by Tim Heald
‘It’ll bounce… It’ll bounce!’ Mrs. Hey was shrieking, tears staining her face as she pummelled feebly at her husband’s shirt-front.
One of the cowhands was sitting in a corner slouched over a half-empty bottle of Scotch, muttering obscenities, while the other sat beside him with an arm round his shoulder attempting apparently to console him. Mr. Hey remained silent under his wife’s assault, though from his appearance it seemed that speech was physically beyond him. He was hardly able to stand.
‘What on earth?’ said Bognor feebly.
Mrs. Hey turned on him. ‘Everything!’ she screamed. ‘Every last pound note, everything. And Gilbert’s motorbike. Why, why, why? He’s mad.’ Whereupon she returned to beating her husband, who was now collapsed on the bar, apparently asleep.
Bognor turned round and stepped outside, where he drew a deep breath of chill air. After a moment he had made a decision. It was his case and nobody else could help now. He was on his own. He must simply give chase.
Father Xavier and Brother Paul had made sensationally good time. There had been an anxious moment on the Oxford bypass where Xavier had only just managed to cut in front of an articulated lorry as the road reverted to two-lane traffic. Also his dark glasses tended to mist up. But as they bombed down the tunnel which leads from the M4 to the main terminal buildings at Heathrow, Xavier noticed with satisfaction that it was only midnight. He slowed to an unobtrusive thirty and parked Gilbert’s Norton in a dark corner of the park outside the No. 2 European terminal.
‘Well played,’ he said, patting her affectionately on the saddle and the two men marched swiftly inside.
The cavernous building was almost deserted. Little huddles of sleeping passengers lay about on the benches. A very few uniformed hostesses and air crew walked busily; others sat lethargically at desks.
Xavier had not been inside the airport for ages. He was dismayed to find it so huge and so empty. Despite the fact that their habits had been left behind and that they were in conventional, if scruffy, civilian clothes, they looked conspicuous. It would be better by about seven o’clock when the rush started, but if by any frightful mischance there was a search on before then, it would be difficult to evade capture.
‘I hope there are some early flights,’ he said to his son as they mounted the stairs to the main arrival and departure boards. ‘I want you out as quickly as possible.’ Paul, who led the way, shrugged.
‘I’d like us both out fairly quickly,’ he said.
The departure board was not encouraging. A B.E.A. to Paris was about to take off, but there was little else before five.
‘That looks good,’ said Paul, who was more used to reading boards like this. Xavier had missed it. It was a LOT Polish airline flight to Warsaw at 1.55.
‘Right,’ said Xavier. ‘This is where we split up.’ He handed Paul seventy-five pounds and the two embraced briefly.
‘See you in Prague,’ said Paul. ‘Good luck.’
Bognor arrived at Heathrow almost two hours after the friars. His driver had gone fast, but was unwilling to take serious risks. As they came out of the tunnel and swung right towards No. 2 terminal, Bognor noticed an old four-engined propeller-driven plane shaking past the main buildings and clambering up the bright night sky above the airport. To his fevered imagination there was something sinister about it. He sucked his teeth and prayed for luck.
The question, really, was where to begin. He went to the girl on the B.E.A. desk and showed his card. ‘I want a quick summary of all European flights out before 9 a.m.’ he said.
The girl produced a typewritten list and he scanned it swiftly. There were three likely ones. The 1.55 to Warsaw, 5.30 B.E.A. to Prague, and seven o’clock TAROM to Bucharest.
‘Have you had a couple, male, booking on any of these three flights?’
‘You mean recently?’
‘This morning.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, no. We’ve only had two bookings this morning. It’s unusual. Most people book further in advance.’ She smiled nervously.
‘Two bookings?’
‘Yes, sir. They were made independently.’ She consulted her records. The names, thought Bognor, would mean nothing. They’d hardly travel as Father Xavier and Brother Paul. And the passports would be faked as likely as not. He wished he had some support.
‘Do you remember them?’
‘Yes, sir. There was a young man, in his early twenties, who seemed rather agitated. And then an older man with dark glasses. He only booked on about twenty minutes ago.’
