A Prospect of Vengeance

'So Butler was their front runner. Because he was there— he knew the form.' Buller forgot to drop his aitches. Which was a sure sign that what he was saying was more important to him now than how he was saying it. 'An' Butler was a crafty dummy2

choice because he was working-class — not Eton and the Royal Marines . . . but grammar school scholarship, an'

commissioned-in-the-field, in some second-rate North Country infantry regiment in '45 ... An' 'is dad was a big trade unionist, who'd been a mate of Ernie Bevin's in the TUC in the old days, before his boy had learned to be an officer an' a gentleman — ' He swung towards Jenny ' — so you may think your bloke was the greatest thing since sliced bread, Lady . . .

But Jack Butler was a front runner while chief Petty Officer Jim Callaghan was still Prime Minister, an' running the show

— right?'

Jenny tossed her hair aside. 'Philly was the man for the job, Mr Buller.'

'Oh aye?' Reg Buller's lip curled. 'More like . . . "Philly" was the man in the Civil Service who could fix things so Butler fell on his face — how about that then?'

Jenny held her hair up with one hand, while finishing her gin with the other. 'What do you mean by that, Mr Buller?'

'What do I mean?' Buller had consumed enough alcohol to be unafraid of her now, even apart from the fact that he appeared to be running their show at the moment, however temporarily. 'I mean we just tipped all the pieces of the jigsaw out on the table so far. An' we don't even know we got all the pieces yet. In fact, we certainly ain't got 'em all ... But that don't mean we can't try an' put the bits together that look like fitting, eh?'

'I see.' Her lips compressed. 'So you've just picked up some dummy2

dirty little rumour about Philip Masson — is that it?'

'Oh aye? An' you didn't pick up some dirty little rumour about David Audley, Lady? I thought that was what started us off. Correct me if I'm wrong, Lady — ?'

'But we've already had confirmation that it was a strong rumour going around Audley played dirty back in '78, Mr Buller. John Tully and I both picked that up, quite independently: there was going to be a big shake-up in R & D. Fred Clinton was coming up for retirement, and his deputy had already gone. And Audley was backing Jack Butler. But the Cabinet Secretary and others were backing Philip Masson.'

'Ah?' Buller emptied his beer glass and instantly stamped heavily on the floor, like a magician summoning up spirits from the underworld. 'So the smart money was on your bloke, then. But Audley's a man who likes to get 'is own way

— '

'That's precisely it, Mr Buller: Audley likes to get his own way. So Philly had an accident — and Audley got his own way, didn't he?'

Buller stared at her for a moment. Then he stamped again, more heavily than before. Then he sniffed. 'You don't think killin' someone on 'is own side ... or 'avin' 'im killed . . . you don't think that's comin' on a bit strong — even for 'im?'

Jenny's lip twisted. 'Audley? Aren't you being a bit sentimental, Mr Buller? His side — our side ... we don't do dummy2

such naughty things? Only the lesser breeds — the KGB and the CIA . . . and the Israelis ... do naughty deeds?' The twist became more pronounced. 'They say Audley's left a trail of bodies behind him over the years — remember?'

'But they were his enemies, Lady, by all accounts.'

Or innocent bystanders, thought Ian bitterly.

'If Masson had been a traitor now — ' Buller started to develop his thesis unwisely.

'Don't be ridiculous, Mr Buller. If you think that then we'll settle your bill here and now. I have my cheque book with me, as well as my passport. You can even have a Eurocheque, if you prefer.'

'I wasn't saying that, Lady. Your bloke was clean. If there'd been any doubt about 'im — any slightest doubt ... I grant you that.' Buller hastily changed his tack. 'What I mean is ... it would 'ave been straight murder, killing him. An' if you think about it, they didn't even arrange for old Peter Wright to 'ave an accident, when they knew 'e was goin' to cause 'em all that trouble — now did they? An' why not?' He paused. 'Because for a private murder you need a private murderer. So Audley would have had to get hisself a man, and a good one —

someone, in fact, like "Mad Dog" O'Leary — ' He nodded towards Ian ' — or your bloke MacManus. An' there's a lot of risks involved in hiring that sort of talent. You really got to

'ave someone you can trust. And you can't never trust a private murderer, I don't reckon.'

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Jenny shook her head. 'That's a pretty thin argument, Mr Buller.'

Buller made a face. 'I wasn't really talkin' about that, anyway

— not yet anyway.'

'No. You were talking about Philip Masson. And some dirty little slander.' Jenny was like a terrier dropping a dead rat in preference for a larger one whose back she also intended to break before it could get away. 'So what was that, then?'

The door opened suddenly, and the same large young woman entered again, with more drinks. Buller had indeed summoned up spirits from the deep.

They waited until the re-fuelling had been completed, and then Buller turned back to Jenny. 'All that trouble they had up north, at the University, with the bomb, an' then O'Leary turnin' up at Thornervaulx, when Jack Butler was on some other job . . . There's those that might say it was Jack Butler who was being measured for an "accident" there. Only the woman that was killed an' Dr P. L. Mitchell spoilt the accident between 'em — '

'Mitchell?' Jenny wasn't interested in 'the woman'.

'Oh aye.' Buller nodded. 'Old "Mad Dog" was a top man in his profession — he was good, Lady . . . Even goin' to Thornervaulx like that, which was a mad thing to do, it seemed . . . But 'e'd got a car waitin' in a barn about a mile away, over the top, complete with a police uniform and identity papers. An' then another car about five miles away, dummy2

with another identity — an' the uniform of a major in the Royal Signals, from Catterick. An' a real major, too — only 'e was on leave at the time. An' the number-plate on the second car was the same as the major's car. They didn't even find those cars for a fortnight, neither. So 'e'd 'ave got away, you can reckon.'

'You were talking about Mitchell, Mr Buller, I thought,'

'I am talking about Mitchell, Lady. Because old "Mad Dog"

was a real pro. But Dr P. L. Mitchell is another. An' maybe a better one, too.'

'How so? What are you trying to tell us, Mr Buller?'

Buller drew a breath. 'By all accounts, 'e 'ad no more than two seconds flat, that day at Thornervaulx, after O'Leary started shooting. An' O'Leary had a long gun — a rifle of some sort. An' Mitchell — Doctor Mitchell . . . he had a little gun. A hand-gun, that would be. Probably an automatic pistol, that would be, so as not to spoil his jacket . . . But it don't really matter — that it was a little gun. Because it was big enough for what was needed, see?' He looked at them in turn. 'O'Leary gets off one shot — bang!' His free hand came up, with a finger pointing at Jenny. 'An' bang-bang-bang goes the little gun. An' 'e never even got a second shot off —

down like a pole-axed steer, 'e went. . . "never" as they say in the old westerns, "to rise again". A proper little Wyatt Earp, our Doctor Mitchell is. Or maybe more like Doc Holliday.'

As Jenny digested all this in silence, Ian was conscious of a shiver down his own back because of Buller's chance dummy2

imagery. Almost, that might have been how Gary Redwood would have described that shoot-out, with his own dear Marilyn Francis down in the dust — the wet hillside bracken at Thornervaulx — after that first-and-last shot of O'Leary's.

'Who told you all this?' Jenny had indeed noticed the curious imprecision of Buller's account, which ruled out one of his police contacts . . . even supposing that he'd been clever enough and lucky enough to find one so imprudent to say so much. And even then —

'Ah! Now that would be telling!' Buller savoured his memories for a moment. 'You know what I've got — eh?'

'An eye-witness.' Ian snapped the words as they hit him, in the instant he recalled Buller's powers of conversation-recall from past experience, when these could be checked against played-back tapes for comparison.

'And clients paying for your time,' added Jenny tartly, but oddly out of character. 'Come on, Mr Buller — don't piss us around: you've got an eye-witness.'

'Strictly speaking . . . no, Lady.' Buller drank deeply.

'Meaning . . . you won't ever be able to turn this into one of your lovely bits of dialogue, Ian lad — like with that Yank we found up in those mountains — remember?'

'Why not, Mr Buller?' Jenny was less hampered by any imperishable memories of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, never mind the horrors of Vietnam.

'Because my eye-witness is dead and buried. So I never got to dummy2

talk to — '

' What?' Ian gulped air.

'Hold on, lad!' Buller cut him short. 'At ninety-one years old she has a perfect right to be dead — and decently buried, too!

You don't need to blame me: it was pneumonia, after she broke her hip getting out of bed, an' fell over, see? An'. . . she was always gettin' up — they never could stop the old girl, that's what her daughter said . . . An' the daughter's nearer seventy now, than sixty . . . But she heard all the commotion, the old woman did, so she got out of 'er bed an' went to look

— see?'

The repetition of see? was maddening. 'You're saying, Reg ...

a ninety-one-year-old woman . . . saw Mitchell shoot O'Leary? At Thornervaulx — ?'

'She wasn't ninety-one then. She was . . . what's ninety-one minus eight?'

'Eighty-three.' Jenny answered automatically, before she could stop herself. 'You're pissing us around again, Mr Buller. And in our time.' She was beginning to get angry again. 'She was . . . bed-ridden. But she was an eye-witness.

And . . . now she's dead?'

'That's right — you got it, Lady.' No one could shrug off Jenny better than Reg Buller. But, then, no one but Reg Buller dared to shrug her off.

'Got what, Mr Buller?'

Buller half-grunted, half-sighed. 'Got the whole thing. The dummy2

story of your life an' mine — how we make a crust, an'

something to drink with it, between us. Like ... no matter 'ow clever they are, or 'ow careful . . . there's always somethin'

that they ' ave thought of. But it still scuppers 'em — see?'

Ian didn't see. And he knew that Jenny couldn't see, either.

But, in the next instant, he knew exactly what Reg Buller meant, all the same — in general as well as at Thornervaulx, on November 11, 1978: Sod's Law was out there, waiting for everyone.

'You've been to Thornervaulx?' When Jenny remained silent Reg simply nodded at her. 'A lot of old ruins, that Henry VIII knocked about a bit? Chucked out the old monks —

privatized the abbey, an' pinched all their savings . . . An' now they charge you a dollar to see what's left, all neat an' tidy.

An' half-a-dollar for the guide-book — right?'

Jenny wasn't meant to interrupt, and she didn't.

'You go up the steps, an' the path, from the car-park, by the road — by the "Thor Brook", the little river there — when you've paid your money, an' got your ticket... an' you never notice the cottages there, on the other side of the path, alongside the ruins.' Pause. 'Farm-labourers' cottages, they are — God knows how old . . . They're all listed as "historic buildings", because they're built with the stones from the old abbey, anyway. But no one notices 'em.'

There was a picture forming in Ian's head.

'So they were all there, that day.' Buller warmed to his own dummy2

story. 'It was pissing down with rain — it was a Saturday, an'

it was in November, an' it was pissin' down with rain. An'

then the cars started to arrive.' Pause. 'An' then they started to arrive — first Butler and Mitchell, an' Audley — Dr David Audley . . . an' some more.' Pause. 'An' the woman — 'er too, eventually.'

Ian opened his mouth, but then shut it tightly.

'An', of course, old "Mad Dog" was there too, somewhere . . .

Up on the hillside, in the bracken an' the trees — good cover there.' Pause. 'So he was there, too.' Pause. 'An' then a police car comes along, over the bridge — soundin' 'is siren, the silly bugger, just to show off.' Pause. They will do it, 'owever much you tell 'em not to, when there's no need — silly bugger!'

'Why was Audley there?' The question burst out of Jenny as though she couldn't contain it.

'God knows.' Buller seemed to dismiss the question. 'It was Butler who was in charge. My bloke that I talked to first didn't know anything about Audley. Or about Mitchell, either . . . Never even got their names.' Pause. 'Good descriptions, though. An' from the old lady too, second hand . . . Bloody shame, that. But even second hand, she was good, though.' Pause. '"The bloke" in charge wore a deerstalker hat, an' carried a golfing umbrella, an' 'e 'ad freckles an' a red face" — how's that, then, for memory?'

Buller grinned. 'When it comes to mindin' other people's business, an' peering through the curtain, an' seein' strangers dummy2

up to no good, you can't beat a countrywoman — specially North Countrywomen. And they knew that, of course.'

'They?'

'The local cops. Maybe Butler, too — he's North Country, so he'd have known ... So, after it was all over, they went into the cottages an' put the fear of God into the women there.

The men an' the boys were all at the matches, see — there was the football and the rugby, it being a Saturday afternoon.

So there were only women an' girls home. An' the Police put

'em through it.'

'What did they want to know?'

'What they'd seen. Who they'd seen. Every last detail.' Buller drew a breath. 'Frightened the life out of 'em — twice. First time, it was a uniform man, Mrs Rowe said — Mrs Rowe being the old woman's daughter . . . But not their own local man. A senior officer, with lots of silver braid on his uniform, and talked posh. Then, later on, a civilian, with their own local bobby in attendance. Same questions . . . only he talked even more posh. An' he wore a beautiful suit, she remembered — Mrs Rowe did. Because she'd been in one of the mills in Bradford when she was a girl, so she knew good cloth when she saw it. I reckon the suit frightened her more than the man. But then, of course, she was already scared stiff by that time.'

'Why?' Jenny had decided to be chief questioner.

'Huh! Because she knew by then that she'd deceived 'em dummy2

something shocking the first time, Lady.' Buller chuckled grimly. 'She an' the old witch between 'em.'

'How?'

'She'd told 'em she hadn't seen anything. Just the police car, anyway . . . An' then a policeman had told her to stay indoors.

An' the wall by the cottage is too high to see right into the ruins from the ground-floor, anyway. So he half-believed her the first time. But even then they also told her not to speak to anyone — meaning the press, of course.'

'But she did see something — ?' Jenny frowned.

'No. She didn't see anything. But, when they asked her if there was anyone else in the house, she'd said "Only my old mum, who's ill in bed upstairs". An' then the bloke with all the silver braid went up an' checked, she said. An' that frightened her, too . . . But, of course, all he saw was a frail old lady with the sheet drawn up under her neck, pretending to be halfway to heaven. So that satisfied him, anyway.'

Buller chuckled again. 'Silly bugger!'

Ian recalled his own grandmother vividly to mind. 'She saw everything — from her bedroom window, Reg?'

'Near enough, lad. Near enough!' No chuckle this time.

'When the daughter went back up, after the silver-braid bloke had gone — she started to tell the old witch about him. But she didn't get far, before the old witch started to tell her . . .

near enough everything — aye!'

'And she didn't tell the second man — the man in the suit dummy2

— ?'

Buller sniffed. 'Too scared, she was.' Another sniff. The first one told her, if she'd not been telling the truth, or had withheld evidence, then she'd be in serious trouble. And her eldest boy was a prison officer, at Northallerton or somewhere then. So she thought he might get the sack, an'

lose his pension. So she stuck to her story, same as before.

An' fortunately the old girl was still in bed. So the whole story stuck, same as before.'

Sod's Law: no matter how clever you were, there was always something waiting to catch you by the heel. Frances Fitzgibbon's book had gathered dust in Mrs Champeney-Smythe's shelf, waiting for its moment. And now an old woman's eye-witness story had found its moment too — even after the death of its eye-witness narrator.

'But she talked to you, Mr Buller — the daughter.'

'Ah, she did that, but 'appen I'm not a silly bugger in a uniform. An' my suit's Marks and Spencer, off the peg.'

And Philip Masson had been waiting also, in his shallow grave, for his moment, to catch someone — Audley?

Mitchell? Someone, anyway — by the heel —

'Very true, Mr Buller.' Jenny wasn't about to let Buller's arrogance remain unpunctured. 'But you also slipped her a few of those nice crisp banknotes you always keep, to loosen honest tongues? Which you charge to expenses.'

'The man with the freckled face had a golfing umbrella.'

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Buller cut his losses. 'Red, white an' blue ... or, red, green an'

white — that's what the old woman said . . . An' she'd never seen a golfing umbrella before. But the old witch 'ad a telescope to spy on people, an' a good memory. Because Sir Jack Butler, KBE, MC . . .'e's got ginger hair, an' a red-brick face, an' freckles. An 'e plays golf.'

'Yes?' Buller was making his point. But Jenny was after other game. 'What about Audley?'

'A big bugger. Like . . . her old man, who was long-dead . . .'e was Rugby League. So she said there was one of 'em built like

'im: six-foot an' more, with broad shoulders an' long legs, an'

a broken nose from way back — ?' Buller paused to let the next identification sink in. 'An' that's Audley, to the life, by all accounts.' Shorter pause. 'Rugby Union, 'e played — not Rugby League . . . But that's Audley.' Even shorter pause.

'But he was late: it was all over when he arrived. It was Butler first, with his umbrella — '

' Why?' Jenny snapped the question, before Buller could continue. 'What was he doing there?'

'Doing?' Buller gave a snort of derision. 'I'll tell you what he wasn't doing, Lady: he wasn't expecting to meet O'Leary.'

'Why not?'

'F — !' Buller swallowed the obscenity. 'If you were goin' to meet an IRA marksman . . . would you carry your golfing umbrella, to help him aim?' He let the thought sink in. 'An'

besides . . . Butler had been told to give O'Leary back to the dummy2

Anti-Terrorist Squad — an' the Special Branch — after the bomb at the University: it was them that were after O'Leary.

An' they thought he'd long gone, too.'

'You don't know why Butler was there?'

'Christ Almighty!' Buller simulated outrage. 'Twenty-four hours — thirty-six hours ... an' you expect me to know what British Intelligence was up to in 1978? An' not just MI5 — but Research and Development? An' not even MI5 knows what R

& D is up to, most of the time. Lady — you don't want much, do you!'

'I'm sorry, Mr Buller. I was just asking, not expecting.' Jenny recovered quickly. Tell me about Mitchell.'

'Yes.' Buller accepted the name, but stopped on his acceptance. Because 'Mitchell' wasn't just another name any more: he echoed distant gunfire now, and maybe more than that.

'He was with Audley?'

'No. Audley was late — I told you. The woman was with him.'

'Yes — of course! Ian's woman.' Jenny dismissed Frances Fitzgibbon once more. 'So ... Mitchell was there with Butler, was he?'

Ian's woman, thought Ian: in a curious way, that was what she had become now — just that. And the need to know more about her obsessed him again suddenly.

'Go on, Mr Buller.' Jenny's patience was beginning to stretch again. 'What — '

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'Tell me about the woman, Reg.' Ian overrode her. 'Mrs Fitzgibbon.'

'Ian! For heaven's sake!'

'Tell me about the woman, Reg.'

'Yes.' Buller ignored Jenny. '"Just a slip of a girl", the old witch said — Mrs Rowe said she said. A pretty little thing, too

— '

'She had good eye-sight, did she? At ninety-one?' snapped Jenny.

'Eighty-four. An' yes, she did.' Buller's voice strengthened.

'But I told you: she had this old telescope. An' she used to sit in her room, by the window, an' spy on everything — on all the people that came to visit the abbey ruins. Like, it was her hobby: see the coaches come over the narrow bridge, down the road, where they used to get stuck. An' then the kids climbin' on the ruins, an' their mothers pullin' 'em off an'

thumpin' 'em — ' He stopped suddenly. 'A pretty little thing.

