The Labyrinth Makers dda-1

by Anthony Price

  'Did he fall, or was he pushed?' he inquired.

  'Neither,' replied Roskill, slowing down not in the least. 'He was dead when he was slung down those stairs.'

  He changed gears with casual skill, and drifted the car coolly round a badly-cambered bend with an ease Audley envied bitterly. How was it that some people could bring machines alive, and then achieve a symbiosis with them?

  'But you were right, Dr Audley,' Roskill continued. 'It was an accident, most likely. He actually died of heart failure –he had a heart condition that only needed the right shock to set off.'

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  'And that shock was—?'

  'Somebody slapped him around a bit. Not hard, but hard enough.

  Made his nose bleed. We frightened him, but we weren't in any hurry. Someone else was, apparently.'

  'They'd have hit him to make him tell them something?' asked Faith.

  'That's right, Miss Jones. He'd just spoken to us, and he knew we were OHMS. He'd know that his next visitors weren't official–but he also knew that we were coming back soon. So he might have tried to stall them and that was very unwise of him.'

  'Unwise?'

  Roskill was silent for a moment. Then he spoke more seriously:

  'Miss Jones, most people think that types like me are just like–the men on the other side. They think we're just tools, like a gun or a fighter; same basic object, just a different make. But it isn't quite true, you know.'

  'You're good and they're bad?'

  Audley wriggled uncomfortably. The old argument was rearing its head.

  But Roskill avoided it.

  'I'm bound by laws, very strict laws, and they aren't. In this country, anyway.'

  'But you'd stretch those laws.'

  'Stretch–maybe. But break–never! With a free press and civil liberties I wouldn't even if I wanted to. Which I don't, oddly dummy4

  enough.'

  Audley intervened. 'Hugh means that if Morrison had refused to talk to us there isn't a thing we could have done about it. And there aren't many places in the world where that's the case. That's why you're coming up to Knaresborough with us, as I told you: because I've a feeling that Tierney won't be panicked like Morrison.'

  Roskill nodded.

  'True–but that isn't really what I meant to say, Miss Jones.

  'I meant to say that if ever you should be in Morrison's situation, don't try to be brave or clever. Just tell 'em what they want to know. Sing like a canary.'

  'I'll remember your advice, Mr Roskill.'

  'It was just a thought. And please call me Hugh–everyone else does.'

  'Well, then, Hugh–what was it they wanted to find out from that poor man? David didn't seem to think that he had much of value to tell–except that he knew my father brought the treasure in.'

  The speed of the Triumph dropped all of three m.p.h., only to rise sharply. Audley remembered from the Dassault interview that Roskill had flown fighters: he drove exactly as one would expect a fighter pilot to drive.

  'Treasure?' said Roskill innocently.

  Audley told him briefly about the Schliemann Collection, and was exceedingly gratified to find that his information was received with the same caution as he had accorded it. This not only vindicated his attitude, he reflected, despising the jealousy he was unable to stifle; dummy4

  it relegated Hugh to his own level in Faith's eyes.

  'All this trouble for a load of museum exhibits!' The prospect seemed to amuse Roskill, and although Audley refrained from turning to look at Faith he could sense her bristling on the back seat.

  'All what trouble?' she asked.

  Roskill gave Audley a quick sidelong glance.

  'That's the thing that's been disturbing me more than somewhat, Dr Audley: the priority service we've been getting. I'm used to being told to get on with it, and mind the expenses. But ever since that JIG fellow set eyes on me it's been all "Ask and ye shall receive"–

  and I don't like it!'

  'The Schliemann treasure—' began Faith.

  'The Schliemann treasure may be the biggest thing since Tutankhamen, Miss Jones. I'm sure it's enough to set all the thieves in Europe drooling—'

  Roskill stopped for several seconds, conscious at once that he had dropped a brick. Then he plunged on.

  '—But it isn't the sort of thing that gets me out of bed. And certainly not Dr Audley here. And never the other lot–them least of all.'

