A Prospect of Vengeance

For a moment, Buller didn't reply. ''Fitzgibbon', was it?'

Another pause. 'You had an interesting day, did you, Ian lad?'

He had to keep his cool. 'But she had a bad day — November 11, 1978?'

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Another pause. 'What was she doing in Rickmansworth?'

'What was she doing in ... where was it?' Surprisingly, it was Jenny who came to his rescue. 'At Thornervaulx — the ruined abbey there, wasn't it?'

'You know the place, do you?' Buller had obviously decided that he was giving too much and receiving too little in exchange.

'I know the place. Daddy used to shoot near Thornervaulx —

or hunt, or something.' Jenny also knew Buller's game. 'Or maybe it was racing at Catterick . . . What was she doing in Thornervaulx, Reg — this Mrs FitzPatrick?'

'Ah . . .' With Jenny, Buller usually surrendered more quickly than this. 'Well, it's like they always say with makin'

omelettes: you 'ave to break the eggs now an' then. Only . . .

it's always the cooks an' the omelette-eaters talkin', isn't it?

Never the eggs and the chickens.'

'So she was just doing her job.' It was impossible to say whether Jenny was more irritated by Buller's obstinacy or by fluctuating extremes of the accent he tended to assume with her. 'But was she Police, Mr Buller? Or was she Intelligence?

And ... if she was Intelligence, in R & D? Because they do appear to pretend that they're 'equal opportunity', it seems.'

Equal opportunity to die, in this case, Ian added silently.

'I tell you one thing, Lady . . .' But Buller trailed off maddeningly as the sound of another train came down the line towards them.

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'One thing — ?' Jenny urged him on, her voice rising against the sound.

'Aye. She was . . . brave, Lady — ' The rest of his shout was cut off by the train, the noise sucking the words away with it again.

This time she waited until the noise had gone, and the hum of the city had reasserted itself as a background to the silence in the cutting. 'Brave, Mr Buller?'

'She was the one that picked up the bleedin' bomb at the University.'

Frances? thought Ian. Frances! 'How do you know that, Reg?'

'I thought it was Audley, first. But he wasn't there — at the University.' Buller addressed him deliberately in the darkness. 'An' then I thought it must 'ave been Mitchell. But it was ' er — '

'How do you know?' That it had never occurred to him before seemed like a betrayal, almost: like Buller, he had never dreamt of equating the 'heroic secret services officer' of Reg's favourite tabloid newspaper with its 'innocent bystander' at Thornervaulx a few days later. ' How do you know, man?'

'I talked to a bloke that was there — what d'you think?' Buller was guarded about his police contacts again. 'An' I've just put two-an'-two together. An' they make four, just like always.'

'She sounds a bit stupid, to me.' Jenny spoke to no one in particular. 'But . . . she was R & D, then — is that what you're dummy2

saying, Mr Buller?'

Suddenly Ian didn't want to talk about Frances any more.

And he didn't want Jenny to talk about her either. 'I thought we were talking about Mitchell, not Mrs Fitzgibbon.'

'And we know that he's R & D,' agreed Jenny. 'But . . . what's Thornervaulx got to do with Philip Masson, Mr Buller?'

There was doubt in her voice, and she wasn't arguing now: she was conceding a point while seeming to ask for an explanation.

But Thornervaulx was Frances Fitzgibbon to Ian. 'He wasn't there — you said, Reg?' (If there had been the slightest possibility of that, Jenny wouldn't have asked her question: it would have been all Thornervaulx then!)

'No, 'e wasn't there.' Buller dismissed the idea scornfully.

'The bleedin' generals don't go into the front line, lad—'

'Mr Buller!' Jenny snapped him off. 'Just answer the question, please.'

Buller crunched the dirty people's refuse under his feet. 'It's time we got out of 'ere, Lady. It's not too far to that pub I know. An' I can phone from there — '

'Mr Buller!'

'Okay, okay!' He drew a noisy breath. 'I don't know for sure.

But if I'm right . . . then Thornervaulx wasn't just the death of O'Leary an' the woman: it was the death of your