A Perfect Spy by John le Carré Page B

she said.
    His knowing eyes lifted to her. “How do you manage that?”
    â€œHe doesn’t offer a fight, that’s why.”
    â€œYou do though. You’re a right little demon when you get going, Mary.”
    â€œNot any more,” she said, mistrusting his charm.
    â€œYou never met his dad, did you?” said Brotherhood as he wound the film through the camera. “There was something about him, I seem to remember.”
    â€œThey were estranged.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œNothing dramatic. They’d drifted apart. They’re that sort of family.”
    â€œWhat sort, dear?”
    â€œScattered. Business people. He’d said he’d let them in on his first marriage and once was enough. We hardly talked about it.”
    â€œTom go along with that?”
    â€œTom’s a child.”
    â€œTom was the last person Magnus saw before he vanished, Mary. Apart from the porter at his club.”
    â€œSo arrest him,” Mary suggested rudely.
    Dropping the film into the bin bag Brotherhood picked up Magnus’s little transistor radio.
    â€œThis the new one they do with all the shortwave on it?”
    â€œI believe so.”
    â€œTake it with him on holiday, did he?”
    â€œYes, he did.”
    â€œListen to it regularly?”
    â€œSince, as you once told me, he runs Czechoslovakia single-handed out here, it would be fairly startling if he didn’t.”
    He switched it on. A male voice was reading the news in Czech. Brotherhood stared blankly at the wall while he let it continue for what seemed like hours. He switched off the radio and put it in the bag. His gaze lifted to the uncurtained window, but it was still a long while before he spoke. “Not displaying too many lights for the time of morning, are we, Mary?” he asked distractedly. “Don’t want to set neighbours chattering, do we?”
    â€œThey know Rick’s dead. They know it’s not a normal time.”
    â€œYou can say that again.”
    I hate him. I always did. Even when I fell for him—when he was taking me up and down the scale and I was weeping and thanking him—I still hated him. Tell me about the night in question, he was saying. He meant the night they heard of Rick’s death. She told it to him exactly as she had rehearsed it.
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    He had found the cloakroom and was standing before the worn dufflecoat that hung between Tom’s loden and Mary’s sheepskin. He was feeling in the pockets. The din from upstairs was monotonous. He extracted a grimy handkerchief and a half-consumed roll of Polo mints.
    â€œYou’re teasing me,” he said.
    â€œAll right, I’m teasing you.”
    â€œTwo hours in the freezing snow in his dancing pumps, Mary? In the middle of the night? Brother Nigel will think I’m making it up. What did he do in them?”
    â€œWalked.”
    â€œWhere to, dear?”
    â€œHe didn’t tell me.”
    â€œAsk him?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t.”
    â€œThen how do you know he didn’t take a cab?”
    â€œHe’d no money. His wallet and change were upstairs in the dressing-room with his keys.” Brotherhood replaced the handkerchief and mints in the duffle.
    â€œAnd none in here?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow d’you know?”
    â€œHe’s methodical in those things.”
    â€œMaybe he paid the other end.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMaybe someone picked him up.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œHe’s a walker and he was in shock. That’s why. His father was dead, even if he didn’t particularly like him. It builds up in him. The tension or whatever it is. So he walks.” And I hugged him when he came back, she thought. I felt the cold on his cheek and the trembling of his chest and the hot sweat clean through his coat from his hours of walking. And I’ll hug him again, as soon as he comes through that door. “I said to him: