The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  I went with him to the door. ‘One thing, Inspector; you never saw that card.’

  He nodded abruptly and left.

  Ashton and Penny came back more than two hours later. Penny looked as tired as she had the previous morning, but Ashton had recovered some of his colour and springiness. ‘Good of you to stay, Malcolm,’ he said. ‘Stay a little longer—I want to talk to you. Not now, but later.’ His voice was brusque and he spoke with authority; what he had issued was not a request but an order. He strode across the hall and went into the study. The door slammed behind him. I turned to Penny. ‘How’s Gillian?’

  ‘Not very good,’ she said sombrely. ‘It was strong acid, undiluted. Who would do such a barbarous thing?’

  ‘That’s what the police want to know.’ I told her something of my conversation with Honnister. ‘He thinks your father might know something about this. Does he have any enemies?’

  ‘Daddy!’ She frowned. ‘He’s very strong-minded and single-minded, and people like that don’t go through life without treading on a few toes. But I can’t think he’d make the kind of enemy who would throw acid into his daughter’s face.’

  Somehow I couldn’t, either. God knows some funny things go on in the economic and industrial jungles, but they rarely include acts of gratuitous violence. I turned as Benson came out of the kitchen carrying a tray on which were a jug of water, an unopened bottle of whisky and two glasses. I watched him go into the study then said, ‘What about Gillian?’

  Penny stared at me. ‘Gillian!’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re not suggesting Gillian could make that kind of enemy? It’s preposterous.’

  It was certainly unlikely but not as impossible as Penny thought. Quiet homebodies have been known to lead exotic and secret lives, and I wondered if Gillian had done anything else on her shopping trips into Marlow besides buying the odd pound of tea. But I said tactfully, ‘Yes, it’s unlikely.’

  As I helped Penny get together a scratch meal she said, ‘I tried to neutralize the acid with a soda solution, and in the ambulance they had better stuff than that. But she’s in the intensive care unit at the hospital.’

  We had rather an uncomfortable meal, just the two of us because Ashton wouldn’t come out of the study, saying he wasn’t hungry. An hour later, when I was wondering if he’d forgotten I was there, Benson came into the room. ‘Mr Ashton would like to see you, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I made my excuses to Penny and went into the study. Ashton was sitting behind a large desk but rose as I entered. I said, ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this awful thing should have happened.’

  He nodded. ‘I know, Malcolm.’ His hand grasped the whisky bottle which I noted was now only half full. He glanced at the tray, and said, ‘Be a good chap and get yourself a clean glass.’

  ‘I’d rather not drink any more this evening. I still have to drive back to town.’

  He put down the bottle gently and came from behind the desk. ‘Sit down,’ he said, and thus began one of the weirdest interviews of my life. He paused for a moment. ‘How are things with you and Penny?’

  I looked at him consideringly. ‘Are you asking if my intentions are honourable?’

  ‘More or less. Have you slept with her yet?’

  That was direct enough. ‘No.’ I grinned at him. ‘You brought her up too well.’

  He grunted. ‘Well, what are your intentions—if any?’

  ‘I thought it might be a good idea if I asked her to marry me.’

  He didn’t seemed displeased at that. ‘And have you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He rubbed the side of his jaw reflectively. ‘This job of yours—what sort of income do you make out of it?’

  That was a fair question if I was going to marry his daughter. ‘Last year it was a fraction over £8000; this year will be better.’ Aware that a man like Ashton would regard that as chickenfeed I added, ‘And I have private investments which bring in a further £11,000.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘You still work with a private income?’

  ‘That £11.000 is before tax,’ I said wryly, and shrugged. ‘And a man must do something with his life.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  Thirty-four.’

  He leaned back in his chair and said musingly, ‘£8000 year isn’t bad—so far. Any prospects of advancement in the firm?’

  ‘I’m bucking for it.’

  He then asked me a couple of questions which were a damned sight more personal than digging into my finances but, again, in the circumstances they were fair and my answers seemed to satisfy him.

