| The
Tell
by Jenny Yates
Everyone has one, an involuntary twitch or fidget It could be a
facial expression so obvious that the player could be holding his
cards to face his opponent or one that’s inappropriate to
the circumstances. It’s called a tell and I’ve seen
them all. A man taps the side of his nose as his hand moves to his
holster, a woman pulls her eyelashes when she turns to kiss her
lover. I’m never mistaken; I know how a person is going to
act before they do.
When I left the armed forces, just before my thirty-second birthday,
I was keen to take up a profession that made full use of my talents
and experience. I perceived a gap in the market for a certain type
of private investigator, an investigator who specialises in the
top end of the market. There would be no trilby hat and grubby raincoat
for me. I could talk to clients in a language they understood. My
business prospered. Five years ago I started to offer additional
services. It seemed obvious once I thought of it. Why stop when
you’ve identified the problem? Providing a solution pays much
better, like a whore in a massage parlour.
The intelligence agencies became aware of my activities fairly early
on. At first they merely tolerated me, but then they started to
use me – nasty little jobs they didn't want to dirty their
hands with, or that would be compromising for them if caught. It
made a change from unfaithful spouses and corrupt business partners.
Given my Cambridge background it was only a matter of time before
an intelligence job involved someone I knew.
In fact it was two people and I knew them well, not just peripherally.
From our second term at Cambridge Grant, Julian and I had shared
a flat. It was a dingy, damp two-bedroomed hole on the fourth floor
of a terrace, but we preferred it to the incestuous cloy of cloistered
life. Grant McKenzie was Scottish, but you'd barely know it from
his speech. A pedantic way with consonants was the only thing that
gave him away – that plus a tendency to wear a kilt to attend
the Church of Scotland when his father visited and a habit of calling
all girls and women 'ladies'. Julian was English to his Dover chalk
core. Charterhouse educated, it was inevitable he'd end up working
for the foreign office. I was only surprised he chose intelligence
over diplomacy, but not Grant. Grant was born for subterfuge.
I wasn't born with the advantages of Grant and Julian; before Cambridge
I’d been educated at a minor public school. I took any opportunity
to boost my finances and I started playing poker. To begin with
my finances were diminished rather than boosted. The day I recognised
a tell was the turning point and from then I was able to supplement
my meagre allowance through school and university.
At university I got into some serious games. There was a lot of
money flying around and it wasn't difficult to make it fly into
my pocket. More money than sense is the cliché, but true
about many of the students there. It was rare for me to play poker
with Julian or Grant. I’d worked out Julian's tell on the
second hand we played: he pulls his earlobe when he's nervous, when
he has good hand and doesn't want to blow it. Grant was more difficult.
He was steely and I couldn't discover his tell. He wasn't like me
– I was aware of my tell and I worked hard to control it.
It seemed to me as though Grant just didn't have one. For those
reasons I didn't like to play with either of them. One was too easy,
the other too difficult. Also, they were my friends. Poker wasn't
for fun; it was serious, my way of life.
Laura was the girlfriend of one of the poker regulars. He wasn't
the worst player, but I generally took a fair amount of his money
home with me. He kept coming back for more, seemed determined to
beat me. Unfortunately for him, I also won Laura from him. She was
gorgeous, not conventionally pretty, with her mousy brown hair,
she was small and carried a bit too much fat. But she had 'it',
whatever that was. I moved her into our dingy digs and she never
complained. Her mission was to improve the three of us. I know it
sounds corny, but life, when she lived with us, was just about perfect.
Of course Grant and Julian had girlfriends too, chinless posh girls,
Fiona or Tamara or Jessica, with rich daddies. I forget them all
now, all except Emily. She was Julian's girlfriend and the best
of the lot. Laura's opposite, she had blonde hair and her make-up
was always perfect. Her legs were long and shapely and I couldn't
resist an afternoon in bed with her. It was a big disappointment,
certainly not worth the price of Laura. The bitch Emily couldn’t
keep her mouth shut and Laura walked out of the flat and my life.
The job, involving Grant and Julian, was a complicated affair. It
consisted of the usual subterfuge of foreign powers, money and bribery.
The country was in Africa, so small you won’t have heard of
it. Julian and Grant were trying to keep the 'right' man in power,
but things were not going well. When the intelligence services contacted
me they were certain that one, if not both, of them was taking bribes.
Not the odd fifty thousand dollars, but life changing, leave the
country multi-millionaire stuff. Of course the spook, my contact,
me was aware of our earlier friendship. That was a plus as far as
they were concerned; there's no room for sentiment in this job and
my knowing them gave me a chance to 'accidentally' bump into both
men. I hadn't seen either of them since graduation, hadn't even
gone to Grant's wedding. They looked well, although Julian had put
on some weight around his middle. After I engineered a meeting we
had dinner and talked inconsequential nonsense. They gave nothing
away, had to lie about the jobs they did, the lives they lived;
as did I. They were cool at that meeting and I couldn't identify
the traitor.
After Laura left me, Grant couldn't wait to move in on her. He didn't
tell me, but I knew. He'd always fancied her and she'd been charmed
by his immaculate Scottish manners. I think I took it quite well:
I didn't beat him to a pulp or throw him out of the kitchen window.
I went round to Laura's one time to plead with her to take me back.
I stood outside her new flat for over an hour, shaking, but I've
never begged for anything and I couldn't then.
Just before our finals Grant took me out for a drink. He told me
he was going to marry Laura and I knew it then, his tell. It was
the tell of a man who knows he holds the winning hand, a smile from
a man who doesn't smile much. He laughed a lot, uproariously at
the kind of things privileged Cambridge students laugh at, but he
seldom smiled. His expression was usually neutral, a poker face.
That day the smile played on his face. It was barely a smile, just
a hint around the edges of his mouth, but it was there and I recognised
it for what it was. I shook his hand and wished them well.
A few years later I heard they'd split up, like many university
pairings they didn’t survive domesticity. They'd married too
young. Laura left him for an American and lived there still. I know;
I check on her every six months or so.
After the meeting with Grant and Julian, I followed them for a couple
of weeks. Sometimes together, sometimes apart, they gave nothing
away. I rented a small apartment opposite the hotel where they held
their meetings. Last week my contact in intelligence told me I had
to act – both men were leaving the country, separately, as
I would expect. I had just a few hours to take out the traitor.
My contact implied I should eliminate both of them if unsure who
was about to betray his country – better an innocent man die
than the consequences of the treachery. I didn't like that, not
for reasons of sentiment, more professional pride. I'd be paid to
kill the traitor, or traitors, and if there were only one, he'd
be the only one to die. Unfortunately, with hours to go, I still
had no idea who he was.
I’ve positioned myself at the window of the apartment, knowing
the men will leave soon. They stop at the top of the hotel step
to say their goodbyes and I watch them in my sights. My gut feeling
is Julian; he’s the more greedy, but he looks calm, relaxed,
like a man about to go on holiday, not commit treason. I will his
hand to tug his earlobe, but it doesn't. I look at Grant, examine
his features carefully through the rifle sights; something plays
around his mouth and I recognise the expression, though I've seen
it only once before. I squeeze the trigger and watch him fall; the
smile frozen on his face.
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