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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 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.
An' she's never looked back since then — eh?'
'Where's Kidlington, Mr Buller?'
'Just outsid
e Oxford, Lady.' Buller grinned at her unsmilingly. 'It's the largest village in England, they say. So it's got its own airfield.' The unsmiling grin vanished. 'But you're right about 1978: that's the key to the door, of course.'
There was nothing very clever about that. But, if she chose not to be very clever, he must play their game. 'So what really dummy2
happened in 1978, Reg?'
Buller looked at Jenny. But Jenny was suddenly pretending to concentrate on her hair again, to their exclusion.
'Reg—?'
'All right.' Buller dismissed her, and drank more of his beer.
'There was one of their internal bust-ups . . . like the bloke who ran R & D was going, because 'e was sick ... an' 'is No. 2
'ad just died with 'is boots on, of a heart-attack — what was
'is name, Lady — ?'
'Stocker — ' The name cut through the hairpins.
'Ah! Just so . . .' Buller shrugged off the name. 'So they were all tryin' to fix things, so it came out right for 'em, an' they got the bloke they wanted to sign their expense accounts —
okay?'
Jenny half-turned away from him, as though regretting that she'd even given him a name, pretending to fight again with her hair.
'Okay.' Buller turned to Ian. 'So Audley an' all the rest of 'em wanted Jack Butler. Because, better the devil you know than the one you don't know . . . An' the one they didn't know was the Lady's bloke — Mr Philip Masson — see?'
He had already seen that much. 'So — ?'
'So Butler was their front runner. Because he was there— he knew the form.' Buller forgot to drop his aitches. Which was a sure sign that what he was saying was more important to him now than how he was saying it. 'An' Butler was a crafty dummy2
choice because he was working-class — not Eton and the Royal Marines . . . but grammar school scholarship, an'
commissioned-in-the-field, in some second-rate North Country infantry regiment in '45 ... An' 'is dad was a big trade unionist, who'd been a mate of Ernie Bevin's in the TUC in the old days, before his boy had learned to be an officer an' a gentleman — ' He swung towards Jenny ' — so you may think your bloke was the greatest thing since sliced bread, Lady . . .
But Jack Butler was a front runner while chief Petty Officer Jim Callaghan was still Prime Minister, an' running the show
— right?'
Jenny tossed her hair aside. 'Philly was the man for the job, Mr Buller.'
'Oh aye?' Reg Buller's lip curled. 'More like . . . "Philly" was the man in the Civil Service who could fix things so Butler fell on his face — how about that then?'
Jenny held her hair up with one hand, while finishing her gin with the other. 'What do you mean by that, Mr Buller?'
'What do I mean?' Buller had consumed enough alcohol to be unafraid of her now, even apart from the fact that he appeared to be running their show at the moment, however temporarily. 'I mean we just tipped all the pieces of the jigsaw out on the table so far. An' we don't even know we got all the pieces yet. In fact, we certainly ain't got 'em all ... But that don't mean we can't try an' put the bits together that look like fitting, eh?'
'I see.' Her lips compressed. 'So you've just picked up some dummy2
dirty little rumour about Philip Masson — is that it?'
'Oh aye? An' you didn't pick up some dirty little rumour about David Audley, Lady? I thought that was what started us off. Correct me if I'm wrong, Lady — ?'
'But we've already had confirmation that it was a strong rumour going around Audley played dirty back in '78, Mr Buller. John Tully and I both picked that up, quite independently: there was going to be a big shake-up in R & D. Fred Clinton was coming up for retirement, and his deputy had already gone. And Audley was backing Jack Butler. But the Cabinet Secretary and others were backing Philip Masson.'
'Ah?' Buller emptied his beer glass and instantly stamped heavily on the floor, like a magician summoning up spirits from the underworld. 'So the smart money was on your bloke, then. But Audley's a man who likes to get 'is own way
— '
'That's precisely it, Mr Buller: Audley likes to get his own way. So Philly had an accident — and Audley got his own way, didn't he?'
Buller stared at her for a moment. Then he stamped again, more heavily than before. Then he sniffed. 'You don't think killin' someone on 'is own side ... or 'avin' 'im killed . . . you don't think that's comin' on a bit strong — even for 'im?'
Jenny's lip twisted. 'Audley? Aren't you being a bit sentimental, Mr Buller? His side — our side ... we don't do dummy2
such naughty things? Only the lesser breeds — the KGB and the CIA . . . and the Israelis ... do naughty deeds?' The twist became more pronounced. 'They say Audley's left a trail of bodies behind him over the years — remember?'
'But they were his enemies, Lady, by all accounts.'
Or innocent bystanders, thought Ian bitterly.
'If Masson had been a traitor now — ' Buller started to develop his thesis unwisely.
'Don't be ridiculous, Mr Buller. If you think that then we'll settle your bill here and now. I have my cheque book with me, as well as my passport. You can even have a Eurocheque, if you prefer.'
