Blame The Dead

He looked blank, then said, 'Well-here.'

I nodded at the tycoons' village. 'What, this?'

He glanced up and down the road. 'Yes, every building you can see is part of the School.' Then he grinned. 'It is a bit odd. What house did you want?'

'Cundall's.'

He pointed; it was only twenty yards away, a solid flat-faced red-brick affair, four storeys high. 'Thanks. Do you teach here?'

'For the last three years – I still get lost myself. And I teach geography.'

I parked in a tiny gravel forecourt that was already mostly full of a small estate car. Before I reached the door – a stone-framed item borrowed from a Robin Hood movie – it opened, and Hawthorn himself came out.

Well, it had to be; you'd've known him for a schoolmaster at half a mile in flat darkness. Tallish, thinnish, a bit stooped, with a close-cut fringe of white-grey hair, a moustache that was just a bristle patch of the same colour, and a camouflage-coloured tweed suit that looked as if he'd collided with it rather than put it on. Horn-rimmed bifocals and a pipe, of course.

We introduced ourselves and went through into a big room that was more or less furnished and overlooked a big garden at the back. There was a small coal fire burning in a big fireplace and it wasn't winning. I chose a chair close to it.

Hawthorn spent a little time doing open-cast mining on his pipe, finally Ht it, and made a harrumphing sound.

'This is a rather odd sort of occasion. I thought I'd seen most things as a housemaster but not this before. You must have a rather, ummm, interesting job.'

I understood: he was immigration control. But fair enough -that must be part of his job.

I made it friendly and chatty. 'I spent sixteen years in Army Intelligence. A lot of it was learning the, latest interrogation procedures; you know the sort of thing – how to talk a man into talking, sizing him up, deciding what to believe and not. And a few years practising it.'

Now he got it. He gave me a resigned, but quite friendly, little smile.

I owed him more than that. 'Most of my work is advising on security: stopping industrial espionage and so on. All this electronic bugging gear – eavesdropping devices – was first invented for the real espionage services, so I'm fairly well up in it. I don't do a bodyguard job very often.'

He said, 'Ummm,' and then, 'Quite so,' and then, 'You seem to have been rather an innocent bystander, on this occasion.'

'That's a fair summing up. I didn't know what was going on and I still don't.'

'You didn't, ummm, interrogate Mr Fenwick by the latest procedures?'

I grinned. 'No.'

He puffed smoke at the high ceiling and stared after it. 'I have a double problem here.' He looked down at me again. 'I'm talking about the boy, of course. In the first place, ummm, his father doesn't seem to have been quite such an innocent bystander – or am I wrong?'

I shrugged as delicately as I could. 'He knew more than he told me. He damn sure didn't know he was going to get shot at, just like that. But obviously he was involved in something."

He nodded, jerking little puffs of smoke from his pipe. 'Quite so. The boy was rather close to his father, I'm wondering if that sort of surmise would be, umm, helpful.'

'I might be the one who brings the bad news from Ghent to Aix; I couldn't be the one who stops it. There just ain't no way. The police in both countries are involved now.'

He harrumphed again and looked sternly at the mouthpiece of his pipe. 'Quite so. But my second problem – you might well appear a rather glamorous figure to young Fenwick. The pistols and so forth, at his age. On the other hand-' he suddenly smiled at me '-I don't think you do glamourize yourself.'

'Who knows? Why am I in this job? '

'Quite so.' He glanced at his watch. 'He'll be free from four-fifteen. You can either talk in his room – he shares it with another boy – or go out to one of the cafés on the Hill.'

Til leave it to him. How old is he? '

'Just fourteen. Rather a bright boy; he's in the Classical Remove now. That doesn't mean he's a classic, by the way. In fact, he's obviously going to be a historian.'

'You said he was close to his father. D'you mean he wasn't close to his mother?'

He cleared his throat and frowned at nothing. 'Ummm…'

'I've only met the lady twice. Have you?'

'Not yet.'

'She gives him rather a lot of money. That's usually a sign that she isn't giving him much else.'

'You don't think Fenwick and his wife were breaking up?'

He said carefully, 'We usually learn about such things because they're reflected in the boy's behaviour. No, I can't say I've seen any of the, ummm, usual warning signs.'

There was a sound like distant thunder. Hawthorn smiled gently. 'The young lions have returned to their lairs. I'll have him shouted for.' He went through to the hall; I followed. He opened a door on the far side and the noise swept in over me. Hawthorn told a few people to shut up, then sent an older boy off down the corridors, shouting, 'Fenwick! A visitor for Fen-wick!'

'We appoint a few specific "shouters",' Hawthorn explained. 'If one makes it a privilege, they stop the rest of them shouting.' He smiled wryly. 'They'll probably entertain you rather more lavishly on the boys' side. Come back and see me on your way out – if you want to.'

A boy in the standard uniform of blue blazer, black de, and grey flannels came galloping up, then stopped dead when he saw me. He was thin, pale, tall for his age – maybe five-eight -and rather better-looking than I remembered his father. Delicate features, large brown eyes, dark hair that kept falling into his eyes and kept being swept back again.

'Mr Card?'he asked.

'James Card.'

'I'm David Fenwick, sir.' He held out his hand, long and slim, and I shook it. 'Would you like to come up to our room, sir?' His voice was very polite, very controlled.

I followed him along a tall, dim corridor, up two flights of stairs, along another corridor, and into a small square room that was surprisingly bright and well furnished. Mrs Fenwick's money, maybe? Anyway, you could see that the school cash had run out with a couple of iron bedsteads folded up against the wall, two small desks and chairs, and two elderly chests of drawers. Private enterprise had brought in two slim Scandinavian armchairs, elegantly shaded table lamps, a fan heater, and some sprawling indoor plants. Probably the school hadn't provided the prints of armoured fighting vehicles, either, nor the big publicity picture of some Italian actress coming up out of the sea having lost almost everything except weight.

A second boy jumped up from a desk where he'd been working on a plastic model of a tank. A Russian T-34,1 think. David introduced him as Harry Henderson: shorter, stocky, with a cheery red face and wild fair hair.

Harry said, 'I'll push off now,' and waited for David to say No. David did and Harry cheered up and turned back to me.

'Would you like a drink, sir? We've only got vodka and sherry at the moment, I'm afraid.'

He picked up a couple of dark bottles off the mantelpiece; one was labelled 'Liquid Plant Manure', the other 'Metal Polish'. 'We have to keep them in these to stop the monitors and old Hawthorn suspecting."

Hawthorn had mentioned 'lavish entertainment'; hadn't he? 'I'll take vodka, please.'

He poured me a healthy dose of plant manure. 'I'm afraid we're out of tonics, but half an Alka-Seltzer tablet makes-'

Til have it straight.'

We all sat down. Harry turned suddenly serious and stared at me, then at his feet; David just went on looking pale and controlled.

I said, 'Cheers. Well, you rang me. Here I am.'