someone, in fact, like "Mad Dog" O'Leary — ' He nodded towards Ian ' — or your bloke MacManus. An' there's a lot of risks involved in hiring that sort of talent. You really got to
'ave someone you can trust. And you can't never trust a private murderer, I don't reckon.'
dummy2
Jenny shook her head. 'That's a pretty thin argument, Mr Buller.'
Buller made a face. 'I wasn't really talkin' about that, anyway
— not yet anyway.'
'No. You were talking about Philip Masson. And some dirty little slander.' Jenny was like a terrier dropping a dead rat in preference for a larger one whose back she also intended to break before it could get away. 'So what was that, then?'
The door opened suddenly, and the same large young woman entered again, with more drinks. Buller had indeed summoned up spirits from the deep.
They waited until the re-fuelling had been completed, and then Buller turned back to Jenny. 'All that trouble they had up north, at the University, with the bomb, an' then O'Leary turnin' up at Thornervaulx, when Jack Butler was on some other job . . . There's those that might say it was Jack Butler who was being measured for an "accident" there. Only the woman that was killed an' Dr P. L. Mitchell spoilt the accident between 'em — '
'Mitchell?' Jenny wasn't interested in 'the woman'.
'Oh aye.' Buller nodded. 'Old "Mad Dog" was a top man in his profession — he was good, Lady . . . Even goin' to Thornervaulx like that, which was a mad thing to do, it seemed . . . But 'e'd got a car waitin' in a barn about a mile away, over the top, complete with a police uniform and identity papers. An' then another car about five miles away, dummy2
with another identity — an' the uniform of a major in the Royal Signals, from Catterick. An' a real major, too — only 'e was on leave at the time. An' the number-plate on the second car was the same as the major's car. They didn't even find those cars for a fortnight, neither. So 'e'd 'ave got away, you can reckon.'
'You were talking about Mitchell, Mr Buller, I thought,'
'I am talking about Mitchell, Lady. Because old "Mad Dog"
was a real pro. But Dr P. L. Mitchell is another. An' maybe a better one, too.'
'How so? What are you trying to tell us, Mr Buller?'
Buller drew a breath. 'By all accounts, 'e 'ad no more than two seconds flat, that day at Thornervaulx, after O'Leary started shooting. An' O'Leary had a long gun — a rifle of some sort. An' Mitchell — Doctor Mitchell . . . he had a little gun. A hand-gun, that would be. Probably an automatic pistol, that would be, so as not to spoil his jacket . . . But it don't really matter — that it was a little gun. Because it was big enough for what was needed, see?' He looked at them in turn. 'O'Leary gets off one shot — bang!' His free hand came up, with a finger pointing at Jenny. 'An' bang-bang-bang goes the little gun. An' 'e never even got a second shot off —
down like a pole-axed steer, 'e went. . . "never" as they say in the old westerns, "to rise again". A proper little Wyatt Earp, our Doctor Mitchell is. Or maybe more like Doc Holliday.'
As Jenny digested all this in silence, Ian was conscious of a shiver down his own back because of Buller's chance dummy2
imagery. Almost, that might have been how Gary Redwood would have described that shoot-out, with his own dear Marilyn Francis down in the dust — the wet hillside bracken at Thornervaulx — after that first-and-last shot of O'Leary's.
'Who told you all this?' Jenny had indeed noticed the curious imprecision of Buller's account, which ruled out one of his police contacts . . . even supposing that he'd been clever enough and lucky enough to find one so imprudent to say so much. And even then —
'Ah! Now that would be telling!' Buller savoured his memories for a moment. 'You know what I've got — eh?'
'An eye-witness.' Ian snapped the words as they hit him, in the instant he recalled Buller's powers of conversation-recall from past experience, when these could be checked against played-back tapes for comparison.
'And clients paying for your time,' added Jenny tartly, but oddly out of character. 'Come on, Mr Buller — don't piss us around: you've got an eye-witness.'
'Strictly speaking . . . no, Lady.' Buller drank deeply.
'Meaning . . . you won't ever be able to turn this into one of your lovely bits of dialogue, Ian lad — like with that Yank we found up in those mountains — remember?'
'Why not, Mr Buller?' Jenny was less hampered by any imperishable memories of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, never mind the horrors of Vietnam.
'Because my eye-witness is dead and buried. So I never got to dummy2
talk to — '
' What?' Ian gulped air.
'Hold on, lad!' Buller cut him short. 'At ninety-one years old she has a perfect right to be dead — and decently buried, too!
You don't need to blame me: it was pneumonia, after she broke her hip getting out of bed, an' fell over, see? An'. . . she was always gettin' up — they never could stop the old girl, that's what her daughter said . . . An' the daughter's nearer seventy now, than sixty . . . But she heard all the commotion, the old woman did, so she got out of 'er bed an' went to look
— see?'
The repetition of see? was maddening. 'You're saying, Reg ...
a ninety-one-year-old woman . . . saw Mitchell shoot O'Leary? At Thornervaulx — ?'
'She wasn't ninety-one then. She was . . . what's ninety-one minus eight?'
'Eighty-three.' Jenny answered automatically, before she could stop herself. 'You're pissing us around again, Mr Buller. And in our time.' She was beginning to get angry again. 'She was . . . bed-ridden. But she was an eye-witness.
And . . . now she's dead?'
'That's right — you got it, Lady.' No one could shrug off Jenny better than Reg Buller. But, then, no one but Reg Buller dared to shrug her off.
'Got what, Mr Buller?'
Buller half-grunted, half-sighed. 'Got the whole thing. The dummy2
story of your life an' mine — how we make a crust, an'
something to drink with it, between us. Like ... no matter 'ow clever they are, or 'ow careful . . . there's always somethin'
that they ' ave thought of. But it still scuppers 'em — see?'
Ian didn't see. And he knew that Jenny couldn't see, either.
But, in the next instant, he knew exactly what Reg Buller meant, all the same — in general as well as at Thornervaulx, on November 11, 1978: Sod's Law was out there, waiting for everyone.
'You've been to Thornervaulx?' When Jenny remained silent Reg simply nodded at her. 'A lot of old ruins, that Henry VIII knocked about a bit? Chucked out the old monks —
privatized the abbey, an' pinched all their savings . . . An' now they charge you a dollar to see what's left, all neat an' tidy.
An' half-a-dollar for the guide-book — right?'
Jenny wasn't meant to interrupt, and she didn't.
'You go up the steps, an' the path, from the car-park, by the road — by the "Thor Brook", the little river there — when you've paid your money, an' got your ticket... an' you never notice the cottages there, on the other side of the path, alongside the ruins.' Pause. 'Farm-labourers' cottages, they are — God knows how old . . . They're all listed as "historic buildings", because they're built with the stones from the old abbey, anyway. But no one notices 'em.'
There was a picture forming in Ian's head.
'So they were all there, that day.' Buller warmed to his own dummy2
story. 'It was pissing down with rain — it was a Saturday, an'
it was in November, an' it was pissin' down with rain. An'
then the cars started to arrive.' Pause. 'An' then they started to arrive — first Butler and Mitchell, an' Audley — Dr David Audley . . . an' some more.' Pause. 'An' the woman — 'er too, eventually.'