Then Sir Mosby bore on his shoulder the banner of the Mothers’ Union in St Swithun’s Churchyard—
He pretended to be wrapped in his own ecclesiastical thoughts as he walked down the path, delaying noticing them until the last moment. He must get the words as well as the accent right, which according to Doc McCaslin’s formula for speaking British English meant that he had to speak from the front of his mouth in fragmented sentences.
“Luverly mornin’.” He beamed at them over his spectacles.
No reply. Tall and Thin wore a neat grey suit, Thickset the rumpled overalls of a working man. Harry Finsterwald showed no sign of recognition. Range, maybe eight or nine yards.
“Church is open to visitors,” he said. Thickset was holding his right hand rather awkwardly behind his back.
Tall and Thin nodded, returning his smile. “Thank you. But we’re just looking around.”
Mosby cupped his ear with his free hand and stepped off the path towards them. “Beg your pardon?”
“I said ‘we’re just looking around’,” repeated Tall and Thin clearly.
“Looking round?” Mosby echoed the words vaguely. Thickset swayed nervously, but held his ground, one eye firmly fixed on Harry. “Looking round… I see…” He bobbed his head at Tall and Thin, half turning his back on Thickset and Harry as though he had written them off as sources of conversation. “Must see the interiah of the church, then—can show you round if you wish.” He slid the banner from his shoulder as he spoke, letting the shaft rest on the grass. “Stained glass very fine.”
Tall and Thin looked at him for a moment with just the beginning of a frown creasing his brow. It could be he’d exaggerated the accent too much, or it could be simple annoyance at his inconvenient appearance. The next few seconds would show which.
“That’s very good of you, sir.” There was a slightly guttural quality to the ‘g’ which reassured Mosby more than the words themselves; a foreigner would be far less likely than a native Englishman to question his authenticity. “But we must be on our way very soon, I am afraid.”
Mosby smiled and shrugged. “Of course, of course… quite understand… some other time, perhaps… Well, good day to you, then.” He nodded to the man, lifting the banner with both hands as he did so as if about to set it back on his shoulder. At the same time he began to turn slowly towards Thickset and Harry.
“And good day to you—“ he continued, still smiling.
Thickset’s attention was still divided by the need to watch Harry, and as if he understood Mosby’s intentions Harry chose that precise instant to take a larger share of it by shifting his feet.
As Thickset’s eyes left him momentarily, Mosby sprang towards him, swinging the banner off his shoulder in a great sweeping arc. For one terrible fraction of a second, as the man’s reflexes triggered him backwards, it looked to Mosby as though the swing would miss by inches—and as he moved, Thickset’s gun hand came into view, swinging from behind his back on the opposite course.
But fast though he was, Thickset couldn’t quite make up for that lost moment: the gun was still short of its target when the accelerating banner struck him just above the ear. Mosby had put every last ounce of strength into the sweep for the sake of speed as much as force; he felt the shaft bend and then snap like a rotten branch. The pistol flew out of Thickset’s hand and Harry Finsterwald dived for it like an Olympic swimmer. Tall and Thin came back into view, clawing inside his waistband as Mosby reversed his momentum. He ducked as Mosby hurled the broken stump of banner at him and got his gun clear just as Harry squeezed off his first shot. The bullet spun Tall and Thin round and threw him against a tombstone in a tangle of windmilling arms and legs. For a moment the stone supported him, then he rolled off it on to the grass.
Mosby turned back towards Thickset, but saw no sign of movement. He felt suddenly drained of energy, and more frightened than he had been even during the walk down the gravel pathway from the church. Now that it was over he could see the risk he had taken: he had allowed his better judgment of the odds to be overturned by a sudden harebrained idea which had seemed smart, but which had been plain madness. And he had been delivered from the consequences of his folly by good luck and Harry Finsterwald’s snap-shooting.
He watched Harry examine the ruin of Tall and Thin.
