Deadlock

My job now is to get the shell – complete with mechanism – back to Admiralty. Anything more?'

'This sounds something entirely new. You said it couldn't be any kind of terrorist. Where was the blasted thing made?'

'Moscow, old boy. Compliments of the Soviet Union.'

5

The bad news came in a telephone call. It so often did, Tweed thought.

Blakeney had returned to normal. Rope barriers had vanished, as had the uniformed police. The Lakenheath Bomb Squad team came and went, relieved that someone else had done the dirty work. The coaster on the front had resumed unloading its soya bean meal.

Tweed stood staring out of the front room window. Low tide. Masted boats were scattered along the creek banks, heeled over in the mud at drunken angles. An elderly man, well-wrapped against the brisk wind, wearing a deerstalker hat with field glasses looped from his neck, walked along the front. Birdwatcher.

'Paula,' Tweed began, 'if you still want the job with me it's available…'

'Great,' she said coolly. 'I'll start packing. And I'll call the buyer of my pottery business to clinch the deal…'

'Why not delay that?' he warned. 'You'll join on six months' probation. It's the regulation…'

'I'll take my chances. I've built that business as far as I want to. I've thought up God knows how many designs for pots for the Californian market. There's nothing ahead but more and more expansion. I want something new – a fresh challenge.'

'Monica might be a problem,' he warned again. 'She could resent the arrival of a younger woman. She's been with me forever.'

'I've talked with her on the phone. She sounds nice. That's my problem – and I'm confident I can handle it.'

'And this house?'

'I'm keeping it on. Somewhere quiet to visit when I can…'

The phone rang. 'That will be my buyer,' she continued. 'I gather he's keen as mustard. The profits for the past three years are very good. And don't forget – we have to visit Mrs Massingham at Cockley Cley, get all the gossip about Cockley Ford for you…'

She was in the narrow hall, lifting the phone. Tweed stood watching the wasteland, thinking why he'd decided to employ her. Two main reasons. One, the calm, controlled way she'd reacted to the bomb and the later period of waiting. Two, and it was a very secondary consideration – had to be – he liked her.

'It's for you,' she called out. 'Monica. Says it's urgent.'

'Blast!'

'I hoped I was safe here,' were his opening words when he took the call.

'I'm frightfully sorry…'Monica sounded nervous,'But you did say you were going to Paula's. There's a crisis, Major, over a new insurance contract. They're running round in circles since they found you'd gone.'

'Who are "they"?'

Top management. And Howard is frantic.'

Monica knew she was talking on an open line. Translation: a summons from the PM, no less. Howard in a dither. Something very serious.

'All right.' He sighed audibly. 'I'll be back by nightfall. It was a bloody short holiday.'

'You grumbled enough about going,' she said waspishly.

'I'll be back,' he repeated. 'With a new recruit.'

He put down the receiver before she could ask about that – and immediately felt guilty. Monica was only doing her job. He ran upstairs where Paula was packing swiftly in her bedroom.

'A major crisis back at the ranch. We have to be at Park Crescent by nightfall. Looks as though you're going straight in at the deep end.'

'Best way to learn to swim,' she replied, deftly folding more clothes, laying them neatly in the case. 'That would give us time to call in at Cockley Cley, wouldn't it?'

'I suppose I'd better just check. It was a weird business – and it could just be linked with the bomb.'

'Don't follow…'

'The Porsche driver took your picture. Dough-face carried a photo of you when he was tracking down where you lived. So, there's your link.'

Cockley Cley was almost the twin of Cockley Ford. The same grassy green shaped like a triangle, the same huddle of old cottages, the same approach up a long narrow road. But no gate, no inn, no stream.

Tweed let Paula do the talking while he studied Mrs Massingham. Must be close to eighty, a tall, thin woman with grey hair and the face of a golden eagle. Her legs were thin as a couple of sticks but she had a commanding presence, a clear mind. He wasn't surprised to hear she'd been a senior Civil Servant, a Principal.

'Of course,' Mrs Massingham continued, 'there have been rumours that Satanism is practised at Cockley Ford. Don't believe a word of it myself – but the locals are superstitious. And the papers do say witchcraft is on the increase. More tea, Mr Tweed? It is Earl Grey.'

'Thank you, yes,' replied Tweed, who hated Earl Grey.

Mrs Massingham, sitting very erect in a chintz-covered armchair, prattled on. She didn't like Dr Portch. He had arrived only eighteen months ago. Yes, she had heard of the outbreak of the disease which had killed six villagers. Peculiar, she thought. No, she didn't know where Portch had come from. He was rarely seen. Come to that, the villagers of Cockley Ford were rarely seen. Portch had on one occasion organized a holiday for most of the villagers in the West Indies somewhere.

'Expensive,' Tweed commented.

Mrs Massingham agreed, remarking that Voodoo was practised in the islands. The natives, of course, were simple-minded-even more so than the local villagers. And then there was the private zoo Portch had installed. Cages full of wild cats and cobras. It all discouraged outsiders from going anywhere near the place.

'We'd better be going.' Tweed stood up. 'I'm Chief Claims Investigator for an insurance company. We've had a belated claim on the life of one of the villagers who died at Cockley Ford,' he explained. 'Can't give you the name. Claimant has just returned from a long tour abroad. I have to check.'

'Oh, I did wonder.' A twinkle appeared in the eagle eyes. 'I mean, what you did.'

'Dr Portch seems to run Cockley Ford like his private estate,' Tweed ventured.

'Yes, I suppose he does. I'd never looked at it like that before.' A frown crinkled her high forehead. 'Very odd…'

They were driving through the rolling hillsides of Bedfordshire, heading for Woburn. Tweed was behind the wheel. Paula sat beside him, drawing in her sketch-book – content, Tweed thought, not to keep up a running streak of chatter. Which suited him as he sorted things out in his mind.

He brought up the subject over lunch at the Bedford Arms in Woburn. They were the only diners, which made it an ideal moment and place.

'I'd better tell you the form. I phoned a friend of mine, Bob Newman, while you were finishing your tidying up…'

'Robert Newman? The foreign correspondent? Writer of that blockbusting bestseller book, Kruger: The Computer That Failed? '

'The same. That book made him financially independent. Now he works freelance, just takes on the jobs that interest him. He has a flat in Beresforde Road, South Ken. He's agreed you can stay there for a few days until we get you fixed up with living quarters.'

'Won't I be a damn nuisance to him?'

'He won't be there. I want Cockley Ford investigated. I can't do that now something else big has come up. Bob has agreed to do the job for me. You may as well know he's been vetted like yourself years ago.'

'Might it not be dangerous for him? If the bomb is in some way linked with that village as you wondered?'

Tweed smiled. 'He can cope. He's an ex-SAS man. He survived the full course when he was writing a series of articles on how they operate. But I'm still sending one of my men with him – which is something he doesn't know yet.'