Gunner Kelly (12 page)

Most of you, who today fill this little church which he loved, in th
is place which he loved and shared with us, will have known our dear Squire too well for any words of mine to be necessary. Some of you grew up
with him, and knew him as a boy and a young man; some of you served with him in the war, and afterwards; some of
you, the younger members of this congregation, were privileged to be his friends in his later years.

There are, however, a few who are here today in our midst in their official capacities, discharging their duties, to whom our Squire can only be a name, a
lbeit an honoured one. It is to them that I say … that we who knew him are not here to mourn, but to give thanks for his life, which enriched ours, and to pray not only for him, but also—as he would have wished—for God’s mercy andforgiveness on those who m
ust one day stand before the Judgement Seat to account for their actions—

“You don’t need any more. Except to know that he went on for another page about the perfection of God’s justice, and the imperfection of man’s, and the uselessness of bitterness and anger. He’s a sharp old bird, is the Vicar, I rather suspect.”

Benedikt looked at him questioningly.

“He’s not in on it, but he might have sniffed trouble, is my guess,” said Colonel Butler simply. “Because what they plan to do is to get the man who put the bomb in the old General’s car to Duntisbury Chase, and then deliver him to that Judgement Seat themselves.”

“You know this?” Benedikt felt a small twinge of anger. “You have known this all along—since the beginning?”

“I first heard about some of it a very short time ago. I learnt a bit more about it yesterday. Enough to go to your Major Herzner, who owes me a favour.” If the Colonel had noticed his anger, it didn’t bother him. “But I haven’t been rock-hard certain until this evening, if that’s what you want to know, Captain.”

Suddenly there was no room for anger, there were too many questions in his head for that.

“Aye—” The Colonel forestalled him “—and now you’ll be asking why I didn’t go straight down to Duntisbury and ask Dr David Audley what the hell he’s playing at, eh?”

That—among other things—

“Instead of which I let you take your chance?” Butler shook his head. “I tell you one thing, Captain Schneider—whatever David Audley’s playing at, it won’t be murder. And it certainly won’t be acting as an accessory to a teenage slip of a girl and a bunch of farm labourers—least of all when he’s given someone his private promise that he’ll look after her. He’s a tricky blighter, if there ever was one, but that isn’t
his
style.” The grizzled head shook again. “You weren’t in any danger.”

Benedikt recalled the Wiesbaden Kommissar’s print-out on Audley: whatever his failings the man had an intuition for mischief like a bomb-sniffing dog for explosives.

“But
someone
is in danger, Colonel.” Obviously the Colonel trusted the man up to a point, but only up to a point. “Who was it who set the bomb under General Maxwell’s car?”

For a moment the Colonel looked at him in silence. “They haven’t the slightest idea. They don’t know
who
—and they don’t know
why
.”

“They?”

“The Anti-Terrorist Squad,” said Andrew. “Their inquiries are proceeding—officially. But the truth is, they’re at a dead standstill.”

“And your inquiries?”

Andrew looked at the Colonel, and not too happily, Benedikt thought.

“Do not exist—for anyone else’s consumption. Not yet.” The Colonel’s features hardened. “And we know no more than they do. As yet.”

It was easy to see why the Chief Inspector wasn’t altogether happy. “Except that Dr Audley is in Duntisbury Chase?”

“Dr Audley is on leave, Captain.”

“Writing another book,” murmured Andrew. “He writes books.”

On feudalism, remembered Benedikt. And perhaps Duntisbury Chase was at present not such an inappropriate place for him to be, in which to study a text-book example of its survival in the 19805. But that was not why he was there.

He had come to the real question at last. “But in Duntisbury Chase they know—they know
who
and
why
. That must be so, Colonel.”

“Happen they do. Or someone in there does—aye.”

But perhaps … but
happen …
that was really not so surprising, thought Benedikt. Peasants the world over kept their own counsel, close-mouthed, rejecting outside interference in their affairs; and if there was a secret in the Chase, the people of the Chase would be more likely to know it than any outsiders, even outsiders with all the resources of the British intelligence and police agencies.

