The Labyrinth Makers

'. . . five minutes, but it seemed like hours. We'd never brought anything so big in before. Johnnie said it was worth it because it was the last time.'

The last time. It had been that all right: the very last time.

'So Ellis put it in the safe deposit. And when did you go and check up on it?'

'Check up on it?' A shadow crossed the man's face, as the resurrected memory of wealth won and lost took hold of him. 'I never did–at least not till much later. Johnnie said it was put away safely, an' we'd have to wait and be careful for a long while.' He stopped and gave Faith an oddly pathetic glance. Like Jones, he'd never quite believed in the death of the clever, indestructible John Steerforth. 'And I trusted him,' he said simply.

'I told that man–the Frenchman–that we couldn't bring it in the first time, and Johnnie was like a cat with two tails.'

'When was it that he told you it was put away safely?'

'It was next day–at the afternoon briefing, just before I went to see the Frenchman. At the Bull I saw him.'

'And you finally checked the hut–how long after?'

'Three weeks–more–I don't remember. I broke my sodding ankle baling out. There was a thunderstorm and we'd lost a lot of height–

we were too low.' Tierney was no longer looking at Audley; he was dummy4

looking through him and far away, back into the thunderstorm.

'Far too low. I thought we were going to come down in the sea. But Johnnie nursed her along–he said the old bitch knew what he wanted, she just hadn't understood her orders properly and he wasn't going to let her spoil everything.'

There was a squeal of laughter from the next table. One of the youths who had joined the mini-skirts had spilt beer down his shirt.

Tierney's eyes focused on Audley again.

'But the old bitch got him, didn't she! She bloody well got him! I never thought I'd see her picture again!'

'And how much of this did you tell Bloch and his colleagues?'

'Colleagues? I never saw any colleagues. Only Bloch. He got into the hospital a couple of days after I was taken there. I didn't even know Johnnie was missing — they didn't tell me. So I told him what we'd agreed on: that Johnnie wouldn't dare crashland with the stuff on board and we'd lost the lot.'

'Did Johnnie have a car?'

'A car–no. He didn't even have a licence. I remember he said it was silly, being able to fly a plane and not being trusted with a car.'

That was another bonus, and a wholly unexpected one.

The possibility of handy transport, even in those austerity days, had been the one insuperable danger. It had never remotely occurred to him that Steerforth could not drive. Rather, he'd taken it for granted that he could.

'It's still there, isn't it!' Tierney was looking at him with a look of total incredulity. 'Of course it's still there. It has to be still there, dummy4

and it was staring me in the face.'

Tierney had really been remarkably slow to follow the drift of the questions. Or slow at least to recover after being shocked into co-operating. Either way he would give nothing more which could be relied on. Audley took out his wallet and extracted five ?10 notes from it.

'Fifty?' Tierney's assessment of his value was inflating rapidly with the birth of understanding. 'What I've given you's worth more than fifty!'

Audley was tempted to put the money back in his pocket. But it was more a gift to the blind goddess than to Tierney.

'What you've given me is worth nothing,' he said brutally. 'Nothing to you, anyway. You had your chance long ago, but because you were stupid–and because you didn't trust John Steerforth enough in the end–you missed it.'

'I could still queer your pitch–I could go to the authorities. I could report you! Both of you—'

The threat was empty and Audley was weary of the charade anyway. He reached into his pocket for his identification folder.

'We are the authorities, Tierney. You've been had, I'm afraid.'

Tierney squinted at the folder, then at Audley and finally at Faith.

And longest at Faith.

'I could have sworn—' he began.

'Johnnie's daughter?' It was the first time she had spoken since showing him the photograph. 'You weren't had there, Mr Tierney.

dummy4

I'm Johnnie's daughter. But you'd have done better not to have trusted me.' She spoke sadly.

'And Morrison–and the other man?' Now Tierney was really empty, with not even fear left.

'You weren't altogether had there either,' said Audley. The least he could do was to warn the man off–and make Richardson's job simpler. 'You're just lucky that we reached you first. There are other people around who