  He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘You could do better by changing your job. I have an opening which is ideal for a man like yourself. Initially you’d have to spend at least one year in Australia getting things off the ground, but that wouldn’t hurt a couple of youngsters like you and Penny. The only trouble is that it must be now—almost immediately.’

  He was going too fast for me. ‘Hold on a moment,’ I protested. ‘I don’t even know if she’ll marry me.’

  ‘She will,’ he said positively. ‘I know my daughter.’

  He evidently knew her better than I did because I wasn’t nearly so certain. ‘Even so,’ I said. ‘There’s Penny to consider. Her work is important to her. I can’t see her throwing it up and going to Australia for a year just like that. And that’s apart from anything I might think about the advisability of making a change.’

  ‘She could take a sabbatical. Scientists do that all the time.’

  ‘Maybe. Frankly, I’d need to know a lot more about it before making a decision.’

  For the first time Ashton showed annoyance. He managed to choke it down and disguise it, but it was there. He thought for a moment, then said in conciliatory tones, ‘Well, a decision on that might wait a month. I think you’d better pop the question, Malcolm. I can fix a special licence and you can get married towards the end of the week.’ He tried to smile genially but the smile got nowhere near his eyes which still had a hurt look in them. ‘I’ll give you a house for a dowry—somewhere in the South Midlands, north of London.’

  It was a time for plain speaking. ‘I think you’re going a bit too fast. I don’t see the necessity for a special licence. In fact, it’s my guess that Penny wouldn’t hear of it, even if she does agree to marry me. I rather think she’d like to have Gillian at the wedding.’

  Ashton’s face crumpled and he seemed about to lose what little composure he had. I said evenly. ‘It was always in my mind to buy a house when I married. Your offer of a house is very generous, but I think the kind of house it should be—and where it should be—are matters for Penny and me to decide between us.’

  He stood up, walked to the desk, and poured himself a drink. With his back to me he said indistinctly, ‘You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t interfere. But will you ask her to marry you—now?’

  ‘Now! Tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I stood up. ‘Under the circumstances I consider that entirely inappropriate, and I won’t do it. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go back to town.’

  He neither turned nor made an answer. I left him there and closed the study door quietly behind me. I was at a loss to understand his driving insistence that Penny and I should marry quickly. That, and the offer of the job in Australia, had me worried. If this was the way he engaged his staff, not to mention picking a son-in-law, I was surprised how he’d got to where he was.

  Penny was telephoning when I entered the hall. She replaced the receiver and said, ‘I’ve been talking to the hospital; they say she’s resting easier.’

  ‘Good! I’ll be back tomorrow evening and we’ll go to see her. It might make her feel better to have someone else around, even a comparative stranger like me.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ said Penny, doubtfully. ‘She might be…well, self-conscious about her appearance.’

  ‘I’ll come anyway and we can decide then. I h
ave to go now—it’s late.’ She saw me to my car and I kissed her and left, wondering what kind of bee was buzzing in Ashton’s bonnet.

  FOUR

  Next morning, when I walked into the office I shared with Larry Godwin, he looked up from the Czechoslovakian trade magazine he was reading and said, ‘Harrison wants to see you.’ Harrison was our immediate boss.

  ‘Okay.’ I walked straight out again and into Harrison’s office, sat in the chair before the desk, and said, ‘Morning, Joe. Larry said you wanted to see me.’

  Harrison was a bit of a stuffed shirt, very keen on formality, protocol and the line of authority. He didn’t like me calling him Joe, so I always did it just to needle him. He said stiffly, ‘On checking the weekend telephone log I found you had disclosed yourself to a police officer. Why?’

  ‘I was at a house-party over the weekend. There was a nasty incident—one of the daughters of the house had acid thrown in her face. She was taken to hospital and, when the police pitched up, I was alone in the house and they started to get off on the wrong foot. I didn’t want them wasting time on me, so I disclosed myself to the officer in charge.’

