Tomorrow's ghost

'And do you think Colonel Butler could reach the same conclusion - that you were sent to watch him?'

'I don't know Colonel Butler well enough to answer that. I didn't have long enough to watch him.'

'But I require your opinion.'

Require.

'I think ... no, I don't think so. I think - Paul thought - that he wanted to know why we'd been sent to him, and that was why he sent me back home. If you want me to go back again to watch him I'll have to have a much better cover story.'

'He smelt a rat, then?'

'I wouldn't put it as strongly as that.' Frances thought hard for a moment. It occurred to her that Butler would have to be damn good to have worked out what they had been doing, since they hadn't known themselves what they were doing.

But then Butler was damn good.

'Yes?'

'I think he simply didn't know what to make of us ... I suppose it depends whether or not he's expecting to be watched. If he is, then ... yes. If he isn't ... then I don't think so.

He had a lot of other matters on his hands.'

Silence.

'Good.'

More silence. It was almost like being blind: she could sense the presence of the things she knew were around her. Sir Frederick two yards in front of her, the incinerator on her right, the cricket stump at her feet, and on her left the scatter of Marilyn's proofs of identity bulging out of the plastic handbag - Birth Certificate and National Insurance card. Post Office Savings book and Agency references ... even the misspelt letter from

'Dad' and the holiday snapshot of Marilyn in her bikini, posed self-consciously against the alleged beach umbrellas of Torremolinos. So much effort for nothing!

'What is your opinion of Colonel Butler?'

It was a logical question after her last answer. And it required - required - the truth.

Nothing else would do.

'I think he's good.'

Well, that was nothing more than the truth, anyway. If she was expected to have noticed more than that it was their hard luck, they'd have to go to Paul for that.

'But you said you didn't see very much of him really, did you?'

'No, I suppose not.' The truth requirement roused her obstinacy. 'But I liked what I saw.'

'Yes. But that wasn't a great deal, was it?' He pressed the point again, like a man committed to pushing a door marked 'Pull'. 'I'm afraid things didn't go quite according to plan there. We were expecting him to keep you alongside him a little longer - as he did with Paul.'

If by 'things' he was referring to a certain briefcase, then things had certainly not gone quite according to plan, thought Frances. Yet she had never observed such insensitivity in him before, and he wasn't the sort of man who pushed 'Pull' doors. So he was after something else.

'I think he sent me to the Library because it was supposed to be safe. Sir Frederick.'

'Because you were a woman, d'you mean?'

He was goading her, quite deliberately.

'Possibly. I gather he doesn't altogether approve of women, that's true ... But I'd guess it was also because I'd never worked for him before, so he didn't want to have to worry about how I'd perform.'

'Yes?' He'd wanted more, and now he knew it was coming.

'You can check with Paul - as you say, he saw more than I did...' And what would Paul say? she wondered. Well, Paul was no fool, and even with no straw for his bricks he'd been way ahead of her this time. In fact, he'd had the answer in the palm of his hand - he'd grasped it, but he simply hadn't recognised it. Which wasn't really surprising, because it was an almost unbelievable answer.

The enormity of it - her answer, her conclusion - hit her again.

They had been watching Colonel Butler.

And it was a matter of internal security.

She knew she was right. Even if Sir Frederick hadn't yet confirmed it in so many direct words, she knew she was right, just as she knew that Colonel Butler was formidably good at his job even though she had observed him directly for only a few minutes. But she also knew that there was something not right - something not wrong, but nevertheless not right either - with her conclusion.

And part of that not-rightness lay in the way Sir Frederick was waiting so patiently for her to put her thoughts together, too patiently for the circumstances, as though she had all the time in the world; time which he couldn't have, otherwise he wouldn't be here, in the dark of her garden.

'I don't know ...' What he wanted her to explain couldn't rationally be explained; even in the dark it would be like taking her clothes off in public before an eager and critical crowd. Yet his patience hemmed her in on all sides. 'I suppose you could say I saw him when he was up against it - first on a job he hated and then when everything was going wrong ... and you can't measure time in minutes at times like that.'

'So you had enough ... of that sort of time to observe Colonel Butler to your satisfaction?' He sounded unsatisfied.