A Sentimental Traitor (29 page)

She found him where they had left him, amongst the overturned piles of his books, in his vomit. She couldn’t help noticing there was blood in it, but he was breathing,
heavily, his lungs rasping. ‘Harry, you bloody fool,’ she sobbed, kneeling by his side.

He opened an eye. ‘If this is what a man has to do to get you back, I think I’ll try Internet dating instead.’ He tried a sardonic smile, his face wrinkled in agony.

She helped him to the sofa, trying to make him comfortable, cleaning him up, crying quietly. She gasped when she took off his filthy shirt. She found more bruising and weals than there was skin.
She bathed him, tenderly, in warm water, trying not to cause him too much pain, when suddenly he grabbed her arm, so tightly it was her turn to hurt. ‘What did you see? Tell me,
Jem.’

As he listened to her, his body seemed to relax. His breathing became less frantic, he stopped sweating, the colour returned to his face. ‘Did you follow him in?’ he demanded when at
last she told him about the pub.

‘I couldn’t, Harry. I’d have stuck out like a . . .’ She struggled to find a metaphor, but decided none was necessary. ‘I got photographs.’ She pulled out her
camera and held it up for him to inspect. Many of the images were fumbled, out of focus, betraying how much her hands had been trembling, but amongst them were several excellent images. And they
needed only one.

‘Good girl,’ he whispered, falling back on his cushion. ‘Were you scared?’

‘No.’

‘Liar.’

His eyes closed and he fell deeply asleep.

When he woke again, he found he was lying beneath a duvet. His books had been set into neat piles once more, and she had washed the carpet of all trace of the attack. He still felt like shit,
every breath cost him dear, but he found he was able to smile, and he did. Only one or two cracked ribs, and he hadn’t even lost any teeth. In the world of Harry Jones, this wasn’t
exactly a famous victory, but at least he was still in the fight.

A cry came from the tennis court. ‘I think that was out.’

A second voice warbled from the other end of the net. ‘Was it? Then point to you.’

‘No, let’s play a let.’

‘You sure?’

‘Thirty-forty,’ the first player insisted, and prepared to serve again.

Doubles, of course. Singles would have been far too limiting for the annual tennis tournament of a small village like Upper Marlsford, ruling out most players over fifty. That didn’t
prevent the matches being fought with considerable intensity, even while being wrapped in a blanket of neighbourly politeness.

This was the final. Felix and Patricia played hosts, handing round the squash and sandwiches he’d made. A good number of the villagers of Upper Marlsford had gathered to watch, dressed in
their bleached straw hats, cotton dresses and open collars, sitting around the court on freshly mown grass or standing in the shade of the crab apple tree. Others had gone for a stroll through the
gardens, constructed for the low maintenance that a weekend couple required yet nevertheless nurtured with enormous fondness by Felix.

‘It’s comforting to be able to do our bit,’ Patricia remarked as their paths crossed by the ancient sundial, a birthday present to him from her that was slowly being claimed by
the lichen.

‘Love this time of year,’ he replied, his voice larded with nostalgia for his childhood. He was in starched shirtsleeves, which protruded from a multi-hued silk waistcoat that seemed
to catch every colour of the garden. ‘Few weeks’ time we’ll be picking the early plums and apples. You know, Patricia, next year I’d like to try keeping some bees. What do
you think?’

But she appeared not to have heard. ‘The English at play,’ she remarked, without much apparent approval, as a further cry came from the tennis court and at last the game was
lost.

‘Next year you should enter,’ he encouraged, ‘you used to enjoy a game.’

‘You forget, Felix. I don’t like losing.’

‘Then let’s put in a swimming pool. Good exercise, and we could use one of those ground-source heat pump thingies. Ingenious bits of kit, so I’m told, very green and
environmental. I suspect we could get some sort of grant.’

‘We don’t need a grant. We could do it on my expenses.’

‘Your expenses would cover a swimming pool?’ he said in surprise.

‘Felix, my expenses would fill a swimming pool. We’d open it once a year to the village, of course. Put it down as entertainment.’

She smiled contentedly, but he didn’t join with her. Instead he stroked his renewing beard, still not much more than stubble, not yet at its best. His brow said he had something on his
mind. ‘I sold two picture frames this week. Broke my heart.’

‘To sell them?’

‘No, for what it said. You see, one was entirely authentic, wonderful rich patina, original gilding. Oh, a little battered here and there but only what you’d expect from something
that was probably Georgian. The story of centuries told in every little chip and layer of dust. A one-off. It only needed a little restoration and retouching to be perfect once again. And the other
. . . Well, that was no more than thirty years old, all pretence and brashness. I got twice as much for it. Yet in another thirty it will probably have fallen apart.’

‘The world moves on, Felix,’ she said distractedly, adjusting the sundial a fraction.

‘Yes, of course, my dear. But sometimes it pays not to push the future too fast. Let it get there in its own time.’

Ah, one of his homilies. An eyebrow arched halfway to her scalp. ‘Do I sense the brush of criticism?’

‘Of you? Never. But . . . sometimes, my dear, I wonder if you don’t require the world to be a little too precise. Orderly. All its ends tied together rather too neatly.’ He
pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat and examined it carefully. Then he moved the sundial back to its original position.

‘You know I don’t do untidy, Felix,’ she scolded. ‘After all, I’m a bureaucrat, remember. Everything in its little box.’

And everyone, too, he thought, but didn’t say. She moved away, not wanting a trial of strength over a wretched sundial.

