Free Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton Page B

thumbnail into the head and ignited it. She was impressed and stared into my eyes as I lit the cigarette. I took it pretty calmly, just like I didn’t have a couple of milligrammes of flaming phosphorus under the nail and coming through the pain threshold like a rusty scalpel.
    ‘Are you in Advertising?’ she said. She had a soft American accent.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m an account executive with J. Walter Thompson.’
    ‘You don’t look like any of the Thompson people I know.’
    ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘I’m the vanguard of the button-down shirt mob.’ She gave a polite little laugh. ‘Where in Chelsea?’ the driver called. She told him. ‘It’s a party,’ she said to me.
    ‘Is that why you have that bottle of Guinness in your pocket?’ I asked.
    She tapped it to make sure it was still there. ‘Ghoul,’ she said smiling. ‘That’s to wash my hair in.’
    ‘In Guinness?’ I said.
    ‘If you want body,’ she said patting her hair.
    ‘I want body,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I do.’
    ‘My name is Samantha Steel,’ she said politely. ‘People call me Sam.’

Chapter 13
    Roman Decoy: a piece offered as bait to save a
hazardous situation.
    London, Friday, October 11th
    Charlotte Street runs north from Oxford Street and there are few who will blame it. By midmorning they are writing out the menus, straining yesterday’s fat, dusting the plastic flowers and the waiters are putting their moustaches on with eyebrow pencils.
    I waved to Wally who runs the delicatessen across the road before turning into the doorway marked, among other things, ‘Ex-Officers’ Employment Bureau’, by a smooth polished brass plate. In the hall the same floral wallpaper had moved ever nearer autumn. The first-floor landing smelled of acetone and from behind a doorway marked ‘Acme Films Cutting Rooms’, I could hear the gentle purr of a movie projector. The next floor pretended to be a theatrical tailor so that we couldbuy, alter or make any kind of uniform we needed. This is where Alice sat. Alice was the cross between librarian and concierge. Anyone who thought they could do anything in that building without having Alice’s approval should just try doing it.
    ‘You are late, sir,’ Alice said. She was thumping the lid into a caterer’s-size Nescafé tin.
    ‘Right as always, Alice,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’ I climbed towards my office. From the dispatch department came the mournful trombone solo of ‘Angels Guard Thee’ as the CWS Brass Band played their part in the dispatch department’s ceaseless record recital. Jean was waiting on the stairs. ‘Coming in late,’ she said.
    ‘It’s one of the B-flat cornets,’ I explained, ‘clipping the notes.’
    ‘I mean you are coming in late.’ She put my old raincoat on a wooden hanger that had the words ‘stolen from typing pool’ burned into the surface.
    ‘How do you like it?’ Jean said, ‘the office.’
    I looked around at the balding carpet, Jean’s teak desk and the gleaming new IBM typewriter, and then I saw it. There was a large spiky indoor plant on the window sill.
    ‘It’s lovely,’ I said. The leaves were long and prickly, the bright green giving way to a dull yellow at the thorny edge. All it did as far as I could see was block just a little more of the already inadequate grey London daylight. ‘Lovely,’ I said again.
    ‘Mother-in-law’s Tongue,’ said Jean, ‘that’s what it’s called.’
    ‘Don’t stretch my credulity too far,’ I said.
    ‘That’s what Dawlish said when he saw your expense sheet for last month.’
    I unlocked my ‘In’ tray. Jean had already sifted most of it. The worst was the political reading matter. Long foolscap translations of excerpts from L’Unità, Party Information 1 and two other information sheets had been waiting there for nearly a week. It was a job no one else could do for you.
    ‘It was that bill at The Ivy,’ said Jean. I signed the two