An' she saw 'er first when the car came. Like a racin' car, slitherin' on the gravel in the car-park. An' out she comes like lightning — didn't even close the door after 'er, before she started runnin': that's what the old woman saw first, that took her eye — the way she went off runnin'.'

Buller paused there, and Ian thought for a moment that he was challenging Jenny to interrupt again. But Jenny didn't speak, and in the next instant he knew why — and why Buller had stopped, as the final picture he was painting for them in dummy2

words began to form again in his own mind — and to move, like a suddenly-animated film.

'It was rainin'.' Buller confirmed that second thought with extra information, to complete the picture. 'It 'ad been rainin'

all day, off an' on. So there 'adn't been any visitors much, before then. An' it was November, in any case.'

November 11. Next day, there would have been the Armistice Day Sunday parades, with everyone wearing their red poppies up and down the country, and the Queen televised at eleven o'clock, laying her wreath at the Cenotaph, before the veterans' march-past.

'An' then ... it was the way she ran.' Buller's voice was matter-of-fact, as it always was when he was totally-recalling what had been said to him. 'Like a boy, the old woman said: with

'er short hair, if she 'adn't noticed 'er skirt when she come out of the car, she'd 'ave thought it was a boy, when she ran up the path by the wall . . . Until she came out at the top, where you turn through the little gate into the ruins — remember?'

Buller was addressing Jenny, as one who knew what he was talking about, quite forgetting Ian now. So Ian had to build his own picture for himself, out of a jigsaw of other pieces, from other places, other ruins: Tintern and Bylands, Fountains and Rievaulx — all the old ruined abbeys . . . And Rievaulx for choice . . . because, hadn't there been cottages nearby there — ?

'You know, the old woman actually saw O'Leary — saw 'im?'

For an instant Buller's matter-of-factness became dummy2

incredulous. ''E must 'ave got there late — like Audley . . . Or, not like Audley. Because Audley would 'ave been VIP, an' 'alf the police in England was lookin' for O'Leary by then, so it wouldn't 'ave been easy for 'im, by Christ!' The next intake-of-breath was incredulity mixed with admiration. They must

'ave been payin' 'im premium rates, for whatever 'e was paid to do — even with all the escape disguises 'e'd got set up behind 'im. Because, 'e was really chancin' 'is arm, that last time — gettin' to Thornervaulx, over the top of the moor there . . . Silly bugger!'

'Yes.' Jenny weakened. 'But . . . what was he doing there, Mr Buller?' The logic strengthened her. 'It had to be Butler, surely — ?' Then doubt intruded. 'Or . . . whoever was meeting him there — ?'

'Aye. That's more likely. Because he must 'ave 'ad a clear shot at Butler — just about, anyway.' Buller sounded as though he'd been there before her, but was still uncertain. 'What about your Philip Masson, though?'

'No.' Jenny was decisive. 'Philly was out of the country that week. He was abroad — ' As she spoke her voice came from Buller to Ian ' — he was talking to the French in Paris. And he must have had all his R & D interviews by then. That's what I think, anyway.'

'So he'd got the job — deputy first ... an' then the gaffer, when Sir Frederick Clinton retired — ?' Buller stopped short, but just a shade too innocently.

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'I didn't say that.' Jenny also stopped there. Because the reality was that they had both been busy calling in their debts from their best sources — Jenny from her friends, and

'Daddy's friends', or even from Daddy himself, while Buller had tapped his 'blokes' in Fleet Street, or the Special Branch, who owed him favours (and who hoped to owe him more in the future?); but, with John Tully dead, this was a situation neither of them would ever have faced before, anyway: with survival at stake, they both had more urgent imperatives.

'You know too much, Reg Buller,' said Jenny.

'Too much?' Buller snapped back at her. 'Lady — I don't know 'alf enough.' Deep breath. 'But Audley was in Washington too, that week — I do know that. So someone tipped 'im off that Butler was in trouble — right?'

'But he got there in time for the fun, all the same — right?'

Jenny still didn't know how much Reg Buller knew, but she wanted all he'd got.

In time for 'Mad Dog' O'Leary! thought Ian. But not in time for Frances Fitzgibbon. 'Mrs Fitzgibbon reached the ruins, Reg. She reached the ruins, Reg — ?'

' Ahh — ' Buller breathed out again, through the silence between his two questions ' — yes, she got there, lad — your

"slip of a girl" — yes! She came out there, at the top, through the gate — the gate, there — ?'

'Where was Mitchell then? Paul Mitchell — ?' Jenny's interest in the final picture still concentrated on Mitchell.

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'He was right there.' Buller agreed with her. 'He was up top, gawpin' about in the main part, under the hillside, where the high altar was, an' the big window at the end — the big round window they all admire — ? That's in all the postcards?'

'The rose window.' Jenny supplied the rest of the tourist information.

'That's right. But there isn't any glass in it now — '

' Reg!' He lost patience with Buller. 'What happened then?'

'It was all rather quick, lad.' Buller sniffed. 'Mitchell was there — coverin' Butler, most likely. An' Butler was there . . .

down in the lower part of the ruins, keepin' the rain off 'im, under 'is big umbrella. An' O'Leary — 'e came down the hillside, over the bracken, an' through the trees . . . An' she shouts at 'im — the woman does — '

'Shouts what?' Jenny burst out, suddenly abandoning Mitchell.

'God knows.' Duller stopped. 'But 'e shot 'er dead, then — as she shouted at 'im. An' then Mitchell swings round, from watchin' Butler ... an' bang-bang-bang! — with 'is little gun!

An' bowled 'im over — O'Leary — like 'e'd been pole-axed.'

Pause. 'Which at that range — an', I tell you, I've been there

— at — that range, that's target shootin', that is: like, two bulls, an' one inner, at thirty yards or more, before 'e could take over, O'Leary — like bloody lightning, that was!'

Ian thought of the two empty barrels in the shot-gun at Lower Buckland; and of Mitchell's barely-suppressed passion dummy2

after that, which he'd not understood.

'And then?' Jenny, once again, was unencumbered by that first-hand experience of Paul Mitchell. ' What happened ...

Reg?' This time she softened the question finally.

Still no reply. So, there was something here which Reg Buller couldn't quite handle. And that struck Ian as strange, even disconcertingly strange, almost worrying. Because Reg Buller, drunk or sober (or, more-or-less permanently, midway between those extremes), was never a man to be lost for words.

'That is what the old woman saw? What she told her daughter?' Jenny had to be experiencing the same doubts: those were not so much questions as encouraging noises, jollying Buller along with her acceptance of what he was saying. 'Tell us, Reg.'

'Aye. What she saw.' Buller agreed with her reluctantly. 'Of course . . . it's early days yet. So we didn't ought to jump to conclusions an' then stay there. Because you never have before, anyway.' Sniff. 'Which is why you're worth more working for than some I could name.'

The man's reluctance and his change-of-subject fazed Ian completely for a long moment — and, obviously, Jenny also: their surprise flowed together in mutual silence.

' Reg — ' Jenny broke first, albeit in a whisper.

' Jenny — ' Ian reached out to restrain her, but misjudged the distance and caught only a handful of nothing.

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'It's all right, darling.' She got the message, nevertheless. 'Of course it's early days yet. But we ... it does rather look as though we don't have a lot of time. So do please jump to a conclusion for us, Reg dear.' As near as Ian had ever heard —

nearer by far than at any time in Beirut — she was pleading now, to get what she wanted. ' Please — ?'

'All right.' Reg Buller couldn't resist her, any more than any man could when she pushed so hard. 'So O'Leary went down

— like 'e'd been pole-axed ... an' that's probably exactly what the old woman said, because she was country-bred, so she's seen 'em kill their beasts stone-dead, with just the legs kickin' . . . But what she meant, I reckon, was that Mitchell knew 'e 'adn't missed, maybe. But 'e didn't care, anyway —

not about O'Leary.' Reg Buller drank, and they waited for him. 'It was the woman 'e went for — to where she'd dropped down when she was hit.'

Ian was aware that his mouth was dry. He'd hardly touched his non-alcoholic lager. And he had another full glass, untouched, waiting for him.

'It was pissin' down with rain by then. But . . . Jack Butler came up, an' 'e 'ad 'is umbrella down, she said. An' 'e tried to stop Mitchell pickin' up the woman — the girl . . . But Mitchell pushed 'im away, an' cuddles 'er, an' 'olds 'er. So then Jack Butler puts up 'is umbrella again, an' 'olds it over

'em both, while all the rest of 'em comes runnin' up.'

Frances! thought Ian. And then . . . Mitchell — ?

'An' 'e wouldn't let go of 'er, Mitchell wouldn't — not when dummy2

the police came up, an' some others not in uniform . . . An'

not even when the ambulance men finally came, with stretchers: 'e shoved 'em off, an' Jack Butler backs 'im up, an'

points to where O'Leary is — ' Buller moved from the past tense to the historic present' — so they goes to' get 'im. An'

brings 'im down first, with a ground-sheet over 'im, or a blanket . . . an' 'is arm 'anging over the side, like dead-meat

— ' Buller sniffed ' — no proper scene-of-the-crime police-work for ' im, with photographs: just get the bugger away quick, an' 'ave done with 'im! Okay — ?'

Ian realized that he had made a noise of some sort, because Buller was looking at him suddenly, frowning. 'Go on, Reg.'

Buller stared at him. 'What is it?'

'It's nothing. Go on.'

'Okay ... So in the end it was a policeman comes up, because Mitchell won't let go of 'er — like we used to do when there was a road accident . . . I've seen it happen, when they won't let go of 'em, just like that . . . when they know's too late.'

Buller nodded at him. 'But Jack Butler — 'e stops the copper, an' talks to 'im. An' then 'e talks to Mitchell — with the rain still pissin' down, an' Mitchell an' the girl are like a couple of drowned rats by then, with the rain, while Butler's been talkin' to the copper ... So finally Mitchell picks 'er up in 'is arms, an' carries 'er down 'isself . . . with Audley be'ind 'im, an' then a copper that's picked up O'Leary's rifle, carryin' it like it was gold-dust, so as not to smudge the prints on it, with a pencil down the barrel, an' a string through the trigger-dummy2

guard — she even remembered that, the old woman did.'

Ian saw it all, detail by detail, on the hillside he'd not yet seen, among the ruins of the abbey he'd also never seen yet —

not yet! But which he would see, by God, as soon as he was free again!

'Yes?' He almost added, for Jenny . . . this is one we have to write, Jen! But then he suddenly wasn't so sure. 'Go on, Reg

— go on!'

Another frown. 'Well, that's all there is, lad: they took 'er away — an' O'Leary with 'er . . . An' then they started to make bloody-sure no one ever printed the truth about what happened there.' Buller watched him. 'So what else do you want, then?'

Ian couldn't really say anything. But Jenny saved him from admitting so much. 'But . . . you haven't really told us the ending — have you, Reg?'

Buller picked up his chaser, but didn't drink it. 'Yes . . . But maybe that's the bit you won't like, Lady. An' I'd only be guessin' anyway. An' maybe it's too early to start guessin'?

Not when you've got your cheque-book at the ready?' He looked at Ian.

For once Ian knew that he not only knew more than Jenny did, but also understood better what he knew: knew that he had lost forever what he could never have won anyway —

knew utterly and forever that his best book couldn't be written.

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'Go on, Reg.' His knowledge didn't set him free: it chained him. But he wanted Jenny to feel the weight of those chains.

'Okay.' Buller dropped him. 'Your bloke Masson, Lady — he may have been the greatest thing since bread an' alcohol. But he'd still have played his game the only way he knew — the way the clever buggers in the Civil Service always play it.

Which is only the way everyone else plays it, anyway, if they're clever: you use the weapons you've got, that the other bloke hasn't got — okay?'

The man was trying to wrap up his can-of-worms in pretty paper. 'For God's sake, Reg — tell her!'

'Okay — okay!'

Jenny looked from one to the other. Tell me what — ?'

Out of nowhere, Ian suddenly understood why Buller was delaying. And that was remarkably to Reg Buller's credit, when he was so shit-scared of 'Dr P. L. Mitchell' — enough to make them go over that wall in the rain and the dark into the railway cutting so uncomfortably and so recently. But, for his part, he couldn't let himself identify so exactly with Dr Mitchell — not yet, not yet!

He faced Jenny. 'Philip Masson wanted the job, Jen. And . . .

maybe he didn't think Jack Butler was right for it — ' Partly on impulse, and partly to help her accept what he was about to say, he sugared the bitter pill ' — more likely ... So he fixed a test for Butler to prove himself — handling all the different pressures, up north: not just O'Leary, but the Special Branch, dummy2

and MI5, and the local police up there — and the Chief Constable — right, Reg?'

Buller nodded gratefully. And then faced up to the truth. 'It was a maybe fair test — ' Then he faced Jenny in turn, to repay his debt. ' — but it was a fucking dirty trick, Lady — if you'll pardon my French!'

'It was a fair test.' Ian chose to disagree. 'Because Butler pretty well passed it at the University: he didn't catch O'Leary . . . but O'Leary's bomb didn't kill anyone.' He still tried to sugar the pill — even after Reg Buller's French. 'But then O'Leary went on to Thornervaulx. And . . . Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon died because of that, you see — ?'

'You've got it, lad!' Buller didn't want to owe him more than that. 'But that's where we 'ave to start guessin', Lady. Because it still could be Audley who did for him, after that. Or ... it could be 'e just turned a blind eye — see?'

The blind eye seeing confused her for a second. 'Audley — ?'

' 'E could 'ave turned a blind eye.' Buller emphasized himself.

' 'E could have just pointed Mitchell in the right direction. Or he could have gone to Mitchell straight off, an' said "This bugger Masson — if 'e fell under a bus now ... or, maybe, if 'e fell off 'is boat, an' drowned, an' no question asked . . .

wouldn't that be nice now?" An' after what 'ad 'appened to the woman 'e wouldn't 'ave needed to ask twice; 'e'd got the perfect murderer. Or almost perfect.'

Jenny stared at them both. ' Mitchell?'

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' 'E's got the balls for it, Lady.' Buller nodded. ' An' she was 'is woman, Lady — don't you see!'

With a terrible certainty, Ian understood why she was so slow now, when she was usually so quick. And then he saw how he could make her understand. 'You want vengeance for Philip Masson, Jen. So Paul Mitchell wanted to even the score for Frances Fitzgibbon.'

She frowned at him. 'But Philly didn't kill her.' She looked at Reg Buller.

'"Mad Dog" O'Leary?' Buller shook his head. ' 'E just snapped a shot off — it could 'ave been at anyone — it could 'ave been at Mitchell ... or it could 'ave been at Butler . . . or it could

'ave been some poor bloody copper, Lady: they're the ones who usually get the bullet.' Another shake. 'But it was ' er . . .

an' if it was your bloke Masson who put it all together, then it was ' im that got 'er killed — that's the way I might 'ave seen it, if she'd been my woman, I tell you straight.' He cocked his head. ' 'Ave you ever loved anyone? Your mum and dad, maybe? Or this bloke of yours, Philly — ?'

Jenny had got it: it was pasted across her face, white under falling-down red.

'If it 'ud been my woman I might 'ave done it, anyway,'

repeated Buller simply. 'Or ... if I was "Dr P. L. Mitchell" —

yes. Because then I'd 'ave known how to do it, too —

'specially if I'd 'ad "Dr D. L. Audley" to help me!' He stared at Jenny. 'But, then again, I'm not sure about Audley to tell the truth. Because, 'avin' 'eard a thing or two about 'im, I reckon dummy2

'e'd 'ave fixed Masson some other way, short of murder.' He cocked his head at her. 'Wasn't it you said on the phone today that 'e likes to out-smart people? That 'e gets 'is jollies that way more than any other? An' she wasn't 'is woman, after all — was she?' He shook his head finally. 'No ... if I was bettin', then I'd say the worst 'e might 'ave done is to 'ave looked the other way. An' my money would all be on Mitchell, Lady.'

Jenny looked at Ian: she had been looking at him ever since she'd got it, he realized. 'Ian — ?'

He had to face it, too. 'She was quite something, Jen.

Everyone who knew her — ' He thought of Mrs Simmonds for an instant ' — everyone who knew her as she really was . . .

she must have been quite a woman, Jen.'

'I don't mean her — ' She brushed irritably at her hair ' — I mean Mitchell, Ian.'

'Yes.' Ian had to face that, too. And with Paul Mitchell there was the matter of the empty shot-gun between them, as well as Frances Fitzgibbon. But it was Frances who made the decision easy. 'Actually, I think Mr Buller has got it wrong, Jen. It's clever . . . but he's wrong. Although . . . it's early days, of course.'

'Oh aye?' Buller frowned at him in surprise.

'Yes.' Never writing this marvellous book was bad enough.

But helping Paul Mitchell to escape was a more immediate problem. And then, quite suddenly, he saw the easy answer.

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'Or is Mitchell a saint, Reg?'

'A—?' The frown deepened.

'Only saints have the gift of bi-location, Reg: they can be in two places at once. But the rest of us can't.' Annoying Reg Buller would also help. 'Even if Mitchell wasn't saving my life this afternoon, I really don't see how he could have been killing John Tully — do you?' There was, of course, a major flaw in that dismissive argument: he didn't really know that Mitchell had been behind him, watching him, until quite late in the afternoon. But Reg Buller couldn't know that. 'I'm his alibi, Reg.'

'Oh aye?' Buller stared at him belligerently as they both faced up to John Tully's death, about which they knew next to nothing. But ... if that had also been Mitchell, then his own ethical problems multiplied hideously. But he would think about that later: it was early days — everyone seemed agreed on that.

Buller grinned suddenly. 'You could be right at that, lad—

back in'78.'

It was Ian's turn to frown. 'What?'

'Someone hired O'Leary. So someone was up to something.'

Buller dropped him, almost contemptuously, in preference for Jenny. 'So now Masson's turned up again, an' there's a great big can of worms goin' to be opened up . . . An' if you want me to try an' guess what's 'appening — Lady, I can't even begin to guess.' He made a face at her. And then dummy2

remembered his whisky chaser on the table beside him, and picked it up and downed it. 'But I tell you one thing: there'll be others as well as Mitchell tryin' to stop up the rat-holes.

An' the rats are all runnin' scared, bitin' whatever gets in their way — like us, for a start, maybe?' He looked at Jenny for a moment, and then nodded. 'So I'm runnin', too. An' not just from Dr P. L. Mitchell, neither, Lady.'

Mitchell himself had said it, thought Ian with a swirl of panic: they had raised the Devil between them! And now the Devil was after them!

