Here Be Monsters (11 page)

And what sort of name was
Haddock
Thomas for God’s sake!

Whatever long-forgotten imperial requirements had launched the power and the glory of the British Empire in Abyssinia—Marxist Ethiopia now, but Christian Abyssinia then presumably—the brevity of the casualty list identified it as one of Queen Victoria’s smallest and healthiest wars—

The big complication was the presence of the Americans—of the CIA—on the Pointe du Hoc. But then, if Parker was an undoubted traitor, he was their traitor, so they had a right to be there, watching him. And, by the same token,
Haddock
Thomas was hers—was he?

It had certainly been an imperial war. For, in addition to names from the 4th, 33rd and 45th Regiments (judging by the Donovans and the Kellys, the 33rd must have been an Irish regiment), there were officers ‘
attached
’
to the Punjabi Pioneers, the Bengal Lancers and the 27th Baluchis … plus (which would have gladdened Father’s heart) a little midshipman from the Naval Rocket Brigade, poor child!

But it was not simply a memorial to the Abyssinian War: the bronze tablet on which the names were inscribed was supported by two elephants, carved in a high relief, facing each other across a trophy of cannon, drums, spears and battle-flags; but one elephant had half its backside chipped away and one face of the obelisk was scarred and gouged, in memory of the German bomb which must have fallen nearby, maybe forty years before—

Forty years? That took her back to the Pointe du Hoc again—

‘
Miss!
’

The taxi seemed to come from nowhere. Or, since it hadn’t cruised gently along the kerb into the edge of her vision, it must have executed a quick U-turn across the traffic, from the opposite direction.

Elizabeth peered into the cab. But the cabbie, who must have leaned across to his nearside to shout at her, had already straightened up and sat waiting for her to get in. And the meter flag was already down.

She almost got in, but then she didn’t. Instead, she took a step back, to the safety of the Abyssinian War memorial.

The cabbie turned towards her again. ‘Well, Miss -you comin’ or en’tcha?’

‘Coming where?’ She had the elephant at her back now.

He gave her a questioning look, as though she’d just changed her mind. ‘Dr Audley’s fare, en’tcha?’

If this was the field, thought Elizabeth, it was not at all how she had imagined it—going blindly into it. But then nothing in R & D had ever been as she imagined it, all these months. But then no doubt the little midshipman had never imagined himself on an Abyssinian mountainside, with his rockets.

She hadn’t time to arrange herself comfortably before he lurched her sideways with another fierce U-turn, to get himself back
en route
—
whatever the route might be.

‘Can y’sit yerself one side or the other, Miss … so I can see?’

Elizabeth slid obediently into one corner of the cab. ‘May I ask where we are going?’

‘Yus—you may.’ He twisted the cab up a narrow street behind the Xenophon tower, cutting ahead of a CD-registered Mercedes full of Arabs which had just pulled away from the oil company’s entrance. ‘Dont’cha know, then?’

‘No. I do not know.’

The taxi raced up the narrow street, then turned into an even narrower one, which looked like a cul-de-sac.

Elizabeth waited, unwilling to weaken his concentration while their lives were at stake. Then, when there was only a blank wall ahead, he swung into what appeared to be a loading bay, turned narrowly past a line of vans, and came into daylight again, in another street.

‘Where are we going?’ Wherever they were going, it would cost the British tax-payer. ‘Is it far?’

‘No.’ He jumped the lights at a crossing, ahead of a terrified old lady in a Metro. ‘Nothin’ followin’ us now -‘e’s backin’ out of Napier Lane by now, fr all the good it’ll do Mm. Silver MG Maestro, EUD 909Y?’

Paul drove a silver MG Maestro, of which he was inordinately proud; but she’d never thought to look at its number-plate. ‘No.’

‘No?’ He cocked his head. ‘Well, ‘e was the one—an’ not bad, neither, ‘cause he remembered me when I went round the second time, past ‘im, an’ went like the clappers after us, into Pict Street … not that it did ‘im any good, like I said—but we’re comin’ up now, Miss—‘

Elizabeth looked around. They were back beside the river now—on the Embankment, somewhere—?

‘Only ‘e
was
good—so just in case, it might be as well for you to get out quick-like—right? An’ that’ll be two-fifteen, wiv any small token of your esteem, Miss, for my time an’ trouble—like, silver MG Maestro EUD 909Y?’