It was not what they knew, but what they proposed to do about it, and what that signified, which was so startling.

“And … whoever it was … they know he’s coming to them—”

“
Right
!” Colonel Butler pounced on him before he could finish. “They know he’s coming to them! And the Vicar preached to deaf ears: it’s good, old-fashioned Old Testament vengeance for them, and no messing around. But that won’t do for David Audley, Captain—do you see?”

Knowing the man was everything—in this case, reflected Benedikt. Colonel Butler was known to be a stickler for the book, army-trained, which was the antithesis of everything that was known about Dr David Audley. But each was an intelligent and successful officer, and if the Colonel was now consciously and deliberately breaking every rule in his own book there had to be an over-riding reason for it.

“Looking after the girl—that’s what he promised to do, so that’ll be what he’ll be doing. But there’s got to be more to it than that.”

Not knowing the man was the problem. Benedikt ran the film of his memory, marrying it to the print-out: Audley striding away across the field, super-confident—over-confident?—in his old clothes … the scholar built like a boxer: in good shape, but physically past his prime—too old for the ring, too old for field-work … for guarding a girl—or a secret—from a professional, with a village of unprofessional peasants at his back?

Then he knew what was coming.

“I don’t want to spoil whatever he’s doing. Because it’s my guess that he’s seen something that they haven’t seen—it depends how far he is into their confidence, but acting as a bodyguard doesn’t suit him any better than acting as an accessory to murder. I don’t want to spoil it—but I don’t want to leave it to chance, Captain. I need to know what’s really happening in there.”

He knew exactly what was coming. And it would be better to meet it as a volunteer than to wait for the order which would be couched as a request, from one ally to another.

He shrugged. “Major Herzner has lent me to you for a week, Colonel. I could go back … But if Dr Audley has contacts of his own … I do not resemble Dr Wiesehöfer very closely. So I do not think my cover will last so long—always supposing that it has survived this afternoon.”

“Forty-eight hours, at most—if you go back,” said Chief Inspector Andrew. “He’ll have to get back to Germany. Herzner’s got it buttoned up here.”

“No.” Butler shook his head. “Forty-eight hours is too much—it’s making pictures we’d like to see. And with Audley you don’t make pictures. We’ll go for another cover.”

“Another cover?” Benedikt couldn’t conceal his disappointment. It wasn’t that Colonel Butler’s lack of confidence in his Roman roads disappointed him—it was good that the Colonel preferred to plan for the worst, rather than the best. But anything which reminded him of Papa had its own special virtue, and the gentle study of small irregularities in the ground for signs of the passing of mighty Caesar’s legions had recalled happy memories of the old man’s boyish enthusiasm, and his own happiest days.

“Don’t worry, Captain! I have a cover much closer to your real skin in mind.” The Colonel misread his face. “But I won’t send you naked back into Duntisbury Chase. And I won’t forget what you are doing for Her Majesty’s peace, either.”

It was an old-fashioned way of expressing gratitude, thought Benedikt—it was like granting him a
Mil Eliot zu Ruhm und Sieg
battle-honour of his own. Indeed, it was almost embarrassing … except that it gave him an insight into Colonel Butler which the Kommissar had not printed out.

“And I’ll give you something better than that.” The Colonel became matter-of-fact again. “I’ll tell you what I particularly want to know which shouldn’t be too difficult to find out.”

He was almost diverted from his concentration on what Butler was saying by the change in Chief Inspector Andrew’s expression, which graduated in that instant from proper subordinate interest to equal concentration.

“Yes, sir?” What the Colonel was giving him now was something new to the Chief Inspector also.

“I told you no lie when I said that we don’t know much more than what the Anti-Terrorist Squad knows—other than what we know about Audley being there, of course.” The Colonel bridged the huge gap effortlessly. “But what you’ve told me— the fact that you confirm what we’ve suspected … that helps me to see it through Audley’s eyes. And because of that I can see a lot more than I saw before.”

The Chief Inspector’s face confirmed his impression: he was in on a new picture of what was happening in Duntisbury Chase.

