Here Be Monsters

could say - ' The old man caught himself in the mid-flow of his eloquence as he happened to glance from Audley to Elizabeth ' - hmmm!'

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'Go on, Willy.' Audley had more successfully assumed an expression of guileless interest.

'Worms, did you say?' Mr Willis fixed his gaze on her. 'And I said cuckoos. But snakes is what I'm thinking now! Or wolves - wolves pulling down old bulls for sport, maybe.'

Elizabeth cursed her inexperience. 'Nobody's pulling anyone down for sport, Mr Willis. I told you the way things were - and how they are. We are not concerned to establish anything other than the truth.'

'The truth? Only the truth?' He dropped her almost contemptuously. 'What I do not understand, David, is why you are wasting your time on Haddock, believing as you do.

Could you not be better employed?'

'I could indeed, Willy,' agreed Audley. 'I have much better things to do - much better, and probably more pressing, and certainly more important things. From which I have been untimely ripp'd, Willy. However… as I was at pains to explain in words of one syllable… I think I am being set up, one way or another. And I think the basis for that setting-up may be some error I once made - not in regard to the snow-white Haddock - or in regard to his former friend. But I'm certainly not going to wait around for the trap to close. And Haddock is the only clue I've got at the moment.'

'But he's no traitor, dear boy - not in a thousand years!'

'So he's been set up too, then.' Audley's voice lifted defiantly. 'And so clearing him -

clearing him for the third time, Willy - could be reckoned as much my job now as it ever was, as well as saving my own valuable skin. Remember those rules you made? Bloody impossible rules - when I saw you after old Fred had recruited me in '57 - remember?'

What rules? wondered Elizabeth, altogether frozen out of the exchange. And, when it came to the crunch, David Audley was a notorious rule-breaker.

But now there came another crunch, of tyres on the track on the other side of the privet hedge, accompanied by the opulent engine-noise of a much larger car than hers.

Audley stood up. 'A Jaguar, Willy. Is this deer coming to your singing?'

'Ah!' The old man eased himself out of his deck-chair. 'He took his time, but he is here at last.' He peered over the hedge, but then looked down at Elizabeth suddenly, smiling his old-ferrety-smile. 'A character-witness, I think you might call him. But then, if a man is innocent… A very tricky thing, innocence. Guilt is much more easily provable.'

She watched him round the side of the cottage, and then turned to Audley. 'I'm sorry, dummy2

David.'

'Sorry?' He wasn't listening to her.

'Haddock Thomas may be innocent. But he fits the Debrecen specification just as well at Waltham School as in the Civil Service. Maybe even better.' She mistrusted them both - the godson and the godfather. 'Much more ingeniously, anyway.'

'Yes.' He was listening to her now. 'Yes, he does.'

It wasn't the answer she was expecting - so much so that it shut her mouth.

'Yes.' When he smiled this dangerously sweet smile of his, he wasn't ugly. 'You've done well, Elizabeth. I certainly wouldn't like to be caught between two such dreadful old men!

But you did well.'

'I did?' She hated the way he seemed able to read her, too.

'But you're quite wrong.' The smile vanished. 'The monsters on the Other Side are smart.

But they're not that smart.' He shook his head. 'I made no mistake about Haddock Thomas and Peter Barrie. Not then and not now - may I swing for it if I'm wrong!'

Someone was coming. 'So long as I don't swing with you, David.' She observed him look past her, his face rearranging itself into its more usual expression of brutal neutrality.

The newcomer was a tall bespectacled young man, with fair hair and a ruddy complexion ravaged by acne. He took in Audley with a single glance, then his eyes focused on her legs for an instant before travelling inexorably upwards towards disappointment. It was a progression she had encountered many times before, to which she knew she ought to be inured.

'My dear Gavin - let me introduce you - ' Mr Willis managed an extraordinary octogenarian skip round the young man ' - Miss Elizabeth Loftus, daughter - only daugher, if my memory serves me right - of the late Captain-Loftus VC, the distinguished naval historian.'

'Miss Loftus.' The young man hastened too late, as they all did, to take her hand. To cover up that disappointment he would treat her sympathetically, if he ran to form.

'Mr Gavin.'

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'Thatcher, actually, Miss Loftus - Gavin Thatcher.' The ruined cheeks creased into a shy grin.

'But no relation to our other Sovereign Lady,' said the old man. 'That splendid woman!'

'Wimpy - you're a trouble-maker.' The young man looked at Audley. 'And you're the godson, sir? He's told me about you.'

'Oh, yes?' Audley pretended to know an ally when he saw one as he extended his hand.

'And you're from the Cambridge Science Park?'

'Watch yourself, Gavin!' snapped Mr Willis. 'He's tricky.'