Faith came in with the coffee, still wearing her serene morning-after-last-night face, when everything had gone the way it ought to go, if not somewhat better.
(10.16 a.m. now: Sergeant Digby was turning into the Ferryhill estate, looking for the Wessex Electronics building.
"I'm just going down to Ferryhill," he had told his mother,
"to meet someone." He had seven minutes of life ahead of him then.)
But Faith didn't stay—
"Darling, I've got to fly—got to take Cathy down to the village to play with—"
No matter. Audley bent his head over the scenario.
Tomorrow he would go down to Winchester, where Paul Mitchell would give him his costume for the afternoon, and report that nothing of interest had happened, and that the Tenth Legion was getting bored with inactivity.
He read the scenario again, and began to drowse over it, staring out at the dying elms beyond the lawn. He would have to hire someone to cut them down—they were too big for him—and then the bark, where the infection lay, would have to be stripped off. And that would be damned dummy5
expensive, but he couldn't burn them where they fell; that would be wasteful as well as difficult. . . .
(It didn't matter now. The battleships were sinking and burning now, and the admiral had torn his epaulettes from his shoulders. Henry Digby was dead now.) He started to think of the CIA. In a way, by carefully failing now, he was protecting the Department from that fate. If he'd really tried to screw Charlie Ratcliffe he would probably have ended up by causing a big scandal, which wouldn't have done Counter-intelligence any good at all—with all those far-left-wing MP's asking awkward questions in the House of Commons about the infringement of personal liberties. Even William Strode had suspected that he was a fascist beast in disguise.
He forgot all about phoning Jack Butler. It was no longer of any importance.
Just after the grandfather clock struck eleven Faith returned, bearing cakes which old Mrs. Clark had baked for them, some of which she would pack up for the weekend expedition into seventeenth-century England.
It occurred to him that the best thing he could do would be to arrange for Charlie Ratcliffe to be part of the Special Effects Section's simulated magazine explosion, thus solving all problems. Which happy thought encouraged him to kiss her, which she mistook as an advanced farewell on account of his imminent departure for manoeuvres at Standingham Castle, and returned the hug with interest. And the late August sun dummy5
shone on them both.
Then the phone rang.
Audley removed one hand from his wife and reached back across his desk for the receiver.
"Stop it, love—if you whisper into one ear I'll never hear anything in the other. . . . Hullo. Audley speaking."
For no particular reason he stared at the grandfather. The hands were on five past eleven.
Dr. Audley, this is—
Superintendent Weston has asked me to—
I'm afraid I have to tell you that—
He was still staring at the clock. The minute hand always jerked forward so strongly that it marked each advance with a shiver.
"Are you there, sir?"
"Yes. When did this happen?"
10.23. Henry Digby had been dead for . . . forty-three minutes now.
"Where?"
He listened.
"Where?" Time had stopped. "What was he doing there?"
Not in a position to say.
"Get me Superintendent Weston."
dummy5
Superintendent Weston was busy. Of course he was busy.
"Don't argue with me. You don't think he told you to phone me out of courtesy, do you? Get him."
Hold the line.
"What's the matter, David? What's happened?" asked Faith.
"Henry Digby's dead."
"This time next year he'll be Inspector Digby CID."
"Well, you just make sure he is, that's all."
"So you be careful of him . . . sir."
Faith was no longer touching him, she was looking at him in appalled anger. "What have you done, David?"
"I haven't done anything."
"You mean it was an accident? A road—" But she could read his face like a book. "But it wasn't an accident, was it? What have you done?"
He could only shake his head. "I don't understand. He wasn't doing anything dangerous. I deliberately didn't put him in harm's way."
"You said he'd have to take his chance."
She was remembering the same conversation now. "You said that."
"That's what I said, not what I did." But he was already dummy5
arguing with only half his mind; the other half was groping towards the immediate consequences.
"Well, you bloody well miscalculated, didn't you! Whatever you did." And already her anger was changing also, but into helplessness. "He was . . . too young."
So he was, thought Audley, remembering Digby's threadbare dressing-gown. Too young, but no younger than half the names on the old hot war casualty lists— even older than some of those. Except that they had known the reason why, and Digby—
"What happened?"
He stared at her. "What happened?" He heard himself repeat the question with a curious detachment. Repeating questions was a stupid habit which had always irritated him.
"Or shouldn't I ask?" She was not far away from sympathy now, and anger was preferable to that; sympathy only emphasised the truth of her earlier reaction.
You've bloody well miscalculated!
"He was shot. It happened somewhere on the Ferryhill Industrial Estate." He spoke harshly. "And don't ask me what he was doing there, because I haven't the faintest bloody idea."
There was a click on the phone at his ear.
"Is that you, Audley?"
"Yes." Audley steeled himself for what was to come.
dummy5
Yet nothing came: there was a vacuum between them as each waited for the other to speak. He had expected Weston to be tightly controlled in his reaction, but silence was a refinement which surprised him. It was pointless to be sorry, anyway: only Faith's question was left to him.
"What happened?"
"It was just bad luck, that's all."
"Bad luck?" The answer was even more surprising than the silence. It was the wrong answer the wrong tone of voice—
the wrong everything. "What d'you mean —bad luck?"
"His being there just then." Weston paused. "Didn't they tell you?"
Audley just managed to stop himself repeating the question.
If he did that once more it would become a habit. "No, they didn't."
He heard Weston speak to someone else —presumably the detective constable— but couldn't make out any of the words.
"I'm sorry Audley." More indistinct words. "I'm sorry—I thought you had been told, but it seems they hadn't had the confirmation here until a minute or two back. It was the IRA." Weston paused. "I take it he wasn't investigating anything which had an Irish connection—for you?"
"Of course not." Sheer incredulity roughened Audley's reply.
"I didn't think so. Then that's what it was—sheer accident.
He just happened to run into one of their bomb squads in the act of planting a bomb. He must have caught them planting dummy5
it, and he tried to tackle them. And they shot him."
Steady. "You've had confirmation of that?"
"We had a phone call at 10.25—Irish accent and codeword.
They said there was a bomb outside Wessex Electronics and we had ten minutes to clear the place."
"And there was a bomb?"
"We've just defused it—the Army has. Ten pounds of gelignite and one of those damned American detonators—the ones they lost in Vietnam—that's what they think." Another pause. "Look, Audley— as you can imagine, I'm pretty pushed now. We've got a fighting chance of picking the bastards up—this is a largely rural area, outside the estate, not like Birmingham or London. So we've got it sealed off tight now ... so I shall have to hang up on you, you understand?"