“Your birthday party?” Butler feigned surprise. “Have you got another birthday? How many birthdays a year do you have? Are you like the Queen? Is this your official birthday—or your real birthday? You can’t expect me to keep track of all your different birthdays—I’m much too busy for that, young lady!”
“But I haven’t—” The child caught herself a second too late, birthday-excitement betraying intelligence “—if you’re too busy . . . then that’s your hard luck— you don’t get any of the cake
— and you don’t come to the dinner afterwards, with Paul and Elizabeth, and pineapple Malakoff and Muscat de Beaumes de Venise in the funny bottle— okay?” Cathy added her special birthday pudding and its attendant wine to her other favourite grown-ups like a visiting Russian nobleman and his exquisite dummy1
French mistress, joining in the game. “But Daddy’s not here, anyway—he’s in Dorset, digging up Romans and looking at tanks . . . but Mummy’s here, if you want her—”
Conflicting emotions warred in Butler’s breast: his much-loved and super-intelligent god-daughter had given him what he wanted
—Audley was in Dorset, digging up Romans and looking at tanks, whatever that meant, if it was true—even though he hadn’t asked for that information, and though he had intended to play foully to get it, hoping it would come from her mother without his asking for it—
“Here’s Mummy, anyway—” The rest was lost in the surrender of the receiver, from daughter to mother.
“Jack?” Faith Audley was matter-of-fact, as always. “If you want David, he’s not here.” Then the ever-defensive and slightly-disapproving wife asserted herself. “But he’s on leave, as you well know.”
“In Dorset, digging up Romans and tanks?” Butler chuckled deceitfully at her.
“Yes.” The matter-of-fact disapproval crystallised itself. “You can get him at Duntisbury Royal 326—but only if you have to, Jack.”
Duntisbury Royal 326
“I haven’t the slightest interest in Duntisbury whatever— and even less in Romans and tanks, Faith dear—” What had Romans and tanks got to do with Duntisbury Royal and General Maxwell, lately deceased? “—and least of all with your husband ... I am at home, attempting to enjoy my weekend, if you can believe that ... I was dummy1
merely calling about next weekend, as a matter of fact. Your daughter’s birthday, remember?”
There was a pause. Butler’s eye ranged over his desk, and as it did so one of the blank red eyes on the console of the red telephone started to blink at him redly, off and on, on and off, to inform him that the duty officer was back on that line, holding Chief Inspector Andrew for him, from another ruined weekend somewhere.
“I’m sorry, Jack. Of course! But . . .” It started as an apology, then the voice became edged with doubt “. . . he is on leave, isn’t he?”
There it was, thought Butler with bleak sympathy: the bomber pilot’s wife’s question, redolent with uncertainty about the actual whereabouts of her husband, who could be drinking in the Mess with his crew this morning, but then Flying Tonight: that, even after a dozen years’ safe landings, and in spite of his age and seniority, was the nightmare with which Faith Audley lived, on her pillow in the dark, in her washing-up bowl in the light, and everywhere she went in-between when he was out of her sight, and nothing would change that.
“If he isn’t, it’s news to me.” That at least was true! “I was just calling to confirm next weekend—” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, covering the untruth of a phone-call he would not have needed to make if Jane had not spoken to him with the truth of what he had already done in honour of his goddaughter’s birthday “—I’ve got her a first edition of Kipling’s collected poems, and a signed copy of Little Wars, plus something for her bottom-drawer, which she can put into her savings account.”
“Jack—” Her voice trailed off, and he heard her despatch Cathy dummy1
out of ear-shot “—Jack, that’s much too generous—”
“Nonsense. She’s my god-child. Just don’t tell David that I’ve called—” Butler’s eye strayed from the winking red light on the red phone to the gazetteer, wedged blue-black in its shelf: Duntisbury Royal—Faith and Jane both agreed on that, and Cathy had added Dorset—and Romans, and tanks—
What the hell was David Audley up to, adding General Maxwell to all that—?
And murder—?
Faith was mouthing good-mannered platitudes at him and he had to get rid of her gently and circumspectly: Diana was well, and enjoying her job . . . and Sally’s horses were well, and appeared to be enjoying what Sally made them do ... and Jane was enjoying Law at Bristol University, together with all the other things that Law students did—
In the end he managed to extricate himself from her convincingly, if without the luxury of honour, and returned to the red phone.
“Hullo, sir,” said Andrew cheerfully. “Trouble?”
“Wait.” There was a red eye still, next to the green one. “Thank you, Duty Officer—that will be all.”
The red eye closed abruptly.
“Andrew.” Weekend or not, Andrew had been accessible. And—
what was better than availability—Andrew could be trusted.
“Maxwell. Major-General Maxwell—in the newspapers recently . . . and there was a routine circular on him.”
dummy1
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you know about him?”
There was only a fractional pause. “Not a lot, sir. You want the Anti-Terrorist Squad for him.”
“If I wanted them I’d be talking to them.”
Another pause: as a detective-inspector, Andrew had been one of the brightest sparks in the Special Branch, but it still sometimes took a moment for him to adjust to the eccentric politics of Colonel Butler’s service. “Right, sir.”
“Very well. It was a car bomb in Bournemouth, about a fortnight ago, as I recall. We accused the IRA Proves or the INLA, with the odds on the INLA. They both denied responsibility. Go on from there.”
“Yes, sir.” Only the very slightest South London whine betrayed Andrew’s Rotherhithe origins: for some people he turned it on full, complete with rhyming slang, as a tactical device, but with Colonel Butler he never tried it on, it was the Honours graduate in Law who spoke. “It was an Irish bomb, undoubtedly, Inertia-type—pop the parcel under the seat, and just withdraw the pin . . . Good for soft, unsuspecting targets: off they go, and the first time they slow down up they go ... It’s one they’ve used before—not too difficult to put together when you know how, but not crude.”
“Professional?”
“Professional—yes ... to the extent that there are three known training-schools in the Soviet bloc which include it in their syllabuses—schools which handle foreign trainees . . .one in East dummy1
Germany, one in Czechoslovakia . . . and the KGB one, naturally.”
“So it doesn’t have to be Irish?”
“It doesn’t have to be—no. Except that they’re the only ones who’ve used similar devices, so far . . .”
“Yes?” Was that uncertainty in the man’s voice?
“Yes . . . well, there is an element of doubt on this one, it’s true. In fact. . . doubt is about all there is, apparently.”
“Doubt?”
“About it being Irish, sir.”
Butler’s heart sank. David Audley was not an Irish specialist, and notoriously avoided any involvement with the Irish problems which came their way even peripherally. He had pinned most of his hopes on that, he realised now.