A Prospect of Vengeance

Philip Masson, maybe.'

This time it was Jenny's silence, with no train coming, and only the distant continuous hum of the city above them holding down the lack of sound in the cutting.

'Philly wasn't part of R & D then,' she said finally. 'And Philly would never have been into dirty tricks.'

'Wouldn't 'e?' Buller goaded her cruelly. 'Not like Audley?

Not like Mitchell?'

'We're not discussing Philly, any more.' She refused to be goaded. 'It's Mitchell we're running away from, aren't we?'

'Oh aye?' Buller harumphed derisively. 'Well, he'll do for a start, Lady. But — '

'But he saved Ian, Mr Buller. Now why would he do that —

for a start?'

Ian was already beginning to regret his obstinacy. Most of all dummy2

he wanted to question Buller about Frances Fitzgibbon. Yet he didn't want to do that in front of Jenny, although he didn't know why. But then, even as he tried to conjure up the girl in his imagination, his thoughts suddenly ignited. 'He was there, Reg — wasn't he?'

'There? Where?' Buller played for time. 'Who?'

'At Thornervaulx. Don't play silly buggers with us, Reg. In '78

— Mitchell was there — right?'

Now, when it was least required, a train from the opposite direction announced itself; and then (obeying a variant of Sod's Law), took an unconscionable time to pass them, unlike its predecessors, stopping and starting convulsively just in front of them.

'Was Mitchell at Thornervaulx, Reg?'

'I heard you the first time, old lad.' Buller had used the interruption more profitably. 'They were all there — at Thornervaulx. Except Masson, of course.' Silence —

mercifully unpunctuated by another dink. ' 'E was probably ordering 'is new suit, with 'is new badges-of-rank, on bein'

promoted to command Research an' Development, most likely.' Silence. 'But the rest were all there — yeah.'

Contempt from Jenny was par for the course. But from Reg Buller — that was over the top. 'And Marilyn Francis — ? Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon — ? Are you including her, Reg?'

'You mean the woman?' Buller sounded surprised at such sharpness, coming from him, like a ferret bitten by a rabbit.

dummy2

'Yes — the woman.' It was time Frances Fitzgibbon got her due, outside Lower Buckland. ' 'The woman who was killed the week before', Jenny — ? The 'innocent bystander'?'

'Yes.' Buller recovered. 'Yes . . . the one that blew it — her too, yes!'

'Blew it?'

'Got 'erself killed. That's blowing it, in my book.' Buller didn't give him time to bite back this time. 'She didn't ought to have got herself killed by 'Mad Dog' O'Leary — 'Mad Dog' my eye!'

'He wasn't mad?' Jenny cut in quickly.

'Oh . . .'e was mad right enough. 'E was mad to stick around after 'is bomb went off, an' 'e got clean away ... But, of course,

'e stayed. An' that was what took 'em all by surprise — 'im staying, an' 'avin' another go. Took the police by surprise, certainly. But they were bloody fed-up by then, anyway — the way the Intelligence lot had sodded 'em around, tryin' to run things, an' then throwin' O'Leary into their lap when things went sour.' Buller paused. 'Not Colonel Butler, though — 'Sir Jack' as 'e is now. Got a lot of time for 'im they 'ave.'

Reg had been talking to the Police. Or, at least, to some contact he had inside the force up north: Reg always seemed to have an old mate, or a mate of an old mate, in whatever Police Authority he found himself. 'Why was that, Reg?'

'E was brought in late, to the University — where the bomb went off. And . . . they said 'e wasn't too pleased with what 'e dummy2

found. But 'e didn't waste time complainin'. An' 'e didn't blame anyone neither, at the University there. But then they

— his bosses — they took O'Leary off him, more or less, apparently. Like . . . well, the last bit, after the bomb and before the shooting at Thornervaulx — all that was pretty confusing, after that, by all accounts.' Buller paused, but Ian knew of old the mixture of resignation and cynicism which he couldn't see. 'Everybody got praised for everything, but that was to keep 'em quiet. Because crossing O'Leary off the

'Most Wanted' list made all the Top Brass — the cabinet ministers, and the judges, and the rest — it made 'em sleep a bit sounder at night. And saved a lot of taxpayers' hard-earned money, too: ' Efficient police- work in preventing the suspect from escaping from the cordoned area' — although they didn't know where the hell he was. And ' vigilance on the part of the security services and the anti-terrorist group' . . . meaning 'Thank you very much for shooting the bugger dead. So let's not have any arguments to spoil the good publicity, eh?'' Buller sniffed. 'Never quarrel with the bloke who pins the medal on you — not when there's been a happy ending: that's the rule.'

'But it wasn't a happy ending for Mrs Fitzgibbon, Reg.' Ian couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.