'Meaning Audley?'
'So I drew the short straw. Meaning Ian here. Fortunately.'
Mitchell ignored the latest question. 'Because it would seem that you actually flushed out someone else from the undergrowth with your questions — someone who really doesn't want any questions being asked.' He stared at her for a long moment. 'I don't know what the hell you've been doing today, Miss Fielding. But, if our experience is anything to go by, you've been bloody lucky, anyway. Because you're still alive.'
Jenny licked her upper lip, and a trick of the light revealed to Ian that there were beads of sweat above it. Which, since she knew about Reg Buller, was fair enough: whether Mitchell knew as much or not, those last words of his had hit her where it hurt.
Then she resisted the blow. These other two men — the ones who followed you, Ian — ' but she wasn't interested in him: it was Mitchell she was looking at ' — you know them — ?'
'I knew one of them.' Mitchell frowned at him. 'God! You really didn't tell her much, did you?' He shook his head. 'Yes, dummy2
Miss Fielding — Jenny: I knew one of them, from the old days. And that makes us all lucky — and maybe Ian and me luckiest of all. Because Paddy MacManus was a hard man when I knew him ... Or, more accurately, knew of him, back in Dublin in the late '70s. A real hard man — even too bloody hard for the boyos, in the end, when they started to wonder who he was working for.' He drew a breath. 'You see, when you keep a tiger, you've got to feed him regularly, because he gets hungry . . . And when he's a man-eater, and he gets the taste for it ... that's okay when you're in a killing-phase, because then you can feed him. But when you want to lower the profile — maybe for political reasons, or just for public relations in America, for financial reasons, say . . . then you've got a problem — ' Mitchell opened his mouth to continue, but then closed it. 'Mmm . . . well, let's put it like this: when the postman comes up the drive, then he's delivering letters. And when you start asking questions, then you're thinking about writing a book — or writing for the newspapers ... or both.' Another breath. 'But when you see Paddy MacManus striding towards you in the middle of nowhere . . . then he isn't writing a book. And it's not the post he's delivering. Will that do?'
Jenny breathed out, as though she'd been holding her breath.
'He works for — ? The IRA?'
'No. At least, not any more.' Mitchelr shook his head, almost regretfully. 'He's privatized himself: he's strictly a contract man now — that I do know . . . I'm really rather out of that dummy2
scene, in so far as I was ever into it.' He shrugged. 'I'm more like Ian here — a writer. I arrange other men's flowers, is what I mostly do now.' He turned to Ian. 'A much underrated job, not to say unglamorous. But very necessary. And also agreeably safe.'
'I see.' Jenny moved quickly, as though to discourage any idea of writers' solidarity. 'So you work for Research and Development, now?'
The unexpected question caught Writer Mitchell unprepared, in the midst of offering Ian false friendly sympathy, freezing his smile. 'I beg your pardon, Miss Fielding? I work for — ?'
'Jack Butler.' Having achieved her desired effect, Jenny herself brightened into innocent friendliness in her turn. 'Sir James . . . but always Jack, of course?' Even a sweet smile now. 'Why didn't you say so straight away, Paul? It would have made things so much easier!'
Paul Mitchell's desperately-maintained smile warned Ian to attend to his own expression. But neither of them was looking at him, they were concerned only in each other.
' Such a charming man!' Jen was the Honourable Jennifer now, claws sheathed in velvet. 'One of the old school, my father always says — and those enchanting daughters of his ... Which is the one who's with Lovett, Black and Porter —
Daddy's quite adorable lawyers — ? Is that Sally? Or Diana —
or Jane?'
In the car Mitchell had wondered what she'd been up to, dummy2
while they had been having their own adventures — and so had Ian himself; and, latterly, they'd worried more than that, each of them, as they'd progressed agonizingly through the evening traffic into London. But now they both knew.
'Jack Butler was in Korea, of course.' She nodded knowingly.
'Daddy never met him — not there . . . not until long afterwards, when he came back from Cyprus.' The nod, continued, became conspiratorial. 'But he says — Daddy says
— that his MC on that river there — where was it? But . . .
wherever it was . . . Daddy says it should have been a VC, anyway.' She turned the nod into a shake, and then returned the shake to Ian. 'It was only because Jack didn't get himself killed there that they gave him a Military Cross, Daddy says.'
She came back to Mitchell. 'But, of course, you must know that, seeing as you work for him.'
She had the poor devil on her toasting fork now, thought Ian.
Sir Jack Butler might not have been quite as heroic as that, long ago, any more than he was 'charming' now, after having been so dull only yesterday (any more, too, than his three daughters might be 'enchanting' and — least likely of all —
that those legal advisers were 'adorable'). But, when all her calculated exaggerations had been stripped away, Mitchell remained spiked on the facts which he must know were accurate, and on the real possibility that her father knew Butler, even if she didn't.
'I do?' Mitchell had managed to get rid of the wreckage of his original smile. 'Do I?'
dummy2
'And, of course, that really answers our question, darling.'
Jenny gave Ian a brief nod. 'Jack wouldn't want anything nasty . . .' She trailed off as she turned back to Mitchell. 'But, then again, it doesn't quite . . . does it?'
In place of the smile, Mitchell's face was stamped with caution. 'It doesn't?'
'Mmmm . . .' Jenny eyed him thoughtfully. 'You are all rather elusive and mysterious, of course — in R & D . . . But, then, that's what you're paid to be, so one can't really quarrel with that, can one? Daddy said not, anyway.' She smiled at Mitchell as she turned the toasting fork, with one side of him nicely browned. 'I really wanted to talk to Oliver, you see —
Jack's No. 2 ... I told you, didn't I, Ian darling — Oliver St John Latimer?'
" Ahh — ' With his mouth already open, that was the only sound Ian could manage before she re-engaged Mitchell.
'But positively the only person connected with R & D I could track down was Willy Arkenshaw. And that was more by good luck than good management — in the chocolate shop at Harrods actually, buying a little birthday present for Oliver, would you believe it?' By the second she was becoming more and more her own most-despised self ('The Honourable Jennifer Fielding-ffulke, the well-known author, chatting with Mr Ian Robinson, and Mr Paul Mitchell' , as The Tatler might caption her). 'And Willy's only a camp-follower, really . . . You remember Tom Arkenshaw, Ian darling — who was such a sweetie in '85 — ?'
dummy2
'Yes.' This time he was ready for her: the very mention of
'Arkenshaw', which was a uniquely-memorable name, had already alerted him. And the occasion itself had been memorable too, when Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, baronet, had descended on the embattled embassy in Beirut like the wrath of God: it had been Sir Thomas who had first made contact with Major Asad . . . It had been Sir Thomas, thought the Major, who had been instrumental in saving Jenny, not so much from a fate worse than death, as from death itself, which was the only truly-worst fate of all! 'But — he was R