October Men (7 page)

“Deal?” The Superintendent frowned. “What do you mean—deal?”

“Just that. She’s not going to talk to me because I’ve got a kind face—she’ll talk because when I offer her a bargain she’ll know she can trust me to keep my side of it. And don’t tell me you haven’t tried that already.”

“What sort of deal have you in mind, Captain Richardson?” said the Superintendent cautiously.

“There’s only one that’d do: let old Charlie off the hook.”

“We’ll promise to go easy on him.”

“Easy on him? Christ—the poor old bastard hasn’t committed a crime!”

“He’s killed a man, Captain.”

“In self-defence—and if he hadn’t he’d be dead.”

“It doesn’t alter the case.” The Superintendent shook his head. “But we’ll go in and bat for him—that’s the most I can do.”

“Well, it’s no damn good. It’s the court appearance that’d break Charlie. But you aren’t offering him anything he hasn’t got already— there isn’t a judge or a jury on God’s earth that’ll touch him, and she knows that even if you don’t. But the damage’ll be done all the same —she knows that too.”

“Then what exactly do you suggest?”

“We fake it up. The man fell down stairs and blew his own head off. I believe it’s called ‘misadventure’.”

The Superintendent shook his head. “It can’t be done, Captain.”

“It’s been done before.”

“Not by us, it hasn’t.” The Superintendent looked hard at Stocker. “And we aren’t starting now, that’s final.”

And that, also, was a mistake, thought Richardson happily: it was exactly the sort of challenge Stocker could not afford to overlook.

“Final?” Stacker’s tone was deceptively gentle. “I wouldn’t quite say that, Superintendent. It seems to me that we might manage something along those lines, you know.”

“Indeed, sir?” The Superintendent said heavily. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t agree with you there. You’re asking me to break the law.”

“To bend it, certainly. But not to pervert it. After all, since you’ve already agreed to—ah—bat for Clark the case would be little more than a formality, wouldn’t it?”

“The law is the law, sir,” the Superintendent intoned the ancient lie obstinately.

“I’m well aware of the law.”

The danger signal was lost on the Superintendent. “Of course, you can promise the woman anything you like, sir. As far as I’m concerned you’re free to do whatever suits you.”

Richardson opened his mouth to protest—the double-crossing sod! —and then closed it instantly as he saw the light in Stocker’s eye. The Superintendent had made his final error.

“You are exactly right there,” said Stocker icily. “I can promise her anything I like and I am free to do what suits me—you are exactly right.”

The Brigadier had come to the Department from a missile command, but before that he had been an artilleryman: the words were like ranging shots bracketing the Superintendent’s position.

On target!

“And it suits me now to remind you that I am in charge here—“

Shoot!

“—and you are absolutely free to telephone your Chief Constable if you have any doubts about that.”

The two men stared across the hall at each other.

“You make yourself very clear, sir.”

Target destroyed
! No doubt about that, anyway: it was there in the droop of the tweed shoulders and the immobile facial muscles.

“It’s better that we understand each other.”

The Superintendent nodded slowly. “I take it you will be putting this in writing—that you have assumed responsibility?”

“Naturally,” Stocker nodded back equally slowly. Then he turned towards Richardson. “You can go ahead and make your deal, Peter.”

“Right—“ In the instant before Richardson’s gaze shifted from the Superintendent to the Brigadier he glimpsed a fleeting change of expression, a change so brief that it should have passed unnoticed “—sir.”

It was a look of profound satisfaction though, not defeat…

So that was the way of it after all: that target had been a false one, no more than an incitement of Stocker to take all the responsibility, and to take it over a formal protest and in black and white… Except for that momentary twitch of triumph it had been neatly done, too.

Not that it would worry the Brigadier, who was as accustomed to carrying the can as he was to breathing. It was simply a reminder that for him the Clarks and their victim were of very little significance.

What mattered was David Audley.

“
HULLO, CLARKIE!
”

“Mr. Richardson!” Surprise, relief and then suspicion chased each other across Mrs. Clark’s face in quick succession. “Well I never!”

