A Prospect of Vengeance (7 page)

‘Yes—‘

‘
It’
s about a murder that’
s gone wrong, is what it’
s about—
‘

So maybe Jenny was right. For certainly Jenny was clever, and she was very often as lucky as she was clever, which was an unbeatable alliance.

But that still left them with the Unnamed Play expert, who had been unlucky, as well as indiscreet, beside the curtain at the embassy party; he sounded clever too, and maliciously so perhaps. But just how clever had he been with that throwaway Macbeth reference?

Just
generally
clever, with Macbeth’s hired murderer reporting back on the bodged killing—

—Is he dispacht?

—My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.

Or
exactly
clever, with Philip Masson as well as Audley in mind, after Banquo’s grisly ghost had broken up a pleasant dinner—

—the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools

Was that it?

Had Banquo/Masson risen again, in order that Jenny Fielding and Ian Robinson should push David Audley from his stool—?

Well … Jenny Fielding’s castle was now just across the wet road, and he could hear no footsteps behind him, only his old tutor’s warning against preconceived ideas which fitted so well that one bought them too easily, without feeling the quality of the shoddy material.

The road was safe, anyway—as safe as suburban East Berlin on a wet Sunday, never mind Hampstead; and he was probably as unfollowed here and now as he had been there and then—and Jenny could have simply heard two malicious Civil Service tongues chatting imaginative gossip—

He skipped the last few yards, from the road and across the glistening pavement, to the refuge of the flat’s entrance, and stabbed the bell with a sense of anti-climax, feeling foolish because he was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Because, if Jenny and Buller were
right
, it might well be that they didn’t even consider him worth following—

‘Yes?’ The cool, disembodied voice was haughtiest Jenny.

‘It’s me. Who did you think it was?’ He heard his own voice too late, as squeakiest Ian.

‘Are you alone? Or already in durance vile, with the cuffs on and a gun at your back?’ Now she was stage-Jenny, making fun of all the painted devils of his imagination.

‘For heaven’s sake, Jen—let me in!’ He couldn’t stop himself protesting. ‘My feet are soaking, damn it!’ He managed to lower the squeak to a growl.

Click!

‘Darling—I’m sorry—I am
sorry
…
But John Tully and dear old Reg insisted—remember?’ She patted him like a child after relieving him of his raincoat and umbrella. ‘Of course, John wanted my taxi. And he said we’d got nothing to lose, anyway … And Reg wanted you to lead the opposition away, so he could do his own thing.’ She brushed ineffectually at the huge bird’s-nest tangle of hair which she’d pinned up, but which was falling down on all sides. ‘I do
love
Reg—don’t you, Ian?’

‘No.’ He could smell an unfamiliar smell. And it was as far removed from the usual smell of her flat as what he felt for Reg Buller was separated from love. ‘Reg Buller is not lovable.’ He sniffed again. ‘Have you been cooking?’

‘He is so. Come and have a drink. And he’s also one very smart operator. Did you read his report? You did bring it with you?’

‘Yes.’ He had to sniff again. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘Eh? Well, I don’t know what you think it is. But the man in the butcher’s shop said it was his very best Scotch beef. And he gave me all sorts of advice about what I should do with it—he seemed quite worried that I might not treat it with proper respect. I almost asked him to come and roast it for me … only I was afraid he might take me up on the offer.’ She smiled her Scarlett O’Hara smile at him. ‘But then he said it needed a good Burgundy with it. Only, I know you like claret, so I asked the other man, in the wine merchants’, who sells me my usual plonk … and he said this would be about right—‘ She swept a bottle off the sideboard ‘—he said it had the
body
… which really sounded rather gruesome … But I do remember the name—it has to be named after an Irishman really—“O’Brien”? Because none of that area is “haut”, it’s all flat as a pancake. But it was one of Daddy’s favourite tipples, so it can’t be bad—can it?’ She jerked the bottle to her nose. ‘I think it smells rather fun—it reminds me of Daddy, actually. He used to make me smell all his bottles. Here—have a sniff! Is it okay?’

Ian clamped his hand on the bottle. What he had to remember was that he was almost certainly being taken for a ride, as better men before him had been, and others after him would be. Because Daddy had been a power in the land (and that was part of Jenny Fielding’s stock-in-trade, and his also by their literary alliance). And also because she was his only-and-favourite daughter, and a conniving chip off the same block.

