A Prospect of Vengeance (31 page)

‘Wait!’ Jenny surfaced first: Jenny was never better than in danger. ‘If we’re running, Mr Buller—
Reg
—
?’ She half-looked at Ian, as though to remind him that even Paul Mitchell had wanted them to run.

That was their old technique: one picked up the unasked question from the other. ‘Where are we going, Reg?’ He moved slightly, so as to block Buller’s passage towards the door. ‘We’re running … where?’

Buller grinned at him. ‘We ain’t exactly
runnin
’
, Ian lad.’ He replaced his empty beer-glass on the table, beside the empty whisky-glass. ‘Because I don’t reckon there’s an ‘ole deep enough for us to run to, not now—not even if we go an’ call on the Lady’s dad, even—‘ He started to move towards Ian.

‘
Where
, Mr Duller?’ Jenny moved too, alongside Ian.

‘Not “where”, Lady.’ Buller stopped. ‘
Who
is the name of our game now, I reckon—
where
just takes us to him. And we know where.’

Now they were shoulder-to-shoulder in the way, just like in the old days. Only now … Frances Fitzgibbon was between them, somehow, thought Ian: now they were just business associates, and allies at need.

‘Spain, Mr Buller?’ Jenny drew a breath.

‘Audley, Lady.’ Buller’s expression hardened. ‘The only bloke who can get us out from under is Audley. Because … if ‘e knows, then we can maybe make a deal with ‘im. An’ … if ‘e doesn’t know … then ‘e’ll know what’s what when we’ve told ‘im. An’ then ‘e’ll ‘ave to be on our side, to save ‘is own skin.’ He started to move towards them. ‘Okay?’

Ian didn’t know which of them moved first. But they both moved, anyway.

And he completed that belated truth then:
as with lies, and with all the sins, great and little, so with vengeance and revenge: you never knew, until too late, what a great work you
’
d started out on
—
until too late
!

JENNIFER FIELDING AND
THE GHOSTS OF SALAMANCA

ALTHOUGH THE SUN
had nowhere near reached its full strength Jenny already felt a prickle of sweat between her shoulder blades. And, as she sensed it, another spike of corn-stubble gouged her ankle painfully, reminding her again that she had chosen the wrong shoes this morning. She had planned to look cool and elegant for this encounter, and she was going to end up a perfect mess, sweaty, injured and angry. And it was all Ian’s fault—bloody,
bloody
Ian!

‘Ouch!’ She stopped to examine the damage. There was a glistening dark-red globule marking the injury, not far from the unsightly smear of its predecessor, which was mixed with red dust. Sweaty, injured, angry and
dirty
—
bloody, bloody,
bloody
Ian! ‘Wait for a moment! I’m hurt, Ian—Ian?’

He hadn’t even stopped. He was striding ahead, quite oblivious of her. And now she couldn’t even
see
the rocky plateau towards which he started for, when they’d left the car on the edge of that fly-blown village: there was a long undulation of lethal corn-stubble blocking the view. And she was wearing the wrong shoes.

(They weren’t really the wrong shoes: they were her bloody
best
shoes … or, they had been, anyway; it was because he had insisted on leaving the car there, bloody-miles from where they were going—that had made them wrong.
‘
I
can see his car
,’ he had said, lowering his binoculars, speaking in his strange new voice. ‘
It
’
s up the track, just by that hut
—
a silver Rover Sterling. But we
’
ll
go from here. I want to walk
…
I want to think. There
’
s plenty of time. Come on, then.
’
)

He had stopped at last, silhouetted in the glare at the top of the rise against the pure blue cloudless sky. But he still wasn’t looking at her: he had his binoculars glued to his eyes again, still oblivious of her.

Well, that bloody settled it
, thought Jenny. This was the new Ian—a problem Ian, and a difficult one; and all the more of a problem, and all the more difficult, because the old one had always been easy and simple, and just tedious in the usual obvious ways, like a dumb-clever brother—

‘
Ian! Sod you
!’ she shouted at his back.

Now, at last, after he’d observed what he wanted to check on, he turned towards her. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s all right, darling.’ She realized as he turned that the greatest mistake of all would be to whinge, like a man. Indeed, to whinge as Ian himself did (or, had used to do; but this was a different Ian, she had to remember). ‘It’s just … your legs are longer than mine … Have you spotted him?’