‘Which flights?’
‘The young gentleman was on the 1.55 to Warsaw, sir. And the older gentleman… One minute, sir. Yes, he was on the 5.30 to Prague.’
‘What do you make the time now?’
‘Just after two, sir.’
‘Do you know if the 1.55 to Warsaw got away on time?’
‘Hang on, sir. I’ll check for you.’ She dialled an internal number, but Bognor sensed that it was useless. He knew that the clumsy old plane he’d seen as he drove in was the 1.55 to Warsaw. It couldn’t have been anything else. He felt depressed. It was going to be Xavier alone, without his son. He wished it had been the other way round, because he’d become attached to the old boy.
The girl replaced the receiver and smiled a neat plastic smile.
‘Yes, sir. The 1.55 to Warsaw left on time.’
‘Thank you.’ He turned and walked upstairs. He had two alternatives. He could sit in the exit channel round about five when the flight was called and pick Xavier up as he came through. Or he could go and look for him. He weighed the alternatives. The trouble with waiting was that Xavier might spot him and change tickets. There was nothing to stop him changing to a flight anywhere else in the world and by the time Bognor had realised that he wasn’t going to Prague he would have wasted three hours. By that time, too, the airport would have filled up.
He looked round the empty halls. The cleaners were in, sluicing down the marble floors, waking up the unfortunates who were lying on the benches. Bognor felt tired looking at them. He walked over to an automatic vending machine and bought a coffee.
If Xavier chose to spend the next few hours sitting out in the concourse he’d be easy to find. It was conceivable that he would, since he presumably didn’t expect a hue and cry until the friars had noticed all those empty places at Prime and Matins. On the other hand, Xavier was worried by now. Surely he must realise that his behaviour had been cavalier. Bognor wondered what clue there had been in the sermon the other day. It would be interesting to find out.
He finished the coffee and looked blankly at an Italian family complete with grandparents and three young children. The youngest appeared to have wet itself. There was a lot of confusion and the harassed mother carried the screaming infant off through the lavatory door marked with the word ‘Ladies’ and a diagrammatic picture of the female form.
Bognor reacted to the sight with what he considered professional acumen. The most obvious place for Xavier to hide for three hours was in the gents’. He could sit in there reading a good book and no one would disturb him. It was not a happy thought. Bognor did not relish a detailed tour of every lavatory in London airport. Instead he decided to start on an inspection of the more obvious places. It would be silly to waste time in lavatories and then find Father Xavier sleeping openly and casually on a public seat.
There was a lot of ground to be covered. Bognor walked slowly along the main floor, his footsteps echoing through the emptiness. At the far end he stopped and listened to the tannoy saying, ‘Alitalia announce the departure of their flight 235 to Rome and Naples.’
Suppose Xavier had managed to change his ticket and slip on that? He turned round to walk back, past the bank of telephone kiosks, when he stopped again and sniffed. There was a smell. He sniffed again. There was disinfectant from the cleaners and another less easily definable one which was just people en masse. Or the remains of people en masse. But there was something else. Very close. He sniffed more d
eeply. It was a familiar smell and it was coming from below. He looked down at the floor and let out a grunt of recognition before bending down to pick up a smouldering cigarette stub. It was more than a stub—almost half a cigarette. Perfectos Finos.
He ran his eye down the telephone kiosks and saw what he had, typically, missed before. There was a light on in one and one only. He could see only the back of the man, but he recognised immediately the thickening body in its stained old canvas trousers and silk shirt, with its grizzled hair and bulging neck. He went across and very softly opened the door.
‘Excuse me,’ he said gently. ‘You dropped your cigarette.’
Father Xavier came, as they say, quietly. Indeed, it was the most civilised arrest. He appeared surprised to see Bognor, but only mildly.
‘I’d been talking to Gaymer Burton,’ he explained later, in the car. ‘He seemed to think he’d been wildly clever. Didn’t react very kindly when I told him he was a conceited little prick. Still, I didn’t expect to see you so soon. You’re only two hours late. Not that it made any odds with Anselm’s prissy silliness. I must say that I didn’t expect his curiosity to get the better of his prudishness. I thought he might experience the odd pang. No more.’
