'Last I heard,' I said. 'Sixty-seven he'll be now, but lively with it.'
'Well, then.' She smiled again. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon.'
She went down the steps and walked away through the rain, vanishing in the early evening mist at the end of the street.
I sat by the fire and read the file twice, then I went back into the kitchen, made myself some more tea and a chicken sandwich and sat at the table, eating the sandwich and thinking about things.
Extraordinary how events coming right out of the blue can change things. It had happened to me once before, the discovery of that hidden memorial to Steiner and his men in the churchyard at Studley Constable. I'd been researching an article for an historical magazine. Instead, I'd found something unlocked for that had changed the course of my entire life. Produced a book which had gone round the world from New York to Moscow, made me rich. Now this - Ruth Cohen and her stolen file, and I was filled with the same strange, tingling excitement.
I needed to come down. Get things in perspective. So, I went to have a shower, took my time over it, shaved and dressed again. It was only eight-thirty and it didn't seem likely that I'd go to bed early, if I went at all.
I didn't have any more whiskey as I needed to think, so I made even more tea and settled on the chair again by the fire, lit a cigarette and started to work my way through the file again.
The doorbell rang, shaking me from my reverie. I glanced at the clock. It was just before nine. The bell rang again insistently and I replaced the file in the folder, put it on the coffee table and went out into the hall. It occurred to me that it might be Ruth Cohen again, but I couldn't have been more wrong, for when I opened the door I found a young police constable standing there, his navy-blue mac wet with rain.
'Mr Higgins?' He looked at a piece of paper in his left hand. 'Mr Jack Higgins?'
Strange the certainty of bad news so that we don't even need to be told. 'Yes,' I said.
He stepped into the hall. 'Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I'm making an enquiry relevant to a Miss Ruth Cohen. Would you be a friend of hers, sir?'
'Not exactly,' I said. 'Is there a problem?'
'I'm afraid the young lady's dead, sir. Hit-and-run accident at the back of the British Museum an hour ago.'
'My God!' I whispered.
'The thing is sir, we found your name and address on a card in her handbag.'
It was so difficult to take in. She'd stood there at the door where he was such a short time before. He was no more than twenty-one or -two. Still young enough to feel concern and he put a hand on my arm.
'Are you all right, sir?'
I said, 'Rather shocked, that's all.' I took a deep breath. 'What is it you want of me?'
'It seems the young lady was at London University. We've checked the student accommodation she was using. No one there with it being the weekend. It's a question of official identification. For the Coroner's Office.'
'And you'd like me to do it?'
'If you wouldn't mind, sir. It's not far. She's at Kensington Mortuary.'
I took another deep breath to steady myself. 'All right. Just let me get my raincoat.'
The mortuary was a depressing-looking building in a side street, more like a warehouse than anything else. When we went into the foyer, there was a uniformed porter on duty at the desk and a small dark man in his early fifties standing at the window looking out at the rain, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He wore a trilby hat and trenchcoat.
He turned to meet me, hands in pockets. 'Mr Higgins, is it?'
'Yes,' I said.
He didn't take his hands out of his pockets and coughed, ash falling from the tip of his cigarette on to his coat. 'Detective Chief Superintendent Fox. An unfortunate business, sir.'
'Yes,' I said.
This young lady, Ruth Cohen, was she a friend of yours?'
'No,' I said. 'I only met her for the first time earlier this evening.'
'Your name and address were in her handbag.' Before I could reply he carried on, 'Anyway, best to get it over with. If you'd come this way.'
The room they took me into was walled with white tiles and bright with fluorescent lighting. There was a line of operating tables. The body was on the end one covered with a white rubber sheet. Ruth Cohen looked very calm, eyes closed, but her head was enclosed in a rubber hood and blood seeped through.
'Would you formally identify the deceased as Ruth Cohen, sir?' the constable asked.
I nodded. 'Yes, that's her,' and he replaced the sheet.
When I turned Fox was sitting on the end of the table in the corner, lighting another cigarette. 'As I said, we found your name in her handbag.'
It was then, as if something had gone click in my head, that I came back to reality. Hit and run - a serious offence, but when had it merited the attention of a Detective Chief Superintendent? And wasn't there something about Fox with his saturnine face and dark, watchful eyes? This was no ordinary policeman. I smelled Special Branch.
It always pays to stick as closely to the truth as possible, I found that out a long time ago. I said, 'She told me she was over from Boston, working at London University, researching a book.'
'About what, sir?'
Which confirmed my suspicions instantly. 'Something to do with the Second World War, Superintendent, which happens to be an area I've written about myself.'
'I see. She was looking for help, advice, that sort of thing?'
Which was when I lied totally. 'Not at all. Hardly needed it. A Ph.D., I believe. The fact is, Superintendent, I wrote a rather successful book set during the Second World War. She simply wanted to meet me. As I understood it she was flying back to the States tomorrow.'
The contents of her handbag and briefcase were on the table beside him, the Pan Am ticket conspicuous. He picked it up. 'So it would appear.'
'Can I go now?'
'Of course. The constable will run you home.'
We went out into the foyer and paused at the door.
He coughed as he lit another cigarette. 'Damn rain. I suppose the driver of that car skidded. An accident really, but then he shouldn't have driven away. We can't have that, can we?'
'Good night, Superintendent,' I told him and went down the steps to the police car.
