well again! - all that made the whole thing even more inexplicable.
'But if that's the case, Paul - if that's what everyone thinks of Colonel Butler - how have we ended up with the job of wrecking his chances?' she frowned at him. 'And how did David ... bog it up?'
Paul looked to Shapiro for the answer. 'Colonel?'
'Who's got it in for Colonel Butler?' Frances shifted the questions in the same direction. And come to that, she added silently, what the hell arc you doing here. Colonel Shapiro?
Shapiro rubbed the tip of his nose with a grubby finger.
'Yes...' He considered her reflectively for a moment, as though he'd picked up an echo of what she hadn't said. 'Well, Mrs Fitzgibbon, I would guess that the probable answer to your second question is "Nobody". Or it was to start with, anyway.' He paused. 'And I'm afraid that the answer to your first question is that David wasn't very clever for once. He tried to play politics, and he played foolishly.'
'Politics?'
Shapiro sighed. 'And ... very regrettably ... some of the blame is mine too. I condoned
- I contributed to - a most egregious error of judgement. I must confess it. And I have come here tonight to do all I can to rectify it.'
Frances began to feel out of her depth. That Mossad should be interested in Brigadier Stocker's successor was fair enough. But although it would have suited them down to the ground for David Audley to take the job they had no reason to expect any favours from Colonel Butler.
'It was such an excellent ideas, that was the trouble with it. One should always be suspicious of excellent idea,' said Shapiro sorrowfully. 'The better they are, the worse the situation becomes if they go wrong.'
Way out of her depth, decided Frances.
'It was such a good idea that Audley came back from Washington to make sure Sir Frederick
Clinton acted on it - to make sure nothing went wrong. And while he was here he came to me to enlist my support for it - I have some influence with the West Germans, also with the Americans over here. He wanted the right people to be primed if there was consultation ... and we both agreed it was ... an absolutely excellent idea.'
But why did the Israelis think Butler was an excellent idea?
'For quite different reasons, as it turned out,' continued Shapiro. 'Although at the time I thought differently - I thought David was playing the same game as I was, even though he said he was being entirely altruistic - ' he nodded at Paul' - exactly as you claim to be, Mitchell. You say Colonel Butler doesn't like you, but you trust him... And that's precisely what David Audley said. And I didn't believe a word of it.'
'Why not?' said Frances. 'Don't tell me it was just because David is devious.'
'You know, I am being rather altruistic,' said Paul to no one in particular. He sounded suspicious of himself.
'My dear lady - young lady - ' Shapiro caught himself just in time. 'I told you - I made a mistake. Isn't that enough for you?'
Under the urbanity he was angry with himself - so furious that it required a continuous effort not to burn up everything and everyone around him, not excluding dear young ladies, thought Frances. But one thing he wasn't going to receive from this young lady - and 'young lady' from him was patronising and he ought to have known better: in Israel 'young ladies' were accepted as young soldiers - was any special consideration. Whatever he'd done, there was no way Colonel Shapiro of Mossad would have behaved altruistically.
'I didn't believe him - ' Shapiro saw that he wasn't about to be offered an olive branch, and that cooled him down ' - for the sufficient reason that Colonel Butler thinks very highly of him, professionally. Which is all that matters.'
Yes. And so here was another one who wasn't concerned with motives and wives and murder, decided Frances. For all Shapiro cared. Colonel Butler could be the Motorway Murderer himself, with women planted under the roadway one to every hundred yards for miles on end. Professionally that was of no consequence whatsoever, provided it was done efficiently.
'My God!' said Paul in a hollow voice. 'It's Audley that they're after, not Butler!'
'What?' For once Frances ignored her own hateful feminine squeak of surprise.
'What?'
'Christ - I'm dim - dim!' Paul, in turn, ignored her, addressing himself to Shapiro. 'I thought Fred Clinton was losing his grip - letting them push Butler out of the way, doing their dirty work for them.'
