'He was nothing. A Frenchman, I think. And scared out of his wits.
I never even gave him a chance to explain what he wanted. He just muttered something about Steerforth's cargo and I told him to go to hell. I can't remember anything more about him–except that I think he was quite relieved to clear off.'
That fitted too. The Belgian had been an ex-policeman with a dubious wartime record. He had readily admitted that he had been hired, and paid, anonymously to trace Steerforth's plane. There had been no mention of any missing property. But he had soon sensed something bigger and possibly more dangerous, and he had wanted no part of it, he said.
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A little man, but a big complication, thought Audley. He gave an extra dimension to the Steerforth mystery, which admitted only one explanation. But it was an explanation as yet without any facts to support it.
'Then there were your people,' said Jones. 'But you'll know all about that, I've no doubt.'
'There are two points I'm still unclear on,' said Audley slowly. 'You hardly knew Steerforth, yet you knew he was a selfish bastard?'
Jones nodded.
'I married his widow. My knowledge of Steerforth is second-hand, but I'd say it's better than first-hand really.
'When I decided to ask Margaret to marry me I wanted to make sure I didn't have a ghost lying in bed between us. Maybe some men could just forget that there was a past. I couldn't, because I just wasn't sure he was dead. So I had to exorcise him, alive or dead. To do that I had to make her tell me about him.'
'Wasn't that rather cruel?'
'If she'd loved him it would have been. But they didn't even like each other any more. Only she didn't know that until she'd heard herself say it–to me. Then I knew I wouldn't have to share her with him.'
Audley cast a sidelong glance at Jones. Half a loaf would never have been good enough for him. The file had assessed him as an innocent bystander whose involvement with Steerforth had been accidental. Only his subsequent marriage with the man's widow made him suspect. But now that too could be discounted. Not only dummy4
was there no likelihood that he was withholding anything on Steerforth, but it was unlikely also that Steerforth would have confided in a wife who bored him.
Nevertheless Jones's own assessment of that last flight tallied usefully with Butler's and his own: it had the smell of a put-up job.
The silence of the hillside was broken by the sound of a car climbing the gradient. As it reached the level stretch below them it began to accelerate, then slowed down and pulled into the verge beyond Audley's. Roskill got out and looked expectantly up at Audley.
Again he had the feeling that the action was outrunning the script.
For Roskill to disturb him like this only trouble was sufficient reason.
He stumped down to the road with undignified haste.
'I'm sorry to break in on you, Dr Audley,' Roskill apologised, 'but when I phoned in to the office to say I was coming home there was an urgent message for you. I'm to tell you that the professor–no names, just the professor -has been positively identified in East Berlin. And rumour puts him on a flight to London on Tuesday.'
Audley blinked unhappily, and Roskill completely misconstrued his reaction.
'I'm sorry it sounds so bloody mysterious, but that's exactly what the Harlin said, and I'm afraid it comes from that JIG character, not Fred.'
Audley tried to think. A moment before the task ahead seemed reasonably clear, no matter how unfamiliar his own role in it was: a dummy4
simple and leisurely reconstruction of the events of the last week in Steerforth's career, with the willing or unwilling help of the survivors of his crew. Panin had only been a potential complication.
But now Panin was a reality, and Panin appeared to be on the move. And unlike Audley, Panin knew exactly what he was doing.
He grasped the nettle. 'Hugh, I'm going back to London at once.
You run Jones home and then get tracing the crew as fast as you can. Tell Butler to drop everything and get after the Belgian.'
He turned towards Jones, who had stepped on to the road a discreet distance away.
'Trouble?' There was a suggestion of amused sympathy in Jones's eyes.
'What makes you think that, Mr Jones?'
'The same reason I wasn't too surprised to see you. If you've got Steerforth, you've got trouble: you can't just bury men like Steerforth.'
'You may have him too, Mr Jones.'
'I've got a shotgun too. Just leave me your telephone number, and I'll let you know if I shoot something interesting.'
III
Audley stared from his study window out across the South Downs and tried to make sense of Nikolai Andrievich Panin.
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Usually he found it relaxing to watch the evening spread over that landscape, dissolving the familiar landmarks one by one. But Panin refused to let him relax on this evening.
The Russian had to be the key to Steerforth. It was his involvement alone which had kept the dead pilot alive in the files over the last decade; it was his interest which- had aroused the department and had even provided Fred with an honourable way of sacking Audley: Panin was big enough to make the sack look like promotion.
