A Prospect of Vengeance (18 page)

But the yew-tree was marching towards him by the second, and he was only compounding his stupidity with self-recrimination. Because when he reached it he’d have to know what he would do next, where he would
go
next; because there were only two roads out of Lower Buckland, according to the map, and both of them were behind him now, on the wrong side of the Village Green, with maybe Fin Bheara himself in the way. And ahead of him … ahead of him was the churchyard wall again—

Damn it! All the citizens of Fin
’
s kingdom would be waiting for him there with old Reg Buller grinning over Marilyn Francis
’
s shoulder!

And he was there, now. And he must stop thinking this Fin Bheara nonsense before it reduced him to a helpless jelly: simply, he must turn round and face his pursuer. Because … because—for heaven’s sake!—he wasn’t in some Beirut wasteland now, like last time: there were no half-smashed tenements full of hooded women and Kalashnikov-armed trigger-happy bandits from half-a-dozen different militias: these were elegant Georgian-Regency-early-Victorian English residences around him on the other three sides of the green, with elegant stockbroker-merchant-banking-high-tech-yuppie wives (with little boys and girls playing computer games at their backs as they started to prepare dinner, while watching the early evening BBC/ITV news on the kitchen TV), waiting for their husbands to return from the high-return, high-risk fray—
shit
!

(Shit? That was what Jenny would say. But Jenny was
extricating herself from her flat; and he had a rendezvous with her at Abdul the Damned
’
s; which he had to keep
—
or face her father
—
)

He was right underneath the yew-tree now, where he’d been so few minutes before, in the age when he’d still believed himself
clever
as well as
lucky
. But it was as much the threatened prospect of having to explain himself to ‘Daddy’ as his own desperation which turned him round, at the last—

Shit! He had increased the gap to the full width of the Village Green, but there were two of them now!

From being in trouble, he was in big trouble now, in his own high-return fray, which had also suddenly become as high-risk: the closest of the Georgian houses was away to his left, beyond the corner of the wall, with its manicured box hedge and holly tree, and its owner’s wife’s big silver Volvo Estate outside; but could he really knock at the door, and say: ‘
Excuse me, madam
…
but my name is Robinson
—
Ian Robinson, of Fielding-ffulke, Robinson
…
And I
’
m just researching Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon, who used to live here, just
across the Green, in Gardener
’
s Cottage
—
Captain Fitzgibbon
’
s widow
—
perhaps you remember her
—
? Only
…
there are these two men, just on the other side of the Green
—
one of them is wearing a check sports jacket, and he
’
s tall
…
and the other is short and plump, in a grey suit
…
But I think they may have been following me. And now I think they may want to kill me—I know that sounds silly, but they may just have killed my associate, Mr Reginald Buller
—
formerly of the Metropolitan Police Force
…
So, do you think that I might use your telephone
—
or your lavatory
—
? Or could I please cower in one of your attics, perhaps? Can I take sanctuary with you
—
?’

One of them was moving left, round the Green. And the little fat one was advancing across the grass, towards him—

Sanctuary
—
?

He did know someone in Lower Buckland: the old priest, in his long black cassock—the Vicar? the Rector?—had spoken to him. And the church was right behind him—and the Vicarage—Rectory?—was just somewhere behind that, through the churchyard: he had glimpsed it round the back—and the priest himself had indicated it at the end of their encounter, after he’d pronounced on the Fitzgibbons, beneath their stone in his churchyard, and very lovingly—

With Check Sports Jacket and Grey Suit converging on him purposefully, the thought of knocking on strange doors and seeking safety no longer embarrassed him: it was no longer a question of feeling foolish, but of
which door
—
? And Check Jacket decided that for him by accelerating towards the silver Volvo and thereby eliminating the door behind it (which might not, in any case, have opened up quickly enough). But Grey Suit (who was not so much short and plump as menacingly thickset and powerful at close range) had already reached the furthest end of the churchyard wall, not far from the lych-gate in it.

Ian ducked under the overhanging yew-tree branches and sprang on to the top of the wall with an agility which surprised him—it was as though his arms and legs, once released from their brain’s indecision, knew damn well what to do when it came to physical self-preservation—

He landed awkwardly in a pile of grass-cuttings, but the arms adjusted his balance and the legs kicked strongly, launching him out and away at immediate top-speed among the gravestones. At the same time, nevertheless, his brain cautioned him that perhaps even now he was piling up mistake on mistake: back there, on the edge of the Village Green, he had at least been out in the open, where there might have been watching eyes in the houses on its other three sides to see whatever might have happened next. But here, among the stones—
Richard Glover, 1810-1894
—
Edmund Chapman, 1785-1847
—
Martha Chapman, 1821-1867
—
William Thomas Eden, 1712-1790
—
this could be where
Ian Drury Robinson
might end up—
1958-
1987
—
and no one the wiser: this might even be where Check Jacket and Grey Suit had been quite deliberately driving him—
God
!

He jinked round an ancient weathered gravestone, and skidded to a halt, steadying himself on its finial, the gritty surface of which sandpapered his hand—

A grinning skull-and-crossbones, spattered with yellow-grey splodges of lichen, mocked him:
George Wellbeloved, beloved husband
—

They were both almost inside the churchyard now, so there was no question that he had been imagining persecution where there was none: he was their target, whatever their final intention—and, with this obscene confidence of theirs, half-hurrying, half wnhurrying, he wasn’t going to wait to find out what might be on their minds, in this too-private graveyard.

He pushed himself away from George Wellbeloved’s stone, twisting on one heel in the soft rough-cut grass, and took three strides. And stopped.

He was trapped
—

He swayed, beginning to half-turn. And then stopped the turn as its purpose became irrelevant: he knew what was behind him, because he had assessed it only a moment before. So now he knew what it was in front of him—and understood why Check Coat and Grey Suit had been so confident.

