A Prospect of Vengeance (13 page)

‘But he was there.’

‘Aye. And one or two others with him, that Terry remembers.’ The mouth tightened. ‘And Marilyn.’

Now the poor girl herself was a challenge. ‘Marilyn—?’

‘
”
Marilyn Francis
”
—
“shorthand typist”.’ Buller nodded. ‘Little slip of a girl—Terry actually saw her, stretched out like a little drowned rat, when they put her in the ambulance.’ Another nod. That was just when they twigged who he was—an’ bloody-near thumped ‘im, one of ‘em did … an’ then they tried to arrest him, before the top brass came up an’ threw him out.’

Ian waited.

‘”Marilyn Francis”.’ Buller repeated the name.

Ian waited.

There’s no such person,’ said Reg Buller.

IAN FELT
pleased with himself as he left the churchyard: pleased, first and foremost, because he was not being tailed (if he ever had been); but pleased, second and professionally, because it was just like old times, with the wind in his hair and the rain on his face; and he hadn’t lost all his own skills, when it came to the crunch (or, anyway, it wasn’t only Jenny who was lucky as well as smart!).

Although, to be honest with himself (and he could afford to be honest now, with all the hot-bath luxury of certainty), he had to give Reg Buller his due: Reg had not only zeroed-in on ‘Marilyn Francis’, but had added hard investigative graft and shoe-leather to his intuition to come up with British-American Electronics.

Odd though
(he thought)
that it had been British-American
’
s
‘
Research and Development
’
centre, of all its factories, which had recruited
‘
Marilyn Francis
’
as a temporary secretary all those years ago, out of nowhere: odd
… or
maybe not so odd now
—
?

Not so odd. And not out of nowhere—or, not quite nowhere, even after Reg had tracked down the agency which answered Brit-Am’s Rickmansworth factory’s temporary needs (Reg passing himself off as the pushy manager of another agency, offering his own ‘well-qualified young secretarial persons—we are registered with your local job-centre as a non-sexist, non-racial enterprise’—at competitive rates; and then Reg, having gleaned the name of Brit-Am’s favoured agency, suborning its personnel clerk somehow to let him look at her records … ).

That had been a dead end, in more ways than one: if she had ever lived (which she hadn’t), ‘Marilyn Francis’ would have been long dead, and quite reasonably purged from what were once the agency books, and now the agency computer. But, in any case, that had been more than offset by his outrageous (though deserved) bit of luck, in uncovering the single newspaper reference to ‘the dead girl, who worked for an electronics company in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire’; which, significantly, had appeared only once
(
‘
Someone didn
’
t get the message
—
some copper who
’
d looked in her bag like, early on, an
’
didn
’
t know no better
…
See how it becomes just
“
A clerical worker on holiday from London
”
later on? I
’
ll bet they came down on him like a ton of bricks, poor bugger!
’
)
. And that had been enough for Reg (although anyone could have carried on from there, given time; just, Reg was quicker on the ball, as well as off the mark), and then, while he had still been acclimatizing to the prospect of having to dig out information for himself again, at the sharp end, instead of sitting in his ivory tower and putting it all together, Reg had automatically taken charge—

‘That inquest, up in Yorkshire, must ‘ave been fucking dodgey—evidence of identification, an’ getting the paperwork done, an’ the right documents and the release for the body, after the post-mortem—somebody took the woman away, an’ somebody buried her. So, most likely,
somebody
passed himself off as next-of-kin … That ‘ud be the simplest way, if the Police were in on it, an’ smoothing things, rather than asking awkward questions … Coroners aren’t so easy—they can be right little Hitlers when they’ve a mind to … But the local Police,
they
wouldn’t have liked it, if that was the way it was. An’ that’s what went wrong with Philip Masson, when they found him … But up at Thornervaulx, the top brass were already on the spot—Audley an’ his friends—so they were able to call the tune right from the start—‘

Pattern
, once again. But not history repeating itself in Philip Masson’s case: in Philip Masson’s case too much had been revealed too quickly when he’d turned up at last; whereas, in the case of ‘Marilyn Francis’ … apart from Audley’s presence on the battlefield, she had seemed to be only a poor innocent bystander, and everyone’s attention had been focused on ‘Mad Dog’ O’Leary—

‘So who do you think she really was, Reg?’