Elizabeth stared at the Abyssinian War memorial, just across the road from where they were drawing into the kerb, under the canopy of Xenophon Oil’s entrance.

‘Quick now, Miss!’ He held out his hand. ‘Say a tenner?’

‘A tenner?’ Just in time she remembered whose fare she was. ‘I’ll tell Dr Audley that.’

Up three—four—five marble steps—after the fifth, as she stepped on the huge Xenophon mat, the dark-green glass doors bearing the same oil-rich-gold colophon hissed open automatically, drawing her inside and then cutting off the sound of London behind her as they hissed shut again.

Too much information jostled momentarily in her brain, coming from too many directions. There was visual information all around—the overwhelming green-and-gold assault of the entrance hall of Xenophon’s Aladdin’s cave: not only the green-and-gold of marble and mosaic, but a jungle hothouse profusion of growing things which would have made Mrs Harlin’s mouth water.

Then memory sorted out the driving theme of Xenophon’s public relations, on television and in the colour supplements and across innumerable billboards: ‘
Xenophon grows
’
was a slogan carefully divorced from the growth of Xenophon’s profits, and there were green leaves entwined round the Green X symbolizing the company’s well-publicized concern for the environment of its operations—
There is no acid rain in our rain forest
! But where did Squadron Leader Thomas—
Haddock
Thomas—peep through those leaves?

And if EUD 909Y was Paul, why was Paul sticking his neck out beyond common sense—

‘Elizabeth!’ Audley brushed aside a trailing piece of jungle. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘David.’ She stifled the temptation to say ‘Dr Audley, I presume?’ The field was already too much like a jungle for such flippancy.

‘You’re late.’ Audley tugged at the sweaty striped knot of his rugby club tie. ‘Come on!’ He gestured towards the lift doors.

She stood her ground. David Audley was much younger than Father was—than Father
would have been
: it still required an effort to think of Father in the past tense -but he was quite old enough to be her father, nevertheless. But if she weakened now, she would be lost.

He abandoned the dreadful tie. ‘Come on, Elizabeth -
please!
’

‘You owe some taxi-driver two-pounds-and-fifteen-pence, plus tip. And he makes that ten pounds exactly.’

‘What?’ He blinked at her. ‘Why didn’t you pay him?’

‘I thought ten pounds was too much for just crossing the road. Which was where I was. As you well know.’ In spite of herself, she weakened. ‘The Abyssinian War memorial, David—remember?’

‘Yes … Yes, I’m sorry about that, Elizabeth. Just a little old-fashioned precaution. But in this case just to annoy Paul Mitchell.’

‘Paul?’

‘I said I was sorry. And I know I should have chosen somewhere farther away, for form’s sake.’ He raised one massive shoulder apologetically, and then grinned at her. ‘It’s an interesting memorial, though—don’t you think?’

‘Quite riveting.’ That was one pitfall which she knew how to avoid: the study of war memorials was Colonel Butler’s only known hobby, and the rest of the department indulged this macabre taste almost out of habit now. But that didn’t mean she had to reward his grin. ‘If you think it was necessary to encourage Paul to make a fool of himself, then it achieved your objective, anyway.’

‘It was Paul?’ He smiled at his own question, as though amused by it.

‘It was EUD 909Y, according to your taxi-driver. But why, David?’

‘Why indeed!’ He shrugged diplomatically. ‘He should be back in Cheltenham. But he’s still foolishly protective where you’re concerned—is that not true, Elizabeth?’

‘He thinks I’m not up to … whatever this is.’ If he was fishing, then she could fish also. ‘He showed me a cutting from the
Daily Telegraph
.’

‘God bless my soul!’ But his surprise wasn’t quite genuine. ‘Well … I must admit that I taught him to read his newspapers thoroughly … ’

On second thoughts, she had no need to fish. He was supposed to be helping her, not vice-versa. ‘Why are we here, David?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t you read my note? What have you been doing, Elizabeth?’

‘I was told to speak to Major Turnbull first. About the man Parker—the man in the
Daily Telegraph
.’

‘
Ah!
The eyebrow dropped. ‘And getting information out of the equivocal Major was like squeezing blood out of that proverbial stone?’ He nodded sympathetically. ‘So what did he have to say, then?’

‘He said—‘ Elizabeth stopped suddenly, first because she realized that she couldn’t afford to let vice-versa work like this, with her answering all the questions, and then because someone was heading directly towards them across the foyer.

