The Journeyman Tailor by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online Page B

much altered because Century House, Six, had agreed with extreme reluctance to share the facility with Curzon Street, Five, and the men who held the purse strings had made the decision and forced it through in the teeth of opposition from the Secret Intelligence Service. M.I.6 alone could no longer afford the upkeep of the building so M.I.5, the Security Service, was now a half partner in the running of the house. There was new gravel on the drive, new paint and wallpaper in the common rooms, a new oil-fired Aga in the kitchen, new sheets on the beds . . . But Mrs Ferguson, the housekeeper, remained. George, too, had survived the cyclone, handyman and gardener. The Rottweiler, older and ever more temperamental, still needed to be shut away behind the stout kitchen door when a newcomer arrived.
    The men who came now to the house were different. Mrs Ferguson would have said a little less refined than the men from Century - they had even made a formal complaint about her cooking -
    but since she was not yet ready to retire she kept her peace. The dog had heard the car and the pounding behind the kitchen door billowed up the wide staircase. She looked down from an upstairs window as the car came to a stop beside Mr Ronnie's Sierra. And that was another thing that she disliked about the Five people, they never gave her their full names, so they were Mr Ronnie and Mr Frederick and Mr Ernest . .
    . Well, that was just childish.
    She was agreeably surprised. A pleasant-looking fellow, well built and as tall as her late husband when he was that age. Neat dark hair with a clean parting. A grey suit and a sensible mackintosh for the time of year. She had been told his name. In the old days she would just have had a call from nice Mr Carter and all the arrangements would have been made on the telephone, now her instructions came ahead by the facsimile machine. It was all laid out who would be arriving and when, how long they would be staying, which room they should have, what meals would be needed. It was a Mr Gary who walked now to the front door, but she had been notified that he was to be called Mr Bren.
    They were in the sitting room. The paint was new and the settees were old. They sat either side of the freshly-lit fire. Ronnie stopped in mid-sentence. A big and elderly man, a little bowed at the shoulders, shuffled in with a fresh bucket of coal, tipped it into the scuttle, wheezed, and backed out. Not a word. The door closed heavily behind him. Bren smiled, and there was a soundless curse from Ronnie.
    Ronnie said, "I'll get this bloody place sorted out if it's the last thing I do . . . They're used to Six's pansies. I'll get a bloody grenade up their arses . . . Where was I? . . ."
    Bren didn't reply, it was his style not to speak when he didn't know of anything useful to say. He had thought Mrs Ferguson like any of the other grandmothers who lived in his parents' road. He had heard the dog, its whine behind the kitchen door, and then the clatter of its paws.
    He had met George, who had said, straight off, that he should always knock before coming into the kitchen and that he shouldn't walk round the grounds after dark unless he knew for certain the dog was shut away.
    " . . . Yes, right, now that our gracious coal man has called . . . Over there is the nastiest and most dirty little low-intensity war that you will ever have the misfortune to blunder into. You make one mistake and you'll get your informer shot. If you're cleverer and you make one big mistake then it'll be you that goes into the box. You're being sent - I say
    'sent' because if you volunteered then you're addled in the brain - after a small mistake was made and an informer was taken by the opposition.
    He was missing for a week. He was tortured, we assume he told them everything he knew about his handler, he was then shot and dumped.
    The handler was most likely compromised and we've pulled him out. A great deal of effort and time blown away by one small