‘Sir Frederick intended me to call you?’
‘He surely did. He’s determined to make me fight for Jack Butler, and so I will. Now he thinks I shall fight for you two as well—and so I will. But he’ll never take “no” for an answer—which is what I call a communications failure—and I won’t have his job for all the tea in China. I have the same problem with that scheming bastard Jake Shapiro but at least that’s understandable—Jake knows how I feel about Israel, from way back. But Clinton has let the thing become an obsession to such an extent that it’s become dangerous. Now he’s missing the things he should be seeing.’
‘What things?’
‘Ever since I put Jack Butler up for poor old Tom Stocker’s job they’ve been giving him tough assignments—putting him in the forefront of the battle like Uriah the Hittite.
But that’s fair enough—trial by ordeal will prove that God’s on the Butler side as well as Audley.’
‘North Yorkshire University being one of the ordeals, presumably?’ murmured Crowe.
‘That’s what I thought, when I heard about it,’ Audley nodded. ‘A more diabolically stupid operation, that degree ceremony, I find it hard to imagine.’ He paused. ‘Too hard, in fact.’
Frances could nod to that.
‘You’re not suggesting that Colonel Butler was to be discredited at the cost of other people’s lives, David?’ Crowe sat up angrily in his spectator’s chair. ‘You’re not serious!’
‘I’m not sure what I’m suggesting any more, to be honest, Hugo. But I’m beginning to think I’ve been quite unusually stupid—almost as stupid as Sir Frederick Clinton. Stupid and arrogant and self-satisfied. And I’m only just in time to make amends—‘ he gave Frances a little bow ‘—thanks to Mrs Fitzgibbon’s commonsense disobedience.’
Frances gritted her teeth. ‘David, I’ve got something to tell you. And you’re not going to like it one bit.’
He smiled at her tolerantly. ‘It’s okay, love—I know. They wanted you to find a reason why Jack might have wanted to kill her, and of course you found one. But it doesn’t matter, not now.’
‘But he didn’t kill her, David.’
‘Of course he didn’t! The idea’s plainly ridiculous—you know it, I know it. She was a selfish, scheming, cold-hearted, unloving bitch, and if ever a woman needed murdering, she did. But he hasn’t got murder in him. I could have told you that in two seconds flat. And Fred should have realised it too—when they fed him the dirt it should have put him on his guard. The moment I heard about it I realised how bloody stupid I’d been.
‘I mean … it made me think about Jack himself for the first time, not about the great David Audley. Everything that’s been happening to him, I thought it was because of me—because the department’s full of faceless little bastards who hate my guts. So I rather enjoyed letting Jack rub their faces in the mud—I’ve always enjoyed letting them hate me.’
‘”Oderint dum metuant, murmured Crowe. ‘Enmity is the most rewarding form of flattery.’
‘Yes.’ Now the smile was vengeful. ‘I’ve half a mind to take Fred’s job and screw the lot of them, just for that, Hugo. Except that now I’ve put the whole thing together differently, and it fits much better this way.’
‘What way?’ Frances heard the sharp note of fear in her voice.
‘I turned Fred’s job down flat—they were never serious about Tom Stocker’s job, they knew I wouldn’t take that. But then there were all these rumours about me wanting Fred’s job—no matter how often I squashed them they kept coming up again—‘
Crowe stirred. ‘You really don’t want the top job?’
Audley scowled at him. ‘Christ, Hugo—not you too!’
‘I only asked, dear boy…. Are you saying that these rumours were planted deliberately—by those who knew you wouldn’t accept it?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I was too stupid to consider the possibility—I’m saying that too.’
‘Ah—now I’m beginning to see! You thought that what was happening to Colonel Butler was directed against you. But now you believe that the rumours about you were actually calculated to stimulate opposition to his appointment? A simple reversal of the obvious, in fact?’
‘More than that, Hugo.’
‘More than that?’ Professor Crowe gazed into space. ‘Yes … it would also account for what happened to Butler. A campaign directed against Butler would have made people suspicious—particularly you—because he is generally well-regarded. But a campaign against your acquisition of Sir Frederick’s job wouldn’t surprise anyone—least of all you.
Is that it?’
Audley nodded.
‘I see. So Butler has been the real target all along? And that effectively eliminates Sir Frederick—and your illegitimate Israeli friend—and all the faceless little love-children from your list of villains, dear boy.’ Crowe paused.
‘Then it’s just Butler.’ He started up again. ‘Someone must be very frightened indeed of his getting the job. Quite terrified, in fact, to go to such lengths. They’ve gone a long way beyond domestic politics and slander—they’re into treason and murder, constructively.’
‘Yes,’ said Audley.
‘Is the job that important?’
‘It is and it isn’t. It’s basically a bloody thankless dogsbody job. But whoever gets it carries a lot of clout. And also gets to see a lot of things he’s never seen before. From his own file upwards.’
His own file, thought Frances. Even she had only seen an edited version of that. But he had never seen it at all and now he would be able to. In his promoted place that would be the first thing she’d look at: all her test analyses, all her fitness reports, all her successes and failures.
His file would be a lot bigger than hers, though. It would start before she was born, and it would follow him across the world and back. It would list General Chesney’s last will and testament. It would miss the marital disaster, and the visits to Rifleman Sands, because those were private matters that he had never revealed to anyone, and in certain things Colonel Jack Butler was a very private man…. For a guess, it might also miss this investigation, if Sir Frederick decided to play that close to his chest now, after what she had done. But it would certainly include everything about the original disappearance of Madeleine Francoise, and—Successes and failures—
‘What’s up, Frances?’ said Audley.
Failures.
‘What’s the matter, Frances?’ repeated Audley.
She looked at him. In fact she had already been looking at him, but not seeing him.
‘Have you ever heard of Leslie Pearson Cole?’
‘Leslie—?’ He frowned at her. ‘Leslie Pearson Cole?’
‘And Trevor Anthony Bond.’
‘Never heard of him. But Pearson Cole—what d’you know about Pearson Cole?’
‘Very little. He committed suicide.’
‘That’s right.’ Audley nodded. ‘I wasn’t on the case, thank heavens. There was a botch-up of some kind. Pearson Cole was mixed up in a big security leak, but there was a delay in picking him up, so he took his leak with him. What—?’
‘The delay was because a Major Butler was taken off the case, David. His wife had disappeared—he was delayed by that first. And then someone gave some conflicting evidence, for no reason. And nobody put two and two together.’
They stared at each other.
‘Yes…’ Audley nodded slowly. ‘Yes, that would do very well—very well indeed. At least for a start.’
‘In what way, dear boy?’ asked Crowe.
Audley turned to him. ‘Jack Butler’s a good chap—he’ll do a good job when he’s promoted. He’s very painstaking. Not a genius, but very, very painstaking. There’s no general reason why anyone should go to such lengths to block his promotion—he isn’t disliked. He isn’t going to carry me up with him—so there has to be a specific reason.
That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since I came back: somebody doesn’t w
ant him to be able to put two and two together and make four. If he isn’t promoted, then he never will—and two and two will never meet. And then somebody will go on being safe somewhere.’
‘You have a traitor in the camp, dear boy.’ Crowe sat back in spectator’s comfort, hands at prayer. ‘It happens in the best regulated families from time to time.’
‘Yes.’ Audley gave Frances a grimly anticipatory nod. ‘Someone quite low down nine years ago, most likely. But quite high up by now. And someone who doesn’t know that we know, by God!’
‘Don’t be too sure, dear boy. They’ll be running scared now,’ Crowe admonished him. That’s when they’ll become dangerous.’
‘They can’t know. Because they don’t know I’m back.’ Audley reached towards the Glenfiddich. ‘I think I’ll have a celebratory slug of my duty-free USAF hooch. I’m going to enjoy this… And, above all, they won’t be running scared because they’ll be expecting Mrs Fitzgibbon here to come up any moment with a nice handful of sticky mud which will keep Jack Butler firmly and safely among the other ranks. A nice, neat bloodless solution. Nothing to stir nasty suspicions in nasty suspicious minds like mine. No need to put O’Leary at risk by using his special talents…. Cheers!’ He swung towards Frances.
‘My manners! May I top you up—‘ he stopped.
‘What—what d’you mean—O’Leary’s special talents?’ said Frances.
He relaxed. ‘It’s all right, Frances. As long as Jack is under suspicion of murdering his eminently murderable wife then they’ll strive to keep him healthy and unpromoted.
You’ve actually saved him by giving him his motive, love—if you’d proved him innocent then O’Leary would have probably been given a new target by the name of Butler.’
‘Oh my God!’ whispered Frances.
Crowe was looking at her. Crowe knew what Audley didn’t know.
She’d told the Death Story.
‘I’ve already phoned Control,’ said Frances.
Once you’ve summoned him, he won’t go away empty-handed.
CHAPTER 15
THIS YORKSHIRE RAIN wasn’t like Lancashire rain, or even like Midland rain, thought Frances resentfully as the car thudded into another unavoidable puddle which had spread into the centre of the narrow road: in the Midlands it had been half-hearted drizzle, with the occasional well-bred little storm; in Lancashire it had been pervasive wetness; but here, on the shoulder of the high moors, it was an obliterating deluge which had to be fought every inch of the way.
The car juddered and skidded over a pot-hole hidden in the puddle and the spray rose up simultaneously ahead, to dash itself on the windscreen a fraction of a second later, and underneath, to strike the floor beneath them with a solid thump.
‘You’re going too fast,’ said Audley nervously. ‘If you kill us on the way we won’t get there at all.’
It was such a stupidly obvious thing to say that Frances felt a half-hysterical giggle beneath her irritation that he should have said it at all.
‘If you can drive better, then you can drive,’ she snapped back at him out of her knowledge (which was common knowledge, for he had never concealed it) that the great David Audley was a bad driver who hated driving, and who would have still managed to put them at risk in this downpour, on this road, even at half her speed.
He lapsed into sullen silence beside her, and she instantly felt half-ashamed, and half-angry with herself for snapping him down. It was the sort of thing a shrewish wife might have said, all the worse for being true; and, worse still, she knew also that his fear for their safety was sharpened by a greater fear which she shared with him.
* * *
They were dropping down off the ridge, she could sense it rather than see it, between the low, half-ruined dry-stone walls with their occasional stunted bushes and trees in the featureless moorland landscape which the rain narrowed around them.
Somewhere ahead of them, down there ahead of them in the greyness, was the opening into the tree-shrouded valley of the Thor Brook, still almost as secret and isolated as when the first monks and lay brothers trudged up it all those forgotten centuries ago.
‘How much further?’ asked Audley.
The child’s eternal question—
* * *
‘How much further. Mummy?’
‘Not far, dear.’
‘But I don’t see anything.’
‘You’re not meant to see anything.’ Father always knew the answer. He always knew how much further and how long. He even knew, unfailingly, how the films on TV ended, whether they were sad or happy. He knew everything.
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s why they came here, the old monks. Because there was nobody here, and it was miles from anywhere. Remember Rievaulx, Frances—hidden there in its valley. Getting away from men to be closer to God, that was what being a Cistercian monk was all about.’
‘But why. Daddy?’ She knew the answer now, he had told it to her before, but she wanted the comfort of hearing it again.
‘Because it was a nasty, rough world, and they wanted to get away from it.’ Patient repetition.
‘But Kirkstall Abbey’s in the middle of a town.’ Unanswerable logic.
‘It wasn’t when they built it, sweetie. Things have changed a lot since the twelfth century, you know.’ Unarguable answer.
‘It’s still a nasty, rough world,’ said Mother dryly.
‘And now you can’t get away from it, either,’ said Daddy.
* * *
And so Frances Warren had come to Thornervaulx the first time.