'He is losing his grip,' snapped Shapiro. 'Five years ago ... even two years ago ... he would have closed up that file on Butler tight - he would have locked it up and thrown away the key. If Stocker hadn't been a sick man he still might have managed it. But with Stocker the way he was - no help ... waiting for the next pain in his chest ... and he's too old to fight the way he used to, Clinton is. The politicians pushed him - you're right, Mitchell: there are people who know all about Audley, and they don't like what they know - he doesn't push around easily, and he isn't polite with it either. Also there's the anti-Audley faction in your own department - they really hate his guts too.'
'For a different reason, I hope to God!' murmured Paul.
Audley?
'So do I,' said Shapiro grimly. 'By God - I hope that too!'
Audley? Audley?
'Clinton's 64. He's retiring next year,' said Paul.
Clinton - Audley? Not Butler, not Stocker. But Clinton and Audley?
'In November. One year exactly,' Shapiro nodded. 'We have one year - to the day, near enough. He'll be at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, and that'll be the last time.'
The irrelevance of the exact dating threw Frances into confusion. Sir Frederick Clinton had always attended the Remembrance Day parade in Whitehall, every Sunday of every November that she could remember, with his medals on his chest. Twice, when she'd been duty officer, he'd quite deliberately taken her too - had put someone else on duty for an hour quite deliberately.
'You'll want to come of course, Frances. You have something to remember.'
She'd never seen David there - in spite of the Wessex Dragoons' 80 per cent casualties. But-then David wasn't sentimental.
She'd never seen Butler there either... And that was much stranger, with his passion for anniversaries and the Lancashire Rifles' battle honours, which must be scattered across dozens of cemeteries all the way to Korea and back.
But that was all irrelevant: she was being diverted from the wood by the ba-rk on the trees.
Paul noticed her confusion at last, and took pity on her.
'Frances - I'm sorry! I am dim-witted.' But he was pleased with himself, nevertheless.
'Fred Clinton's retiring next year.'
'Yes?'
'It's as plain as the nose - ' Paul's eye flicked to Shapiro's beak, which almost rivalled Nannie's, and then came back to her ' - as the pretty nose on your face. I just didn't get it until I realised that no one would expect me to be altruistic - to want to do the right thing just for once for the right reason, like poor old Thomas Archbishop in Murder in the Cathedral.
Exasperation. 'Paul, what are you talking about?'
'He turned the job down - David did. Stocker's job. And he pushed Butler for it - '
Paul pointed at Colonel Shapiro ' - and he lobbied all over the place for Butler to get it.
And David doesn't normally play politics, he despises politics almost as much as Fighting Jack does. Right, Colonel?'
'Correct.' Shapiro nodded. 'And a grave mistake, too. David Audley is a professional who tries to behave like an amateur. He suffers from the gentlemen-and-players syndrome - a common British disease afflicting ex-public schoolboys.'
'Very true. But not a common Israeli disease afflicting ex-tank commanders,' Paul agreed, deflecting the insult back at the Colonel. 'So few gentlemen in that line of business, I suppose?'
Frances looked at them angrily. 'For God's sake - both of you - why are they after David, not Butler? What's David done?'
'It's not what he's done, it's why he did it,' said Shapiro.
'Or rather,
dear Princess, why everyone thought he did it,' said Paul.
Motive again, thought Frances bitterly. She had already found a motive Colonel Butler had had for something he hadn't done; now all she had to find was a motive David Audley had lacked for something he had done.
It came to her a second before Paul spoke, but too late.
'They thought David was going for Sir Frederick Clinton's job,' said Paul.
Just like that. Simple, obvious and self-evident. Like the nose on Nannie's face - plain as the nose, plain as the face.
David Audley for Number One.
Therefore, in advance, to prepare the way for the lord, his old friend and colleague -
godfather to his daughter - for Number Two.
'Correct,' said Shapiro.
David Audley for Emperor.
But first Colonel Butler for Grand Vizier.
It was safe as well as simple: the Grand Vizier never got the Emperor's job, that required different qualifications as well as cojones. But the Grand Vizier was uniquely well-placed to influence the succession ... and - God! - also to eliminate rivals.
