David.'
'Suit yourself, Jack.' Audley smiled at Butler. The Colonel's political hangup went much deeper than his military instincts, he reminded himself; in fact, despite all appearances, he had risen from the ranks and a cloth-cap background in which his subsequent career was regarded as an act of defiance, if not actual treason.
In close-up the Double R Society's version-for-the-day of the Grand Plotter and Contriver of all Mischiefs in England was something less impressive than the original, at least in appearance; even in his Roundhead General Staff uniform he was still a ratty little man, sharp-featured and bright-eyed.
The eyes fastened instantly on Audley, snapping him for future reference. So it wasn't going to be so easy after all: the prospective Labour candidate for Mid-Wessex was no fool and no beginner, those eyes indicated. The natural selection of political jungle warfare, which forced men like this one to watch their backs as well as their fronts, had made William Strode very wary.
dummy5
'Mr—?' Strode didn't wait to be introduced.
'Audley.'
'Mr. Audley . . . Colonel Butler asked me this morning if I could come to see you now—here.' The eyes flicked briefly towards Butler. 'You both represent a branch of the security services?'
'That's correct.'
'I can give you five minutes. In ten minutes' time I'm seeing the Royalist commander. You can have half that time, no more.'
'I might want more than that, Mr. Strode.'
'It's all you can have.'
Audley smiled his most unfriendly smile. 'Then I shall have to be brief, won't I? Mr. Strode, I want your help.'
Strode said nothing for a few seconds, as though an appeal for aid hadn't been what he was expecting.
'Indeed?' he said finally. 'Or?'
'Or—what?'
'Or what will you do if I don't choose to help you?' The gleam in Strode's eye was obstinate now. 'After all, helping the internal security service isn't going to make me popular in my own party. If I help you I take a risk. It doesn't happen to be a risk I want to take.'
'But I haven't told you what sort of help I want.'
'You don't need to. I know the Roundhead Wing has some dummy5
pretty far-out types in it—political extremists you people are bound to be interested in. But I intend to beat them my way without your help, Mr. Audley. By the rule book and the ballot box, I shall beat them.'
'Not Charlie Ratcliffe, you won't beat him that way.' Audley shook his head.
'Charlie—?'
'That's right. Because Charlie isn't going to use the rule book and the ballot box. He's going to use the printing press. And he's going to do to you, Mr. Strode —and people like you—
what the South Africans are alleged to have done to the Liberal Party. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about him, Mr. Strode. But there just may be something I can do—with your co-operation.'
Strode stared at him. 'You mean . . . you're just after Ratcliffe, no one else?'
'Ratcliffe—and whoever helped him murder James Ratcliffe.'
Strode frowned. 'You're re-opening the murder case?'
'It was never closed. Though, to be frank, I don't give a stuff who killed who—I already know that. But I want Ratcliffe to start worrying about it, so I want the word out that the police are pursuing a promising new line of inquiry. And I want that rumour to start at the very top—from you.'
The cast of calculation was in Strode's eye now. 'That's no problem. That's pure law-and-order.'
dummy5
'The next thing's no more difficult. . . . Will you be at Standingham next weekend?'
'Of course. I'm playing the part of Sir Edmund Steyning.'
'With Charlie as Nathaniel Parrott?' Audley smiled. 'It's all planned, is it?'
'It's the biggest show we've ever put on.' Strode nodded, more cautiously this time. 'The BBC is filming it for television, so we're aiming at a maximum muster.'
'And it's all planned?'
Strode nodded again. 'The advance party will be going down on Thursday to set the scene. Then there's a full- dress rehearsal on the Friday evening, and we'll stage the storming for the public on the Saturday and the Sunday. With any luck we'll have a turn out of at least eight hundred.'
'Eight hundred and one now. I shall be attaching myself to your staff, Sir Edmund.'
Strode frowned. 'You can't fight if you aren't a member. I can't break our own rules.'
'I don't want to fight. I want to be free to 'come and go and look and know'—put me down as a friend of yours, or a foreign observer, or whatever you like. But one way or another, Mr. Strode, I want to be there to breathe down Charlie Ratcliffe's neck. I'm going to run him to hounds, and run him to ground—and then I'm going to dig him out and let him go again, and hunt him again—until he doesn't know whether it's April 1st or Christmas Day. And you're going to dummy5
