Tomorrow's ghost

'It doesn't matter,' she shrugged the words at him.

'No. But I tell you what I'll do.' He paused. 'What was that thesis you were allegedly writing at North Yorkshire University? Something about Tolkien - ?'

'It doesn't matter.' She switched on the torch. 'Let's go inside.'

He ignored the light. 'Fairyland - that's it. It was Fairyland: From Spenser to Tolkien.'

''Faerie' actually - 'The Land of Faerie', not 'Fairyland'. There's a considerable difference,' she said pedantically, directing the beam into his eyes and wishing it was brighter.

'Of course - I beg your pardon! You know your Tolkien backwards?' He blinked at her. 'Naturally.'

'Naturally.' She could hardly deny that now.

'Good. Then I can perhaps let Tolkien explain for me much better than I could.' He lifted his hand up into the light, so that for a moment she thought he was shielding his eyes from it. 'The Lord of the Rings, he called his book, didn't he? 'Rings' in the plural.'

A flash of gold caught her eye as he lifted one finger from the others. There was a signet ring on it.

'Rings of power, Frances. The Seven, the Nine, the Three ... and of course the One.

Right?'

She could just about remember that, but obviously he had read the book - the three volumes of it - more carefully than she had, so she'd better keep quiet.

'An interesting concept - rings of power.

Fortunately we don't have to contend with the One ... or at least not in the way the other side has to. Because we do still have machinery for changing the hand that wears it... But we do have other rings, Frances. And like Tolkien's rings they confer great power, and not least the power to bring out either the best or the worst in the wearer.'

The gold glinted as he moved his hand in the torchlight.

'So before we give Jack Butler a ring of power we have to know as much about his worst as about his best, that's what it amounts to, my dear.'

'His worst?' The question came out before she could stop it.

'That's right. You see ... we know his best - which is very good, no doubt about that, no doubt at all ... But there is - how shall I put it? - a loose end which does worry us a bit.' He paused, as though 'loose end' was not quite how he wanted to put it. 'It's nothing to do with security, really.'

No more questions. At least, not until she'd read that report, and maybe not even then, decided

Frances.

'A ghost - we want you to lay a ghost from the past, Frances.' He nodded, to himself as well as at her. 'Can you lay a ghost, do you think?'

'I don't believe in ghosts. Sir Frederick.' And in this garden that was just as well, she thought. 'So they don't frighten me.'

'Very sensible. That is, so far as the ghosts of the past are concerned.'

'Are there ghosts of the future?' Damn! 'Oh yes - they are the frightening ones, my dear. When you get to my age you see tomorrow's ghost in the mirror. Tomorrow's ghosts are still alive, but on borrowed time - your job will be to lay those ghosts too, before it's too late. Let's go inside.'

* * *

After he had gone, which was after she had read and re-read the report, and he had taken it away with him, Frances sat in front of the electric fire, which warmed the sitting room but did not warm her.

There is a loose end which does worry us a bit.

Well, there was a loose end, of course. But there was more to it than that - the very fact that it had been Sir Frederick himself who had come to her, and that he had briefed her in such an eccentric way, so very differently from Brigadier Stocker, aroused her deepest suspicions (the more so as David Audley had always maintained that 'Fred' was the most devious old sod of them all; though, again, since she had never been briefed by him before she had no previous experience there to judge by).

We want you to lay a ghost.

Well, there were ghosts enough in Colonel Butler's file, and not merely his hecatomb of the Queen's enemies either.

General Sir Henry Chesney was an old ghost, rich and benevolent.

And Leslie Pearson Cole was a classified ghost, probably off limits now for ordinary mortals, even temporary VIPs.

But Patrick Raymond Parker was a very public ghost, with a whole string of his own ghosts in attendance; any newspaper morgue would deliver them up to her.

And there were tomorrow's ghosts there too - Trevor Anthony Bond was still alive somewhere. And Major Starinov of the KGB was also probably still alive, though for her purposes he might just as well be dead for all the information he could give her.

But the little Misses Butler would be very much alive, though not so little now. Very much alive, and very promising too.

Sir Frederick hadn't told her everything, they never did. And the file hadn't told her what she most wanted to know about the most important ghost of all.