Tomorrow's ghost

understand what he was on about.' And there's a note from the detective-sergeant to the effect that Bond couldn't actually remember Major Butler's name, but only that it had been a red-headed man in a brown check tweed suit with a red Remembrance Day poppy in his lapel who'd been a 'Major someone or other'. Which they took to be a positive ID in the circumstances.'

'What circumstances?'

Extension 223 coughed. 'The sergeant thought Bond was a near-idiot. 'Apparently of low mentality', to be exact.' He paused. 'A judgement subsequently confirmed on the re-check. Do you want to hear it?'

Frances's heart sank. Low mentality's natural travelling companion was a bad memory.

'Yes.'

'Very well. I quote - or rather a certain Detective-Constable Smithers quotes: 'In the morning - yes, as I was having my tea. Oh bugger, I tell a lie. It was in the afternoon I was having my tea, not the morning. I was sweeping up the leaves by the high altar, they blow in therefrom the trees at the back, where the wall's down at the comer there. In the morning I was repairing the wall of the infirmary cloister, I had my tea there in the morning. It was when I was having my tea in the afternoon when he comes up to me. I'd been sweeping the leaves round the altar. It's all these questions. Why are you asking all these questions? Haven't you got anything better to do? It was the afternoon, not the morning. But I put my name to that bit of paper. I was mixed up, that's all. I have a thermos in the morning, for my elevenses, and I make another thermos for the afternoon in the winter, when it's cold ...' Do you want me to go on, Mrs Fisher?'

'Oh bugger' was right, thought Frances. Her tentative theory on Trevor Anthony Bond looked to be as much in ruins as Thornervaulx Abbey, where the autumn leaves blew in over the site of the great golden altar under which the bones of St. Biddulph had once rested.

'No.' But there were still two questions to be asked, the answers to which had not been in Butler's file, and no matter how dusty the answers they still had to be asked.

'Was anything ever established against Bond?'

'You mean ... other than the fact that Pearson Cole and Starinov each spoke to him on consecutive days? Actually, it was Starinov who spoke to him first, then Pearson Cole ...

That was established, certainly. They were both being tailed.'

'Did they know they were being tailed?'

'That's anybody's guess.' He sniffed. 'Pearson Cole ... probably not ... Starinov was a pro of course. But then so was the man who set up the surveillance on him ... That makes it anybody's guess.'

'And they did make contact?'

'Pearson Cole took the high jump just as we were about to pick him up. Starinov was diplomatic - he took the next plane home. It's fair to assume those two events weren't unconnected, that was the official view.' Pause. 'But whether Bond was the link man ...

that was never proved, one way or the other. And he's never stepped out of line since, so far as we know. Nothing known before, nothing known since.'

The old Scottish 'non-proven': Trevor Anthony Bond, apparently of low intelligence, had been left pickled in doubt, innocent but unlucky, guilty but lucky, or guilty but too damn clever by half, and nobody knew which.

Just like Colonel Butler, in fact.

And, in the matter of Madeleine Butler's disappearance, just like Patrick Raymond Parker too.

Sod it!

Question Two, then.

'What did Colonel Butler have to say about him, Trevor Bond?'

'Ah ... now Butler was not entirely converted to the Special Branch view, you might say. Because, although he didn't get anything out of him, he didn't think the fellow was as stupid as he made out.'

Frances perked up. 'In what way?'

'In what way ... Well, reading between the lines say, perhaps not a traitor, but possibly an artful dodger. But he wasn't sure after only one stab at him.'

Only one stab at him. That had never occurred to her, and it was a bonus she hadn't expected. She ought to have thought of that before, but better late than never.

And the bonus gave her cash for another question.

'What was Pearson Cole doing?'

Pause.

'Sorry, Fisher. Classified.'

Frances frowned at the wall. ' 'All I have to do is ask'. I'm asking.'

'That means within the limits of the job.'

'Then - it's within the limits.'

'I'm afraid it isn't, Mrs Fisher. Colonel Butler is your concern - Colonel Butler and his lady - not Pearson Cole. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.'

His voice was very gently chiding, almost silky, so far as she could make out, and once again it struck a chord in her memory which she still couldn't identify. The telephone was worse than last night's darkness, in which she had at least been able to pick up Sir Frederick's tone without distortion, even with heightened perception.