She raised her own glass ' — so I think we can now drink to ...
what?' She zeroed in on Reg Buller. 'Murder, for a start?'
Buller drank without answering, keeping his counsel dry as an infantryman's powder.
Tully sipped his sherry, and from the look on his face either approved of its dryness or was thinking of his fees. 'Treason, for choice, Miss Fielding. With murder in a chief supporting role, perhaps — ?' Then (as before) he remembered Ian. ' Pro bono publico, of course . . . But it isn't Masson who is primarily interesting, interesting though he undoubtedly is ...
even very interesting, if I may say so.' He smiled his thinnest, driest-sherry smile at Jenny. 'But Audley is the one who matters.'
'Why do you say that, John?' Jenny watched him over her glass.
'Don't you agree?'
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'Back in '78-'79?' She accepted the challenge casually.
'Whenever it was, anyway . . . Philip Masson was more influential than Audley — at least, potentially, anyway.'
'Was he?' He let her steel rasp down his blade. Either, they had already rehearsed this for his benefit, thought Ian — or, if they hadn't, then they were manoeuvring to find out how much the other knew. 'I would have thought that was . . .
arguable, at the least?'
Jenny shrugged, and refilled her glass: since Tully was their employee now, at his usual rate, she was not minded to play games with him, the gesture implied. 'Philip Masson's dead and Audley's alive.'
'A very proper conclusion.' Because he had picked up her signal, Tully agreed with her. But because he was Tully he couldn't resist talking down to her. " However, dead, in precise and gruesome detail, is of no interest, now that Mr Buller has pronounced on it.' He hardly glanced at Buller.
'And by whomsoever dead — by whose actual hand . . . that is merely a police matter. And I think it exceedingly unlikely that they will ever put their cuffs on that particular hand . . .
And, if they can't then we won't.' He only had eyes for Jenny now, in proclaiming his limitations. 'But it won't have been Audley, anyway.'
'Why not?' The question came, surprisingly, from Buller —
perhaps because the emptiness of his glass made him irritable.
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'Why not?' This time Tully gave Buller his full attention. And although there was no surprise in his repetition of the question, there was a matching hint of irritation. 'I hope you haven't exceeded your brief, Mr Buller.'
'Ah! My brief . . .' Buller sucked in his cheeks slightly, and gave Tully back scrutiny for scrutiny, like a man who knows his rights as well as his place. 'No, I wouldn't say that, Johnny — no.'
'No?' Tully smiled suddenly, almost proprietorially. But then, of course, each of them knew his man, Ian reminded himself: the Tully-Buller relationship went back a long way, to the days when neither of them was engaged in his present avocation. 'Then . . . what would you say?'
For a moment Ian was tempted to suspect that he might be a potential client treated to a piece of rehearsed dialogue, to which Buller's earlier confidences had been a mere prologue.
But now that he'd as good as taken Jenny's hook (and theirs) such dramatics were hardly necessary; and Buller's thoughtful expression and elongated silence served to remind him of the watchers in the rain outside.
'What exactly was your brief, Mr Buller — ' Jenny cracked first ' — your brief, Reg — ?'
Buller kept both bloodshot eyes on Tully for another five seconds'-worth of silence before turning to her, as though the sound of her voice had had to travel across some dummy2
unimaginable distance before it had reached him. 'Just like always, madam — Miss Fielding: I take off my boot, an' then my sock ... an' I dip my big toe in the water, to test the temperature.' He gave her his ex-policeman's smile of false encouragement. 'An' of course, I do all that behind some convenient bush, so no joker can swipe my boot when I'm not looking. As a precaution, like.'
'I see.' Even when a client, Jenny was patient in the face of such stone-wailing. 'And how was the hot water, then — in that pond, where Philip Masson didn't drown . . . which you didn't actually see, you said — ?'
'Warm, Miss Fielding.' Buller accepted the sharp points of her little claws approvingly, as though not being punctured would have disappointed him.
'Warm.' Jenny had drawn blood from harder stones than Reg Buller. 'Meaning . . . warm-cooling-down? Or warm-hotting-up, Reg?'
Buller liked that too — her acceptance of his imagery. But that, by some special alchemy, was the effect she always had, even on the most unregenerate chauvinist-pig, one way or another, sooner or later. 'It may not warm up much down there, now. It could be just the place where he finished up . . .' He shrugged. 'He didn't live there. He may not even have died there.'
'But — ?' She picked up the vibration instantly.
'Somebody planted him there. So somebody knew it was dummy2
there — that's a fair bet.' Another shrug. 'All these years . . .
that may be hard to pin down usefully. But if I was running the Incident Room I'd be waiting for that to register on the computer, anyway.' Nod. 'Because, although that isn't so very far from London there, it's still country — deep country . . .
Or, it was then. And it's amazing what long memories they have, the country-folk. Like, I told you: there was this tale about the soldier who went missing in the war . . . And not Dr David Audley's war — or even his father's war, which was the same one — the '39-'45 one. But the one before that, with all the trenches and the barbed wire . . . And that is a long memory for you.'
'But that was a story, not a memory, Reg — ' Jenny started, razor-sharp as ever, but then caught herself. 'But . . . go on
— ?'
That's all. For Masson, for my money, there's still something down there. But there's no way we can get at it at this moment — not without crossing the locals, never mind whoever else is nosing around. There just aren't enough bushes you can hide behind, to drop your boot.'
'Yes. I see.' She had what she wanted there. 'But . . . you put your toe in ... I can't say "Audley's water" without seeming indelicate, Reg . . . but you did take your boot off for him too, didn't you — yes?'
'Took it off, aye. Didn't dip me toe, though.'
'Why not?'
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'Didn't need to.' Buller paused. 'Didn't want to, either.' He cocked his head slightly. 'Remember that book you and Mr Robinson did a few years back, about the Vietnam business, and all that?'
Jenny frowned. ' The Vietnam Legacy! Yes, Reg — ?' The frown cleared slightly. 'You and John did some of the leg-work for us, of course. You covered that Chicago reunion I couldn't get to — and you traced that amazing Green Beret man who ran that mission up in the mountains, out West.'
'That's the ticket. The Grand Tetons. Always wanted to see them, ever since I saw 'em in Shane when I was a lad.' The eye cocked at Ian. 'Didn't see 'em though, did I! Low cloud, there was, the whole time I was there — d'you recall me telling you about it?'
'I do, Reg.' What Ian chiefly remembered was Buller's explanation that 'Grand Tetons' meant 'Big Tits'. 'But what have the. . . Grand Tetons to do with Audley, Reg?'
'Not the Grand Tetons.' The ghost of a wink accompanied the name. 'After I'd finished with Major Kasik I had a day or two spare, so I drove up from Jackson Hole to Yellowstone, where there's this great big National Park, with all the
"geysers" spouting and fuming. And it was autumn then, with a nip in the air, like it might start snowing any moment . . . And there are all these little pools of water, clear as crystal and fresh-looking, with lovely colours — pale blues, and greeny-blues ... In the hot summer maybe they'd look cool, but when it's colder you might reckon they'd be just dummy2