‘But you must have realised I’d have him searched?’
‘Knowing you, you’d have forgotten. Anyway, we’d still have scored. I doubt whether you could have proved that Gaymer was other than a dupe. And Gaymer would have sworn that he gave the letter to Anselm, not me.’
‘Gaymer Burton’s word against Anselm’s.’
‘Not only that. Anselm would have been caught with the plans on him. That wouldn’t look good.’ Father Xavier drew heavily on one of his incriminating cigarettes. ‘I think given a little more luck and a little more modesty from Burton we might have pulled it off. Do you have a drink, by any chance?’
‘Sorry,’ said Bognor. ‘Something else I forgot.’
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the boy got away with it.’
‘With murder maybe,’ said Bognor, seriously, ‘but not with the secrets.’ Xavier looked at him incredulously.
‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘we always take a spare copy. It just means that they go to Father Stanislaus in Warsaw this year and not poor Brother Aloysius. Luck of the draw.’ And he dragged again very fully.
They had passed the Heston service station and the road had risen up above London on its concrete stilts. There were still a lot of questions.
‘What about the clue in the sermon?’ asked Bognor.
‘Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him; a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.’ Father Xavier recited it with his eyes closed. ‘In certain respects,’ he said, ‘you’ve conducted this investigation in a manner which verges on the intelligent. At others your lack of original insight is heartbreaking. It’s not even as if it is a difficult or complex clue. It’s ludicrously simple. You should have twigged when that fool Burton was talking about Anselm’s motives. They’re the same as mine.’
Bognor was too tired to unravel it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to do it for me.’
‘Oh Christ,’ said Xavier. ‘All it means is that I became a Communist when I was nineteen and a friar when I was thirty-eight. The reasons for becoming a Communist were perfectly valid thirty-three years ago and they have not changed in any essential. My reasons for becoming a friar were more complex.
‘My little annual espionage was something I concocted with Gaymer. We’d been aware of each other’s sympathies since before the war, and the idea struck me as droll. It was also some compensation for dropping out. I agree it didn’t put me in the Fuchs-Lonsdale class, but I’ve done well enough. Anyway, I wouldn’t entirely accept dropping out. For all its shortcomings Beaubridge has many of the better characteristics of the Communist society. And as you have observed, I haven’t been unduly concerned with the aspects I don’t care for. To be frank, I’ve almost become fond of the life religious. But it is a secondary allegiance. In other words, my old friend is Marxist-Leninism; my new and less vital friendship is with my sacred brethren and all that.’
‘Are you trying to tell me,’ asked Bognor, ‘that you joined the Friary simply so that you could smuggle out trade secrets?’
‘That’s crude. Like so much post-war British thinking,’ said Xavier, chuckling. ‘But broadly correct. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’
‘But,’ said Bognor, very slowly and deliberately because he was thinking out loud, and finding the process difficult, ‘that means that you joined the Friary specifically to get secrets to your ideological comrades. But when you joined there was no Expo-Brit, much less any Beaubridge involvement in it.’
‘Ah.’ Xavier patted Simon on the knee. ‘It was no problem to get Beaubridge involved. They fell over each other trying to get the glory. Persuading Wharfedale Newspapers to start Expo-Brit was, I concede, a little more taxing.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Bognor wished he were in bed. ‘You’ll be telling me next that you put the Globe up to it yourself, and that Lord Wharfedale is a member of the Communist Party.’
Father Xavier turned and with one hand ruffled Bognor’s hair, as if he were an idiot child. ‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘that would be fearfully indiscreet. If I ever say anything like that, don’t believe a word of it.’
Cool shafts of afternoon autumn sunlight filtered softly through the ilex and sparkled on the two silver goblets below. Between them, on a small table overlaid with a crisp white cloth, was a bottle of Dom Perignon beady with condensation formed from its ice bucket, which was elegant, Georgian and, typically, uninsured. Three days had elapsed since the apprehension of Father Xavier and the escape of Brother Paul and they had been filled with paperwork and awkward questions. It was the first chance Bognor had had of relaxing, and he had cheerfully accepted the Begs’ invitation to stay, on the sole condition that at no time did they venture to within ten miles of Beaubridge.
