A Prospect of Vengeance (12 page)

‘Accident?’ It wasn’t that the man ever lied, when he was on the payroll; it was just that he always doled out the truth bit by bit, to keep the client eager for more. But then (and what made the technique bearable),
more
was usually worth the extra money in the end.

‘Yes. Because … after that bomb went off, at the university, they didn’t know their arse from their elbow. An’ it wasn’t this bloke who was a friend of Audley’s—Colonel Butler … Apparently, he was a good sort, even if he was foisted on them at the last moment. All the coppers liked him—said he wasn’t at all like the usual run of Sandhurst-types, an’ superior Oxford-and-Cambridge civil servants … aye, an’ the cloak-and-dagger brigade, making ‘em feel like peasants at a big party … No,
he
was civil to them, an’ efficient with it, an’ knew his job. But he only arrived at the last minute, to take over. An’ there was lots of new surveillance equipment—all high tech stuff … half of which was on the blink, see—?’

‘But they knew O’Leary was there, somewhere—?’

‘
Oh yes
.’ They
knew
—
someone had double-crossed O’Leary, somewhere down the line.’ Nod. ‘All these different IRA off-shoots … O’Leary was “ILA”—
Irish Liberation Army
…
which was a short-lived splinter-group no one ever seems to have quite sussed out. But
not
to be confused with the INLA—the Irish
National
Liberation Army—see?’

After Beirut this was peanuts. But, nevertheless, he had always steered Jenny away from Irish entanglements—whenever that possibility had arisen; and (probably because of her divided family loyalties) he had never had any trouble there. So heaven only knew what she would make of this complication, then.

‘But he was IRA—ultimately, Reg?’

‘God only knows! When you get far out, on the edge … you don’t know who you’re really dealing with: it could be the really top IRA boyos, with their big cars parked outside their big houses in Dublin … or it could be the Marxist-Leninists, pure in thought—an’ put a bomb in an orphanage, if they reckoned it could further the workers’ cause, long term … Or it could be the Mafia or the KGB, doin’ what comes naturally—‘ Buller shrugged. ‘—if you want to know what Michael O’Leary was for … then you’d best ask Colonel Butler—or maybe David Audley. But don’t rely on whatever they tell you. So don’t ask
me
, for God’s sake!’ Grin. ‘But somebody peached on him—O’Leary—anyway. Yes.’ Out of the shrug, and the grin, came recovery. ‘The point is, O’Leary missed his target—all he got was half-a-dozen ducks, on a duckpond, when the bomb went off.’ Genuine grin. ‘So fuck him, then.’

‘But he got away.’ Deep inside Reg Buller, within the cynicism, there was a core of old-fashioned patriotism, like a Falklands Factor, thirsty for victory after years of defeat. ‘Didn’t he? Until Thornervaulx, anyway.’

Buller shook his head. ‘No. He got
clean
away. He was a pro, was O’Leary: he had his escape route all mapped out—they didn’t get a smell of him, not a smell.’ Shake became nod. ‘He was a real pro.’

There was something not right here—something which
did
smell. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Reg? He
did
get away, at first … But they
did
catch him—‘

‘No. That’s just the story in the papers.’

And you never ought to believe what
’
s in the newspapers
. And Buller had already told him that, anyway. So that was the end of the questions: he would wait now, for the answers.

Buller tossed his head, accepting his silence. ‘Accident, I told you … Terry was driving down this road, in the rain … Actually, he was goin’ to interview this CND Vicar he knew, who was refusing to have a Remembrance Service, the next day. Because it was a Saturday—November 11. An’ the next day was when they were all going to have the services, an’ Terry reckoned there might be a demonstration against the Vicar, an’ he might be able to flog a story to Fleet Street. So he was just sewing up the loose ends, in his spare time. Because he wasn’t covering a football match, that Saturday afternoon.’

Ian drank another careful measure. It was now Saturday, November 11, 1978 … on a wet afternoon, somewhere near Thornervaulx Abbey in Yorkshire. And that was still a week away from Philip Masson’s own last journey, to his shallow grave far to the south, anyway.

