Like—what the hell was Henry Digby doing on the Ferryhill Industrial Estate, way off course, at ten o'clock in the morning?
Audley picked up the phone again and dialled.
'Colonel Butler? Anything doing, Jack?'
Grunt. 'Pretty quiet.'
'Absolutely nothing you could put your finger on?'
'No. . . . Haven't had the morning reports yet, of course.'
'You sound as though you've reservations about that.'
Grunt. 'Nothing tangible. We've pulled off the front men now, of course—did that on Tuesday midday, as I told you yesterday.'
That was routine. The obvious watchers, having established their presence, had removed themselves, leaving the dummy5
observation to more unobtrusive and sophisticated men and machines in the hope that fear or foolishness might now betray any guilty party into activity. It was a crude bit of psychology, but it was occasionally successful nevertheless.
'And?'
'Nothing. But the man Davenport worries me. He visited the American Embassy on Tuesday.'
'No reason why he shouldn't. Did our inside man there know what he did there?'
'Apparently not. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if he wasn't getting ready to run for it, that's all.'
'Why d'you think that?'
'Hard to say. . . . He's been buying one or two little extras, paying one or two debts. . . . And I had Maitland search his flat.'
'Maitland?' Audley lined up the technical support men in his mind and picked out a freckle-faced expert with hair even more ginger than Butler's. 'Yes, I know him. A good man.'
'He didn't find anything. But he had the strong impression that Davenport was expecting to be searched—the way things were left. And he said he couldn't guarantee that Davenport wouldn't know his place hadn't been turned over, if that was the case, because he couldn't leave every hair in its original position.'
'I understand—which would make Davenport a pro.'
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'Very well.' Audley steadied his voice. Maitland had once a partner, a clever young trainee who had got himself blown up while examining a booby-trapped car. . . . 'You'd better put a watch on the ports and airports, Jack. If Davenport moves—
if any of them move—pick 'em up and hold 'em.'
'For what?'
'Suppression of Terrorism Act. No lawyers and no phone calls until I've seen them. And see that their bags aren't searched, too.'
Jenkins, that was the boy's name. He'd been the younger brother of a friend of Hugh Roskill's. And it had been Butler himself who had brought the news of his death—to this very house, four or five years back. . . .
'And you meet me at the Steyning Arms at Standingham tonight, Jack. As arranged.'
Jenkins.
The Jenkins Gambit, he had called it, because Jenkins himself had been the booby-trappers' target: the best way to kill a food taster is by poisoning his master's dish—then it looks like an occupational hazard.
And, by the same token, the best way to murder a policeman was to kill him in the execution of his duty, where sudden death was an occupational hazard which good coppers could be relied on to accept.
And Digby had been a good copper.
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Audley stared at the grandfather clock.
And now Digby was a dead copper.
The thought of Digby dead was a physical pain. He would never see Digby again. He would never introduce Frances Fitzgibbon to Digby, that little matchmaking dream of Faith's
—a crazy dream, but no bad dream—was gone like smoke on a summer's day. He had only known the boy for a few hours, and the boy had felt nothing for him but curiosity, yet the sense of loss was none the less bitter for that. It was boys—
and men—like Digby who held the sky suspended; taken for granted in life, and mourned only briefly in the headlines in death, more out of public piety than from conviction.
Henry Digby was dead, and he would rot and putrefy, and long before he was dust he would be forgotten. Even Audley himself, who might be as guilty as the killer, would soon relegate him to a dull ache of conscience, and then a mere regret, and at the last a hazy memory of one job that hadn't gone according to plan years ago.
Faith was in the doorway, beside the grandfather clock.
'It's been on the news, David—the twelve o'clock news.'
He looked at her stupidly. 'About Digby?'
