The Labyrinth Makers

by Anthony Price

  '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 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 to 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.

  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.

  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 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.

  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.

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

  Richardson had a long brow
n 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 children 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.'

  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. 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.

  'And his credit?'

  'That's rather hard to say. The business seems sound enough. But in a small way, and he's a big spender–runs an "E" registration Jaguar, drinks a fair bit. Girl friend in Harrogate, and an expensive one, according to rumour. The same source says that's why the business hasn't expanded: never enough loose money in the kitty.'

  Audley felt better now, so much so that he began to regret pushing Richardson. Tierney's nerves would be in middling shape, his sense of public responsibility non-existent and his greed unlimited. That had been the original assessment of him, and it was always reassuring to find leopards with all their original spots in place.

  He smiled at them both, wondering as he did so what Faith made of her father's choice of a right-hand man.

  'That's well done,' he said. 'You must have sunk a few beers to get that lot.'

  Richardson grimaced. 'They all drink whisky in Tierney's circles. It was touch and go at the end whether they were going to tell me about him or I was going to tell them about me! And it's cost the nation a fortune.'

  A few minutes later Audley added to that cost with a reversed call to the department. Mercifully the hotel's public telephone was located in an enclosed sentry box of dark varnished wood, with additional privacy provided by a giant plant which flourished aggressively beside it.

  Extension 28 eventually brought him Stocker, as he had expected. For the time being, and perhaps permanently, Fred was no more than a friend at court. And at this time of a Sunday morning he would be only just leaving the church he so dutifully attended.

  But Stocker beamed insincerely at him down the phone.

  'David!'–So he had ceased to be Audley at some point in the last twenty-four hours–'I'm glad you were able to get through to me so soon'–was there a reprimand there?–'I gather you know all about G Tower?'

  At least he wasn't prevaricating.

  'I do–yes.'

  'You must tell me about your private network some time. It appears to have the virtue of efficiency.'

  Audley grunted non-commitally. That would be the day.

  'And I gather you have also heard about the missing Trojan antiquities.'

  It was a statement, not a question. Audley gloated briefly over the vision of Sir Kenneth Allen's reaction at being disturbed twice in one evening to answer the same question.

  'You consider it likely that that was Steerforth's cargo?'

  'I'm reasonably certain it was.'

  'You have corroborative evidence? From the daughter?'

  Roskill was reporting back everything to Stocker, for no one else had known about Faith until that morning. But it was only to be expected. If he was dealing with someone as awkward as himself he would have done no less.

  'Yes.'

  'Good. And you consider her involvement in the next stage necessary?'

  'I think it may be essential.' Fred had become resigned to monosyllabic answers until he was ready with a full report, but it would be too much to expect the same of Stocker, Audley warned himself. He was already forgetting the tactical errors which had got him into this mess in the first place.

  'I don't think Roskill and Butler will get anything out of Tierney,' he elaborated. 'Not unless we let them lean on him hard, and probably not even then. So I'm going to try a different approach and Miss Jones will be my–my passport.'

  'Proof of your mala fides! I see! And is she a chip off the old block?'

  Audley found the suggestion that Faith had inherited anything from her father except that physical resemblance oddly distasteful.

  'Not in the least. But she's an intelligent young woman, and she wants to help.'

  'Very well–I leave her to your discretion. Now about last night's business. Your three visitors.'

  'They put–devices in the cars and they may have bugged the house.'

  'They did bug the house. I received an interim report half an hour ago. They're still looking.'

  Audley loathed asking questions of his nominal superiors. Apart from their reluctance to give straight answers, which provided him only with negative intelligence, it suggested incompetence on his own part. But he had been pitchforked into this puzzle at such short notice that it would be folly to pretend that he understood what he was about.

  'I don't understand why they did it,' he admitted. 'I can't see why it's so important. And I can't see why a man like Panin has involved himself personally in it. I take it we've offered him full co-operation?'

  'We have–yes.'

  'In that case there must be something I don't know about.'

  'I give you my word, David–for what it's worth–that we know no more than you do. Probably less, on your past form. Panin is a man with very little past, a big present and an even bigger future. We'd like to know more about him, and this is a great opportunity. We don't want to offend him if we can help it, either!'

  Nothing had changed since yesterday.

  'I think you should at least admit the possibility, Dr Audley, that he simply wants to recover the Trojan antiquities. He's an archaeologist. He lost them in the first place –and that probably rank
les. He's on holiday, too. On his own time, as it were. Taking precautions could be second nature with him. All we can do is to find those boxes for him, show him the sights and send him home happy.'

  Audley felt his irritability returning as he retraced his way to Richardson's room. Stocker must know something else, but he wasn't going to divulge it, even in answer to a direct appeal. It must therefore be a matter of high policy, something relating to the official attitude to Panin, rather than to the Steerforth aspect. All he could do was to obey orders without fully understanding them–which might suit the field operatives, but didn't suit him at all.

  Roskill's large feet propped on the end of Richardson's bed were the first thing he saw. Richardson himself was still stationed by the window; Faith sat in the only comfortable chair and Butler was perched on a stool next to the wash-stand. The overall effect almost restored his spirits: crammed suspiciously into this little room they generated an atmosphere of conspiracy strong enough to set all the bank alarms in sleepy Knaresborough ringing.

  He caught Roskill's eye and saw disconcertingly that his thoughts were being read and shared. And there was a slow smile spreading across Faith's face. In another second this council of war would slip into farce while he was still searching for the right words to bring it to order.

  Butler saved him: 'You were right about Tierney, Dr Audley. You said we'd get nothing from him, and nothing is exactly what we got.'

  Roskill swung upright on the bed.

  'Master Tierney's memory is very poor. He remembers exactly what's in his little blue log book–which he still has, incidentally. No more, no less. Twenty-four years is a great healer for him. All his harrowing experiences have faded into nothing. He wishes he could help us, but he can't.'

  'I prodded him on Steerforth,' Butler took up the narrative again. 'Said we had reason to believe that he was bringing in contraband goods and warned him about certain non-existent regulations. He didn't quite laugh at me, but he obviously knows we can't touch him.'