Tomorrow's ghost dda-9

by Anthony Price

  'Don't be awkward. Fisher. It's the best we can do in the time available, with the housekeeper there.'

  'I want her out. I want the house first, and then the children. I want to be alone there.'

  'Like Greta Garbo ... You know, you don't ask for easy things, Fisher. The housekeeper is like a limpet, she never leaves the children on their own except on her day off. And then the cleaning woman stays with them - stays the night, too.'

  Frances waited.

  'All right - so we've managed something ... just so you don't think it's easy, that's all.

  And it will still require some ingenuity on your part. Or some respectability, I should say - you're not still blonde, are you?'

  'No.'

  'Thank God for that.' Extension 223 sniggered knowingly, as though he had the bikini snapshot of Marilyn before him. 'It's cost us a favour, too - quite a sizeable one.'

  'Yes?' Frances just managed to take the waspish note out of her voice. There was no point in letting old angers betray her.

  'All right.' He sounded disappointed at her subservience. 'You must be there shortly after 1400 hours, as our representative - the Police will meet you. Right?'

  'Yes.' After the first time it was easy.

  'At about 1430 the housekeeper will receive a phone-call - they call her "Nannie", by the way ... Butler striving for bourgeois respectability, I shouldn't wonder, eh?'

  'Yes.' Now it was harder again.

  ' "Nannie" will receive a call from the Matron of the Charlotte Tyson Nursing Home, a Miss Prebble -'

  'Who?'

  'Miss Prebble. Just listen, Fisher. Matron Prebble is Nannie's best friend, they nursed together in the QARANCs years ago, when Nannie was an army wife. Prebble runs this nursing home, and on her day off Nannie takes over - it's on Nannie's day off too, and night off ... Just a small place, run on a shoestring. And at the moment it's badly understaffed, so Matron Prebble has no one she can hand over to except Nannie - at short notice. And that's what we've arranged: short notice. Nannie will have to take over tonight.'

  'How?'

  'The home is nearly bankrupt. We've arranged for the Ryle Foundation to offer Prebble a grant - they're an Anglo-Arab group, and they owe us a favour. And they've got money to burn.'

  Frances had heard of the Ryle Foundation, it had been one of Hugh Roskill's responsibilities.

  'Yes?'

  'Prebble will phone Nannie. She's got to go to London, and there's no one else she can turn to at short notice, we've made sure of that, too. So that's where you come in.

  Fisher - you have to convince Nannie you can baby-sit for her. You have to earn your keep, Fisher.'

  The voice stung Frances. 'I've already earned my keep - ' she caught herself. 'I'm just afraid Butler will be suspicious, that's all.'

  'Of course he'll be suspicious. It's his business to be suspicious. But he's got a lot on his plate with O'Leary at the moment, and it seems he approves of you. Fisher.' The voice was smugly approving. 'And I like that - I like that a lot, it's good for us. And I also like the sound of you earning your keep - I like that even more if it means you obtained something from that awkward policeman of yours.'

  That was interesting. Whether Hedges had originally been awkward because he hadn't been allowed to do his job properly, or because he hadn't done his job properly anyway because he liked his Major Butler, she hadn't time to decide. Nor, for that matter, could she decide whether he hadn't been awkward with her because he liked her, or because he hadn't changed his mind about the Major in nine years.

  But that was something she could think about. What mattered now was to sting Extension 223 into confirming her suspicions of him.

  'He thinks Colonel Butler's clean.'

  'Oh?' Extension 223 sounded sceptical. 'Indeed?'

  'He liked him, too.'

  'Don't we all! The Thin Red Line in person, of course! But what did he give you, the policeman?' Extension 223 didn't quite slaver over the inference that William Ewart Hedges had revealed something to Colonel Butler's disadvantage, but it was plain to Frances that whatever it might be, it would be received with intense satisfaction.

  So Colonel Butler had an enemy where he ought to expect an impartial judge.

  'I can't say for sure yet.' That was all the more reason why she must play hard to get: it was the least she could do for Colonel Butler, to offset Extension 223's bias against him, and it was also what she wanted to do.