'I wasn't saying that, Lady. Your bloke was clean. If there'd been any doubt about 'im — any slightest doubt ... I grant you that.' Buller hastily changed his tack. 'What I mean is ... it would 'ave been straight murder, killing him. An' if you think about it, they didn't even arrange for old Peter Wright to 'ave an accident, when they knew 'e was goin' to cause 'em all that trouble — now did they? An' why not?' He paused. 'Because for a private murder you need a private murderer. So Audley would have had to get hisself a man, and a good one —
someone, in fact, like "Mad Dog" O'Leary — ' He nodded towards Ian ' — or your bloke MacManus. An' there's a lot of risks involved in hiring that sort of talent. You really got to
'ave someone you can trust. And you can't never trust a private murderer, I don't reckon.'
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Jenny shook her head. 'That's a pretty thin argument, Mr Buller.'
Buller made a face. 'I wasn't really talkin' about that, anyway
— not yet anyway.'
'No. You were talking about Philip Masson. And some dirty little slander.' Jenny was like a terrier dropping a dead rat in preference for a larger one whose back she also intended to break before it could get away. 'So what was that, then?'
The door opened suddenly, and the same large young woman entered again, with more drinks. Buller had indeed summoned up spirits from the deep.
They waited until the re-fuelling had been completed, and then Buller turned back to Jenny. 'All that trouble they had up north, at the University, with the bomb, an' then O'Leary turnin' up at Thornervaulx, when Jack Butler was on some other job . . . There's those that might say it was Jack Butler who was being measured for an "accident" there. Only the woman that was killed an' Dr P. L. Mitchell spoilt the accident between 'em — '
'Mitchell?' Jenny wasn't interested in 'the woman'.
'Oh aye.' Buller nodded. 'Old "Mad Dog" was a top man in his profession — he was good, Lady . . . Even goin' to Thornervaulx like that, which was a mad thing to do, it seemed . . . But 'e'd got a car waitin' in a barn about a mile away, over the top, complete with a police uniform and identity papers. An' then another car about five miles away, dummy2
with another identity — an' the uniform of a major in the Royal Signals, from Catterick. An' a real major, too — only 'e was on leave at the time. An' the number-plate on the second car was the same as the major's car. They didn't even find those cars for a fortnight, neither. So 'e'd 'ave got away, you can reckon.'
'You were talking about Mitchell, Mr Buller, I thought,'
'I am talking about Mitchell, Lady. Because old "Mad Dog"
was a real pro. But Dr P. L. Mitchell is another. An' maybe a better one, too.'
'How so? What are you trying to tell us, Mr Buller?'
Buller drew a breath.
'By all accounts, 'e 'ad no more than two seconds flat, that day at Thornervaulx, after O'Leary started shooting. An' O'Leary had a long gun — a rifle of some sort. An' Mitchell — Doctor Mitchell . . . he had a little gun. A hand-gun, that would be. Probably an automatic pistol, that would be, so as not to spoil his jacket . . . But it don't really matter — that it was a little gun. Because it was big enough for what was needed, see?' He looked at them in turn. 'O'Leary gets off one shot — bang!' His free hand came up, with a finger pointing at Jenny. 'An' bang-bang-bang goes the little gun. An' 'e never even got a second shot off —
down like a pole-axed steer, 'e went. . . "never" as they say in the old westerns, "to rise again". A proper little Wyatt Earp, our Doctor Mitchell is. Or maybe more like Doc Holliday.'
As Jenny digested all this in silence, Ian was conscious of a shiver down his own back because of Buller's chance dummy2
imagery. Almost, that might have been how Gary Redwood would have described that shoot-out, with his own dear Marilyn Francis down in the dust — the wet hillside bracken at Thornervaulx — after that first-and-last shot of O'Leary's.
'Who told you all this?' Jenny had indeed noticed the curious imprecision of Buller's account, which ruled out one of his police contacts . . . even supposing that he'd been clever enough and lucky enough to find one so imprudent to say so much. And even then —
'Ah! Now that would be telling!' Buller savoured his memories for a moment. 'You know what I've got — eh?'
'An eye-witness.' Ian snapped the words as they hit him, in the instant he recalled Buller's powers of conversation-recall from past experience, when these could be checked against played-back tapes for comparison.
'And clients paying for your time,' added Jenny tartly, but oddly out of character. 'Come on, Mr Buller — don't piss us around: you've got an eye-witness.'
'Strictly speaking . . . no, Lady.' Buller drank deeply.
'Meaning . . . you won't ever be able to turn this into one of your lovely bits of dialogue, Ian lad — like with that Yank we found up in those mountains — remember?'
'Why not, Mr Buller?' Jenny was less hampered by any imperishable memories of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, never mind the horrors of Vietnam.
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