He was caught
—
pin-pointed as a collector
’
s butterfly: not pursued, but caught, beyond all hope of escape!

To Check Coat and Grey Suit he added
Combat Jacket
: a third style, naturally, so that there had been no uniform appearance to register among the followers he might have noticed, if he’d been more observant—if he hadn’t thought himself so clever, and so lucky. Or … or, if he’d taken poor old Reg more seriously, maybe—?

But now he was caught, anyway. And caught finally and more obviously than before, and quite unarguably. Because, where Check Coat and Grey Suit concealed their weapons, Combat Jacket carried his own openly—openly, albeit casually, in the crook of his arm. But then, in Lower Buckland on a wet September evening, a shotgun was as good as a Kalashnikov and more easily explained.

He straightened up, accepting the inevitable even as he tried to reject it as something which didn’t happen in real life, to ordinary people.

Or …
not to Ian Robinson
—
?

Or …
not to Reg Buller
—
?

Combat Jacket straightened up, too. But, as he did so, his free left hand came up, to steady the shot-gun even as his casual right hand slid back to slip its trigger-finger into position.

‘Hullo there!’ Combat Jacket smiled at him, even as the double-barrels swung from their safe downwards-point into the shooter’s-readiness position, for the clay pigeon, or the rabbit, or whatever sport was in prospect—whatever game: feathers-and-two legs, fur-and-four-legs—or
skin-and-Ian-Robinson
—

This time his legs betrayed him: he wanted them to run, but his knees had thrown in the towel, and it was all he could do to stop them buckling, to bring him down to grass-level.

‘Mr Ian Robinson, I believe?’ The gun was coming up.

And Combat Jacket was smiling psychopathically, with enjoyment—

It would be an accident: one of those tragic shot-gun mishaps
—

Ian closed his eyes. There would be a terrible impact. And then there would be … whatever there was after that: probably pain, until communications broke down; but that wouldn’t take long, with a shot-gun at five yards. And then …
everything
? Or …
nothing
?

Nothing happened.

Or perhaps time was standing still for him, in his last second of it?

Only, time
wasn
’
t
standing still: all he had felt, before that last thought, was blank fear filling his chest. But then he realized that he had breathed in deeply as he’d closed his eyes, and now he couldn’t hold his breath any longer: it was the discomfort of that which was filling him—

He breathed out and opened his eyes again simultaneously, to find that there was no one in front of him any longer: there were only the greens and greys of the churchyard, swimming slightly for an instant and then coming sharply into focus as he blinked the sweat away.

He had been stupid, he
began to think. And then the confusion in his mind cleared, just as the sweat had done, in another eye-blink, as he remembered that the man with the gun had called him by his name.

He turned round clumsily, grasping at the nearest grave-stone for support as his legs threatened again to give way under him, making him stagger slightly.

Combat Jacket was still in the churchyard, but was way past him now, up by the wall midway between the yew-tree and lych-gate and staring out across the Village Green, shot-gun still at the ready. For the moment he seemed quite uninterested in Ian.

But … ‘
Mr Ian Robinson, I believe
?’ was there between them, validating the man’s presence, making it not-accidental—and reconvening all Ian’s fears in a clamorous disorderly crowd in his brain: the man was real, and his shot-gun was real. And those other men had been no less real—Check Coat and Grey Suit—but where were they now—?

Combat Jacket turned towards him suddenly, beckoning him.

There was no arguing with the invitation. If there had been a moment to run, and continue running, it was past now. And, anyway, the weakness in his legs dismissed the very idea as ridiculous, never mind that shot-gun in the man’s hands.

The rough-cut churchyard grass was soft and springy under his feet, and there was a different cross-section of memorials to the long-dead inhabitants of Lower Buck-land all around him. But he only had eyes for Combat Jacket now, as he approached the man.

Combat Jacket was no longer smiling (and maybe he’d never been smiling: maybe that smile had been inside his own imagination?).

‘Well, I think they’ve gone.’ Combat Jacket nodded at him, then re-checked the Village Green, and then returned to him.

‘They’ve gone?’ Ian’s husky repetition of the words betrayed him. But … Combat Jacket was fortyish, for the record: young-fortyish, but a little haggard; brown hair, short-cut but well-cut; brown eyes, regular features … the sort of man, if he’d been ten years older, whom Jenny might have looked twice at, once he’d acquired a touch of grey (older men, not younger, were Jenny’s preference—)—

(Philip Masson maybe? Is that it, Jenny? Is that it?)

The thought of Jenny made him want to look at his watch. But he mustn’t do that!

‘Didn’t you hear the car?’ Combat Jacket was studying him just as carefully.

‘No.’ It was just possible that this man had saved his life. But, if he had done so, he had only been obeying orders, just like that Syrian major in Beirut. And it was Jenny who mattered now—and Jenny’s orders. So he must keep his head and not let foolish sentiment get in the way of necessity. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Mitchell. Paul Mitchell—‘ Mitchell-Paul-Mitchell took another look over the churchyard wall: whatever Mitchell-Paul-Mitchell was, and
whoever
… he was a careful man. ‘Paul
Lefevre
Mitchell. Almost exactly three hundred years ago one of my Huguenot-Protestant ancestors fled from Louis XIV’s France, to England … and just a minute or two ago I rather wished he hadn’t, Mr Robinson. But now, I think it’s time for us to go, too.’

That was curiously interesting. Because a few years back (and after Jenny had vetoed the idea of it, in preference for the more saleable Middle East) he had proposed a book on that anniversary of King Louis’ expulsion of his Protestants, which had given England the Bank of England and Laurence Olivier; and Paul Revere to the United States.