A Prospect of Vengeance

consternation he was experiencing.

'Oh yes.' Buller nodded. 'Meaning ... I wasn't quite sure. But I looked up the time of your morning service on the board outside the church. An' then I had a careful look-around . . .

using a couple of my thousand disguises, naturally . . . An' it seemed to me that you had one at the front, an' one at the back, trying to blend into their surroundings ... In fact, I nearly phoned up the local nick and tipped 'em off, to see dummy2

what would happen. But then I thought, we can always do that in future — because I'd have to do it anonymously, see?

But you can get the old girl downstairs to do it. An' then we can see whether they do anything about it or not, as the case may be. But we won't have revealed our own guilty interest, if it's official.' This time, as he drank, he rationed himself to one swallow. 'Which I'd guess it is. But it 'ud be nice to be sure, for starters. When you're ready — when you're ready, eh?'

Jenny had been right. But it was all happening too quickly, nevertheless. Which, of course and on second thoughts, made her even more right, damn it! 'What makes you sure —

now?'

'When you went out, the chap in the front called up the chap at the back. It's like he's plugged into one of these bloody

'Walkman' things — but he's two-way plugged . . . So they both met up at the corner, down the road. An' then I nipped inside.' Duller put his glass down on the kitchen table. 'Of course, they could have in-depth cover. So that could have blown me, too. But, I thought, if they've got that sort of cover, then I'm probably already blown to hell, anyway — so what the hell!' He grinned again. 'Besides which, it was beginning to rain, an' I haven't got an umbrella — ' he shrugged ' — an' I remembered about your beer supplies, too. An' I'm not charging for Sunday work. Not until 12.15. Plus travel expenses. So ... so, actually, you're still on my private time now, without the meter running.'

dummy2

Ian's thoughts had become cold and hard as he listened, like thick ice over bottomless Arctic water: it had been like this in Beirut, when Jenny had been doing the leg-work as usual in the misplaced belief that the fundamentalist snatch-squad didn't rate women (or, if they did, they couldn't handle the indelicacies of kidnapping one), and he had been holed up in the hotel.

'They're back in place now, getting nicely soaked. So you'll have to go out again later on, with your lady and my Mr Tully to draw 'em off.' Buller nodded into his silence. 'Which the three of you all together certainly will, goin' out all together

— no! For fuck's sake don't go and have a look —! ' Buller slid sideways, to block his path. 'Let's be nice and innocent for as long as we can, eh?'

Questions crowded Ian's mind. 'What made you . . .

suspicious?' It was an inadequate word, knowing Buller. But it was suitably vague.

'Huh!' Short of another beer, Buller produced an immense gunmetal lighter with which to set fire to the foul mixture in his pipe, which surely resisted conventional combustion methods. 'As soon as Mr Tully mentioned Masson's name, I thought 'Aye-aye! Watch yourself, Reg!''

'Why?' Ian remembered what Tully had said the first time he'd mentioned Reginald Buller's name: that, whatever you do, wherever you wanted to go, Buller was halfway there before you started towards it.

'I never did rate that much — a senior civil servant lost at sea: dummy2

'what a terrible tragedy!' ... I never rated that, not even at the time.' Buller shook his head. 'I thought . . . here we go again, I thought — ' A foul smoke-screen enveloped him momentarily, so that he had to wave his hand to disperse it '

— I thought aye-aye!'

'But there was nothing ever known against Philip Masson, Reg.'

'Nor there was. And that was what I thought next — quite right, when that was all there was.' This time, a nod of agreement. 'But when he turned up again ... an' miles from the sea, an' dry as a bone — ' From shake, through nod, to shake again ' — what sort of tragedy was that, then?'

That had been what Jenny had wanted to know. Or, anyway, it had been the beginning of what she had wanted to know.

'You tell me, Reg — ?'

'Hmm . . .' Somehow they had progressed out of the dining room and past the study door (and Reginald Buller would have examined all the 'Work in progress' there, too, for a certain guess), into the living room again; but Reg was blocking off the approach to the glorious bow-window, just in case.

'Well?'

'No bugger's saying anything. And you can't get near where they dug him up.' Buller scratched the back of his head.

They've got the local coppers out, both sides of the place, guarding it. There are a couple on the back road to it, never dummy2

mind the front . . . And it was two kids who found the body.

But you can't get to them, either. And the parents aren't talking to anyone.' Another shake. 'And I had to be bloody careful, because there were one or two people there I know, sniffing around, buying drinks — from the Guardian, and the Mirror . . . and so maybe from the big Sundays, too. And the Independent, could be ... But, the point is, there's a smell about it — about Masson — is what there is.'

'So you didn't get anything — ?' He knew Reg Buller better than that.

'Oh . . .' Buller bridled slightly, on his mettle '. . . there was this barmaid I chatted up, who knew someone in the coroner's office. And she said . . . that he said . . . that