Now he found himself looking at Jenny — looking, and trying not to look at her bitterly, without recrimination. Because it had been Jenny who had wanted vengeance for her beloved Philip Masson, against his own better judgement, and that had been what had started them off on this ill-judged enterprise. And from their present experience he now came upon an unpalatable truth belatedly, which his judgement and instinct hadn't been quite strong enough to formulate exactly, before it was too late—

The door opened again, without any knock, as before —

Oh God! Ian thought. Not more drinks! Not when Reg Butler's bulbous red nose seemed even larger than usual, and they needed him stone-cold sober, as never before!

The large barmaid was somewhat breathless, and she didn't smile at Buller this time. 'Call for you, Mr Buller — on the phone downstairs — okay?'

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'Thank you, love — ' Buller addressed the door as it closed again. Then he looked at them in turn. 'Well, "the bell invites me", as the bard says — eh?'

That was Reg Buller to the life, thought Ian: all those dropped 'aitches', and half-genuine, half-false common speech. But Reg Buller had always been more than he seemed to be. So now, when Jenny had started them off with Macbeth, Reg Buller was quoting Macbeth back to them: he either knew it from old, or he'd looked it up after Jenny had quoted it at him. And now he'd quoted it back at them, when it was too-damn close to the bone for comfort.

'Wait!' Jenny surfaced first: Jenny was never better than in danger. 'If we're running, Mr Buller — Reg — ?' She half-looked at Ian, as though to remind him that even Paul Mitchell had wanted them to run.

That was their old technique: one picked up the unasked question from the other. 'Where are we going, Reg?' He moved slightly, so as to block Buller's passage towards the door. 'We're running . . . where?'

Buller grinned at him. 'We ain't exactly runnin' , Ian lad.' He replaced his empty beer-glass on the table, beside the empty whisky-glass. 'Because I don't reckon there's an 'ole deep enough for us to run to, not now — not even if we go an' call on the Lady's dad, even — ' He started to move towards Ian.

' Where, Mr Duller?' Jenny moved too, alongside Ian.

'Not "where", Lady.' Buller stopped. ' Who is the name of our dummy2

game now, I reckon — where just takes us to him. And we know where.'

Now they were shoulder-to-shoulder in the way, just like in the old days. Only now . . . Frances Fitzgibbon was between them, somehow, thought Ian: now they were just business associates, and allies at need.

'Spain, Mr Buller?' Jenny drew a breath.

'Audley, Lady.' Buller's expression hardened. 'The only bloke who can get us out from under is Audley. Because ... if 'e knows, then we can maybe make a deal with 'im. An' ... if 'e doesn't know . . . then 'e'll know what's what when we've told

'im. An' then 'e'll 'ave to be on our side, to save 'is own skin.'

He started to move towards them. 'Okay?'

Ian didn't know which of them moved first. But they both moved, anyway.

And he completed that belated truth then: as with lies, and with all the sins, great and little, so with vengeance and revenge: you never knew, until too late, what a great work you'd started out on — until too late!

PART TWO

Jennifer Fielding and The Ghosts of

Salamanca

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Although the sun had nowhere near reached its full strength Jenny already felt a prickle of sweat between her shoulder blades. And, as she sensed it, another spike of corn-stubble gouged her ankle painfully, reminding her again that she had chosen the wrong shoes this morning. She had planned to look cool and elegant for this encounter, and she was going to end up a perfect mess, sweaty, injured and angry. And it was all Ian's fault — bloody, bloody Ian!

'Ouch!' She stopped to examine the damage. There was a glistening dark-red globule marking the injury, not far from the unsightly smear of its predecessor, which was mixed with red dust. Sweaty, injured, angry and dirty — bloody, bloody, bloody Ian! 'Wait for a moment! I'm hurt, Ian — Ian?'

He hadn't even stopped. He was striding ahead, quite oblivious of her. And now she couldn't even see the rocky plateau towards which he started for, when they'd left the car on the edge of that fly-blown village: there was a long undulation of lethal corn-stubble blocking the view. And she was wearing the wrong shoes.

(They weren't really the wrong shoes: they were her bloody best shoes . . .or, they had been, anyway; it was because he had insisted on leaving the car there, bloody-miles from where they were going — that had made them wrong. 'I can see his car,' he had said, lowering his binoculars, speaking in his strange new voice. ' It's up the track, just by that hut — a dummy2

silver Rover Sterling. But we'll go from here. I want to walk . . . I want to think. There's plenty of time. Come on, then.')

He had stopped at last, silhouetted in the glare at the top of the rise against the pure blue cloudless sky. But he still wasn't looking at her: he had his binoculars glued to his eyes again, still oblivious of her.

Well, that bloody settled it, thought Jenny. This was the new Ian — a problem Ian, and a difficult one; and all the more of a problem, and all the more difficult, because the old one had always been easy and simple, and just tedious in the usual obvious ways, like a dumb-clever brother —

' Ian! Sod you!' she shouted at his back.

Now, at last, after he'd observed what he wanted to check on, he turned towards her. 'What is it?'

'It's all right, darling.' She realized as he turned that the greatest mistake of all would be to whinge, like a man.

Indeed, to whinge as Ian himself did (or, had used to do; but this was a different Ian, she had to remember). 'It's just ...

your legs are longer than mine . . . Have you spotted him?'

'Yes.' He turned back, away from her, lifting the binoculars again.

'Yes?' She was conscious of looking at the new Ian with new eyes, now that he wasn't interested in looking at her. That

'wimp' image had always been unfair, of course: he had been very far from that in Beirut that time, everyone had said dummy2

afterwards; more like a hero, they'd said, but she'd taken that with a pinch of salt (or, anyway, taken it for granted: in wars and emergencies, scholars and poets down the ages had rarely been among the skulkers . . . and a scholar and a poet was what the poor darling really was — or, in a better world, might have been). 'Where?'

'On the Greater Arapile.' He lowered the binoculars, and then pointed. 'See where his car's parked — the Rover? Just beyond that hut. Imagine that's the centre of a clock, and the hour-hand is pointing at eleven — follow that line up to the top, Jenny. He's standing just to the right of that monument.

It must be a battle memorial of some sort.'

Jenny shaded her eyes and stared.

'”The Greater Arapile".' The binoculars came up again.

'That's where the French were, when the battle started in 1812. And the Duke of Wellington came along behind us, from the "Lesser Arapile" to the village. He must have had his lunch just about where we left the car: that was when he saw they'd over-extended their line of march, and threw his chicken leg over his shoulder and said "That will do!" So the story goes, anyway.'

Either it was the glare, or perhaps she needed glasses, but she couldn't see a damn thing in the desolate parched landscape. 'I really don't need to know about the battle — do I, darling?'

'It's an interesting battle.' He spoke distantly, as though to a child. 'When people think of Wellington they think of dummy2

Waterloo . . . like, when they think of Nelson, it's Trafalgar . . . But Nelson's finest victory was the Nile — or maybe it was at St Vincent that he really showed what he was made of ... So this was maybe Wellington's "finest hour" . . .

ye-ess: " That will do!"'

Jenny squinted hopelessly at a blur of boring fields and boring rocks, and knew that it wasn't her own finest hour.

Or, anyway, not yet. 'I didn't know it was the Duke of Wellington we were interested in, darling. I thought it was David Audley.'

'We could do a book on Spain instead, you know.' The new Ian was impervious to sarcasm. 'All those people on holiday on the Costa Blanca, and the Costa Brava . . . and now Spain in the Common Market. And the ETA link with the IRA . . .

And we could take the history all the way from the Black Prince, and the War of the Spanish Succession, and Wellington . . . and the Civil War, with the International Brigades — ' The binoculars went down, and then up again '

— and the phenomenon of peaceful transition from fascism to democracy ... I met a woman recently who is an expert on Spanish economic development, and what she had to say was extremely interesting — ahh!'

The new Ian was also becoming sassy in pushing alternative projects to the one which mattered to her. Although the one plus-factor was that at least he seemed for a moment to have forgotten Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon, alias Marilyn Francis, about whom he had obsessively taxed poor Reg Buller all the dummy2

way from London to Madrid to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Reg Buller — ? The thought of Reg (and of Reg complaining about Spanish beer, even more vociferously than about Spanish food) momentarily diverted her: in Spain Reg Buller was much less of an asset than in London; he seemed somehow to have withdrawn into himself, as though he no longer approved of what they were doing in seeking out Audley; although it couldn't be Audley whom he was worrying about — more likely he was torn between self-preservation and his duty to his paymasters on the one hand, and a sneaking identification with Paul Mitchell, their new suspect, on the other hand — could that be it?

'"Ahh"?' It probably was it. Because Reg and the Police Force had parted company long ago not so much because of his drinking (that would have been no great sin, the way he held it) as because of his sneaking sympathy for underdogs and minor villains versus authority. But it was still an added burden now, when Ian had gone funny on her too. 'What is it, darling?'

'I think I've spotted the wife.' He concentrated on the lower part of the plateau.

'Where?' Reg Buller was all the back-up they had, somewhere behind them in the car, and probably drinking already from his hip-flask. But Ian was her immediate problem.

'Or it may be the daughter . . . They're both tall and thin and blonde . . . But what on earth is she doing — ?' He dummy2

concentrated for another moment. Then he lowered the binoculars and pointed. 'Just down there, left of the car — in the ploughed field . . . Come on, Jen — let's get going.'

'Hold on.' It was still a long and uncomfortable walk to where he was pointing and she felt mutinous. 'Why are we walking all this way?'

'Eh?' The bloody binoculars came up again. 'I told you, Jen: I want to think a bit. And I also want to look at the battlefield.'

'You want to — ?' She bit off her anger, and looked round instead to help her count to ten: it was (she could see at a glance) a most excellent and absolute, and suitable and tailor-made . . . battlefield: apart from the modern railway-line which ran diagonally through the valley between the two rocky plateaux, with a couple of grotty station-buildings halfway along it in the middle of the open fields, and that single even grottier hut where Audley's car was parked, there was absolutely nothing to be seen. So, once upon a time, the British and the French could have killed each other in their thousands quite happily, without inconveniencing anyone or damaging anything of value. But that 1812 suitability still didn't answer the question. 'Why do you have to do that, Ian darling?'

'I don't have to. But I want to.' Now he was studying a more distant ridge to the right of the Greater Arapile. 'It's what Audley's doing today, Jen. I told you in the car — remember?'

What Jenny chiefly remembered from the short journey out dummy2

of Salamanca was that he had been irritatingly masterful and matter-of-fact and decisive. But then he had been like that for the last thirty-six hours, ever since Reg Buller had sold them his theory about Paul Mitchell and that wretched woman.

'So what?' What cautioned her was that he had also been efficient with it, in coaxing information about David Audley's whereabouts from a series of slightly bewildered Spaniards while she had stood on the sidelines like an idiot girlfriend whose main function was to stare at the ceiling of a series of bedrooms.

'I told you, Jen.' Now he wasn't so much masterful as quite damnably long-suffering. 'The daughter prattled to that man the receptionist found for us in the hotel after we checked in

— the one who spoke English? They were here all yesterday, but they were "doing" the English side of the battle, and that ridge over there — ' he pointed. 'So today they were going to do the French side. And the French were up there — " The pointing finger was redirected towards the Greater Arapile '

— and that's where Audley is. But I wish I knew why.'

'Why . . . what?' If he'd wanted to make her feel even more stupid, he was succeeding.

He sighed. 'Why is he studying the battle of Salamanca?'

She mustn't lose her temper. 'Does it matter? He's supposed to be a historian. Don't historians study battlefields?'

'But he's a medievalist. The Peninsular War just isn't his dummy2

period.'

She mustn't lose her temper. 'I expect he'll tell us why, darling, if we ask him nicely.' But now he wasn't even looking at her again, damn it — and damn him! ' I'll ask about Philip Masson, darling. And you can ask about the battle of Salamanca . . . and Mrs Fitzgibbon too, if you like — '

He looked at her then, even as she was already regretting what she'd just said. And the way he'd looked at her made her regret the unnecessary words even more, however much he'd asked for them. 'I'm sorry, Ian — '

'Don't be sorry, Jenny dear. I shall only ask him one question about Frances Fitzgibbon. And I think I already know the answer to it.' He shook his head slowly. 'But it's of no importance to you, I agree. So shall we go, then?'

The hateful corn-stubble ended eventually, but with a deep drainage-ditch (as though it ever rained in this parched landscape!). And Ian leapt the ditch and went on again without a backward glance, leaving her to take the longer route beside it to the track, while he struck off on his own —

Hateful, hateful Ian! It isn't as though I haven't prayed that you'd meet some nice girl at one of your Christian Fellowship meetings, rather than making hopeless sheep's eyes at me! But now you have to go and fall for some crazy dead woman who wouldn't have given you a second look in dummy2

life — a bloody ghost-woman! And now she's going to be the death of our partnership. Because I'm not going to play second-fiddle to any bloody ghost-woman for evermore —

damn you, Ian Robinson! And damn you, Frances Fitzgibbon, too!

She reached the dusty track at last, sweating like a horse and with her hair coming down. And she reached it ahead of him, because he had stopped for another of those exclusive binocular-sweeps of his.

What was he thinking about? Was he 'doing' his battlefield, like David Audley — imagining himself a poor sweating redcoat advancing towards the great unclimbable rocky prow of the headland with French cannon-balls whistling past his ears? Or was he back, not in 1812, but in 1978, with his ghost-woman — his ghost-woman who had been Paul Mitchell's real woman — ? Was he practising his question —

the question to which he already knew the answer?

She walked up the track to intercept him, forcing herself to recover her breath, and some shreds of dignity and self-respect.

It was the daughter, not the wife, she could see now: a tall blonde child mooching up and down the furrows of a newly ploughed field on the edge of the fallen scree from the dummy2

Greater Arapile plateau, head down and intent on the red earth at her feet, as though she was looking for something she'd lost.

She had been foolish. Ian Robinson no longer mattered, any more than Frances Fitzgibbon had ever mattered (let alone Ian Robinson's question about Frances Fitzgibbon). And Paul Mitchell didn't matter. And even David Audley didn't really matter — even he was only a means to an end. It was only Philly, dear beloved Philly, who had always been there when she needed him — always there until some bastard had decided otherwise! And now some bastard was going to pay — that was all that mattered now —

She had a plan.

And she even had time to put back her hair. And it even went back easily.

'I want to talk to the child first, darling. Okay?'

The new Ian frowned at the old Jenny. 'What about Audley?'

Maybe she had done him an injustice. But now wasn't the time to think about injustice and Ian Robinson: this was justice-time and Philly-time now. 'Audley's not going to go away. Not while I'm talking to his daughter.'

'No . . .' Even the new Ian couldn't argue with that. But the new Ian didn't like being thwarted. 'But what's the use of talking to her?'

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'It's what I want to do.' The old Jenny frankly didn't give a damn. 'You wanted to "do" the battlefield of Salamanca, darling. So I want to "do" David Audley's daughter.' She could even smile at him now. 'We're still partners, aren't we?'

'Yes — of course — ' he stopped suddenly. 'If you want to ...

okay, then.'

So now you know, too! thought Jenny. And it was strangely like that first moment of falling-out-of-love, when what one already suspected in oneself was confirmed by the sudden doubt in the no-longer-loved-one's eyes, rather than by any outright lie.

'I want to, then.' But now she also wanted more than that.

'What's her name? How old is she?' It irritated her that she knew so little: that she was asking these questions now, and not before, when there had been plenty of time. 'What do you know about her?'

'Her name is Catherine, with a "C". Because he calls her

"Cathy".' He nodded towards his Arapile. 'Like in Wuthering Heights.' Then he shrugged. 'I don't know anything else.

Except . . . she talks to Spaniards. So she isn't shy . . . even though she is only fifteen — or maybe sixteen, I suppose — '

A faint memory of the old diffident Ian animated him suddenly. 'Why d'you want to talk to her, Jen? Audley's up there — ' The Wuthering Arapile received another nod ' — in fact, I rather think he's watching us, actually.'

Yes, thought Jenny cruelly: you don't want to talk to any dummy2

fifteen-year-old girl, do you! Fifteen-year-old girls probably frighten you. So at least you won't interrupt me!

It was easy to ignore him. There was a wide-open gap in the fence inviting her towards the child, who was no more than fifty yards away among the furrows, staring intently down at the ground, pretending to ignore them both.

But Ian had got her right, exactly: mid-teens, tall and very blonde . . . and thin, almost flat: she'd never be a Page Three girl, for sure!

'Have you lost something?' On the strength of her own great age, and Catherine Audley's alleged 'not-shyness', she called out confidently.

The child had already observed them covertly, while keeping her head down. But now she straightened up and stared directly at them from behind the protection of huge sunglasses which emphasized the thinness of her face, first at Jenny, then with a small movement of her head towards Ian, and finally back at Jenny. 'No.'

Jenny felt herself being scrutinized woman-to-woman, from hair to unsuitable shoes, via her sweat-stained dress, and returned the compliment automatically: jeans (but designer jeans), royal blue sweat-shirt (bearing the legend 'Buffalo Bar — Murdo — South Dakota', but without any sign of sweat), and a Givenchy silk scarf artfully knotted: the shoes alone were ordinary — ordinary schoolgirl's uniform-issue, square-toed (but that only served to remind her of her own sore feet, damn it!).

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The child continued to stare at her, giving nothing away from behind the darkened lenses. And Jenny felt a trickle of sweat run down from her throat to lose itself between her breasts, and adjusted 'not-shy' to 'self-possessed' as the gap between their ages was critically narrowed.

'You're looking for something?' She realized too late that the question was a stupid one. Even though there plainly wasn't anything to look for in the newly-turned red-brown earth, Catherine Audley had quite obviously been looking for something. 'What have you lost, Miss Audley?' She threw the name in deliberately, to regain the upper hand as though it was a fight between equals.

The child frowned, nonplussed by her recognition.

'It's Catherine, isn't it?' Jenny smiled sweetly. 'I'm a friend of Willy Arkenshaw's — Lady Arkenshaw?'

'Oh!' The frown dissolved. 'Willy — yes!'

'What have you lost, dear?' Jenny tried to open the age-gap again.

'I haven't lost anything.' Catherine Audley relaxed perceptibly for a moment. But then she began to frown again.

'I'm looking for bullets . . . Are you looking for my father?'

'Bullets?' The counter-punch caught Jenny unprepared, so that it took her a second to recover. And then she decided to leave the second question. 'Bullets?'

'Not bullets, actually — musket balls, I mean.' Catherine Audley touched the frame of her glasses with a nervous dummy2

gesture. 'Do you know my father? I mean ... if you know Willy

— ?'

If this was the teenage daughter, what would the father be like? Jenny wondered uneasily. 'No, dear. But — I've heard a lot about him.' Another sweet smile was called for. 'Musket balls?'

'Yes.' The child seemed to accept her lying-truth: it would take another year or two for her to learn that grown-ups were liars. 'There was a battle here, Miss — ? Miss — ?'

Saved by good manners! thought Jenny. 'Oh, I'm sorry, dear!

I'm Jennifer Fielding — Jenny?' Smile again Jenny. 'And you are ... Catherine? Cathy — ?'

'Cathy.' The child nodded. But then cocked her head.

