A Prospect of Vengeance

by Anthony Price

  For a moment Ian thought she might have overdone it. Because anyone who knew Jenny when she was as brittle as this wouldn’t trust her an inch. But Mitchell didn’t know her, he saw instantly: Mitchell only knew that she ought to be frightened, as he had intended her to be, and deluded himself consequently that she was hiding her fears behind her banter.

  ‘You stay here, for the time being.’ Mitchell was infinitely relieved by her surrender, so that he insulted Ian by not even looking at him.

  ‘You mean … we are safe, under Mr Malik’s protection?’ She was so sure of herself now that she prodded Mitchell unmercifully.

  ‘This is your secret place, is it?’ Mitchell was still relaxing. ‘Nobody knows about Mr … Malik—?’ For the second time Mitchell tasted what was in his own glass, which he had hardly touched hitherto.

  ‘Yes.’ Suddenly she wasn’t quite so sure.

  ‘Yes. Well … there’s a term we have for that: it’s called “Making pictures”.’ Mitchell nodded, and tasted his drink again. ‘Which means, believing what we’d like to believe.’ He wanted to drink more deeply, but he resisted the temptation, and looked at his watch instead. ‘So … maybe you’ve got another hour or two, at best.’ He looked up from his watch. ‘But you let me worry about that now. And when I come back … then we can maybe make a deal—okay?’ He started to turn away, towards the door.

  ‘Paul—wait!’

  Ian agreed with her: now it was all happening too quickly. ‘Mitchell—!’

  Mitchell turned. ‘This is your secret place—isn’t it?’

  Jenny drew a deep breath. ‘What’s the deal?’

  ‘How do I know?’ He shrugged. Then he concentrated on them both. ‘Well … let’s say … if I have to throw David Audley to the wolves … then you can be the wolves—how’s that, for starters—?’ He paused for a second—two seconds—while Ian’s mouth opened, but before he had time to look at Jenny. And then he opened the door and was gone through it before they could exchange faces. And then it was too late.

  Ian stared at the door. ‘Phew!’

  ‘Shit!’ murmured the Honourable Miss Jennifer Field-ing-ffulke.

  ‘What?’ He hated to hear her swear.

  ‘Did he really save your life?’ She was angry.

  Ian pressed his video-buttons, re-winding fast and trying not to see the reversal, which always reduced reality to comedy; but then, as he played forward again slowly, frame by frame, without sound, the reality became frozen into a succession of unrealities, turning the horror film he had lived through into single pictures, like the stills outside the cinema.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He tried to add up Mitchell—Combat Jacket to Dr Paul Mitchell. ‘But I think he thinks he did, Jenny.’

  ‘He was lying.’

  ‘What?’ He couldn’t complete the addition. But there were certain pictures he couldn’t forget. ‘I don’t know. But … I don’t think so, Jenny—‘

  ‘I mean, he knows one hell of a lot more than he’s saying, Ian.’

  That was true! She hadn’t been there, in the churchyard, or afterwards. But Paul Mitchell knew one hell of a lot more about Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon—that was true!

  ‘About Audley—by God, he does!’ She crossed over towards the heavy curtains at the window. ‘Never mind Philly—Audley—!’

  That was different—Audley was different. And … she knew more about Mitchell, too—more even than she had let Mitchell himself see.

  ‘What about him, Jenny—Mitchell, I mean—?’ He cursed their failure to communicate in the few minutes they had had, when they’d thrown away their advantages, so that they’d had to play the game cold just now.

  ‘He’s R & D from way back.’ She touched the curtain, but then turned back to him. ‘”P. L. Mitchell”—doesn’t the name mean anything to you, Ian? You’re supposed to be the literary one—the literate one? Half of them are bloody authors, in their spare time—P. L. Mitchell?’ She shook her head irritably. ‘Or Neville Macready? You’re not an economist, of course … but “Hayek and Keynes”—you must have seen Macready’s book reviewed in the FT, or the Sunday Times, or somewhere. Because even I did … even though I didn’t read the reviews. But Macready is R & D—he’s their economist, actually. And Audley’s their medieval historian … for all the good that does them!’ She touched the curtain again. ‘And P. L. Mitchell—‘ She peered into the gap ‘—Dr Paul Mitchell—‘