  Faith opened her mouth to speak and then closed it suddenly. She had evidently realised that she had let slip the treasure ahead of schedule, although Audley had given her no instructions about it.

  But like the admirable young woman she was, she had caught herself in time before mentioning Panin.

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  She glanced at him and he smiled at her. Not so much out of gratitude at finding a woman who could hold her tongue–it was high time that Hugh was introduced to Panin, anyway–as because she had heightened his regard for her. It was a new thing for him to desire and admire a woman at the same time.

  'There's one man who might be interested,' he began. Strictly speaking he ought to get Stocker's clearance before telling Hugh about Panin. But the cat would be out of the bag on Tuesday in any case.

  Hugh listened, nodding at intervals.

  'Well, that's a bit more like it!' he said at length. 'But I still don't quite understand why he's so worked up about it. Is there a chance he's going to defect?'

  That possibility had already passed very fleetingly through Audley's mind, only to be rejected utterly. It was not so much unlikely as plain ridiculous. Defection was for the system's victims–for intellectuals like Kuznetsov and poor devils in the field like Khokhlov and Gouzenko. It wasn't for the men who made the system work, the coming men.

  'Not a chance,' he replied flatly.

  'I only asked,' said Roskill unrepentantly. 'The word is that with the Czechs and the Rumanians and the Chinese –and the Americans in Space–they're all at sixes and sevens over there. If I was one of

  'em, I'd be looking for a cosy billet.'

  But not Panin, thought Audley. The Russians were in an unhappy situation not unknown in the West: they had fallen into the hands dummy4

  of a junta of second-raters, all jockeying for power. It might be a mere historical accident, or it might be a basic built-in defect of the one-party system, which admitted another Stalin as the only alternative. Either way the prospect was quietly terrifying.

  But Panin was not a second-rater. More like a first-rate Father Joseph looking for his Richelieu. Or maybe a potential Richelieu himself. . .

  'But you wanted to know what Morrison knew that might have been valuable, Miss Jones,' said Roskill, sensibly changing the subject. 'They might have wanted to know how far we'd got, of course. But more likely they wanted the addresses of the other crew members–Tierney the second pilot and Maclean the navigator. Right, Dr Audley?'

  'Do you think they got them?'

  'Probably not, Miss Jones. I think Morrison's heart gave out on them inopportunely–which is perhaps one reason why you had visitors last night!'

  Faith digested the sequence of events which had brought her to the priest's hole. Audley could almost hear her mind working, although the dark glasses gave away nothing. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't so; that it was fear and the need for an anodyne, not death, which had thrown them together. But there was nothing he could say.

  Finally she spoke: 'Then logically, if they are at all efficient, they should be following us now.'

  Audley thought it highly unlikely that anyone was capable of dummy4

  following Hugh Roskill's Triumph.

  'That's all taken care of,' said Roskill. 'It isn't likely, but we'll be swapping cars on the M1 in due course. And we've got chaps watching over Tierney and Maclean already–we're efficient too, you know, when no one's pulling the purse-strings tight!'

  He whistled contentedly through his teeth.

  'You know,' he said conversationally t
o Faith, 'I used to think that with enough manpower to cover all the contingencies, and someone like Dr Audley to do my thinking for me, this job would be easy. Not this job, I mean, but things in general. But now I've got 'em I'm more at sea than ever . . .'

  Audley retreated into the plastic folder. He envied Roskill's ability to make easy conversation, interesting yet self-mocking, as much as his driving skill. He knew he was incapable of diverting her with tales of his own modest triumphs and humiliations. He recalled the last bitter session of recriminations with Liz, when she had piled his dullness on top of his seriousness and his inability to talk to her. 'Like a bloody pedantic German professor, with no room for me except in bed and in the kitchen' had been her parting shot, all the more wounding for its element of truth.