‘So he was driving along, minding his own business—‘ Reg Duller drained his glass, and lifted it towards the barmaid, catching her eye instantly, as Ian himself never could ‘—an’ he heard this Police siren, in the distance—‘ Down went the glass, but not the eye, which was fixed on the stretched black silk, and 40D-cups which barely restrained the advance of those splendid breasts towards them, past less favoured customers. Thank you, love. And my friend too, love.’ Buller encompassed her, over-hanging-bosom and all, as she swept away his empty glass and replaced it with a full one, leaving Ian’s unfinished one contemptuously, and was gone. ‘An’ then he heard another bell … so being Terry—or
Tel
, as we always used to call him … an’ being properly brought up … he turned his car round, an’ followed ‘em.’

That was right: that was the old-style journalist, of Reg Buller’s vintage, who followed the sound of the policeman’s siren and the fireman’s bell in the same way as the old-fashioned captains had steered their ships towards the sound of the guns, in the hope of bloodshed.

‘Of course, the Police ‘ud been out, all that weekend, running about like blue-arsed flies, after any word of O’Leary.’ Buller shrugged. ‘But the word was, they reckoned, he was long gone—Liverpool, or Glasgow, or Manchester … But long gone, anyway. But there was always a chance.’

That
was
the old style: the best stories were always the ones that came out of nowhere, very often. The trick was to pretend that they were no surprise, and that you’d expected them all along, sooner or later, having your finger on the pulse of events.

‘So he followed ‘em—round the roads over the top, down in the Thor Brook there, over the narrow bridge, where you have to back up if you don’t get halfway across, an’ some other car has just got there before you—it’s the original old bridge, that the monks built, there.’

More and more, the picture was emerging: like, out of the original 1978 mist-and-rain, in darkest and most back-of-beyond North Yorkshire, under the dripping overhanging trees in the deep valley of Thornervaulx Abbey, with the Police sirens shrieking anachronistically, to sound alarms which had not been heard there since the times of the wild Scottish raiders.

‘So he got there with the Police, anyway.’ Buller nodded. ‘An’ as they were hardly there before him, an’ they didn’t know who the hell he was … at first they didn’t stop him—when he pushed his way in.’

That was also the old style: look like you belong there—plainclothes policeman, special branch man, doctor (serious-faced, bag-in-hand if you can find a bag)—John Tully always simply looked like himself, and waved an impressively embossed card with his photograph on it, which testified that he was a Count of the Holy Roman Empire; and that, with his superior manner, had passed him into all sorts of unlikely places. And, when it came to unlikely places, Thornervaulx Abbey—

He stopped in mid-thought as he realized simultaneously that Reg Buller was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to speak, and that he’d been following the wrong line of thought, from the wrong angle—Buller’s Terry’s angle. And Buller had told him all he needed to know about Terry, of course—

And then it was easy
—

‘It wasn’t an ambush, of course—
of course!
’
All the thrust of the newspaper stories had been that O’Leary had been ‘cornered’—like the ‘Mad Dog’ he was: Reg’s favourite newspaper had started its subordinate clause with that word, and two of the quality papers had used the word ‘ambush’ in their headlines. But siren-shrieking police cars coming from afar didn’t attend ambushes. They would already have been there, or nearby, unmarked and tucked away unobtrusively.

‘Right.’ Buller leered at him for an instant, then raised Ian’s empty glass for the barmaid to see, and then came back to him. ‘Or, rather … wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ He covered his own beer with his hand to stop her getting the wrong idea.

‘It was an ambush all right.’ Buller reached across him to surrender his glass for refilling. ‘But it was O’Leary who was doing the ambushing, not Audley’s lot.’

This time it was stronger than hypothesis. But it was still no better than circumstantial. And good old-fashioned incompetence could yet turn those circumstantial elements on their head. ‘What makes you so sure?’

Buller waited until his glass was returned to him. ‘Terry talked to someone there—there’s two or three houses by the ruins. One of ‘em was the custodian’s … Ministry of Works, or National Trust, or whatever it was then. An’ he said there was a police car parked in the car park, large as life, on the forecourt, where the coaches and the day-trippers off-load—blue light on the top, day-glow orange-and-red strip along the side—from midday onwards. Plus other cars, that looked official. Not toufist cars, anyway … apart from the fact it was a November day—November 11 to be exact … An’ that was why old Terry was round there: he was goin’ to interview this CND Vicar, who was saying he wasn’t goin’ to encourage the British Legion in their militaristic practices—huh!’ Reg Buller tossed his head derisively. ‘
Anyway
… it was a wet November Saturday—it ‘ud been pissing with rain earlier, but it was down to a fine drizzle when Terry comes on the scene, just behind a couple of police cars. And there were several big home matches that weekend, too. So there weren’t any tourists sight-seeing, to complicate matters.’

