Tomorrow's ghost

by Anthony Price

  ‘And I have a special legacy, do I?’

  ‘As it happens, we think you do, Frances. Unfortunately, however, it’s a legacy in a very doubtful currency. Because in modern human beings it is heavily devalued—grossly distorted, more accurately … by reason in the first place—the Darwinian essential of instinct is independence from reason—and by emotion in the second. In the male of the species reason is the main problem, and in the female it is emotion—generally speaking, of course.’

  Chauvinist! thought Frances.

  ‘Is that so?’ she said coldly.

  ‘Now in your case, Frances, reason and emotion are probably both problems.

  Whereas in Paul’s case reason is undoubtedly by far the larger problem—‘

  They had probably been unable to find any emotions at all in Paul, except possibly anger and pride, decided Frances.

  ‘—so much so that he’ll probably have to make do without instinct altogether, and manage with experience and knowledge. But then fortunately he has an exceptional memory, and very considerable powers of observation … But that’s beside the point. In your case, Frances, it’s almost as though reason and emotion sometimes cancel each other out, and you are left … as it were … with pure instinct.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  ‘Yes. In the controlled tests we gave you a few years ago—and as confirmed by subsequent field observations—we gave you a score of four out of ten on a notional scale.’

  ‘Four?’ Frances felt deflated. If she was a pre-prehistoric female animal under the skin, she wasn’t a very efficient one, clearly. ‘Four?’

  ‘Four out of ten.’

  ‘So I can’t rely on my instinct, then.’

  ‘You certainly cannot. If you could you’d be an animal, my dear—you wouldn’t be talking to me here in the dark, you’d be hunting me for supper. There’s a million years of evolution, not to mention a few thousand years of civilisation, between nine-point-nine out of ten and four out of ten.’

  She stared at him. Four-out-of-ten lacked night-vision too. And four-out-of-ten was cold and confused.

  ‘Then … if my score is so low … why -‘

  ‘Low? My dear Frances, it isn’t low. The consistent mark for instinct—among experienced officers—is two. And anything near three is exceptional.’

  The chilly fingers between her shoulder blades were not those of the night. ‘And four?’

  ‘Four is phenomenal. Literally … because we’ve never had a four. Which means sometimes—no, I’m not going into the details. One day I’ll arrange a meeting between you and our psychological people. Only you’ll have to be careful with them—four years ago they wanted to keep you and take you to pieces to see how you worked. Huh!’

  Frances frowned into the darkness between them. Four years before there had been a lot of tests—everything from conventional I.Q. papers and ink blots to weird guessing games and an elaborate version of hunt-the-thimble. They had seemed to go on for an unconscionable time; in fact, hers had gone on longer than anyone else’s, which she had assumed was either because she was a woman or because she was a borderline candidate. But she had nevertheless taken them all for granted.

  Well, her phenomenal four-out-of-ten instinct hadn’t worked then, that was for sure! she decided grimly.

  ‘The fact was—and is—that you are more valuable to us, my dear,’ concluded Sir Frederick. ‘But let’s go inside—you must be perished with cold. It was altogether thoughtless of me to keep you out here in the dark, beautiful though it is, your night sky.’

  In the dark, thought Frances. She had been in the dark and she was still in the dark.

  ‘No—wait. You said there were two reasons. Sir Frederick.’ In the light she would be over-awed by him: out here the odds were evened up.

  ‘So I did. Very well … you had never served under Butler before. If we’d told you to go and observe him then I believe your instinct would have been distorted. You would never have had that one clear vision you had today. And that was what I wanted you to have, Frances. It was the first thing you had to have.’

  The first thing?

  ‘But I was wrong. It wasn’t a clear vision.’

  ‘Have I said that?’

  ‘You’ve implied it. Sir Frederick.’

  ‘I’ve implied no such thing. You’ve doubted your instinct, and that’s good. You must never rate it higher than a suspicion—but that’s a very different thing.’

  ‘Are you telling me I’m right about Colonel Butler?’

  ‘No, Frances. I’m telling you I think you’re right.

  I think—and I rate two-point-five—I think that in a few minutes … a few of your out-of-time minutes, Frances … in a few minutes you came up with an instinctive certainty which our top personnel selection experts couldn’t give me in a year. Because they’d be afraid to—they don’t have the equipment to do it, the equipment doesn’t exist—so I couldn’t require them to do so. Do you understand now?’

  Top personnel selection experts.

  Personnel selection.

  Selection.

  They had been watching Colonel Butler.

  And it was a matter of internal security—

  She had had the right answer, almost. Prompted by Paul, and spurred on by Sir Frederick’s presence, she had had the right answer, only she had got it back to front.

  ‘You’re going to promote him.’

  ‘Not quite. We may promote him. We are contemplating his promotion. But there are questions to be answered first.’ Sir Frederick emitted a sound which she couldn’t identify in the dark. Perhaps it was a back-to-front laugh. ‘My dear Frances, you are doing something now which the workers of the world want to do … and what the democratic principle is supposed to do … although looking at the back benches of the Commons—and the front benches too in places—I have my doubts about that. The only thing you can say for it is that it works better than behind the Iron Curtain, a lot better …

  You are participating in the election of your boss. Indeed, you have the veto.’

  ‘The veto?’

  ‘In effect—very possibly.’ The back-to-front sound reached her again. She decided that it wasn’t a laugh: whatever he was doing, he wasn’t laughing. ‘And you’d better get it right, for everyone’s sake, including your own.’

  ‘But I don’t know—‘ Frances was suddenly aware that she was hugging the dressing gown to herself so fiercely that the torch was digging painfully into her left breast ‘—I don’t know enough about him to make that sort of decision.’

  ‘You haven’t finished yet. You’ve only just started, in fact.’

  No, thought Frances. No.

  ‘Sir Frederick…’ She had to get it right. ‘I don’t have the experience—I don’t have the qualifications. And sod the instinct.’

  ‘Excellent!’

  That wasn’t right, then. ‘Paul would do it better. He’d enjoy doing it.’

  ‘Enjoying it isn’t a qualification. Not enjoying it—that’s a qualification. That happens to be one of Jack Butler’s best qualifications for the job we may give him, in my opinion: he’ll hate doing it,, but he’ll do it all the same. And so will you, Frances’. So will you.’

  The torch was hurting her again.

  ‘What will I do?’

  Acceptance was painful too. It even hurt to know that he was right—that he had been right all along.

  How did he know more about her than she knew herself? Was that two-point-five?

  And if it was, then what use was four-out-of-ten?

  ‘First you’ll read a special report on him. Then you’ll decide what you wish to do—who you wish to see, where you wish to go. All that will be arranged for you. All you have to do is to ring a number which I shall give you.’ He paused. ‘As of now you’re a VIP, Frances.’

  Dry mouth, fast pulse, cold back. What clinical symptoms were they?

  ‘To whom do I report?’

  ‘The same number.’

  ‘Can I
ask for advice?’

  ‘Whom have you in mind?’

  ‘David Audley.’ No question about that. In fact, now she thought about it, it was a mystery why they weren’t giving this job to David, rather than to her, because David knew Colonel Butler better than anyone else.

  ‘David’s in Washington. He’s busy.’

  ‘But I’d like his advice.’

  ‘No. Not David.’

  Categorical negative. There was information there, of a sort. She would need to think about that.

  ‘Group Captain Roskill, then.’

  No back-to-front sound this time. Just nothing.

  ‘I think you’d better read the report first.’

  I don’t feel like a VIP, thought Frances. But there was no percentage in asking that question. Come to that, she wished now that she hadn’t asked the question about David Audley…

  She’d have to be more careful about asking questions in future.

  There was one question which couldn’t be avoided, though.

  ‘What job is Colonel Butler in line for?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ He seemed almost surprised. ‘As yet you don’t really need to know, anyway.’

