‘It’s hardly out of your way. We can still pick up the London road… oh, in just a mile or two from there.’ Audley got in before he could start nipping. ‘We may even save time, in the end.’
Unless the old liar had discovered a shorter line between two points than a straight one, they were going in very nearly the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State opposite direction, that was the truth of it. ‘Just tell me what the hell we’re doing, David.’
‘Yes.’ Audley’s meekness was as bad as his contrition. ‘Well…
we’re going to talk to someone—someone I need to talk to. So when we get to the main road… we bear left there, until we come to the Three Pigeons—which is a big pub with coloured lights…’
Left would be even further to the west, or at least north-west. ‘Yes?’
‘And then, about five miles further on… there’s another pub—just by the church… the Bear and Ragged Staff. You turn sharp left there.’
That would be due-bloody-west. Which was fine for Nikolai Andrievich Panin, who would probably be already within sight of the Bristol Channel by now, speeding down the M5. But for a man who ought to presume that he was going to London it was a bad joke.
‘Yes?’ Tom stifled the temptation to ask Audley whether he habitually navigated across England from pub to pub, with the occasional church thrown in.
‘Yes.’ Audley nodded. ‘It really will save us time. And maybe not time alone, Tom.’
‘Yes?’ But pubs didn’t matter. What mattered more was… who the hell did Audley want to see, who mattered more than Panin, who wanted to meet him so urgently on Exmoor?
And, come to that— Exmoor! Because the Russian would have needed Foreign Office dispensation to go so far. But—never mind the Foreign Office!—he would have required Moscow Centre Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State dispensation too, to swan off into the far unexplored West of England, to meet his old friend, and Mamusia’s—
‘I’ll tell you where to go then. But it’s only a step or two from there.’
A step or two to the west, near another pub? The Red Lion, or the Eight Bells, or the Vine, or the George and Dragon—or the Old Castle, where even now, in a better world, Tom Arkenshaw ought to have been drinking champagne cocktails with Miss Wilhemina Groot, in the privacy of the bridal suite? Bloody hell!
‘Who are we going to see then, David?’ He thrust Willy out of his mind, back to London where Audley thought he was going, but wasn’t.
‘Ah…’ Audley jerked forward as the police car in front illuminated its hazard lights, ahd then slowed; and then signalled left, as it drew aside on to the grass verge by the side of the road. ‘You go ahead here, Tom.’
Tom drove ahead into the first beginnings of evening, unsure whether he was glad or sorry as he lost sight of the flashing lights behind him. He didn’t know where he was, because he’d never castle-hunted seriously in Hampshire. Somewhere to the north of this, or more like north-east, Henry of Blois had thrown up one of his 1138 strongpoints at Farnham, certainly. And there were other 1138 ‘illegals’ at Waltham and Wolvesey. But he couldn’t place either of them on the map in his head. Yet—much more to the point
—the A34 Winchester to Oxford road couldn’t be far ahead, and that would take him fast to the westward-bound M4 and M5.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But it was no use fretting (Farnham was an interesting site, which he’d always intended to measure: the motte there had been revetted with a buttressed shell-wall allegedly comparable with the Crusaders’ keep at Acre in Israel; although that hadn’t prevented good old Henry Plantagenet from demolishing it in 1155). He was going to be late, bringing them together, but that wasn’t his fault—
so it was no good fretting.
‘You were saying, David—?’ The brief intrusion of Henry of Blois and Henry Plantagenet, eventual Lord of England, Wales, Ireland and two-thirds of France, and of their great works, restored his sense of proportion, as always: the two Henrys, and David Audley and Nikolai Panin and Tom Arkenshaw, and all the ants in all the ant-hills, engaged in great works. But it would all be the same in the end—always the only question was sooner or later?
‘Yes.’ Audley had been quite content for him to go ahead in search of the bright lights of the Three Pigeons public house. ‘Did you ever meet Basil Cole? Or was he before your time?’ Once committed, Audley perked up. ‘Probably not, even if he wasn’t.
Because he worked for Fawcett—Victor Fawcett—? Who worked for “Digger” Wilmot… I don’t think he was still in post when that clever bugger Jaggard came into his inheritance.’
Tom felt Audley’s eyes on him as he searched in vain for bright lights ahead. ‘No.’ But if they were into name-dropping, he’d better drop one or two. ‘ “Digger” Wilmot took me on—he was at school with my father. And I’ve met Henry Jaggard since, of course.’ That was the truth—even if it was the truth naked and ashamed. ‘But I work for Frobisher, David.’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Yes. And he approves of you, too.’ Audley spoke derisively. But, to give him the benefit of the doubt, that might be because he didn’t wish to patronize Danny Dzieliwski’s son too obviously. ‘At least, that’s what he gave Jack Butler to understand. He says you’re a straight-shooter—is that true?’
There were lights ahead. And, because Jaggard had obviously foreseen that Audley would never obey orders exactly, it was so much the opposite of the truth that he couldn’t bring himself to give it a straight lie. ‘Not with that damn thing they gave me, David.’ He felt the discomfort of the police Smith and Wesson, and remembered that he had lied to Cathy Audley too. ‘If we meet your sniper again, for God’s sake don’t rely on me—I’ll most likely shoot myself in the foot.’
‘Hah!’ Audley chuckled, but then pointed suddenly. ‘Turn left by the pub—see the sign?’
Tom hadn’t time to read the sign, only to see that the road was empty behind as they swerved into a narrow side-road. So now, even if there was an unmarked police car behind them, it would end up heading for Winchester and disappointment.
‘I had a driver in Normandy—he was a damn good driver, too…
He tried to shoot himself through the foot… purely by accident, you understand…’
Now they really were lost, thought Tom. Except that there was a church and another pub somewhere ahead now.
‘Not that I blame him. We were in the bocage, you see—’ Audley sat back, oblivious to his surroundings, as Tom strained in the half-Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State light to see where he was going ‘—because I have three nightmares in my old age… One is of taking examinations, on subjects about which I know damn-all… But the other is about the bocage— every two or three years some damn fool asks me to go back to Normandy, to meet the old people whose houses we demolished, and the priests—I demolished a church in Normandy. That was probably my main contribution to winning the war—demolishing a church at point-blank range with 75-millimetre HE.’ Audley nodded. ‘It’s quite simple: you just knock the corners out, and the tower falls into the chancel then, with a bit of luck—’ Another nod
‘—and it was a fine old Norman church too, mine was, I think.’
Sniff. ‘There was a sniper in the tower, who’d just shot a friend of mine. He must have been a brave bastard!’ Pause. ‘There’s our church—do you see it?’