It was Haut-Brion, and he had been in short trousers when it had been in its grapes. This’ll do just fine, Jen. It’s … okay.’

‘Oh—good!’ She turned away from him. ‘I have to take the little man’s beef out of the oven—if I don’t, I think he’ll come and demonstrate outside, or haunt me when he’s dead … And there are the vegetables—but they’re just out of the freezer, so they’re no trouble … But I have also made a Yorkshire pudding, according to that recipe the man gave us in Belgium—remember? The one who said that the people in Yorkshire had got it all wrong, after the battle of Waterloo—? But you
must
come and help me, Ian—‘

He followed her, towards the smell, with his arm and shoulder frozen, as though it was a bottle of Château Nobel, from the Nitro-Glycerine commune, of an unstable year—

Waterloo was right, though: the kitchen resembled nothing so much as the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte towards the end of the battle, after the French had stormed it, and Wellington’s troops had re-taken it at the point of a bayonet. And, quite evidently, the ex-freezer vegetables were already casualties, and the Belgian-Yorkshire pudding had suffered the same fate as the unfortunate Belgian regiments which had been exposed to the fire of Napoleon’s artillery for too long—

‘Jen! Let’s eat the beef—‘ There was just enough space to bestow the Haut-Brion safely on the table. But then, as he rescued what looked like the better part of an Aberdeen Angus from her, he met her eyes ‘—all this on my account, Jen—?’

‘Well … you don’t eat enough, do you? All those fast-foods—
junk
foods—and take-aways?’ She looked down at the beef, and then back up at him. ‘The way to a man’s heart is supposed to be through his stomach, that’s all.’

She really wanted Audley’s scalp. Or someone’s scalp, anyway. Or, one way or another, she wanted some more Beirut-style excitement, anyway. And (more to the point) she’d expected him to cast his vote against the enterprise.

‘But all a bloody waste of time?’ Having already got what she wanted, she was perfectly happy, and the irritation was hardly skin-deep. ‘Shall we throw it away, and go round the corner to the pub, Ian?’

‘Certainly not!’ As always, the pain was his as he was reminded for the thousandth time of the difference between her need and his desire. ‘I’m not going to let this beef—and that plonk of yours—go to waste. Get the carving-knife, Fielding-ffulke! And lay the table—go on!’

‘Yes, master—at once, master!’ As always, she was his humble and attentive servant in her moment of triumph, and never more beautiful. ‘So what about David Audley, then? Isn’t he
something
, eh?’

‘The devil with Audley.’ Predictably, her carving-knife was blunt. But the beef was superbly tender. ‘Were you followed?’

‘Don’t ask me, darling. But if Reg says we’re being, then I’m sure we were. And—don’t you think it’s fun?’

‘No. I don’t think it’s fun … Is that enough for you, Jen?’

‘No?’ She peered over his shoulder, and the smell of her and the beef aroused different carnal desires simultaneously. ‘No, I’m absolutely
ravenous
…
and look at all that lovely blood, too! God, I must take up cooking, I think—evening classes in
cordon bleu
, and all that—and
nouvelle cuisine
—
that’ll do, darling. What d’you think?’

What he thought was that she now had a heavy-manual-worker’s plate of roast beef, which would make a
nouvelle cuisine
chef quite ill to look at. ‘What I think, Jen, is … that being followed scares me. And David Audley terrifies me … since you ask.’ He offered her the plate.

‘Can I have a little more of that … sort of gravy-stuff.’

‘Blood, you mean?’ He accepted the spoon she was holding out to him in anticipation. ‘Well, at least you have the right appetite, I suppose.’

‘What?’ Greed deafened her for a moment. ‘Do you want some of my Yorkshire pudding? I did put cheese in it, like the recipe said.’

Ian’s memory of the outcome of that experiment enabled him to concentrate on his carving, while pretending similar deafness.

‘What d’you mean—“the right appetite”?’ She had heard, after all.

‘People involved with Audley end up dead, according to Reg Buller.’ He might as well match her greed: what wasn’t eaten here and now would probably be thrown away, and it would be a sin to waste this noble animal.

