War Game dda-7

by Anthony Price

  "I understand—which would make Davenport a pro."

  Maitland—of course!

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  "Very well." Audley steadied his voice. Maitland had once a partner, a clever young trainee who had got himself blown up while examining a booby-trapped car. . . . "You'd better put a watch on the ports and airports, Jack. If Davenport moves—

  if any of them move—pick 'em up and hold 'em."

  "For what?"

  "Suppression of Terrorism Act. No lawyers and no phone calls until I've seen them. And see that their bags aren't searched, too."

  Jenkins, that was the boy's name. He'd been the younger brother of a friend of Hugh Roskill's. And it had been Butler himself who had brought the news of his death—to this very house, four or five years back. . . .

  "And you meet me at the Steyning Arms at Standingham tonight, Jack. As arranged."

  Jenkins.

  The Jenkins Gambit, he had called it, because Jenkins himself had been the booby-trappers' target: the best way to kill a food taster is by poisoning his master's dish—then it looks like an occupational hazard.

  And, by the same token, the best way to murder a policeman was to kill him in the execution of his duty, where sudden death was an occupational hazard which good coppers could be relied on to accept.

  And Digby had been a good copper.

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  Audley stared at the grandfather clock.

  And now Digby was a dead copper.

  The thought of Digby dead was a physical pain. He would never see Digby again. He would never introduce Frances Fitzgibbon to Digby, that little matchmaking dream of Faith's

  —a crazy dream, but no bad dream—was gone like smoke on a summer's day. He had only known the boy for a few hours, and the boy had felt nothing for him but curiosity, yet the sense of loss was none the less bitter for that. It was boys—

  and men—like Digby who held the sky suspended; taken for granted in life, and mourned only briefly in the headlines in death, more out of public piety than from conviction.

  Henry Digby was dead, and he would rot and putrefy, and long before he was dust he would be forgotten. Even Audley himself, who might be as guilty as the killer, would soon relegate him to a dull ache of conscience, and then a mere regret, and at the last a hazy memory of one job that hadn't gone according to plan years ago.

  Faith was in the doorway, beside the grandfather clock.

  "It's been on the news, David—the twelve o'clock news."

  He looked at her stupidly. "About Digby?"

  "They didn't mention him by name. They said a policeman had been shot and killed, and that the army had defused a bomb—" She stopped.

  "Yes?" He could see that there was more.

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  "But there was another bomb that went off—a car bomb. Two other people have been killed."

  "Yes?"

  "They think they were in the car. They're not sure, but they think so. And the police think they may have been the bombers themselves."

  There was a nuance of satisfaction in her voice. No one was more resolute against the death penalty than Faith, but when God Himself jogged the hand on the bomb she was as bloodthirsty as any sans-culotte in her approval of the execution.

  Now only the clock was staring at him.

  Thesis: it had been Watson's "pure bad luck", with Digby going down to the estate to his death for some simple innocent reason. Bad luck with an Irish accent, and an IRA codeword and an IRA bomb to prove it, begorrah.

  The minute hand moved.

  Antithesis: bombs and brogues proved nothing, and passwords and codewords were known; and any killer with the price of a phone call could have lured Henry Digby to meet his bullet, anywhere, any time—and who better than Charlie Ratcliffe, who had hired death once already? Charlie, whom they'd been driving towards action, driving with cold deliberation towards the belief that there was something very wrong with his beautiful golden plan.

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  And now the car bomb.

  Another minute.

  Thesis: it had happened before and it would happen again, the bomber fragmented by his own bomb. Bombs were no respectors of persons, Weathermen, Irishmen, Palestinians, housewives on the way to the supermarket, golden lads and lasses. And, as he well knew, those American time pencils from Vietnam were notoriously unreliable.

  Antithesis: killers killed to a pattern, and stripped of all their superficial differences this was Swine Brook Field all over again, by God! Because but for the accident of Digby's presence Swine Brook Field would have been a nice neat accident too. Sooner or later in the controlled violence of the Double R Society's battles someone might have caught the butt-end of a pike. And now sooner or later had caught both Sergeant Digby and his killers.

  But if his thesis was right?

  That was the temptation. All he had to do was to accept his own innocence, and he was in the clear. Without Digby's special knowledge he would be half-blind at Standingham this evening and tomorrow and on Saturday. He could do his best and fail, and no one would blame him very much. Some you won and some you lost, and Sir Frederick would be the first to admit that politics was the very devil.

  It didn't even require any special effort. It wasn't as if Digby had been ferreting around in the area of James Ratcliffe's dummy5

  murder at Swine Brook Field, and that was the only crime which Charlie Ratcliffe had committed. He'd only been filling in on the details of the gold itself, where Charlie had been on safe ground—his very own ground, where nobody could touch him.

  Unless—

  Audley knew that if he pursued the alternative he would have no choice in the outcome. Once he lifted the phone and called Weston again and said No. Screw bad luck. He was working for me and therefore he died for me—until you can prove otherwise then Weston would never rest until that otherwise was established. It wouldn't be a matter of guilt or blame for Weston—it would be a matter of truth, and a matter of keeping faith.

