The Steel Crocodile Read online

  “I love you more than yesterday,” he said.

  They lay on the grass, just their hands touching. The sun was lowering, and Matthew half-closed his eyes against its brilliance on the white stucco of the house behind them. There was a recent cherry tree, its stippled, shining bark exuding reddish anemones of resin. The garden itself was old and tired, with dusty figs growing against the south wall, nectarines, and a pear tree long barren. The woodwork of the greenhouse sagged: if Matthew repaired it technology would dictate extruded aluminum and anti-filter sheeting. So he left the dulled white paint to gather mold, and the glass to cloud over. The garden might have been claustrophobic, preserved falsely, feeding on itself. Instead it formed a starting point and a safe return"

  “I’m taking the Colindale job. It’ll mean moving house in a few days.”

  “Is that all it’ll mean?” She leaned up on one elbow. “The work sounds so abstract. Your hold on reality is flimsy enough at the best of times.”

  “Plenty of studies have been done on closed academic communities. I’m sure they’ll be watching out.”

  “I feel uneasy, Matthew. That’s all.”

  “Besides, it looks as if I shall be having a strong outside interest.” He stood up. “Let’s go indoors so that I can kiss you.”

  They went up the curving staircase and in at the French windows. He kissed her. They stood together for so long that their shadow had time to move on the soft carpet within the room. He told her about what Gryphon had asked him to do. He repeated the question he had asked earlier.

  “Tell me what you think of Gryphon.”

  “I’d rather tell him to his face. He’s a bore.” She smiled. “I suppose what I have most against him are the short cuts in his conversation. The more right they are, the more insulting. People should be allowed to progress at their own tempo.”

  “That’s funny. I find his assumptions of my intelligence flattering.”

  “They’re not meant to be. He only makes them to prove how even more intelligent he himself must be.” “That’s very uncharitable of you, love.”

  “He’s arrogant, Matthew. I can’t stand arrogance. She turned away from him. He thought how small she looked. “But you must do what he wants you to.”

  “If I’m found out it’ll finish me.”

  “Good.” She turned back to him. “Finish you for what? For all this?” She indicated the room, the garden, the town car, the long-haul car, the holidays, the space. “For all this?”

  “It might mean jail."

  “I’d wait for you.”

  “You romanticize.”

  “God loves me. Were never tested beyond our strength.”

  Matthew thought of the millions in mental hospitals. God loved them too. Unfathomably.

  "I'll take you out to see our new house in the morning,” he said.

  She walked away, went downstairs to prepare his dinner. It wasn’t that he needed to guard her faith. Years ago he’d lost the conceit that it depended on his protection, on the things he said or left unsaid. It existed in spite of, or perhaps because of . . . The front doorbell rang and he went to see who was there.

  “Police.” Two men in slacks and bright shirts. “Were looking for a Dr. Oliver. Matthew Oliver.”

  Matthew was wary. “I am he,” he said.

  “Will you hear that?” said the fatter of the two men. “The verb to he governing the dear old nominative after all these years.”

  “You wanted to speak to me?”

  “Detective Inspector Kahn, that’s I. Sergeant Wilson, that’s he too. I reckon.”

  Matthew had obviously started badly. The guilt he already felt had made for a bad beginning. He tried to do better.

  “Please come in, Inspector.”

  “That’s nice. If you don’t ask, we push—so where are you?”

  The two policemen entered. They stared at the staircase curving up under a glass cupola. Matthew knew he should ask them for their identification warrants. He wanted to avoid being difficult.

  “They tell me you write books. Get all this writing books?”

  “It helps.” He refused to sound apologetic. “I also work for a government planning agency. And for one or two business corporations.”

  “The man, Sergeant Wilson, is a vocationalist Holy, holy.. .”

  “Perhaps he can’t help it.”

  They walked, trailing Matthew, through into the living room. Kahn lit a cigarette and threw the match on the carpet.

  “Name of Edmund Gryphon mean anything to you?” “I know him very well. We were at College together.” “You were at College with ten thousand, but you know Edmund Gryphon.”

  “We shared a room. We had a lot in common.”

  “Had .. . ?”

  “Have. We still have a lot in common.”

  “You said had."

  “He’s a physicist. We work in different fields. I haven’t seen so much of him lately.”

  “Then have you a lot in common or haven’t you?”

  “We think with similar techniques.” He was pleased to have avoided saying they thought in similar ways. Words could be dangerous. “It’s a question of minds, Inspector.” “Which I wouldn’t know about ”

  Matthew decided he was wasting his time. “What’s Dr. Gryphon supposed to have done?”

  The police sergeant had been looking along the bookshelves. He flipped out a C.L.C. pamphlet, Aspects of Censorship, and held it up for Kahn to see. The inspector sat down, made himself offensively comfortable.

  “And you haven’t seen so much of him lately.”

  “Not for a month or two. I was with him this afternoon, though.”

  “Wise man. University porter, half a dozen students, they all saw you.”

  “I’m not surprised. My visit wasn’t secret in any way.”

  “Yet you threw your tail.”

  “Of course.”

  “He knows his rights, Sergeant You and me must watch ourselves.”

  Naturally the interview was being recorded, probably from the sergeant’s shirt pocket. The balance between legality and intimidation was very nice. Matthew asked for the policemen’s warrant cards and was shown them. His wife came up from the ground floor.

  “Visitors, Matthew? I thought I heard the doorbell.”

  He made the introductions.

  “Shall I go or stay?”

  “You can please yourself.” Kahn had not risen. Abigail led Matthew over to the couch and sat him down beside her. The sergeant was still prowling, looking now in the music chest beside the harpsichord.

  “I asked you what Dr. Gryphon was supposed to have done,” Matthew said.

  “Illegal, you mean? Nothing, as far as I know. Perhaps you know better.” Kahn tossed cigarette ash in the direction of the fireplace. In that room his shirt was the greater offense. “This visit of yours—tell us why you made it.”

  “I’m leaving Central London in a few days . . .” Matthew had had time to work this one out. “Taking up a new job out in Colindale. I thought I’d have a chat with him before I went.”

  “A chat.... What about?"

  “Nothing in particular." He saw he’d never get away with just that. “We talked about"—improvising—“some of his students’ results. They were sociologically interesting."

  “Tell me."

  “It’s the relation of background to performance, Inspector. Plus variants such as leisure activities, ethical positions, integration/alienation quotients, and so on. There seems to be a clear connection between these and-"

  “You could keep that up all day, Dr. Oliver."

  “I don’t understand you."

  “True or not, you could keep that spiel up all day. It’s your field. You could keep it up all day."

  Abigail’s hand tightened on his, her anger like an electric current. He felt none himself, only an intense depression. For her sake he defended himself.

  “You asked me a question, Inspector Kahn. I was doing my best to answer it."

  “So you talked about whatever it is you vocationalists talk about."

  “There’s no need to sneer. Isn’t the police force classed as a vocation, in view of the hours you work?"

  “The police force, Dr. Oliver, provides a legitimate outlet for men with a warped or immoderate need to exercise power. Warped or immoderate, the words were."

  Matthew’s words, the words he had written. A tag like that would have gone the rounds. Theory at the time of writing: now observable fact.

  "You dont like the police force, Dr. Oliver"

  "Would you want to be liked?"

  Inspector Kahn was amused. He showed his amusement loudly, for a long time, longer than was credible. At last he subsided.

  “So you talked about students' records. On a visit to tell him goodbye"

  "We have a common interest in techniques of statistical analysis"

  "And then you shot him"

  Even Sergeant Wilson was still, caught at the window, etched into by the sun behind him. Matthew could hear the sound of the house around him. His perception altered, narrowed to a policeman s colored shirt collar, driving Abigail away, denying her hand in his, leaving him alone with Gryphon s death.

  "Shot Gryphon?"

  "Records show you with a license for a laser pistol, Dr. Oliver"

  "That's right. I ... In case there was any more civil unrest I thought—"

  “No bullet, no ballistics. No ballistics, no proof. And you the last person to see Dr. Gryphon alive."

  "Except the murderer.” Abigail was on her feet. “I shall issue a formal complaint. You have no right to interrogate my husband without—”

  “Emergency regulations have a way of lingering on, Mrs. Oliver. If parliaments are frightened enough.”

  She fal
tered, looked back at Matthew. Her vulnerability restored him. The policeman had spoken the truth; for her sake if for nothing else he wished it were not so.

  “Don't worry, love. They still need to be able to prove more than just the opportunity. ... I have a laser, Inspector, because they can be tuned down till they only bum. I'm not good with guns and I didn't want to kill anybody."

  “They can also be tuned up till they go straight through and take a piece out of the chair behind."

  “I know that."

  Matthew wouldn't be shocked again, refused the picture of Gryphon held up in his seat by flesh welded to the chairback.

  “But not by me."

  He and Abigail stood in the open doorway and watched the police car till it turned the comer at the end of the tall street. Shadow from the low sun lay in a precise roofline across the houses opposite. There were plane trees with heavy, summer-dark leaves. And aching pavements. The rich were very silent, and kept safely within walls.

  “Do you still want me to go to the Colindale?"

  Abigail didn't answer. He felt that, without outward sign, she was crying. Her grief was always like this, an inward bleeding. He put one arm around her and let her rest her head on his chest. He looked out above her at the street.

  “That was a silly question. I'm sorry." He pressed his chin down into her hair. “There have always been bullying policemen, and suspicion, and hiding around comers. I suppose they're necessary. We've just got spoiled, and let our sensitivities become unbalanced."

  He heard himself trying to sound wise. But she didn't move away from him in disgust. Perhaps she didn't mind. Or hadn't been listening. Or had even found what he said true. ... If his protection was to be worth anything she needed to respect him. But to retain that respect he must now expose her to the Kahn and the Wilson, and expose her again. For they were what Gryphon's job for him at the Colindale was about. He drew her gently into the house and closed the front door.

  “Poor old Gryphon.” He did not grieve for Gryphon, only for the idea of someone dying. “I wonder what he did to get himself killed.”

  “Been right on one level and wrong on every possible other.”

  So casual?

  “It's funny how you never liked him.”

  “I'm sorry he's dead. Desperately, desperately sorry. I feel-”

  “You'll ask for prayers to be said for him at Mass?” He looked at her, sensed something he did not understand, perhaps anger. “That's not sarcasm, Abigail. I just wasn't sure that prayers could be said for non-Catholics. Officially, I mean.”

  “I expect the truth is that he was killed for his moderation.” She smiled brightly. “It's the usual reason nowadays. I doubt if the authorities would want him dead.”

  She was describing the entire failure of the C.L.C. Its sanity had made it acceptable, had made its reactions able to be predicted, able to be absorbed. Matthew walked away, back into the living room. Society evolved. Perhaps man was too multifold ever to control its direction.

  “We'd better eat,” he said.

  Inspector Kahn had never seriously suspected him of killing Gryphon. The visit had been purely routine, to be cheered up in the only way Kahn knew. If he'd needed a target, the space of Matthew's life supplied him with one. He earned five hundred a month; he had never known to the slightest degree what had once been called hardship; above the basic twenty he only worked the hours he cared to work. But he felt deprived. Possibly he bucked social pressures and worked forty hours or even fifty. Possibly his wife thought he was crazy. Possibly his flat was forty up. Possibly there was no Wide Open Door Group working in his housing unit. Possibly there was and he hated it, being a bom recluse. . . . Whatever the causes, he could never win. Matthew went over to the harpsichord and sat down at it, sliding his knees under the keyboard.