I'd left the light on in the hall. When I went in, I carried on into the kitchen without taking my coat off, put the kettle on and then went into the living room. I poured a Bushmills into a glass and turned towards the fire. It was then that I saw that the folder I'd left on the coffee table was gone. For a wild moment I thought I'd made a mistake, had put it elsewhere, but that was nonsense of course.
I put the glass of whiskey down and lit a cigarette, thinking about it. The mysterious Fox - I was more certain than ever that he was Special Branch now - that wretched young woman lying there in the mortuary, and I remembered my unease when she'd told me how she had returned that file at the Records Office. I thought of her walking along the pavement and crossing that street in the rain at the back of the British Museum and then the car. A wet night and a skidding car, as Fox had said. It could have been an accident, but I knew that was hardly likely, not with the file missing. 'Which raised the problem of my own continued existence.
Time to move on for a while, but where? And then I remembered what she had said. There was one person still left who could confirm the story in that file. I packed an overnight bag and went and checked i the street through a chink in the curtain. Cars parked everywhere so it was impossible to see if I was being watched.
I left by the kitchen door at the rear of the house, I walked cautiously up the back alley and quickly worked my way through a maze of quiet back streets J thinking about it. It had to be a security matter, of course. Some anonymous little department at DI5 that took care of people who got out of line, but would that necessarily mean they'd have a go at me? After all, the girl was dead, the file back in the Records Office, the only copy recovered. What could I say that could be proved or in any way believed? On | the other hand, I had to prove it to my own satisfaction and I hailed a cab on the next corner.
The Green Man in Kilburn, an area of London popular with the Irish, featured an impressive painting of an Irish tinker over the door which indicated the kind of custom the place enjoyed. The bar was full, I could see that through the saloon window and I went round to the yard at the rear. The curtains were drawn and Sean Riley sat at a crowded desk doing his accounts. He was a small man with cropped white hair, active for his age, which I knew was seventy-two. He owned the Green Man, but more importantly, was an organizer for Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, in London. I knocked at the window, he got up and moved to peer out. He turned and moved away. A moment later the door opened.
'Mr Higgins. What brings you here?'
'I won't come in, Sean. I'm on my way to Heathrow.'
'Is that a fact. A holiday in the sun, is it?'
'Not exactly. Belfast. I'll probably miss the last shuttle, but I'll be on the breakfast plane. Get word to Liam Devlin. Tell him I'll be staying at the Europa Hotel and I must see him.'
'Jesus, Mr Higgins, and how would I be knowing such a desperate fella as that?'
Through the door I could hear the music from the bar. They were singing 'Guns of the IRA'. 'Don't argue, Sean, just do it,' I said. 'It's important.'
I knew he would, of course, and turned away without another word. A couple of minutes later I hailed a cab and was on my way to Heathrow.
The Europa Hotel in Belfast was legendary amongst newspaper men from all over the world. It had survived numerous bombing attacks by the IRA and stood in Great Victoria Street next to the railway station. I stayed in my room on the eighth floor for most of the day, just waiting. Things seemed quiet enough, but it was an uneasy calm and in the late afternoon, there was a crump of a bomb and when I looked out of the window I saw a black pall of smoke in the distance.
Just after six, with darkness falling, I decided to go down to the bar for a drink, was pulling on my jacket when the phone went. A voice said, 'Mr Higgins? Reception here, sir. Your taxi's waiting.'
It was a black cab, the London variety, and the driver was a middle-aged woman, a pleasant-faced lady who looked like your favourite aunty. I pulled back the glass panel between us and gave her the ritual Belfast greeting.
'Good night to you.'
'And you.'
'Not often I see a lady cab driver, not in London anyway.'
'A terrible place that. What would you expect? You sit quiet now like a good gentleman and enjoy the trip.'
She closed the panel with one hand. The journey took no more than ten minutes. We passed along the Falls Road, a Catholic area I remembered well from boyhood and turned into a warren of mean side streets, finally stopping outside a church. She opened the glass panel.
'The first confessional box on the right as you go in.'
'If you say so.'
I got out and she drove away instantly. The board said 'Church of the Holy Name' and it was in surprisingly good condition, the times of Mass and confession listed in gold paint. I opened the door at the top of the steps and went in. It was not too large and dimly lit, candles flickering down at the altar, the Virgin in a chapel to one side. Instinctively, I dipped my fingers in the holy water and crossed myself, remembering the Catholic aunt in South Armagh who'd raised me for a while as a child and had anguished over my black little Protestant soul.
The confessional boxes stood to one side. No one waited, which was hardly surprising, for according to the board outside I was an hour early. I went in the first on the right and closed the door. I sat there in the darkness for a moment and then the grill slid open.
'Yes?' a voice asked softly.
I answered automatically. 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.'
'You certainly have, my old son.' The light was switched on in the other box and Liam Devlin smiled through at me.
He looked remarkably well. In fact, rather better than he'd seemed the last time I'd seen him. Sixty-seven, but as I'd said to Ruth Cohen, lively with it. A small man with enormous vitality, hair as black as ever, and vivid blue eyes. There was the scar of an old bullet wound on the left side of his forehead and a slight, ironic smile was permanently in place. He wore a priest's cassock and clerical collar and seemed perfectly at home in the sacristy at the back of the church to which he'd taken me.
'You're looking well, son. All that success and money.' He grinned. 'We'll drink to it. There's a bottle here surely.'
He opened a cupboard and found a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses. 'And what would the usual occupant think of all this?' I asked.