Finally Harry straightened up and turned towards him.
“This guy’s had it,” he called across. That was no surprise to Mosby. There had been something about the way Tall and Thin’s body had behaved after the bullet had struck which had suggested a puppet with all the strings irrevocably cut. The only surprise was that Harry’s voice was cracked and shaky.
He was glad that he’d had the banner instead of the gun.
Not that Thickset wasn’t going to have one hell of a headache, he decided as he walked towards the recumbent figure. The blow had spun him halfway back to the path, so that he’d come to rest face down almost in the shadow of Geo. Pratley’s tombstone, and he was still out cold.
He knelt beside the body with a sigh. An unconscious prisoner was also going to be a headache for them too, much more so than a conscious, self-propelled one—
Oh God!
He stared in horror at the one eye he could see, an eye that was open and staring.
The man couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t be. The blow had been hard, but the tightly-furled banner itself ought to have cushioned the shock, and the snapping of the shaft ought to have taken the killing force out of it. He couldn’t be dead.
Harry came up beside him.
“What’s the matter, Doc?”
Mosby swallowed the sickness in his throat. “I think he’s dead too.”
Harry knelt down on the far side of the body and gently felt the neck pulse. Mosby heard him breathe out.
They stared at each other.
“That’s about as dead as you can get,” admitted Harry huskily.
“He can’t be.”
“I guess you don’t know your own strength, Doc. You caved in the side of his skull like an eggshell.”
Mosby gave an uncontrollable shiver.
“Come on, Doc,” said Harry Finsterwald gently, “we couldn’t help ourselves, you know that. These guys, they weren’t going to just kick my ass and send me home—remember how Davies got it. You hadn’t shown up, I’d ‘uv gotten a piece of the same, you better believe it. So we just evened the score, is all.” He paused and looked around him, frowning. “But what we have to do now is get them out of sight, and quick.”
Mosby came back to immediate reality abruptly. This was neither the time nor the setting for conscience pangs: no matter it was a graveyard, it was no place to be caught squatting beside the brand-new corpses of their victims. Any moment now the vicar—or maybe the entire Mothers’ Union—might come trotting up the path to the church, and then they’d have a fully-grown international incident on their hands as well as a glitched mission.
He stood up quickly, ripping the dog-collar from his neck and stuffing it into his coat pocket together with the spectacles. Apart from the bodies and the broken banner midway between them the scene was as peaceful as before; the insects still buzzed and even the blackbirds were back, squabbling among themselves near the overgrown south-east corner. Their outrageous luck was still holding.
“I can get the car up here and stash them in the trunk,” said Finsterwald. “Once I’ve gotten them back on base I can handle them. But we got to get them out of sight first.”
Mosby was aware that he was being jollied out of shock and into action. Maybe Harry Finsterwald wasn’t so bad after all when it came to the crunch—maybe he was starting to repay the debt he owed Mosby for the preservation of his skin. Or perhaps he himself was naturally trying to see the best side of the skin he’d saved.
None of which mattered, compared with the need to tidy up St Swithun’s Churchyard.
He pointed towards the south-east corner, where ecology had produced a fine crop of shoulder high nettles.
Finsterwald nodded. “Okay. You take the feet, Doc.”
VIII
SHIRLEY LOOKED ONLY briefly at Mosby before dumping her bag and pile of parcels on her bed.
“Take your dirty shoes off the quilt, honey—you’re not at home now.”
Mosby eased his shoes off with his toes and raised himself slightly in order to get a better view of things to come.
“Harry give you a bad time?” She stripped off her dress and seated herself at the dressing table.
“Harry’s not so bad.”
“He’s not?” She examined her face in the mirror. “You mean he came up with something on Bullitt?”
“One or two things.”
“Uh-huh?” She examined her face carefully in the mirror. “So you had an easy time… Well, I didn’t… That town sure doesn’t welcome the motorist. It may be beautiful, but it’s an awful place to park a car in, and that’s the truth. We had to walk miles.”
