Tomorrow's ghost

Jane had closed her eyes

. 'Lancome 'Magie', I think it was - '

'It wasn't Lancome 'Magie',' Sally had said professionally . 'It was Worth 'Je Reviens'.'

* * *

In the circumstances of a nine-year-missing mother, that wasn't funny, Frances had thought - and still thought: Je Reviens was a promise too horrible to think about nine years after a possible encounter with Patrick Raymond Parker, 'The Motorway Murderer' of the headlines which suddenly came back to her. The women who met Patrick Raymond Parker didn't ever come back: they were planted deep - Julie Anne Hartford, Jane Wentworth, Patricia Mary Ronson, Jane Louise Smith ... and Madeleine Frangoise de Latour d'Auray Butler, nee Boucard - they were planted deep under his stretch of motorway, compacted by his great earth-moving machines and held down by the thickness of hardcore and concrete and tarmac, and millions of speeding vehicles, until doomsday; and even if the world ended tomorrow, and it took another thousand years for green-growing things to push up through that hard surface, they wouldn't come back.

And yet ... in another way and in her own sweet vengeful time, she had come back, had Madeleine Francoise. And even now she was reaching out to catch her husband's heel from behind, when he least expected her touch.

* * *

She shook her head again, decisively. 'No.'

'No?' He was no longer searching for doubt in her. Instead he was superimposing her conclusion on top of his own knowledge in the last hope that they wouldn't coincide.

Finally he sighed: one thing Paul never did was to argue with inconvenient facts, or not for long.

'Okay. So they adore him, he adores them. And he hated her.9 The corner of his mouth drooped. 'So you've got the one bit of dirt no one else came up with - the Reason Why. And they're really going to adore you for that. Or he is.'

'He? Who?'

'Our Control. Our esteemed Control. He who will give us anything we want, everything we want, provided we will give him exactly what he wants. Namely, the dirt on Jack Butler - a dirty knife in the back for Fighting Jack: the Thin Red Line attacked a tergo, with no time to turn the rear rank back to back, like the 28th at Alexandria - '

'What d'you mean?' Frances quailed before his summer-storm anger.

'Battle of Alexandria, March 21st 1801. French dragoons caught the 28th - the Glosters - in the rear when their infantry was attacking from the front. So their colonel turned the rear rank round and fought 'em off back-to-back - I know you don't go much for the military. Princess, but you ought to remember that from your Arthur Bryant - '

He swung away suddenly, towards the bookshelves, scanning the titles ' - and he'll be here somewhere, Sir Arthur will be, you can bet your life - '

Frances took a step towards him, but he -was already moving down the long shelving. 'I didn't mean that, Paul.'

'No? The Years of Endurance - it has to be here, the old General would never have missed it ... No? Well, perhaps you ought to have meant it - there's something in it you ought to see, by God!'

'Paul - '

But he ignored her, pouncing on a maroon-coloured volume and thumbing through the pages without looking up as he swung back towards her. 'Yes - '

'Paul - listen to me, please.'

'No. You shut up, Princess, and listen to me. Listen to this, in fact - '

Frances opened her mouth, and then shut it again as he looked for a moment at her.

'1801. We beat the French in Egypt. Everyone knows about Nelson sinking their fleet at the Nile, but that was no contest - no one remembers we beat their army, Bonaparte's veterans of Lodi. No one ever gives a stuff for the British Army, they just take it for granted - and pay it wages that would make your average car worker go screaming mad with rage, and rightly so - ' His eyes dropped to the page ' - now, listen - '

This was the obsessive Paul again, the military historian who had never worn a uniform. But there was something more to it than that obsession this time, thought Frances: something in his mind had connected now with 1801, which she could only discover by holding her tongue.

'Abercromby - General Sir Ralph Abercromby, commanding the army that beat the French. Died of wounds a week after - gangrene from a sword-cut - 67 years old, but he wouldn't give up until the French retreated from the battlefield ... they put him in a soldier's blanket and he insisted on knowing the name of the soldier, because the man needed his blanket ... Here it is: when he died there was a General Order of the Day published:

'His steady observance of discipline, his ever-watchful attention to the health and wants of his troops, the persevering and unconquerable spirit which marked his military career, the splendour of his actions in the field and the heroism of his death are worthy the imitation of all who desire, like him, a life of honour and a death of glory!'

He didn't look up when he'd finished reading the passage: he was re-reading it, memorising the words for himself, for his own purposes, for the secret Paul, to make sure he was word-perfect.

But where was the connection?

He looked up at last. 'Well ... at least he's not quite dead yet. Princess - our General Abercromby.'

So that was the connection: somewhere along the line during the past twenty-four hours Paul Mitchell had