Frances stared at Paul. Was he thinking what she was thinking: that whoever was urging them both on to dig the dirt on Colonel Butler, was acting in self-defence, to avert the possibility that before long, otherwise. Butler would be urging Mitchell and Fitzgibbon to dig the dirt on them with his new Ring of Power? Everybody had dirt hidden somewhere, and given time and resources someone else could find that dirt.
(She went on staring at Paul. It wouldn't take him long to find out that Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon's marriage had been breaking up because Mrs Fitzgibbon was rotten in bed; and that Captain and Mrs Fitzgibbon both knew that Captain Fitzgibbon wouldn't come back to her from that last Ulster tour, one way or another. It wouldn't take him long. He might even know already, at that, being Paul.)
(She mustn't think of that. She didn't want Robbie to come back any more than Colonel Butler would not want Madeleine Francoise to come knocking at his mock-Tudor door again.)
David Audley for Emperor.
No wonder there was a palace revolution in progress!
'I know what you're thinking,' said Paul. That wasn't possible. She had to head him off, anyway.
She turned to Shapiro. 'Is David after the job?' 'I wish he was!' Shapiro scowled at her. 'But he's not. He just isn't hungry enough to fight, that's the trouble.'
'Maybe this'll change his mind,' said Paul. 'He may not like to fight, but he doesn't like to be beaten.'
Paul was hungry, thought Frances. If Paul thought he was being altruistic, he was deceiving himself.
'I wouldn't rely on that assumption,' said Shapiro. 'And even if he does fight - even if we fight - I wouldn't rely on our chances of winning.'
Paul nodded. 'No - I agree. This makes it a different ball-game. It's relegation or promotion now.'
'It's the bloody Cup Final - I beg your pardon, Mrs Fitzgibbon.' Shapiro acknowledged Frances, but kept his eye on Paul. 'You think you've been shouting for the wrong team, Mitchell?'
Paul grunted ruefully. 'I don't think I've got any choice now - in this company. The trouble is, I don't even see how to win by fighting dirty.' He nodded at Frances. 'That's what our little Princess was thinking. You're going to have to produce one hell of a magic spell to get us out of this one, Princess. Otherwise it's going to be "unhappy ever after" for us.'
Shapiro saved Frances. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean, Colonel... that it won't be good enough for Fitzgibbon and Mitchell to give Colonel Butler a clean bill of health. We weren't put on this one to find an answer they didn't know. We were set to find what they knew already - to make it nice and respectable.' He shook his head at Frances. 'Somebody's already talked - I knew that smug bastard who briefed me was giving me the message, not seeking after wisdom.'
'What message?'
Paul's lip curled. 'Nine years ago. Colonel - nine years to the day, almost - our dear Colonel could have killed his wife. And that was very naughty of him.'
'He didn't,' said Frances.
'Of course he didn't. Fighting Jack wouldn't do a vulgar thing like that - the old General wouldn't approve. Besides which he knows his Kipling on the subject of service wives - of course he didn't! He couldn't.' He paused. 'And if he did it would have been a beautiful tragic accident, with an unbreakable alibi built into it, and no comeback nine years later.'
So Paul Mitchell and William Ewart Hedges, travelling from different directions, had reached the same destination, thought Frances.
'But that doesn't matter,' said Paul. 'Unfortunately our job isn't to give him a character reference - we just have to breathe suspicion over him. I thought it might be enough if we did the exact opposite - Frances and I. But the stakes are too big for that, and if we don't provide the right answer they'll simply send down someone else who will.'
Shapiro looked at Frances.
'Am I right. Princess?' asked Paul.
Shapiro continued to look at Frances.
'Princess?'
Frances looked at Shapiro. 'When does David get back?'
'Not until midday tomorrow. He's got a meeting he can't break - Washington time,'
said Shapiro.
Washington time. Not enough time.
'I'll give you whatever help you need,' said Shapiro.
Everyone was so helpful. There was altruism everywhere.
'I'm going to Blackburn,' said Frances for the second time. But now she knew why she was going there.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For the second time in one morning Miss Marilyn Francis was in Thistlethwaite Avenue, at the entrance of the driveway to St. Luke's Home for Elderly Gentlefolk. But this time she was going inside.
