A Delicate Truth A Novel

a last-ditch effort to persuade himself that Jay Crispin was telling the truth and Jeb is the barking psychopath with the gift of the gab that Crispin said he was. The bureaucrat in him assesses his best course of action on this unproven assumption. Should he humour Jeb, offer him sympathy, medical help? Or should he – fat chance – lull him into complacency and wrest the key from him? Or failing that, make a mad dash for the open window and the fire escape? All this over urgently transmitted messages of love and abject apology to Suzanna, and requests to Emily for advice on the handling of the mentally sick and potentially violent patient.
    Jeb’s first question is the more alarming for its placidity:
    ‘What did Crispin tell you about me, Paul, back there in the Connaught Hotel?’
    To which Kit mumbles something to the effect that Crispin merely confirmed that Operation Wildlife was an unqualified success, an intelligence coup of exceptional value, and bloodless:
    ‘Everything it was trumped up to be, in fact. More ’ – cavalierly adding – ‘despite that foul message you wrote on your so-called receipt for my wife’s handbag.’
    Jeb stares at Kit without expression, as if he has misheard. He whispers something to himself that Kit can’t catch. Then there follows a moment which Kit, for all his determined objectivity, seems at a loss to describe in comprehensible terms. Somehow Jeb has crossed the bit of threadbare carpet that separates him from Kit. And Kit, with no memory of how he got there, finds himself jammed up against the door with one arm behind his back and one of Jeb’s hands holding him by the throat, and Jeb is talking into his face and encouraging Kit’s replies with smacks of his head against the doorpost.
    Kit stoically recounts what happened next:
    ‘ Bang . Head against the doorpost. Red sky at night. “What were you getting out of it, Paul?” What d’you mean? I say. “Money, what d’you think I mean?” Not a bloody bean, I told him. You’ve got the wrong man. Bang . “What was your share of the bounty, Paul?” Bang . Didn’t have a bloody share, I told him, and take your hands off me. Bang . I was angry with him by then. He’d got my arm in this bloody horrible twist. If you go on doing that, I said, you’ll break my fucking arm, and neither of us will be any the wiser. I’ve told you everything I know, so leave me alone.’
    Kit’s voice lifts in pleased surprise:
    ‘And he did, dammit! Just like that. Left me alone. Took a long look at me, stood back and watched me slide down the wall in a heap. Then helped me to my feet again like a bloody Samaritan.’
    Which was what Kit called the turning point: when Jeb went back to his chair and sat in it like a beaten boxer. But now Kit becomes the Samaritan. He doesn’t like the way Jeb is heaving and shaking:
    ‘Sort of sobbing noise coming out of him. Lot of choking. Well ’ – indignantly – ‘if your wife’s been ill half her life, and your daughter’s a bloody doctor, you don’t just sit there gawping, do you? You do something.’
    So Kit’s first question of Jeb, after they have sat in their separate corners for a while, is whether there’s anything Kit can get for him, his idea being – though he keeps the thought to himself – that in extremis he’ll track down old Em, as he insists on calling her, and get her to phone through a prescription to the nearest all-night chemist. But Jeb’s only response is to shake his head, get up, walk across the room, pour himself a tooth-glass of water from the washbasin, offer it to Kit, drink some himself, and sit down again in his corner.
    Then after a while – could have been minutes, says Kit, but neither of them’s going anywhere so far as he knows – Jeb asks, in a hazy sort of voice, whether there’s any food about. It’s not that he’s actually hungry as such, he explains – bit of pride kicking in here, according to Kit – it’s for fuel purposes.
    Kit regrets he has no food with him, but offers to pop downstairs and see if he can rustle something up with the night porter. Jeb receives this suggestion with another prolonged silence:
    ‘Seemed a bit out of it , poor chap. Gave me the impression he’d lost his train of thought and was having a spot of trouble getting it back. Know the feeling well.’
    But in due course, good soldier that he is, Jeb braces himself, and digs in his pocket and hands over the bedroom key. Kit gets up from the bed