It had been a wonderful trip up in the train. They had eaten the sandwiches and drunk the champagne and then, to the rhythm of the giant diesels pounding out the miles, they had made long, slow love in the narrow berth. It had been as if the girl was starved of physical love. She had woken him twice more in the night with soft demanding caresses, saying nothing, just reaching for his hard, lean body. The next day she had twice pulled down the roller blinds to shut out the hard light and had taken him by the hand and said, ‘Love me, James’ as if she was a child asking for a sweet.
Even now Bond could hear the quick silver poem of the level-crossing bells, the wail of the big windhorn out front and the quiet outside clamour at the stations when they lay and waited for the sensual gallop of the wheels to begin again.
Jill Masterton had said that Goldfinger had been relaxed, indifferent over his defeat. He had told the girl to tell Bond that he would be over in England in a week’s time and would like to have that game of golf at Sandwich. Nothing else – no threats, no curses. He had said he would expect the girl back by the next train. Jill had told Bond she would go. Bond had argued with her. But she was not frightened of Goldfinger. What could he do to her? And it was a good job.
Bond had decided to give her the ten thousand dollars Mr Du Pont had shuffled into his hand with a stammer of thanks and congratulations. Bond made her take the money. ‘I don’t want it,’ Bond had said. ‘Wouldn’t know what to do with it. Anyway, keep it as mad money in case you want to get away in a hurry. It ought to be a million. I shall never forget last night and today.’
Bond had taken her to the station and had kissed her once hard on the lips and had gone away. It hadn’t been love, but a quotation had come into Bond’s mind as his cab moved out of Pennsylvania station: ‘Some love is fire, some love is rust. But the finest, cleanest love is lust.’ Neither had had regrets. Had they committed a sin? If so, which one? A sin against chastity? Bond smiled to himself. There was a quotation for that too, and from a saint – Saint Augustine: ‘Oh Lord, give me Chastity. But don’t give it yet!’
The green telephone rang. ‘Three Goldfingers, sir, but two of them are dead. The third’s a Russian post office in Geneva. Got a hairdressing business. Slips the messages into the right-hand coat pocket when he brushes the customers down. He lost a leg at Stalingrad. Any good, sir? There’s plenty more on him.’
‘No thanks. That couldn’t be my man.’
‘We could put a trace through C.I.D. Records in the morning. Got a picture, sir?’
Bond remembered the Leica film. He hadn’t even bothered to have it developed. It would be quicker to mock up the man’s face on the Identicast. He said, ‘Is the Identicast room free?’
‘Yes, sir. And I can operate it for you if you like.’
‘Thanks. I’ll come down.’
Bond told the switchboard to let heads of sections know where he would be and went out and took the lift down to Records on the first floor.
The big building was extraordinarily quiet at night. Beneath the silence, there was a soft whisper of machinery and hidden life – the muffled clack of a typewriter as Bond passed a door, a quickly suppressed stammer of radio static as he passed another, the soft background whine of the ventilation system. It gave you the impression of being in a battleship in harbour.
The Records duty officer was already at the controls of the Identicast in the projection room. He said to Bond, ‘Could you give me the main lines of the face, sir? That’ll help me leave out the slides that are obviously no good.’
Bond did so and sat back and watched the lighted screen.
The Identicast is a machine for building up an approximate picture of a suspect – or of someone who has perhaps only been glimpsed in a street or a train or in a passing car. It works on the magic lantern principle. The operator flashes on the screen various head-shapes and sizes. When one is recognized it stays on the screen. Then various haircuts are shown, and then all the other features follow and are chosen one by one – different shapes of eyes, noses, chins, mouths, eyebrows, cheeks, ears. In the end there is the whole picture of a face, as near as the scanner can remember it, and it is photographed and put on record.
It took some time to put together Goldfinger’s extraordinary face, but the final result was an approximate likeness in monochrome. Bond dictated one or two notes about the sunburn, the colour of the hair and the expression of the eyes, and the job was done.
‘Wouldn’t like to meet that on a dark night,’ commented the man from Records. ‘I’ll put it through to C.I.D. when they come on duty. You should get the answer by lunch time.’