  No choice, anyway. He could have no more avoided the alternative than the clock's minute hand could have avoided ticking to the next sub-division of its hour. Only when the clock stopped would the hand stop.

  The phone rang in the exact instant that he reached for it, almost as though it had been waiting for him to make up his mind. Audley stared at it in a mixture of exasperation and relief. It had to be Weston, he felt that with a strange calm certainty; it had to be Weston because the moment the heat of the hunt was off Weston would find the accident of Digby's presence on the Ferryhill Industrial Estate sticking in his throat, a question much too sharp to be swallowed. And if he dummy5

  had been unexpectedly quick in feeling its point it was no less true that Audley had been fatally slow in anticipating it: he could never bring himself to say "I was just going to call you"

  now, even if there had been the least chance of it being believed. As it was, he had missed his chance by a matter of seconds.

  But there was justice in that. The error was still his error, admitting it did not exonerate him of it. No anger or contempt of Weston's would ever hurt him as much as his own self-anger and self-contempt.

  "Weston?" He was so certain that the question was unnecessary.

  "What?"

  Butler?

  Audley blinked with surprise. But he'd only just been talking to Butler—

  "Is that you, Audley?"

  Butler.

  "Yes. I'm sorry—I thought you were someone else." Audley realised that he had a fresh lease of life where Weston was concerned. "I'm expecting a call, Jack, so make it quick—

  whatever it is."

  "I will indeed," Butler snapped. "You were right."

  It was a comfort to have been right about something, after having been fatally wrong once already today, thought dummy5

  Audley.

  "I was, was I?"

  "Davenport. It came in just after you phoned."

  "He's started to move?"

  "He's moved. And he
damn near moved too fast for us. It's a mercy we'd strengthened the surveillance on him or he might have managed it."

  Audley half-smiled into the receiver at the typically Butlerian modesty. Butler had been right in his suspicions and Butler had strengthened the surveillance, but nothing would make him admit as much.

  "What happened?"

  "He'd established a route pattern to London over the past three days. But this morning he ditched his car in Staines and threw our tail. But our lad was smart—he switched the back-up straight to London Airport and put them on red alert there, it's only minutes from Staines, of course."

  "And that paid off, I take it?"

  Butler allowed himself a small grunt of satisfaction. "He had a flight bag waiting for him there, and a ticket to Holland.

  And a spare passport in the name of Donaldson." Butler paused. "Which he's used half a dozen times before in the past year. One trip to Holland, five trips to Paris."

  Davenport.

  The conflicting implications of what Butler was saying dummy5

  suddenly began to jostle Audley, elbowing each other like a crowd which had smelt smoke in the auditorium. Digby was dead and Davenport had run for cover—and that escape kit at the airport made him a pro for sure. But, more than that, if the deed and the action were connected, he ought not to be running, he ought to be playing it cool; and if they were not connected, then that shored up the good luck thesis, undermining his own conclusions about Digby's death. And yet, again, those trips to Paris ... if they were Charlie Ratcliffe-orientated—

  But why should a professional run?

  What did he think they could prove against him?

  "What does he have to say for himself?"

  "Precious little. He says his name's Donaldson, and he's an innocent American. And this isn't a police state, but he wants to phone his embassy just in case."

  Well, that was playing it by the book. And for a man in Davenport/Donaldson's position that was the only way he could play it, guilty or innocent.

  But for his captors the options were more varied. There was no problem in holding him; even without the passport they had the Suppression of Terrorism Act, and with the passport they could probably make a legitimate meal of him at their leisure. But leisure was something they didn't have—he knew that, and Butler knew it too. And, for a guess, Davenport/

  Donaldson knew it also: if the ticket waiting for him had dummy5

  been for Holland, then he would look to be met there, or at least to announce his safe arrival. So the advantage they had in having taken him on the wing was a fragile one, and every moment wasted gave the enemy time to adjust his defences.

  The old clock was still ticking and Butler was waiting for him to do what he was paid for: to out-think the clock.

  And he still had to phone Weston, to admit what the Superintendent would never forgive, the squandering of a useful life. That wasn't a pleasant prospect, rendered no more endurable for that it couldn't be avoided.

  What can't be cured must be endured.

  What must be endured must be used—

  "Jack . . . listen—this is what I want you to do—"

  He waited while they searched for Weston. It occurred to him that he could still be entirely wrong, and he had already made mistakes enough to make that a fair bet for any honest bookmaker. And if he was wrong he would be raising the devil for himself now.

  But that too was what they paid him for, to raise the devil.

  "Audley?" Weston's voice was rough with accumulated tension.

  And that was also part of the payment, the excitement of backing the judgement and taking the risk. It was a very odd sort of job satisfaction.

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  "I'm sorry to bother you again, Superintendent. You've got your men, then?" He paused deliberately. "But in pieces—is that right?"

  "That's the way it looks." The words came with an effort.

  "You're sure?"

  For a moment Weston didn't answer, but when he did the roughness had been smoothed away. "No. It's too early to be sure of anything."

