From eight-thirty in the morning until eleven he dealt with a case of petty larceny; there were six witnesses to examine, and he didn’t believe a word that any of them said. In European cases there are words one believes and words one distrusts: it is possible to draw a speculative line between the truth and the lies; at least the cui bono principle to some extent operates, and it is usually safe to assume, if the accusation is theft and there is no question of insurance, that something has at least been stolen. But here one could make no such assumption: one could draw no lines. He had known police officers whose nerves broke down in the effort to separate a single grain of incontestable truth; they ended, some of them, by striking a witness, they were pilloried in the local Creole papers and were invalided home or transferred. It woke in some men a virulent hatred of a black skin, but Scobie had long ago, during his fifteen years, passed through the dangerous stages; now lost in the tangle of lies he felt an extraordinary affection for these people who paralysed an alien form of justice by so simple a method.
At last the office was clear again. There was nothing further on the charge-sheet, and taking out a pad and placing some blotting-paper under his wrist to catch the sweat, he prepared to write to Louise. Letter-writing never came easily to him. Perhaps because of his police training, he could never put even a comforting lie upon paper over his signature. He had to be accurate: he could comfort only by omission. So now, writing the two words My dear upon the paper, he prepared to omit He wouldn’t write that he missed her, but he would leave out any phrase that told unmistakably that he was content. My dear, you must forgive a short letter again. You know I’m not much of a hand at letter writing. I got your third letter yesterday, the one telling me that you were staying -with Mrs Halifax’s friend for a week outside Durban. Here everything is quiet. We had an alarm last night, but it turned out that an American pilot had mistaken a school of porpoises for submarines. The rains have started, of course. The Mrs Rolt I told you about in my last letter is out of hospital and they’ve put her to wait for a boat in one of the Nissen huts behind the transport park, I’ll do what I can to make her comfortable. The boy is still in hospital, but all right. I natty think that’s about all the news. The Tallit affair drags on - I don’t think anything will come of it in the end. Ali had to go and have a couple of teeth out the other day. What a fuss he made! I had to drive him to the hospital or he’d never have gone. He paused: he hated the idea of the censors - who happened to be Mrs Carter and Galloway - reading these last phrases of affection. Look after yourself, my dear, and don’t worry about me. As long as you are happy, I’m happy. In another nine months I can take my leave and we’ll be together. He was going to write, ‘You are in my mind always,’ but that was not a statement he could sign. He wrote instead, you are in my mind so often during the day, and then pondered the signature. Reluctantly, because he believed it would please her, he wrote Your Ticki. For a moment he was reminded of that other letter signed ‘Dicky’ which had come back to him two or three times in dreams.
The sergeant entered, marched to the middle of the floor, turned smartly to face him, saluted. He had time to address the envelope while all this was going on. ‘Yes, sergeant?’
‘The Commissioner, sah, he ask you to see him.’
‘Right.’
The Commissioner was not alone. The Colonial Secretary’s face shone gently with sweat in the dusky room, and beside him sat a tall bony man Scobie had not seen before - he must have arrived by air, for there had been no ship in during the last ten days. He wore a colonel’s badges as though they didn’t belong to him on his loose untidy uniform.
‘This is Major Scobie, Colonel Wright.’ He could tell the Commissioner was worried and irritated. He said, ‘Sit down, Scobie. It’s about this Tallit business.’ The rain darkened the room and kept out the air. ‘Colonel Wright has come up from Cape Town to hear about it.’
‘From Cape Town, sir?’
The Commissioner moved his legs, playing with a pen-knife. He said, ‘Colonel Wright is the M.I.5 representative.’
The Colonial Secretary said softly, so that everybody had to bend their heads to hear him, ‘The whole thing’s been unfortunate.’ The Commissioner began to whittle the corner of his desk, ostentatiously not listening. ‘I don’t think the police should have acted - quite in the way they did - not without consultation.’
Scobie said, ‘I’ve always understood it was our duty to stop diamond smuggling.’
In his soft obscure voice the Colonial Secretary said, ‘There weren’t a hundred pounds’ worth of diamonds found.’
‘They are the only diamonds that have ever been found.’
‘The evidence against Tallit, Scobie, was too slender for an arrest.’
‘He wasn’t arrested. He was interrogated.’
‘His lawyers say he was brought forcibly to the police station.’
‘His lawyers are lying. You surely realize that much.’
The Colonial Secretary said to Colonel Wright, ‘You see the kind of difficulty we are up against. The Roman Catholic Syrians are claiming they are a persecuted minority and that the police are in the pay of the Moslem Syrians.’