“Never what, Clarkie?” It pained him to see that shrewd, good-natured face so changed: the good nature had been driven out by fatigue, the pink cheeks were pale and the shrewdness had been sharpened into wariness. Standing up to the Superintendent and the Brigadier had not taken the stuffing out of her, but it had pushed her hard nevertheless.

“I never expected to see you, Mr. Richardson, sir. Not just now.”

“”Never expected to be here, and that’s a fact.” He turned to the uniformed policeman who stood like a monstrous statue beside the grandfather clock, out of place and out of proportion among the shining brass and polished oak of the dining room. “Very good, officer— you can leave us.”

The policeman stared at him doubtfully.

“Out!” commanded Richardson, irritation suddenly welling up inside him. “Go on with you!”

But as the door closed behind the policeman he pinned down the spasm of anger for what it was and took warning from it: either way this thing was hateful, but it was not that which was fraying his nerves. It was that caution and instinct were pulling him in opposite directions.

Something of this must have shown on his face, because there was regret in Mrs. Clark’s voice when she spoke.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I still can’t say anything to you. Not unless Sir Laurie Deacon says I can.”

“Sir Laurie Deacon?”

“That’s right, sir. Sir Laurie Deacon.”

Laurie Deacon
! Richardson felt laughter—God! It was almost hysteria—rising up where anger had been seconds earlier. No wonder they were wetting their pants out there in the hall! No wonder Stocker had dragged him all the way from Dublin, expense no object, and was quite prepared to twist the law into knots—and no wonder the Superintendent was only too happy to crawl away into a place of safety!

Deacon—Sir Laurie Deacon, baronet—was not only a barrister of vast experience and a Tory MP of even vaster influence and notorious independence of mind, but also a veteran campaigner on behalf of underdogs all the way from Crichel Down to Cublington.

So they’d leaned on this poor old countrywoman without a penny in her purse, and if she’d summoned up the Archangel Gabriel and all the hosts of Heaven she couldn’t have frightened ‘em more with the name she’d given ‘em back.

“Clarkie—how on earth do you come to know Sir Laurie Deacon?” He couldn’t keep the admiration out of his voice and he didn’t try to. “You really do know him?”

“I do, sir. But I’m not saying more than that.”

Richardson stared at her for a moment, then rose from his chair and began carefully and ostentatiously to examine the room. First the flower vases, then under the table and chairs, behind the ornaments, in the fireplace. When Mrs. Clark stared at him in surprise he put a finger to his lips and continued the search wordlessly until he was satisfied that there was nothing to be found. Then he listened silently at the door, bending even to peer through the keyhole, and as a final obvious precaution craned his neck quickly through the open window.

“I think we’re clear,” he murmured conspiratorially, pulling up one of the chairs from under the table until it was directly opposite where she was sitting.

“Clarkie, you’re bloody marvellous… Now, you don’t need to say anything if you don’t want to. You’ve got ‘em all beaten anyway, I tell you—but I just want you to listen to what I’ve got to say, and listen carefully.”

She watched him intently.

“You’re worried about Charlie, aren’t you? About what it’d do to him—all the police and the newspapermen and so on, never mind what might be said in court. I know that and I understand it.”

Mrs. Clark’s lower lip trembled and Richardson reached out and patted her knee.

“Well, don’t you worry about that, Clarkie. I can fix that—I give you my word I can fix that, even without calling up Sir Laurie Deacon. He’s your second line—I’m your front line. Because I can fix it so Charlie never has to go to court. If you’ll trust me—and if you’ll both promise never to talk about what happened last night—then they’re willing to tell everyone it was an accident. Charlie needn’t come into it at all. You just heard the shot and went and called Constable— what’s his name—Yates.”

She was frowning at him now, but frowning in evident disbelief. But why should she disbelieve him?

“Don’t you believe me, Clarkie?”

That frown had deepened at the mention of Yates, the Constable— the village copper. Richardson tried to project himself into her mind to pinpoint the line in it where trust ended and distrust began.

The village copper … could it be as simple as that? Could it be that in a world of fallen idols she still believed that some still stood, neither to be bribed nor bullied? That the law really was the law, though the heavens fell?