  So she ought to know. So Paul Mitchell, if he thought about it, was bound to know—and the sooner she extricated herself from the question, the better, before he embargoed Paul too. She hadn’t taken her own advice quickly enough.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she shrugged the words at him.

  ‘No. But I tell you what I’ll do.’ He paused. ‘What was that thesis you were allegedly writing at North Yorkshire University? Something about Tolkien—?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She switched on the torch. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  He ignored the light. ‘Fairyland—that’s it. It was Fairyland: From Spenser to Tolkien.’

  ‘”Faerie” actually—“The Land of Faerie”, not “Fairyland”. There’s a considerable difference,’ she said pedantically, directing the beam into his eyes and wishing it was brighter.

  ‘Of course—I beg your pardon! You know your Tolkien backwards?’ He blinked at her. ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Naturally.’ She could hardly deny that now.

  ‘Good. Then I can perhaps let Tolkien explain for me much better than I could.’ He lifted his hand up into the light, so that for a moment she thought he was shielding his eyes from it. ‘The Lord of the Rings, he called his book, didn’t he? “Rings” in the plural.’

  A flash of gold caught her eye as he lifted one finger from the others. There was a signet ring on it.

  ‘Rings of power, Frances. The Seven, the Nine, the Three … and of course the One.

  Right?’

  She could just about remember that, but obviously he had read the book—the three volumes of it—more carefully than she had, so she’d better keep quiet.

  ‘An interesting concept—rings of power.

  Fortunately we don’t have to contend with the One … or at least not in the way the other side has to. Because we do still have machinery for changing the hand that wears it… But we do have other rings, Frances. And like Tolkien’s rings they confer great power, and not least the power to bring out either the best or the worst in the wearer.’

  The gold glinted as he moved his hand in the torchlight.

  ‘So before we give Jack Butler a ring of power we have to know as much about his worst as about his best, that’s what it amounts to, my dear.’

  ‘His worst?’ The question came out before she could stop it.

  ‘That’s right. You see … we know his best—which is very good, no doubt about that, no doubt at all … But there is—how shall I put it?—a loose end which does worry us a bit.’ He paused, as though ‘loose end’ was not quite how he wanted to put it. ‘It’s nothing to do with security, really.’

  No more questions. At least, not until she’d read that report, and maybe not even then, decided Frances.

  ‘A ghost—we want you to lay a ghost from the past, Frances.’ He nodded, to himself as well as at her. ‘Can you lay a ghost, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Sir Frederick.’ And in this garden that was just as well, she thought. ‘So they don’t frighten me.’

  ‘Very sensible. That is, so far as the ghosts of the past are concerned.’

  ‘Are there ghosts of the future?’ Damn! ‘Oh yes—they are the frightening ones, my dear. When you get to my age you see tomorrow’s ghost in the mirror. Tomorrow’s ghosts are still alive, but on borrowed time—your job will be to lay those ghosts too, before it’s too late. Let’s go inside.’

  * * *

  After he had gone, which was after she had read and re-read the report, and he had taken it away with him, Frances sat in front of the electric fire, which warmed the sitting room but did not warm her.

  There is a loose end which does worry us a bit.

  Well, there was a loose end, of course. But there was more to it than that—the very fact that it had been Sir Frederick himself who had come to her, and that he had briefed her in such an eccentric way, so very differently from Brigadier Stocker, aroused her deepest suspicions (the more so as David Audley had always maintained that ‘Fred’ was the most devious old sod of them all; though, again, since she had never been briefed by him before she had no previous experience there to judge by).

  We want you to lay a ghost.

  Well, there were ghosts enough in Colonel Butler’s file, and not merely his hecatomb of the Queen’s enemies either.

  General Sir Henry Chesney was an old ghost, rich and benevolent.

  And Leslie Pearson Cole was a classified ghost, probably off limits now for ordinary mortals, even temporary VIPs.

