The Old Vengeful

found gratifying.

'Yes . . . I'm sorry about that. But it seemed a good idea at the time.' He smiled disarmingly. 'Anyway, I'm hoping you can do better on reflection.'

Respect was better than nothing, thought Elizabeth as she hardened her heart against the smile: if she couldn't have anything else from him, at least she could win that.

'But now that you've read Father's chapter you really know as much as I do. And you are the trained historian, not me.'

dummy3

'But you are the expert on this, Elizabeth—not me.'

'No. I was only the typist. I keep telling you.'

For a minute or two he drove in silence. Then he shook his head slowly at the two small children who were waving at him out of the rear window of the car in front. 'No ... I don't think 'only the typist' could ever be a description of you, Elizabeth. You're always going to be a lot more than 'only the typist'. And that's not just my opinion . . . although it is my opinion.'

Elizabeth was half surprised, half shocked. 'You've canvassed other . . . opinions?'

'Of course! We don't go entirely blind into something like this, we know a lot about you. But it's Number Seven we want to know about now.'

Elizabeth was still grappling with the news that she had been . . . 'investigated' was the only word for it... by —by whom? 'Who are you, Paul? What are you?'

'But you know who I am, Elizabeth. You checked up on me—

and quite efficiently, too—the moment you left the fete yesterday.'

She stared at him. 'You were in that car—in St Helen's Street

— when I visited Margaret's bookshop?'

'No. I wasn't in that car.' Suddenly his expression was intent. 'You spotted that car?'

'I didn't exactly 'spot' it—I mean, I just saw it ... I didn't really take any notice of it until I saw it again behind me, dummy3

when I reached home.' His interest made her uneasy.

'But it could have been any car. Why did you notice it?'

'Well . . .' she floundered under his intensity '... I thought it might be you, as a matter of fact.'

'Why should I follow you?'

This was becoming awkward. 'Well—I don't know—I didn't know ... I suppose I was a bit suspicious of you, that's all.'

'Christ!' He drew a deep breath, and then relaxed slowly.

'Phew!'

'It wasn't you?' She shied away from the proper question.

'No. I was round the corner, in another car.' He shook his head, but more to himself than at her.

The proper question wouldn't go away, it had to be asked.

'Who was in the car I saw, Paul?'

For a moment she thought he hadn't heard, as he raised his hand to wave back at the children. Then she thought it was more likely that he simply wasn't going to answer the question.

'It was a man who goes by the name of Fergusson.' He waved again. 'A freelance journalist from Canada.'

'A journalist?' Elizabeth was deeply suspicious of all journalists, both on principle and for their obstinate refusal to spell her name correctly in hockey reports and prize-lists.

'Actually, he isn't a journalist, and he wasn't born in Canada in 1942—it was 1942, but it was in a makeshift hospital dummy3

alongside the Krasnyi Oktiabr tank factory in a place they called Stalingrad in those days. And he certainly wasn't christened Winston Fergusson. His real name is Novikov.'

Novikov! The name came back to her clearly once she heard it pronounced for the second time, even though it had first come to her only indistinctly through the babel of her own thoughts beside the sitting room door— Novikov—

If I hadn't spotted Novikov—

'Josef Ivanovitch Novikov.'

The Russians, remembered Elizabeth—and this seemed the moment for them at last. 'A Russian?'

'A Russian.' He nodded. 'You know what the KGB is, do you, Elizabeth?'

That made it all fit, thought Elizabeth numbly, not so much without surprise as with an absence of feelings which was beyond surprise: it didn't make sense—the people . . . not just the terrible snake-man, but Paul himself, and little Humphrey Aske, and David Audley, with his kind-brutal face . . . and the violence, which was beyond experience. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to make sense, it merely had to fit into its own ugly pattern, like some do-it-yourself kit for a science-fiction monster.