‘Ah! I see what you mean—‘ She cleared a space for them on the kitchen table simply by throwing everything into the sink, higgledy-piggledy ‘—and that’s what this friend of Daddy’s I talked to said, actually.’

‘And doesn’t that frighten you?’ He watched her fish cutlery out of a drawer, and glasses from a cupboard. The cutlery was beautiful bone-handled antique, tarnished but razor-sharp, and the glasses were the thick and ugly petrol-coupon variety, and none-too-clean. But he was past caring about that now.

‘I don’t see why it should.’ She let him pour, and then raised her glass high. ‘Here’s to us—and crime paying, anyway!’ Then she drank. ‘Mmm! It
is
good—trust Daddy!’ Then she attacked her beef. ‘Mmmm! So’s this!’ She grinned and munched appreciatively. ‘I mean … if you look at what Johnnie and Reg dug up about him … it is all rather vague … sort
of gossip
, I mean … There were inquests. But there was always a perfectly reasonable story of some sort—like that young man who blew himself up, during that cavaliers-and-roundheads mock-battle—‘

‘After someone else had got murdered, at another mock battle?’ The need to concentrate on what she was saying detracted cruelly from the paradisal meat and wine. ‘And that case has never been closed, Reg says.’

‘But Audley wasn’t there, that time—‘

‘So far as anyone knows. But he was there the second time—‘

‘But nowhere near the explosion—‘ All the same, she nodded as she cut him off ‘—I do agree, though: he is rather
accident-prone
…
Except that he’s never been summoned to give evidence, or anything like that.’

‘Or anything like anything.’ He swallowed, and disciplined himself against eating and drinking for a moment. ‘And the year before last, when that visiting Russian general died—Tully says he didn’t have a heart-attack—that he was shot by someone.’

‘But not by Audley, Ian.’ Jenny didn’t stop eating, but she had somehow become a devil’s advocate. ‘He’s a back-room boy, not a gunfighter. He’s too old for that sort of thing.’

‘But he was there, somewhere—Tully also thought that—‘

‘No.’

Thus flatly contradicted, Ian returned to his food. Whatever crimes Audley had, or had not, connived at, there was no reason why he should compound them by letting his meat congeal on his plate. If Jenny thought Audley was innocent of the Russian general’s death, so be it. And if he’d never come out into the limelight, so be that, too. Because Jenny quite obviously thought there were other things he had to answer for.

‘No.’ She pushed her plate away and then filled her glass again, like Daddy’s daughter.

‘No?’ He pushed his own empty glass towards her.

‘Johnnie didn’t think that.
I
told him that. But then he did some checking, and he says there was one hell of a shoot-out, somewhere down there in the West Country. Only it was all very efficiently hushed-up. And the Russians helped with the hushing, apparently.’ She nodded at him. ‘And Audley was probably mixed up in that.’

‘Probably?’ Jenny had a prime source—that was both obvious and nothing new: Jenny had more sources than she had had take-away dinners (or expensive restaurant dinners, for that matter). But, what was more to the point, it would be easier to excavate a two-year-old scandal than a nine-year-old one. ‘Probably, Jen?’

‘Maybe. But who cares?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s Audley-and-Philly-Masson we’re after, not Audley-and-General-Zarubin, darling.’

‘But Zarubin sounds more promising.’

‘I don’t agree.’ She savoured her wine, as though she was thinking of Daddy again. ‘Zarubin was just an effing-Cossack, by all accounts—
not
one of dear Mr Gorbachev’s blue-eyed boys. Which presumably explains all the friendly co-operation.’ Then she was looking at him, and she very definitely wasn’t thinking of Daddy. ‘I don’t say that isn’t interesting. And maybe we’ll find a place for it eventually. Because once we start turning over stones then I expect all sorts of creepy-crawlies will start emerging and running for cover—that’s the beauty of it. Because Audley goes back a long way. Long before poor Philip Masson. So God only knows what we’ll turn up.’

Now it was
poor
Philip Masson. And just now it had been ‘Philly’. But that could wait. ‘And yet no one’s ever heard of him, Jen.’

‘Of Audley?’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not quite true. In fact, it’s entirely untrue: lots of people have
heard
of him. Lots of people
know
him, actually … and he seems to know a lot of people, putting it the other way round. They just don’t know what he
does
, exactly.’