‘This Jones business,’ he said, pursuing her, ‘you’ve made him entirely irrelevant.’

‘With your help.’

‘Precisely, which is why I make bold enough to wonder.’

She stopped suddenly and turned. ‘
What
do you wonder?’

‘Is it really necessary to humiliate him completely? Make him bankrupt? It seems . . .’

‘A step too far?’

‘Unnecessary.’

‘That’s the difference between the antiques trade and my business, Felix. I don’t live in the past, or even move with the times. I make the times. One can’t keep going
back, letting things gather dust.’

From the court came a cry of despair, a point lost, and with it the match. Polite applause rippled through the onlookers, the vicar jumped to his feet, brushing crumbs from his chest, scrubbing
his brow with a vast handkerchief as he prepared to present the winners’ cup.

‘Come on, Felix, we have more work to do.’ She struck out once again, leaving their conversation behind.

‘Yes, dear,’ he sighed, and dutifully followed.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese might easily have given itself over to tourist tat, seeing that it had stood on its site near Fleet Street for more than four centuries since the Great
Fire had burned down its predecessor, yet it had resisted the temptation. Its mishmash of corridors and staircases and wood-panelled rooms conjured up traces of earlier times, and that is precisely
what Sloppy wanted. To go back. Forget about now. That was why he drank. When Harry arrived, soon after the doors had opened, he found his old colleague sitting alone in a booth down in the
stone-clad vaults, cradling a glass. Harry had brought Jemma with him, suspecting that Sloppy might find the presence of a woman less threatening, quite apart from reducing Harry’s temptation
to grab the man by the hair and beat the crap out of him. Not that his ribs left him in much of a condition to mete out physical punishment, but in Sloppy’s case, he’d be happy to make
an exception.

Sloppy raised two bleary eyes as they approached. ‘You’re in luck,’ he muttered. ‘Money will be gone by this evening. So will I.’ He swallowed some of his wine, not
tasting. ‘Who’s the new tart?’ he said, eyeing Jemma.

‘I’m just a friend.’

‘Sure,’ Sloppy muttered, ‘always lots of friends, has Harry.’ A smile, cold and hard, cut across his face. ‘Friday nights, when they let us out of Sandhurst and we
bombed down to town. You remember? That very first club on the Kings Road, what was its name?’ He shook his head, trying to clear the mists, and turned once more to Jemma. ‘Don’t
worry, it was only completely meaningless sex. They didn’t give us time for anything else. Spent too many months and too much money on our training, so they didn’t want romance getting
in the way.’ A wistful tone crept into his voice. ‘There was that little blonde we used to argue about, I always thought she’d be better off with me instead of you. From Latvia or
Lithuania or wherever. What was her name?’

It was Finland, her name had been Kaarina, but this wasn’t the time.

‘Sloppy, for pity’s sake. Concentrate! This is important, for both of us.’

‘Yes, she was.’

The bastard. Sloppy was enjoying making his old friend squirm. Harry produced a large manila envelope, and from it he took three photographs. He moved Sloppy’s drink in order to lay them
out on the table. ‘Take a look, Sloppy. Is this our man?’

Sloppy seemed to be struggling. The alcohol was waging war with his eyesight and some bastard had moved his drink. Yet there was something in these photographs that was insisting on his
attention. He lowered his head for a closer look, sticking his finger on the central photo as though to pin it down, in case it tried to escape. He shook his head. ‘Different hair, different
glasses. Didn’t have that ridiculous bloody beard.’ He slumped back in his seat. ‘But they’re the same bloodsucking eyes. Like a lizard. That’s the piece of slime. I
can feel his clammy hand even now.’ Sloppy closed his eyes. When they returned something had changed, as though he were no longer completely lost in a storm of alcohol but had been washed up
on some beach, a place where he could find a little firm ground once more. ‘Who is he, Harry? Who the hell is he?

‘Dunno, Sloppy. But I know where the pisshead drinks.’

In fables, the fight against evil is pursued without quarter or hesitation; in the world of Harry Jones, there were always distractions. One of the most pressing was a letter he
received by Special Delivery, for which he had to sign. It was a Statutory Demand. He scanned it, trying to take it all in. Insolvency Act . . . Debt for Liquidated Sum Payable Immediately . . . 21
days after its service on you, you could be made bankrupt . . .

It had started.

He spent the afternoon with more sorting, sifting, knowing it must be done and determined not to run from it. Jemma was assisting, taking pity, since Harry’s ribs still hurt like hell. She
was helping him fillet the endless yards of filing he had accumulated during his parliamentary career and that, now his office in the House of Commons had been closed down, had been dumped across
his dining room. Campaigns he had pursued, speeches he had made, and letters. As she read through them she grew aware for the first time how much of his work had been low-key, but vital for the
constituents concerned. Over the years Harry had helped keep many families and homes together, even though he couldn’t keep his own.

The radio was on, a news report that the new Prime Minister, Dave Murray, had made a speech on a visit to the White House promising to repair the damage to relations caused between the two
countries by recent misunderstandings. Privately, and on a few occasions publicly, the Americans had been suggesting that the Speedbird crash had been handled even more incompetently than
Lockerbie. The Americans wanted justice, retribution, some means of restoring their national pride, and all they had was a grainy bit of footage from somewhere in Russia. They hadn’t even had
the pleasure of watching that ball-less bastard Ghazi die. Yet Harry chose not to listen. Politics just brought back the pain, so he took himself off for a shower while Jemma ploughed through more
of the filing.