Scobie said, ‘The same thing would have happened the other way round - only it would have been worse. Parliament has more affection for Moslems than Catholics.’ He had a sense that no one had mentioned the real purpose of this meeting. The Commissioner flaked chip after chip off his desk, disowning everything, and Colonel Wright sat back on his shoulder-blades saying nothing at all.
‘Personally,’ the Colonial Secretary said, ‘I would always ...’ and the soft voice faded off into inscrutable murmurs which Wright, stuffing his fingers into one ear, leaning his head sideways as though he were trying to hear something through a defective telephone, might possibly have caught.
Scobie said, ‘I couldn’t hear what you said.’
‘I said personally I’d always take Tallit’s word against Yusef’s.’
‘That,’ Scobie said, ‘is because you have only been in this colony five years.’
Colonel Wright suddenly interjected, ‘How many years have you been here, Major Scobie?’
‘Fifteen.’
Colonel Wright grunted non-committally.
The Commissioner stopped whittling the corner of his desk and drove his knife viciously into the top. He said, ‘Colonel Wright wants to know the source of your information, Scobie.’
‘You know that, sir. Yusef.’ Wright and the Colonial Secretary sat side by side watching him. He stood back with lowered head, waiting for the next move, but no move came. He knew they were waiting for him to amplify his bald reply, and he knew too that they would take it for a confession of weakness if he did. The silence became more and more intolerable: it was like an accusation. Weeks ago he had told Yusef that he intended to let the Commissioner know the details of his loan; perhaps he had really had that intention, perhaps he had been bluffing; he couldn’t remember now. He only knew that now it was too late. That information should have been given before taking action against Tallit: it could not be an afterthought. In the corridor behind the office Fraser passed whistling his favourite tune; he opened the door of the office, said, ‘Sorry, sir,’ and retreated again, leaving a whiff of warm Zoo smell behind him. The murmur of the rain went on and on. The Commissioner took the knife out of the table and began to whittle again; it was as if, for a second time, he were deliberately disowning the whole business. The Colonial Secretary cleared his throat’ Yusef,’ he repeated.
Scobie nodded.
Colonel Wright said, ‘Do you consider Yusef trustworthy?’
‘Of course not, sir. But one has to act on what information is available - and this information proved correct up to a point.’
‘Up to what point?’
‘The diamonds were there.’
The Colonial Secretary said, ‘Do you get much information from Yusef?’
‘This is the first time I’ve had any at all.’
He couldn’t catch what the Colonial Secretary said beyond the word ‘Yusef’.
‘I can’t hear what you say, sir.’
‘I said are you in touch with Yusef?’
‘I don’t know what you mean by that’
‘Do you see him often?’
‘I think in the last three months I have seen him three - no, four times.’
‘On business?’
‘Not necessarily. Once I gave him a lift home when his car had broken down. Once he came to see me when I had fever at Bamba. Once ...’
‘We are not cross-examining you, Scobie,’ the Commissioner said.
‘I had an idea, sir, that these gentlemen were.’
Colonel Wright uncrossed his long legs and said, ‘Let’s boil it down to one question. Tallit, Major Scobie, has made counter-accusations - against the police, against you. He says in effect that Yusef has given you money. Has he?’
‘No, sir. Yusef has given me nothing.’ He felt an odd relief that he had not yet been called upon to lie.
The Colonial Secretary said, ‘Naturally sending your wife to South Africa was well within your private means.’ Scobie sat back in his chair, saying nothing. Again he was aware of the hungry silence waiting for his words.
‘You don’t answer?’ the Colonial Secretary said impatiently.
‘I didn’t know you had asked a question. I repeat - Yusef has given me nothing.’
‘He’s a man to beware of, Scobie.’
‘Perhaps when you have been here as long as I have you’ll realize the police are meant to deal with people who are not received at the Secretariat.’
‘We don’t want our tempers to get warm, do we?’
Scobie stood up. ‘Can I go, sir? If these gentlemen have finished with me ... I have an appointment.’ The sweat stood on his forehead; his heart jumped with fury. This should be the moment of caution, when the blood runs down the flanks and the red cloth waves.
‘That’s all right, Scobie,’ the Commissioner said.
Colonel Wright said, ‘You must forgive me for bothering you. I received a report. I had to take the matter up officially. I’m quite satisfied.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ But the soothing words came too late: the damp face of the Colonial Secretary filled his field of vision. The Colonial Secretary said softly, ‘It’s just a matter of discretion, that’s all.’
‘If I’m wanted for the next half an hour, sir,’ Scobie said to the Commissioner, ‘I shall be at Yusef’s’
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