Air Apparent Read online

  AIR APPARENT

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner 2014

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 1970 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

  This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2014.

  To

  The dark-haired chick in the black maxi and lace-up boots whom I often see swinging up Ken High Street and who makes me feel like I was three hundred and five years old.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  GRACE NOTE

  Extract from The Secret Generations by John Gardner

  Extract from WHO’S WHO

  MOSTERVALE, Rear Admiral Sir Richard, K.B.E., cr. 1952; C.B. 1949; M.V.O. 1936; b. 22 August 1900; s. of Admiral Eversliegh Mostervale and Georgina Nellie (née Truecott); unmarried. Educ. R.N. College, Dartmouth. H.M.S. Ceres 1918-22; Portsmouth, Special Duties 1923-35; Admiralty I935-39; Executive Officer Combined Operations (I) 1942-45; Captain 1944; Admiralty 1945-57 ; Rear Admiral 1951; Reserve List 1957; Attached as head of a department at Foreign Office 1958-67; Retired List 1967. Recreations: imbibology, art and opera. Clubs: Whites, Army and Navy. Address: 12 Abbot’s Mews, W.8.

  MOSTYN, Colonel Hon. James George, C.M.G. 1966; C.B.E. 1958; M.C. 1942; b. 4 March 1914; s. of The Hon. George Edward Mostyn and Alice May (née Longbow); unmarried. Educ. Haileybury College and New College, Oxford. Foreign Office 1935-38; attached 2nd Lancers 1939; Special Operations Executive 1941-46; Colonel on attachment 2nd Lancers 1947; Foreign Office, Special Consultant (Europe) 1949-58; Deputy Head of a department at Foreign Office 1958-67; Reserve List 1967. Recreations: Shooting, Golf. Club: Guards. Address: c/o Coutts & CO., 440 Strand, W.C.2.

  12 Abbot’s Mews

  London,

  W8

  01-937 1789

  Dear Mostyn,

  Suggest you get in touch with me soonest. Most important suggestion for you. To mutual advantage.

  Sincerely,

  Richard Mostervale

  Foreign and Commonwealth Office

  London S.W.1

  TO: The Prime Minister.

  FROM: The Foreign Secretary.

  Date: 3rd March 1970

  Index Code: A/4025/18

  CLASSIFIED

  Dear Harold,

  Regarding the matter of President Anthony and General Bushway about which we spoke on Thursday last.

  I am pleased to inform you that the officer who appraised me of the latest situation has now been put in full control of what he likes to call ‘his own outfit’.

  I have given him a free hand. DI 5 and our own IS have been fully acquainted but will remain in reserve, though some individual members are involved.

  I have complete confidence that, in this way, the whole matter will be dealt with in a manner that does not openly involve HM Government or Forces.

  Yours cordially,

  Michael

  Foreign Secretary

  1

  It was the moment he had dreaded: the fraction of time we all spend our lives trying to prevent. Now there was no avoiding it. The moment of truth.

  The big white Ford GT40 reversed, lining up and pointing its nose directly at him with uncompromising accuracy. But he remained paralyzed.

  The car moved, beginning to build up speed. Closer. Tyres singing. Straight. He did not even brace himself. Now. It was going to hit … hit … hit …

  The battery-operated model thudded against Boysie Oakes’ right shoe and was deflected, whirring off across the carpet.

  It was a clever toy which worked by feeding a programmed card into the underside of the model. The edges of the card could be cut so that, as it moved through a pair of rollers, it connected with spring-loaded buffers, pushing them apart or closing them, thereby controlling gears and steering.

  In theory you could cut the card and make the car drive itself all round the room without hitting anything. Highly instructional. A child of ten could do it. Boysie often found that children of ten were more advanced with things like that. He found it difficult to make the wretched thing drive away from him, stop, reverse and return so that it missed the chair on which he was sitting.

  He had bought the car in a moment of exhilaration last Christmas while the brandy-breathed Santas were conning the toddlers. The moment had come, in the toy department of the big store, at the same second as a dazzling smile from a chick all done up in a little black dress, the kind they made them wear to work in big stores.

  She was around eighteen with a waist so tiny that Boysie knew he could just open up his big hands and make the tips of his thumbs and forefingers touch, with room to spare, if he encircled it.

  But that was a dream, living on for a precious five seconds in the middle of all the clamour and hell-raising of a merry Christmas spend up.

  The smile had cost Boysie a couple of quid for the toy car which he promptly stowed away for a rainy day and only remembered again now, on this blustery March night, and he was damned if he could work the thing properly.

  Boysie was bored. He had been bored for the best part of a year: ever since the private security organisation, Grimobo, founded by his ex-boss, Colonel James George Mostyn, had succumbed to the credit squeeze of the late sixties.

  Still with a little capital left, Boysie had moved from the comparative splendour of Dolphin Square to more modest surroundings at the better end of the Earl’s Court Road. 1 bedr’m, 1 stng. rm, ktn, bt’rm. It was not luxury, but it left a little spare cash for things like food and drink.

