The man called kyril, p.14
The Man Called Kyril, page 14
Mr Williams drew a deep breath. This was going to take time.
‘The first thing I must tell you, Mr Webb, is that you’ll obviously need your own solicitor.’
Kyril smiled bleakly. As far as he was concerned, this was not going to take any time at all.
‘I appoint you,’ he said. ‘I will pay your fees before I go.’
‘But the professional impropriety…’
‘Have your secretary type up a legal waiver. I’ll sign it.’
‘Local searches… inquiries of the local authority…’
‘Forget it. I’m a gambling man. The upstairs is vacant, yes? That’s all I need to know.’
Mr Williams was flummoxed. In front of him he saw a man, a nice enough man he was sure, lounging in the best chair. He noticed one or two details. The man’s clothes were shabby and travel-stained. By his side was a large rucksack, the kind of thing Mr Williams’ children carried when they hitched-hiked around Europe. The clothes had a foreign look about them, although the quality was there all right. Mr Webb wore no tie; evidently a habit, for Mr Williams could see a sunburned triangle of skin between the folds of his collar.
‘I’m afraid I must ask you to wait a minute, Mr Webb.’
‘Of course. Can I possibly have a cup of tea, d’you think?’
Once ‘Mr Webb’ had been dealt with by handing him over to the secretaries Mr Williams closed the door of his office and drew the telephone towards him.
Five minutes later he sat back, a look of puzzlement on his face. He had spoken personally to the manager of the bank at the branch whence Mr Webb’s draft emanated. It was perfectly above board. For good measure Mr Williams had requested the manager to call him back, when he had again confirmed that there was nothing suspect about the draft. Then Mr Williams had phoned his contact in the Law Society, who had hummed and hawed and finally said that it should be all right as long as Mr Webb was prepared to sign a waiver, as he suggested.
Mr Williams took out the draft contract and studied it. Everything was in order. He had a power of attorney to sign it on behalf of the executors, who lived abroad. Vacant possession could be given that day. He sat in silent thought for a minute, before flicking down a switch on his intercom and asking his receptionist to show Mr Webb back in.
* * *
When he was through with Williams Kyril went down to Dawsons, the builders’ merchants at Clapham Junction, and worked his way through a long and expensive shopping-list before returning to the house. Once he had let himself in he contented himself with making a thorough inspection while waiting for Dawsons to deliver.
It was a solid house with few signs of neglect or decay; the impression which he had formed on his quick walk-through with the agent was accurate.
The doorbell rang. Kyril clattered down the uncarpeted stairs to take delivery of his order, tipping the driver generously enough to prevent resentment but not so lavishly as to cause him to stick in the man’s mind.
Kyril took his coat off and set to work. He had given himself plenty of time to get established before he need reveal himself on the streets of London. There was no particular hurry.
Kyril had never owned a house before. The thought that it was his to do as he liked with, that he was accountable to no one, quickened his interest and made the prospect of hours of physical labour somehow less daunting. As he bored the first hole in the wooden window-frame he began to whistle quietly to himself, a cheerful air which he had inherited from his father, who had learned it from his father before him.
First he dealt with the outer defences. All the windows were sealed with bonded adhesive and angle-brackets fastened to the frame. The single drain-pipe at the rear he treated with anti-burglar paint and a wrapping of barbed wire. The chimneys were already bricked up, so Kyril didn’t waste time on them, but he secured the hatchway to the roof-space with double iron bars let into the woodwork.
Then he began to seal off the interior. The main front room he designated his headquarters, that and the tiny kitchen leading off. All the other rooms were fastened with the same bonded adhesive, double bolts on both sides of the frame, and padlocks. The front door at the foot of the stairs he fitted with a padlock, double bolts and a new Yale deadlock. When he had finished he bundled up all the keys to the various locks he had bought, with the single exception of the key to the front door, put them into a small canvas bag and slipped out for a quick trip to the nearby river, glad of the excuse for some fresh air. He waited only long enough to see the bag sink beneath the slimy water before returning to the house.
