A Prospect of Vengeance (29 page)

‘Why?’ Jenny had decided to be chief questioner.

‘Huh! Because she knew by then that she’d deceived ‘em something shocking the first time, Lady.’ Buller chuckled grimly. ‘She an’ the old witch between ‘em.’

‘How?’

‘She’d told ‘em she hadn’t seen anything. Just the police car, anyway … An’ then a policeman had told her to stay indoors. An’ the wall by the cottage is too high to see right into the ruins from the ground-floor, anyway. So he half-believed her the first time. But even then they also told her not to speak to anyone—meaning the press, of course.’

‘But she
did
see something—?’ Jenny frowned.

‘No.
She
didn’t see anything. But, when they asked her if there was anyone else in the house, she’d said “Only my old mum, who’s ill in bed upstairs”. An’ then the bloke with all the silver braid went up an’ checked, she said. An’
that
frightened her, too … But, of course, all he saw was a frail old lady with the sheet drawn up under her neck, pretending to be halfway to heaven. So that satisfied him, anyway.’ Buller chuckled again. ‘Silly bugger!’

Ian recalled his own grandmother vividly to mind. ‘She saw everything—from her bedroom window, Reg?’

‘Near enough, lad. Near enough!’ No chuckle this time. ‘When the daughter went back up, after the silver-braid bloke had gone—she started to tell the old witch about him. But she didn’t get far, before the old witch started to tell
her
…
near enough everything—aye!’

‘And she didn’t tell the second man—the man in the suit—?’

Buller sniffed. ‘Too scared, she was.’ Another sniff. The first one told her, if she’d not been telling the truth, or had withheld evidence, then she’d be in serious trouble. And her eldest boy was a prison officer, at Northallerton or somewhere then. So she thought he might get the sack, an’ lose his pension. So she stuck to her story, same as before. An’ fortunately the old girl was still in bed. So the whole story stuck, same as before.’

Sod’s Law: no matter how clever you were, there was always something waiting to catch you by the heel. Frances Fitzgibbon’s book had gathered dust in Mrs Champeney-Smythe’s shelf, waiting for its moment. And now an old woman’s eye-witness story had found its moment too—even after the death of its eye-witness narrator.

‘But she talked to
you
, Mr Buller—the daughter.’

‘Ah, she did that, but ‘appen I’m not a silly bugger in a uniform. An’ my suit’s Marks and Spencer, off the peg.’

And Philip Masson had been waiting also, in his shallow grave, for his moment, to catch someone
—
Audley? Mitchell? Someone, anyway
—
by the heel
—

‘Very true, Mr Buller.’ Jenny wasn’t about to let Buller’s arrogance remain unpunctured. ‘But you also slipped her a few of those nice crisp banknotes you always keep, to loosen honest tongues? Which you charge to expenses.’

‘The man with the freckled face had a golfing umbrella.’ Buller cut his losses. ‘Red, white an’ blue … or, red,
green
an’ white—that’s what the old woman said … An’ she’d never seen a golfing umbrella before. But the old witch ‘ad a telescope to spy on people, an’ a good memory. Because Sir Jack Butler, KBE, MC … ’e’s got ginger hair, an’ a red-brick face, an’ freckles. An ‘e plays golf.’

‘Yes?’ Buller was making his point. But Jenny was after other game. ‘What about Audley?’

‘A big bugger. Like … her old man, who was long-dead … ’e was Rugby League. So she said there was one of ‘em built like ‘im: six-foot an’ more, with broad shoulders an’ long legs, an’ a broken nose from way back—?’ Buller paused to let the next identification sink in. ‘An’ that’s Audley, to the life, by all accounts.’ Shorter pause. ‘Rugby Union, ‘e played—not Rugby League … But that’s
Audley
.’ Even shorter pause. ‘But he was late: it was all over when he arrived. It was Butler first, with his umbrella—‘

‘
Why
?’ Jenny snapped the question, before Buller could continue. ‘What was he doing there?’

‘Doing?’ Buller gave a snort of derision. ‘I’ll tell you what he
wasn
’
t
doing, Lady: he wasn’t expecting to meet O’Leary.’

‘Why not?’

‘F—!’ Buller swallowed the obscenity. ‘If you were goin’ to meet an IRA marksman … would you carry your golfing umbrella, to help him aim?’ He let the thought sink in. ‘An’ besides … Butler had been told to give O’Leary back to the Anti-Terrorist Squad—an’ the Special Branch—after the bomb at the University: it was them that were after O’Leary. An’ they thought he’d long gone, too.’

‘You don’t know why Butler was there?’

