A Prospect of Vengeance

can't be an offence, otherwise they'd have prosecuted other people long before. And then, if we're just the teeniest bit careful . . . and he'll vet every line you write, Simon says he will . . . then there's a hell of a lot we can get away with, under 'Public Interest' — Pro bono publico, as John Tully would say.' The grim smile showed again, quite different from her more mischievous grin. 'Audley won't sue.

Because they won't let him — they never defend their own.

Not like the KGB . . . But, if we're right, he won't anyway —

will he?'

They were back to one of his earliest thoughts. 'You know him — ? Do you know him, Jen?'

'Never met him in my life, so far as I know.' She frowned, as though running memories backwards. 'Big ugly fellow, apparently.' The frown cleared. 'That's a pleasure in store, darling.'

For her, anyway: 'big ugly fellows' couldn't very well thump young lady investigative-writers, certainly — not without the direst consequences. But this time, with time so short, she needed her Ian up there with her, in the forefront of the dummy2

battle. And that wasn't reassuring. 'So why are you so hell-bent on nailing him, Jen?'

'I'm not.' No smile, no grin, now: she looked as neutral as Switzerland. Yet there was a cold glitter in her eye he'd never seen before. 'But this is one book I really want to see published.'

It couldn't be avarice, surely? 'We don't need the money, Jen.

Not that badly.'

'The money?' Sudden anger replaced the coldness. 'Don't be silly, Ian. You're the one who likes money. I don't need it —

remember?'

That was hurtful — and all the more so because she intended it to be. And that wasn't really Jenny. 'I'm sorry — '

She closed her eyes for an instant. 'No! I'm the one who should be sorry. That was dirty. And you weren't being silly

— you just don't know, that's all. It was before your time —

our time.'

'Our time?' Whatever it was, it had hurt her. And whatever it was she wanted, he was going to do it for her, he realized.

'What was, Jen? 1978 — ?'

'Korea.' She produced the name like a rabbit out of a top-hat.

'Korea?' One of their future possible subjects (which, now he heard himself repeat it, Jenny herself had floated) had been the Korean phenomenon, in anticipation of all the Olympic coverage, and the possible political nastiness which might attend the event.

dummy2

Jenny nodded. 'Philip Masson was a lovely man. And he was also a Royal Marine, long ago, in Korea.'

'A Royal — ?'

'In the war — the Korean War.' She seemed to lose patience with him, where the moment before she had conceded that he couldn't know what she was talking about. 'Philly Masson carried Daddy for miles, on his back, in the middle of winter, with the Chinese shooting at them all the time — Daddy wouldn't have survived without him: he would have frozen to death before he'd died of wounds, if the Chinese hadn't finished him off, he said. Philly saved his life.' She looked at him. 'So, you could say, he saved my life, too. Because I wouldn't have been born if he hadn't done that. And ... he was my godfather, Ian. And I loved him.'

3

It was Reg Buller who put his finger on it. And he put his finger quite literally on it (and slightly drunkenly, slurring his words a little), as he stabbed the protected enlargement of the microfilmed newspaper page.

'Thish ish it! You mark my wordsh, Ian lad! Thish ish it!'

Ian had spent three good hours in the library by then, dissecting the anatomy of an almost perfect murder, albeit without ever getting close to the victim. Because, if there was dummy2

one certain thing about the death of Philip Masson, it was that he'd never actually been on board the Jenny III on the evening and night of Friday/Saturday, November 17/18, 1978.

But, equally certainly, somebody who knew his job had been on the Jenny III instead of him.

The reliable Daily Telegraph had done its own job well, in reporting the eventual inquest at length on page three.

Maybe there hadn't been a good murder trial that day, to lead the page. Or perhaps some smart editor had calculated that there might be a great many yachtsmen among the Telegraph readers, who would study every line of three columns thinking all the time this could have been me!

Time: 3.35 P.M., Saturday, November 18; Wind: South-West freshening; sea: moderate to rough —

The yacht Jenny III (no prizes for guessing why she had been so named) had been found by a fisherman, adrift ten miles south of the Needles.

There had of course been no one on board, but (or because of that) the fisherman had been observant: the mainsail had been sheeted hard home, as for close-hauled sailing, and reefed down; the working jib had been set, but was flapping; the jib sheets were lying on deck, shackle in place, but pin dummy2