Sweat was running down my ribs. I'm not prepared, I thought. Not able, not trained, not armed, not brave. I've been too deskbound too long. After fear came a storm of guilt. He's here. Dead. He staggered back and died here. The murderer is about to discover the body. A guilty man has come to take his medicine. Then I remembered that Larry was alive again, and had been alive since Jamie Pringle had remembered the last grouse of the season, and my guilt crept back into its lair.
I had reached the end of the row. Number 9A was a corner house, as every safe house should be. The drawn curtains in the upper windows were orange and unlined Pale light from the street lamp shone on their poor fabric. There was no light from inside.
Continuing my reconnaissance, I turned into the side street. Another upstairs window, unlit. A plastered wall. A side door. Crossing to the opposite pavement, I took a proprietary look up and down the street. A yellow cat stared back at me from behind a net curtain. Among the dozen cars parked each side of the street, one had a plastic cover to protect it from the weather.
Another controlled glance at the doorways, pavements, and parked cars. The shadows were not easy to read, but I could make out no human shape. With the toe of my right shoe I raised the plastic cover and saw the buckled rear bumper and familiar registration number of Larry's blue Toyota. It was one of the little tricks we taught on training courses, for the joes to forget the moment they returned to the real world: if you're worried about your car, put a cover over it.
The side door of the house had neither a handle nor a keyhole. Passing it on my way back, I gave it a furtive push, but it was locked or bolted from inside. A smear of chalk in the shape of an L ran across the centre panels. The lower stroke of the L tailed downward. I touched the chalk mark. It was wax based and resistant to rain. I turned the corner back into Cambridge Street, marched confidently up to the front door, and pressed the bell. Nothing happened. Electricity's cut off. Larry's way with bills. I gave the knocker a diffident tap-tap. It's Honeybrook on New Year's Eve, I thought as the din echoed inside the house: my turn to knock the happy lovers out of bed. I was acting boldly, nothing up my sleeve. But I was thinking seriously of the chalk mark.
I lifted the flap of the letter box and let it slap shut. I rapped on the bay window. I called, "Hey, it's me!"—more for the seeming than the being, for there were people going past me on the pavement. I wrenched at the sash window, trying to move it up and down, but it was locked. I was wearing leather gloves, and they reminded me of Priddy. Still at the bay, I put my face against the glass and by the light from the street lamp squinted inside. There was no entrance hall. The front door opened straight into the living room. I made out the ghostly shape of a portable typewriter on a desk and, below me to my left, a heap of mail, mostly bills and printed matter: Larry could step over them for weeks without a thought. I looked again and saw what I had half seen the first time: Emma's piano stool set in front of the typewriter. Finally, assuming I had by now attracted the interest of the neighbours, I did what legitimate people do in such cases: I took out my diary, wrote in it, tore the page out, and dropped it through the letter box. Then I walked off down the road to give their memories a rest.
I took a brisk walk round the block, keeping at the centre of the road because I didn't like the shadows, till I had reentered the street from the opposite end. I passed the side door a second time, looking not at the chalk mark but in the direction indicated by the tail of the L. L for Larry. L for Larry's tradecraft in the days when he and Checheyev exchanged their secret materials by way of dead-letter boxes and safety signals. In parks. In pub lavatories. In parking lots. In Kew Gardens. L for "I have filled the dead-letter box," signed Larry. The L converted to a C for "I have emptied it," signed CC. Back and forth, not once but more like fifty times in the four years of their collaboration: microfilm for you; money and orders for me; money and orders for you; microfilm for me.