  He crossed the room, pulled back the curtains and stared down into the street, watching the little bundles of living jumble trudge along damp pavements. Across the road there was a family-size double-fronted shop. Newsagent S. W. Wood Tobacconist. In its small doorway a man strained his eyes to read the postcard ads. The man was wearing a grey raincoat.

  Boysie allowed the curtain to drop, turned back into the room and switched on the television, slumping into a chair and lighting a cigarette. Slowly the picture emerged. It showed a junk-ridden room with a bed, rear centre. On the bed lay a middle-aged woman apparently garbed in rags. Forward, and to the right, was a table. At the table sat a middle-aged man. He wore a stained striped shirt without a collar, and a pair of trousers with a large rent in the left leg. His hair, what was left of it, stuck matted to a dirty scalp.

  “Noel Coward,” observed Boysie.

  He leafed through the Evening Standard to find the TV Guide. “Ah! The Wednesday Play. The Glittering Gem by Sam Cole.” It looked as gripping as a wet lettuce.

  The man on the screen was indulging himself in a ferocious bout of coughing. The coughing eased and he took a deep breath, launching into conversation with the lady on the bed. The matted, coughing man spoke first.

  You didn’t get the cocoa then?

  What cocoa?

  The cocoa you usually get before we go to bed.

  I don’t usually get the cocoa. You get it. You usually get the cocoa. Ten o’clock. You get the cocoa.

  Never. If I get it then I get it at a quarter to ten. Now it’s five past.

  Argue. That’s all we do. Sit here and argue. Day in day out. Month after month. Year by year. Seems there’s no fun to life any more. There were days, long ago days, when we used to get out into the green fields where the birds sing in the sky and the wind sobs on the cheeks of cripples in consolation. But not any more.

  We ain’t got any co
coa anyway.

  Why ain’t we got none?

  ‘Cos you didn’t go and collect the benefit, did you?

  Benefit? What do I want with benefit? Bloody charity. Bloody Welfare State’s charity, we don’t want none of that. Here I am, used to be able to work hard, earn a good honest wage and what am I reduced to now? A husk. A living shell. No work. No pleasure, not even with you in bed like we used, ’cos I lost me strength and when we do it’s only pleasurable when you get a coughing spell. Look at me. Look at me.

  The camera did as it was bidden and went into close-up. The ravaged face was horrific. The man went on.

  And me only forty-eight.

  “Oh Christ,” said Boysie aloud, leaping for the set and switching off. “Forty-eight. Christ.” He went into the bathroom, put the light on, and began to peer at his face in the mirror.

  The hair was greyer and had receded a shade, but it was still a good strong face. Maybe the odd line or two now, but one had to expect that. The eyes, ice blue, remained as clear as ever. Who was he kidding? A year of doing nothing had sapped his strength. Too many cigarettes. Too many late nights and not enough exercise. It would not do. He decided that his body called for some form of stimulation. A walk. A walk to some hostelry, probably.

  Boysie went over to the window again and looked into the street. The wind still blew but there was no rain. The man in the raincoat still stood in the doorway of Newsagent S. W. Wood Tobacconist.

  Boysie shrugged into his short suede car coat with the fur collar. It was getting shabby, a small tear in the right shoulder, but it still kept out the cold from the knees upward.

  The wind was strong when he hit the street. Strong and gusty, belching up from the cavern of Kangaroo Valley, the far end of the Earl’s Court Road inhabited by Ned Kelly immigrant Australians who preferred the old country to the glare of Bondi Beach and all the Sheilas who spread themselves on the sand of the emigrate and prosper posters.

  With the wind behind him, Boysie struck out in the direction of Kensington High Street.

  Old habits die hard. With long accustomed care he glanced over his left shoulder as he turned into the High Street. The man in the grey raincoat was walking on the opposite- side of the road but in the same direction.

  Boysie slowed his pace, clenching his fists in the pockets of the car coat. This was not the first time. During the twelve months away from the frantic world, the nightmare land of security, he had suffered several uncomfortable moments: times when he imagined the past was edging back to meet him, or at least catch up with him.

  There were many things about his past that Boysie Oakes would prefer to forget. Blood stained the memory as well as the hands.

  He had gone a hundred yards up the High Street before he was certain that Grey Raincoat was tailing him. A quick dead feeling in the stomach and that arid sensation at the back of the throat told him he was unhappy about the situation.

  Give him a run for his money, he thought and walked on, conscious of the soundless footsteps behind him.

  He kept the pace steady and slow. There were not many people about and if the tail was out for a kill it could be done quickly with an easy getaway. Boysie was not anxious to force that kind of issue by breaking into a run.

  He got to the entrance of Kensington High Street tube station before making a move. Two steps past the entrance he suddenly spun round and moved fast down the alleyway, running for the ticket machines.

  For a second he wondered if it had been a wise choice. There were still too few people about. He banged a tenpenny piece into a machine, grabbed at his ticket and headed towards the trains.

  There were four people on the platform. A couple intent on public copulation. A young lad surreptitiously filling in some detail on a corset advertisement, and an elderly man in the London businessmen’s uniform. It was cold and draughty, backed by the odd sounds of underground stations. A minute went by. Grey Raincoat had not appeared. From far away came the first whine of an approaching train. Boysie stood close to the wall, his eyes fixed on the platform entrance. The train was louder. Nearer. Still no raincoat.

