Here Be Monsters (23 page)

But even that wasn’t quite the truth. ‘I broke the rules back there, David. Doesn’t it say, “When a contact is compromised—“—what does it say? “Run like hell”, is it?’ That was it, paraphrased. ‘You were a long time in the yard, getting the cases out. So I didn’t know quite what to do.’ But there was still something in the back of her mind, which she couldn’t reach.

Audley sniffed. ‘As it happens … I was stretching my legs, trying to get some feeling back into them.’ Sniff. ‘This isn’t a very comfortable vehicle.’ He kicked out at the car irritably. ‘What did you do, for God’s sake?’

What was it, that she couldn’t reach? ‘He wasn’t breathing—he had no pulse.’ Those lessons in the First Aid class, which the Headmistress had made compulsory for every mistress, obliterated everything for an instant. ‘
Whatever you do, don
’
t give up
’
, the St John’s man had said. ‘
Not until the doctor comes
.’

Audley turned towards her, but wordlessly.

‘If you must know, David, I tried to revive him. Only I didn’t try for very long, and you’re supposed to keep trying. But then, by our rules, I shouldn’t have tried at all. I should have left immediately, shouldn’t I!’

There were times when Audley’s ugliness became brutal, almost Neanderthal, and this was one of them. ‘I see. So you did the wrong thing both times—is that it?’ He started fiddling with the wing-mirror again, but gave it up in favour of turning round. Not that he could see much that way. ‘Damn car! Can you see anything behind?’

‘No.’

‘Neither can I. So we may be lucky. Or they may only have wanted Major Turnbull.’ He looked at her again. ‘So now you have to do the right thing, that’s all.’

He wasn’t going to help her. ‘I want to report in, David.’ That was easy. ‘And I want protective back-up.’ That was prudent as well as according to the rules, even if poor Major Turnbull had only succumbed to natural causes: nobody could fault her for any of that.

‘Fine. So we want a telephone, short of the new technology we ought to have. And a phone in a Police House would be ideal. But I doubt that Lower Hindley boasts a policeman of its own.’ He peered ahead. ‘Just keep going.’

Just keep going
, thought Elizabeth automatically. But then she thought
why Major Turnbull
?

‘Why should anyone want to kill Major Turnbull?’

‘God knows!’ He smoothed the map on his knee. ‘But he went to the Pointe du Hoc. So maybe they picked him up there.’

‘Major Turnbull was researching Mrs Thomas’s death, David. And you said that was above board—back in 1958—?’

‘Uh-huh?’ He couldn’t deny the most obvious implication. ‘Meaning what?’ There was an unnatural note to his voice. ‘Meaning I missed something, back in the deeps of time? Perhaps he did have a heart attack.’

Elizabeth remembered what Paul had said about David Audley and Debrecen, when they came together. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’

‘No,’ said Audley. ‘I can’t say that I do.’

‘No.’ She felt suddenly outraged at the flatness of his reaction. ‘Neither do I.’

Audley pointed ahead, to the left, without warning. ‘Over there, Elizabeth—pull in there.’

‘Over there’ was a sudden line of flags-of-all-nations, waving over an assortment of used cars on the edge of the road, and a trio of petrol pumps set back on a forecourt beyond them, all of which had appeared from behind a small wood suddenly.

Elizabeth slowed automatically, on command, and steered towards the pumps. There was an ugly little kiosk behind them, and a ramshackle scatter of garage buildings beyond, with a combine harvester outside them as its main customer.

‘Stop,’ ordered Audley.

Elizabeth glanced at her petrol gauge, and hated him. The needle was on low, and she ought to have thought of that herself.

‘
Stop
, I said,’ snapped Audley, before they reached the pumps.

Elizabeth jammed her foot on the brake.

Audley sat there beside her silently, like an overpowering dummy, while a fat red-faced bald-headed man in greasy blue overalls stepped out of the garage door, wiping his hands on an oily rag, and stared at them questioningly for a moment. And then disappeared back inside the garage.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Audley finally. ‘Perhaps I did miss something. Or anyway … if we have to make pictures, it’s better to make bad pictures than good ones. I agree with that.’

A knot of anger twisted inside Elizabeth. ‘Making pictures’ was common departmental shorthand for footling hypotheses. But her picture of the Major on his back among strangers was no hypothesis. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was making any pictures.’ She controlled her anger. ‘I was simply asking a question.’

