"And how did he reply?"
"Oh ... he said that the past always lies in ambush for the present, waiting to get even." The smile vanished. "But you are right: I didn't think your Vengeful—or any of your Vengefuls—could possibly have anything to do with their
'Project Vengeful'."
"But you do now?"
He looked at her, but not quite inscrutably. "Now ... I also dummy3
think of everything that's happened—to both of us. And I think of Novikov . . . because Novikov is real—he's not a Napoleonic single-ship action, or a crew-member from a jolly boat—Novikov is KGB, and the KGB isn't a registered charity, or a funny set of initials to frighten the children with when they won't settle down, or any other sort of imaginary bugbear that doesn't really matter—" he caught himself as though he could hear the change in his own voice. "You have to understand what the KGB is, Elizabeth: it's the militant arm of the Soviet State outside Soviet territory—and inside it as well, but inside doesn't concern us— here concerns us ...
and I've seen it kill here— plan to kill, and then kill someone who got in the way of the killing, without a second thought—
and that was a bloody 'project' too, which became an operation . . ." Again he caught himself, this time scrubbing his face clean before he continued. "So you've got to watch out for yourself now. Don't depend on Audley—don't even trust me . . . Faith is quite right, we're not really trustworthy, and we're not safe to know."
Something had changed about him. The garden, and the quiet of evening, with the smells of honeysuckle and lavender, were the same. But he was different.
"Why are you telling me this, Paul?"
"Orders, Elizabeth. 'Spill the beans', David said."
She shook her head. "No—why are you warning me?"
He looked at her curiously for a second, and then grimaced.
"You know too much now, Elizabeth."
dummy3
"But you said . . . David Audley trusts me now—?"
He nodded. "That's right. And in my experience that's a damn good reason for not trusting him, I'm sorry to say."
VII
"'HE SHOT AN arrow in the air'—or, to be exact, in the correspondence columns of The Times, which for his purposes was very much better—and it came to earth in the remarkable memory of Miss Irene Cookridge. Which was not at all what he expected, but much more rewarding," said Audley. "So you just read her reply for yourself, Elizabeth."
He reached down the table towards Elizabeth, and she took the letter from him. But although she also caught Paul's eye between the silver candlesticks, with the flames sparkling on the glitter of the cutlery and glass between them—and Del Andrew's eyes too (less cautioning, more frankly curious) in passing—she still felt like the little girl who had found the answers in the back of her book, but still couldn't make her sums add up right—
"Elizabeth—Detective Chief Inspector Andrew, Special Branch— 'Del' to us, apparently, according to my husband . . . Chief Inspector—Miss Elizabeth Loftus—
Elizabeth to us."
First, he was too young—or not first, since she had never met a Chief Inspector of any sort, let alone of the Special dummy3
Branch ... So first, was this the type—more like the young gipsy who'd come up the drive last month, trying to sell a load of asphalt "left over from a job"?
"Hullo, Miss Loftus." The sharp gipsy look was there too, sizing her up unashamedly.
"Chief Inspector." She couldn't quite expel the surprise from her acknowledgement, and was embarrassed to observe the flicker of amusement in his dark eyes.
"And I'm Mitchell." Paul drew the eyes away from her. "I don't believe we've met before, Chief Inspector. But I've heard about you from Colonel Butler."
"No." There was the merest suggestion of an East London naow there, just as there had been the slightest hesitation in the aspirate of hullo, and the eyes were frankly appraising now, with a hint of wariness. "And I've heard about you too, Dr Mitchell."
"Nothing derogatory, I hope?" Under the light tone Paul also sounded just a touch wary.
The Chief Inspector smiled. "You've just given two of my sergeants a lot of paper-work."
"I think I'd better see to the ruins of dinner," murmured Faith. "Are you staying the night, Del?"
"I don't know, madam." The Chief Inspector glanced towards Audley, while Elizabeth envied Faith's ability to handle eccentric situations gracefully.
"I think he is, love." Audley waited until his wife had dummy3
departed before continuing. "To be exact, Paul . . . they've been tidying up your depredations of yesterday to make them fit for any god-fearing coroner."
"I wouldn't call them 'depredations'." The Chief Inspector cocked his head at Paul. "In fact, I got some mates down my old nick who'd buy the first round for you, Dr Mitchell—and all the other rounds, and see you safe home when you couldn't stand up straight. They'd reckon you done them a favour."
"Which reminds me—" Audley moved towards an array of bottles in the corner of the room "—it's Irish whiskey, isn't it, Del?"
"Thank you." The Chief Inspector wasn't overawed by Audley. "All the same, you chanced your arm with Steve Donaghue, Dr Mitchell. Very quick on his feet was old Steve—
for a man his size."
"Steve Donaghue—" Paul swallowed. " Was?"
"Patrick Lawrence Donaghue—'Steve' to his friends, of whom there can't have been very many, because he had a nasty temper . . . yes, we've lost him, Dr Mitchell—to your second bullet though, so we'll count that as self-defence, because he'd 'ave broken your back if he'd reached you. But he doesn't matter—he was just a thick heavy, and somebody would have done 'im sooner or later . . . And much the same goes for little Willie Fullick—someone would have done him sooner, rather than later, because he wasn't nearly as good as he thought he was—lots of talk, but no bottle . . . He reckoned dummy3
he was Steve's brains—and God knows, Steve needed some brains . . . but he wasn't."
"Willie . . . Fullick?" Paul repeated the name softly.
"Thank you—" the Chief Inspector took his glass from Audley, and sipped, and nodded "—very nice . . . yes . . . of course, there was no time for introductions—William Harold Fullick was the look-out man you put down yesterday in the garden . . . But at least he gave you the shooter, and that makes things easier for us to prove self-defence, like it made it easier for you with Steve." Another sip, and a cold smile to go with it. "Funny really—Willie was warned not to carry firearms, that it'd be the death of'im . . . and it was . . . but it'd 'ave been the death of you, Dr Mitchell, if he hadn't—if old Steve 'ad got 'is hands on you." He shook his head at Paul. "Very careless, you were."
Paul said nothing.
"But they don't matter—no one'll cry over those two . . .
though no one'll buy you a drink for them, either." The Chief Inspector stared at Paul for a moment, and then turned towards Elizabeth. "But Julian Oakenshaw—Julian Alexander Carrell Oakenshaw—Bachelor of Arts . . . You are a very lucky lady, Miss Loftus, if I may say so—a very lucky lady."
For the first time ever, Elizabeth wished she had a strong drink in her hand, like yesterday.
"But I think you probably know that—I shouldn't be at all dummy3
surprised—"
"She knows it," snapped Paul. "So what?"
"So I shouldn't explain to her how lucky she is?"
"If she knows it—no."
"Ah! You're worried because he didn't have a shooter—"
"I don't give a damn what he had—"
"He didn't need a shooter." Suddenly Chief Inspector Andrew was all chief inspector, and a thousand years older than Paul Mitchell. "Steve Donaghue maybe killed a couple of men in his time—he certainly crippled a few . . . and Willie Fullick never killed anyone most likely, because he couldn't break the skin on a rice pudding— though it wasn't for lack of trying, and 'e'd 'ave managed it sooner or later . . . with some poor old nightwatchman, or a sub-postmistress maybe . . .