'Fielding — '

'"Jenny", please.' She felt the smile painted on her lips as she wondered if the child watched television, and how good her memory was from not so long ago. Because after the Beirut business, when they'd had all the television coverage, the TV

people had made a big thing of 'Fielding-ffulke', making a joke of it all the way back to 1066 and all that. 'Yes, I know there was a battle here — 1812, was it? And have you found any musket balls, Cathy?'

'No.' Cathy looked at her steadily. 'I'm not having much luck.

In fact, I'm not having any luck, to tell the truth.'

Jenny felt firmer ground under her feet. 'Did you expect to find any?'

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But now Cathy was looking past her, at Ian.

'Oh — Cathy, I'm sorry!' She had clean forgotten about Ian herself. And she had done that in the past, and felt guilty about it: but now all she required of him was politeness. 'This is Mr Ian Robinson, dear: he's a friend of mine.' She looked down at the broken earth at her feet, and couldn't see any bullets (why the hell should the child look for . . . bullets, for God's sake!). 'Ian — Miss Catherine Audley — ?'

'Yes.' His voice came soft and cold, and quite without interest. 'Hullo, Miss Audley.'

'Mr Robinson.' The child stared at him.

Jenny felt her doubts increasing. Because Mr Robinson had also appeared on the damned television programme, even if only briefly: Ian typically self-effacingly, even though he'd been the real hero, and she'd not really been-the heroine at all. Damn!

But if Cathy Audley remembered him, and recognized him, his lack of interest froze her out now — just as it had frozen Jenny herself out, these last few hours. Ian was only interested in one woman, and she wasn't here. Indeed, she wasn't anywhere.

'Did you expect to find any . . . musket balls, Cathy?' Jenny controlled her fears carefully. Because Ian's Frances Fitzgibbon obsession was all very well, in its place, however unhealthy. But now, when this eccentric child could lead them straight to Audley, Ian and his obsession were an dummy2

inconvenience — even, a quite unnecessary obstacle, which made her wish that he wasn't here with her, when she had more urgent questions on her mind. So — sod Ian!, as she looked down at the earth at her feet. 'Musket balls — here?'

'Oh yes!' Cathy Audley matched her move. 'On the Somme I found lots of them. Or not musket balls, actually — lots of shrapnel balls, I mean. But musket balls must be just like shrapnel balls — like round — ?' Her head came down so close to Jenny that she exchanged a strong whiff of childishly over-applied scent ' — and there should be lots of them hereabouts . . . because the poor Portuguese charged up here . . . and then down again . . . and then the French charged after them. And finally the British charged. So there should be lots. But I just can't find any . . .'

Cathy trailed off, and they both concentrated on scanning the field together for a moment, to the exclusion of all other matters.

Jenny straightened up finally. 'No — I see what you mean.

Perhaps they've just been ploughed into the ground, Cathy?'

'Oh no! It doesn't work like that.' Cathy shook her head vehemently. 'There's someone I know who's an expert, and he says that ploughing brings them up to the surface, it doesn't bury them. And I'm sure this is the right place.' She reached into the back-pocket of her jeans, producing a crumpled piece of paper which she then unfolded with grubby fingers. 'This was practically the centre of the battle

— at the start, anyway.'

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It was a map, neatly hand-drawn, but now rendered incomprehensible with its profusion of little red and blue squares, and diagonally red-and-white and blue-and-white rectangles, which followed the criss-crossing arrows of the rival armies' advances and retirements around and beyond the Greater Arapile.

'We're here — ' Cathy stabbed the map, and then shook her head. 'I simply don't understand it. It's most vexing.'

'Yes.' It was curious how, when Cathy Audley had stared at her she had seemed grown up, but now she was a child again.

'Do you collect . . . bullets and things, Cathy?'

'No ... not really.' The child-Cathy grinned at her. 'But, it's interesting finding things — isn't it? I got some super barbed-wire at Verdun. My father says it's German. It's got very long barbs on it, and they're much closer together than on modern barbed-wire.'

Jenny felt her jaw drop open.

'People in America collect barbed-wire, you know.' Cathy Audley nodded seriously. There are hundreds of different varieties, going back to the middle of the nineteenth century, almost. Some bits are worth hundreds of dollars, my father says — the first bits they used in the Wild West, I suppose.'

The repetition of 'my father says' recalled Jenny to reality.

She had established herself with the child. And now the child would lead her to the father, complete with an introduction of sorts. 'And your father collects battlefields, does he?'

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The child's eyes sparkled suddenly, and she laughed.

'Oh ... he collects everything — he's like a great big jackdaw, Mummy says: he never throws away anything.' She shook her head, becoming older again as she shared her mother's despair. 'But . . . yes, he does collect battlefields. In fact, this is a "battlefield holiday" — at least, the first two weeks are.'

She grinned fondly. 'Medieval ones coming down: Crecy, Poitiers and Chastillon — that's the place where the French finally beat us, in the Hundred Years' War, you know — did you know?'

'No.' Jenny sensed Ian chafing nearby. But Ian was wrong to chafe: so long as they had the daughter, then they couldn't lose the father.

'Oh yes! There's even a monument to poor old John Talbot, who got killed there, by the river. And my father says . . .

losing the American colonies was no great loss — no one minds losing them. But losing Bordeaux, where the wine comes from — that really was the most rotten luck. Because it's much too good for the French, he says.' She giggled again.

'And he said all that to a French couple and an American couple we met at the Parador at Ciudad Rodrigo — honestly, I thought Mummy was going to kill him . . . But that was later on. Because from Chastillon we came over the Pass of Roncesvalles — where Roland was killed . . . that was super . . . And then down the other side, to a lovely old Parador, in a medieval hospital — that was so he could show us the battlefield at Najera, where the English longbowmen dummy2

wiped out that Spanish-and-French army in five minutes —

like machine-gunners, Father said — wow!'

Suddenly, Jenny understood: this poor child had been holidaying for nearly a fortnight now, with her overwhelming father and disapproving mother, between whom she hadn't got a word in edgeways. But now she'd met a sympathetic English-speaking stranger, so the floodgates of pent-up speech had burst, just as they had done with the Spanish waiters.

'But this isn't a medieval battlefield surely, Miss Audley?' Ian intruded suddenly with the same silly question which he had put to her.

'Oh no — ' Cathy Audley fielded the statement almost joyfully. 'But we did the medieval battles the first week, you see — and Mummy's having a week in Paris, for shopping, on the way back — ' the grin twisted. ' — and so am I ... Father's going back to work and we are going shopping, Mummy and I!'

So 'Mummy' wasn't so stupid, thought Jenny: Audley himself paid for his idiosyncrasies — and quite properly, too!

'The middle week's the Peninsular War,' Cathy Audley concentrated on Ian. 'We've just come from Ciudad Rodrigo: another super old Parador . . . except Father hated the food there — ' She cocked her head at him suddenly, almost shyly, yet unchildlike. 'Are you staying at the Salamanca Parador, Mr — Mr Robinson?'

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Ian nodded, matching her shyness. 'We just checked in this morning, Miss Audley.' Then he blinked. 'The Peninsular War?'

'Yes.' Nod. 'We stormed Ciudad Rodrigo in 1812. And my father ... he wanted to see where "Black Bob" Crauford was killed — and where they buried him in the ditch there ... I mean, he used to flog them, and hang them, but they loved him, my father says . . . He's a great admirer of General Crauford.' Cathy Audley nodded seriously. 'He wanted me to see Badajoz too, where our army did a lot of raping-and-pillaging. But Mummy said we didn't have enough time for that.'

'Why the Peninsular War?' Ian, when a 'why ' eluded him, was as persistent as any child, regardless of raping and pillaging.

'Oh, not the whole of the war.' The child accepted his curiosity as quite natural. 'It went on for years and years, you know. But my father is only interested in 1812. And really he's only interested in here, because Salamanca is our special battlefield, Mr Robinson: my father has been talking about coming here for ages and ages.' She blushed slightly. This is a sort of reward for my A-levels — ' The blush combined with a grin ' — this . . . and Paris.'

A-level exam results were a blow below the belt: she had waited herself for them, through endless days a dozen years ago, to find out whether she had been accepted by the dummy2

university of her choice, and it had been Philly who had been there, waiting for her at the last, as she'd scraped through by the skin of her teeth, with champagne ready for congratulation or commiseration! Philly, oh Philly — damn them all!

'So . . . you passed then?' Now it was her turn to grit her teeth and concentrate on the matter in hand, all sweetness and light, (it had been mid-August then, a month ago now; so, to travel safely from Parador to Parador, Audley must have booked ahead, planning this holiday-reward; so that meant he hadn't prudently removed himself from the country, to avoid awkward questions after Philly's body had been found — ? Or had it been just luck, and not just confidence in his clever daughter?)

'What's so special about Salamanca, Miss Audley?' Ian, having decided to be involved, was even more single-minded in seeking answers to questions which were bugging him —

quite oblivious of the child's awkward modesty about her results (straight bloody A-grades, with distinctions in the special papers, the clever little beast? But she mustn't let her sour grapes betray her smile!).

'Oh yes!' The child seized on the question eagerly again: it saved her from immodesty, for a guess; but also (if she was normal) she properly preferred men to women now, for another guess. 'My great-great-great-grandfather was killed here, you see. In 1812, at Salamanca, Mr — ' she floundered dummy2

momentarily.

'"Ian",' Jenny supplied the Christian name tartly. 'He answers to "Ian", Cathy. But . . . your great-great . . .

grandfather was killed . . . here?'

'Oh?' The child blinked at her for another moment. But then her years increased again as she measured Jenny up, and took in her slightly battered condition to even up the reckoning. And then turned back to Ian coolly. 'Not actually here, I mean.' She smiled at Ian and then swung on her heel and pointed away past the rocky headland of the Greater Arapile towards the distant ridge behind it, on which a long line of scrubby trees marked the skyline. 'That's where the British cavalry charged. And my great-great-great-grandfather was in the charge: he charged right through two whole French divisions . . . before he was killed, right at the end. So this is our special family battlefield, do you see?'

Wow! thought Jenny: Ian had wanted an answer to his 'why'

— and he had got it to the last syllable. 'Like . . . the Charge of the Light Brigade — ?'

'No — not at all!' Ian's voice was stiff with contempt. 'He must have been in General Le Marchant's charge — ' He began by addressing her, but then dismissed her, to turn the words back to Cathy Audley ' — and General Le Marchant was killed up there, too — in the moment of victory — ?'

'That's right — gosh!' The child was quite enchanted by this supremely useless piece of information. 'You know about the dummy2

battle, Mr Robinson?'

'I know about Le Marchant, Miss Audley.' Whether Ian really knew about 'General Le Marchant' hung in the balance for an instant: it could be either that he had always known, because it was the sort of thing he knew: or it could be that he had just done his homework last night, to know just enough, but no more than that. 'He was the one man in the army who was a scientific soldier — ? A Guernsey man — from the Channel Islands?'

'That's right!' Cathy Audley positively bubbled with pleasure.

'You really do know about the battle, don't you!' Then she frowned. 'But that's silly, isn't it!'

'Silly?'

Not silly, thought Jenny, amending her previous contempt abjectly as she realized what Ian was doing — and what he had done, which she hadn't even thought to do —

'I don't mean you — gosh! I mean me.' Cathy hunched her shoulders. 'I mean . . . you wouldn't be here, traipsing around like this, if you weren't interested in the battle. So ... you're probably a historian — are you a historian?' She cocked her head at Ian, but not coquettishly: it was a simple, straight question, as unfeminine as it was unshy, but with logic behind it. 'Or are you a dragoon?'

'A — ?' Ian was good, having done his homework. But he wasn't that good. 'A ... dragoon, Miss Audley?'

'My father was a dragoon, in the war . . . Not the Peninsular dummy2

War, I mean . . . but his war.' Cathy threw out her inadequate chest with filial pride. 'He wasn't on a horse, of course — he was in a tank ... He doesn't even like horses . . . But, then, he doesn't much like tanks, either. Even though he's always talking about them.' Pride quite vanished beneath honesty.

'But. . . my great-great-great-grandfather was a horse-dragoon, you see. And he was shot right beside General Le Marchant — in "the moment of victory", just like you said . . .

And my father says all British dragoons should come here, because this was one of the best charges they ever made. But, of course, he wanted me to see it because of great-great-great-grandfather . . . Are you a historian, Mr Robinson?'

'Not a historian, Miss Audley. Or a dragoon. But we are writers, Miss Fielding and I.' Ian smiled and nodded at the child. 'And we are thinking of writing a book on Spain —

aren't we, Miss Fielding?'

'Possibly, Mr Robinson.'

'And if we do, we shall certainly mention the battle of Salamanca, Miss Audley — General Le Marchant's charge.'

'And the dragoons, Cathy.' It was Jenny's turn to smile. 'At least, we will if your father will tell us all about them — would he do that, do you think?'

'Oh . . . yes — ' Cathy looked up towards the Greater Arapile '

— well, I don't see why not.' She came back to Jenny. 'So long as you make allowance for him not being in a very good mood, I mean.' She made a face at them both. 'He's been like that ever since — ' She stopped abruptly.

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'Ever since — ?' Ever since they tipped him off that there was trouble back home, thought Jenny. It was only to be expected. And with Fielding and Robinson on the loose it was doubly to be expected. 'Something he ate, dear?'

'Oh no!' Cathy was quite disarmed by the fatuousness of the suggestion. 'He just got a phone call from home. And he hates being bothered by the office when we're on holiday, you see.'

'Don't we all, dear!' Jenny laughed. 'But ... is that him up there, watching over us? Up by that . . . what is it? It looks like a sort of monument — ?'

'Yes.' Cathy followed her glance. Then she waved suddenly.

'All right — let's go and see him, then — '

Once she had her second wind the climb wasn't so bad, really: even, it was preferable to the corn-stubble, so long as she took care to avoid the occasional thistle.

'See these walls, Jenny?' Ian had stopped to let her catch up, while the child bounded ahead. They must have cultivated this land right up to here in the old days — ' He spoke loudly, but then dropped his voice as she came level with him ' — if Mitchell's phoned him he'll know who we are, and what we're up to. So he may even be expecting us, Jen.'

She waved at Cathy, who had also stopped now. 'Surprise, surprise. So he's expecting us, then.' She turned, as though to admire the view, and saw that the deceptive undulations of the fields had already flattened out far below her. It was hard dummy2

to imagine that flesh-and-blood could ever have been so brave (or so stupid?) to march all the way she'd come, buttoned-up and constricted in silly uniforms and weighed down by weapons and equipment, and through a hail of Cathy Audley's elusive musket balls. But then, it was also fairly way-out, the process which had brought her so far from home, to this unlikely place: she was here because Philly had once carried Daddy on his back in far-off Korea (another unlikely place, by God!) — and because an Audley ancestor had once charged to death-and-glory here, to find his unmarked grave.

Philly had almost had an unmarked grave of his own, she thought. And the thought turned her round again. 'Come on, Ian. We've got work to do.'

Cathy was waiting for them.

'See there, Miss Fielding — Jenny — ?' She pointed at the ground.

'What?' Behind the child the final tumble-home of the Greater Arapile rose more steeply, in a jumble of rocks. But it would be no more exhausting than climbing up to Piccadilly from the Underground without the benefit of the moving escalator.

'Autumn crocuses, Miss Fielding.' The child pointed again.

Jenny looked down. And there at her feet was a tiny delicate pale-mauve flower with a bright white-into-yellow centre, dummy2

thrusting out of the dead grass like a promise of life-in-death.

'Isn't it beautiful, Miss Fielding?'

'Yes, dear.' Jenny stepped carefully around the crocus. And then she saw another, and another . . . and some were already wilting in the fierce Spanish sun, as ephemeral as butterflies. 'Very beautiful.'

'Here, Jen — ' Ian reached down to help her up over a steeper place, almost like the old Ian.

Now they were on the edge of the summit, with bedrock and tumbled rock all around them.

Their hands and their eyes met. And it wasn't strange that he looked sad: they were at the beginning of their long goodbye; which had always been going to come one day, inevitably; but that didn't make it any sadder, now that they could both see it ahead of them: maybe they would write a Spanish book together, but it would be their last book; or maybe he'd write it, while she was frying some other and very different fish.

But this was Philly's day for her, anyway —

She felt his strength as he hauled her up, and mourned the loss of it already. But then she saw Audley, waiting for them.

And this was Philly's hour.

The sun beat down on her head, hotter than ever, behaving as she always felt it should now that they were closer to it, dummy2

melting her as it had melted the wax holding Icarus's feathers to his wings. But there was a lump of ice-cold resolution in the centre of her which resisted the heat —

which even seemed to expand as she stared past them, at Audley —

Audley waiting for them: he knew who they were, and what they were, and why they were here. So he was sitting there, on the plinth of the monument, on its cooler shadowed side: Audley still unhappy this morning, after last night's phone-call, but cool and calm and collected now, and ready for them —

'Wait a minute, Ian.' She used the last ounce of her waning influence over him in her voice. 'Please wait!'

He stopped. 'What is it, Jenny?'

'There's no hurry. He's not going away.' She looked round deliberately, taking her time; at first seeing nothing, then seeing everything with sudden clarity in the crystal air.

The Greater Arapile was shaped like a ship, exactly: long and flat-topped, and barely a dozen yards wide. And they were standing halfway down the deck, between the supertanker prow and the slight rise to the monument; and the deck itself was covered with a carpet of dead grass, brown and withered, through which an astonishing profusion of Cathy Audley's dummy2

delicate autumn crocuses burst out defiantly.

'What an amazing place!' It wasn't particularly amazing, actually: it was just another piece of the great yellow openness that was so much of Spain, with nothing to betray the great and terrible event which it had once witnessed. In fact, nothing had happened here since that moment when the rolling fields below had been black with marching lines, and columns, and screaming horses and thundering cannon.

But there wasn't the slightest echo of the past up here now, anymore than of the future.

But she had to say something.

And, by God! something was going to happen here now!

'Look!' She saw a sudden flick of movement in a jumble of rocks on the flank of the ridge.

'What — ?'

'There — ' She pointed. 'It's a fox — with long pointy-ears —

see!'

Obligingly, the fox moved again, and became visible for an instant before it vanished into the hillside.

'Yes — !' In that same instant Ian's face lit up, with pure pleasure, and he was just like the old Ian at the sight of any small interesting thing, like a new postage stamp on a letter, or an old building which caught his eye. (Had he welcomed the sight of that first autumn crocus? Or had he had eyes only for Audley, and thought only for his Frances Fitzgibbon?) But then he frowned at her, and was the new dummy2

Ian again. 'What are you playing at, Jen?'

Now they were at last facing each other in the face of the enemy, and facing their moment of truth. 'Audley's mine, Ian

— he's not for you. I want him.'

He breathed out. 'Because of Philip Masson?'

'Because of Philip Masson. And because this was my idea, not yours — my truth . . . not yours, Ian.'

