A Prospect of Vengeance (26 page)

‘Please—?’ The single word sounded curiously unlndian: second generation London-Indian, different not so much because of its pronunciation as for its simple politeness …

‘Never mind, lad. We got down. Now, how do we get out? Are those lights I can see up there the ones on the bridge?’

A sniff came from Jenny’s direction. ‘Now you ask!’

‘Don’t fret, Lady. I’ve been alongside more railway lines than you’ve ‘ad ‘ot dinners—as a nipper
and
as a copper, chasin’ nippers. There’s always ways in, an’ there’s always ways out.’ Buller drew in a breath. ‘Well, lad.’

‘Oh yes, sir. Those are the bridge lights, sure. You just follow the wall—you take my little torch, okay? People throw junk—very dirty people—and you maybe trip, see? But no difficulty … just the rubbish.’

‘And then we scale the wall again?’ Jenny’s voice was admirably calm.

‘No, Miss. The bank comes up by the bridge. The wall is very little there—very easily, you go up. Just the broken bottles of the dirty people, you got to watch for them. Then only little walls, like I say. No difficulty, Miss.’

‘Well … thank you.’ She prodded Ian inaccurately in the almost-darkness. ‘In your wallet, darling—for services rendered?’ She hissed the command.

‘Oh no, Miss.’ The young waiter moved towards the ladder like a ghost. ‘Service charges all included in the bill, my father says. I must go now—we’ve got to pull up the ladder damn-quick now, he says—okay?’

‘Okay. Up you go, lad,’ agreed Buller. ‘And hide the bloody thing too, just in case—if you can—?’

‘Don’t you worry, sir—‘ The voice already came from above them, through the branches ‘—we padlock this fire-escape ladder back in the passage. Then my father loses the key, I think … Good night, sir—Miss—‘ The voice faded.

‘Artful little monkey!’ murmured Buller admiringly.

‘But well-brought up,’ said Jenny.

‘Ah … well, they still bring ‘em up, don’t they! Model bloody citizens they’d be, if it wasn’t for their religions, makin’ ‘em all hate each other—‘ Buller stopped abruptly. ‘But we didn’t ought to stand gabbin’ sweet nothing’s—‘

As he spoke, the sound of another train rose, drowning the rest of his words as it increased, until it filled the cutting deafeningly. But, more than the noise which reverberated around him, Ian was filled from within with an almost panic-stricken feeling of unreality, which worsened as he glimpsed the train’s occupants sitting and strap-hanging in safety and comfort in their brightly-lit carriages—late city-workers going home to suburban wives and husbands, girl-friends and boy-friends, families and friends … or (since he didn’t even know which way he was facing, up or down) going out happily for a night’s West End entertainment, taking their real world for granted …
while he was cowering illegally on railway property in the darkness, with heaven-only-knew what vile refuse crunching underfoot!

The noise fell away into echoes, which the wind of the train seemed to suck after it, down the line—up the line? And
worse
—

‘Come on, now!’ Buller moved into the deafening silence which the vanished train drew into the cutting, within the enormous hum of that same real world above them, and all around them. ‘We gotta get out of ‘ere, Lady—Ian lad—?’

And worse
! (The drizzle, working down through the leaves above him into single larger drops of rain, spattering irregularly on his face now.)
And worse: the whole of
that world, real or unreal, had turned against him. Ever since Reg Buller had first changed all the rules with his bad news, so few hours ago, but which seemed like forever now
—
now
—

‘Come on!’

He didn
’
t want to move. This day had started unhopefully, yet then it had fed his ego deceptively, when he
’
d
thought himself so clever. But from the moment he
’
d got through to Jenny its true nature had been revealed, albeit through a glass, darkly: the whole world out there was hostile, and full of dangers which he could no longer dismiss as imaginary.

‘Come on—‘ Buller had moved, lighting his own way first with the boy’s inadequate pocket-torch, and then helping Jenny as she had followed, leaving Ian behind in the actual dark, as well as his inner darkness. So now the voice came further off. ‘
Mister
Robinson!’

‘I’m coming.’ The feeble glow illuminated a great buttress, dark on his side and dirty yellow-brown on its railway side: the Victorian bricks in which London had burst outwards in its great days, in their untold billions; but now his feet were skidding and crushing on filthy modern detritus, of bottles and cans and plastics, up against the wall and the buttress, all mixed with the leaf-compost of a hundred years.

