'Not as far as we know. Nothing as helpful as telling us why he sold his horses to Filmer, if that's what you mean. Not unless a letter comes in the post next week, which I very much doubt.'
Gideon had been frightened beyond death, I thought. The threat must have been to the living, an ongoing perpetual threat.
'Mr Gideon has daughters,' I said.
The Brigadier nodded. 'Three. And five grandchildren. His wife died years ago, I suppose you know. Am I reading you *aright?'
'That the daughters and grandchildren were hostages? Yes. Do you think they could know it?'
'Positive they don't,' the Brigadier said. 'I talked with his eldest daughter today. Nice, sensible woman, about fifty. Gideon shot himself yesterday evening, around five they think, but no one found him for hours as he did it out in the woods. I went down to the house today. His daughter, Sarah, said he's been ultra-depressed lately, going deeper and deeper, but she didn't know what had caused it. He wouldn't discuss it. Sarah was in tears, of course, and also of course feeling guilty because she didn't prevent it, but she couldn't have prevented it, it's almost impossible to stop a determined suicide, you can't force people to go on living. Short of imprisonment, of course. Anyway, if she was any sort of a hostage, she didn't know it. It wasn't that sort of guilt.'
I offered him one of my so far uneaten sandwiches. He took one absentmindedly and began to chew, and I ate one myself. The problem of what to do about Filmer lay in morose wrinkles across his brow and I'd heard he considered the collapse of the conspiracy trial a personal failure.
'I went to see Ezra Gideon myself after you and John Millington flushed out Welfram,' he said. 'I showed Ezra your photograph of Welfram. I thought he would faint, he went so white, but he still wouldn't speak. And now, God damn it, in one day we've lost both contacts. We don't know who Filmer will get to next, or if he's already active again, and we'll have the devil's own job spotting another frightener.'
'He won't have found one himself yet, I shouldn't think,' I said. 'Certainly not one as effective. They aren't that common, are they?'
'The police say they're getting younger.'
He looked unusually discouraged for someone whose success rate in all other fields was impressive. The lost battle rankled: the victories had been shrugged off. I drank some wine and waited for the commanding officer to emerge from the worried man, waited for him to unfold the plan of campaign.
He surprised me, however, by saying, 'I didn't think you'd stick this job this long.'
'Why not?'
'You know damn well why not. You're not dim. Clement told me the pile your father left you simply multiplied itself for twenty years, growing like a mushroom. And still does. Like a whole field of mushrooms. Why aren't you out there picking them?'
I sat back in my chair wondering what to say. I knew very well why I didn't pick them, but I wasn't sure it would sound sensible.
'Go on,' he said. 'I need to know.'
I glanced at his intent eyes and sensed his concentration, and realized suddenly that he might mean in some obscure way to base the future plan on my answer.
'It isn't so easy,' I said slowly, 'and don't laugh, it really isn't so easy to be able to afford anything you want. Short of the Crown Jewels and trifles like that. Well… I don't find it easy. I'm like a child loose in a sweet shop. I could eat and eat… and make myself sick… and greedy… and a jellyfish. So I keep my hands off the sweets and occupy my time following crooks. Is that any sort of answer?'
He grunted noncommittally. 'How strong is the temptation?'
'On freezing cold days in sleet and wind at say Doncaster races, very strong indeed. At Ascot in the sunshine I don't feel it.'
'Be serious,' he said. 'Put it another way. How strong is your commitment to the Security Service?'
'They're really two different things,' I said. 'I don't pick too many mushrooms because I want to retain order… to keep my feet well planted. Mushrooms can be hallucinogenic, after all. I work for you, for the Service, rather than in banking or farming and so on, because I like it and I'm not all that bad at what I do, really, and it's useful, and I'm not terribly good at twiddling my thumbs. I don't know that I'd die for you. Is that what you want?'
His lips twitched. He said, 'Fair enough. How do you feel about danger nowadays? I know you did risky enough things on your travels.'
After a brief pause, I said, 'What sort of danger?'
'Physical, I suppose.' He rubbed a thumb and forefinger down his nose and looked at me with steady eyes. 'Perhaps.'
'What do you want me to do?'
We had come to the point of the meeting, but he backed away from it still.
I knew in a way that it was because of what he'd called the mushrooms that he'd grown into the way of speaking to me as he did, proposing but seldom giving straight orders. He would have been more forthright if I'd been a junior army officer in uniform. Millington, who didn't know about the mushrooms, could uninhibitedly boss me around like a sergeant-major, and did so pretty sharply under pressure.
Millington mostly called me Kelsey and only occasionally, on good days, Tor. ('Tor? What sort of name is that?' he'd demanded at the beginning. 'Short for Torquil,' I said. 'Torquil? Huh. I don't blame you. ') He always referred to himself as Millington (' Millington here,' when he telephoned) and that was how I thought of him: he had never asked me to call him John. I supposed that a man who had served in a strongly hierarchical organization for a long time found surnames natural.
The Brigadier's attention still seemed to be focused on the glass he was slowly revolving in his hands, but finally he put it down precisely in the centre of a beer mat as if coming to a precise conclusion in his thoughts.
'I had a telephone call yesterday from my counterpart in the Canadian Jockey Club.' He paused again. 'Have you ever been to Canada?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Once, for a while, for maybe three months, mostly in the west. Calgary… Vancouver… I went up by boat from there to Alaska.'
'Did you go to the races in Canada?’
'Yes, a few times, but it must be about six years ago… and I don't know anyone ' I stopped, puzzled, not knowing what kind of response he wanted.
'Do you know about this train?' he said. 'The Transcontinental Mystery Race Train? Ever heard of it?'
'Um,' I said, reflecting. 'I read something about it the other day. A lot of top Canadian owners are going on a jolly with their horses, stopping to race at tracks along the way. Is that the one you mean?'
'It is indeed. But the owners aren't all Canadian. Some of them are American, some are Australian and some are British. One of the British passengers is Julius Filmer.'
'Oh, 'I said.
'Yes, oh. The Canadian Jockey Club has given its blessing to the whole affair because it's attracting world-wide publicity and they are hoping for bumper attendances, hoping to give all Canadian racing an extra boost. Yesterday, my counterpart, Bill Baudelaire, told me he'd been talking with the company who are arranging everything-they've had regular liaison meetings, it seems-and he found there was a late addition to the passenger list, Julius Filmer. Bill Baudelaire of course knows all about the conspiracy fiasco. He wanted to know if there wasn't some way we could keep the undesirable Mr Filmer off that prestigious train. Couldn't we possibly declare him persona non grata on all racetracks, including and especially Canadian. I told him if we'd had any grounds to warn Filmer off we'd have done it already, but the man was acquitted. We can't be seen to disgrace him when he's been declared not guilty, we'd be in all sorts of trouble. We can't warn him off for buying two horses from Gideon. These days, we can't just warn him off because we want to, he can only be warned off for transgressing against the rules of racing.'
All the frustrated fury of the Jockey Club vibrated in his voice. He wasn't a man to take impotence lightly.
'Bill Baudelaire knows all that, of course,' he went on. 'He said if we couldn't get Filmer off the train, would we please get one of our grandees on. Although the whole thing is sold out, he twisted the arms of the promoters to say they would let him have one extra ticket, and he wanted one of our Stewards, or one of the Jockey Club department heads, or me myself, to go along conspicuously, so that Filmer would know he was being closely watched and would refrain from any sins he had in mind.'