Next came the really heavy work. At the head of the stairs was a door leading into the main room. Kyril hadn’t touched it. Now he knelt by the door, on the inside, testing the floorboards. A padsaw would do for the initial incision, and that he had, but for the main task he was going to save a lot of time by using a power-saw. That meant another shopping trip.
It was getting late, but Kyril didn’t worry. That was one of the reasons why Battersea, attracted him, an aspect which reminded him of Moscow: he was living in a cash economy. On the street outside his house brand new Jaguars were parked side by side with cement-dusty builders’ vans and the front halves of articulated lorries; men in dirty jeans came home at six o’clock and emerged half an hour later dressed in good quality suits, their equally well-dressed wives or girlfriends on their arms. Kyril liked that. He knew there were little shops open where normally you would not even expect to find trade premises, shops down quiet alleys, or in the basement of a terraced house. Within 20 minutes he had found what he wanted, a second-hand Black & Decker, haggled with the shopman, relishing the sound of his own voice again, struck a bargain and paid cash. On his way home Kyril stopped in a ‘Mini-Mart’ and bought bread and tea from the morose Asian proprietor, again enjoying the brief touch of human contact.
Darkness had fallen, but the street was noisy and Kyril had no compunction about using the power-saw. Let the neighbours complain, much he cared. Besides, it was necessary to make the downstairs tenant aware of him.
At nine o’clock Kyril broke off for a scratch meal and a smoke. He didn’t eat much. The bread felt damp to the touch and tasted of nothing while at the same time coating his mouth with a faintly acidic, bilious substance. He thought with regret of a borodinski loaf, coarse and brown and liberally sprinkled with caraway seeds. Kyril sighed. There was nothing like that in England.
After he had eaten he lay down on an old mattress which he had picked up in the market earlier and looked through the black oblong of the window at the sky. Quite close to his house, though not so near as to be uncomfortable, a lamp-standard cast a garish orange glow into the room. Despite its softness this glow brought Kyril no comfort. It made him afraid. He propped himself up on one elbow and tried to analyse the feeling.
So far he was undetected; no one knew where he was. That was fine. Why, then, be afraid? Kyril drew deeply on his cigarette. It was something to do with the area… he had come to the end of his journey now, there was nowhere else to go. Except home. And Kyril felt exposed. He was at the centre of a web fringed with terraces of crumbling property, a tangled labyrinth of high streets and main streets and cross streets and side-streets, all leading to him, in the centre, alone. Kyril remembered how as a boy his father would take him fishing on a Sunday afternoon, the sun glinting on the river as it wound down from the Urals, the sound of birdsong, the feel of a clean wind on the skin. He smiled. His father… there was a good man. But he had died, as had Kyril’s mother; his wife left him, there were no children. He was in London, at the cold centre of a concrete maze where the sky was always grey and the rain never washed the grime from the stained, forbidding walls which hemmed him in.
The rain. A thin drizzle had begun to fall, coating the window-pane with a dirty mixture of lead, carbon-monoxide and filth. For a second Kyril thought of the stalacmites in the caves in the mountains above his childhood home: there too, the moisture never washed anything away, never cleansed, never purified, it merely added stone to stone, drop by drop.
Somewhere out there was another world, in which Stanov plotted desperately, the Athens referentura fought to cover its tracks, the KGB combed Brussels, then Belgium, then all of western Europe. But it was not his world any longer. He had no means of knowing what went on there. How much did SIS know? Had Stanov succeeded in exposing the traitor? Precisely how much danger was Kyril in, and how immediate was that danger…?
The last question was easy to answer. If the diary had any effect on the traitor at all he must try to eradicate Kyril. He could not afford to run the risk that Stanov might get to him first and make him talk. Now that Kyril was stationary, the peril was immediate. He put that question aside as answered and went on to something else.
Loshkevoi.
This aspect of his mission had begun to trouble Kyril greatly. Before, he could ignore it. Now, at the end of the road, it must be faced.
