Home>>read The Baghdad Railway Club free online

The Baghdad Railway Club(63)

By:Andrew Martin.txt


‘Well there you are‚ sir. That’s just what I told the gent with the red cap on.’

‘You couldn’t use the diplomatic bag to send a letter to Mrs Jones of Sycamore Avenue.’

‘Exactly right, sir. I rest my case.’

He drained his glass.

I took from my pocket . . . not rupees this time, but a one-pound note. I set it on the table before us. A pound note went a long way in Baghdad.

‘I notice that you haven’t exactly denied the charge. Only told me why there’d be no point doing it.’

‘No point at all, sir.’

I picked up the note, and made to replace it in my pocket book.

‘Of course,’ said Lennon, ‘it might be different if your brother worked in the bag room of the War Office in London.’

I set the note back on the table, and pushed it a little way towards Lennon.

‘Now if I pick that up,’ he said, ‘you’ll arrest me on a charge of taking bribes.’

‘Try me,’ I said.

‘You’re the only officer who’s ever bought me a drink, sir.’

‘Just so,’ I said.

He swiftly pocketed the note, and I said, ‘I will now arrest you on a charge of taking a bribe unless you help me out with my special duty.’

‘You’re very bad for my nerves, sir, do you know that?’

‘Do you want another glass of beer?’

He nodded and I got two more. When I returned to the table, he said, ‘I’ve decided it’s official business you’re on sir, although of a secret sort. And the money I take to be fair wages.’

We both nodded for a while. I was thinking of the letter sent by Boyd to Manners at the War Office. That had gone via the diplomatic bag. Had its contents been somehow leaked? What exactly were its contents? I had not had sight of it, but I knew that in it Boyd had told what he’d seen at the station, and set out the case against Shepherd. I asked Lennon, ‘Are you aware of anybody trying to find out the content of letters sent in the diplomatic bag?’

‘No.’

‘But that does not mean you haven’t put other letters into it – ordinary letters.’

‘It doesn’t in itself mean that sir, no.’

‘If for instance a fellow wanted to send a mucky letter to my wife.’

‘Now that doesn’t sound like secret service business,’ he said.

It seemed to me – weighing the fellow up – that Lennon had added letters to the diplomatic bag, but had probably not taken from it, since that would be too big a proposition . . . In which case I was thrown back on the question of the telegrams. According to Manners, the ones sent by Boyd (both before and after the sending of his letter) had not disclosed any names, either of people or places. But it would be worth trying to make sure of that; and to find out about any other wires sent by Boyd. Since a copy was kept of all messages, it would be possible to do this given access to the records. Sitting back in my seat, so as to appear relaxed, I said to Lennon, ‘Do you have the keys to the telegraphic office at the Residency?’

‘Now there’d be no point having those keys,’ he said. ‘A sentry is posted outside at all times, and in any case the place never closes.’

‘I need to find out what was sent by a certain man and where to.’

‘When?’

I thought back. When would Boyd have been sending? He had first wired to the War Office the day after the fall of the city, which meant March 13th. The wires arranging the rendezvous at Baghdad station, or the ‘safe place’ (which turned out to be no such thing), were sent the third week of April. That was the end of his communication with the War Office. But Boyd might then have sent any number of other telegrams to other people up to the day I found his body: May 24th, Thursday last.

I said, ‘Between the fall of the city and last Thursday?’

‘Then you don’t need the telegraphic office.’

‘No?’

‘You need the strongboxes in the room around the corner. That’s the archive. Everything sent up to the end of last week will be in there.’

‘Can you get me in there and can you get those boxes open?’

‘For a pound?’ he said.

‘For your freedom from arrest.’

‘And another quid when the job’s done, sir?’

The man was incorrigible.

‘We’ll see about that,’ I said.

*

At ten that night, I presented my identity card to the sentry at the Residency, and passed into the quadrangle. The horse smell, the heat, the falling darkness, the puttering of a generator, one or two whispered conversations proceeding on the overhanging verandas . . . The man Lennon waited by the fountain. It still did not work. He had been trailing his hand in the green water, but he stood up snappily enough when I approached, and he very nearly saluted.