  He struggled with Scarlatti while Abigail finished getting the dinner ready. He wondered if he liked the music, or only his own dexterity. Whichever it was, it overlaid the evening's unpleasantness, made him excited and happy. He chose the stamping, more rowdy sonatas, torrents that he tried to catch at as they flowed past him. When Abigail came up with the food he was wide open.

  “Abigail love, what can I ever do to deserve you?"

  “Just love me."

  Such replies were hard to credit. It would be easy to attribute them to fear, or false naivete. But her presence took away from him his nagging need to analyze. He put his arms around her thighs as she stood beside him holding plates.

  “I do."

  “Then we're all right."

  But as he hugged her he knew perfectly well that things were never as simple as that.

  During the meal they talked about the Colindale, and the people Matthew would be working with. He knew most of them only from the work they had done, always of particular distinction. Even his future assistant, Margaret Pelham, had been unavailable on his previous visits. But he knew her work very well, and admired the habits of mind it showed. He had met the principal, of course, a psychiatrist called Chester Billon. The interviews had been long and detailed and very tiring.

  “It’s an odd name, Matthew. Is he American? And what’s a psychiatrist doing in charge of the Colindale?” “I’m not quite sure. He’s one of these physiological psychiatrists. Got there via chemistry and microbiology. And I doubt if he’s American. He doesn’t sound like one.”

  “I don’t like physiological psychiatrists. They use large hammers for very small nails.”

  “They get more done than the analysts.”

  “Perhaps that’s why I don’t like them.”

  They laughed, spinning a shield around themselves, secure in the love they would make later.

  TWO

  For Abigail the police car was unimportant, and the policemen—but for the news they brought—hardly real. Edmund was dead. Incomplete, years too soon. The moment she had recognized the nature of Kahn’s bullying it had ceased to bother her. The questions had gone on and on, around and around, offering no threat in the face of Matthews innocence. Now they had stopped.

  She stood beside Matthew and watched the car out of sight. She had loved Edmund. Not as she had loved him once—not any more in love with him—but with a sad love, as for a cripple. It was through him that she had met Matthew, in the years when Edmund was coldly denying her everything but hope. Loving her from behind bars, chopping at her hands if she put them through, but never sending her away. And through him she had met Matthew.

  “Do you still want me to go to the Colindale?”

  She found it hard to connect Matthew’s words and discover their meaning. Edmund was dead, his soul already judged. Over the last few years she had seen him infrequently—at University functions when she had gone with her brother, a few dinner parties, a sailing weekend arranged by Matthew among the Greek Islands. On these occasions the echoing coldness in him had repelled her, remembering how it had once hurt. He shouldn’t have died so. He should have been given time.

  “That was a silly question. I’m sorry.”

  Long ago she had told Matthew what she had once felt for Edmund. He couldn’t have forgotten. It must be that he didn’t know what to say, was embarrassed, jealous even. She couldn’t go on listening. Edmund, whom she had failed to get through to, was dead. And God was merciful. . . . Then the front door was closed and she was alone in the hall with Matthew.

  “Poor old Gryphon. I wonder what he did to get himself killed.”

  “Been right on one level and wrong on every possible other.”

  “It’s funny how you never liked him.”

  She had been willing to discuss the subject in a way that Matthew found easiest. But not at the price of denying the past, denying her responsibility.

  “I’m sorry he’s dead, Matthew. Desperately, desperately sorry. I feel—”

  “You’ll ask for prayers to be said for him at Mass?” So he didn’t want to know He always moved off into the mechanics of her faith when he needed distance. “That's not sarcasm, Abigail. I just wasn’t sure that prayers could be said for non-Catholics. Officially, I mean.”

  Sarcasm? Perhaps there was something she hadn’t heard. . . . She felt so far from Matthew that it frightened her. If he was jealous without cause he must battle with it by himself. They knew too much about each other: reassurances would be insulting. She chose a remark completely neutral.