That was typical Buller understatement, after he had just enormously complicated what had seemed before to be a neatly open-and-shut episode of counter-intelligence anti-terrorist operations.

‘Except the one girl, who was killed.’ All this made the poor little thing’s death even more poignant: her presence there, late in the afternoon on a wet November day, had been against the odds; and maybe the only target O’Leary had seen when he had failed to find his proper target for the second time in succession. But that raised a much more important question. ‘So … who was he after, Reg—O’Leary—?’ He frowned at Buller, as the more important question suddenly offered an answer which was dangerous because it was also much too quick, much too simple.

‘Yes.’ Buller had been there before him, and had also seen the same dangers. ‘If it
was
Audley he was going for—if Audley
was
at the university, just before … ’ He cocked his head. And then straightened it to get at his beer. And then came back to Ian. ‘A bit too easy—eh?’

Ian drank the last of his own beer. All this was following on their established technique: in any investigation, one had to start somewhere.

Sometimes it was easy, and one started at the beginning. But more often than not there was no clear beginning: the more one researched, the further back the beginning went, in that first month’s careless gadarene rush at the subject, open-minded. And out of that their line would come (usually out of Jenny’s greater gathering of fact, and rumour, and fiction … and his own final interpretation of all that).

‘What d’you think, Reg?’ He mustn’t let the man go off the boil.

‘I dunno … ’ Buller stared down into his glass. ‘But … even without that bugger Masson … we could ‘ave a good one ‘ere, y’know … ’

That was another sign: Reg only dropped all his aitches either deliberately or
in extremis
with clients—at least, apart from when he also deliberately did so to annoy John Tully.

‘A good one?’

‘Aye. An’ thass the truth.’ Buller slurred again. ‘We do O’Leary … and maybe we’ve got O’Leary gunning for Audley, an’ Audley gunning for O’Leary—an’ that’s bloody good.’ He cocked an eye at Ian again. ‘But if we add Masson to it … O’Leary
versus
Audley—that’s simple. But Audley
versus
Masson … that’s bloody complicated, I tell you.’

Suddenly there was no contest, no choice: always, and forever, doing the easy thing—dating the girl who’d say ‘yes’, in preference for the other girl, who’d already said ‘no’—was never worth doing. ‘Was Masson involved in the O’Leary killing?’

Buller shook his head. ‘God only knows.’ Then he looked at Ian sidelong. ‘Old Johnny’ll maybe answer that, when he comes in out of the cold. Because when that bomb went off, an’ killed those ducks on the duck-pond … he was just a senior civil servant, Masson was. An’ then, three days for O’Leary, an’ a week for Masson … an’ then they’ve got something in common, see?’

Then they were both dead, Ian saw. (But that had not been apparent at the time, except by eventual inquest verdict long afterwards. But that, also, was what had started all this now.)

He cast around for further objections, taking his accustomed role with Jenny, of Devil’s advocate. ‘In common with the girl—‘ He fished for the elusive name in his memory, from the follow-up newspaper reports ‘—Sandra—? Marilyn—?’

‘Marilyn.’ Buller set his empty glass down on the table. Then he looked up, directly and disconcertingly at Ian, challenging him. ‘You know why I started with Thornervaulx—an’ the bomb that killed the ducks—?’

No ducking that challenge. ‘The timing.’ They both knew the rules. ‘We have to start somewhere.’

The challenge remained in place, like a gauntlet thrown down which he somehow hadn’t noticed. ‘The bloke I talked to first, about Audley—
he
said “Look for anything that doesn’t quite fit—anything that’s somehow out of the ordinary, an’ doesn’t quite have an easy answer … An’ then take another look at
that
… if it’s Audley you’re after. Because he doesn’t fit, either.”’

The challenge was still there. ‘How … doesn’t Audley fit—at Thornervaulx?’

The corner of Buller’s mouth twisted. ‘Thornervaulx doesn’t fit—in the bloody back of beyond.’