Here Be Monsters (7 page)

‘Yes.’ He munched again. ‘About Parker—talk to Major Turnbull first, Elizabeth. Let Dr Audley cool his heels for a few minutes. Just listen to what Turnbull has to say. Then you’ll know we’re not wasting our time.’

Elizabeth’s heart sank even more at the mention of Major Turnbull, remembering her one and only meeting with him. ‘Major Turnbull?’

Latimer nodded, manipulating his chocolate. ‘He’s waiting for you, too. And you may need him for extra leg-work.’ He nodded again. ‘He’s got a job on, but we can hire some extra help for that—‘ He swallowed ‘—so if you want him, just tell him what you want him to do. But he’s been looking into the Parker accident—he’ll tell you all about that, anyway.’

David Audley
and
Major Turnbull? If he had given her Paul … well, she could handle Paul. And dear James would have been easy, and maybe a labour of love. And Del Andrew would always have told her the truth, the straight unvarnished truth: the bonus of Del’s preference for pretty Page Three girls was that he treated Plain Janes (and even plainer Elizabeth) as
mates
, and not
playmates
, with no bourgeois sexual hang-ups. But giving her David and Major Turnbull, who were each inscrutably old-fashioned, suggested that this was either a cruel test of her ability or a high mark of confidence.

Meanwhile … meanwhile, Dr Audley could cool his heels, and Major Turnbull could wait, because they were both waiting her pleasure. And her pleasure awaited that of the Deputy-Director—that was her pleasure now, anyway.

He reached out towards the box again. But this time he thought better of his greed, closing the lid on it and pushing the box to one side.

She waited. Because, although he might know from records that she had 140-words-a-minute shorthand, which was a skill Father had required of her for his voluminous correspondence, she knew how to wait. Compared with Father, who had thought that he had all the time in the world and didn’t have to be polite, the rest of the world was a push-over.

He played with the box, wanting to open it again. ‘I must say … you’re demonstrating a remarkable lack of curiosity, Elizabeth.’

‘Am I?’ There was a difference between the Deputy-Director and Father, of course: with David Audley and Major Turnbull waiting, he had time at his back, if not politeness. But it would be foolish to go down a snake merely to revenge herself on Father. ‘I’m sorry. I was only waiting for you to bring Major Parker up-to-date. With … with Squadron Leader Thomas, was it?’ She swallowed her pride. ‘Has he fallen off a cliff too?’

‘No.’ Her obeisance mollified him. ‘Not as far as I know—not yet. But I’m sure Audley will tell you all about that.’

‘Indeed?’ After that crack about ‘lack of curiosity’ she must assert herself. ‘So Dr Audley will tell me all about Squadron Leader Thomas. And Major Turnbull will tell me all about Major Parker.’ She smiled. ‘And they are both at my disposal—Dr Audley and Major Turnbull.’

‘That’s right, Elizabeth.’ He smiled back, and nodded. And then waited for her to protest.

‘But you don’t want me to teach them Latin grammar?’

‘What?’ He stopped smiling.

‘Or lecture them on the use of Special Forces?’ She gave him a Varney face. ‘But if Major Turnbull knows all about Major Parker he probably knows more about the Pointe du Hoc than I do. So it can’t be that … and Dr Audley’s Latin is certainly better than mine.’ She pretended to think. ‘Although his Latin would be more the medieval variety, wouldn’t it? Not the classical sort -
arma virumque cano
, and all that—?’

He stared at her for a moment. Then, somewhat to her surprise, a slow and very different smile spread across his face, crinkling its lines with what might be genuine pleasure—she had never seen him smile like that, with face and eyes as well as mouth betraying satisfaction. It was almost a conspiratorial smile, admitting her to a club for which she had not put herself up as a member.

‘They don’t worry you, then?’ He tested her gently, as though he couldn’t quite believe his luck.

‘Worry me?’ If she’d ever been of a mind to protest, she couldn’t do so now.’ Dr Audley and Major Turnbull? Why should they worry me?’

‘No reason—no reason at all, Miss Loftus.’ He raised one hand defensively. ‘It was merely a thought.’

And an insulting one. ‘They have their orders, presumably.’

‘They have indeed.’ The smile had vanished, but the glint-in-the-eye remained. ‘They have indeed.’

‘Yes? So if the worst comes to the worst I can always order them to tell me what I am supposed to be doing. Which at this moment I still don’t know.’