'Your revenge, more like. And that's the wrong way to look for truth, Jen — it's a bad way, Jen.'

He was right, of course. He was always fucking right —

going to church on Sundays, and giving to charity, and never getting drunk on a Saturday night, or any other night! But she wanted to hurt him, not to argue morality with him. 'And you want the truth about some silly woman who forgot to pack her gun when she went to arrest a terrorist? A woman you've never met — who wouldn't have given you the time of day if you had met her? That's stupid — ' The image of Philly came back to her: Philly smiling his big slow smile at her, when they met — Philly hugging her, godfatherly — the smell of his pipe-tobacco and his malt whisky, Philly strong and safe — Philly praising her, Philly laughing as the champagne cork popped . . . even Philly in that rare unguarded moment, looking at her with that ungodfatherly look, of naked-desire-well-controlled . . . which she'd shared

— oh! how she'd shared! — but which she hadn't truly understood until it was too late —

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Too late! Too late!

But she had hit him hard. And that was all that mattered.

'He's mine, Ian. Even if we don't write this book . . . he's mine.' She corrected her own thought: all that mattered was that someone was going to pay in full; that was all that mattered. 'You can have your bloody Spanish book instead.'

She swept a hand over the Greater Arapile. ' But I want Audley, Ian.'

Ian bit his lip. With Ian — or, at any rate, with the old Ian —

there had been times when commonsense, and confused affection, and old-fashioned journalism (never mind self-doubt!), had played the very devil with his Christian imperatives! 'Well . . . we'll see, Jen — we'll see!'

'Yes — we'll see, darling.' If she'd got that much back, to make him question his irrational obsession with the Fitzgibbon woman, then that much was better than nothing.

'Miss Fielding — ?'

'Oh — ?' Jenny turned quickly towards the question: she had halted Ian, but Cathy Audley had progressed towards her father before she'd realized that she was alone, and had had to turn back to them ' — we're coming, dear . . . This is an amazing place — isn't it? All these lovely little flowers!' She grinned at the child. 'We saw a fox, Cathy — down there — '

She pointed ' — with great big ears . . . he's in the rocks down there, somewhere — '

'Did you? Gosh!' The child scanned the hillside. 'A fox — ?'

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'He's gone, dear — '

Audley was still waiting. Although now, after they'd taken such a time to reach him, he had managed to stand up, and had moved out of the shade of the monument into the full sunlight, so that she could see him clearly at last.

'Daddy — !'

What he looked like, length-and-breadth-and-face, was no great revelation: there had been that picture, which John Tully had uncovered, of David Audley in a line-out — Cardiff versus the Visigoths, on some dreadful rugger-playing day, when they'd all looked as though they'd been mud-wrestling: and Audley had been wearing a dirty headband, and a look of excited brutality, like an eager Saxon in the shield-wall at Hastings.

(But — God! the real-life image, of the man himself, jolted her as though she'd touched a live wire — )

'Daughter?' Standing up under the monument, Audley could look down on them, with the huge sky behind him: a sky shading down from purest blue to palest blue-grey, where the distant green line of trees on the next ridge divided it from the yellow cornfields, and he seemed ten-foot-tall for a moment, above them. 'What's this, then?'

But it wasn't that —

'What's this, then?' Audley smiled at his daughter as he repeated the question. And then he looked directly at Jenny.

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'Hullo, there!'

That made it worse. Or . . . not just worse — much worse!

'Daddy — this is Mr Robinson . . . and Miss Fielding. They know Willy Arkenshaw. And they write books, Daddy. And they want to talk to you.'

'Yes.' Audley stared at Jenny. 'I know.'

'Dr Audley — ' The jolt of the shock was still there: it shook her voice, just as it had shaken her hands that time, after she touched that wire beside the ancient Victorian light-switch in the cellar at home. 'Dr Audley.' The husky faltering repetition was almost worse: it was so far from the way she had intended to face up to him that it was almost laughable.

Except that, if she started to laugh, she was afraid she might go off into hysterics.

'Daddy — ?' As Audley continued to stare at her — as they both continued to stare at each other — the child picked up the vibration of something strange happening.

'Miss Fielding.' Audley spoke at last, drawing her back to him even as relief suffused her. 'I do recognize you, actually. I saw you on the television once. That time you escaped in Beirut.

And, of course, I've read your books.'

He had a nice voice. And, although the pictures of that rather battered face hadn't lied in any factual detail, he seemed much younger than Willy Arkenshaw had suggested: old was as much a slander with David Audley as it had been with Philly: old was in the mind —

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God! She was betraying Philly now —

'Oh, Daddy!' Cathy Audley exploded.

Jenny was aware that more of her hair was coming down; and there were beads of sweat crawling down the side of her face, and elsewhere —

But he was so very like — so very like, even though he was quite unlike — so very like Philly! And she bloody-well fancied him! And — what was so ultimately worse: what rocketed that betrayal into unimaginable orbit — was that he fancied her, too!

'Mr Robinson knows all about the battle, Daddy.' Cathy Audley's patience ran out. 'He wants to talk to you about General Le Marchant.'

'He does?' Audley let go of Jenny unwillingly. 'Does he?' The letting-go stretched itself until it had to snap. 'Mr Robinson . . . You are the writer, of course.' He smiled at Ian.

'And you have a rare grasp of good English. A quite unjournalistic grasp, if I may say so — ?' All the smile went out of Audley's face. 'But that would be because you were at Princess Mary's Grammar School, and brought up on the classics? Like Gibbon having the Bible hammered into him?'

Jenny looked at Ian, and caught him with his mouth open.

Audley nodded. 'Hennessey — Henworth — ? Henworthy ...

he was your High Master, of course. And he was taught by my old Latin Master, as an inky child, before he gravitated to higher things.' He nodded again. 'There's a descent in such dummy2

matters, among schoolmasters. Not quite as good as breeding through pedigree bulls, perhaps . . . but it leaves its mark, nevertheless, I'd like to think.' Another nod, but this time accompanied by a terrible cold smile. 'I particularly enjoyed your book on the Middle East. It had several interesting insights, as well as some quite deplorable flights of fancy.'

Jenny felt her own mouth open — Audley wasn't perfect: the

'rare grasp of English' and the Hennessey/Henwood one-upmanship was fair enough at a smart cocktail party; but if Audley thought he could patronize Ian Robinson, he had much mistaken his man! But then it was too late, because Ian was reacting —

In fact, Ian was smiling. 'Your daughter has told us about your ancestor, Dr Audley — who was killed in the charge here?' He gave Audley back a nod. 'But . . . was he just another bone-headed English dragoon? Or was he one of Wellington's "Research and Development" officers — the

"exploring" officers, were they called? Andrew Laith Hay — ?

Or John Waters, or Somers Cocks? Or Colquhoun Grant? Or Dr Paul Mitchell?'

Christ! That was giving him both barrels! thought Jenny.

Ian, being Ian, really had done his homework!

'You're interested in the battle of Salamanca, Mr Robinson?'

Audley, being Audley, was taking Ian's measure now.

'Not in the least, Dr Audley.' Ian smiled at Audley. 'But—'

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'Daughter!' Audley interrupted Ian rudely. 'Go and see how your mother is — ' He nodded past the monument, into a stone-quarried gap behind him, which divided the Greater Arapile super-tanker into two parts, fore and aft on its port side here, below the tall stone shaft. 'She's reading her book ... or sunbathing, or something — down there — yes?'

Cathy Audley stared at her father, the huge sunglasses concealing what would certainly be a frown.

'Go on, Cathy.' Audley's voice was gently level now, neither pleading or commanding.

The sunglasses turned towards Ian for an instant. But now the tightened lips and the anger-lines around the mouth told their own story.

'Off you go.' This time he actually smiled. 'There's nothing to worry about.'

Cathy came back to him. 'I told them you received a phone-call, I think they pretended not to be interested in it. I'm sorry.'

Audley shrugged. 'So I received a phone-call. That's nothing to be ashamed of, love. So — '

'Yes — "Off I go".' The child started to go, but then stopped.

'But I'm forgetting my manners — aren't I!' She swung towards Jenny. 'They all say "Don't talk to strangers — forget about good manners!" But, I forgot my lesson, didn't I, Miss Fielding?' No child now — not for her, and not for Ian, in his turn: for Ian, a look which, if he'd been a British dragoon, dummy2

and Cathy Audley a Frenchman sighting him along her musket, would have knocked him stone-dead from his saddle, beside her ancestor and General Le Marchant. 'And goodbye, Mr Robinson.'

Wisely (although she didn't give him time, anyway) Ian didn't try to answer, as she twisted away again, and dropped down gracefully into the rocks below the monument, leaving the echo of his name on her bullet in the silence.

'Yes . . . well, I don't really need to enlarge on that — do I?'

Audley watched her go, and then turned back to them with the vestiges of his smile still in place, but with a mixture of pride and contempt edging it. 'But, then, perhaps I am indebted to you both — for teaching her a lesson about the Great British Press, to go with "Don't talk to strangers"?'

Now it was war to the knife! thought Jenny. 'We're not the Great British Press, Dr Audley. We're just . . . us, actually.'

'"Us"?' Looking at her (rather than at Ian), his expression twisted. And the bugger of it was that she knew that look, having seen it on other men similarly caught between suspicion and desire; but she had not felt about them as she felt about him — and she must stop feeling like that, right now!

'We're in trouble, Dr Audley.' Self-preservation came to her rescue, adding tactics to inclination. 'We need your help.'

'My . . . help . . . ?' His confusion helped her. 'But. . . I thought I was the one who was supposed to be in trouble. Aren't you dummy2

supposed to be investigating me, Miss Fielding-ffulke?'

'"Fielding" — ' Everyone who wanted to shit on her waved that ridiculous name in her face ' — just "Fielding", please, Dr Audley.'

'No "ffulke"?' He cocked an eyebrow at her. 'But that's a fine old name, Miss Fielding-ffulke: Rudyard Kipling chose it in Puck of Pook's Hill — which is one of our favourite books,

"ffulke" — Fulke ... he was the double-agent — the traitor. He was the one whom the Lord of Pevensey "turned round" to save England from Robert of Normandy, Miss — Fielding-ffulke.' The eyebrow lowered. 'So ... whose side are you on now?'

Ian loomed up at her side — like the old Ian, at need: like the older Ian, when they'd worked together. 'Didn't your telephone-caller of last night tell you all about us, Dr Audley?' Ian-like, he didn't try to give a smart answer to a silly question.

'He did — yes.' No expression for Ian. 'He said you were investigating me. And he didn't suggest that I should be flattered, either.'

'We're only trying to find out the truth about Philip Masson's death, Dr Audley.'

'Only the truth? Well-well!' Audley sneered at the word, just as Mitchell had done before him. 'I wish you the worst of luck then, Mr Robinson.'

'You don't fancy the truth?' Against Audley's sudden dummy2

unpleasantness and the sense and the thrust of his own question, Ian was as respectful as a curate with a bishop nevertheless.

'My dear fellow! I've spent two-thirds of my life looking for the truth. But only in relation to other people, of course —

just like you. The truth about myself... and my many wicked deeds ... is quite another matter.' Cutting his losses, Audley became pleasant again. 'But you must forgive my bad temper

— or make allowances for it, anyway. Because I am on holiday. And with my family — ' He raised a big blunt-fingered hand ' — and yes — I do realize that Dr Goebbels and many other villains — probably Attila the Hun, too —

were good family men, who loved their children, and their wives, and also went on holiday ... I realize that, Mr Robinson!' He smiled a terribly ugly smile, not at all sweetly, in spite of his best efforts. 'But . . . would you like all your little secrets dragged into the harsh light of day? Or of print

— in some book, or some yellow tabloid rag?'

'No.' Ian shook his head, still curate-respectful. 'Especially if they involved the death — or the murder — of another human being, Dr Audley . . . No — I certainly wouldn't like that.'

'I didn't mean that, Mr Robinson. I meant exactly what I said.' Audley twisted slightly, peering down beside the monument where there was a gap in the rocks, as though to make sure that his wife and daughter were not within earshot. 'As it happens I have been "involved", as you put it dummy2

so delicately, in the death of a number of human beings over the years. Since before you were born, in fact, Mr Robinson.'

The sneer was back. 'I started young, when I didn't know any better, with anonymous Germans in Normandy, saying

"shoot" to my gunner — second-hand work even then, you might say.'

He was that old! thought Jenny. But of course he was, and Cathy Audley had said as much; and even Philly himself had been killing Chinese — anonymous Chinese in Korea only a hand's-breadth of years after Audley's war; and Audley hardly looked older than Philly had done, that last time, when he'd turned up out of the blue at the end of her Finals

— Philly! Oh Philly!

'Ian — Mr Robinson — isn't talking about ancient history, Dr Audley,' she said sharply.

'Neither am I, Miss Fielding.' Audley almost sounded hurt by her sharpness. 'But ... old men have a habit of remembering the wounds they had on Crispin's day.' He shrugged. 'As it also happens ... I had no hand in your godfather's death, for what it's worth — ' He raised his hand as her mouth opened '

— oh yes: I know all about him . . . And by "all" I do mean all, Miss Fielding. Because I investigated him, once upon a time . . . Or, rather, twice upon a time: first, before he died, because we needed to know who he really was . . . and then afterwards, when we wanted to know why — or what . . . and then who and how, as well as why.' He stared at her for a moment. 'He was quite a man, was your godfather . . . But, dummy2

then, you know that already.'

He was quite a man, too! She started to think. But then she fought against the thought, amending it mutinously: whatever he was, he was also a clever man — and even that instant of mutual recognition might be part of his cleverness, like a python hypnotizing its prey before swallowing it! So now he was trying to make her think what he wanted her to think, perhaps?

'I know it suited you when he died, Dr Audley.'

'Did it? Well . . . perhaps it did. And perhaps it didn't. Who can tell?' He shrugged again. 'What I know is ... that it doesn't suit me now to be bothered by you. Because I have other work to do — more important work than having to worry about you.' Now, at last, she got his purely-ugly face.

'Which is why I asked "whose side are you on?", Miss Fielding.'

'But you're on holiday now, Dr Audley. So we're not wasting your official time, are we?' Ian came in again, playing uncharacteristically dirty.

'I don't suppose it would do any good if I told you I have an alibi?' Audley ignored Ian. 'I flew back to Washington the Tuesday after we killed O'Leary — the Tuesday after the Saturday when my very dear Frances died — ?' He switched to Ian suddenly. 'No — ?'

It was the wrong appeal, to the wrong person.

'No.' Audley nodded. 'I didn't think it would.' He sighed. 'And dummy2

you're quite right, of course! It's like an old friend of mine is always reminding me, about what the centurion said to Christ, according to St Matthew: "I am also a man under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this Go!

And he goeth".' He gave them both a twisted grin. 'It's what he calls "one of the hard sayings". Meaning that authority and action and responsibility are all the same thing in the end. So that won't do will it?' He smiled at her. 'So we have a problem. Because you won't believe me unless I tell you what I'm not at liberty to tell you. And even if I do tell you, then you may choose not to believe me. So I'm into a Catch-22

situation, it seems.'

'And so are we, Dr Audley.' If Ian had liked the St Matthew throwaway line, he didn't show it. 'Didn't he say — on the telephone?'

'Oh yes!' Audley bowed slightly. 'You've "raised the devil" — ?

And now he's after you — is that it?'

Suddenly Jenny wanted Reg Buller badly. Audley was playing with them, and Ian was still too screwed-up about Frances Fitzgibbon to think as straight as he usually thought. And even she was having trouble with Audley's sharp image imposed on her memory of Philly.

'Where's Reg, Ian?' What they needed was Reg Buller's no-nonsense brutality: Reg had no hang-ups about Philly or Frances, let alone Audley.

'Yes — ' Ian raised his binoculars again ' — he has rather taken his time. But — yes, he is coming now, Jen — see?' He dummy2

lowered the glasses and pointed at a distant dust-cloud in the valley between the Greater Arapile and the lower ridges opposite, across the intervening cornlands which had once been another foreign field that was for ever England.

'Actually . . . we've begun to think that it may not have been you, Dr Audley — see there, Jen — ?'

'What?' The information casually dropped after Ian's advice to Jenny, that Buller was approaching at last, caught Audley flat aback. 'What d'you mean?'

'Mrs Fitzgibbon — ' Ian squared his shoulders, while pretending to concentrate on the foreign field, like a French general watching the advance of the British Army ' — she was Paul Mitchell's girl, wasn't she, Dr Audley?'

That couldn't be the question — there had to be more than that!

'What?' Audley frowned.

It couldn't be the question — even though it fulfilled the 'I-already-know-the-answer' criterion.

'Frances Fitzgibbon was Paul Mitchell's girl — was she, Dr Audley?' But Ian stuck to his gun like a brave Frenchman with the dragoons upon him, nevertheless.

'No.' Audley shook his head slowly. 'Actually, she wasn't.

Although he would have liked her to be. But. . . she wasn't anybody's girl. Not even her husband's, I rather suspect. . .

But... I don't really see what Frances Fitzgibbon has to do with you, Mr Robinson.'

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'Or Paul Mitchell, Dr Audley?' Jenny came in on his flank.

'You asked us which side we're on, Dr Audley.' Ian came back on cue. 'But we don't know for sure whose side anyone is on, now. All we know is that we're in trouble — like Miss Fielding said. And we think you're the only person who may be able to help us.'

That really was the truth. And, of course, who better than Ian to pronounce it?

Audley relaxed, suddenly. ' Mitchell — Paul Mitchell —?' Then he laughed, but not happily. 'Oh yes — that would be it, of course! We laid the trail — and you picked it up . . . even after so many years ... is that it? Now I see! You think that Mitchell

— ? Because of Thornervaulx — ?' He completed the unhappy chuckle. 'It's what my dear wife always says: "too-clever-by-half" — and not half clever enough!' He looked at Ian, and then Jenny, and then away from both of them, down the hillside.

Jenny waited.

'Well, Miss Fielding — Mr Robinson — ' Audley came back to them, with a slow shake of the head ' — if you think that, then I think you're both in big trouble now.' He pointed down the hillside. 'So now we'll see?'

And then there was suddenly Reg Buller, stamping up out of the dead ground among the rocks.

And then there was Paul Mitchell with him —

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Reg Buller was puffing like a grampus, from his climb: Reg would be sweating now, even worse than she had done before the sun had dried her, here on the summit of the Greater Arapile.

But Paul Mitchell wasn't puffing: he was striding easily, swinging up a long black case — half briefcase, half violin-case — as he surmounted the last of the rocks.

'Paul.' Audley seemed neither surprised nor pleased. 'You took your time.'

'David!' Mitchell trod disgracefully into the midst of the crocuses, quite regardless of them. 'I'm sorry, David — ' He cradled the not-violin-case in his arms, to his breast, still crushing the flowers. 'Where's Faith? Where's Cathy, David

— ?'

'They're down below.' Audley nodded back towards the monument. 'Among the rocks. Sunbathing and reading. And possibly topless . . . Faith, anyway. Do you want me to call them?'