‘Yes.’ He turned back, away from her, lifting the binoculars again.

‘Yes?’ She was conscious of looking at the new Ian with new eyes, now that he wasn’t interested in looking at her. That ‘wimp’ image had always been unfair, of course: he had been very far from that in Beirut that time, everyone had said afterwards; more like a hero, they’d said, but she’d taken that with a pinch of salt (or, anyway, taken it for granted: in wars and emergencies, scholars and poets down the ages had rarely been among the skulkers … and a scholar and a poet was what the poor darling really was—or, in a better world, might have been). ‘Where?’

‘On the Greater Arapile.’ He lowered the binoculars, and then pointed. ‘See where his car’s parked—the Rover? Just beyond that hut. Imagine that’s the centre of a clock, and the hour-hand is pointing at eleven—follow that line up to the top, Jenny. He’s standing just to the right of that monument. It must be a battle memorial of some sort.’

Jenny shaded her eyes and stared.

‘”The Greater Arapile”.’ The binoculars came up again. ‘That’s where the French were, when the battle started in 1812. And the Duke of Wellington came along behind us, from the “Lesser Arapile” to the village. He must have had his lunch just about where we left the car: that was when he saw they’d over-extended their line of march, and threw his chicken leg over his shoulder and said “That will do!” So the story goes, anyway.’

Either it was the glare, or perhaps she needed glasses, but she couldn’t see a damn thing in the desolate parched landscape. ‘I really don’t need to know about the battle—do I, darling?’

‘It’s an interesting battle.’ He spoke distantly, as though to a child. ‘When people think of Wellington they think of Waterloo … like, when they think of Nelson, it’s Trafalgar … But Nelson’s finest victory was the Nile—or maybe it was at St Vincent that he really showed what he was made of … So this was maybe Wellington’s “finest hour” … ye-ess: “
That will do!
”’

Jenny squinted hopelessly at a blur of boring fields and boring rocks, and knew that it wasn’t her own finest hour. Or, anyway, not yet. ‘I didn’t know it was the Duke of Wellington we were interested in, darling. I thought it was David Audley.’

‘We could do a book on Spain instead, you know.’ The new Ian was impervious to sarcasm. ‘All those people on holiday on the Costa Blanca, and the Costa Brava … and now Spain in the Common Market. And the ETA link with the IRA … And we could take the history all the way from the Black Prince, and the War of the Spanish Succession, and Wellington …
and
the Civil War, with the International Brigades—‘ The binoculars went down, and then up again ‘—and the phenomenon of peaceful transition from fascism to democracy … I met a woman recently who is an expert on Spanish economic development, and what she had to say was
extremely
interesting—
ahh!
’

The new Ian was also becoming sassy in pushing alternative projects to the one which mattered to her. Although the one plus-factor was that at least he seemed for a moment to have forgotten Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon,
alias
Marilyn Francis, about whom he had obsessively taxed poor Reg Buller all the way from London to Madrid to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Reg Buller
—
? The thought of Reg (and of Reg complaining about Spanish beer, even more vociferously than about Spanish food) momentarily diverted her: in Spain Reg Buller was much less of an asset than in London; he seemed somehow to have withdrawn into himself, as though he no longer approved of what they were doing in seeking out Audley; although it couldn’t be Audley whom he was worrying about—more likely he was torn between self-preservation and his duty to his paymasters on the one hand, and a sneaking identification with Paul Mitchell, their new suspect, on the other hand—could that be it?

‘”Ahh”?’ It probably was it. Because Reg and the Police Force had parted company long ago not so much because of his drinking (that would have been no great sin, the way he held it) as because of his sneaking sympathy for underdogs and minor villains versus authority. But it was still an added burden now, when Ian had gone funny on her too. ‘What is it, darling?’

‘I think I’ve spotted the wife.’ He concentrated on the lower part of the plateau.

‘Where?’ Reg Buller was all the back-up they had, somewhere behind them in the car, and probably drinking already from his hip-flask. But Ian was her immediate problem.