‘Dr Audley?’ It was one of the two beautifully-tailored and coiffured receptionists from the marble desk. ‘Dr Audley, Sir Peter will see you now.’ The woman smiled her practised reception-smile at him, simultaneously taking in Elizabeth, pricing her from head to toe, and adding a nuance of apology to her smile on the basis of her combined estimation of their importance.

‘Eh?’ Audley frowned into her politeness. ‘What?’

‘Sir Peter, Dr Audley—‘ She faltered under his frown ‘—Sir Peter will see you now.’

‘Ah—hmm … ’ Audley’s face became a mask of vague intransigence, for which his somewhat battered features were well-suited. ‘Right. Then you just tell Sir Peter that we’ll see him in five minutes—right?’

The woman’s own face, at least above the pasted smile, registered something like consternation. It was as though, as a junior archangel at the Gates of Heaven, she had said
Saint Peter will see you now
, only to discover that she had been addressing some Old Testament prophet who rated her master as just another newcomer.

But then she rallied. ‘Sir Peter is a very busy man, Dr Audley.’

‘And so am I.’ The intransigence was not so much vague as blandly and brutally confident. ‘Five minutes, tell him—right?’

The hate above the woman’s smile was almost tangible. ‘Yes, Dr Audley. If—if you would take the left-hand lift … when you are ready?’

‘Thank you.’ Audley turned back to Elizabeth. ‘Now, Miss Loftus—as you were saying—?’

Elizabeth watched the receptionist’s retreating back, outwardly stiffened, but inwardly slumped. He would never have dared to treat Mrs Harlin like that.

‘I was going to say … I was going to say that you are a nig sometimes, David—to quote your wife.’

‘Only when it is necessary—to quote Tsar Alexander, Elizabeth.’

‘But I was late, you said. So it wasn’t her fault.’

‘You were late—and she’s paid to handle awkward bastards like me. And we’re paid to do what I’m doing now, actually.’

‘Which is not telling me a damn thing?’

‘We haven’t time for that now—which is tactics, Elizabeth.’ He glanced towards the lifts, and so did she. There were three of them, and there were people waiting outside two of them, on the right. But no one was waiting outside the left-hand one, which was open and empty.

‘What tactics?’

‘What tactics?’ He came back to her. ‘Getting an interview with Sir Peter Barrie was a slice of luck to start with, because he probably spends half his life jetting somewhere, first-class. Like this morning, for instance, Elizabeth.’

‘This morning?’

‘He was booked to Cairo this morning, top security. Because Xenophon’s got a deal going with the Egyptians, so my Israeli friends tell me. But when his old friend -his
very
old friend—who, quite surprisingly, is me … when his old friend phones him up this morning, first his secretary says he’s a busy man, and hard luck … But then she phones me back and says he has got maybe a few spare minutes, between one pressing matter and another. And that begins to interest his old friend, Elizabeth. And then you’re quite unconscionably late. But he’s still got time to spare. And that might also be luck. But I think I’ve had all the luck I can reasonably expect already. So that interests me even more. So I’m just pushing my luck for another five minutes, do you see?’ He smiled hideously at her. ‘Besides which I really would like to know what Major Turnbull said about Mr Edward Parker, Elizabeth.’

‘And I’d like to know what Squadron Leader Thomas has to do with Xenophon Oil, David.’

He nodded. ‘Fair enough. And the answer is—absolutely nothing, so far as I know.’ He looked at her. ‘So now I get my answer—fair?’

It wasn’t in the least fair. But, unfair or not, she needed Audley more than he needed her. ‘He thinks Parker was murdered.’

This time the look was elongated. ‘Yes … ’ Then he nodded again. ‘Yes … although he didn’t say quite as much in his report. But then he has this thing—this psychological block, would it be?—about unveiling his opinions in print.’ He cocked an eye at her. ‘But if he says that was the way of it, then we had both better believe it … And that justified dear Oliver St John Latimer taking me away from more important matter, I suppose.’

More important matters? There was a display of time spanning Xenophon’s international, intercontinental, world-wide operations, electronically illustrated over a huge spinning globe in the middle of the foyer, continuously red for this minute of British Summertime, and green for Xenophon’s own communications satellite, as it fulfilled its function from the North Slope of Alaska to the China Sea. But Elizabeth felt only the pressure of the red numbers adjusting their verticals and horizontals as her own lifespan was counted.