'No. They'll do well enough where they are.' Mitchell clambered up on to the uneven rocky platform on which the monument had been raised, setting the case down at his feet.

'No problem, David.'

'No problem,' Audley growled the words. 'You'd better be dummy2

right.'

'Now, David . . .' Mitchell continued to scan the landscape, quartering it segment by segment ' — when have I ever let you down?'

Audley stared at him, then shook his head resignedly.

And finally came back to Jenny. 'You've caused us a lot of trouble, Miss Fielding.'

'Correction: she's caused me a lot of trouble.' Mitchell stepped down from the platform. He looked untroubled, but decidedly rough and quite unlike his previous rather smooth self, thought Jenny unhappily: unshaven, with the beginning of a pronounced designer-stubble and an open-necked shirt inadequately tucked into a pair of shapeless old trousers, he might just have passed for a local. And, oddly enough, the net effect of this was to make him look younger and much more sexy (at least, for those who might be into younger men; but still not in the same class as Audley). 'You've caused me a lot of trouble, Miss Fielding-ffulke — and that's a fact!'

'I'm sorry, Dr Mitchell.' It was hard to think of this ragamuffin as Doctor Mitchell. 'But . . . you caused us some trouble, too. In fact, you frightened us.'

'So I gather.' Mitchell flicked a glance at Reg Buller, who was mopping his face with an enormous and very dirty handkerchief. 'So — I — gather!'

Jenny looked at Buller accusingly. 'Mr Buller — ?'

'Don't blame me, Lady!' Buller wiped his face even more dummy2

vigorously. "E caught me on the road, not long after you left me. An' . . .'e was very nasty, I tell you.'

'Oh yes?' There would be no help from Reg Buller now, that wonderfully authentic whine indicated: Reg knew which way the wind was blowing, and he always adjusted himself to his circumstances, which was the secret of his survival from many past disasters. So, in his new role as their unwilling employee he could no longer be relied upon. But that, in turn, freed her from employer's responsibility. 'So, do you still think Dr Mitchell is a murderer, Mr Buller?'

'I never said that, Lady — I never did!' Buller rolled his eyes, driven to over-play his role even more by such a direct accusation. 'It was Mr Robinson, more than me: I just reported what I found out — like you told me to.'

That shifted the whole weight to Ian, who hadn't said a word since the world had changed for them.

That's not true, Mr Buller — '

'It's all right, Jen.' Ian watched Mitchell.

'It was Mr Buller, Ian — '

'It's all right.' He dismissed her, having eyes only for Mitchell. 'And it's true, also.' He blinked for an instant.

'Maybe we made a mistake. Or ... maybe we didn't— ?' He faced Mitchell unashamedly. 'What was she really like, Dr Mitchell? Tell me?'

Mitchell stared at him. Then he turned away and reached for the case.

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'What was she really like?' Ian pursued Mitchell remorselessly.

'Let him be, Mr Robinson.' Audley took a step down from his eminence, to join them. 'This isn't the place — or the time.'

'Isn't it?' Ian didn't look at Audley: he watched Mitchell apply his thumbs to the two catches on the case, still concentrating on him. 'What was she like?'

'She was quite a girl — quite a woman.' Audley annexed the question gently, but firmly. 'But we didn't kill Philip Masson, Mr Robinson. I didn't give the order — and Dr Mitchell didn't carry out the order I didn't give.'

All the same, Audley was frowning: Audley was frowning, and Mitchell was working on the contents of the case — the bits of dull metal, which clicked and screwed and snapped together, as they had been carefully turned and crafted to do

— the bits (which were worse than useless by themselves: just bits of metal) became the usual things, custom-built and delicate and ugly: a long-barrelled rifle, slender and deadly.

'But you're quite right: she was something special.'

Audley saw that he was losing, and raised the stakes accordingly. 'But how the devil do you know that? You never met her — did you?' He shook his head. 'No! You couldn't have done.'

Mitchell had completed his work. It was designed to be completed quickly, and he knew his job.

'No.' He lifted the completed thing up, and squinted through dummy2

the telescopic-sight which had been its last attachment, staring first up into the sky, and then away across the valley, towards the railway station. 'I'll never hit anything with this

— not at any sort of range, with the first shot.' He took another squint, and then selected a little screwdriver from the case and made an adjustment. 'I ought to have a couple of sighting-shots, at five-hundred, and a thousand.' He looked up suddenly, and smiled at Jenny. 'But you can't have everything, can you?' He lowered the rifle, resting it carefully on his thigh, and picked out a long steel-nosed, brass-jacketed bullet from a compartment in the case, and opened the breach and snapped the bullet home. Then he set the rifle down and stood up.

'I was the one who was to blame, actually,' said Audley. 'At Thornervaulx.'

'But I was the one who should have got the bullet.' Mitchell examined the valley carefully, from the far-off white blue of the village, round the deceptive roll of the cornland between to where the track curved towards them. 'So it all adds up to the same thing, really.' He looked at Reg Buller suddenly.

'You were quite right, Mr Buller: if I'd thought of it ... then I might just have done it, at that!'

'No, you wouldn't have done: you're not that stupid,' snapped Audley.

'Aren't I?' Mitchell's mouth twisted.

'Yes.' Audley looked from Mitchell to Jenny, and then at Ian.

And then back to Jenny. 'We were working for Fred Clinton dummy2

then, Miss Fielding. And he had a rule — a very strict rule.

And Sir Jack has the same rule. It's what you might call our

"Rule of Engagement", from the Falklands War — ? Although it goes back much further: it goes back to Lord Mansfield giving judgement in the case of Eurdett v. Abbot, in 1812.'

'Uh-huh . . . Burdett v. Abbot — ' Mitchell swung towards Audley ' — you know, David, I never have been able to trace that exact case — not even though Jack Butler's so fond of quoting it at us, at regular intervals ... I asked a clever girl I know who works for the Law Society to trace it for me . . .

and she couldn't. So, maybe Fred just made it up — to annoy us?'

Ian stirred. 'What did — what was Lord Mansfield supposed to have said — ? In the case of "Burdett versus Abbot", Dr Audley?'

'Oh, it's quite simple, my dear fellow!' Mitchell annexed the question quickly. 'It's all to do with what you can do — and what you can't do — if you've taken the Queen's Shilling, as David and I have . . . Which puts us in quite impossible situations, of course — '

'But "if you don't like the heat in the kitchen" — then you add that, Mr Robinson, eh?' Audley relaxed. 'No one ordered you to visit the battlefield of Salamanca, did they? You came here of your own free will, I take it?'

What were they both driving at? 'But we haven't taken the . . . the "Queen's Shilling", Dr Audley.' Their own old rule dummy2

drove Jenny to defend Ian. 'We're just . . . journalists.'

'Doesn't make any difference, Miss Fielding.' A similar rule brought Paul Mitchell back. 'Not to you — not to Peter Wright, or Clive Ponting — or even to Kim Philby: whatever we are, or whatever we do, the same rule applies, according to Chief Justice Mansfield: " It is therefore highly important that the mistake should be corrected which supposes that an Englishman, by taking on the additional character of a soldier — " (but it doesn't matter what additional character you put on: soldier, or journalist, rat-catcher) " — puts off any of the rights and duties of an Englishman" . So how about that, then?'

Jenny thought, suddenly . . . 1812! Because now they were here, on the top of the Greater Arapile, where the Duke of Wellington had also ruled, on a military truth, in 1812, while Chief Justice Mansfield had ruled on this other legal truth.

'That's the second "hard-saying",' murmured Audley. 'Fred Clinton and Jack Butler, and St Matthew and Lord Mansfield . . . they all put us on our mettle.'

'Yes.' Mitchell was staring past him. 'And now Paddy MacManus is about to put us on our mettle, I rather think —

what can you see through those field-glasses of yours, Ian?'

He pointed into the great open sweep of the valley. 'What car is that — ?'

Ian lifted his binoculars, towards a distant dust-cloud on the track.

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'Mr Buller!' Mitchell didn't wait for an answer. 'You go down and say "hullo" to Mrs Audley, and Miss Audley — okay? And keep them down there, in the rocks, until I call you. And do be a good fellow, and make a noise when you're going down, so as not to embarrass Mrs Audley — okay!'

'It's a little car — a SEAT, or a Citroen — or a Renault ... a little car — ' Ian read back what he could see automatically.

That will do.' Mitchell was taking on his 'additional character'

now. 'Off you go, Mr Buller.'

'I'm goin' — I'm bloody-goin' — Dr Mitchell!' Reg Buller was going.

'It's a Citroen 2-CV, Dr Mitchell,' Ian confirmed his sighting.

'That's just fine!' Mitchell was Field-Marshal Montgomery and Alexander of Macedon. 'You stay up here, Mr Robinson: talk to Dr Audley about the battle of Salamanca — tell him how you would have fought it from here — okay?'

'Oh — that's just fine!' Audley complained as he surrendered.

'We walk up and down, to give him a target — ?'

'He doesn't want you, David. His payment is on Mr Robinson.' Mitchell looked at Ian. 'Are you prepared to walk, Mr Robinson?'

That was too much! 'Ian — '

'Shut up, Jen.' But he grinned at her. 'Like the man said —

" the rights and duties of an Englishman" — ? And ... at least I've got a better chance than Mrs Fitzgibbon had, this time —

haven't I, Dr Mitchell?'

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Mitchell picked up the rifle. 'Down there, Miss Fielding — on your tummy, by that flat rock — there? See?' He held the rifle to his chest with one hand and pointed with the other. The moment he gets out of the car, then I've got carte blanche, if he's got his rifle with him. And you can drop down then, Mr Robinson. And when you're down you stay down. Because I'm not at all sure that I can hit him, with this gun, at this range — not with my first shot, anyway.' He reached down into the open case, and scooped up a handful of the left-behind cartridges, and stuffed them into his pocket. And then grinned at Jenny. 'But... no problem, eh?'

It didn't seem like that at all, to her. But, then, it was quite out of her experience.

'What about behind us?' Audley's voice was cold. 'MacManus always operates with a partner — a back-up? And . . . my family is down there, Paul.'

'Don't worry about behind us.' Mitchell nodded at Jenny. ' If you please, Miss Fielding— ? Go!'

There was something in Mitchell's face which made any sort of protest contemptible, however much she wanted to argue with him, to assert herself.

So ... over the dead grass, and the scatter of autumn crocuses, to where he'd indicated, and down behind a safe rock —

Mitchell was saying something, behind her; and so was Audley — but she couldn't hear what they were saying. Then he was beside her — first, on his knees — on his knees, but dummy2

with the rifle carefully cradled in one hand, to keep it off the ground . . . and then easing himself carefully alongside her.

'No need to watch, Miss Fielding. In fact, I'd prefer that you didn't — you'll only distract me.' He took a khaki handkerchief from his pocket and spread it out behind the rock and put two of his spare cartridges on it. 'Nothing to see, anyway. He's just stopped to have a final look around, just in case.'

She lowered her head, keeping her eyes on him. Because there was something to see, of course — something she'd never expected to see at all, ever ... let alone like this, within touching distance: one man preparing to kill another man.

'And now there's a further delay — an unforeseen occurrence.' Mitchell was peering round the edge of the rock, keeping his own head low. 'There's a farm tractor coming behind him, towing a load of something. So he'll have to pull into the side to let it past, and wait for it to disappear. And he won't like that — not one bit.'

She could hear the tractor. 'Why not?'

'A witness.' He didn't look at her. 'Not that he plans to stay around afterwards, to be identified. And there'll be a different car waiting for him, another vehicle, anyway —

maybe a lorry, or something like . . . Goods for Portugal, maybe. We're only two or three hours from the frontier, after all.' He looked at her suddenly. '"Quickly in — quickly out": that's his usual method. You can never tell for sure, of course

— not with a wild animal. But it's always worked for him in dummy2

the past.' He returned his attention to the front again as the noise of the tractor's diesel rose. 'And he certainly doesn't want to hang about in Spain, that's for sure. He's taken one hell of a risk already, as it is ... Although his friends will have looked after him this far ... so they may have other plans for him now, at that!'

'His friends?' The sound of the tractor rose to a crescendo, but then suddenly died away as it passed the headland of the Greater Arapile and continued on towards the ridge behind them. 'His friends — ?'

'Now he's waiting again. And, if he's got any sense he'll turn round and wait for another chance . . . Go on, you bastard!

Turn round — there's a gap just ahead where you can do it easily! Don't be an idiot!' Mitchell drew a deep breath and stared fixedly into the valley, with his chin almost into the dirt. 'No ... of course you're not going to — are you! You missed out once — and the old juices are pumping now: this is what turns you on — ' He stopped suddenly 'Yes . . .

"friends", Miss Fielding. He did a difficult contract job for ETA a few years back — one the Basques didn't fancy doing themselves for domestic reasons. It was a car bomb, actually.

Although he prefers guns to bombs, himself. But it was a big bomb: it blew the damn car clear over the block ... so they owe him one.' Just as suddenly he turned to her again. 'And a penny for your thoughts now, Miss Fielding?'

There was something not right with all this. 'I'd like more than a penny's-worth, Dr Mitchell — ' She caught the edge of dummy2

her own doubt: why was he giving her so much, when he didn't need to?

He looked away again. 'Well . . . we'll see, eh? I'll ration the pennies, maybe — Ah! He's moving again . . . very slowly . . .

and now he's stopped again, at the gap . . . well, well! Does he smell a rat — does he?'

'How did he know we'd be here, Dr Mitchell.'

'Now that is asking.' Mitchell's chin was on the dirt now. 'We didn't know for sure ourselves, not at first: we did it by logic first — what we might have done, in your shoes, if we were stupid . . . before we managed to frighten one of Mr Reginald Buller's friends into confirming.' He slid the rifle forward, and applied the eye-piece of the telescopic sight to his left eye, adjusting its focus. 'It could ... just be ... that your Mr Buller isn't as clever as he thinks he is — ' With a deft little movement, quickly and yet unhurriedly, he extracted a small screwdriver from the breast-pocket of his shirt and made an adjustment to the sight ' — or ... judging by the way he got out of England with his little fat chum . . . with a certain country's CD plates on his luggage ... it could be that the devil you raised — Mr MacManus's employer, that is — is a very smart devil, as well as a very stupid one — ' He applied the eye-piece to his eye again ' — that will do.' He lowered the rifle for an instant, and looked at her squarely. 'We won't know until we ask him — will we, Miss Fielding?'

She wanted, quite desperately, to raise her head. And . . .

how could he be so cold-blooded, damn him! 'How are we dummy2

going to do that, Dr Mitchell — if you are about to kill him?'

'Kill him?' Paul Mitchell frowned at her for only a fraction of a second, before rolling back to his rifle, and bringing it up to his shoulder, and settling himself comfortably — long legs splayed out behind him, ankles flat to the dirt (one foot gouging away a swathe of autumn crocuses regardlessly).

'What d'you think I am — a murderer ... not that it wouldn't give me the greatest of pleasures — the greatest of pleasure . . . and it'd be a bloody-sight easier, too — don't look: he may spot your little white face over the top — '

What stopped her from looking, even more than his final shout, was that he wasn't looking at her: he had known, without looking, that she couldn't resist looking at the last —

The rifle kicked, sending a tremor through him and deafening her as he fired in the very instant that his order held her motionless, so that she witnessed the unforgettable professionalism of his second shot — the practised bolt-action-empty-cartridge-flying-out-live-round-off-the-khaki-handkerchief-slid-into-the-breach — bolt-snapped — rifle-up — aim — FIRE!

And then the whole thing started again —

But then stopped.

And then Mitchell's face momentarily sank on to his rifle, his unshaven cheek distorting it, with his eyes squeezed shut.

And with that all bets — all shouted orders — were off, and Jenny was on her knees, above the rock —

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The little car was moving again: it was backing, in a cloud of dust, down the track — it was turning — swerving and skidding in its own dust into the gap in the track behind it, in a racing turn-about, to escape —

'What's happening — ?' As she spoke, Mitchell stepped up beside her. 'Did you miss?'

'Yes. I missed.' He didn't look at her. 'One does sometimes.'

The Citroen's tyres churned up the track, with its little engine screaming at them to get it moving, so violently that it rocked and bucked this way and that before engine and tyres were both fighting to obey the driver.

'My rifle fires high, and to the right,' continued Mitchell. 'But he wouldn't have missed: he had a rather special gun, I think

— a Voss Special, I think they call it.' He shook his head sadly. 'I've never seen one of them — I've only heard about them. They're like the old buffalo-hunters' long rifles, only better: on a windless day they can manage a couple of miles, supposedly . . . It's got a very long barrel and a marvellous sighting-device.'

Noise filled the valley, drowning out the rest of Mitchell's excuse: there were dust-clouds on the top of the cornfield, where she had trailed up behind Ian, with her feet hurting; and there was a dust-cloud coming up the track from the village, round the rise of the field which was deceptively dummy2

flattened by the height of the Greater Arapile above it.

And — God! — there was even movement in the railway station, in the middle of nowhere, with men fanning out of the gap between its two buildings — and from behind them, with a single concussive bang, a red-winking rocket flared up, trailing a line of bright red smoke as it curved down towards the converging dust-clouds of the retreating Citroen 2-CV and the dther dust-clouds —

'I smashed the passenger's window, in the car, with that first shot.' Mitchell's voice came back almost to the conversational. 'I was only supposed to frighten him . . . But he didn't come up towards us — he went round to take aim over the bonnet — that's when I saw the Voss ... He was going to rest on the bonnet. So the second time I aimed for him.'

The dust-clouds still converged — even as the red smoke-trail descended, to bounce in a final red spark as it hit the field: the spark bounced brightly once, and then the smoke drifted away from the point where it vanished.

'I don't know where that second shot went.' Mitchell paused.

'I aimed . . . left . . . and slightly down ... I might have hit something — you never know ... I couldn't guarantee to hit a tyre, after that first shot, Miss Fielding — do you understand? Not at this distance — ?'

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The further of the two dust-clouds stopped suddenly, the two vehicles which had caused it slewing to the left and right so as to block the passage of the approaching Citroen. One of them was large and black and civilian, the other drab and military-looking: their doors opened even before they had halted, and their occupants tumbled out — Spanish Civil Guards from the military vehicle, in their distinctive black tricornes, and bare-headed civilians from the black car —

Mitchell was still speaking. But she had been so intent on watching the drama in the valley, trying to imprint every detail on her memory — this is something else I never thought I'd see!— that she hadn't taken it in. 'What?'

'I said . . . they took their bloody time.'

The Citroen had also stopped now, but well short of the road block — a hundred yards or more away from the Spanish Police.

'You knew they were coming?' It was a foolish question.

'Too-bloody-right!' He stared at the scene, frowning. 'You don't think we play silly games on our own in other people's countries? Not this sort of game, anyway — Ahh! He's thought better of it, by God!'

'What — ?' Something in his expression chilled her, in spite of the heat. But his words turned her away from him, back to the valley.

The Citroen was moving again, very slowly.