  ‘What are you looking at?’ What she knew, which he didn’t know, needled him more than what she was doing—which was obvious, now he thought about it. ‘A big silver Volvo, Jenny. And it’s parked right outside the door, on double yellow lines … But he could be back in the phone-box again—‘

  He saw the curtain tighten sharply, almost convulsively, as she held on to it. And, for a foolish half-second, didn’t understand why. And then he realized that she was holding on to it, as her knees buckled, to stop her falling—

  ‘Jenny—‘ In the next half-second he was holding her, and she was a dead-weight as she let go of the curtain, and he took the strain. And the weight was nothing—she was light as thistledown, with her hair in his face, and what little there was of her in his arms; much more than the childish weight, he could smell her—he had seen her sweat before, as all red-headed girls always did, with those dark patches under her arms, when she hadn’t changed her dress in Lebanon—when her dress had been sweaty and dirty, that time … But now, when she was in his arms and close to him—she might have been sweating before, but she was throwing it off like an animal now, mixed with her own additional expensive commercial smell, which was always with her ‘—hold up, Jenny!’

  She stiffened, her legs suddenly obeying her will again, pushing her body upwards and then letting him manoeuvre her sideways towards the nearest chair.

  Then, without warning, she started resisting him, trying to throw off his arms. ‘No! Let me go—‘

  That was more like her: Jenny never fainted—that was her own boast. But she’d never been closer to giving the lie to that than just now, all the same.

  ‘I want to look—let go, Ian!’ She struggled weakly. ‘I want—‘

  ‘No!’ He pressed down hard on her shoulder, thumping her into the chair. ‘I’ll look, damn it!’ He twisted round her, to get his back to the wall as he parted the inside edge of the curtain, knowing simultaneously that he wanted to look, yet didn’t want to—and that this was the wrong way to look, anyway—not extinguishing the light first, before he looked. But the hell with that!

  ‘Well?’ She whispered the question.

  To make the best of an unprofessional job, and in order to see right up and down Cody Street, he pushed himself all the way in, letting the curtain drape round his shoulders like a cloak. It had rained since he had come out of the premature half-light of the evening, and the street lamps reflected a million points of light in every drop of water trapped in the unevenness of the road surface. Then he looked back towards her, frowning.

  ‘Well?’ Her face was chalk-white, emphasizing the dark smudges under her eyes and the remains of her lipstick: with her accustomed falling-down hair she looked even more like the wreck of the Hesperus than usual. And more beautiful to him than ever.

  ‘There isn’t anything—is there?’ Something of the original Jenny returned as she clenched her jaw.

  ‘There isn’t anything there, Jenny.’ He couldn’t lessen her humiliation. Whatever she’d thought she’d seen, there was nothing now in Cody Street—not only not the scene of carnage he’d been half-expecting as he’d parted the curtain from the wall … but actually nothing, other than the reflection of the wetness on the street and the cars parked in it; and, most of all, no Mitchell and no Volvo—the man and the car had slipped away into the night together and quickly, without fuss, unheard against the Taj Mahal clatter.

  ‘No. There wouldn’t be.’ She subsided into the chair, gripping its arms. ‘I’m hungry—‘ She pushed herself up, straight-backed, and picked up her glass from the tabl
e ‘—I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. You’re always telling me that I don’t eat enough … In fact, I’m bloody starving, Ian. So let’s have one of Abdul’s specials, eh—? Ring the bell, darling.’

  Excuses? But … excuses—from Jenny? ‘What else did you see, Jen?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything, darling. Ring the bell.’ She pointed at the bell-push by the light-switches at the door. And then picked up his beer, from where he had put it down beside her glass and offered it to him. ‘You haven’t touched your drink, darling. And … knowing you … did you have lunch—?’

  He reached for the glass automatically. But, as he did so, there came a sound from behind him: not so much a knock, as a finger-tapping scraping noise on the door-panel—quite unnatural, because it was quite different from Mr Malik’s sharp-knuckled signal.