‘What’s the matter?’ Buller shone the torch into his eyes challengingly. ‘We ‘aven’t got all night, y’know … You got the bag, ‘ave yer?’

That was it
! Ian felt the last strand of his patience snap, with the addition of the bag of congealing curries and rice and pickles to Buller’s assumed ‘working class’ voice, which was designed to jolly him along, challenging him to behave like an officer and a gentleman, and not let the side down.

‘No.’ He rounded the buttress, and then set his back against it, as though exhausted. ‘This is far enough.’

‘What?’ The torch came back to him.

‘Darling—when we get to the car—‘ Jenny supported the torch—‘—and I’m getting
wet
, too!’

‘Damn the car!’ When they reached the BMW, he would be driving it. And then it would be too late, because he would have to concentrate on his driving. And … maybe they were both relying on that. ‘I want to know what’s happening to me.’ As he spoke, he knew that he had the whip-hand: even apart from her unwillingness to drive and Reg Buller’s careless intake of alcohol (and consequently even greater unwillingness), they couldn’t leave him behind now, with whatever they each had in mind—not with Paul Mitchell out there … whoever else was out there.

The light continued to blind him. But behind it, in the absolute darkness, they must each be coming to the same conclusion. So he leaned back, and let the enormous weight of brick support him, just as it had held up the whole of Cody Street for a hundred years, above all the trains which had used this cutting.

‘Fff—‘ Buller cracked first, but then remembered Jenny.

‘What are you playing at, Ian?’ Jenny was not so inhibited, so she sounded unnaturally shrill. ‘My God! Aren’t things bad enough already? With—‘ The rest of the words were cut off by the rumble of another train, which approached them more slowly so that, where before her face had been only flickeringly illuminated, disco strobe-lighted, now he saw its anger and intensity as the noise enveloped them again.

‘No … no!’ Buller came back first. ‘He’s right. You got to level with him, Lady—that’s only fair. And now’s as good a time as any.’

‘What?’ She sounded incredulous, as well as angry.

‘About Mitchell, Lady.’
Clink
.

‘
What
—
?’ From incredulity-and-anger to doubt. ‘But … I told him about Mitchell, Mr Buller: he’s their blue-eyed boy—and he knows Audley—?’

‘Ah! And then—?’ Buller paused. And the torch went out, and the pause elongated.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Buller.’

She stopped him sharply on her own full stop. ‘Ian—
Ian
… we had a three-way talk this morning—Reg, and John Tully and I, on that gadget of John’s—the phone-thing—?’

‘I was still up north, coming back, on the motorway,’ supplemented Buller. ‘And then, after what I told ‘em, the Lady was going to check out Dr Mitchell.’

‘Yes. And so I did, as far as I could.’ Jenny’s voice strengthened. ‘And you were off checking on that woman—the one who got shot … so we couldn’t warn you about Mitchell. And it never occurred to us that he would be after you, darling.’

‘Yes.’ It occurred to Ian that Jenny hadn’t reckoned too much to ‘the woman who got shot’ when they’d spoken to each other last night. But maybe it hadn’t just been the dogsbody job they’d given him: maybe, more simply, they’d just wanted him safely out of town, where he couldn’t come to much harm while drawing off some of their followers on his wild goose chase. ‘Go on, Jenny.’

‘Well … that’s all there is to it, as far as I’m concerned, darling: I
did
get some more, about all of them. Including Dr Paul Mitchell. Including the fact that Willy Arkenshaw thinks he needs the love of a good woman to sustain him—or even just look after him, like Paddington Bear: “
Please look after this Mitchell
”
—
‘

‘Huh!’ Reg Buller emitted an unPaddington Bear-like growl from his own darkness …

‘And I only got that out of her because she’s
very
pregnant with the next little Arkenshaw baronet, and all dewy-eyed about marriage and motherhood. And even so she clammed up then, and started quizzing me about where I’d met him … which she’d assumed had been at some party, and that I’d fancied him there. So I had to concoct an elaborate tale which I’m not at all sure satisfied her. Not that it matters now, anyway.’ She paused. ‘But that’s all I got about Mitchell since we talked on the phone, Reg. But now you’ve got more, obviously—?’

‘No.’ Buller remained silent for a moment. ‘I had more
then
. I just didn’t want to give it to you over that line, for all to hear.’ The next silence was broken by a
clink
. ‘A lot more.’