‘Ah … ’ But he was quite unabashed, of course. ‘Now … where were we—?’

It didn’t really matter what she said, because nothing would deflate his self-esteem. ‘I think we were in the sea, four miles off the Pointe du Hoc. And was that the start of a beautiful friendship?’

‘What? Between Parker and Thomas? Good heavens, no!’ He sat back. ‘Does that surprise you?’

It did surprise her. Because there had to be a relationship between these two men, if David Audley and Major Turnbull had not been wasting their time. And it had to start with that heroic rescue.

‘It does, a bit.’ But then suddenly it didn’t. Because it hadn’t really been an heroic rescue at all, merely an accident of war, albeit a happy one: simply, among the thousands of random chances which had decreed life or death that morning, the vagaries of wind and tide had drifted one half-drowned British pilot into the arms of a handful of weary Americans who were themselves beating a delayed retreat from a hostile shore. In the midst of greater events and more pressing business the pilot would have been just a lucky survivor.

‘Yes?’ He waited for her to finish thinking.

‘Maybe not.’ She frowned. ‘But they did meet.’

‘They did. June 7th, 1944—that was the first time. And the second time was last week.’

‘Last week?’ Well, it certainly hadn’t been a friendship, beautiful or otherwise, Elizabeth agreed silently; the forty years’ interval precluded that.

Latimer nodded. ‘So far as we have been able to establish. Just the two meetings. Although they did exchange Christmas cards for a few years, apparently. But even that stopped after a time. So … just those two meetings, Miss Loftus. 1944, 1984. The first, pure chance—the second, quite deliberate.’

Elizabeth remembered the Parker cutting. ‘On the cliffs at the Pointe du Hoc, would that be?’

‘No.’ He gazed at her almost blankly. ‘Major Turnbull will tell you about the Pointe du Hoc. But … no, Miss Loftus—Elizabeth … Thomas was nowhere near there at the material time, as our constabulary would say.’

It had hardly been likely, for they must both be old men now. Yet he must be giving her the coordinate of the latitude of truth, if not its longitude.

‘So why are we interested in them?’
Parker
and
Thomas
! She wondered. Or was it Parker
or
Thomas? Or, since Parker was dead—Thomas?

‘Thomas, Elizabeth.’ He forestalled her. ‘Squadron Leader Thomas, pilot that once was—Dr Thomas, retired schoolmaster, that is. A most distinguished teacher of the classics—Officer of the Order of the British Empire, no less. Plus a couple of honorary fellowships and the Gold Medal of the British Classical Association, awarded for leading many a likely young lad into the realms of gold.’

He gave her a hopeful look. ‘You haven’t heard of him by any happy chance? From your teaching days?’

Elizabeth shook her head mutely.

‘No? Well, you’re not really a classicist—I appreciate that.’ He smiled his non-smile at her again. ‘But, anyway, our Dr Thomas wasn’t always a classical teacher. He was a civil servant in the Foreign Office for ten years, after he came down from Oxford the second time, with his doctorate, after the war. A little eccentric for the embassy lot—he might have done better in the Treasury …
Anyway
, he was there, and one day his name turned up on this list of ours, you see, Elizabeth.’

She nearly said ‘What list?’. But it was a redundant question, because there was really only one sort of list that ever got as far as R and D. ‘He was a security risk, you mean?’

‘No.’ His hand strayed towards the Thornton’s box. ‘No. Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly?’ It occurred to her that all this had to be a long time ago, ‘this list of ours’, if since then Dr Thomas had not only changed horses in mid-stream, but had had time to ride his new mount to a very different winning post. ‘When was this?’

‘1958.’

Twenty-six years ago. He had called it ‘our list’, but it must almost have been before his time. And, indeed, almost before Audley’s time too, since both he and Latimer had also changed horses themselves to come into this thankless service—just as she herself had done, come to that!

‘He was forty-two then.’ Latimer supplied the answer to a question she had not yet reached; she had been about to think
and I was in pigtails then, learning about Old Lob the Farmer and Mrs Cuddy the Cow in kindergarten
. ‘Came down in ‘37—First in Greats—from Jesus, of course.’

Of course?

‘Two years’ teaching. Then the war. Then Oxford again.’

Elizabeth kicked herself. Thomas’ was a Welsh name, and Jesus College, Oxford, had still been full of Welshmen in the years before and after the war.

