a moment before winning their tug-of-war with the branch.
Roskill's pulse beat with excitement: four tyre marks made the evidence conclusive. The act of dragging a heavy object on the ground would have produced deeper rear wheel marks and shallower front ones, even if the vehicle was four-wheel drive. But the downward pull had equalised the forces at work — another few yards, indeed, and it would have been the front tyres which would have dug deeper into the ground. These marks were exactly those which a Land-Rover would make in the act of sabotaging the line, unremarkable in themselves but irrefutable evidence in context.
He experienced a curious mixture of gratification and anger. His logic – and Audley's confidence – was vindicated by this tattered piece of low-grade pasture. Here Maitland had been deliberately cut off, so that Jenkins should keep the appointment.
Somebody knew too bloody much about the technical section, that was certain. And somebody knew too much about Llewelyn's movements.
Roskill felt for the camera in his webbing haversack. And somebody, he thought grimly, had come unstuck, nevertheless.
III
AUDLEY WAS STANDING on the pavement in Grosvenor dummy2
Gardens, ten yards from its junction with Buckingham Palace Road, which was precisely where he had said he would be, to the yard.
In fact, thought Roskill, he looked rather like a solitary, oversized waxwork which had been stolen from Madame Tussaud's and then abandoned to become a pedestrian obstacle: he stood unmoving, engrossed in a dull- looking, stiff-covered mag;azine, oblivious of the passers-by who eddied round him and of the traffic which accelerated past his nose.
Even when Roskill slid the Triumph alongside the kerb beside him he did not move at once. And nor, when he did move, did he bother to verify that it was Roskill. He methodically closed the magazine, turning down the page – so much Roskill could see from the driver's seat – and simply got straight into the car, without a word.
Roskill engaged the gears. 'Well, we were right,' he said.
Audley grunted and nodded. 'You mean
But I'm glad to hear it; it's always nicer to be certain.'
He subsided into silence and it occurred to Roskill that he wasn't going to ask for details. That might indeed be proof of a touching confidence, but now seemed far more likely to indicate that Audley was trying to forget how very nearly he had missed the chance of making a laughing-stock of his enemy.
But he wasn't going to get off as easily as that.
'They pulled it down with a Land-Rover,' said Roskill, 'Not the whole tree – just one big branch. The tyre-marks are perfectly plain dummy2
when you know what you're looking for.'
He reached under the dashboard for the envelope.
'Photographs, diagram and report – all in there.'
Audley slid the material half out of the envelope, riffled through the photos briefly and then pushed it all back.
'You didn't talk to anyone?'
'I didn't talk to anyone. Nobody saw me. And I developed the pictures myself.' Roskill kept his tone neutral. 'It's our own little Top Secret.'
'We'll keep it that way, then.' Audley slipped the envelope between the pages of his magazine. 'I don't want anyone round while we're checking up on Jenkins. I don't even want them to know that we're checking on him, in fact. The chances are that they'll find out sooner or later, but I want to put that off as long as possible. But I don't want to tell any lies, so I think our lines should be what Kipling called 'suppressio veri, suggestio falsi' – do you understand, Hugh?'
Roskill understood very well, and bitterly too: once Llewelyn found out that they were investigating Jenkins he would soon put two and two together. And the moment he realised he was in no danger the joke was over. Indeed, to get a full and perfect revenge Audley needed to complete his assignment first, for only then would it become a matter of record and unsuppressible.
But it was a sad thing that the only way Jenkins could be avenged was by enabling Audley to indulge his own private feud...
'I understand that perfectly well,' he said evenly. 'We're going to dummy2
make him sweat.'
'Make him sweat – yes.' Audley turned in his seat and looked hard at Roskill for a moment. 'But I don't think you do fully understand, all the same. At a guess I'd say you're thiking that there's not much to choose between Llewelyn and me – a couple of right bastards.
But I just happen to be the bastard who suits you at the moment –
is that right?'
It was a question that didn't admit equivocation.
'I think,' said Roskill reluctantly, 'that you can do the right thing for a paltry reason. In this case your reason doesn't – dignify – what we're doing.'
Audley nodded thoughtfully. 'A
'I'm not complaining. You asked rne a question and I gave you an honest answer. And as you said, it suits me well enough.'