‘Or it may be the daughter … They’re both tall and thin and blonde … But what on earth is she doing—?’ He concentrated for another moment. Then he lowered the binoculars and pointed. ‘Just down there, left of the car—in the ploughed field … Come on, Jen—let’s get going.’

‘Hold on.’ It was still a long and uncomfortable walk to where he was pointing and she felt mutinous. ‘Why are we walking all this way?’

‘Eh?’ The bloody binoculars came up again. ‘I told you, Jen: I want to think a bit. And I also want to look at the battlefield.’

‘You want to—?’ She bit off her anger, and looked round instead to help her count to ten: it was (she could see at a glance) a most excellent and absolute, and suitable and tailor-made …
battlefield
: apart from the modern railway-line which ran diagonally through the valley between the two rocky plateaux, with a couple of grotty station-buildings halfway along it in the middle of the open fields, and that single even grottier hut where Audley’s car was parked, there was absolutely nothing to be seen. So, once upon a time, the British and the French could have killed each other in their thousands quite happily, without inconveniencing anyone or damaging anything of value. But that 1812 suitability still didn’t answer the question. ‘Why do you have to do that, Ian darling?’

‘I don’t have to. But I want to.’ Now he was studying a more distant ridge to the right of the Greater Arapile. ‘It’s what Audley’s doing today, Jen. I told you in the car—remember?’

What Jenny chiefly remembered from the short journey out of Salamanca was that he had been irritatingly masterful and matter-of-fact and decisive. But then he had been like that for the last thirty-six hours, ever since Reg Buller had sold them his theory about Paul Mitchell and that wretched woman.

‘So what?’ What cautioned her was that he had also been efficient with it, in coaxing information about David Audley’s whereabouts from a series of slightly bewildered Spaniards while she had stood on the sidelines like an idiot girlfriend whose main function was to stare at the ceiling of a series of bedrooms.

‘I told you, Jen.’ Now he wasn’t so much masterful as quite damnably long-suffering. ‘The daughter prattled to that man the receptionist found for us in the hotel after we checked in—the one who spoke English? They were here all yesterday, but they were “doing” the English side of the battle, and that ridge over there—‘ he pointed. ‘So today they were going to do the French side. And the French were up
there
—
“
The pointing finger was redirected towards the Greater Arapile ‘—and that’s where Audley is. But I wish I knew
why
.’

‘Why … what?’ If he’d wanted to make her feel even more stupid, he was succeeding.

He sighed. ‘Why is he studying the battle of Salamanca?’

She mustn’t lose her temper. ‘Does it matter? He’s supposed to be a historian. Don’t historians study battlefields?’

‘But he’s a medievalist. The Peninsular War just isn’t his period.’

She
mustn
’
t
lose her temper. ‘I expect he’ll tell us why, darling, if we ask him nicely.’ But now he wasn’t even looking at her again, damn it—
and damn him!
‘
I
’
l
l ask about Philip Masson, darling. And you can ask about the battle of Salamanca … and Mrs Fitzgibbon too, if you like—‘

He looked at her then, even as she was already regretting what she’d just said. And the way he’d looked at her made her regret the unnecessary words even more, however much he’d asked for them. ‘I’m sorry, Ian—‘

‘Don’t be sorry, Jenny dear. I shall only ask him one question about Frances Fitzgibbon. And I think I already know the answer to it.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘But it’s of no importance to you, I agree. So shall we go, then?’

The hateful corn-stubble ended eventually, but with a deep drainage-ditch (as though it ever rained in this parched landscape!). And Ian leapt the ditch and went on again without a backward glance, leaving her to take the longer route beside it to the track, while he struck off on his own—

Hateful, hateful Ian! It isn
’
t as though I haven
’
t prayed that you
’
d meet some nice girl at one of your Christian Fellowship meetings, rather than making hopeless sheep
’
s eyes at me! But now you have to go and fall for some crazy dead woman who wouldn
’
t have given you a second look in life
—
a bloody ghost-woman! And now she
’
s going to be the death of our partnership. Because I
’
m not going to play second-fiddle to any bloody ghost-woman for evermore
—
damn you, Ian Robinson! And damn you, Frances Fitzgibbon, too!