Frances looked at her watch. It was 11.25, which ought to be just about right for visiting.
She turned to the woman beside her. 'If you could wait here, Mrs Bates - just down the road, perhaps.'
'Yes, luv.' Mrs Bates gave her a motherly smile. Mrs Bates was a motherly person, almost grandmotherly. 'Shall I have Brian bring your own car up, from behind the hotel?'
Mrs Bates was also a well-organised and well-organising person, who thought of everything, as befitted an Israeli intelligence cell commander.
Frances sorted Brian from Evan Owen and Mr Harcourt, who were taking it in turns to keep Colonel Butler in sight. Brian was the plump-faced young man on the motor-cycle, the junior partner in the team. Evan Owen drove the van, and Mr Harcourt was the commercial traveller in the nondescript Cortina.
She also wondered, for the umpteenth time, how Paul Mitchell had made out with Nannie on her return from night duty. The girls, mercifully, had accepted the unscheduled dawn departure of the potential Second Mrs Butler after she had reassured them that Paul was only a colleague, and that he would never be anything more than a colleague, and that he was too young for her anyway, and that she would be coming back to see them at the earliest opportunity; which reassurances - three truths and one lie (she would never come back to Brookside House, that was a near-certainty) - had been the least she could do for Paul, whom they would otherwise have either murdered or seduced during the night as an obstacle to their plans. But Nannie was a different problem - she would give Paul a hard time, supposing his charm didn't work; and she would also report on him to Colonel Butler at the earliest opportunity, after which the cat would very likely be out of the bag. But by then, very likely, it wouldn't matter much, he could think what he liked, it would be all over; and, anyway, it was all over for Paul, that part of it - Nannie's part - and by now he would be two hours up the motorway to Yorkshire.
(The same motorway that Colonel Butler had once travelled at another November dawn, nine years ago.)
She felt strangely fatalistic about it all. 'Thank you, Mrs Bates.' As she stepped out of the car she saw Mrs Bates reach under the dashboard for the microphone which linked her to Brian and Evan Owen and Mr Harcourt in his Cortina.
* * *
A cobweb of ra
in brushed her face, fine as gossamer but nonetheless quickly soaking.
This was real northern rain - not so much rain as total wetness. When she had left Brookside House it had been raining - raining obviously, with real raindrops spattering on her. But somewhere along the drive northwards it had stopped raining and had become simply wet, the very air so saturated with moisture that a fish could have breathed it.
She put up Mrs Bates' big black umbrella, but the dampness ignored it. By the time she reached the porch she could feel it running down her face, spoiling Marilyn's make-up. If someone didn't come quickly to answer the bell Marilyn's blonde frizz, which had jumped so surprisingly from under the wig, would be reduced to unsightly rats'-tails.
The door opened.
' 'Northern Daily Post-Gazette," said Frances quickly, hunching herself up against a trickle of rain which had infiltrated the top of her plastic mac. 'I phoned up about an hour ago. To see Mr Sands, please.'
'Mr Sands?' A blast of warm air reached Frances's face.
Rifleman Sands, please, begged Frances silently.
'Oh, yes - the young lady from the newspaper?' The green-uniformed nurse was as crisp and fresh as a young lettuce leaf. But she looked at Frances - at Marilyn -
doubtfully for a moment, as though she had expected a better class of young lady, not something off the cheapest counter at the supermarket.
'That's right,' said Frances desperately. Marilyn would just have to do, now. But the theory that as Colonel Butler and the North had never seen Marilyn, so that she might purchase a minute or two more of anonymity if the worst came to the worst ... that theory of Paul's didn't seem so clever now.
She shivered uncontrollably, and the Florence Nightingale training of the lettuce leaf came to her rescue.
'Ee - but you're wet, dear - come inside!' The lettuce leaf opened the door wider. Tut your umbrella down there - in the stand - so it won't drip on the floor.'
Frances collapsed the umbrella gratefully. The door closed at her back and the warmth swirled around her.
'And get your raincoat off - let me help you - there now - that's better! Oh ... isn't it a right miserable day - that's better!'
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