A Prospect of Vengeance

when they'd given it a clean bill-of-health, we were quite relieved. Because it took all the heat off Jack Butler, so he got the job. And because all we were concerned with was why they were dummy2

trying to kill him, you see — do you see?'

Jenny didn't see. What she saw, in the next second, was that the little car was still burning in the valley: as always, it was amazing how long a collection of bits of metal burned, once they took fire. 'Why — ?'

He shook his head at her. 'This isn't the Middle East, Miss Fielding: we don't go round killing their chaps. And they don't go round killing ours — it's bad for business.' His lip curled. 'You journalists steal stories from each other, and that's fair enough. But if you started killing each other every time, then you'd pretty soon have a recruitment problem —

especially if the editors started knocking each other off, as well, eh?' He shook his head again. 'No . . . putting O'Leary on to Jack Butler was too heavy to ignore: we had to sit down and find out why. Because Jack's a great chap. But he's not irreplaceable — even after your godfather's 'accidental'

death there were other candidates — ' The lip curled once more ' — including me even, faute de mieux . . . Except that I wasn't willing. Because I don't like the paperwork — the managing, as they say? Because I'm not a civil servant at heart: I'm a leopard who's too old to change his spots, Miss Fielding.'

Arrogant bugger! But then Philly had been pretty arrogant, too! But . . . she mustn't interrupt —

'So there had to be a reason.' He repaid her restraint by continuing. 'And we very soon came up with one. Because Jack was promoted, then he had access to a lot of highly-dummy2

restricted files. So we thought . . . once he sees those files, then he'll see something no one else has, maybe? So ... they can't afford for him to see them . . . maybe?'

He looked at her, and she realized that he wanted her to react now, to prove that she understood. 'Like . . . there was a traitor somewhere? What Mr Le Carre calls 'a mole' — ?'

He shrugged. 'Yes. Or ... it could be that they'd deceived us somehow, with a piece of disinformation. They're damn good at that — feeding us with a great big pack of lies ... or feeding the Yanks, or the Frogs, or the Krauts ... or Mossad, and then they feed us . . . and we all believe it, and act accordingly — ?'

He almost grinned at her, but didn't. 'If you start off from the wrong place, then you usually end up at the source of the Nile, and you think you've made a great discovery. So you don't notice the boat they've moored on the Thames, alongside Westminster . . .' He repeated the almost-but-not-grin. 'Don't ask me, Miss Fielding. Because I won't tell you.'

But he was self-satisfied. So he had come up with an answer.

And all he wanted to do was to wrap up the question in the Official Secrets Act, so that he could shrug off his answer, in turn. So she had to get the question right. 'But . . . you had Sir Jack Butler there, beside you, after that. So . . . if he did see those files — ?'

David Audley beamed at her. 'Absolutely right, Miss Fielding: we had him there beside us — ' Then the beam dulled.

'What's the matter, Dr Audley?'

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'Nothing — ' He was uneasy for a moment. Then he was himself again. ' — your Mr Ian Robinson is talking to my wife, with your Mr Buller . . . and to my daughter. And I was merely wondering what they were saying down there — ' He jerked his head ' — in the rocks down there — ?'

Jenny remembered the pointy-eared fox, which was also somewhere down there in the rocks. But it was beyond her imagination, what they were all up to now, down there: Ian and Reg and the pointy-eared fox, never mind Audley's wife and his daughter, after Paul Mitchell's two failed shots, and then that burst of gunfire, the turret-gun's concluding broadside.

But there was no one there in the rocks. 'What did you discover, Dr Audley?'

He made another ugly face. 'It took us a long time, Miss Fielding. And Paul Mitchell worked longer than I did.' He stared at her, and then nodded. 'Because your Mr Robinson is right — O'Leary wasn't enough for him: he wanted whoever was behind what happened at Thornervaulx.' Nod.

'And so did I, come to that.' Another nod. 'But for a quite different reason.'

'A quite different — ?'

He shook his head again. 'But we didn't find anything — not even with old Jack alongside us: we didn't find a damn thing: not a happening, not a policy, not a name, not even a smell —

nothing.'

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Jenny junked Paul Mitchell with Frances Fitzgibbon: they had been, respectively, infantryman and infantry- woman who had fought and died in the front line, and of no interest to the historian's deeper truth.

'Paul worked all hours God sent — 8 A.M. to midnight. Or later, sometimes, I suspect.' Audley tested her. 'I don't know ... I went home each night. But he was always there next morning, when I came in, Miss Fielding.'

As with Reg Buller, so with David Audley. And as with Reg Buller, so with Ian Robinson too: whatever spell she cast across the years from Thornervaulx, Frances Fitzgibbon really must have been quite a woman, to ensnare them all like this, in all their different ways, thought Jenny enviously.

Except that Frances- Marilyn Fitzgibbon- Francis was dead now: so sod her!

So she waited.

'One morning, I came in ... And Paul said 'There's nothing here, David; the bastards have beaten us. Or Jack can't remember anything, anyway. So, even if O'Leary hadn't been so damned incompetent and done the job properly . . . either at the University, or at Thornervaulx ... it wouldn't have made any difference. Because there's nothing here.''