Or was it even more simply that his word was not enough and she needed to know why he was able to make a mockery of law and truth so easily?

“I’ll tell you why you’ve got to believe me, Clarkie. You see this— business—is a lot more complicated than it seems. It doesn’t involve just you and Charlie. It involves Dr. Audley.”

“I don’t see as how it can do that, sir.”

So David and Charlie ranked equally, each to be protected from outrage, the need to speak up for the one cancelling the need to keep silent for the other.

“Because he isn’t here?” The wrong word now would spoil everything.

She nodded cautiously. She was still with him.

“That’s just it, Clarkie. He really ought to be here.” This, he judged, had to be the moment: the risk had to be taken now whether he liked it or not. “You know that some of the work Dr. Audley does is very important—“ if she didn’t know it she would be pleased nevertheless at the importance of her Mr. David “—and very secret. So secret that I’m not allowed to tell you about it.”

He paused. “But when you do that sort of work, Clarkie—when you do it as well as he does—you make enemies. Like people who don’t agree with you, or even people who want your job. You know the sort of people.” He nodded towards the closed door. “Like the fat one out there—he’s been waiting a long time for David—for Dr. Audley—to make a mistake—“

“But he’s only gone off on holiday, Mr. Richardson, sir,” Mrs. Clark protested. “They haven’t been away together, not for a proper holiday anyway, since little Charlotte was born. And they both needed a holiday, ‘specially Mr. David. He’s been like a bear with a sore head just recently, he has.”

Richardson’s heart sank: in her own innocence she was only confirming Oliver St. John Latimer.

“And they’d planned this for a long time, had they?”

“Lord—no, sir! Mr. David only decided just a few days ago. And he was that excited—he hadn’t been like that since the baby came, sir—he had us running to get everything ready. He was like a boy with a new bicycle, sir!”

“Excited?” Richardson grabbed at the word like an exhausted swimmer reaching for a lifebelt. “You mean
happy
?”

“Happy as a sandboy, sir—and so was Mrs. Audley to see him like it. He’d been that grumpy with us both, and then suddenly he was laughing and joking—“

“Because of the holiday?”

“Well, I suppose so, sir. But it was the night of the dinner party he first brightened up.”

“The dinner party,” Richardson grinned at her. He mustn’t spoil it now, letting elation outrun discretion—there was much more to come still if he played his cards in the right order. “You mean it was one of your apple pies that put him in a good mood?”

The dinner party. … He mustn’t probe too quickly into that, or too obviously. She was staring at him now as though she sensed the lightening of his mood, but the slackening of tension was bringing her closer to tears.

He leaned forward and patted her knee again. “It’s okay, Clarkie —I really am on your side—on your side and on Charlie’s and on David’s. And between us I reckon we’ve got ‘em where we want ‘em—the other side.”

She drew a long breath. “You mean you can do that—what you said you could—for him?”

“I can and I will. But they couldn’t do anything to him anyway, you know—not when it was self-defence and he’d got Laurie Deacon speaking up for him.” He smiled. “You never really had anything to worry about.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know, sir. Charlie’s quiet and he seems slowlike, but he’s got a terrible temper when he’s roused. When we were children he near killed another boy once—he’d been teasing Charlie, you see. And there was that business during the war.”

“What business was that? He’s never talked about it.”

“He wouldn’t, no. But it’s still there in his mind after all this time, I know, because he has nightmares about it. Not often, he doesn’t, now. But he used to have them regular as clockwork.”

“About the war?”

“About this farmhouse in France, sir.” She stared at him doubtfully, then at the edge of the table. “I never told anyone about it before exactly, not even Mr. David… But there was this farmhouse… Charlie hadn’t done any fighting, because he was in the pioneers and they were retreating. And they were bombed a lot by those aeroplanes that made a screaming noise—“

“Dive bombers.”

“He didn’t call them that—Stinkers he called them.”

“Stukas.”

“That’s it, sir. All the way back until they were near Dunkirk. And the Germans were right behind them then, almost mixed up with them, you might say. And they sent Charlie and some other soldiers to find out if they was in this farmhouse. At night it was—that was really why it was. They couldn’t really see what they were doing, you see—“