‘Not from way back. I first met him fifteen years ago.’
Tom held his face rigid. The measure of Audley’s intelligence memory was that
‘I did him a good turn… after a fashion—’ Audley was slightly thrown by his failure to turn back from the window this time. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t tear himself away from what he was seeing ‘—and he returned the compliment, a few years later… after a fashion.’
‘Yes?’ What that meant was that self-interest and cooperation had briefly coincided for David Audley and Nikolai Panin, no more.
But also that those two occasions had been the beginning of some sort of relationship between them over fifteen years, nevertheless.
If But he couldn’t go on watching. ‘Yes? What was his fashion, then?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘None of your business—’ Audley read his face. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Now he wants to meet you again, is what’s the matter, David.’
‘And now I want to see
‘The police have arrived, David,’ he admitted.
The old man relaxed slightly. ‘They have?’
‘Not “They”, David—it’s just one policeman.’ Tom turned back to the window, inclining suddenly towards cruelty. ‘He’s just taking his bicycle clips off his ankles now. And he doesn’t seem very scared, either—he’s just parking his bicycle alongside my car…
and he’s looking around as though he owns the place—six-foot-plus, slim build… about forty, forty-five… fair complexion—red weather-beaten, or a winter holiday on the Costa del Sol, or regular visits to your local pub—I don’t know which at this distance.’
‘Yes.’ Audley took one step, but then stopped. ‘That’ll be Alan—
Constable Grant… Does he have a carrier on the back of his cycle?’
‘Yes—’ Tom stared at the bicycle ‘—he’s got some vegetables in it
—or something green—?’
‘Bedding plants, most likely,’ agreed Audley. ‘Alan knows just where to go in the village, to fill his garden in the spring. That’ll be him, right enough. So… Faith will have to give him some of her plants, from the greenhouse —’
‘
Audley stood where he was. ‘It’s all right. She planted far more than we need for bedding-out… And no bugger’s going to shoot a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State village policeman, Tom—not at 600 yards, in default of me—or you.’ He shook his head. ‘Not even Bonaparte would pay him 10,000 francs for that.’
Harvey had said that Audley wasn’t popular in certain quarters, and Tom could see why that might be true. ‘So you’re not scared any more?’
Audley swayed, and then steadied himself. ‘Oh… I’m still scared
—’
A heavy front-door-knocker banging echoed in the distance, from somewhere in the depths of the house.
‘That’s Alan.’ Audley nodded. ‘There’s an electric bell, and a bell on a chain, out there. But Alan always uses the door-knocker. He doesn’t believe in gadgets.’
The echoes died away, but now there was another sound—of tyres scattering gravel, and then of a car coming up the drive from the road.
‘I’m about as scared as Nikolai Panin should be,’ said Audley.
‘Because Fred Clinton laid down a sanction—oh, about twenty years ago, after some rogue East German tried to do for him what Sous-Officier Cantillon tried to do for Wellington, without KGB
clearance… And Fred wasn’t going to have
Tom heard the police car scatter gravel again, as it reached the forecourt. But that was no longer important.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘So he invented
‘Only his version wasn’t a general holocaust—it was much more precise… But not
He had heard of this, although almost as a legend rather than the truth: the
‘You know what I’m talking about?’ Audley had heard the doors of the police car slam, but he ignored the sounds.
‘Yes.’ The revenge-names were pricked at the highest level, the word was. And Research and Development was the highest level.
