A Prospect of Vengeance

was just because it was the betwixt-and-between time of early evening, with the threat of rain from the low clouds which touched the trees on each side of the valley, which kept the inhabitants in their houses. But he might as well have been in Fin Bheara's country, in which Captain and Mrs Fitzgibbon now lived as of right. For the only living souls he'd seen so far were the old village-shopkeeper-cum-postmistress (who looked as though she already had one foot in Fin's kingdom, although she had given him useful information) and (quite fortuitously, but more useful still; and who might be said to have some connection with Fin's business) the village priest.

But the emptiness was reassuring, nevertheless.

So now he had his bearings again: he had parked the car prudently out of sight down that turning, just in case. So the post office must be down that lane, just to his left. And there should be a phone near that —

He had been lucky today, it had to be admitted. Lucky with the start Reg had given him, directing him to dummy2

Rickmansworth . . . and lucky, in a way, at Rickmansworth, during each of his three interviews. But luck was not such a wild card as most people liked to think, it was quite often the just reward for effort, with the Lord helping those who helped themselves. But those roadworks had been pure luck; and he would in any case have sought out the priest next.

Meeting him like that, right in the churchyard, had saved him time, undoubtedly, but —

And there was the phone-box. He should have noticed it first time round. And now, because he was lucky today, it wouldn't be vandalized. (Or anyway, phones didn't get vandalized in places like Lower Buckland.) (Tracing Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon wouldn't be too difficult, at least up to a point: it was the sort of thing John Tully and Reg Buller did well and quickly, with their wealth of varied experience.)

He was barely half an hour late phoning Jenny, which by her standards was nothing. So she'd still be in (and today, anyway, he was lucky). It wasn't vandalized. And he had plenty of change — (Tracing Captain Robert Gauvain Fitzgibbon, of the 39th Lancers, would be even easier: Captain Fitzgibbon, in life and death, would be a matter of record, public and military. Not, in this context, that he would be worth more than a passing reference or two or maybe a footnote, if his family was an interesting one; or — )

'Hullo? Who's that?'

That was Jenny, safe and sound and undoubtedly: Jenny dummy2

never answered the telephone with her own name and number. 'Ian, Jenny — '

'Thank God for that! Where are you?'

'What? I'm at—'

'No!' She cut him off. 'Don't answer that. You're not at home

— at your flat, Ian — ?'

'No. What the hell's the matter, Jen?' He had never heard her so flustered. And that, in very quick succession, surprised him and then frightened him. 'Jenny — '

'Shut up, Ian. Don't say anything. Don't tell me where you are, or what you're doing. Just listen.'

He opened his mouth, and then remembered what she'd just said. But his fear overrode that. 'Are you all right, Jenny?'

'Shut up. I've got to be quick — you've got to be quick. Get out of there — wherever you are — and go to that place where the man dropped the soup . . . Remember that? And don't be followed. If you are, then go to my father's place, and don't leave it. And I'll phone you there. Okay?'

Although he tried to digest all that while she force-fed him with it, there was too much of it, and he gagged on it. Now he was just plain frightened — Beirut-style frightened. Or perhaps even more frightened, because he didn't know what ought to be frightening him in Lower Buckland, or her in London.

'Okay. It'll take me an hour, Jen.' He estimated the journey from Lower Buckland to Abdul the Damned's restaurant as dummy2

best he could. But he couldn't leave it at that. 'What's happened, Jen? You must tell me. Then I'll go.'

There was a fractional pause. 'Reg Buller's dead, Ian. And I can't raise ... his friend — he doesn't answer. I think the police may be there.' Another heart's-beat pause. 'Watch yourself, Ian — for God's sake watch yourself!'

The phone went dead.

5

There were times, under pressure, when everything around him ceased to exist — even he himself seemed disembodied

— and the only reality was what was going on in his head.

Jenny was all right, his brain told him. If she hadn't been all right, she wouldn't have spoken like that: when she'd spoken to him that one time in Beirut, when she'd been unfree, she'd been calm and matter-of-fact, almost confident. This time, she'd been free, but neither calm nor well- organized, and far from confident — certainly far from confident that her line was safe —

He realized that he was still inside the phone-box in Lower Buckland, just down the lane from the Village Green; and he was staring at the dialling instructions blindly, with the phone still in his hand. And his hand was sweaty —

Oh God! He closed his eyes on the blasphemy. Reg Buller!

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