  'Not sure?' Now his voice was positively seductive.

  'I gave him a dozen chances of saying one particular thing, and he never said it. And then, at the very end, he suggested it - by accident, I think. But I have to be sure, which is why I must get into the house ... and talk to the children without the housekeeper being there after that.'

  'Now you're being oracular.'

  'I could be mistaken, that's all.'

  Silence at the other end. If she was right about him he'd be thinking now of a way of encouraging her to come back with Colonel Butler's scalp, or not at all.

  Still more silence.

  'I could be mistaken,' repeated Frances, rearranging the emphasis to suggest that she didn't think she was, nevertheless.

  'Of course. And we must be absolutely fair - that's essential.' The voice changed. 'This isn't a witch-hunt. That's the very last thing it must be.'

  Frances felt confused, even a little disappointed: it was as though another man had taken over, calm and businesslike, and quite unlike the first one.

  'We also appreciate that any sort of truth will be difficult to establish now, Fisher,'

  the Number Two voice continued. 'But what you in turn must appreciate is that you'll never have a more important assignment than this one. I'm sure you do understand that

  - you must forgive me for sounding pompous after I may have seemed ... a little flippant, perhaps.'

  'Not at all,' said Frances.

  'And you're right - absolutely right. We cannot afford to make any mistake about Butler. If we do, we'll live to regret it. And some of us may not live to regret it, too. It's up to you - and I shall be at the end of this line twenty-four hours a day to help you. As of now, nothing's too big and nothing's too small if you want it. All you have to do is ask.'

  The big league.

  Sir Frederick had said as much the night before:

  As of now you're a VIP, Frances.

  'What's more, nothing goes on the record until you are ready to put it there. You are the boss, Fisher.'

  Well, there was a Ring of Power, thought Frances. And it was on her finger, to use as she wished.

  'You've already done well. To have picked up anything at all from that file ... and from that policeman. You're not the first one to have tried, believe me.'

  Frances had the feeling that she'd been tested -

  'You are the first one to succeed.' - and that she'd passed the test. No wonder she'd found Hedges so hard to thaw!

  'But that's no accident. You were chosen for this. And what's more, I recommended you, Mrs Fisher - off the record.' He made the recommendation sound like an unpaid debt she had contracted, but which he expected to collect, with interest, soon enough.

  'So ... what do you want us to set up for you next - after you've finished in the house, that is?'

  He was already taking for granted that whatever it was she was looking for, it was there and she would find it. And she didn't know whether to be flattered or frightened by such confidence.

  Also, in a strange way, there was something about this voice that she recognised.

  Although she could still swear to herself that she had never heard it before - even allowing for the distortion of the telephone - there was something in it which jarred her memory. But how could she remember hearing something that she had never heard?

  'Fisher?'

  'Yes ...' Caution replaced her momentary euphoria. And in any case the prospect of after you've finished in the house had a sobering effect: if she found nothing then she was in trouble, yet if
her one nagging suspicion was confirmed then Colonel Butler would be in trouble.

  'Yes?' He prodded her gently.

  'Yes. Well ...' Frances grasped the nettle. 'What is Colonel Butler doing at the moment?'

  'Why ... he's still pursuing O'Leary, of course.' There was a frown in his tone, as though he was disappointed in her. 'Why do you wish to know, Fisher?'

  'Up in Yorkshire?'

  'Yes. That's where he thinks O'Leary is.'

  'Where, exactly?'

  'This morning I believe he is pursuing his inquiries in the town of Thirsk.' Extension 223 sounded as though he had no great confidence in the inquiries bearing fruit. 'Why do you have to know exactly where he is, may I ask?'

  He was warning her off. They were keeping tabs on Butler now, naturally, but that was someone else's job, not hers - hers was Butler in '69, not Butler this morning, he was politely telling her.

  And, for a guess, that might be Paul Mitchell's job, he would be good at that ... Paul Mitchell the watcher of Colonel Butler, the pursuer - Butler, in his turn, would be better at that, pursuing rather than waiting in ambushes festooned with computerised electronics. A hunter and a fighter, was Colonel Butler, not a trapper.