‘Christ Almighty!’ Buller simulated outrage. ‘Twenty-four hours—thirty-six hours … an’ you expect me to know what British Intelligence was up to in 1978? An’ not just MI5—but Research and Development? An’ not even MI5 knows what R & D is up to, most of the time. Lady—you don’t want much, do you!’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Buller. I was just asking, not expecting.’ Jenny recovered quickly. Tell me about Mitchell.’

‘Yes.’ Buller accepted the name, but stopped on his acceptance. Because ‘Mitchell’ wasn’t just another name any more: he echoed distant gunfire now, and maybe more than that.

‘He was with Audley?’

‘No. Audley was late—I told you. The woman was with him.’

‘Yes—of course! Ian’s woman.’ Jenny dismissed Frances Fitzgibbon once more. ‘So … Mitchell was there with Butler, was he?’

Ian
’
s woman
, thought Ian: in a curious way, that was what she had become now—just that. And the need to know more about her obsessed him again suddenly.

‘Go on, Mr Buller.’ Jenny’s patience was beginning to stretch again. ‘What—‘

‘Tell me about the woman, Reg.’ Ian overrode her. ‘Mrs Fitzgibbon.’

‘Ian! For heaven’s sake!’

‘Tell me about the woman, Reg.’

‘Yes.’ Buller ignored Jenny. ‘”Just a slip of a girl”, the old witch said—Mrs Rowe said she said. A pretty little thing, too—‘

‘She had good eye-sight, did she? At ninety-one?’ snapped Jenny.

‘Eighty-four. An’ yes, she did.’ Buller’s voice strengthened. ‘But I told you: she had this old telescope. An’ she used to sit in her room, by the window, an’ spy on everything—on all the people that came to visit the abbey ruins. Like, it was her hobby: see the coaches come over the narrow bridge, down the road, where they used to get stuck. An’ then the kids climbin’ on the ruins, an’ their mothers pullin’ ‘em off an’ thumpin’ ‘em—‘ He stopped suddenly. ‘A pretty little thing. An’ she saw ‘er first when the car came. Like a racin’ car, slitherin’ on the gravel in the car-park. An’ out she comes like lightning—didn’t even close the door after ‘er, before she started runnin’:
that
’
s
what the old woman saw first, that took her eye—the way she went off runnin’.’

Buller paused there, and Ian thought for a moment that he was challenging Jenny to interrupt again. But Jenny didn’t speak, and in the next instant he knew why—and why Buller had stopped, as the final picture he was painting for them in words began to form again in his own mind—and to move, like a suddenly-animated film.

‘It was rainin’.’ Buller confirmed that second thought with extra information, to complete the picture. ‘It ‘ad been rainin’ all day, off an’ on. So there ‘adn’t been any visitors much, before then. An’ it was November, in any case.’

November 11. Next day, there would have been the Armistice Day Sunday parades, with everyone wearing their red poppies up and down the country, and the Queen televised at eleven o’clock, laying her wreath at the Cenotaph, before the veterans’ march-past.

‘An’ then … it was the way she ran.’ Buller’s voice was matter-of-fact, as it always was when he was totally-recalling what had been said to him. ‘Like a boy, the old woman said: with ‘er short hair, if she ‘adn’t noticed ‘er skirt when she come out of the car, she’d ‘ave thought it
was
a boy, when she ran up the path by the wall … Until she came out at the top, where you turn through the little gate into the ruins—remember?’

Buller was addressing Jenny, as one who knew what he was talking about, quite forgetting Ian now. So Ian had to build his own picture for himself, out of a jigsaw of other pieces, from other places, other ruins: Tintern and Bylands, Fountains and Rievaulx—all the old ruined abbeys … And
Rievaulx
for choice … because, hadn’t there been cottages nearby there—?

‘You know, the old woman actually saw O’Leary—
saw
‘im?’ For an instant Buller’s matter-of-factness became incredulous. “E must ‘ave got there late—like Audley … Or,
not
like Audley. Because Audley would ‘ave been VIP, an’ ‘alf the police in England was lookin’ for O’Leary by then, so it wouldn’t ‘ave been easy for ‘im, by Christ!’ The next intake-of-breath was incredulity mixed with admiration. They must ‘ave been payin’ ‘im premium rates, for whatever ‘e was paid to do—even with all the escape disguises ‘e’d got set up behind ‘im. Because, ‘e was really chancin’ ‘is arm, that last time—gettin’ to Thornervaulx, over the top of the moor there … Silly bugger!’

‘Yes.’ Jenny weakened. ‘But … what
was
he doing there, Mr Buller?’ The logic strengthened her. ‘It had to be Butler, surely—?’ Then doubt intruded. ‘Or … whoever was meeting him there—?’