Sir Erris had been delighted with the champagne and insisted that it would be ready to drink only after a testing round of croquet. Which was why the first bottle sat, chilling and unbroached, under the ilex. A few yards away Sir Erris yet again struck his opponent’s ball fiercely into the roses, and said sorry.
‘I still think it’s a pity about Gaymer Burton,’ said Sir Erris, when Bognor was back within earshot. ‘He’d have got his “K” in the next birthday list.’
Bognor shrugged. He couldn’t summon much regret. Burton had been told that his resignation was required within twenty-four hours and that no decision would be taken on charges for a few days. He’d been found in bed the next morning with an empty bottle of aspirin and another of Tallisker malt whisky on the table. There was a careful and precise letter to his solicitor, and another for his brother. Bognor’s first reaction had been that it was a waste of Tallisker, but he never said so. It would have seemed unduly callous—except perhaps to Xavier, who would have enjoyed the remark.
‘I didn’t terribly care for Burton, you know,’ said Bognor, and smiled, to take the edge off the cliché. ‘But I’m sorry the boy got away. He’s the sinister one; and the one who did the killings.’
‘Have you found out more?’
‘Not much. Poor Xavier’s still being grilled. They’re putting him through it, but he’s not saying very much. Apparently they got their claws into Paul years ago, and Xavier never really objected. After all, with his beliefs he was more than happy for the boy to join the party and go on jamborees to the East. Then he went to East Germany for three years—to the university in Leipzig—came back and said he’d like to live with his father for a bit. Nobody at the Friary knew anything about the relationship. It would have been merely temporary, of course—his stay as a brother. It’s ironic too. I think his employers wanted him to bolster Xavier and just find his feet before starting on some really hot industrial work outside. Then he lost his nerve and started killing people; which is what he was train
ed to do, of course; so they’ve only themselves to blame.’
Sir Erris stooped briefly over his mallet and hit his ball firmly through the penultimate hoop.
‘It… er… took you a long time to work it out,’ he said. ‘You could just have questioned everyone who’d ever been on Expo-Brit.’
Bognor tried to achieve a cannon, but the range was too great and an unexpected slope in the lawn took his ball away towards another flower-bed.
‘I suppose so. But then I’d have alerted the guilty party and scared them off. It was you who suggested I should go slow.’ To be absolutely honest the idea had never occurred to him.
Sir Erris made the final token stroke and watched his ball gently nudge the multi-coloured pole which represented the end of the game. Bognor congratulated him wryly and they shouldered mallets and made for the champagne. ‘The Strudwicks,’ he said, opening the bottle with a flourish so that the cork narrowly missed his host, ‘have Bollinger. But I wanted to be different.’
‘Quite right,’ said Sir Erris, watching with quiet anticipation as his guest poured the golden frothing liquid into the goblets. Then he raised his, and extended his arm in a southward direction, pushed the felt hat back on his head and said, ‘I propose a toast.’ He paused to make sure that Bognor was going to participate, and then declaimed, ‘The Bloody Brethren.’
Bognor drank. ‘The God botherers,’ he said, ‘especially Father Xavier.’
Away to the south, across the green valley turning slowly brown, and over the hills of downland pasture, the objects of their toast were assembling for Evensong. Father Anselm stood, as was his wont, just outside the chapel door with his big black bible and watched as his now sadly depleted flock hurried across the yard. He assumed a world-weary smile and inclined his head in an understated greeting as they passed him: Father John more bent and arthritic than ever; Brother Barnabas still preserving at least an outward jollity; pinched, worried Simon; silent, surly Vivian; and the rather similar, though more intelligent, Aldhelm. Father Anselm sighed as the bell changed its rhythm. He wondered what secrets these men hid. He hoped sincerely that he knew and understood them rather better than others. He sighed again and opened his bible. Luke, Batty Thomas, Bede, Xavier and Paul. All gone. It had been a most distressing period in his life.