  "But you have some evidence that the men in the car were the killers?"

  "I can't say that yet, sir." The voice was hard as toughened steel now; Weston was thinking new thoughts and connecting up old facts with them. He would have thought them eventually, but this way he was being pushed towards them. "I'll let you know in due course, Dr. Audley."

  "I'm afraid due course won't do, Superintendent."

  "And I'm afraid it will have to do."

  "No, it won't." Steel cuts oak— diamond cuts steel. "Look, Superintendent ... I can make you answer me, but it will take time and effort. I don't mind making the effort, but I can't spare the time—neither of us can spare the time. So don't let's waste it while we've still got it, eh?"

  That was spelling it out both ways, confirming Weston's new suspicions about Digby's death and Audley's executive authority at the same time. Only the velvet question mark at the end had been a concession that Weston too had an dummy5

  authority.

  Weston drew one deep, audible breath. "Very well. It is too early to be sure— we've been at the scene of the explosion not very long and we haven't near finished there. But it looks as though they were switching vehicles, and the bomb went off as they were driving away."

  "And the connection?"

  "It was a small bomb. The man in the passenger's seat was actually holding it, it looks like—on his lap, probably."

  Weston paused grimly. "There was a sawn-off shotgun in the back of the car."

  "Yes?"

  For two seconds Weston was silent.

  "The man who shot Digby used a sawn-off shotgun," he said.

  Audley held the receiver tightly and forced his eyes to remain open, knowing that if he closed them for even one fraction of an instant he would start seeing pictures. And this wasn't the time for pictures.

  "So it's all wrapped up neatly?"

  "We haven't established any identification yet."

  But they would, thought Audley. They would. And a dingy room somewhere, with bomb-making materials and ammunition, and maybe an Armalite rule or two. There was always an Armalite. Perhaps there'd be a bunch of shamrocks and a couple of tickets for the Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire boat-train for good measure, too.

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  "Is that what you wanted, Audley?" Weston broke the silence.

  "Yes. I don't believe a word of it."

  "You don't—?" The words trailed off into a growl.

  "I mean—it's all true and it's all false."

  Pause.

  "I think you'd better explain that, Dr. Audley."

  "I will. Where can I meet you?"

  "I shall be here at headquarters."

  "But I'm not going to meet you there. We're not playing that sort of ball game any more. This is between the two of us first."

  Longer pause.

  "Very well. There's a park about a mile from here—"

  Audley relaxed and listened.

  2

  THE road through the park ran, at the point of the first rendezvous, between an avenue of horse-chestnut trees, which in season no doubt provided a supply of conkers for the patrons of the children's playground on the left, but which now shaded the spectators of the cricket match in progress on the sports ground to the right.

  Audley threaded his way between the deck-chairs and picnic-spread rugs to where Butler stood in front of another new dummy5

  Princess. It rather looked as though the Department had bulk-bought the new model as a patriotic gesture towards British Leyland's ailing fortunes, he thought irrelevantly.

  "Enjoying the game, Jack?"

  Butler waited until the batsman had played the ball safely back to the bowler.

  "Aye." He gave Audley a quick glance, and then returned to the contemplation of the game. "He's in the car waiting for you."

  "Has he said anything more?" Again Butler waited for the sharp snick of the ball on the bat. There was a sc
atter of clapping from the spectators, though nothing appeared to have happened on the wicket. But then cricket at the level which people like Butler enjoyed it was an arcane pleasure in which a whole afternoon of unrelieved boredom to the uninitiated was an action-packed battle to those who knew what was going on.

  "No," said Butler. "Except he asked where we were taking him."

  "And you said 'To a cricket match'?"

  Butler registered his displeasure by waiting for the delivery of another ball, the last of the over. "And then he demanded to phone his embassy," he concluded heavily.

  "But he doesn't seem worried?"

  "More angry than worried, I'd say. He won't crack easily."

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  "What makes you think so? He ran quickly enough."

  For an answer Butler produced an American passport from his pocket and handed it to Audley.

  Robert Donaldson. Born: Hartford, Connecticut . . .

  "Preacher" Davenport stared up at him.

  "It's good." He thumbed through the pages. "It looks perfect."

  "It is perfect—perfectly genuine."

  "Uh-huh? And Robert Davenport's passport?"

  "Just as good. Only the trips are different, nothing else."

  "The Paris trips?"

  "The Donaldson trips coincide with Charlie Ratcliffe's—while Davenport stayed at home."

  Audley nodded slowly. So anyone checking up on Davenport's movements wouldn't equate him with Ratcliffe; Davenport was for public consumption, Donaldson for private comings and goings from different points of entry and exit. It was all nice and simple—and professional. And that was what Butler was telling him, just as the man Maitland had told Butler from his own equally professional observations.

  It was a pity a hundred or so reliable witnesses put Preacher Davenport on the wrong side of Swine Brook Field at the right time, but that simply meant he wasn't that sort of professional. And although they had him dead to rights on dummy5

  his two passports, that was a minor grief on a much smaller scale beside the things they really wanted him for.