Soldier No More

paused. 'You'll note that I'm not asking any questions.'

Roche nodded, trying to smile back. 'You don't want to know

—very sensible!'

' 'What you don't know can't hurt you'.' She stopped smiling.

'I just wish I could believe that.'

'Have you a reason for not believing it?'

She considered him in silence for a moment. 'I've never had anything to do with . . . your side of the business before, David.'

'My side of the business is pretty dull most of the time.

Probably duller than yours, Jilly.' It was a pity that the truth sounded so unconvincing.

'I hope this is one of the duller times, then.'

'I see no reason why it shouldn't be.' The thought of Meriel Aspasia Stephanides (active, inform Central Records movements priority urgent) made that a black lie, as Ada Clarke would say. But it sounded no more unconvincing than the truth. 'If I could tell you what London wants me to do I think you'd be ... reassured, let's say.' More truth. 'You might even be rather amused.' Half-truth, anyway.

'I can look after my own amusement.' She didn't smile. 'It's just that . . . Lexy was right—we are rather isolated here. And there's more than one way of being raped.' Another moment's pause in which she took him apart piece by piece.

'I wouldn't like anything to happen to Steffy and Lexy . . .

and Madame Peyrony and Gaston—and little Gaston.'

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He'd been wrong, she was scared. Or, he hadn't been wrong at all, and she didn't scare easily, she was brave—brave as Julie had been, not scared for herself, but worried to death about other people.

(Julie, Julie— If only you hadn't been so scared— so worried to death, literally worried to your death! If only you had waited, to let things work themselves out. . . then I wouldn't be here— it would be some other poor damn Roche; it might even be Oliver St. John Latimer if there was no Roche to hand— and you wouldn't be there, wherever you are, with bones of coral and pearls for eyes. . .) Roche smiled. 'Once I've seen Raymond Galles, I can be at the Tower pretty soon after that—and then you won't have to worry. I shall be David Audley's problem then!'

She gazed at him sadly. 'I shall still worry.'

'For heaven's sake—why? I'll be off your hands—and Lexy's!'

'I shall be worried for you.'

'Why for me?'

She drew a long breath. 'Very well. Because you're frightened.'

Roche felt his grin sicken. It was his own fault for pushing so hard, but he couldn't let the truth lie there in the open between them, unaccounted for.

'Of course I'm frightened. I have an important job to do, and I'm frightened of failing. I don't want to be the oldest captain in the British Army.'

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She half-closed her eyes. 'I didn't ask why.' When the eyes opened fully they were expressionless. 'Let's go and see this man Galles. And after that I'll take you to Madame. And then we'll drive to the Tower.'

Roche followed her along a winding path through the trees.

In the half-light the house ahead seemed bigger and gloomier than it had done when he had first glimpsed it as they'd approached the cottage, but perhaps that was only because he felt smaller and his own mood was even more sombre. He felt that Jilly's instinct to get shot of him, to get her small part of the operation over and to extricate herself and her friends from him, was sound and reasonable. It was only a pity, and it disturbed him, that since Steffy was one of those friends she might not find the process of extrication so easy.

And, as for himself, and what was more disturbing still... he had done so much, and learnt so much, and yet he hadn't even started. He hadn't even clapped eyes on David Longsdon Audley.

There was a collection of smaller buildings, mostly single-storey, at the back of the house. As Jilly led the way through an archway in the tallest of them they resolved themselves into a courtyard of stables and gabled hay-lofts and what must have been a coach-house in the days of the horse. The great double-doors of the coach-house stood wide-open and yellow light streamed out of them, illuminating the herring-bone design of the brick-paved yard.

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Jilly pointed towards the light. 'I'll wait here,' she said. In the opening, half-concealed by one of the doors, stood a tiny corrugated Citroen, bearing the legend Raymond Galles et Fils in flowery white on faded Royal Navy Mediterranean grey, and Garagiste— Location de Voitures, with an indecipherable Les Eyzies-de-Tayrac telephone number beneath it, alongside Route D773. Roche had just started to squint at the telephone number to confirm that it was the same as that which Galles had given him that morning, when his eye was pulled away by the glitter of yellow light on gleaming silver to his right, further inside the coachhouse.

Huge in the centre of the open space—dominating it, even though he was simultaneously aware that it was flanked by a great black coach with brass lamps at its ears—was an enormous car.

Raymond Galles appeared suddenly on the far side of the car