The Day of the Jackal

Shortly before twelve the PA knocked and entered.

‘Superintendent Markham’s just been on from CRO,’ he said. ‘Apparently there’s no one on Criminal Records who can fit that description. Seventeen known contract-hire killers from the underworld, sir; ten in jail and seven on the loose. But they all work for the big gangs, either here or in the main cities. The Super says none would fit for a job against a visiting politician. He suggested Special Branch too, sir.’

‘Right, John, thank you. That’s all I needed.’

With the PA dismissed, Mallinson took the half-finished memo from his drawer and re-inserted it into the typewriter. On the bottom he wrote:

‘Criminal Records reported upon enquiry that no person fitting the description of type submitted by Commissaire Lebel could be traced in their files. The enquiry was then passed to the Assistant Commissioner, Special Branch.’

He signed the memorandum and took the top three copies. The remainder went into the waste-paper basket for classified waste, later to be shredded into millions of particles and destroyed.

One of the copies he folded into an envelope and addressed to the Commissioner. The second he filed in the ‘Secret Correspondence’ file and locked it into the wall-safe. The third he folded and placed in his inside pocket.

On his desk note-pad he scribbled a message.

‘To: Commissaire Claude Lebel, Deputy Director-General, Police Judiciaire, Paris.

‘From: Assistant Commissioner Anthony Mallinson, A.C. Crime, Scotland Yard, London.

‘Message: Following your enquiry this date fullest research criminal records reveals no such personage known to us. stop. request passed to Special Branch for further checking. stop. any useful information will be passed to you soonest. stop. mallinson.

‘Time sent: . . . . . . . 12.8.63.’

It was just gone half past twelve. He picked up the phone, and when the operator answered, asked for Assistant Commissioner Dixon, head of Special Branch.

‘Hallo, Alec? Tony Mallinson. Can you spare me a minute? I’d love to but I can’t. I shall have to keep lunch down to a sandwich. It’s going to be one of those days. No, I just want to see you for a few minutes before you go. Fine, good, I’ll come right along.’

On his way through the office he dropped the envelope addressed to the Commissioner on the PA’s desk.

‘I’m just going up to see Dixon of the SB. Get that along to the Commissioner’s office would you, John? Personally. And get this message off to the addressee. Type it out yourself in the proper style.’

‘Yessir.’ Mallinson stood over the desk while the detective inspector’s eyes ran through the message. They widened as they reached the end.

‘John …’

‘Sir?’

‘And keep quiet about it, please.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very quiet, John.’

‘Not a word, sir.’

Mallinson gave him a brief smile and left the office. The PA read the message to Lebel a second time, thought back to the enquiries he had made with Records that morning for Mallinson, worked it out for himself, and whispered ‘Bloody hell.’

Mallinson spent twenty minutes with Dixon and effectively ruined the other’s forthcoming club lunch. He passed over to the Head of Special Branch the remaining copy of the memorandum to the Commissioner. As he rose to leave he turned at the door, hand on the knob.

‘Sorry, Alec, but this

really is more up your street. But if you ask me, there’s probably nothing and nobody of that calibre in this country, so a good check of records and you should be able to telex Lebel to say we can’t help. I must say I don’t envy him his job this time.’

Assistant Commissioner Dixon, whose job among other things was to keep tabs on all the weird and crazy of Britain who might think of trying to assassinate a visiting politician, not to mention the scores of embittered and cranky foreigners domiciled in the country, felt even more keenly the impossibility of Lebel’s position. To have to protect home and visiting politicians from unbalanced fanatics was bad enough, but at least they could usually be relied upon as amateurs to fail in the face of his own corps of case-hardened professionals.

To have one’s own head of state the target for a native organisation of tough ex-soldiers was even worse. And yet the French had beaten the OAS. As a professional, Dixon admired them for it. But the hiring of a foreign professional was a different matter. Only one thing could be said in its favour, from Dixon’s point of view; it cut the possibilities down to so few that he had no doubts there would prove to be no Englishman of the calibre of the man Lebel sought on the books of the Special Branch.

After Mallinson had left, Dixon read the carbon copy of the memorandum. Then he summoned his own PA.