  Jenny spilt beer over his hand as the door opened, and a hideous apparition appeared in the gap.

  ‘Ullo there!’ said Reg Buller.

  7

  THERE WERE so many things outrageous about Reginald Buller’s appearance that the fact that he very obviously wasn’t deceased was almost the least of them.

  Most obviously, he wasn’t deceased because the newly-dead had no need of large theatrical beards. Or, if they did, they had no need to pull such beards down to reveal their faces as they came to haunt the living. Or, if such a revelation was part of the haunting, they had no call to grin quite so happily before releasing the ridiculous growth so that it sprang back slightly askew, under one ear.

  And, anyway, in the next moment, Reg Buller was all-too-abundantly flesh-and-blood as he removed the equally-ridiculous trilby from his head, and then unhooked the beard, finally adding his voluminous Sherlock Holmes cape to them on the chair beside the door.

  ‘That’s better!’ Reg Buller nodded to Jenny, and then advanced on Ian, larger and cruder than life, and took his glass from his hand, momentarily holding it up. ‘And that’s even better! Untouched by human lips—?’ He drank noisily. ‘Gnat’s piss! But, like the bishop said to the actress, “my need is greater than thine!”’ He finished off the beer, and returned the glass to Ian with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Is there a back way out of here?’

  ‘Mr Buller—‘ Jenny hissed the name ‘—Mister Buller … don’t you ever do that to me again!’

  ‘Do what, m’lady?’ Buller caught Ian’s eye, and nodded at the bar in the alcove before coming back to her. ‘It was you at the window, wasn’t it—? Very careless, that was … But—you knew it was me?’ He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and then gestured towards the heap in the chair. ‘That’s a disguise, that is—twenty-five quid’s worth … if I get it back tomorrow, anyway. And cheap at the price—seein’ as what I got with it.’

  Ian observed her weaken. Of all the men Jenny knew, gilded and ungilded, she could resist Reg Buller least. ‘What did you get with it, Reg?’

  ‘I got professional advice, Mr Robinson. Which is worth more than gold-dust.’ Buller nodded at the bar again hopefully. ‘And I got the lady who gave it for free.’

  ‘What lady, Mr Buller? What advice?’ The colour was coming back into Jenny’s face. ‘I thought you only knew barmaids?’

  ‘Theatrical costumier—“costumier”—?’ Buller tried to will Ian towards the bar. ‘She’s only a barmaid part-time, in the evenings … And she said, “What you are, Mr Buller, is unobtrusive—you move like a shadow in the night … So, they’ll be looking for shadows-in-the-night, the blue-bottles will be. So we’ll make you a bit of local colour—like an actor from the Hippodrome, down the road, where they’ve got the music-hall on … And I’ll walk with you, on your arm, an’ they’ll look at me, not you!”—she’s got a heart of gold, that woman has.’ He concentrated on Jenny. ‘But how did you know it was me?’

  But Jenny wasn’t looking at Buller. ‘Is there a back way out of here, Ian?’

  Her stare caught him struggling with more important matters. But then, maybe they weren’t more immediately important, he thought. ‘I don’t know, Jen. We’ve never had to get out of here—‘ And that, in turn, concentrated his mind. ‘I’ll ring for Mr Malik.’

  ‘You do that, darling.’ She had been there before him, so she was back with Reg Buller now. ‘You’re supposed to be dead, Reg. Why aren’t you dead?’

  ‘Why ain’t I dead? It’s a good question, Lady.’ Buller scratched his nose abstractedly. ‘Well … you could say that I ain’t dead because Mr John Tully stood in for me—‘

  ‘John—‘ Jenny swayed suddenly.

  ‘Or, then again, maybe it was poor old Johnnie they wanted in the first place, an’ not me. I don’t rightly know, you see, Lady—‘

  ‘For God’s sake, Reg!’ As Ian caught her arm the full impact of what Buller was saying hit him: they were back in a nightmare again.

  ‘Oh aye.’ Buller was unrepentant. ‘There’s an easier way of breakin’ the news, is there? Now that it ain’t me?’

  ‘I’m all right.’ Jenny’s face was white again, but her voice was steady as she shook Ian off. ‘What happened, Mr Buller?’