  But Patrick Raymond Parker was a very public ghost, with a whole string of his own ghosts in attendance; any newspaper morgue would deliver them up to her.

  And there were tomorrow’s ghosts there too—Trevor Anthony Bond was still alive somewhere. And Major Starinov of the KGB was also probably still alive, though for her purposes he might just as well be dead for all the information he could give her.

  But the little Misses Butler would be very much alive, though not so little now. Very much alive, and very promising too.

  Sir Frederick hadn’t told her everything, they never did. And the file hadn’t told her what she most wanted to know about the most important ghost of all.

  Madeleine Francoise de Latour d’Auray Butler, nee Boucard.

  Frances stared into the uninspiring glow of the electric fire.

  Madeleine Francoise had not originally been a loose end—if she had been then Colonel Butler would never have got this far in the promotion stakes. Madeleine Francoise had been tied up to everyone’s sufficient satisfaction, and now something (or someone) had untied her—had raised her ghost, which had not walked for nine years…

  (A devious old sod, so she had to think deviously too.) (An old man near retirement; but it couldn’t be his job Colonel Butler was lined up for, that was out of the Colonel’s league, she was sure of that.) (Whatever job it was. Sir Frederick wanted him to get it too, but obviously wasn’t prepared to fight openly for the Colonel, to risk trouble for him. Was it Paul who had said the Old Sod was sitting tight for his pension and his life peerage? It was certainly Paul who had hinted that the Old Sod was losing his grip, no longer holding off the Minister and the politicians and the Civil Servants as he had once done.) (She must talk to Paul as soon as possible. Short of talking to David Audley … short of disobeying orders … Paul was her best bet. Paul wouldn’t be frightened of tomorrow’s ghosts.)

  * * *

  She was tired, but she didn’t want to go to bed.

  She got up and crossed to Robbie’s side of the fireplace, where Sir Frederick had sat while she read the report, and lifted the three Tolkien volumes out of Robbie’s bookshelf.

  Then she went back to her own side and sat down again, and started reading at random, flipping from place to place, picking out the names from the past of
her original reading.

  Rings of Power…

  It was dead quiet in the cottage, as always.

  There was a letter from her Robbie between the pages of the first volume. She felt no curiosity about its contents, they wouldn’t be interesting. She wasn’t even very surprised that it was still there; she had dusted the book a dozen times, but she hadn’t opened it.

  Bits of the old days like this were always turning up, she had long since ceased trying to look for them, they didn’t matter.

  She screwed the letter up into a tight ball and dropped it into the wastepaper basket, and went on reading.

  The men of Cam Dum came on us at night, and we were worsted. Ah! The spear in my heart!

  Well, it was still a fairy story—it hadn’t changed, and neither had she. There was no spear in her heart for Robbie.

  Wizards and trolls and elves with bright eyes and sharp swords, and rings of power…

  She knew she wasn’t really concentrating. Rather, she was wondering how it was she already knew that Colonel Butler hadn’t murdered his wife on the morning of November 11, 1969.

  CHAPTER 6

  AS PROMISED, the side-door of the publican’s snug of the Bear and Ragged Staff public house was unlocked one hour before licensed opening time, and ex-Detective Chief Inspector William Ewart Hedges was waiting for her on the other side of it, sitting comfortably beside a newly-lit fire with a copy of the Daily Telegraph and a pint of mild.

  Telephone Number 01-836-20066, Extension 223, might have the sort of fat, self-satisfied, establishment voice she always found most off-putting, but at least he knew how to deliver the right man to the right place at the right time at short notice, thought Frances.

  Predictably, the right man wasn’t quite as quick to recognise her, though his double-take as she entered was so fleeting that she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been half expecting it, and his moment of surprise when she dropped the catch behind her was so well camouflaged that it was hardly noticeable at all except as a cautious nod of greeting.

  ‘Mrs Fisher?’ He rose to his feet with the characteristic stoop of a tall man accustomed to low beams in old pubs.