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'His moment-of-truth.' Mitchell murmured the words. 'Just like O'Leary ... it comes to them all sooner or later . . . later or sooner . . . But he's being — no! By God —

As he spoke the sound of the little car's engine changed, suddenly roaring in the great stillness of the yellow-and-red fields as the Citroen accelerated — with a new cloud of red dust, which had settled behind it, swirling up again as its tyres churned the track —

'He's making a run for it — that's my man!' breathed Mitchell.

The Spaniards at the road block were scattering — taking cover behind their vehicles.

'He'll never get through — '

In a tank maybe, thought Jenny. But a 2-CV was too little, too light —

Then the Citroen braked — its little red brake-lights were invisible in the dust and the sunlight, but it bucked and slewed sideways, until it was broadside in the track.

'He's turning round — '

'No he isn't — ' Paul Mitchell cut her off as the distant sound of the revving engine reached them again as the little car threw itself into the wire fence beside the road —

The fence bowed and shivered, and stretched on each side of the car for a moment, before the posts snapped and were pulled away as the car broke through into the corn stubble, throwing up an even greater dust-cloud as it started to climb dummy2

the slope — the same slope down which she'd walked, thought Jenny, suddenly torn between what she knew, and the old instinctive sympathy for any hunted animal with the pack in full-cry behind it — the fox breaking cover out of the spinney into open country, knowing that it had been cornered, but going for its own run-for-freedom nevertheless

—

The burst of gunfire, sharp and reverberating, with the echoes ringing across the valley from the Greater Arapile towards the opposing rocky plateau, changed the image: this was sun-baked Beirut again, with that same knock-knock-knocking —

But the dust-cloud was still moving. 'He's going to get away

— '

'No, he isn't.' Mitchell's voice was matter-of-fact, quite unemotional. 'See there — ?'

Up over the top of the cornfield, out of the dead ground from which the Redcoats had once marched towards the French, another of those malevolent army vehicles loomed up, trailing its own dust-cloud. And this one had its own little turret, like a miniature tank: it stopped suddenly as she watched it, and the turret began to traverse.

The Citroen changed direction, no longer trying to breast the rise, aiming now to escape beween two fires, along the curve of the field —

'Don't look — ' Mitchell caught her arm ' — Miss Fielding — '

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She pulled away from him — pulled away just as the long slender gun in the turret banged three times — a different sound from the preceding small-arms knocking . . . deeper and louder — and probably the loudest noise this peaceful valley had known since —

The Citroen was bowled over like a rabbit, rolling and exploding in the same instant, its four little tyres and underside visible for a last fraction-of-a-second before it became an incandescent ball of fire, shooting out flame and black smoke as it became unrecognizable.

'Don't look!' This time Mitchell's grip was irresistible: he swung her round to face him. 'He's dead now. He's no problem now — it's called "Shot while resisting arrest", Miss Fielding. So ... he's got no problems now, either: no one forced him to run, Miss Fielding ... do you see?'

It was strange how quiet it was. There had been the loudest bang! of all as the Citroen had exploded. But now she couldn't hear anything as she stared accusingly at Mitchell.

'You knew that was going to happen.'

'No. That is to say ... no ... I didn't know for sure.' He was stone-faced. 'But you don't need to waste any sympathy for him, Miss Fielding. He'd never met your nice Mr Robinson, who goes to church on Sundays. But he'd been paid to kill nice Mr Robinson, so that was what he was going to do — at maybe two thousand yards, and with a soft-nosed bullet. And that was what he was going to do ... and it frightened the shit out of me when he got out of his car, and the Spaniards dummy2

hadn't turned up, I can tell you.' His jaw tightened. 'Because then I had to decide whether I was going to shoot-to-kill, or not . . . And this contraption — ' He lifted the rifle ' — this was just supposed to be insurance. They said it wasn't really necessary, because they'd be here once he showed up. And then they offered me a hand-gun . . . But I didn't want to let him get that close. Because he's an expert, and I'm not—'

'No — ?' She remembered what Reg Buller had said. And what, from her own observation of only a few minutes ago (so little time?) . . . she also remembered.

'No — damn it — no!' He showed his teeth. 'You don't know what you're talking about, Miss Fielding. Whatever you think you know . . . you-don't-know — ' He let go of her arm, and straightened up. 'But I'm not about to tell you.'

What she knew was that she mustn't let him confuse her with either sincerity or very good acting: for some reason he had given her too much, up to now, but she didn't know why. And that was no reason to trust him now.

He looked away from her, dismissing her.

The unrecognizable wreck of the Citroen continued to blaze fiercely, with its black smoke rising up in a mini-mushroom-cloud in the still air. And the uniformed men were converging on it ... But the civilians were getting into their car — even as she watched the doors closed one by one, and then the car turned on to the track and moved slowly towards them.

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Then she realized that she was alone: Paul Mitchell was retracing his steps, back to the monument, walking across the autumn crocuses as though they didn't exist — as though she didn't exist —

'Dr Mitchell!'

He stopped, and turned. 'Whatever you want to know — you ask Dr Audley now, Miss Fielding. And I wish you joy of it.'

There was a knot in her stomach. Just as Audley had so strangely reminded her of Philly, now Paul Mitchell recalled Ian — the new Ian, for whom she also didn't really exist as she had formerly done.

He looked past her for an instant, then at her, very coldly. 'I must go and make our peace with the Spaniards. Not that it'll be too difficult, I suspect.' His mouth twisted. 'Don't worry —

they won't ask you any questions. Just so long as you go straight home now, and forget what you've seen.'

Her mouth opened.

'Oh yes — forget, Miss Fielding.' The twist became a travesty of a smile. 'A wanted man — a known foreign terrorist who has worked for ETA in the past? And I wouldn't like to guess what's happened to his little fat chum, either. So two known terrorists, believed to be working for ETA, have been shot by security forces, while resisting arrest. And that has nothing to do with any British tourists who may have been passing through, on their holidays: that wouldn't be good for the tourist industry, would it?' He flicked a glance past her for an dummy2

instant. The Spaniards have waited a long time to close the MacManus file, and balance their books. So this way there are no complications — no messy trial, or anything like that.

But next time ETA may not find it so easy to hire outside talent.'

Jenny watched him bend down, to disassemble the rifle and replace each bit of it in its place in the case — right down to retrieving a final round from his back pocket, and putting it too in its box, with the two empty cases of the bullets he'd fired. Then he looked up again. 'Of course, you may not want to forget — not after you've witnessed such a saleable event, eh? Pity you didn't have a camera!' He snapped the case shut and stood up. 'And the Spanish won't touch you, either.

Because, apart from being your father's daughter, you haven't done anything — have you?' He stared at her. 'Which is funny really, when you think about it. Because that's all your own work — ' He pointed into the valley ' — that, and what happened to John Tully.'

'John — ?'

'But you'll be in the clear there, too. He "surprised an intruder" . . . going through the files in his office. Only I'll bet there aren't any files on all this, because you'd only just started, hadn't you? And our chaps will not want to make a fuss about us, I shouldn't think . . . And I expect he was into a lot of other things, in any case. So, although they'll maybe want to talk to you, I doubt whether they'll ask any difficult questions. In fact, I guarantee they won't.' He gave her a dummy2

dreadful reassuring smile.

All my own work! She looked down at the old-and-new battlefield for a moment, suddenly aghast. 'But why — ?'

'But what?' He was waiting for her as she turned back to him.

'You don't need to feel too guilty, Miss Fielding. You have to earn your living, and this time you were trying to settle an old score — weren't you? And who can resist business and pleasure?' He pointed again. ' He bloody-well couldn't, anyway — not even when he knew the risk ... In fact, we're all in your debt for him — even though he wasn't the one you wanted.' He looked away suddenly. 'But I can't stay here philosophizing about guilt — David!'

'No — ' She couldn't let him go ' — why — why — did he come after us? You must tell me, Dr Mitchell — you must!'

'No I mustn't — David!' He didn't even look at her. That answer's more than my job's worth. If you want to know, then you ask old David — he's the one you came to ask, isn't he? David— '

Audley loomed large. But where was Ian?

'My dear Paul!' Audley looked at her vaguely for an instant.

'You were right . . . but only just, by heaven! So . . . don't you ever do that to me again.' He focused on Jenny. 'I sent Mr Robinson to reassure my wife, Miss Fielding. And to make his peace with my daughter. He seemed . . . rather cut up about deceiving her — I don't quite know why, but he did.'

That sounded more like the old Ian, she thought. But dummy2

then . . . what had they talked about, these last out-of-time minutes — ?

'I'm sorry, David.' Mitchell shrugged insincerely. 'Being right never seems to do me any good . . . But I must go and make our peace with Aguirre now. And then I'll come back and put you fully in the picture — okay?'

'Yes — you do that.' Audley still stared at Jenny. Tell him that I'm booked into the Parador near Victoria tomorrow night.

Because I want Cathy to see the battlefield there. And then we'll be gone the day after that — Hotel des Basses Pyrenees in Bayonne, which is safely out of his jurisdiction. I want her to see the Vauban fortifications there.'

Mitchell's mouth twisted. 'I'll tell him that. But . . . you tell Miss Fielding — whom Mr Buller always calls "The Lady" ...

or sometimes "That Lady" ... or sometimes just "Lady" . . .

whatever you want to tell her, David. She's full of questions.'

'Yes?' Audley didn't even watch Mitchell tread through the crocuses, as she did: he still seemed fascinated by her. But, although when she faced him she couldn't read his expression or his thoughts, she had the disconcerting feeling that he had been reading hers. 'He gave you a bad time, did he?'

'Not really.' More than ever he reminded her of Philly: Philly, not really in face or size, or even voice, but nonetheless indefinably Philly. So now she must really beware him. 'His rifle didn't shoot straight, Dr Audley. That may have put him in a bad mood.'

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'I doubt that.' He regarded her steadily. 'Paul usually hits what he's aiming at. He has a natural talent that way. But he just doesn't like squeezing the trigger.'

'That's not what I've heard. But it's early days yet. So I suppose I could be wrong.' Philly, defending one of his friends, would have said exactly that.

'You could be. And you are.' He gave her a little sad smile. 'It was the mention of Frances that unsettled him. It always does. And I'm afraid it always will.'

'He loved her — didn't he?'

'Oh yes.' The smile twisted. 'But that's not his problem, my dear. His problem is that he knows she didn't love him.

And . . . but we're not really discussing Frances Fitzgibbon, are we?' The sad smile faded. 'It's vengeance we're discussing

— and publication?'

He couldn't have had more than five minutes with Ian — or had time tricked her? But even only five minutes would have been enough for the new Ian to put his question. And if Audley had demanded a price for the answering then the new Ian would have paid at once, without a second thought, even though he believed he already knew the answer to it.

'You've been talking to my partner, Dr Audley.'

He nodded. 'I have had that opportunity — yes.' He stared at her in silence for a moment. 'And I must tell you that he no longer seems so keen on writing about me, Miss Fielding.'

Surprise, surprise! But . . . there were plenty more fish in the dummy2

sea, even if it would be hard to find one that swam so gracefully as Ian. 'I hope he didn't suggest that he was speaking for me?' It was the original Philly she must remember, not this equivocal copy.

'On the contrary. He made it abundantly plain that he was not speaking for you, Miss Fielding. And ... he explained your commitment.' Suddenly he looked away from her for an instant, down into the valley. But then came back to her.

'But, for his part . . . perhaps he remembers that old Chinese proverb about revenge?'

Jenny didn't look into the valley. If he thought he could weaken her so easily, then he was much mistaken. 'What proverb is that?'

'"He — or, in this instance, she, of course — she who embarks on revenge should first dig two graves", Miss Fielding.' He tried the valley again. 'The way you're going, it looks as though you'll need more than two, though.'

She summoned Philly to her aid. 'There was a grave dug before we started, Dr Audley. And we — I — didn't dig that one.'

No answer this time: he simply stared at her, testing her.

'You think we're digging our graves now?'

He tried once more, this time gesturing towards the new battlefield of Salamanca. 'Don't you think so, my dear?'

Now she had him. 'I don't quite know what to think yet.

Except ... at the moment the only people I know who might dummy2

want to stop us are yourself and Dr Mitchell.'

'And that man?' He repeated the gesture. (Big, blunt-fingered hand, quite unlike Philly's: she must hold on to that dissimilarity!) 'MacManus— ?'

She could shake her head honestly. 'I don't know who sent him. So ... it could have been you, Dr Audley.' Now she really had his attention. 'To frighten us off ... if Dr Mitchell doesn't like squeezing the trigger, as you say . . . Because you do seem to have succeeded in frightening my partner. And what happened to John Tully certainly frightened me.' The thought of John Tully came to her shamefully late. But, having come, it allied John to Philly and finally hardened her heart against Audley. 'John Tully was acting under my orders, Dr Audley. So what happened to him is my responsibility, St Matthew would say.' She clenched her teeth, knowing that she had almost betrayed Philly because of a freak imagined resemblance which had knotted her up.

But now that was in the past, and she was herself again. 'And Burdett versus Abbot also cuts two ways, Dr Audley: if you think I'm going to walk away and forget John Tully, then you have the wrong woman — ' Even, in fairness, she must make it stronger than that ' — and the wrong journalist.'

He looked at her for what seemed an age. But finally he nodded. 'Well . . . suppose I told you a story, then? How would that be?'

'A story?' Careful, now. 'Fact or fiction?'

'Just a, story, Miss Fielding. An old Chinese story— ?'

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'With nothing promised on either side?'

'With nothing promised on either side — of course!'

'Then I'd listen.' Suddenly she had to play fair with him: that much, from their first sight of each other, she owed him.

'With all my "rights and duties" relating to Philip Masson and John Tully protected, Dr Audley?'

He nodded again, and the compact was made. 'There was this problem in this Intelligence department, nine years ago —

nine years, give or take a few months, either way-'

'Research and Development — '

' This department — ' He cut her off sharply — ' — because its director was retiring . . . and his deputy had just dropped dead in his tracks, of over-work and a dickey heart. So the question was . . . who was going to run the show?'

The compact had been made, so all she had to do was to nod.

'It was an important job. Because, whoever got it, it opened up a lot of secret — very secret — ultra secret files to him —

okay?'

Him wasn't okay. But she had to ride that, this time. So ...

another nod.

'So we had to get the best man for it — '

She didn't have to ride that. 'But there were two best men, weren't there?' And then she had to pin him down. 'Philip Masson and Jack Butler. And you wanted Jack Butler.'

He looked down on her, and his face became quite dummy2

beautifully ugly. 'It really is quite irrelevant now who wanted who, Miss Fielding. Or, anyway, quite unimportant in this context ... so please don't interrupt.' He set his jaw. 'There was of course the usual manoeuvring and lobbying and fixing that one expects on such occasions — ' Then his face broke up almost comically ' — actually, Fred and I both wanted Jack. And we underestimated the opposition, too. And perhaps that isn't irrelevant, I agree! Because they started testing poor old Jack, to see how he'd measure up. And neither Fred nor I expected that.' He paused. 'And then, so it seemed, Jack nearly got killed on the job — twice in the same week . . . And the second time was within a hair's breadth, so we thought.'

'But it was the other candidate who died, Dr Audley — '

He stared her down — just as Philly had used to do. 'That was an accident, we supposed. And it wasn't our business to inquire into it: that was a police job first, and then Special Branch, with MI5 in reserve.' He drew a breath. 'And they didn't find one thing out of place — anymore than we did, later on.' He let the breath out with the words. 'Everybody did his job properly, believe me.' Finally he nodded.

'Whoever did it was a real pro. And, as Paddy MacManus was O'Leary's side-kick and junior partner then, maybe it was him . . . But we don't know, now . . . And then, when they'd given it a clean bill-of-health, we were quite relieved. Because it took all the heat off Jack Butler, so he got the job. And because all we were concerned with was why they were dummy2

trying to kill him, you see — do you see?'

Jenny didn't see. What she saw, in the next second, was that the little car was still burning in the valley: as always, it was amazing how long a collection of bits of metal burned, once they took fire. 'Why — ?'

He shook his head at her. 'This isn't the Middle East, Miss Fielding: we don't go round killing their chaps. And they don't go round killing ours — it's bad for business.' His lip curled. 'You journalists steal stories from each other, and that's fair enough. But if you started killing each other every time, then you'd pretty soon have a recruitment problem —

especially if the editors started knocking each other off, as well, eh?' He shook his head again. 'No . . . putting O'Leary on to Jack Butler was too heavy to ignore: we had to sit down and find out why. Because Jack's a great chap. But he's not irreplaceable — even after your godfather's "accidental"

death there were other candidates — ' The lip curled once more ' — including me even, faute de mieux . . . Except that I wasn't willing. Because I don't like the paperwork — the managing, as they say? Because I'm not a civil servant at heart: I'm a leopard who's too old to change his spots, Miss Fielding.'

Arrogant bugger! But then Philly had been pretty arrogant, too! But . . . she mustn't interrupt —

'So there had to be a reason.' He repaid her restraint by continuing. 'And we very soon came up with one. Because Jack was promoted, then he had access to a lot of highly-dummy2

restricted files. So we thought . . . once he sees those files, then he'll see something no one else has, maybe? So ... they can't afford for him to see them . . . maybe?'

He looked at her, and she realized that he wanted her to react now, to prove that she understood. 'Like . . . there was a traitor somewhere? What Mr Le Carre calls "a mole" — ?'

He shrugged. 'Yes. Or ... it could be that they'd deceived us somehow, with a piece of disinformation. They're damn good at that — feeding us with a great big pack of lies ... or feeding the Yanks, or the Frogs, or the Krauts ... or Mossad, and then they feed us . . . and we all believe it, and act accordingly — ?'

He almost grinned at her, but didn't. 'If you start off from the wrong place, then you usually end up at the source of the Nile, and you think you've made a great discovery. So you don't notice the boat they've moored on the Thames, alongside Westminster . . .' He repeated the almost-but-not-grin. 'Don't ask me, Miss Fielding. Because I won't tell you.'

But he was self-satisfied. So he had come up with an answer.

And all he wanted to do was to wrap up the question in the Official Secrets Act, so that he could shrug off his answer, in turn. So she had to get the question right. 'But . . . you had Sir Jack Butler there, beside you, after that. So . . . if he did see those files — ?'

David Audley beamed at her. 'Absolutely right, Miss Fielding: we had him there beside us — ' Then the beam dulled.

'What's the matter, Dr Audley?'

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'Nothing — ' He was uneasy for a moment. Then he was himself again. ' — your Mr Ian Robinson is talking to my wife, with your Mr Buller . . . and to my daughter. And I was merely wondering what they were saying down there — ' He jerked his head ' — in the rocks down there — ?'

Jenny remembered the pointy-eared fox, which was also somewhere down there in the rocks. But it was beyond her imagination, what they were all up to now, down there: Ian and Reg and the pointy-eared fox, never mind Audley's wife and his daughter, after Paul Mitchell's two failed shots, and then that burst of gunfire, the turret-gun's concluding broadside.