  He remembered guiltily that he ought to have phoned Theodore now that he knew the answer to the problem which he had set. But it might be better to let him come up with the answer independently. He could be suitably grateful–he could take the old man out to one of those heavy lunches he loved so much, talking the whole afternoon away. Theodore was alone among his contacts in wanting nothing but companionship in return for knowledge.

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  He blocked out the chatter around him–Faith was laughing at something Roskill had said–and plunged into the report. The man's casualness concealed an incisive efficiency, which was why he had been seduced from a peacetime air force into this work. All too often the service recruits were those who would never have risen in their original professions. That was the bane of peace-time intelligence. But both Roskill and Butler were exceptions to this rule, conditioned to take orders but with their curiosity and initiative unblunted.

  Roskill had evidently charmed the police and the police surgeon; they had worked hard and had given him everything they had found. He had set up precautions, had got through to Butler and had planned today's moves with absolute precision, elaborating on Audley's half-formulated instructions at some points and even anticipating them at others. His style was economical, but occasionally enlivened by asides which give dimension to the bald facts. Audley was used to reading between the lines of such documents, but they seldom gave him such satisfaction.

  He zipped up the folder and stared out of the car window at the kaleidoscopic scene. Unlike ordinary roads, which were as much part of any community as the houses and people, motorways were intruders, foreign territory belonging not to the countryside through which they ran, but only to their termini miles away.

  He dozed uneasily, conscious that he had lost sleep to make up.

  And then he remembered how he had lost the sleep, drifting into a delicious half-dream of recollected passion.

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  It was the change in the steady engine note that roused him in the end. The Triumph was leaving the fast lane, slowing and sliding into a slip road, towards an ugly motel sprawl. It drew up alongside a Rover in the nearly empty parking lot, and Audley recognised Butler's rufous bullet-head.

  Butler didn't stir, but his driver was out of the car before the Triumph had stopped.

  'We're swapping cars here just in case,' said Roskill, without turning the engine off.

  Audley climbed stiffly out and followed Faith and Roskill into the Rover. The Triumph rolled away from them with its new driver, towards the petrol pumps, and Roskill accelerated past it without a sideways glance. The whole manoeuvre had been accomplished with the suspicious smoothness Audley associated with bank robberies.

  He sighed. This was the aspect of his work which he had hitherto managed to avoid–and rightly, or it was as boring and superficially childish as he had always imagined it to be, undignified by the undertone of danger.

  Butler passed him a file, the identical twin superficially of that Roskill had passed him earlier.

  'Georges Leopold Bloch,' he explained brusquely. 'The late Georges Leopold Bloch.'

  This time Audley did not begin to open the folder, but merely waited for Butler to elaborate.

  'Late and unlamented for the last quarter of a century. Fished out of dummy4

  an Antwerp dock ten days after we chucked him out of England.

  Knocked about first, then knocked out and dumped over the side.

  No clues, police not interested. Case closed.'

  There was no need to ask why the Belgian police had not been interested. Before he had strayed briefly and fatally into private investigation Bloch had been a policeman, and he had been a little too helpful to the German occupation authorities. Not helpful enough to be prosecuted, but enough to be sacked. There'd be some scores to settle there and his former comrades would not be unduly disturbed that someone had settled them. Bloch would have been an inconvenient memory conveniently erased.

  'I talked to his widow,' said Butler. 'Re-married and not pleased to be reminded about him. Stupid little man, she said he was. Backed the wrong horse, and nobody would employ him.'

  But somebody had employed him in the end.

  'Then one night he got a phone call. Spoke in German and cheered up no end. Told her he'd got friends and things were going to be better. Went to England–came back scared stiff. Four days later, went out and didn't come back. Good riddance–she didn't actually say it, but she said he was a loser, with the mark on him.'

  It fitted well enough. The cargo had to be received by someone. If the hijackers were German they'd not have been able to get into England very easily just then. A Belgian would do well, particularly a Belgian who had been tied in with them. It might even be that Bloch's helpfulness to the Germans had been more incriminating than his colleagues had suspected. In which case his new employers would have a useful guarantee of his loyalty.

