‘You know what I’m talking about?’ Audley had heard the doors of the police car slam, but he ignored the sounds.
‘Yes.’ The revenge-names were pricked at the highest level, the word was. And Research and Development was the highest level.
This time the electric bell pealed out, from down below and up above simultaneously, halfway to the sound of the burglar alarm.
‘So if I’m taken out, then Panin can’t expect to celebrate this Christmas either. Because he’s my exact opposite.’ The bell rang again, and Audley waited for the echoes to die away. ‘So the sooner we meet now, the better for both of us.’
4
To Audley’s scrambled phone Tom said: ‘ Would you hold for a moment, sir’, as the door of the study opened; and then, to the Special Branch man, ‘ What is it? ’, holding his temper in check as Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State he heard the sound of Audley’s voice approaching, through the open door; and then Faith Audley’s voice too, raised in protest—so she had been retrieved at last, from her bolt-hole, wherever it was—
‘Sir—’ The Special Branch man also heard the approaching voices, and paused understandably — but then jinked strangely, as though something unexpected had touched him from behind, lifting his left arm and looking down into the gap at the same time.
‘Sorry!’ Cathy Audley’s little face, eyes magnified behind their spectacles, and teeth metal-braced, appeared alongside him. ‘Hullo, Sir Thomas!’
‘What’s happening?’ said Jaggard in Tom’s ear. ‘Are you there?’
‘I know what a baronet is,’ said the child earnestly. ‘Father said to look it up. So I did—in my Everyman’s Encyclopaedia… That’s what he always says: “Look it up” , he says. So I took BAR to CAM
into the hole. And-’
‘ Cathy! ’ Faith Audley bulldozed the Special Branch man out of her way. ‘That’s enough!’
‘Are you there?’ repeated Jaggard.
‘But I didn’t tell him where the hole was, Mummy,’ the child protested. ‘I was just talking about baronets—’
‘Be quiet!’ Mrs Audley concentrated on Tom, ignoring her daughter. ‘Sir Thomas, will you please tell me what’s going on in my house?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom into the receiver. Come back Beirut, come back Tripoli! ‘Would you hold for a moment, sir.’ He frowned at the child as she squeezed past the Special Branch man: Tripoli?
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Audley appeared behind his wife. ‘Faith love—for God’s sake!’ he caught Tom’s eye. ‘I’m sorry, Tom—’
‘Sir!’ The Special Branch man tried simultaneously to hold Tom’s attention while giving ground to Audley and his wife and avoiding a rather fragile table piled high with books. ‘Sir—?’
Come back Athens, come back Nicosia, come back Tel Aviv! But at least Jaggard was quiet now, in his ear—
‘Sir Thomas—’ began Mrs Audley again.
Tom held up his free hand. ‘Just a moment, Mrs Audley—’ He nodded at the Special Branch man ‘—yes?’
The hill is clear, sir.‘ The man took a deep breath. ’There’s no one up there now—‘ He rolled his eyes sideways ’—but…‘
‘Yes?’
This time the man swallowed. ‘It was a high-velocity bullet. It went through the window, and then a lampshade on a table, and then into the panelling on the wall, on the far side. But we’ll have to wait for forensic to recover it. They should be able to tell us a lot more.’
‘Thank you.’ Properly speaking, there was nothing else Mrs Audley needed to know—properly speaking, she had already heard more than she was entitled to hear, even. But in her own house, and since she was David Audley’s wife, it might be prudent to entitle her to more than that. ‘So what else are you doing?’
‘Tom—’ Audley’s mouth opened. ‘Who’s on the phone?’
‘It’s okay, David.’ It would never do for Audley to know that: Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Jaggard was on the other end; it was bad enough to know himself that Jaggard was quite remarkably laid-back with this hideous turn of events, almost as though he’d expected them; or, at least, that they didn’t surprise him, ‘Just the duty man—’ He turned back to the Special Branch man quickly. ‘—Well?’
‘There’ll be more support manpower here soon.’ The man didn’t know quite what to say. ‘It’s almost too late for road-blocks—
we’re very close to the motorway here. And we’re almost into the Gatwick radius, anyway…’ He shrugged ‘… we can’t inhibit traffic inside that without Home Office clearance, sir.’
So much for Limejuice, thought Tom: if someone in Athens had taken a shot at Colonel Stamatopoulos, or one of his friends, then half of Greece would have ground to a halt. But in the Home Counties of England, and with no blood spilt, the traffic had to get through regardless.
‘David—’ Mrs Audley addressed her husband, failing Tom.
‘I told you, love—some fool has got his lines crossed, that’s all.’
‘You also told me that Limejuice was just a precaution, after last time—’
‘That was… that was ten years ago, love.’
‘I don’t care if it was a hundred years—’
‘Mrs Audley—Faith—’ Obligation and self-interest suddenly coincided: he needed Audley to himself and he had to get the man away from her and here as soon as possible. But now he had a chance to cement a relationship which Mamusia had begun before he had been thought of ‘—your husband’s right, actually.’ He Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State remembered the Special Branch man. “Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll come back to you. But we’ll want an escort vehicle—‘
‘And a car for my wife,’ said Audley. ‘I don’t want her here tonight.’
‘Right—that too.’ Tom nodded the Special Branch man out of the room before turning back to Faith Audley. But then he also remembered Jaggard. ‘Hullo?’ There really wasn’t anything else that he wanted to say to Jaggard, the bugger seemed so remarkably laid-back in the circumstances of their high-velocity bullet. ‘I’ll call you again when I’m free.’
‘Don’t bother, Tom. I’ve got the general picture well enough. You just watch over Audley and his old friend, that’s all. Just get Audley to the rendezvous first—then I want to know what he gets up to—where he’s going, and who he’s talking to. And preferably in advance—do you understand that?’
‘Yes.’ It took no effort to slam the phone down. Come back Beirut… but, most of all, where are you now, Willy? ‘I’m sorry, Faith—’
‘No.’ Some of the fire seemed to have gone out of her, damped down under the fine drenching spray of cruel reality. ‘I can see that I’m getting in the way of more pressing matters.’ She gave her husband a weary little smile. ‘There’s a right time for being difficult, and this isn’t it.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ll go quietly, Sir Thomas—in fact, I’ll just go and pack my toothbrush. All right?’
‘No.’ It was working out so well that Tom was almost ashamed.
‘What I meant was that some fool has got his lines crossed—and I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State am the fool. So your husband was really just protecting me.’ He knew that he mustn’t look at Audley, for fear that she might do the same. ‘The bullet was for me, Mrs Audley, you see. Not for him.’
‘What—?’ The lie caught her in the act of turning away. But that, most annoyingly, left her half-facing her husband. ‘David—?’