  He shook his head disapprovingly and tried to hold me in what he supposed to be an eagle-like stare. ‘His name?’

  ‘Detective-Inspector Honnister. You’ll find him at the cop-shop in Marlow.’ Harrison scribbled in his desk book, and I leaned forward. ‘What’s the matter, Joe? We’re supposed to co-operate with the police.’

  He didn’t look up. ‘You’re not supposed to disclose yourself to all and sundry.’

  ‘He wasn’t all and sundry. He was a middle-ranking copper doing his job and getting off to a bad start.’

  Harrison raised his head. ‘You needn’t have done it. He would never seriously suspect you of anything.’

  I grinned at him. The way you tell it co-operation is a one-way street, Joe. The cops co-operate with us when we need them, but we don’t co-operate with them when all they need is a little setting straight.’

  ‘It will be noted in your record.’ he said coldly.

  ‘Stuff the record,’ I said, and stood up. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me I have work to do.’ I didn’t wait for his permission to leave and went back to my office.

  Larry had switched to something in Polish. ‘Have a good weekend?’

  ‘A bit fraught. Who’s pinched our Who’s Who?’

  He grinned. ‘What’s the matter? Wouldn’t she play?’ He fished out Who’s Who from among the piles of books which cluttered his desk and tossed it to me. Our job called for a lot of reading; when I retired I’d be entitled to a disability pension due to failing eyesight incurred in the line of duty.

  I sat at my desk and ran through the ‘A’s and found that Ashton was not listed. There are not many men running three or more factories employing over a thousand men who are not listed in Who’s Who. It seemed rather odd. On impulse I took the telephone directory and checked that, and he was not listed there, either. Why should Ashton have an ex-directory number?

  I said, ‘Know anything about high-impact plastics, Larry?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘A chap called Ashton runs a factory in Slough making the stuff. I could bear to know a little more about him.’

  ‘Haven’t heard of him. What’s the name of the firm?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know much. There might be a trade association.’

  ‘Great thinking.’ I went to our library and an hour later knew there were more associations of plastics manufacturers than I wotted of—there was even one devoted to highimpact plastics—but none of them had heard of George Ashton. It seemed unnatural.

  Gloomily I went back to my office. It’s a hard world where a man can’t check up on his prospective father-inlaw. Ashton, as of that moment, knew a hell of a lot more about me than I knew about him. Larry saw my face and said, ‘No luck?’

  ‘The man keeps a bloody low profile.’

  He laughed and waved his hand across the room. ‘You could ask Nellie.’

  I looked at Nellie and grinned. ‘Why not?’ I said lightly, and sat at the console.

  You don’t have to cuddle up to a computer to ask it questions—all you need is a terminal, and we called ours Nellie for no reason I’ve ever been able to determine. If you crossed an oversized typewriter with a television set you’d get something like Nellie, and if you go to Heathrow you’ll see dozens of them in the booking hall.

  Where the computer actually was no one had bothered to tell me. Knowing the organization that employed me, and knowing a little of what was in the monster’s guts, I’d say it was tended by white-coated acolytes in a limestone cavern in Derbyshire, or at the bottom of a Mendip mineshaft; anywhere reasonably safe from an atomic burst. But, as I say, I didn’t really know. My crowd worked strictly on the ‘need to know’ principle.

  I snapped a couple of switches, pushed a button, and was rewarded by a small green question mark on the screen. Another button push made it ask:

  IDENTIFICATION?

  I identified myself—a bit of a complicated process—and Nellie asked:

  CODE?

  I answered:

  GREEN

  Nellie thought about that for a millionth of a second, then came up with:

  INPUT GREEN CODING

  That took about two minutes to put in. We were strict about security and not only did I have to identify myself but I had to know the requisite code for the level of information I wanted.

  Nellie said:

  INFORMATION REQUIRED?