* * *
‘Thornervaulx?’ The man presiding over—the communications centre had not been overawed at first by Audley’s appearance, for Audley’s appearance had not been overawing. But the penny had dropped at last, with Jock Maitland banging the machine, and the man had accepted that the big dishevelled man with the little bedraggled blonde dolly-bird added up to something that was not what it seemed. ‘Yes, sir—Colonel Butler and Mr Cable have gone to Thornervaulx.’
‘And Paul Mitchell?’ said Frances.
‘Yes—‘ For the life of him, in spite of her warrant card, he couldn’t bring himself to add ‘madam’
‘—Mr Mitchell’s gone there too.’
‘To see Trevor Bond?’ It fitted too well to be wrong: O’Leary needed a safe house close to the University, and there, just across the high ridge of heather within sight of the top of the Science Block on a clear day, was someone Colonel Butler of all men would never have forgotten. It would be so close to the surface of his memory, the remembrance of that name and that place, that it was a certainty. And because it was a certainty it was more than that, was her fear: it was the bait on a hook for Colonel Butler if things went wrong.
Or was she imagining everything? And was David Audley imagining everything?
The man didn’t answer her directly, and Audley started to growl something angry in his throat.
‘Yes—‘ The man’s answer pre-empted Audley’s anger.
‘We have to get a message to Colonel Butler—at once. About O’Leary,’ Audley converted the anger into a command.
‘I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir.’
‘Why the hell not?’ Audley pointed to the banks of equipment. ‘You’ve got enough there to transmit to bloody Moscow!’
‘The system is deactivated, sir.’ As the man’s voice strengthened Frances’s heart sank: he was no longer scared because he was sure of his ground. ‘I’m only here to watch over it—and to take any calls.’ He nodded towards the telephone on the table beside him.
Audley pounced on the phone. ‘Well—give me the line to Thornervaulx then, for God’s sake. There has to be a line, damn it!’
‘Yes, sir—but there isn’t at the moment—‘
‘Why not?’ Audley shook the receiver impotently.
‘The line is out. Sergeant Ballard phoned me half an hour ago—not half an hour, sir.
The Post Office says there’s proba
bly water in the cable somewhere. They’ve sent men out to look for the trouble, but … but we haven’t been able to get through for an hour or more. Sergeant Ballard says. They’re doing all they can—‘ He broke off abruptly, and Frances saw that he at last was beginning to become frightened too. Then he brightened.
‘Sergeant Ballard said he was sending men out to tell the Colonel, sir.’
Audley looked at Frances, and the look confirmed her own fear—and Sergeant Ballard’s too.
If the line was out, that might mean there was water in the cable—it happened, and there was enough water to make it happen now. But she could remember Sergeant Ballard’s cool competence, and she knew that even in the most torrential downpour he wouldn’t accept water as the only answer to a breakdown in communications.
Well … there was a flicker of hope there, kindling against the bigger blaze of fear.
Perhaps Colonel Butler’s disdain of complicated modern electronics might warn him now, where a totally secure communications system wouldn’t have hinted that someone was trying to isolate him. And even if it was a much fainter hope than the fear—not only because O’Leary was a kamikaze assassin, but also because he had no reason to believe that he was now O’Leary’s target—then at least he would by now have Sergeant Ballard’s reinforcements beside Cable and Mitchell to make the hit more difficult.
But it was still only a hope.
‘Frances. We must go.’ Audley’s tone betrayed the same inescapable conclusion.
‘You’d better drive.’
* * *
‘How much further?’ repeated Audley.
‘Not far now—‘ It was no longer a childish question. But childish memories, which she had never recognised as having registered at the time, came from nowhere to help her. ‘There’s a bridge up ahead, over the stream—we go along beside the stream, and then we come to the bridge. It’s a little narrow bridge—‘
She knew what he was thinking, his thoughts burned her.
* * *
‘Why did you phone Control?’
‘Why?’ Frances pressed her foot down to the floor. Why indeed!
‘It was finished. I wanted to get it over and done with.’
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