Another
clink
. And then a tiny scraping sound. And then a
glugging
sound: Reg Buller was at the Tiger beer already.

‘Couldn’t we go on?’ Jenny advanced commonsense tentatively. ‘I mean … we could talk more comfortably in the car, Ian—couldn’t we?’

‘No.’ Buller sounded as though he was more comfortable: Buller’s main in-battle worry would have been—and was—the source of his next liquid refreshment. ‘I think … maybe we’ll leave the car where it is, an’ call for a taxi. It might be safer. An’ there’s a pub I know, not far away. And there’s a bloke I can phone from there who’s into instant travelling, an’ no questions asked, too.’ Another
glug
. ‘I reckon we’re about as safely lost as we can be, right now. An’, whoever’s out there … by the time he comes to ask questions up above, an’ gets the wrong answers—‘ Buller chuckled ‘—‘cause, little Abdul—he’ll be good with the wrong answers, to drive ‘em up the wall—‘ Another chuckle. Then another
glug
. And then a soft empty
clunk
as he dropped the bottle, adding himself to the ‘very dirty people’ ‘—but not
our
wall …
his
wall, eh?’

‘And then?’ Jenny just got the question in before the next train.

Buller waited for the noise to hurry after its cause. ‘Then they’ll get their skates on. Because they’ll know we’ve rumbled ‘em. And they’ll reckon we’ve long gone … . And there won’t be time for committee meetings then: they’ll be wetting their britches, an’ doubling-up in Hampstead—or at your dad’s place, most likely. An’ that’s
really
goin’ to worry ‘em, by golly!’

‘Yes?’ Jenny sounded doubtful suddenly.

‘Right!’ Buller caught her doubt. ‘That’s where you’d have gone, eh? Home to daddy—all nice an’ safe? An’ then maybe a phone-call to one of daddy’s friends in the Government? Or a call from the House of Lords to the Home Secretary—?’

‘You know I wouldn’t do that.’ Jenny bristled with outrage.

‘Wouldn’t you?
I
would—if I was you. Bloody right, I would!’ Buller paused for only a fraction of a second. ‘All right—
you
wouldn’t. But they don’t know
you
, Lady: they’ll only know that they don’t know which way trouble’s comin’ from, while they’re tryin’ to find where you’ve gone—now that they know you’re on to them—see?’ Another pause. ‘If it’s Mitchell … then he’ll be running scared too, I reckon. With Audley out of the country, eh?’

‘He can always run to Jack Butler.’

‘Can ‘e though?’ Buller paused as though in doubt. ‘That’s one of the things that doesn’t add up—I reckon
that
, too.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Jack Butler—
Sir
Jack Butler, as ‘e is now, from the last Birthday Honours … he’s not a dirty player, they say.’

‘Yes.’ Jenny came in quickly. They do say that—yes! But—?’

‘But Mitchell?’ Buller came back even more quickly. ‘Ah! Now we’re into Mr Peter Wright, an’ his dirty tricks, an’ his young Turks.’ Buller paused. ‘An’ …
Philip Masson
, maybe.’

This time it was Jenny’s silence, with no train coming, and only the distant continuous hum of the city above them holding down the lack of sound in the cutting.

‘Philly wasn’t part of R & D then,’ she said finally. ‘And Philly would never have been into dirty tricks.’

‘Wouldn’t ‘e?’ Buller goaded her cruelly. ‘Not like Audley? Not like Mitchell?’

‘We’re not discussing Philly, any more.’ She refused to be goaded. ‘It’s Mitchell we’re running away from, aren’t we?’

‘Oh aye?’ Buller harumphed derisively. ‘Well, he’ll do for a start, Lady. But—‘

‘But he saved Ian, Mr Buller. Now why would he do that—for a start?’

Ian was already beginning to regret his obstinacy. Most of all he wanted to question Buller about Frances Fitzgibbon. Yet he didn’t want to do that in front of Jenny, although he didn’t know why. But then, even as he tried to conjure up the girl in his imagination, his thoughts suddenly ignited. ‘He was there, Reg—wasn’t he?’

‘There? Where?’ Buller played for time. ‘Who?’

‘At Thornervaulx. Don’t play silly buggers with us, Reg. In ‘78—Mitchell was there—right?’

Now, when it was least required, a train from the opposite direction announced itself; and then (obeying a variant of Sod’s Law), took an unconscionable time to pass them, unlike its predecessors, stopping and starting convulsively just in front of them.