But there was no one there in the rocks. 'What did you discover, Dr Audley?'

He made another ugly face. 'It took us a long time, Miss Fielding. And Paul Mitchell worked longer than I did.' He stared at her, and then nodded. 'Because your Mr Robinson is right — O'Leary wasn't enough for him: he wanted whoever was behind what happened at Thornervaulx.' Nod.

'And so did I, come to that.' Another nod. 'But for a quite different reason.'

'A quite different — ?'

He shook his head again. 'But we didn't find anything — not even with old Jack alongside us: we didn't find a damn thing: not a happening, not a policy, not a name, not even a smell —

nothing.'

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Jenny junked Paul Mitchell with Frances Fitzgibbon: they had been, respectively, infantryman and infantry-woman who had fought and died in the front line, and of no interest to the historian's deeper truth.

'Paul worked all hours God sent — 8 A.M. to midnight. Or later, sometimes, I suspect.' Audley tested her. 'I don't know ... I went home each night. But he was always there next morning, when I came in, Miss Fielding.'

As with Reg Buller, so with David Audley. And as with Reg Buller, so with Ian Robinson too: whatever spell she cast across the years from Thornervaulx, Frances Fitzgibbon really must have been quite a woman, to ensnare them all like this, in all their different ways, thought Jenny enviously.

Except that Frances- Marilyn Fitzgibbon- Francis was dead now: so sod her!

So she waited.

'One morning, I came in ... And Paul said "There's nothing here, David; the bastards have beaten us. Or Jack can't remember anything, anyway. So, even if O'Leary hadn't been so damned incompetent and done the job properly . . . either at the University, or at Thornervaulx ... it wouldn't have made any difference. Because there's nothing here."'

Jenny still waited.

'And then it was easy, of course.' Audley nodded.

'Easy?' He wasn't talking about the woman now.

'O'Leary was the best — the best, Miss Fielding.' He nodded.

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'Your Paddy MacManus wasn't in the same class: he was just a pale carbon-copy of the real thing.' He cocked his head dismissively towards the dispersing column of smoke in the plain between the Greater and Lesser Arapiles. 'O'Leary might have screwed up once, if he'd had very bad luck. And he did have very bad luck, when Frances Fitzgibbon turned up out of the blue, at Thornervaulx. But he didn't have any bad luck at the University. And he must have had Jack Butler right in his sights at Thornervaulx.' He stared at her. 'What my old Latin master used to say . . . God rest his lovely soul! . . . was that "nonsense must be wrong!", Miss Fielding.'

Still, he stared. 'What if O'Leary didn't screw up? What if he did exactly what they paid him to do — to make us concentrate on Jack Butler — and not on Philip Masson?'

'And then it was easy', just as he had said: it was like the scales falling from her eyes, in the Bible story she'd once had to learn by heart, to take her O-level Religious Studies exam.

He saw that she understood. 'The irony is that dear Frances deceived us both: because of her we both had blinkers on: we couldn't think of anything except her — and Jack Butler. And we weren't getting any answer because we were asking the wrong question. But we got there at last, anyway.' Audley nodded. 'Your "Philly" was a great guy, Miss Fielding: we did him over after that, right from his birth to what we no longer believed was his accidental death. Although we still believed that he'd been drowned, of course — we never expected him to turn up again. And it took us a long time, I can tell you . . .

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Because we couldn't ask any of our questions obviously — in case we alerted the Other Side.' Nod. 'Because, either way —

if he was theirs, or if he wasn't — we didn't want to let them know that we were on to them. Because that would have given the game away.'

Jenny felt her mouth fall open.

'No — he wasn't on their side, my dear.' Audley reassured her quickly. 'Your "Philly" was absolutely on ours, you have no need to worry.'

She wasn't worrying; it was insulting even to suggest that.

They simply didn't want him to see one of our most secret files — that's all, Miss Fielding.' He accepted her silence gently. 'And it took three of us — Mitchell and me, and someone I cordially detest — four months to find that file: three of us, and four months of hard labour ... So that I know all about you, and your father as well as Philip Masson — all about the Korean War, and how he won his Military Cross ...

I know all about that. . . And about his career, after that. And his hobbies — and his girl-friends . . . and the girls he took on that boat of his — the Jenny III was it? ... And when he took you for a holiday in France, that time — in that cottage in the Dordogne — ?' The next nod was expressionless. 'Because your father was worried about that: because you were only fifteen years old, and he thought his old friend might just fancy you — ? And his tax returns — everything, Miss Fielding.'

Jenny felt the sun burning her head, but a dreadful chill far dummy2

below, where it hurt. 'That's ridiculous — '

His mouth twisted again. 'That's what we thought at the time, Miss Fielding.'

God! They hadn't quite got it right, even though they were clever — and even though Daddy had appeared then, out of the blue! Because it had been her — almost-sixteen-year-old-Jenny — who had had hot-pants for him, without knowing how to take desire further, when he'd discouraged her —

God!

But she didn't even want to think about that now. 'Who killed him, Dr Audley?' She felt empty as she rammed the question at him. 'Who killed him?'

He relaxed. 'Oh, come on, Miss Fielding! You know I can't answer that!'

He was also like Mitchell: of course he was like Mitchell!

But . . . she would never have a better chance than now.

'Then I'll have to work harder, Dr Audley — to find out for myself. With or without Ian. And it may not be such a good book without him. But there are other writers who'll work for me.'

'Whatever the risk?'

She shrugged. 'Maybe I'll write it myself.' She put on her obstinate face. 'Someone had him killed. And I'm going to ruin the bastard — whoever he is.'

He nodded. 'You really did love him.' The nod continued.

'And not just like a good god-daughter, of course!' The dummy2

nodding stopped. 'Well, then I shall have to tell you the rest of the story, Miss Fielding.'

He was too sure of himself for comfort. 'I'm listening, Dr Audley.'

He stared at her in silence for a moment. 'It hasn't occurred to you that your revenge has already been accomplished?'

Somewhere in the stillness of the valley an engine started up.

Jenny was drawn towards the sound: the armoured personnel vehicle with the little turret-gun had started up; nearer to them, at the foot of the plateau in the gap in the fence beside the track, Paul Mitchell was in earnest conversation with one of the Spanish civilians; and the shapeless wreck of the little 2-CV was smoking now, rather than burning.

She felt quite empty. He hadn't mentioned a country, let alone a name. And of course he never would. And it didn't have to be a Russian name, or any one of half a dozen of their East European surrogates. Or it could be an Arab name. Or even an Israeli name. Or it could just conceivably be some clean-cut, crew-cut American. Or, as an ultimate possibility, a Savile-Row-suited Englishman.

'Are you saying that he's dead, Dr Audley?'

'No, Miss Fielding. That's a lie I'm not prepared to tell you.

Because we're not into that sort of vengeance: it's not what we're hired for.'

She remembered what Reg Buller had said. 'You don't do dummy2

wicked things like that — ?'

A curious expression passed across his face. 'No, Miss Fielding. We don't do wicked things like that. Killing is too simple for us: we want more than that. Killing wouldn't give us our proper satisfaction.'

'More?' She couldn't read his face at all. 'Proper — ?'

'Oh yes. When you've been deceived — as we were deceived . . . and for a long time before Philip Masson was killed — the trick is to continue the deception. But you turn it round the other way.' He smiled with his lips. 'It's like, if you find a traitor in the ranks, there's no point in arresting him.

He'll only get a successor — probably someone you don't know. So you leave him where he is.' The not-smile widened.

'Ideally, of course, you turn him around — that's what Masterman did during the war, with his Germans . . . But that's very risky these days, when a man can be ideologically bent ... So you leave him. Or you promote him, even: you make him even more successful, even more valuable to them . . . But this wasn't quite like that — ' He raised his hand. ' — no, Miss Fielding! That's as far as I can go there. So don't ask.' The not-smile became even uglier. 'Our first problem was to make them think that we were still deceived, back in '78 — or '79, as it soon was ... So we put out rumours that the wicked Dr Audley had maybe had your godfather pushed off his little boat, suitably weighted. And had then stifled any sort of investigation by pretending to investigate the matter himself.' He nodded. 'All to ensure Jack Butler's dummy2

promotion, of course . . . And you, of course, duly came upon those rumours . . . nicely matured by the years?'

She nodded. But the devil in the back of her brain leered at her. 'But I mustn't believe them now — is that it? Because I must believe you now?'

'You must believe what convinces you, Miss Fielding.' His mouth set hard.

She had cut deep, justly or not. 'I believe that Philly — that my godfather was murdered nine years ago, Dr Audley. And I also believe that John Tully is dead. And I need a much better answer to John Tully.'

'Ah . . . that's fair enough.' He agreed readily, almost like a judge taking an objection. 'As to poor Mr Tully, I can't answer you with any certainty — I can only hazard a guess there, Miss Fielding.'

'A guess?' The devil shook his head warningly.

'Yes ... I think maybe we've not been as clever ... or as clever for as long ... as we thought, perhaps.' He made a face.

'Nothing lasts forever. And . . . we've been running our Masson deception for a long time, now.' One huge shoulder lifted philosophically. 'They may have tumbled to it . . .Or, they may suspect, honestly I don't know. But I rather fear I'll be working on that when I get back to London — while my dear wife and daughter are spending my money in Paris — ?'

The great once-upon-a-time rugger-playing shoulder rose again. 'Did they teach you seventeenth-century poetry at dummy2

Roedean, Miss Fielding?'

'Poetry — ?' The man was dangerous.

'No! It was biology, wasn't it!' Audley grinned. 'I remember ...

No — there was this seventeenth-century poet, writing his love-poem to chat this girl up — Andrew Marvell, it was . . .

And he said, when you can't delay things, then you ought to hurry them up: " Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still . . . yet we will make him run" — or something like that — ?' He blinked disarmingly. 'It could be that they want to make a dirty great big scandal of it now, with questions in the House of Commons — ? Because we're not going to reveal what we've been doing — never in a month of Sundays! So ...

your Mr Tully was a paid-up member of the National Union of Journalists. And you can kill soldiers, or you can kill

"innocent bystanders" . . . But when you start to kill journalists — paid-up NUJ freelances, no less! That really puts the cat among the pigeons, Miss Fielding.' He raised an eyebrow. 'And your Ian would have been worse than Tully.

Because he's well-liked ... So "Heads, we don't win — tails we lose"?: the media will love another Intelligence scandal too, after Peter Wright and Spy-catcher. And the other side's disinformation-people know just how to feed in a tit-bit or two of genuine scandal. Plus our original rumours, too. And, of course, the word will be out that Jennifer Fielding is preparing a shock-horror revelation — right? But not Ian Robinson — ?'

He was playing dirty. So she could play the same game.

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'Whereas in fact you were very clever? Is that what I'm supposed to say?'

He looked down at her, almost proudly. 'Not very clever, Miss Fielding. But we did take your revenge for you even if we didn't kill him. Because we made a fool of him for a few years. And when his masters found out about that — which they've either just done ... or maybe it was a year or two back . . . then he would have gone down a very long snake on the board, I rather think.' He shrugged. 'We can never do what we'd like to do. We have to settle for what we want. So our satisfaction is usually somewhat muted, you see. But we have assuredly ruined him, you can depend on that. And maybe worse.'

She saw. 'And I must believe all this — ?'

'You must believe what suits you. Or ... you can ask Mr Robinson what he believes, if you prefer?'

Jenny thought of Ian suddenly. 'Ian asked you a question, didn't he? About Mrs Fitzgibbon, was it — ?'

'Yes.' She was rewarded with another of his odd faces. 'I must say that you did very well there: I'm surprised — and a little disturbed — that you got so close to her, after all this time.

Because you wouldn't have got it from Paul ... of that, I'm sure.' He frowned. 'But . . . you're certainly in the right job, anyway.'

He was flattering the wrong partner, thought Jenny grimly.

'What was the question?'

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'The question?' He frowned again. 'Don't you — ' A slight sound, as of a stone dislodged somewhere behind her, cut him off. 'Ah! I think that's my wife coming — '

'What was the question, Dr Audley?'

Audley looked at her. 'He wanted to know who Frances Fitzgibbon shouted at, that day at Thornervaulx: whether it was at the man O'Leary, or at Paul Mitchell, Miss Fielding.'

'At — ?' The scene Reg Buller had described suddenly came back to her, and with all the more vividness for its contrast, here on the top of the Greater Arapile: not fierce Spanish sunlight, in the midst of a brown rocky wilderness only softened by autumn crocuses, but the pouring rain, and the sodden grass and fallen leaves, and the great grey ruins of Thornervaulx Abbey.

'Yes.' He misread her expression. 'He knew the answer, of course. But it was still a good question. With a rare answer.'

The two places had nothing in common.

'When she saw O'Leary at Thornervaulx that day, she must have thought he was going to kill one of them — Paul, or Jack Butler. . .And Jack Butler for choice, maybe. But, of course, we don't exactly know what she thought. Because she died in Paul's arms, without saying anything.'

Or, maybe, there was something: there was violent death —

here, today and long ago, and at Thornervaulx, nine years ago, on a wet November afternoon.

'But, even though she didn't have a gun, she was safe enough, dummy2

anyway — '

Philly was the link — Philly and Audley —

'Only, if she shouted at Paul, that would have alerted him too late — either for himself, or for Jack Butler. Because O'Leary had a clear view of them both, by then — '

Mrs David Audley was tall and blonde, and a lot younger than her husband: obviously, she liked older men too, even though she was smiling at Ian as he helped her up across the rocks from below —

'So she shouted at O'Leary, Miss Fielding. And she must have known that he'd think she had a gun.' Audley glanced towards his wife for a second, to make sure she was far enough away. 'I didn't actually see it happen. But I saw something like it happen in the war, once . . . It's not a thing you forget: one human being dying for another, in cold blood.' He nodded slowly at her. 'She was quite a woman, was Frances. But I think she'd prefer not to have any publicity now.'

' David!' Mrs Audley didn't sound too pleased.

'Hullo, love!' Audley looked at Jenny for one last fraction of a second after acknowledging his name. 'What you must decide, Miss Fielding, is what your godfather would have wanted you to do. That's all.' He turned back to his wife.

'Love — I don't think you've met Jenny Fielding — ? She's a friend of Willy Arkenshaw's, and she's dying to meet you.'

Jenny saw Ian behind Mrs David Audley. And, behind Ian, dummy2

Miss Cathy Audley, bright and pointy-eared as the fox in the rocks down below.

And Reg Buller, finally.

And Reg Buller, knowing everything and nothing, had eyes for her only. Because she would sign his account, and agree his expenses. And they were both still alive.

'Lady—?'

Tomorrow was another day, he was saying.

EPILOGUE

Another conversation which never took place

'I'm not at all pleased with the way this wretched affair finally turned out, Latimer.'

'Yes, I do agree. It was quite unnecessarily violent. But that's the Spaniards for you. And they are actually rather pleased with us: they've wanted to settle with that Irishman ever since the Basques hired him to blow up that general of theirs.'

'They left it damnably late, though. Aguirre could have taken the man long before. Straight off the plane, in fact —

with no shooting. And no risk to Audley's family — I really didn't like that at all, Latimer.'

'Yes. But we couldn't tell Aguirre what to do, Jack — could we? And, of course, I suppose he wanted as many of MacManus's ETA contacts as possible: it was obvious that dummy2

the man would call in their help to trace Audley once he knew where Fielding and Robinson were going.'

'And how the devil did he know that?'

'We're not quite sure, as yet. But he did have the Romanians to help him, of course. And they could have leaned on one of Buller's friends just as we did. But Aguirre assured me there'd be no risk to Audley.'

'There's always a risk . . . And there's also the death of that fellow Tully. The Special Branch has already been on to me about that. They seem to think MacManus was responsible.'

'Yes . . . well, that was a little rumour I let slip on the grapevine, Jack. So now that he's dead they'll most likely settle for "person or persons unknown", I shouldn't wonder.'

'But Mitchell says it wasn't MacManus.'

'No, I agree. It was most likely one of the Romanians — the Departamentul de Informatii Externe doing its stuff . . .

Mitchell's pretty sure that MacManus's minder was one of their officers. And it seems they're missing one of their trade attachés, so that fits. Plus Masson was their murder-victim originally, of course: the whole thing was their project, ab initio . . . '

'And they've caused all the trouble now. Damned Romanians! I'd almost rather deal with the Russians, I sometimes think.'

'Yes . . . well, I rather hope we can leave it to the Russians to sort out now, Jack. Because they're not at all pleased with the dummy2

Departamentul as of now. In fact, there are going to be some heads rolling before very long. We may even pick up a defector or two — I have had a word with Jaggard about that, actually.'

'Well, just make sure it doesn't get into the newspapers.

Otherwise it'll only stir up that damn Fielding woman even more.'

'She doesn't know anything about the Romanian connection, Jack.'

'But she can put two-and-two together. And Audley's already told her far too much for my liking. I don't know what he was playing at, frankly.'

'Oh . . . David was taking a calculated risk. And for once I must support him, Jack. Because we really cannot afford the publication of another book. And particularly a book about R

& D ... So he really had to stop her somehow.'

'By telling her everything?'

'He didn't tell her everything, exactly . . . But, look at it this way, Jack: the Russians will rein in the Romanians now —

they know that no one will believe the DIE wasn't acting on their orders. And they certainly wouldn't like everyone to know that the Romanians have been feeding our disinformation to Moscow all these years — '

'I'm not worried about them. It's the woman Fielding I'm concerned with: she's well-connected. And she's tricky, like all journalists. And the man Robinson, who writes her books dummy2

— he can't be trusted, either.'

'Oh, I don't think he'll write this one, Jack.'

'No? Why not?'

'He doesn't want to, apparently. And . . . he's about to get the offer of a rather nice research fellowship at Rylands College in Cambridge, I happen to know.'

'How do you know?'

'I have a friend there who is an admirer of his work. We've had a little talk, and we both think Mr Robinson will be happier in the groves of academe. And he has rather gone off Miss Fielding-ffulke, Mitchell says.'

I see. But that still leaves her, Latimer.'

'Yes. But . . . well, I think we can leave her to David now, Jack.'

'To Audley?But—'

'They've rather taken to each other. And David says that she could be very useful to us, in the right place and handled properly. And . . .'

'And?'

'And David also particularly wants to know who put her on to him in the first place. He says that Masson turning up like that again . . . that was pure accident. But the Honourable Jennifer Fielding-ffulke overhearing one particular piece of gossip about her beloved godfather . . . that was too much of a coincidence. And David doesn't like coincidences. And nor, dummy2

I must say, do I.'

'You mean . . . it wasn't the Romanians?'

'We're not sure. But we do have other enemies. And it's as well to know who they are, don't you think?'

'Very well. But only on the strict understanding that no positive action is to be taken — is that understood, Latimer?

Not by you — and not by Audley: no settling of scores —

understood? We've had quite enough of that in this affair already.'

'Understood, Jack. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord". I'll tell David that.'

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