“You get to see it better that way.”
“Which wasn’t exactly the object of the operation… I look a wreck.”
Not from where I’m lying, thought Mosby, marvelling at the sexiness of her back. He had seen it a good many times before, since the strip-off and make-up routine was her standard procedure, and it wasn’t the first female back he had ever seen. But there was something about Shirley’s back, even down to the slight bulges of flesh which the bra straps pressed up when she lent forward, that never ceased to arouse him. It was just one hell of a sexy back.
And now he was enormously relieved to find that it still aroused him. It signified that he was back to normal again; it was like flexing the fingers on an injured hand and knowing from their movement that no permanent damage had been done. He had killed a man, but Shirley still had a sexy back.
Crouching beside the two bodies among the nettles, waiting for Harry to bring his car up alongside the nearby wall, he had had one long moment of doubt about that. The feeling of shock had passed surprisingly quickly, and Harry’s common sense had given panic no time to develop. Plus the certain knowledge that he hadn’t meant to hit so hard—even that maybe he hadn’t hit so hard. It had been the brass knob on the end of the shaft which had done the mischief, he had found it on the broken end with the tell-tale blood bright on it. If Thickset hadn’t taken that fatal step back—
And then the little pale yellow butterfly had settled on Thickset’s open palm—the nettles were alive with pale yellow butterflies—and he had realised that all his explanations were mere excuses. Old wives’ tales said that butterflies lived just one single day, but the little butterfly was better off than Thickset. Intention, or accident, or plain bad luck didn’t make a damn of difference: the man was dead and he had killed him.
Shirley had stopped looking at herself in the mirror and was looking at him in it.
“You feeling okay, Mose?”
“I’m feeling fine.”
“You look rather pale.”
“I tell you I’m feeling great. But you could make me feel a lot better very easily, you know.”
Now why the hell did I say that? he thought bitterly as he saw the change in her expression. It was like scratching an itch that was already raw with stupid scratching.
“Don’t kid yourself. It’s me I’m worried about, honey, not you,” said Shirley.
“Well, that’s a start. And you’re beautiful when you’re mad —did anyone ever tell you that?”
Even quarrelling with her was better than nothing.
“Only guys who didn’t get the message first time. But I need you on the top line at the moment.”
“Message received. ‘Is Captain Sheldon combat-ready?’ as General Ellsworth would say… Answer: affirmative. Don’t fret, honey. I’m a real killer today.”
“You’d better be. You’re having tea with Group Captain Bullitt this afternoon.”
“Uh-huh? More cucumber sandwiches?”
She stared at his reflection. “Aren’t you surprised?”
“Not a lot.”
“Or even interested how we got the invite?”
“Not particularly. Audley’s a great fixer, otherwise he wouldn’t be where he is. So he fixed it.”
She examined herself again. “Actually it was Sir Thomas. A friend of his turned out to be a friend of Bullitt’s.”
“Same thing. Audley knows someone who knows someone who knows Bullitt. Just a mathematical progression, like back at home. That’s part of the reason why we got him on our team—he knows the right people.”
“Always supposing Billy Bullitt is the right people.”
Mosby stared up at the ceiling. The blank white expanse of plaster challenged him, like a screen waiting for its pictures.
“He’s the right people.”
“Harry tell you something, then?”
“Some… but not that.”
“But you’re very sure of yourself.” She appeared to concentrate on her eyelashes.
“Uh-huh.”
“Even though it’s like hitting the jackpot first pull?”
The screen was still blank. “Could be the machine’s been fixed that way, honey.”
“You mean they haven’t told us everything?”
Mosby sneered at the ceiling. “Remember what Harry Finsterwald said: I have to be my age… But in the meantime, knowing how Billy Bullitt ticks could be half the battle.”
