A Prospect of Vengeance

bloke too, Lady.'

8

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It was always another pub with Reg Buller: it was a mystery to Ian how the man had found enough opening hours in all the days of his life to be so intimately friendly with so many landlords and landladies, barmaids and barmen, so that they were willing to spirit him away into their small back rooms on the nod, safe from prying eyes.

'Not one of my usual watering 'oles — not since the brewery done it up,' Reg had murmured in his ear as he propelled them through the noise and smoke towards a door at the back of the bar-room. 'But the bloke 'ere owes me a favour, anyway . . . Up the stairs, door straight ahead, an' I'll join you in a mo', when I've fixed up our travel arrangements —

okay?' Then he ducked back into the noise again, leaving them staring at each other.

'What travel arrangements, Jen?' Ian felt that he had left the wet outer darkness of the street outside for a brightly-lit but greater inner darkness.

'Don't ask me, darling.' She shrugged while attempting to repair the ruin of what had probably started out as an expensive hair-do. 'Mr Buller seems to have taken over, that's all I know. Don't you know?'

'You spoke to him this afternoon, Jen.'

'But only on the phone, darling. And he didn't say much then, except that he wanted me to ask around about Paul Mitchell . . . which I had already started to do on my own account, actually . . . But I thought you knew all about his dummy2

trip north — ?' She gave up the repair-attempt. 'I'm not going to argue the toss with you here, darling, in public. So just do like the wretched man said — get up those stairs.'

The only thing he knew — or the only additional thing he knew — thought Ian wearily . . . was that, however scared Paul Mitchell and others might be running now, or soon, Reg Buller was running scared already. And after John Tully, never mind what had happened at Lower Buckland this afternoon, that made sense. So getting up the stairs also made sense.

But the room at the top of the stairs in no way resembled the Shah Jehan room: it had foul red-plastic covered tables and an even fouler smell of stale tobacco-smoke, complete with overflowing ashtrays: it was a meeting-room of some sort, and all that could be said for it now was that it was empty.

'What about Mitchell?' He faced her again.

'Darling — you know him better than we do.' She returned to her repair work, letting the whole elaborate ruin down in a red cascade. 'If only I had an elastic band! You don't happen to have one, do you, darling?' She glanced at him a little too casually. 'No — of course you don't! But... he did save your life — didn't he? Mitchell, I mean . . . No . . . well, of course, we don't know that for sure, do we? And you were busy with that woman of yours . . .'

He had to hit her back. 'Whom you didn't think was important?'

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'I still don't think she's important.' She spoke through several hairpins.

'And Reg Buller going north — ?' Buller had come back with information about Mitchell. So she damn-well couldn't argue with that. 'What — '

The door burst open, and a large young woman with a tray swerved through the opening. 'One large gin-and- tonic —

one low-alcohol lager — ?'

Jenny dropped her hair. 'Mine's the gin — ' She seized the glass from the tray, letting her hair fall again.

Thank you — ' He took one of the three glasses which remained: not the pint in the straight glass, and not the large whisky chaser, and looked interrogatively at the barmaid.

'Those are for Mr Buller — if you don't mind, sir?' She didn't even look at him.

Ian took Buller's share, and waited until the door had closed again. 'But you don't think that was a wasted journey now, do you, Jen?'

'No.' She drank deeply, like Reg Buller. And then set her glass down on the nearest table and returned to her hair. 'I think that was all part of the scene — the run-up to Philly's murder. But your woman was out of it by then.'

He hated that — and almost hated Jenny with it. 'She's not

'my' woman.' But he hated that, too: he heard the cock crow as he spoke. 'But I think you're wrong, Jen. And ... I think she's interesting ... I mean, I think she may be important — '

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But he didn't want to argue about Frances Fitzgibbon. 'What

'scene', Jen — ?'

The door opened again as he spoke, and Reg Buller came through it this time.

'E's goin' to call me back.' Buller looked at them briefly, his radar having indicated where the drinks were. 'E knows there's something dodgey goin' on . . .' He drank. '. . . maybe

'e's 'eard about poor ol' Johnny. But I twisted 'is arm, so 'e'll divvy up, you can bet on it . . .' Another drink. '. . . Kidlington, most likely — if 'e can 'andle the paperwork. But he may prefer us to take the hovercraft from Ramsgate, an' then lay on a plane from the other side, see — ?' He wiped his mouth.

'What 'scene' was that, then?'

'1978, Mr Buller.' Jenny answered him coolly. 'Where are we going . . . from where was it?' She frowned. 'Ramsgate, I know . . . But 'Kidlington' — ?'

'1978!' Buller tossed off his chaser in one swallow. 'A soddin'

bad year for the Labour Party! '78-'79 put Mrs Thatcher in.