  'Fisher?' Extension 223's patience was exemplary.

  'I'd like to see the file on Trevor Anthony Bond.'

  'Ah!'

  Frances breathed a sigh of relief. There was a file on Trevor Anthony Bond, she knew that because it had been cross-referenced in the file on Colonel Butler. What she hadn't known was whether it was an active or a passive file - it might well have been passive with effect from 11.11.69, from . the afternoon when Butler had first and last quizzed Trevor Anthony on his KGB contacts. Indeed, it might very well have been passive from 11.11.69, but that Ah! told her it wasn't passive now; that it was - one will give you ten -

  within reach of Extension 223's right hand on his desk, maybe.

  'He's still alive, I take it?' 'Oh, yes - alive and kicking.' 'And living in Yorkshire?'

  Pause.

  'Yes.' Pause. Thornervaulx Abbey.'

  'He's still there?' Frances shivered. Why had she assumed - why had she known before she asked - that Trevor Anthony Bond still worked for the Ministry of Public Building and Works at Thornervaulx?

  'Yes.'

  Fountains, Kirkstall, Jervaulx, Byland, Rievaulx, Thornervaulx - the great ruined abbeys of Yorkshire.

  They were all a blur in her recollection of the things past in another life.

  Fountains, Kirkstall, Jervaulx -

  Fountains had been full of people picknicking on the grass, leaving their Coke cans and sweet papers and tinfoil...

  * * *

  She closed her eyes.

  Frances Warren, aged 10, had had a green-flowered dress with a velvet bow for dinner - dinner with Uncle John in the immense Victorian vicarage - a dress which had flared out gloriously when she pirouetted in front of the mirror ... except that she had had no breasts at the time, when the unspeakable, rebarbative Samantha Perring had already owned a bra -

  * * *

  Kirkstall, with the marvellous museum across the road, with the Edwardian street and the penny-in-the-slot machine that reconstructed a murderer's last hours, right down to the six-foot hanging drop -

  Frances! Stop working that gruesome machine!'

  * * *

  Kirkstall and the Hanged Man.

  Jervaulx had been too ruined and dull, without the carefully manicured lawns of Byland, with its ruined pinnacle; and the wooded beauty of Rievaulx, where they had lunched on the hillside -

  Chicken legs and white wine.

  'John darling, don't give the child another glass - you'll make her quite tipsy!'

  'Nonsense, m'dear. It's important for a girl to hold her liquor these days. Hold your glass steady, wench.'

  And she had thought thereafter, and still half thought, that holding her liquor was really only a question of keeping her glass steady in her hand.

  But Thornervaulx was still misty in her memory, mixed and confused with Fountains and Rievaulx ... in another wooded valley ("Dale, wench, dale - you're in Yorkshire now, not your muggy Midlands!') - in another wooded dale - hidden from the outside world of the flesh and the devil, as the old Cistercian monks planned it to be.

  Perhaps that was the effect of that second glass of Uncle John's white wine, pale gold remembered through the sleepy warmth of a little girl's summer afternoon, already rich with the prospect of grown-up dinner and the wearing of the new dress - perhaps not surprisingly the old abbeys had become as jumbled in the little girl's recollections as their own tumbled stonework, while the taste of chicken legs and wine and the crisp feel of the dress were as well-remembered as yesterday -

  * * *

  'Mrs Fisher!'

  Frances found herself staring fixedly at the whitewashed wall in front of her nose.

  Thornervaulx Abbey, where Major Butler had questioned Trevor Anthony Bond on the afternoon (repeat afternoon) of 11.11.69 about his recent contacts with Leslie Pearson Cole (q.v. deceased, restricted) and Leonid T. Starinov (q.v. restricted).

  'I'm sorry. I'm still here - I'm just thinking...'

  'About Trevor Bond? There isn't much in the file, I can tell you. He didn't have much to say for himself.'

  No, thought Frances. But what he had said had been distinctly odd.

  'He gave Colonel Butler an alibi at first, though - didn't he?'

