"Perhaps not. It's still not good enough. I think our man should be on site on the next occasion."
"Next? How-what?"
There are two aircraft of the same type still flying in Scandinavia."
They don't have the same system on board—"
"I don't want the same, Fraser. Rather, something that is in truth undetectable. Talk to our man."
"How long do I have? What kind of budget?"
Two days. And what it costs within reason."
"OK. I'll be in a position to report this evening."
Winterborne put down the telephone, already examining the exhilaration that had buoyed him as he spoke to Fraser. He was habitually nervous of the instinctual, as if such responses were immature or dangerous to himself. And yet there seemed he buttered a triangle of toast no other immediate solution. Another 494 had to fall from the sky, Vance had to be driven to bankruptcy… The shares he had recently acquired in two of the largest charter-flight companies would give him the necessary leverage to insist on their leasing a small fleet of Skyliners. Once the aircraft were in service, once the word-of-mouth spread, then Skyliner might yet be salvaged. If there was competition only with Boeing's new aircraft, due in another year or eighteen months, market share might mean something real, by then. If Vance's big, cheap plane had been removed from the board.
He crunched his teeth against the pleasant bitterness of thick marmalade as he sat himself before his kedgeree. The Chinky playing at English gentleman again… Another school taunt. They returned in his dreams, usually when he was stretched, uncertain, struggling.
He began the kedgeree the housekeeper had prepared. Opened the newspaper's pink, restrained pages. Prices had dipped further in Aero UK, Winterborne Holdings, a dozen other companies in which he had a heavy investment and a major influence. Events were a series of detonations under his fortifications ones to which he had reacted too slowly and indecisively. He should have bought into the charter market much earlier, to protect the Skyliner. He should not have believed the protestations of politicians regarding the MoD's choice of helicopter.
He had left himself dangerously exposed to the virus of lost confidence in the City and among the institutions.
Until now. Fraser must buy him the man who would buy him the time. And remove the 494, Vance and Burton from the game.
"Well?" She was as eager as a child, as he held up his hand in a mocking plea for patience." Come on, Kenneth what have you got for me on our Mr. Fraser?"
"My dear girl how your father ever coped with your impatience I shall never know!" Then, mischievously: "More coffee, Marian?"
"Hand it over! Nottiie coffee pot."
"Ah." He lit the first of the half-dozen cigarettes he allowed himself each day and the first of the absolute maximum that Mrs. Grey would tolerate in competition with the summer air through open windows and the constantly renewed cut flowers then he opened a buff folder on his knees.
"Here we are. Everything to him who waits or her."
They were seated in two armchairs near the open French windows. Traffic noise was muted and there was, in reality or imagination, the scent of roses from the Park. Despite her impatience, she luxuriated in his company, in the room's familiarity and security.
"Our Mr. Fraser has been quite busy since he left the service just a little more than three years ago. Just before the redundancy notice
…" He ran his finger down the page.
"His positions have been among the usual ones," he continued, shaking his head. The Gulf States, body guarding and pandering to the paranoia of unelected sheiks swimming in oil… Cambodia… the expected kind of godless association with the Khmer Rouge and other unmentionables the Foreign Office has sometimes sanctioned, or at least ignored." His old features wrinkled more heavily in distaste.
"Were you always so moral?" she asked with some asperity.
"No. An old man's luxury with a lifetime's witness that immorality doesn't begin to solve the problem."
' Touche- a hit, a palpable hit."
"Anyway, seven or eight months in Cambodia and neighbouring Thailand, then a stretch in Singapore. Living a very sybaritic lifestyle while apparently spending his ill-gotten Cambodian gains. Then a return to Europe perhaps a year ago." He looked up, adjusting his glasses.
To do what, exactly?"
The usual. Contact or middleman for rather suspect arms deals, some industrial espionage…" He sighed.
"A man must go where the work is," he added acidly.
"Even if he is going to the bad by the same road."
"So, on the whole you're glad that Hyde's girlfriend came into money and saved him from this kind of thing?"
"On the whole, yes."
"Who employs Fraser at present? The Commission?"
"Not as far as I can tell." He smiled. Though it may be only a matter of time… No one seems to know. Obviously someone at that meeting. He is a director of a ne wish company, here in London Complete Security.
Industrial espionage, no doubt, and bodyguards to the rich, the crooked, the paranoid. Probably arms, too.
However, that is speculation. His sphere of operations seems to be the UK and Europe. At present."
"Who owns Complete Security?"
Aubrey shook his head.
"No one seems to know. In the main, it employs others of a like mind with Fraser." He paused, then said: These are not very pleasant people, Marian. I warn you to be careful. Very careful if, indeed, Fraser was responsible for your young man's death."
There aren't many people to suspect, are there?" Again, Aubrey shook his head, flicking the ash from his cigarette. The net curtains moved gently in the soft breeze from the Park. The illusion of flower scents again.
"So—? I ought to be able to discover which one it was without going anywhere near Fraser, shouldn't I?"
"Are you determined on this?"
"He was helping me."
"You did not cause his death."
"It's not that easy to dismiss. My theory got him killed, I think. Is that reasonable to you?"
"No. Fraser does not require a weighty reason before choosing to eliminate someone." She shivered.
"I'm sorry, my dear, but my past is my past the country's past in a small way. Things were done… Young Lloyd was merely there, that was enough—"
"But they must have had something very suspicious to hide — whoever employed him. Why not my version of what they're up to…?"
She paused, her mouth open.
"Exactly," Aubrey said coldly.
"A British company, a childhood friend of yours, a powerful French plane maker two senior European bureaucrats. One of them or more than one ordered a killing more ruthlessly than I ever would have done.
Now, perhaps, you see your dilemma, and your possible danger. The police report says accidental death, as do the newspapers. The incident is closed. You have no reason to make enquiries of any kind.
If you do, you will inform Eraser's employer that you possess information dangerous to him. Do I make myself clear?" He was leaning forward in his chair, his clawlike old hand gripping her wrist as fiercely as the talons of a hawk.
"I have no powers no people to watch out for your safety.
Because of that, I warn you not to give Eraser or his employer the slightest hint of your suspicions. Because, my dear, if you are right and there is massive corruption and misdirection of EU funds, then all the people at that meeting may be involved, including David Winterbornef He released her wrist. As she rubbed it soothingly, she nodded and said: "I'd already thought of that. But how can I stop?"
"I think you must, Marian. I really think you must. If it has been happening, it will soon end. The project is complete, even if a failure. This morning's Times expects Aero UK to collapse or be taken over—" That's no reason to stop!" she burst out.