Here Be Monsters

cross-checking.' He gave her a twisted smile. 'It was a damnably weary business, I can tell you. But I got some sort of list in the end - not far now.' He pointed. 'Another mile or two, you turn right. Then there's a pond and a track among some trees on your left. Down the track, and tuck the car behind the trees - okay?'

He hadn't used the map since they'd left the Salisbury road. So, wherever they were going, he'd been there before, and not just once, thought Elizabeth. 'So what happened then?'

'Then the real fun started, my dear. I left my pal to carry on the survey - it was good cover, if we had struck gold, if anyone from the other side came sniffing around, looking for a rat.

And by that time we were making honest money, too. I let him buy me out in the end.'

Audley chuckled suddenly. 'All above board - paid Her Majesty back her share, plus interest - so whatever Master Latimer gets me for, it won't be for ancient peculation. But I made a bob or two all the same.' He chuckled again. 'And if I mentioned the name of our little company you might be surprised. Maybe I should have stayed in the business and told old Fred to find another genius.'

'What happened, David?'

'I started to snoop, my dear. Eliminated the impossibles, snooped the possibles until it hurt. Then zeroed in on my short-short-list.'

'And that was where Dr Thomas came in?'

'More or less.'

'And Sir Peter Barrie?'

'Him too.' Audley nodded. 'I gave him a damn good going-over.'

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'But you told him you weren't really after him.' Elizabeth frowned.

True.' Audley rubbed his knee. 'But sometimes I tell lies.'

Sometimes? 'Even though he'd already resigned from the service?'

'Uh-huh.' He pointed ahead. 'Your turning - '

'I can see it. Why did you give Sir Peter the treatment, David?'

Audley said nothing for a moment. 'He wasn't 'Sir Peter' then.'

Elizabeth looked for the pond. 'Of course not. He was - a clerk in a shipping office, was it?'

'Yes… just a clerk in a shipping office. And I'm afraid that's the point, Elizabeth: he was just a clerk.'

'But he was on your list all the same.'

'Oh yes! He had been an assistant principal. Only he didn't really fancy the life - the Civil Service life. And it was a funny sort of period, the first half of the fifties, that life.'

Pond - okay! She scanned the woods for their turning. 'How - funny?' There it was: a track between two holly bushes.

'Oh… hard to say, exactly - I was never a civil servant. But I'd guess the war had interrupted the pattern. A lot of odd types went in during the war. Some of 'em left at the end of it, but a lot stayed on - maybe over-promoted, too. Different tradition, as well. Like, your old-fashioned civil servant, he'd say 'Here's this piece of paper on my desk. But have we any legal powers to act in this matter? If not - why the devil is it on my desk?' But your war people - they felt that everything was the business of government. Different traditions made for a curious atmosphere. Tensions, too… And then there was Suez, of course. Stop here, Elizabeth.'

The track had curved, so that the metalled road was lost in the trees behind them. Just ahead there were a couple of tiny cottages, hull-down behind their private hedges, over-shadowed by several giant beech trees. It was a very private place.

'I talked to his old boss - Peter Barrie's boss. He reckoned Barrie had let the side down by quitting, when he was lucky to be in the Service: 'I've seen bright young types like him before - the shine wears off 'em'… That was the typical over-promoted brigade talking. No dummy2

wonder Barrie didn't hit it off with him!' Audley showed no sign of moving. Instead he turned towards her. 'The truth is, my dear, at that moment Peter Barrie didn't have a friend in the world. And I already had a shrewd idea that it wasn't going to be so easy to dig up dirt on young men who hadn't actually done anything wicked. Except take their holidays at the wrong time. But he wasn't in any position to make waves, so I made him a test case, to see just how good I was at tracking - and bullying.' He wrinkled his nose with distaste. 'I found I was quite good. But I also found I didn't enjoy it much.'

'But you cleared him.'

'Oh sure! He had a perfect alibi. I mean… well, you remember what he said? He impressed half the waiters in Italy - they remembered his girl and his generosity, in that order. In fact, it was such a damn good alibi it was suspicious - who ever heard of an innocent man with a perfect alibi? So even though he wasn't really on the list any more - he'd quit the Service and he was just a clerk to an egregious Greek - in spite of that I did my damnedest to break that alibi, just for the hell of it. And I checked him back to the cradle, too.' The distasteful memory showed again. 'But the rest you know: I couldn't break it, but I got on to the Haddock from it.'

'And you cleared him, too. Was that another perfect alibi?'

Audley gave her a jaundiced look. 'Not quite so perfect, maybe. He'd given out that he was visiting Romanesque churches in Burgundy. But actually he was shacking up with Barrie's girl, first in a hotel in Cannes, and then in a little cottage on the edge of the Vaucluse, at a place named St Servan - ' He caught her expression ' - St Servan? You know it?'

'How wasn't it perfect?'

'The alibi? St Servan is perfect… The alibi - ' He shrugged slightly ' - was an honest philanderer's one… or a lover's, let's say.'

Elizabeth blinked questioningly at him.