‘No sayin’ yet, Ian lad. But she’s got to be one of three things. Like she
could
‘ave been just what she seemed: a little nobody—say, a girl that ‘ud run away from home years before, an’ got herself another identity to keep her nearest an’ dearest off her back. But then, as there weren’t any pictures of her in the papers, it couldn’t have been them that claimed her. Which leaves … either she was there with Audley … or she was there with O’Leary—and maybe it wasn’t him that shot her. Although, again, maybe it was: maybe he reckoned she’d put the finger on him, when he’d thought she was fingering his target for him. But it’s early days—‘

Early days, indeed! All they had known then, just twenty-four hours earlier, was that ‘Marilyn Francis’ and Michael ‘Mad Dog’ O’Leary had been killed on November 11, 1978, almost (if not actually) in the presence of David Audley, and that Philip Masson had been dead within a week after that; and that, while those deaths might or might not be linked, they had to start somewhere with their part of the investigation—

‘So, if it’s all the same to you, Ian lad, after I’ve had another little talk with old Terry, an’ got a few names an’ contacts up north from him … an’ checked up one or two more things down here … then I’ll just take a little trip up to Yorkshire an’ see whether they maybe didn’t bury this ‘Marilyn Francis’ any deeper than Philip Masson. ‘Cause it could be that it was a bit
too
easy for ‘em. In which case they might ‘uv been careless round the edges. And as for you, Mr Robinson
sir
…
how would it be if you went an’ had a word with British-American Electronics down at Rickmansworth? See, I was thinkin’ you might be a solicitor, or something legal like that, tryin’ to trace ‘Marilyn Francis’ to give her a bequest? You could blind ‘em with all that legal jargon you learned at college? That was how you used to do it, in the old days, the Lady told me—?’

Early days indeed! And, indeed, he had more than half- suspected that Reg only had the faintest hopes of anything surfacing down at British-American (who quite properly were unprepared to discuss matters relating to former staff over the telephone ‘as a company policy rule’); though, to be fair, Reg might also have thought that a gentle wild goose chase within easy reach of London would serve to blow away the cobwebs from those long-unpractised foot-in-the-door skills of those ‘old days’, and prepare him for sterner tests to come.

But then, quite suddenly, the early days had become interesting.

‘Mr Robinson—?’

‘Of Fielding-ffulke, Robinson, Mrs Simmonds.’ Her door had boasted the legend ‘Mrs Beryl Simmonds, Administrative Personnel Office’, so he’d reached the right person in British-American at last. He just hoped that his old nicely-embossed card
(Ian
D. Robinson Ll. B (Bristol)
, plus ‘
Fielding-ffulke, Robinson
’
with a legal-sounding accommodation address in Chancery Lane) would work its magic again. ‘I telephoned from my office, Mrs Simmonds. It’s good of you to spare me your time.’ He adjusted the small gold-framed spectacles which Jenny thought made him look so absurdly young that he must be what he said he was. ‘As I explained then, I am inquiring about a former employee of yours.’

‘Yes.’ Frowning came easily to Mrs Simmonds: the years had grooved her forehead for permanent disapproval. ‘I had expected you to write, Mr Robinson. That is the customary practice with such inquiries.’

‘Yes, I know.’ An instinct suddenly contradicted her appearance: she was frowning, but she didn’t want to frown. Perhaps she had a nephew, or even a son, in the law; or maybe she simply had a weakness for very young men trying to make their way in the world. But, whatever, instinct whispered
hard shell, soft centre
, so he touched his spectacles again, and gave her the ghost of what he hoped was a disarming smile. ‘I am … rather trying to cut a corner, Mrs Simmonds. You see, we have a very demanding client from overseas. And … I also have a demanding senior partner. So I am
rather
depending on your help—in strictest confidence, of course. And I will send you a confirmatory letter, naturally: I do appreciate that there must be company policies in these matters.’ He allowed the ghost to materialize more visibly for an instant, and then exorcized it with a dead-serious-pleasing expression.

