still someone alive who could fill in enough of the blanks in the record to point the Russians back to the Richardson episode, if not to the location of his arms dump.
In which case they might even try to make a deal of some sort with us — the sort of deal I've suggested to Henry Jaggard.' He shook his head sadly. 'Isn't that par for the course now?'
'What d'you mean?'
'What do I mean?' What he really meant was the old Audley days were very different from the new Renshaw-Jaggard-Gorbachev ones. But he could never explain that. 'I suppose . . . they don't want trouble here, any more than we do. So ... I was rather hoping they might just come clean and apologize. And then pool resources, for the good of glasnost and perestroika.' He studied her beautiful pink ear again. 'They must have some sort of idea what Lukianov is up to by now. And . . . Henry Jaggard would love that sort of deal — wouldn't he?'
But she wasn't listening to him: she was swinging the wheel furiously —
'What the hell — ?' The car swerved violently, and the driver behind hooted at them.
'What — ?' He had been momentarily distracted by the extension of his own innermost thought, which had filled him with sudden bitterness: that these were the days of Henry Jaggard most of all, and that the days of Audley, dummy1
when everything had been so black and white, were passing
— if not already past? 'What?'
'He's not going to Hereford — Mitchell.' She hung on to the Porsche's tail grimly. 'He's going back into the town.'
Audley looked around. They had been on a new dual-carriageway before the roundabout, neither of which had been there in the old days, any more than this maelstrom of modern traffic.
'No. It's all right, Mary.' Memory came to his aid. 'That must be the new route to Hereford. He's just taking the old one.'
His own reassuring words relaxed her. But they turned him inwards on himself again, with their unintentional double-meaning.
The old roads he had travelled, in the days of Audley —of Audley and Sir Frederick Clinton — had been tortuous, and very dangerous sometimes too, at their black spots. But at least they had been mostly clear and well-signposted, and he had always known where he was going. Whereas on Henry Jaggard's congested multi-lane political motorways
—
'No he's not,' snapped Mary sharply.
No, he wasn't! They had twisted and turned. And now they were undeniably on a side-road . . . going where — ?
Then he saw the little river beside him, and the question was instantly answered. And another one, as yet unasked, with dummy1
it!
'This is the beginning of the Monow valley, Mary. We cross the river over a little bridge just ahead, to the left.' Such a little river, to have so many castles: that was what he remembered. 'Skenfrith and Grosmont are up ahead, then.
With Maerdy and White to the west.' And no prizes for guessing which, now. 'But Maerdy's the nearest. And that's where they're going — Richardson's going to show Paul where he found the spade.'
Mary slapped the driving-wheel angrily. 'That's ridiculous!'
She reached forward to flash the car-lights just as the Porsche disappeared round a corner ahead. 'Damn them!'
'Yes.' She wanted Richardson safely-confined. She wanted them all safely-confined.
'I said we'd be at Hereford by ten.' This time she caught the Porsche. But Mitchell too turned his blind eye to the angry flash in his 'mirror, just as Audley had expected him to do.
'Damn! How far is this village — Maerdy?'
'Not very far... at this speed.' With Richardson beside him, Mitchell was demonstrating his car's performance, it looked like. 'It's not a village. It's just a ruined castle, Mary. With ...
I think there's a farm nearby, if I remember correctly . . . All private, not National Trust. Or it was — ' How many years ago? God! Too many! ' —or it was when I was last there, anyway.' He could almost sympathize with her. But he had to remember also that she was Henry Jaggard's woman, not his. 'We shouldn't be too late. Because it's only a few dummy1
miles on to the Abergavenny-Hereford main road, near Ewyas Harold. And that's an interesting place, too: a pre-Conquest castle site, Mary. Before 1066 and All That. Very