‘Aye. That’s more likely. Because he must ‘ave ‘ad a clear shot at Butler—just about, anyway.’ Buller sounded as though he’d been there before her, but was still uncertain. ‘What about your Philip Masson, though?’

‘No.’ Jenny was decisive. ‘Philly was out of the country that week. He was abroad—‘ As she spoke her voice came from Buller to Ian ‘—he was talking to the French in Paris. And he must have had all his R & D interviews by then. That’s what I think, anyway.’

‘So he’d got the job—deputy first … an’ then the gaffer, when Sir Frederick Clinton retired—?’ Buller stopped short, but just a shade too innocently.

‘I didn’t say that.’ Jenny also stopped there. Because the reality was that they had both been busy calling in their debts from their best sources—Jenny from her friends, and ‘Daddy’s friends’, or even from Daddy himself, while Buller had tapped his ‘blokes’ in Fleet Street, or the Special Branch, who owed him favours (and who hoped to owe him more in the future?); but, with John Tully
dead
, this was a situation neither of them would ever have faced before, anyway: with survival at stake, they both had more urgent imperatives.

‘You know too much, Reg Buller,’ said Jenny.

‘Too much?’ Buller snapped back at her. ‘Lady—I don’t know ‘alf enough.’ Deep breath. ‘But Audley was in Washington too, that week—I do know that. So someone tipped ‘im off that Butler was in trouble—right?’

‘But he got there in time for the fun, all the same—
right?
’
Jenny still didn’t know how much Reg Buller knew, but she wanted all he’d got.

In time for
‘
Mad Dog
’
O
’
Leary
! thought Ian.
But not in time for Frances Fitzgibbon
. ‘Mrs Fitzgibbon reached the ruins, Reg. She reached the ruins, Reg—?’

‘
Ahh
—
‘ Buller breathed out again, through the silence between his two questions ‘—yes, she got there, lad—your “slip of a girl”—yes! She came out there, at the top, through the gate—the gate, there—?’

‘Where was Mitchell then? Paul Mitchell—?’ Jenny’s interest in the final picture still concentrated on Mitchell.

‘He was right there.’ Buller agreed with her. ‘He was up top, gawpin’ about in the main part, under the hillside, where the high altar was, an’ the big window at the end—the big round window they all admire—? That’s in all the postcards?’

‘The rose window.’ Jenny supplied the rest of the tourist information.

‘That’s right. But there isn’t any glass in it now—‘

‘
Reg
!’ He lost patience with Buller. ‘What happened then?’

‘It was all rather quick, lad.’ Buller sniffed. ‘Mitchell was there—coverin’ Butler, most likely. An’ Butler was there … down in the lower part of the ruins, keepin’ the rain off ‘im, under ‘is big umbrella. An’ O’Leary—‘e came down the hillside, over the bracken, an’ through the trees … An’ she shouts at ‘im—the woman does—‘

‘Shouts what?’ Jenny burst out, suddenly abandoning Mitchell.

‘God knows.’ Duller stopped. ‘But ‘e shot ‘er dead, then—as she shouted at ‘im. An’ then Mitchell swings round, from watchin’ Butler … an’
bang-bang-bang!
—
with ‘is little gun! An’ bowled ‘im over—O’Leary—like ‘e’d been pole-axed.’ Pause. ‘Which at that range—an’, I tell you, I’ve been there—at—that range, that’s target shootin’, that is: like, two bulls, an’ one inner, at thirty yards or more, before ‘e could take over, O’Leary—like bloody lightning, that was!’

Ian thought of the two empty barrels in the shot-gun at Lower Buckland; and of Mitchell’s barely-suppressed passion after that, which he’d not understood.

‘And then?’ Jenny, once again, was unencumbered by that first-hand experience of Paul Mitchell. ‘
What happened
… Reg?’ This time she softened the question finally.

Still no reply. So, there was something here which Reg Buller couldn’t quite handle. And that struck Ian as strange, even disconcertingly strange, almost worrying. Because Reg Buller, drunk or sober (or, more-or-less permanently, midway between those extremes), was never a man to be lost for words.

‘That is what the old woman saw? What she told her daughter?’ Jenny had to be experiencing the same doubts: those were not so much questions as encouraging noises, jollying Buller along with her acceptance of what he was saying. ‘Tell us, Reg.’

‘Aye. What she saw.’ Buller agreed with her reluctantly. ‘Of course … it’s early days yet. So we didn’t ought to jump to conclusions an’ then stay there. Because you never have before, anyway.’ Sniff. ‘Which is why you’re worth more working for than some I could name.’