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  But why had the price of failure been so severe? It certainly hadn't been Bloch's fault that he had failed to make contact. Nor would failure under such circumstances frighten him.

  It could only mean that Panin had been back-tracking to catch up with the hijackers, and that Bloch had guessed he'd caught a tiger.

  Audley shivered. The hands which had slapped Morrison yesterday had been controlled by the same agency, motivated by the same aims, as those which had beaten up Bloch in Antwerp all those years ago. Steerforth had raised the devil again.

  IX

  The chill remained with him as he walked beside Faith through the Sunday morning streets of Knaresborough. If Steerforth had raised the devil, they were also in some sense on the devil's work, with their own load of trouble and mischief.

  With a start he realised they were actually passing Tierney's electrical shop. It seemed quite substantial, with one window loaded with television sets garnished with offers of allegedly amazing terms. Tierney had done better in life than Morrison–

  which wouldn't do at all. Except that the rich were often greedier than the poor . . .

  Roskill's man was waiting for them in his hotel room across the street, from which he had been able to keep a comfortable view of the shop.

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  'Richardson–Miss Jones–Dr Audley, I've been looking forward to meeting you!'

  Richardson had a long brown face made longer by a jutting chin, but redeemed by good-humoured dark eyes, and Audley couldn't imagine why he had been looking forward to the encounter.

  'I saw you play for the old Saracens, Dr Audley,' explained Richardson.

  'That was a long time ago,' said Audley. He felt pleasantly flattered, despite the implication of hoary old age in the young man's memory of him. He searched for something suitable to add.

  'You've got the build of a wing three-quarter.'

  'Scrum-half, actually. And it wasn't so long ago that you played either–I was always afraid I might meet you on the receiving end!'

  Faith laughed. 'He was brutal, was he?'

  'Sheer murder, Miss Jones. It must have been like being run over by a locomotive! Do you know the game?'

  'I've got two young step-brothers who are besotted with it.'

  They were suddenly like chil
dren sharing a joke, and Audley felt he had to call them to order. Their sudden pleasure didn't fit his mood.

  'Is Tierney in?' he asked sharply.

  'He is,' said Richardson, unabashed. 'By the grace of God he lives in a flat above the shop, with no rear entrance. The flat entrance is just to the left there. So I've had it easy!'

  'Give me a run down on him.'

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  Richardson flipped open a notebook.

  'Arthur Lawrence Tierney, born Leeds 1922—'

  'Not a biography, man. Tell me about him here and now. I know what he was. But what do people think of him here? What's his credit like? Don't read it out. Tell me.'

  Richardson looked uncertainly at his notebook.

  'There's one thing I should have told you first, sir. They want you to phone the department, extension 28–as soon as you can. Sorry about not telling you right away.'

  Audley sat unmoving. Richardson's jumbled impressions would be all the better if he wasn't given time to rearrange and edit them.

  The department could wait.

  'Tell me about Tierney.'

  The young man took a breath, stuffing his memory into his pocket.

  'A nasty character, for my money. Tricky, certainly. He's a sharp enough businessman–he's respected for that. Always got an eye on the main chance, and not too finicky about what sort of chance it is too. I talked to a detective sergeant –he didn't say so in so many words, but I think he'd like to get his hands on him, and he thinks he will one of these days.'

  'What sort of thing has he been up to?'

  'Nothing proved–but otherwise, you name it and he's done it.'

  'Name it.'

  'Receiving mostly. But the sergeant reckoned he'd squeezed out of a nasty dangerous driving charge. And he's beaten the breathalyser.

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  And they think there was something very smelly about his divorce.

  He's had a convenient fire in small warehouses he rented, too–an electrical fire. I tell you, sir, they don't like him at all.'

  Tierney hadn't changed; the 'receiving stolen goods' was a shaft in the gold.