‘Huh! This whole operation could be a picture.’ Audley tossed his head. ‘Just to show me making a whopping mistake back in ‘58. So now we’re seeing the modern details drawn in, for good measure.’ He turned towards her. ‘A bit more colour here and there, and it’ll be ready for the framer. And then Master Latimer can hang it behind his desk—and me with it.’

She stared back at him. ‘Are you telling me that Major Turnbull could have been killed just to discredit you, David? And Major Parker before him? And Debrecen—?’

‘If it was disinformation once, it could be disinformation again?’ he completed her question. ‘That’s certainly not beyond the bounds of ingenuity. There’s a man on the other side, an old acquaintance of mine, who is undoubtedly capable of it. And if I was in his shoes I know exactly what I’d be doing next, Elizabeth.’ He smiled his ugliest death’s-head smile at her. ‘But that can wait. Because the question is—what are
you
going to do next, love? After you’ve reported in?’

Elizabeth glanced towards the garage buildings. There would be a phone there, so she could report in easily enough, and get all the protection in the world, and all the good advice too. But none of that really answered his question.

The fat man came out of his doors again to stare at her once more.

‘Would you rather have someone else alongside you, Elizabeth?’ asked Audley gently. ‘You can send me packing quite easily, you know.’

She watched the fat man. In a moment or two he would come across and ask her what her trouble was. And she couldn’t begin to tell him. ‘Did you make a mistake, David—back in 1958?’

The fat man turned his head slightly, his eyes still on her, and spoke to someone inside the garage.

‘Not so far as I know.’ He paused as the fat man disappeared again into the garage. ‘I suppose you could say Major Turnbull could be an end-product of someone’s original error … whatever that was. But after so many years I think it would be a little unfair to suggest as much. It’s still 1984 which has killed Major Turnbull; Elizabeth—not 1958. So … even if I made a mistake in 1958, we must not compound it by making another one now. That is what matters.’

‘Even if it ruins you, David?’

‘Ruins me?’ His voice came closer to her. ‘My dear Elizabeth—you’ve all got it quite wrong! You—and your Paul, doubtless—and most of all our esteemed Master Latimer, if you think that. The only thing that can ruin me is if I play fast and loose with you now, Elizabeth. What the hell do my antique follies matter?
Now
is what matters.’

‘We have to know why he died, David.’

‘Okay! But we already know what he was doing. So all we have to do is back-track along his route, for a start—eh? So we drop everything else, do we?’

The fat man had emerged again, but she turned to Audley as he did so, frowning. ‘But, David—‘

‘Exactly right, love! If we back-track, to find out what it was about Mrs Thomas that I missed, all those years ago, then we stop doing what we were planning to do. Is that what you want to do?’

That was it. Killing a field-man in his own country sounded all the alarms, but really solved nothing, because there were others to take his place. All it gained was time, if it drew maximum effort away from what mattered.

‘Can I ‘elp you, Miss -‘ The fat man leaned on the car, lowering himself with difficulty, his piggy-eyes travelling up leg and thigh and bosom until they reached her face, and registering inevitable disappointment then ‘—Miss?’ She watched the eyes shift to Audley, uncomprehending as they took in the whole unlikely mixture: the hard-faced elderly gentleman with the plain woman in the sports car, engaged in a heart-to-heart exchange on his forecourt, maybe father-and-daughter, not bird-and-boyfriend as he had expected from the car.

‘I’d like some petrol,’ she said.

‘Right.’ He stood back. ‘You’ll need the pumps for that.’

‘And a telephone?’ Audley leaned across her.

‘No—‘ The fat man caught sight of the note in Audley’s hand ‘—yes, there’s one round the back, in the office.’

Audley looked at her as the fat man walked towards the pumps. ‘Moment of truth, Miss Loftus.’

Moment of truth, thought Elizabeth.

In fact, he had more or less told her to do what she had intended to do this morning. And that, oddly enough, was pretty much what the book said too:
plans should be adhered to unless compromised
. And since no one except David and she herself knew the plan, it could hardly be compromised yet. But it could be the wrong plan, nevertheless.

But the fat man had reached the pumps now.

‘Very well, David.’