Stanov had lied about Loshkevoi.
A high-ranking traitor was not going to reveal himself to one of Stanov’s irregular agents. It went against all the rules of the game. So what was the point of telling Kyril that Loshkevoi held the key? To divert him from something else, perhaps? But why do that? What was this mysterious something that Kyril ought not to know?
Should he try to see Loshkevoi anyway? Should he leave him strictly alone? Assuming he did meet Loshkevoi, what then?
Why had Stanov lied?
He extinguished his cigarette and stood up, shaking off these doleful thoughts. Action. He had been putting it off for long enough.
It was time to meet the neighbours.
He spent a few moments hanging the drapes at the window, all he would ever need in the way of curtains. Then he went out by the front door and immediately turned left, so that he was facing the entrance which belonged to the downstairs tenant. Halfway up the frame glowed an illuminated bell. Kyril peered closer. ‘Trumper’, that was all the sliver of cardboard said. It could mean anything. The estate agent had spoken of ‘old Mr Trumper’ and called him ‘a nice old man’, but there might be other occupants; Kyril didn’t trust agents. Well, there was only one way to find out. Kyril pressed the bell.
For a long while nothing happened. At last Kyril heard the sound of shuffling movement on the other side of the door, together with a tapping noise he couldn’t identify.
‘Who’s there?’
A male voice. Breathless. Frightened. Old.
‘It’s your neighbour from upstairs. Ian Webb. I’ve come to say sorry about all the noise.’
There was a long pause.
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Webb. Ian Webb.’
There was an indistinguishable sound; the speaker could have been saying ‘Go away’, or ‘Wait a mo’, or any one of a number of things. Kyril gnawed his lip. The last thing he wanted was to have to break in. But suddenly the door opened, and Mr Trumper was revealed.
‘You’d best come in, then. It’s a wet night.’ The voice had lost some of its terror. ‘Sorry about you waiting, and that, but it’s the kids, see? Rotten little buggers, some of them. I thought it was them.’
Kyril took in the white stick, the staring, vacant eyes. The old man was blind.
He stepped over the threshold, feeling and hearing the cold click of lino under his feet. The only light came from a single naked bulb halfway down the passage. As Kyril followed the stooped form of the old man towards the back of the draughty house he began to notice details, take measurements with his eyes. It ought to be possible, the layout was the same as in the flat above…
‘Come in here, it’s warmer.’
‘Here’ was a small scullery leading to the kitchen. Such warmth as there was came from a paraffin stove which gave off more stench than heat. Kyril wondered how the old man managed without setting the place alight. As if in answer to his thought Trumper said, ‘Don’t trouble about me, I can see a bit. Find yourself a chair and sit yourself down.’
Kyril looked round. The only vacant chair was a moth-eaten pouffe with its stuffing beginning to come out of a tear in the side. He lowered himself onto it gingerly.
‘I’m glad you came. I appreciate that. I wondered what all the banging was.’
The old man had awkwardly let himself down into his own chair, a few inches away from the stove. Presumably he was used to the poisonous atmosphere. The only light in the room came from the same bulb in the hall: a shaft of yellow fell through the open door between the two men, illuminating neither of them. Kyril blinked and struggled to get his bearings.
‘Things were in a state upstairs. I only moved in today.’
‘I’ll bet they were. I’ll bet they were.’
The old man spoke very slowly, and with obvious effort. Although Kyril could not see him he was gaining an increasingly powerful and detailed impression of Mr Trumper. In his late seventies, probably; breathing poor; partially sighted; bronchitic… Kyril thought he could detect the dead smell of cheap pipe tobacco somewhere, strong and black, but doled out sparingly.
He was incredibly frail. Too frail to live long.
‘The old couple upstairs, the Walkers… he died, then she died, you see. That’s how it was.’
Kyril nodded sympathetically and said ‘ah’.
‘She was always untidy but when he died she went to pieces. It’s been empty for ever so long.’