  The rattling silver and glass capsule came rushing in, opening its doors with an electric grumble. The other four passengers climbed aboard. Boysie still waited, eyes flicking between the entrance and the compartment doors in front of which he had positioned himself.

  The doors gave their pre-shutting sigh and he dived towards them into the compartment. As he ran the five or so paces the agony leaped in the pit of his stomach. On the periphery of his vision Boysie caught the flash of grey moving from the entrance to the train. As he leaped aboard he turned. There was time enough to see that the raincoat had also boarded the train.

  Boysie fell into a seat on the far side. The compartment was empty except for a painted lady who moved as the train began to roll. She walked the length of the compartment, sat down next to Boysie and enquired if he had a light, holding up a battered Grosvenor as though it was vital evidence.

  Without speaking he dug into the inside pockets of his jacket and extracted a tin of Benson and Hedges and the heavy gold Dupont lighter, which long ago had replaced his battered Windmaster with the unfortunate monogram BO.

  He carefully removed a cigarette, placing it between his lips before clicking up the lid of the lighter and flicking his thumb, all in one movement like a Western sharpshooter. The flame glowed and he offered it to the painted lady. She was of uncertain age and, judging by the bone structure, capricious breeding. She thanked him for the light and, as he kindled his cigarette, asked him if he fancied something different.

  Boysie looked hard at her with his ice blue eyes and smiled. The smile was attractive. It was also lopsided, curving up the left side of his lips. He inhaled deeply on the smoke and blew it out in a long stream. “What you got, lady? Typhus?” was what he wanted to ask.

  “No thank you. Not tonight,” was what he actually said before returning to the problem of Grey Raincoat. By the time he had worked it out they were pulling into Gloucester Road.

  The painted lady disembarked and Boysie moved towards the doors, not going too close. Once more he waited until the last possible moment. The mechanism signalled its action with the usual telltale sigh but he remained immobile until the doors actually began to move together before pushing himself through sideways onto the platform and away up the steps, waving his ticket at the collector at the barrier; now fast to the right. Up the second flight of steps and into the lift.

  There were two other people already in the big double-ended elevator and he could hear steps of more approaching. Boysie turned away, sneaking looks over his shoulder.

  Two women. No Grey Raincoat.

  The lift door slid, tonging shut and they slowly dropped, back into London’s bowels.

  At the bottom, Boysie was off again at speed, through the tunnels to the Piccadilly Line.

  Grey Raincoat was not behind. Boysie was away and safe.

  He walked right up to the far end of the platform feeling contented with his good fortune. It was not until the train came in and he was settled in his seat that he began to search more deeply into the situation.

  Grey Raincoat had been staking him out. He had undoubtedly tailed him. Why? It had to be something to do with his past: either the long years he had spent as Liquidator to the government controlled Department of Special Security, or the short and fatuous time, following the Department’s disbandment, when he had been with Mostyn in Grimobo.

  The Liquidator bit was the most likely. He had made plenty of enemies then. Towards the end too many people had known. These boys were like gun dogs and they knew where to find him. He could not go home.

  The future looked decidedly wintery. He did not have to look in his wallet or pockets to know what the financial situation was. He carried five pounds ten shillings and his cheque book. There was just under a thousand left in the bank and only yesterday he had seriously considered the possibility of work. If that was not a gloomy enough thought there
was now the indisputable fact of violence at his shoulder. And he could not go home.

  He did not get off at South Kensington or Knightsbridge; nor at Hyde Park Corner or Green Park. Boysie just sat there staring into space, greatly troubled and remembering what life on the run was like. Dirty cheap hotels. Hideaway cafes. Chicks are not chicks any more. Grease. Sludge tea. Railway stations and grimy second class carriages. Second class everything. Then the money would run out and there would be nothing but the open air, the cold and the soaking rain.

  He wondered, for ten seconds, if he should make a run for it. Into the country; the cottage he had always wanted. Hell, all that fresh air; he could not live in the country any more. His childhood memories of the Berkshire Downs were enough. That was all soft nostalgia now. He had the creeping cramps in the guts but the years were responsible for a change. He could still get bloody frightened but he was harder inside. The train stopped. Piccadilly. Let’s have a a look at the bright lights and see what the hippies aren’t doing tonight.

  Out onto the platform and Boysie’s bowels did their inimitable head roll. Grey Raincoat was ahead of him walking up the platform fifteen yards in front.

  Boysie slowed in order to allow his thinking processes time to react. He could not go home. Grey Raincoat was in front of him. He did not know why he was being followed in the first place. He now had the upper hand. Go in and find out what it is all about.

  He kept his distance, closing only as they got near the final exit barrier so that three people separated him from Grey Raincoat.

  Then they were out in the crowded circular concourse of Piccadilly Underground Station and Grey Raincoat was headed for the telephone booths.

  As usual they were all occupied and he had to stand there waiting. Boysie moved up behind him, swallowed, stuck one hand in his coat pocket and walked right up beside him, jabbing a forefinger into the man’s side.