‘Very well?’ His expression was made up of doubt and curiosity in equal parts.

‘We’ll go on as planned, to see your contact first. Then I want to meet the famous Haddock Thomas as soon as possible. And I’ll ask James Cable to look after the Major until we get back.’

He relaxed. ‘We’ll need transport. Let James look after that, too.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Tell him to lay on a plane at South Five, Elizabeth. Flight at six A.M. -Marseilles for Monaco. They’ll fix the documentation and cover. You might suggest a little gambling party—the big spender can be me, and you can be my PA. And tell him to arrange a car and a driver—tell him to get Dale on to that.’ He smiled at her suddenly. ‘Decisions, decisions! But, for what it’s worth, I agree with you, Elizabeth: going on is usually better than turning back.’

But who was really making the decisions
? She wondered, as she rolled the car forward the last few yards to where the fat man was fretting by his pumps.

After a few miles of his instructions, after they had reached the Salisbury road, and used it for another five miles and then left it for another labyrinth of minor roads, she felt able to draw on her account again.

‘You’re sure we haven’t been followed, David?’ She looked into her empty wing-mirror.

He shrugged. ‘We live in a technological age, my dear. So they may have bugged you somehow. And one day they’ll probably have a satellite on your tail, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He massaged his knees again. ‘But, for the time being, there are reasonable limits we can assume, as to their omniscience.’ He stretched his massaged legs in turn. ‘Meaning … anyone could have kept a tail on poor Turnbull, after he asked too many questions in Normandy. But they don’t have the resources to follow everyone everywhere.’

‘Why did you abort Debrecen, David?’

‘Good question!’ He touched his wing-mirror idly, as though the previous question still echoed in his mind. ‘You know what I did—when old Fred asked me to draw up a list of Debrecen possibles, Elizabeth?’

She had to adjust her imagination, back twenty-six years, to another David in another time. And she couldn’t do it. ‘No, David?’

‘I made a lot of money, actually—you turn right up here, by the church. I spent some at first—some of my own money, too … but I made a lot in the end—over there—see?’ He pointed. ‘And ultimately I made a lot for General Franco too, when I rediscovered Spain.’ He nodded. ‘Maybe that’s stretching it a bit … But I always like to think that I paved the way for the second British invasion, since Wellington.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Did you know, Elizabeth, that I had an ancestor killed at Salamanca, charging with poor Le Marchant?’

‘What on earth are you talking about, David?’

‘What?’ One knee came up again. ‘Market research is what I’m talking about, love. I funded a friend of mine—half with Her Majesty’s funds, half with my funds, I admit—to find out where the British took their holidays-abroad. And then I sold our research to the holiday-business—through my partner, who was the front-man for the enterprise … and he made a fortune too. Which was fair enough, because he did all the real work—he had a diploma in statistics, from Oxford … But, what we found out, between us, was where people went for their holidays in ‘58—places and dates and reasons. Although what
he
found out was in general, and what I found out was in particular. Because we quizzed some particular people about their colleagues—the ones I was interested in, but who hadn’t filled in our innocent questionnaire. And some of ‘em did fill in the forms, but not always correctly, as it turned out when we started cross-checking.’ He gave her a twisted smile. ‘It was a damnably weary business, I can tell you. But I got some sort of list in the end—not far now.’ He pointed. ‘Another mile or two, you turn right. Then there’s a pond and a track among some trees on your left. Down the track, and tuck the car behind the trees—okay?’

He hadn’t used the map since they’d left the Salisbury road. So, wherever they were going, he’d been there before, and not just once, thought Elizabeth. ‘So what happened then?’

‘Then the real fun started, my dear. I left my pal to carry on the survey—it was good cover, if we had struck gold, if anyone from the other side came sniffing around, looking for a rat. And by that time we were making honest money, too. I let him buy me out in the end.’ Audley chuckled suddenly. ‘All above board—paid Her Majesty back her share, plus interest—so whatever Master Latimer gets me for, it won’t be for ancient peculation. But I made a bob or two all the same.’ He chuckled again. ‘And if I mentioned the name of our little company you might be surprised. Maybe I should have stayed in the business and told old Fred to find another genius.’

‘What happened, David?’

‘I started to snoop, my dear. Eliminated the impossibles, snooped the possibles until it hurt. Then zeroed in on my short-short-list.’