‘Ah,’ said Kyril again. ‘Cigarette?’
Trumper sighed and shook his head. ‘No thanks. I used to but I’ve given it up. Doctor’s orders. He’s another bugger, an’ all.’
‘Does the doctor come often?’
‘Does ’e hell. There’s nobody comes now. My daughter and her husband, they live in Canada. They never write to me and I never write to them. Since my wife died there’s nobody calls.’
‘But… there must be somebody. The people from the Council, now, what about them?’
‘What? Welfare, d’you mean? Social Security?’ The old man cackled, caught his breath and choked. Kyril waited patiently for the fit to end. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
Kyril had a sudden vision of himself, at the end of his life, like this. Alone, in a damp flat without light or heat. He leaned forward and peered at Trumper. He seemed to be wrapped up in layer upon layer of wool, like an advertisement for a jersey manufacturer.
‘You shouldn’t have to live in a place like this. Wait ’til I’m fixed upstairs. It shan’t be long now. Then you must come and visit.’
‘That’s good of you, that is. Kind, I call that. I don’t mind about the noise. It’s your home now. You’ve got to get it fixed. Don’t worry about me, the noise tells me you’re up there, and I like that. It’s been lonely since the Walkers. You’ll like it here, you will really. You can’t beat south of the river, that’s what I say.’
Kyril sat back slowly. He hadn’t meant it to be like this.
‘I wanted to ask you a favour.’
‘Ask away.’
‘I keep a bit of money in the flat. I’m worried about thieves. I’ve bought some of that non-dry paint and barbed wire and I’ve treated the drainpipe outside. Would you mind if I did the downstairs half of the pipe as well?’
Trumper seemed not to grasp what he was saying.
‘It’s to stop them climbing up,’ Kyril explained. ‘Burglars.’
The old man cogitated awhile, then chuckled.
‘You do what you like,’ he said. ‘Suit yourself. Want a cup of tea?’
Kyril swallowed. To his annoyance his hands had begun to shake, not so as to be noticeable to anyone else, but he knew.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot.’
The old man prodded the floor with his white stick, as if to check that the wood was still safe, then levered himself up from his chair. Kyril was halfway off the pouffe in order to help him but the old man waved him back. ‘No.’ His voice was very firm. Kyril knew pride when he heard it. In a sudden fit of disgust he clenched his hands together and squeezed hard.
Trumper awkwardly changed his stick from one hand to the other, and Kyril realised that he relied on it for support as well as to warn people of his infirmity. The vision of his own life’s end came back to Kyril. For a moment he lacked the energy to push it away, and instead he stared at it, appalled.
‘D’you take sugar?’
With a start he realised that Trumper had gone into the kitchen.
‘No, thank you. And no milk either,’ he added mechanically.
‘No milk?’ Normally the old man’s querulous voice would have brought a smile to Kyril’s lips, but now they remained set in a dead straight line.
‘The only other person I ever knew who didn’t take milk in his…’
Trumper looked up from the stove, surprised to find Kyril by his side. His visitor made no more noise than a shadow on the wall.
‘Can I help?’
Kyril was thinking, it would be an easy thing to dispose of the body: two dustbin-liner bags over the feet, two more over the head, and all these houses had cellars. Why, then, not do it now?
No. Trumper’s death would be unnecessary. He was worrying needlessly. When the time for action came the old man must take his chance, but for the moment he presented no threat.
Kyril fished out a cigarette, saying ‘Do you mind?’
‘You suit yourself.’
Kyril held the cigarette to the gas flame. Why was it necessary, all of a sudden, to use both hands? To check the trembling which he had noticed earlier?
Kyril observed his body’s latest phenomenon with detached interest. Tension. That was all. His body and brain had been aligned for the kill; now the order was rescinded it took both a little while to adjust.
The old man had finished making the tea. Kyril accepted a cup and sipped the strong, black liquid. It was good: not as good as in Moscow but unmistakably restorative and refreshing. He felt the tension of the kill begin to drain away.