“Unfinished business. That’s the only thing which could bring back the bomber to Duntisbury. So the bomb didn’t do the job … and he’s dealt with bombers before—and bombs— Audley has. I should have thought of that before, too!” Butler castigated himself for his error.

Bombs—

Benedikt had dealt with bombs, too: bombs were the dirtiest killing method, because no matter what the bombers said—and even when they said it honestly in their hearts—bombs were in the end indiscriminate, counting the risk to the innocent passerby as incidental to hitting the target; and while that might have to be a harsh necessity in war, in peace—in Her Majesty’s peace—

“Unfinished business,” repeated Colonel Butler.

In peace, bombers were the dirtiest killers, never taking the face-to-face risks—killing the bomb-disposal men when they failed to hit their targets—

The chasm opened up at Benedikt’s feet, which he was trained to avoid:
Why sh
ouldn’t the bastards be killed like mad dogs? What was so wrong with what the ‘slip of a girl’ and the peasants of Duntisbury Chase planned to do?

“What unfinished business?” Andrew addressed his superior more sharply than he had done before.

“Kelly, of course. Gunner Kelly, man!” Butler snapped back at him.

“Kelly—?”

“He should have gone up with the car—with the General.” Butler reacted to the snap harshly. “You’ve been telling me that from the start, damn it! Loyal Gunner Kelly—wasn’t he distraught when they tried to talk to him? Wasn’t he so sick that he couldn’t even go to the funeral? Maybe he thought someone was going to take another shot at him! Or maybe he was busy doing something else, perhaps.”

“But—”

“But he was with the General in the war? And he’s been back with him for the last four years?” Butler stabbed a finger at Andrew. “But where was he in between? And what’s more to the point… where is he
now
?”

The Chief Inspector said nothing, and the Colonel encompassed them both. “If you think about what
we
know, that the Squad doesn’t know—Audley maybe knows … is that it isn’t finished, what happened in Bournemouth—and Gunner Kelly
should
have been finished there, with the General.”

Pause.

“So what I want to know—from
you
, Andrew—is the life-story of Gunner Kelly, from Connemara or wherever, until the day he didn’t drive the General’s car a fortnight ago.”

Pause.

“And what I want to know from
you
, Captain Schneider, is whether Gunner Kelly is in Duntisbury Chase now—because he’s supposed to have gone away for a holiday somewhere, but I think he is there … And if he is there, I want to know what he’s doing there.”

THE BURNITURE REMOVAL
van lurched abruptly left and then right in quick succession, following the driver’s scripted indecision, and then suddenly juddered to a stop.

Benedikt stood up in the darkness and applied his eye to the narrow opening which had been left for him in the little sliding hatch in the partition which separated the cargo space from the driver’s cab. The headlights blazed ahead undipped, out across the darkly rippling water of the ford, illuminating the road ahead, and the telephone box, and the overhanging trees.

“You there?” The driver didn’t turn round.

“Yes.” He divided the gap between eye and ear.

“We’re at the water’s edge. I’m going to switch on the cab light so I can look at the map. Then I’ll get the torch, and get out and look for a signpost. Okay?”

“Yes.” The repetition of orders was unnecessary, but it was reassuringly exact. It wasn’t Checkpoint Charlie they were going through, but there was still no room for error.

He ducked down into his own darkness again, and looked at his watch. It was 2242 exactly—three minutes to the police car.

The engine noise ceased suddenly, and a thin bar of yellow light filled the gap. For a few moments the map rustled on the other side of the partition, and then the light went out.

“There’s someone out there—” The driver hissed the words “—I can see a torch … I’m getting out.”

The cabin-door clicked, and there was a scrape of boots on metal as the driver swung himself out. The van shuddered slightly.

“Aw—
fuck
!” exclaimed the driver angrily.

Benedikt raised his ear to the edge of the gap, and was rewarded with the sound of a splash. The driver swore again. Cautiously Benedikt turned his head, just in time to catch the lancing beam of a torch directed from the other side of the water towards the side of the van.

“Are you
arl-roight
there?” The question came across the water from the source of the torch-beam, in a rich peasant accent.