  'Which Butler promptly contradicted. And when the Special Branch went back to him, Bond simply said he'd got it wrong - that he made a mistake. What's the point of double-checking that, may I ask?'

  No point, of course, thought Frances.

  And that was the point.

  'It seems a funny sort of mistake - to say "morning" instead of "afternoon". It couldn't have been more than a week afterwards, when they came to check up on him again, probably not so long. He must have a very short memory.'

  For a moment he said nothing. 'I don't think it was quite like that.'

  He'd read the file quite recently, but the details-hadn't registered with him as being important. It had merely been a minor matter of routine for him, just as it had been for the Special Branch originally. So minor that now he couldn't recall the details precisely.

  'What was it like?'

  'Hmm ... Hold on a minute, and I'll tell you ...' His voice faded.

  It wasn't quite fair to Colonel Butler to say that he'd contradicted Bond, reflected Frances. He would have put in his report independently, in which the afternoon interview with Bond had been recorded. And almost certainly the Special Branch men who had subsequently checked it out with Bond would never have seen that report, which must have had a security classification. The discrepancy between Butler's

  'afternoon' and Bond's 'morning' would only have been spotted when the two reports reached the same desk.

  And then, quite naturally, it would have been re-checked, because all discrepancies had to be resolved. But it would still have been only a minor matter of routine because it had been Butler himself who had established that he had no alibi for the material time of his wife's disappearance:

  Although I had originally planned to interrogate Bond in the morning I decided on reflection that the afternoon might be more productive. Having approximately three hours on my hands, and there being no other duties scheduled for the day, I adjusted my route to take in my home town of Blackburn, arriving there at 1020

  hours and departing at 1125. While in Blackburn I spoke to no one and recognised no one. I then proceeded to Thomervaulx, via Skipton and Blubberhouses, purchasing petrol at the Redbridge Garage, near Ripley (A61), at 1305 hours, arriving at 1425 after lunch at the Old Castle Hotel, Sutton-on-Swale.

  As a not-alibi that could hardly be bettered, Frances concluded. If the Colonel had been trying to set himself up, that change of plan plus I spoke to no one and recognised no one had done the job perfectly. Trevor Bond's conflicting 'morning' stood no chance against such an admission, and once
Bond had obligingly changed his tale to conform with it there had seemed no point in the Special Branch men treble-checking him any further. It was 9 o'clock in the morning that they were after, not 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 200 miles north.

  * * *

  'Hullo there, Mrs Fisher.'

  'Yes?'

  'You're quite right. He does seem to have a remarkably poor memory, does Master Bond. Even worse than you thought, actually.'

  'Yes?'

  'It was only two days. Butler visited him on the 11th - Tuesday the 11th. And the Special Branch checked him two days later, the first time, November 13th, when he said Butler was there in the morning ... And then they did the re-check on Monday the 17th, when he changed it to the afternoon ... So - only two days ... But they do appear to have been perfectly satisfied with his explanation.'

  Yes, thought Frances, but it had just been routine for them. For Butler, on the 11th, Trevor Bond had been a suspect in a security matter. But on the 13th and the 17th, for the Special Branch, he had merely been an alibi witness in a missing persons case in which they were only indirectly involved - and in which Bond himself was also only indirectly involved, come to that.

  'Is there a verbatim?'

  'For the 13th? There's a statement for that ... a very brief statement. But to the point, nevertheless:

  "A man came to see me on Tuesday morning, when I was having my tea at about 11 o'clock, and asked me a lot of silly questions about people talking to me. I never did understand what he was on about." And there's a note from the detective-sergeant to the effect that Bond couldn't actually remember Major Butler's name, but only that it had been a red-headed man in a brown check tweed suit with a red Remembrance Day poppy in his lapel who'd been a 'Major someone or other'. Which they took to be a positive ID in the circumstances.'

  'What circumstances?'

  Extension 223 coughed. 'The sergeant thought Bond was a near-idiot. "Apparently of low mentality", to be exact.' He paused. 'A judgement subsequently confirmed on the re-check. Do you want to hear it?'

  Frances's heart sank. Low mentality's natural travelling companion was a bad memory.

  'Yes.'