  ‘You don’t know … anything, then?’

  She shook her head. There was just the rumour … that it was you, Mr Buller. A man in the crowd outside said so … ’

  ‘An’ you didn’t wait around?’ This time Buller sounded more understanding. ‘Well, I can’t say I blame you.’ He nodded to Ian. ‘I could use another drink, lad—with a chaser this time, if the bar runs to one. An’ whisky for choice.’

  John Tully was dead: Ian’s relief at seeing Buller alive seemed like a dream already. Buller alive was John Tully dead: that was the appalling reality he must accept, now. And, more importantly, he had to get Buller a drink.

  ‘I didn’t wait to ask, neither.’ Buller shook his head, after reassuring himself that Ian was moving. ‘They’ve got clever young coppers trained to remember people who ask questions, when there’s a crowd outside … An’ I ain’t got any real friends in the Met, now—not that wouldn’t shop me, to get promotion.’ He shook his head again, as Ian clinked the bottles while trying to watch him while looking for something better than ‘gnat’s piss’. ‘But, as to makin’ a mistake … ’ He sniffed derisively. ‘ … I took the BMW last night, to drive up north. An’ John—‘e ‘ad my little Metro, with the “Disabled Driver” sticker—they don’t clamp that so quick, in case the newspapers make a scandal out of it. So we always swap when I go out of town.’ Buller’s expression hardened. ‘An’ when I was probably somewhere else, an’ ‘e was up to something … ’e used to leave ‘is credit cards at ‘ome, an’ carry only cash-money—losin’ cash isn’t a problem, they just takes it off you, if they’ve a mind to … But ‘e’d have my calling cards on him, maybe. And those premises are in my name, too … if it happened there, that is.’

  ‘Here you are, Reg.’ Having put the glass and the opened bottle on the corner of the table, Ian just had time to move Mitchell’s half-drunk whisky alongside it, for want of anything quicker, if not better, before Reg Buller looked at him. ‘You’re saying … they got the wrong man?’

  Buller swept the smaller glass up, and drained it. And then poured the ‘gnat’s piss’ carefully. And then looked at him over it. The wrong man—? Maybe the wrong man. Or maybe not the wrong man.’ He sank half of the piss. They got John Tully, is what it looks like. And, with all his faults … which were many … Mister John Tully wasn’t a bad bloke. Because … if he didn’t pay twenty shillings in the pound … at least he paid fifteen of ‘em. Which is better than most.’ He shifted from Ian to Jenny as he swallowed the rest of the piss. ‘So now we owe for him, as well as that one of yours, Lady—‘

  This time it was a genuine knock at the door, not a ghostly scratching.

  ‘Come in!’ Jenny reacted more quickly this time, recognizing the knock.

  ‘Madam!’ Abdul took them all in almost as quickly, half-smiling first, and then smiling hugely as he saw Reg glass-in-hand. ‘Mr Buller—you know Mr Buller—I know Mr Buller: I
am not wrong, to admit him?’

  ‘No—yes, Mr Malik.’ Jenny brushed at her hair. ‘Can we have three of your special take-aways, Mr Malik, please.’

  ‘An’ then your special “get-away” to go with ‘em,’ supplemented Buller.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Back-way. Out-the-back—an’ then scarper … vamoosh—?’

  ‘Ah! Tradesman’s entrance? Fire escape? Both in passage—at the side, Mr Buller—council regulations: orderly damn departure, no panic, one minute.’ Then the little man stared at Buller. ‘But then you go out the front again.’ The stare became a frown. ‘Nothing out front, my cousin says. But I send him out again, maybe—‘

  ‘No.’ Buller shook his head. ‘What’s out back—gardens?’

  ‘No gardens.’ Matching shake. ‘Back-yard—back wall. Damn great high back wall, broken glass on top. No back-way, Mr Buller, sir.’

  ‘Back-way over bloody wall, mate.’ This time Buller nodded. ‘Got a ladder, then? An’ a bit of sacking—?’ He grinned at Jenny. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Big problem.’ Mr Malik shook his head. ‘Other side—damn railway line, Mr Buller.’