‘I see.’ She was holding the frown now only with considerable effort. ‘And about whom, among our former employees, do you wish to inquire, Mr Robinson? How long ago?’

‘About ten years ago—‘ Even before he observed her expression harden again it occurred to him that if she had any sort of weakness for young men she probably had the reverse for the young women who preyed on them. And that decided him to add doubt and embarrassment to what was coming ‘—my inquiry relates to a certain Miss Francis, Mrs Simmonds. Miss—ah—Miss Marilyn Francis—?’ Would she remember the papers, from 1978?

The hardness became granite. ‘But … Miss Francis is … deceased, Mr Robinson.’

Deceased
? Or, more likely,
dead
—
and bloody good riddance!
—
this time instinct shouted at him. So she knew more than either he did, or what the papers had said. ‘Yes. I do appreciate that also.’ He tried to imply that he also knew a lot more than that, even as he prayed that she wouldn’t ask him why, if he knew so much, he wanted to know more.

‘Why do you want to know about her?’

He hadn’t really expected his prayer to be answered. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. Because, quite honestly, I’m not at liberty to say. But … all I
can
say … is that I would appreciate frankness—and I will respect it, so far as I am able.’ All the old Rules of Engagement flooded back. ‘What I do promise, is that nothing you say here will be attributed to you, Mrs Simmonds. I simply want to know about Miss Francis—that’s all.’

She was on a knife-edge. So it was the moment to lie in what he must hope was a Good Cause. ‘I have spoken to others before you.’ Whatever he said, it mustn’t sound like a threat. ‘I’m sorry to sound so mysterious, but I have to respect confidences and I
do
respect confidences. It’s just that I do need reliable confirmation of what I already suspect.’ As he delivered this flattery he screwed up his face with youthful embarrassment.

‘Yes.’ She pursed her lips. ‘You do appreciate, Mr Robinson, that Marilyn—Miss Francis—was a temp … . That is to say, a
temporary
secretary, supplied by an agency. I did not appoint her.’

‘Of course.’ He decided not to congratulate himself on the return of his old skills: although she liked him, and believed him, she was more concerned to exculpate herself from the Marilyn Francis appointment. ‘But you do remember her—?’

‘I do indeed.’ The purse shut tightly.

Marilyn Francis had been memorable. In fact, even assuming that Mrs Beryl Simmonds had a good personnel manager’s memory … Marilyn Francis had been
very
memorable. ‘She was incompetent, was she—?’

Sniff. ‘On the contrary. Miss Francis was highly competent, actually.’

Ouch
! thought Ian. For a man who knew all about Marilyn Francis, that was a mistake—even allowing for the fact that Auntie Beryl would shy away from speaking ill of the dead, which he should have reckoned on. But the rule was to capitalize on one’s mistakes. ‘Well … you do rather surprise me, Mrs Simmonds. But I’m extremely grateful for being corrected—‘

‘As a secretary, she was competent.’ She had done her duty. But now she didn’t want him to get her wrong. ‘Her shorthand was excellent—she must have had over 140 words per minute. Even with Dr Cavendish, who had no consideration for anyone … This was before we went over to full audio-typing, you understand—and when we still had old fashioned typewriters … But her typing was also excellent—quite impeccable.’ Duty still wasn’t done, the nod implied. ‘And her filing. And her paperwork in general: she had been well-trained … and she was … an intelligent young woman—of that I’m sure. Appearances to the contrary.’ Something approaching pain twisted her displeasure at the memory. ‘I blame the schools: they have a lot to answer for—doing away with the grammar schools, and letting children run wild—especially the girls.
Especially
girls like Miss Francis, in fact.’ Nod. They can’t even spell these days. But, of course, we have a spell-check now, so they don’t have to.’ Sniff. ‘
Rarefy, liquefy, desiccate, parallel, routing
—
and the Americanisms we have to cater for:
focused, protesters, advisers
…
But Miss Francis could spell, I will say that for her. Except those dreadful Americanisms. And she only had to be told once, even with them, when Dr Cavendish was writing to America … No, as a secretary she was perfectly competent. It was her behaviour—and her appearance … both absolutely disgraceful, they were.’