‘They offered him a fellowship. But he’d had enough of that, apparently.’

She wrenched herself away from Oxford—away from Turl Street, full of Welshmen from Jesus, and West Countrymen from rival Exeter, and the Taj Mahal restaurant, and the sun slanting down towards All Saints’ and the High, so long ago, so long ago … and, but for Father, a fellowship for Elizabeth Loftus?

But—
damn that!
‘Tell me about this list.’ That was one past she didn’t have to think about: that was the might-have-been past which existed only in her imagination. ‘It wasn’t an SR list—?’

‘No.’ He stirred, as though Colonel Butler’s chair was becoming uncomfortable. ‘It was a rather odd business altogether. It might be better for you to read about it for yourself—‘ He gestured towards the empty screen beside him ‘—you’re cleared for it. All you have to do is punch “Debrecen” into the computer—D-E-B-R-E-C-E-N. It’s all there—what there is of it.’

The name meant nothing to her. But then codenames never did mean anything—
Overlord, Cobra, Horserace, Ajax, Warsaw, Peeler
—
they were all nonsense unless -or until—you were cleared. And even then, now that the Beast-computer ruled, every punched-in inquiry was recorded for posterity. It was easy to understand why they all hated the machine which used them while they used it.

‘In fact, there were two lists, Elizabeth.’ Latimer squirmed again, and she realized that she’d been staring him out of conscience. ‘We had one, and the Americans had one. And the Americans eventually shared theirs with the West Germans, against our advice. And we only tipped them off—the Americans—because we needed to curry favour with them, after Suez … If
they
’
d
got it first they’d never have trusted us … Not that it did us any good, in the end. More like the opposite, in fact.’

The two ‘in facts’ bracketed far more information than she’d expected, even though she still didn’t know what it meant. But as there was a chance that he might actually be giving her more than was in the official record in those asides of his, it was worth pushing her luck. (There were times to push, and times to hold back, and the trick was judging the right time, was what David Audley always preached. And one right time was when your contact was pleased with himself.)

‘Two lists?’ But how to push? ‘Major Parker was on the American list, presumably?’

‘He was.’ He rewarded her initiative with a tiny flash of approval. ‘But we didn’t know that at first—‘ He waved his hand in a jerky disclaimer ‘—when I say “we”, Elizabeth, I don’t mean
me
, of course—I had no part in the affair … It wasn’t
known
, let us say, until we compared lists in detail, the Americans and ourselves. And by that time both Thomas and Parker had been completely cleared, you see. Among others.’

‘Cleared of what?’

‘Ah … well, let’s just say cleared of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for the present? Audley will tell you.’ His hand hovered over the Thornton’s box, as though it had a life of its own and was trying to assert itself. ‘Suffice it to say that until that comparison, nothing even remotely suspicious had been established against either of them.’

‘How good was the vetting?’

Latimer bridled slightly. ‘It was … it was good enough, as far as it went.’ He frowned. ‘No—it
was
good—let’s be fair.’ He nodded. ‘If it had been me, I might have cleared them, too—shall we say that?’ The effort of ‘being fair’ taxed him sorely, she could see: he didn’t want to be fair.

But that was not what she wanted right now. ‘So they compared the two lists?’ She had to keep him moving. ‘And came up with the Pointe du Hoc?’

‘Not immediately, no. That came later. What they came up with first was Parker’s name in Thomas’s address book and vice-versa. So
then
they started to double-check.’ He stared at her. ‘And, you know, that really is the one
absolutely
curious thing about this whole wretched business, when you think about it.’

‘What is?’

He shifted in his chair. ‘The Pointe du Hoc—or that particular point in the sea midway between the two American landing beaches anyway, where Parker picked Thomas up. Because that really was the only connecting link between them which anyone could come up with. They were each on their own respective list in ‘58, and they’d met just that once in ‘44—and they gave exactly the same account of it, near enough. Apart from those few cards … which they’d stopped exchanging long since … there was nothing else. They both worked for their governments—they were both civil servants. But Thomas had no American connections of any significance, his work was strictly European. And Parker’s was strictly South American … or maybe Central American.’ He blinked irritably. ‘”Hemispherical”, the State Department called it. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they checked Parker again too, and pronounced him pristine. He remembered Thomas from ‘44, but that was all. Their paths hadn’t crossed again.’