Tomorrow's ghost

She turned to Shapiro. 'Is David after the job?' 'I wish he was!' Shapiro scowled at her. 'But he's not. He just isn't hungry enough to fight, that's the trouble.'

'Maybe this'll change his mind,' said Paul. 'He may not like to fight, but he doesn't like to be beaten.'

Paul was hungry, thought Frances. If Paul thought he was being altruistic, he was deceiving himself.

'I wouldn't rely on that assumption,' said Shapiro. 'And even if he does fight - even if we fight - I wouldn't rely on our chances of winning.'

Paul nodded. 'No - I agree. This makes it a different ball-game. It's relegation or promotion now.'

'It's the bloody Cup Final - I beg your pardon, Mrs Fitzgibbon.' Shapiro acknowledged Frances, but kept his eye on Paul. 'You think you've been shouting for the wrong team, Mitchell?'

Paul grunted ruefully. 'I don't think I've got any choice now - in this company. The trouble is, I don't even see how to win by fighting dirty.' He nodded at Frances. 'That's what our little Princess was thinking. You're going to have to produce one hell of a magic spell to get us out of this one, Princess. Otherwise it's going to be 'unhappy ever after' for us.'

Shapiro saved Frances. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, Colonel... that it won't be good enough for Fitzgibbon and Mitchell to give Colonel Butler a clean bill of health. We weren't put on this one to find an answer they didn't know. We were set to find what they knew already - to make it nice and respectable.' He shook his head at Frances. 'Somebody's already talked - I knew that smug bastard who briefed me was giving me the message, not seeking after wisdom.'

'What message?'

Paul's lip curled. 'Nine years ago. Colonel - nine years to the day, almost - our dear Colonel could have killed his wife. And that was very naughty of him.'

'He didn't,' said Frances.

'Of course he didn't. Fighting Jack wouldn't do a vulgar thing like that - the old General wouldn't approve. Besides which he knows his Kipling on the subject of service wives - of course he didn't! He couldn't.' He paused. 'And if he did it would have been a beautiful tragic accident, with an unbreakable alibi built into it, and no comeback nine years later.'

So Paul Mitchell and William Ewart Hedges, travelling from different directions, had reached the same destination, thought Frances.

'But that doesn't matter,' said Paul. 'Unfortunately our job isn't to give him a character reference - we just have to breathe suspicion over him. I thought it might be enough if we did the exact opposite - Frances and I. But the stakes are too big for that, and if we don't provide the right answer they'll simply send down someone else who will.'

Shapiro looked at Frances.

'Am I right. Princess?' asked Paul.

Shapiro continued to look at Frances.

'Princess?'

Frances looked at Shapiro. 'When does David get back?'

'Not until midday tomorrow. He's got a meeting he can't break - Washington time,'

said Shapiro.

Washington time. Not enough time.

'I'll give you whatever help you need,' said Shapiro.

Everyone was so helpful. There was altruism everywhere.

'I'm going to Blackburn,' said Frances for the second time. But now she knew why she was going there.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For the second time in one morning Miss Marilyn Francis was in Thistlethwaite Avenue, at the entrance of the driveway to St. Luke's Home for Elderly Gentlefolk. But this time she was going inside.

Frances looked at her watch. It was 11.25, which ought to be just about right for visiting.

She turned to the woman beside her. 'If you could wait here, Mrs Bates - just down the road, perhaps.'

'Yes, luv.' Mrs Bates gave her a motherly smile. Mrs Bates was a motherly person, almost grandmotherly. 'Shall I have Brian bring your own car up, from behind the hotel?'

Mrs Bates was also a well-organised and well-organising person, who thought of everything, as befitted an Israeli intelligence cell commander.

Frances sorted Brian from Evan Owen and Mr Harcourt, who were taking it in turns to keep Colonel Butler in sight. Brian was the plump-faced young man on the motor-cycle, the junior partner in the team. Evan Owen drove the van, and Mr Harcourt was the commercial traveller in the nondescript Cortina.

She also wondered, for the umpteenth time, how Paul Mitchell had made out with Nannie on her return from night duty. The girls, mercifully, had accepted the unscheduled dawn departure of the potential Second Mrs Butler after she had reassured them that Paul was only a colleague, and that he would never be anything more than a colleague, and that he was too young for her anyway, and that she would be coming back to see them at the earliest opportunity; which reassurances - three truths and one lie (she would never come back to Brookside House, that was a near-certainty) - had been the least she could do for Paul, whom they would otherwise have either murdered or seduced during the night as an obstacle to their plans. But Nannie was a different problem - she would give Paul a hard time, supposing his charm didn't work; and she would also report on him to Colonel Butler at the earliest opportunity, after which the cat would very likely be out of the bag. But by then, very likely, it wouldn't matter much, he could think what he liked, it would be all over; and, anyway, it was all over for Paul, that part of it - Nannie's part - and by now he would be two hours up the motorway to Yorkshire.