"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 06 - The Mandarin Cypher 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

'What's he been talking about?' I put it as just another quick question so that she wouldn't think it was significant. The thing was that when a man came back from a mission a bit broken up he was liable to talk too much and blow the whole works.

'He said something about "nearly crashing", and "ten-tenths shit across the airport", things like that, nothing that made any sense.'

I remembered she thought he was an airline pilot; we always have to make something up. It doesn't matter which girl we're with, they never know who we are. Nobody does.

'Did anything in particular start him off?'

'Not that I can remember. He came in looking sort of done-up, and wouldn't have a drink, and wouldn't say what was the matter. Then he slowly went wild.' She drank some more brandy and choked on it a little. 'I've got to be up at six, you know - can you take him away so I can get some sleep?'

I watched North for a bit. He was looking more settled now, with a strange half-smile on his face as if he'd quietly come round to thinking that the only thing to do was laugh the whole thing off. The smile didn't look very good because he was still white to the gills.

'You'll be okay now,' I told him and looked round for the phone.

'Can I use this?'

She nodded and I picked up the receiver while North pulled himself out of the chair and said 'Excuse me,' and went quietly off to the bathroom and shut the door and blew his brains out, by the sound of it.

Connie screamed just once and I got across the room very fast and tried the bathroom door and found it locked and took three paces back and then went at it, going in with a lot of momentum left, with the door stopping halfway because he was on the floor. Then I came back and told her not to go in there, and picked up the receiver from where it had dropped, and dialled the number.

'North has just killed himself and there's been a lot of noise, so we'll need smoke out.'

I gave them the address.

Connie was hunched on the floor, shivering badly, couldn't take any more. 'Christ, what a night,' I said, 'd'you think you could get us some nice hot coffee?' Give her something to do.

Five minutes later I saw a black saloon pulling in to the kerb three floors below and I thought that was pretty fast, even for the Bureau, but they were people in uniform getting out, so I supposed one of the neighbours had called emergency when they'd heard the gun go off: if he'd been punching the wall there wouldn't have been much sleep for anyone, and the bang in the bathroom had been the last straw.

'In there,' I told the sergeant. He must have come up the stairs two at a time, quicker than the lift, because he just nodded and blew out a lot of breath and went over and pushed the door open. Then he came back and asked if he could make a phone call and I said yes.

There was a nice smell of coffee now and I could hear Connie getting through a lot of Kleenex in the kitchen. She'd called out once - 'Why did he have to come and do it here?' - which I suppose was a healthy sign.

Johnson got here next, looking very compact and noncommittal, taking a look in the bathroom. The sergeant had his notebook out, and started with me.

'Will you give me your name and address?'

'No,' Johnson said as he came back from the bathroom, and pulled out his wallet and showed the sergeant his identity and then told me to clear out Connie was in the kitchen doorway holding a green plastic tray with two cups on it, looking at Johnson and wondering who he was. I called out goodnight to her and opened the door as Johnson said: 'Look, Sergeant, I'm going to call my chief, then we'll work out the best way to handle this. There's no immediate need for an amb —' then I shut the door and went down the three flights slowly, pressing the time-button to put the lights on, nearly walking into someone.

'What's the trouble?' A man in pyjamas, red-eyed from sleep.

'Just a family row.'

The September rain was soft and fresh-smelling as I crossed the pavement and got into the car. Connie wasn't one of my girls, though I'd met her once or twice and I was on the list of names she had to call if any kind of trouble came up. Of course we can make what friends we like, unless there's an actual detective warning us off, and that only happens if by sheer chance we've taken a fancy to someone with a job in a foreign embassy or with their name on the books as a security risk. All the same, the Bureau tries to steer a few girls our way, clerks and secretaries working somewhere along Whitehall or across at the Foreign Office, civil servants with a known background. One of our people — I thing it was Carslake - said it was the best-run call-girl system in the whole of London, and a director heard him and got him hauled up on high, because the Bureau is terribly sensitive about things like that.

I went along there now, turning through Hyde Park with the rain hitting the windscreen and slowing the wipers. Except for the fact that we worked for the same outfit, I had nothing to do with North and he had nothing to do with me, but some of his misery had rubbed off and I knew I wouldn't sleep if I went back to the flat, and anyway we all seem to gravitate to that dreary bloody building whenever there's trouble. Comfort in numbers, 1 suppose, when the nerves start playing up.

There wasn't anyone in Field Briefing or the canteen at this time of night. Signals was in full operation because of the Irish thing but I couldn't talk to anyone in there, they'd throw me out. I found Dewhurst wandering about morosely on the first floor.

'When did North get back?' I asked him.