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THE OLD
VENGEFUL
ANTHONY PRICE
PROLOGUE:
Loftus of the Vengeful
"THERE'S NOTHING WRONG with funerals," said Audley.
"I met my wife at a funeral."
Mitchell studied the picture again. In the original newspaper it had been a good sharp reproduction, but the photo-copier hadn't improved it. "I hope the weather was better than it was for this one."
"It was bloody cold, as I recall—an east wind and an open churchyard." Audley peered over his shoulder. "Yes . . . they do seem a bit bedraggled, I must say. But that's because it's never been considered conducive to good order and military discipline to carry umbrellas into action—though I believe Sir Thomas Picton carried one at Waterloo, didn't he?"
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"Or naval discipline, in this case." Mitchell ran his eye down the line of officers. "Two captains, three admirals, and a flag-lieutenant—and the two-striper's the only dry one ... or half-dry, anyway."
Audley smiled evilly. "And that's only because he's holding an umbrella over the hero's daughter. Smart fellow! And the C-in-C looks rather unhappy, I do agree. But then he never did like Loftus— they were at Dartmouth together, and Loftus pipped him for the Sword-of-Honour, or something. . . although, to be fair, I don't think that was the whole reason."
Mitchell went down the line again, and on to the civilians.
They too were in the rain, and bare-headed as the bugler called them to attention, two bald as coots and three with their variously grey and white hair plastered to their scalps, but all wearing their medals proudly.
His eye was drawn to the other picture on the page, of the Vengeful burning furiously, with a list to port, but still spitting gunfire from her 4-inchers, and with a couple of mortally-wounded E-boats in foreground and background. It was a painting, and it had probably never been as dramatic as that, but the artist's untruth conveyed the truth of the battle, which was that the elderly ship had died well and not alone.
"Those old boys are the surviving Vengefuls, I take it?"
"'Vengefuls'?"
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"That's the term for the crew. Like 'Hampshires' and
'Norfolks'— and your 'Wessexes', David."
"Ah! We called our chaps 'Wesdragons' actually—because of our cap badge . . . but I take your point. And—yes, they are.
Plus two of the admirals, who were midshipmen at the time—
or one was a midshipman and the other a sublieutenant, to be exact."
That exactness cooled Mitchell's ardour somewhat: if there was anything the big man was, he was exact in his details; and if there was anything that he wasn't, he wasn't a fool.
All the same, facts were facts, so he had to gesture to the scatter of papers on the desk. "But I don't see that there's anything for us here—honestly, David."
Audley adjusted his spectacles to study the papers.
"THE LAST ROLL-CALL—
"The Royal Navy remembered one of its war-time heroes yesterday: Loftus of the 'Vengeful'—"
And the bald, prosaic, low-key Times obituary cutting:
' Commander Hugh Loftus, RN, VC, who died yesterday . . .'
There had been a gap between those two: the obituary washout of departmental records, filed and dated from three weeks ago; the pictures of the funeral and of the last fight of the Vengeful were from some other source—at a guess from the Daily Mirror, or some such. There was no clue on the photo-copy, so it must be something of Audley's own notoriously catholic culling, which ranged from The Sun to dummy3
Pravda, or the Buffalo Courier-Express to the Bicester Advertiser—the only clue here was that there was no clue, which was in itself a tell-tale indication.
"Why do you say that?" Audley challenged him.
"Well . . ." He had to get this right, even if it was wrong.
"Well, someone's done the routine search on Loftus—and he was living way above his pension . . . But there's nothing unusual about that, in this day and age—he was prematurely retired a long time ago, that's why he never got beyond commander . . . War wounds and ill-health— quite straightforward, no black marks, although he was never a well-loved man among his equals . . . His wife left him a bit of money: she came of a well-to-do naval family. But that was also a long time ago—she's been dead nearly thirty years.
They weren't married very long."
"He wrote books though. 'Naval historian' is how The Times described him."
"That's right. Naval histories. He probably made a bit from them. Not a lot, but some."
"What are they like?"
Mitchell shrugged. "Carefully researched ... he took his time over them. He liked travelling around, staying at good hotels
—he knew his food and drink. Drove a Daimler." He thought for a moment. "The books . . . they weren't bad. Maybe they weren't quite one thing or the other—detailed, but not quite scholarly, and not quite popular either."
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"You don't like them?"
"There's something about them ... a certain irritability ... a preference for blame above praise. I can't quite put my finger on it."
"Perhaps he was embittered by that premature retirement."
Audley tapped the picture. "Those two admirals were his junior officers, after all... But you don't know?"
"I don't think I'd like to have served under him, hero or not, that's all."
Audley pointed again. "But they turned up to see him buried.
'The last roll-call'."
"Yes. I may be doing him an injustice—I probably am."
Mitchell looked at Audley. "The point is, for whatever it's worth, he's—he was—absolutely clean. No contacts. No hint of anything."
"But he's dead."
Mitchell shook his head. "Nothing there, either. I had Bannen check that out. He'd had a dickey heart condition for years—his doctor had told him to go easy, but he took not the slightest bit of notice. When his Daimler was boxed in on that car park he tried to manhandle a Ford Escort out of the way. It was a hot day, and he was angry . . . There are plenty of witnesses, and Bannen talked to the owners of both the cars that had boxed him." He shook his head again. "Pure as driven snow, both of them."
"No one is as pure as that."
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"Then . . . pure enough for Bannen and me. David . . . the man was seventy-one years old—he had a heart attack. Short of digging him up again you're going to have to accept that.
He certainly spent a bit more money than we can readily account for—and he had a big car and a biggish house . . . But that doesn't make him a traitor, or a security risk—and for Christ's sake, the old boy's dead now, anyway! And if he was up to anything he'd have been much more careful about the money angle—"
"I didn't say he was a traitor—or anything else," said Audley mildly, bending over the picture again.
"Then what the hell have I been doing this past week?"
Mitchell let his cool slip. "Damn it—you had me pulled off the Czech link with Dublin just when it was beginning to look good!"
"Waste of time!" murmured Audley, without looking up.
"They'll never let you go back to Dublin now your cover's blown . . . Besides which, you were taking too many risks there latterly."
"I'm only doing research now. I like doing research."
"More waste of time ... Is this the daughter?"
"Yes." It was never worth arguing with Audley.
"Not a good likeness ... at least, I hope not for her sake!"
Mitchell fished among the documents on his left, and then slid the enlarged photograph in front of Audley.