“And has Harry helped you there? It sounds a tall order— one English air force colonel. You only gave him a few hours to take him to pieces and put him together again.”
“Uh-huh… But I told you last night: if the British had a special file on him—one that Audley remembered—then there was a chance we had one too. We got a lot of files on a lot of people.”
“Mmm…” She brushed at the sooty-black lashes. “Which means we do have one?” No praise and no apology. “He flew with the USAF in Korea.” “With the USAF?”
“There were some RAF pilots attached to our F-86 squadrons for combat experience. The British didn’t have anything could stand up to the MiG-15.” “So he had a security clearance, obviously.” “Straight ‘A’ right down the line. World War Two veteran, and what was better, he had a record of fighting the Communists afterwards—British Military Mission to Greece ‘45-‘48, Malayan emergency ‘48-‘50.”
“Sounds our sort of guy.” She was no longer fixing her face, her hands were resting on her lap. “And Korea after that… He really must have been hooked on fighting by then… It makes you think.” “Think what?”
She swung round towards him. “You know he was a student at Oxford in 1939—what do they call them—an undergraduate?” “Think what?”
She shook her head slowly. “I didn’t spend all the morning in dress shops with Faith, Mose honey. David took us straight off to this college, Sir Thomas’s one—and he asked us if we’d had breakfast, for God’s sake, would you believe that?”
“Just an old Anglo-Saxon custom, maybe?” “And then he took us to this other college—that was what he said, but they all look the same to me—and up these staircases, like a rabbit-warren. And there was this room full of old books and papers and dust, and this old, old man. Dr Morton—Dr Oliver Morton. He looked like he was a hundred years old, and he was dusty like the books. And he asked us if we’d have breakfast too.”
“Beats hell out of cucumber sandwiches.”
“It was spooky, honestly. I saw into the bedroom through the open door, and it was full of books too—in piles, on the carpet. Sir Thomas said afterwards that they get to clean his rooms maybe once or twice a year, and then they have to put everything back exactly where it was, otherwise he complains that people have been messing about with his things— he knows where everything is, right do
wn to the last cobweb.”
“And he also knows Billy Bullitt, huh?”
“That’s right. In fact Billy came to see him just recently, when there was all the trouble.”
“Is he an expert on Badon Hill, then?”
“No, he’s an English literature professor—eighteenth century or something. But that was what Billy studied all those years ago, just for a year. Then he quit and joined the RAF to fight the Germans… and he just never came back… Not to study, anyway, but he did come back to see Dr Morton whenever he was in England, which wasn’t often… Did you know he was an orphan?”
“He was brought up by his grandfather, Harry says.”
“That’s right. Professor William Walter Bullitt—and get this, Mose—who was professor of Mediaeval History at Wessex University in the 1930s and a leading authority on Dark Age Britain.”
“Meaning King Arthur.”
“Right. He even wrote a book on him. And the ‘L’ in Billy’s Christian names actually stands for ‘Lancelot’. He inherited a whole library of Arthurian books from the old guy, so it really runs in the family.”
“So?”
“Don’t be dim, honey. If anybody’s got that book on the Novgorod Bede by Bishop What’s-‘is-name it’ll be BiUy Bullitt. The old professor’s library was the best of its kind in the country, Dr Morton said.”
He had been afraid for the preceding half-minute that she would be drawing that intelligent conclusion, because there was no humane way of softening the blow he must then deliver. Better to get it over quickly—
“No good, Shirl. There’s nothing in it.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Howard Morris’s people traced a copy already.”
“Where?”
“The obvious place. In the library of the present Bishop of Walthamstow, where you’d expect it to be. The Novgorod Bede is just an inferior copy of the Leningrad Bede, made about the same time—at least, according to Bishop Harper, and he saw them both. Sorry, honey… But did the old man have anything to say about Billy Bullitt—what he was like?”
Her shoulders drooped in disappointment. She shrugged. “He said he was a nice boy.”
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