  I replied with:

  IDENTITY

  MALE

  ENGLAND

  The lines flicked out as Nellie came back with:

  NAME?

  I typed in:

  ASHTON, GEORGE

  It didn’t seem to make much difference to Nellie how you put a name in. I’d experimented a bit and whether you put in Percy Bysshe Shelley—Shelley, Percy Bysshe—or even Percy Shelley, Bysshe—didn’t seem to matter. Nellie still came up with the right answer, always assuming that Bysshe Shelley, Percy was under our eagle eye. But I always put the surname first because I thought it would be easier on Nellie’s overworked little brain.

  This time she came up with:

  ASHTON, GEORGE—3 KNOWN

  PRESENT ADDRESS—IF KNOWN?

  There could have been two hundred George Ashtons in the country or maybe two thousand. It’s a common name and not surprising that three should be known to the department. As I typed in the address I reflected that I was being a bit silly about this. I tapped the execute key and Nellie hesitated uncharacteristically. Then I had a shock because the cursor scrolled out:

  THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE GREEN TRY CODE YELLOW

  I looked pensively at the screen and tapped out:

  HOLD QUERY

  Dancing electronically in the guts of a computer was a whole lot of information about one George Ashton, my future father-in-law. And it was secret information because it was in Code Yellow. I had picked up Larry Godwin on a joke and it had backfired on me; I hadn’t expected Nellie to find him at all—there was no reason to suppose the department was interested in him. But if he had been found I would have expected him to be listed under Code Green, a not particularly secretive batch of information. Practically anything listed under Code Green could have been picked up by an assiduous reading of the world press. Code Yellow was definitely different.

  I dug into the recesses of my mind for the coding of yellow, then addressed myself to Nellie. ‘Right, you bitch; try again!’ I loaded in the coding which took four minutes, then I typed out:

  RELEASE HOLD

  Nellie’s screen flickered a bit and the cursor spelled out:

  THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE YELLOW TRY CODE RED

  I took a deep breath, told Nellie to hold the query, then sat back to think about it. I was cleared for Code Red and I knew the information there was pretty much the same as th
e code colour—redhot! Who the hell was Ashton, and what was I getting into? I stood up and said to Larry, ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t interfere with Nellie.’

  I took a lift which went down deep into the guts of the building where there lived a race of troglodytes, the guardians of the vaults. I presented my card at a tungstensteel grille, and said, ‘I’d like to check the computer coding for red. I’ve forgotten the incantation.’

  The hard-faced man behind the grille didn’t smile. He merely took the card and dropped it into a slot. A machine chewed on it for a moment, tasted it electronically, and liked the flavour but, even so, spat it out. I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t liked the flavour; probably I’d have been struck down by a bolt of lightning. Strange how the real world is catching up with James Bond.

  The guard glanced at a small screen. ‘Yes, you’re cleared for red, Mr Jaggard,’ he said, agreeing with the machine. The grille swung open and I passed through, hearing it slam and lock behind me. ‘The coding will be brought to you in Room Three.’

  Half an hour later I walked into my office, hoping I could remember it all. I found Larry peering at Nellie. ‘Do you have red clearance?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Yellow is my top.’

  ‘Then hop it. Go to the library and study Playboy or something elevating like that. I’ll give you a ring when I’m finished.’

  He didn’t argue; he merely nodded and walked out. I sat at the console and loaded Code Red into Nellie and it took nearly ten minutes of doing the right things in the right order. I wasn’t entirely joking when I called it an incantation. When faced with Nellie I was always reminded of the medieval sorcerers who sought to conjure up spirits; everything had to be done in the right order and all the right words spoken or the spirit wouldn’t appear. We haven’t made much progress since then, or not too much. But at least our incantations seem to work and we do get answers from the vasty deep, but whether they’re worth anything or not I don’t know.

  Nellie accepted Code Red or, at least, she didn’t hiccough over it.

  I keyed in:

  RELEASE HOLD