For the Good of the State

never be able to resist showing off in front of him.’

PART TWO

The Man for the Job

1

Tom moistened the end of his stub of indelible pencil and wrote

‘1025’ beside the line of the bailey ditch on his sketch-map.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State If Willy’s measurement of the motte ditch was about 500 feet in circumference, then the whole motte-and-bailey was a dead ringer for the Topcliffe castle in size, if not in date—obviously not in date, because Topcliffe was an early post- Conquest castle, and this was as yet not anything at all except an anonymous ‘earthwork’ on the ordnance survey map. So it just could be Ranulf of Caen’s adulterine castle, which certainly should be somewhere hereabouts if his calculations were right.

On the other hand, it was certainly not much of a motte, he thought doubtfully, looking up into the impenetrable undergrowth above him and trying to estimate the height of the mound. These were undoubtedly Ranulf’s lands, de facto, if the local bishop’s de jure, in the mid-twelfth century; and both Ranulf and the bishop had changed sides in the civil war, several times and not always at the same time. But the Norman barons—even a two-timing (or ten-timing) jumped-up shyster and petty hedgerow mercenary knight like Ranulf—had thrown up more impressive earthworks than this in a hundred other places, with little time and their enemies at their backs. So it still could be merely a fortified manor, a hundred years or more away from Ranulf’s brief medieval gangster flowering during the years of anarchy. So, allowing for the wear-and-tear and the wind-and-rain of all the 800 years afterwards, it all depended on Willy’s measurement, which should establish the circumference and diameter of his hypothetical motte, with its stockade and tower, which could perhaps be proved during his next leave—

The sound came from behind him—above and behind him, in the undergrowth which hemmed in the edge of the bailey ditch, at its Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State junction with the motte ditch (if this really was a genuine motte-and-bailey earthwork castle, he thought pedantically)—and he accepted that it had to be Willy, because the motte ditch was all thorn-bushes and brambles, even worse than the tangle above him, from which Ranulf might once have defied the might of King Stephen (or maybe the Empress Matilda, according to which side he’d been on at the time) —

So he would have to apologize to Willy (Willy would never give him the benefit of the doubt, after that last unfortunate slip on the edge of the moat at Sulhampstead, which had not really been his fault—but poor old Willy)—

But it wasn’t Willy: it was—he dropped his pencil as he stuffed the sketch-map into the back-pocket of his jeans, and automatically reached down to find it, but then stopped just as automatically in mid-fumble, half in nothing more than surprise, but then half in momentarily irrational fear, at the glimpse of a uniform.

Then the fear was subsumed by self-contemptuous irritation with himself, for letting the sight of an ordinary British policeman frighten him—not a Mister-Plod-PC-49 fatherly copper in the dear old high helmet admittedly, with red face and button nose and bicycle-clipped trousers, but a young copper in a flat cap, and no older than himself; yet a young copper who seemed just as surprised at the sight of him, and who was even now more concerned with extricating himself from the trailing bramble-sucker from last year’s blackberry growth which had snagged his uniform.

The trouble is, he justified to himself quickly, I have met too many Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State other sorts of policemen, of the shoot- first and who-cares? variety, these last two years, and that’s a fact! But the conditioned reflex was still nonetheless strong enough to make him pick up the stub of pencil slowly, and to hold it up between thumb and forefinger for inspection, complete with an ingratiating smile, as he straightened up in slow motion to match the gesture, as if to say:

‘ Don’t shoot, officer! This is just me—Tom Arkenshaw… And this is just my stub of pencil—not a grenade or a pistol!

But the young policeman only stamped down on the ensnaring blackberry thorns, innocently oblivious of his gestures of submission; which gave him time to come fully to his British senses, to wonder aggressively what’s a bloody copper doing here, sneaking up on me on the edge of old Ranulf’s ditch?

One final trample. And then the young policeman sucked his finger, where a thorn had caught it, before looking down at him again. But it was a damned hostile, suspicious look all the same, thought Tom.

‘What are you after, down here?’ The policeman frowned at his finger again, and then gave it another suck.

Tom’s hackles rose. This was old Ranulf’s ditch, or near enough—

not somewhere beyond the Green Line in Beirut, or a poxy Third World slum within mortar-range of a British consulate. But then he thought maybe I’m trespassing—? But there were no peasants in these coverts, so far south of Watford Gap, surely?

‘What—?’ Caution inclined him towards a show of ignorance, to probe the question further, before he pulled rank and privilege. But then a crunching-and-crashing sound, emanating from the floor of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the ditch, away to his right, diverted the policeman’s attention.

Other sounds accompanied the crunching-and-crashing, which Tom could guess at, but which he didn’t want to interpret as he bent down to look for their source and prepare for the emergence of their author.

‘What’s that, down there?’ The policeman assumed—assumed all too correctly—that whatever Tom was ‘after’ was related to the sounds.

Tom peered uneasily into the tangle. At the very lowest point of the ditch, which was probably all of six feet higher with in-fill than when Ranulf had forced the local peasantry to dig it, there was something like a tunnel. But, although it might be sufficient for the local fauna— foxes for sure… and maybe even badgers, if there were still badgers unpersecuted here—it was hardly enough for Willy, surely—? Because, for one thing, it was muddy—

‘Have you seen a gentleman hereabouts?’ inquired the policeman, obviously despairing of any other answer, and not expecting it to issue from the bottom of the ditch, anyway.

It was Willy: Tom’s ear, attuned to the worst, caught a word—two words, more precisely—from the other sounds which marked Willy’s passage, exactly according to his orders, with two-yard measuring pole in hand.