Tomorrow's ghost Read online

  And she had thought thereafter, and still half thought, that holding her liquor was really only a question of keeping her glass steady in her hand.

  But Thornervaulx was still misty in her memory, mixed and confused with Fountains and Rievaulx … in another wooded valley (“Dale, wench, dale—you’re in Yorkshire now, not your muggy Midlands!’)—in another wooded dale—hidden from the outside world of the flesh and the devil, as the old Cistercian monks planned it to be.

  Perhaps that was the effect of that second glass of Uncle John’s white wine, pale gold remembered through the sleepy warmth of a little girl’s summer afternoon, already rich with the prospect of grown-up dinner and the wearing of the new dress—perhaps not surprisingly the old abbeys had become as jumbled in the little girl’s recollections as their own tumbled stonework, while the taste of chicken legs and wine and the crisp feel of the dress were as well-remembered as yesterday—

  * * *

  ‘Mrs Fisher!’

  Frances found herself staring fixedly at the whitewashed wall in front of her nose.

  Thornervaulx Abbey, where Major Butler had questioned Trevor Anthony Bond on the afternoon (repeat afternoon) of 11.11.69 about his recent contacts with Leslie Pearson Cole (q.v. deceased, restricted) and Leonid T. Starinov (q.v. restricted).

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m still here—I’m just thinking…’

  ‘About Trevor Bond? There isn’t much in the file, I can tell you. He didn’t have much to say for himself.’

  No, thought Frances. But what he had said had been distinctly odd.

  ‘He gave Colonel Butler an alibi at first, though—didn’t he?’

  ‘Which Butler promptly contradicted. And when the Special Branch went back to him, Bond simply said he’d got it wrong—that he made a mistake. What’s the point of double-checking that, may I ask?’

  No point, of course, thought Frances.

  And that was the point.

  ‘It seems a funny sort of mistake—to say “morning” instead of “afternoon”. It couldn’t have been more than a week afterwards, when they came to check up on him again, probably not so long. He must have a very short memory.’

  For a moment he said nothing. ‘I don’t think it was quite like that.’

  He’d read the file quite recently, but the details-hadn’t registered with him as being important. It had merely been a minor matter of routine for him, just as it had been for the Special Branch originally. So minor that now he couldn’t recall the details precisely.

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Hmm … Hold on a minute, and I’ll tell you …’ His voice faded.

  It wasn’t quite fair to Colonel Butler to say that he’d contradicted Bond, reflected Frances. He would have put in his report independently, in which the afternoon interview with Bond had been recorded. And almost certainly the Special Branch men who had subsequently checked it out with Bond would never have seen that report, which must have had a security classification. The discrepancy between Butler’s ‘afternoon’ and Bond’s ‘morning’ would only have been spotted when the two reports reached the same desk.

  And then, quite naturally, it would have been re-checked, because all discrepancies had to be resolved. But it would still have been only a minor matter of routine because it had been Butler himself who had established that he had no alibi for the material time of his wife’s disappearance:

  Although I had originally planned to interrogate Bond in the morning I decided on reflection that the afternoon might be more productive. Having approximately three hours on my hands, and there being no other duties scheduled for the day, I adjusted my route to take in my home town of Blackburn, arriving there at 1020 hours and departing at 1125. While in Blackburn I spoke to no one and recognised no one. I then proceeded to Thomervaulx, via Skipton and Blubberhouses, purchasing petrol at the Redbridge Garage, near Ripley (A61), at 1305 hours, arriving at 1425 after lunch at the Old Castle Hotel, Sutton-on-Swale.

  As a not-alibi that could hardly be bettered, Frances concluded. If the Colonel had been trying to set himself up, that change of plan plus I spoke to no one and recognised no one had done the job perfectly. Trevor Bond’s conflicting ‘morning’ stood no chance against such an admission, and once Bond had obligingly changed his tale to conform with it there had seemed no point in the Special Branch men treble-checking him any further. It was 9 o’clock in the morning that they were after, not 3 o’clock in the afternoon, 200 miles north.

  * * *

  ‘Hullo there, Mrs Fisher.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re quite right. He does seem to have a remarkably poor memory, does Master Bond. Even worse than you thought, actually.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was only two days. Butler visited him on the 11th—Tuesday the 11th. And the Special Branch checked him two days later, the first time, November 13th, when he said Butler was there in the morning … And then they did the re-check on Monday the 17th, when he changed it to the afternoon … So—only two days … But they do appear to have been perfectly satisfied with his explanation.’

  Yes, thought Frances, but it had just been routine for them. For Butler, on the 11th, Trevor Bond had been a suspect in a security matter. But on the 13th and the 17th, for the Special Branch, he had merely been an alibi witness in a missing persons case in which they were only indirectly involved—and in which Bond himself was also only indirectly involved, come to that.

  ‘Is there a verbatim?’

  ‘For the 13th? There’s a statement for that … a very brief statement. But to the point, nevertheless:

  “A man came to see me on Tuesday morning, when I was having my tea at about 11 o’clock, and asked me a lot of silly questions about people talking to me. I never did understand what he was on about.”

  And there’s a note from the detective-sergeant to the effect that Bond couldn’t actually remember Major Butler’s name, but only that it had been a red-headed man in a brown check tweed suit with a red Remembrance Day poppy in his lapel who’d been a ‘Major someone or other’. Which they took to be a positive ID in the circumstances.’

  ‘What circumstances?’

  Extension 223 coughed. ‘The sergeant thought Bond was a near-idiot. “Apparently of low mentality”, to be exact.’ He paused. ‘A judgement subsequently confirmed on the re-check. Do you want to hear it?’

  Frances’s heart sank. Low mentality’s natural travelling companion was a bad memory.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. I quote—or rather a certain Detective-Constable Smithers quotes: “In the morning—yes, as I was having my tea. Oh bugger, I tell a lie. It was in the afternoon I was having my tea, not the morning. I was sweeping up the leaves by the high altar, they blow in therefrom the trees at the back, where the wall’s down at the comer there. In the morning I was repairing the wall of the infirmary cloister, I had my tea there in the morning. It was when I was having my tea in the afternoon when he comes up to me. I’d been sweeping the leaves round the altar. It’s all these questions. Why are you asking all these questions? Haven’t you got anything better to do? It was the afternoon, not the morning. But I put my name to that bit of paper. I was mixed up, that’s all. I have a thermos in the morning, for my elevenses, and I make another thermos for the afternoon in the winter, when it’s cold …” Do you want me to go on, Mrs Fisher?’

  ‘Oh bugger’ was right, thought Frances. Her tentative theory on Trevor Anthony Bond looked to be as much in ruins as Thornervaulx Abbey, where the autumn leaves blew in over the site of the great golden altar under which the bones of St. Biddulph had once rested.

  ‘No.’ But there were still two questions to be asked, the answers to which had not been in Butler’s file, and no matter how dusty the answers they still had to be asked.

  ‘Was anything ever established against Bond?’

  ‘You mean … other than the fact that Pearson Cole and Starinov each spoke to him on consecutive days? Actually, it was Starinov wh
o spoke to him first, then Pearson Cole …

  That was established, certainly. They were both being tailed.’

  ‘Did they know they were being tailed?’

  ‘That’s anybody’s guess.’ He sniffed. ‘Pearson Cole … probably not … Starinov was a pro of course. But then so was the man who set up the surveillance on him … That makes it anybody’s guess.’

  ‘And they did make contact?’

  ‘Pearson Cole took the high jump just as we were about to pick him up. Starinov was diplomatic—he took the next plane home. It’s fair to assume those two events weren’t unconnected, that was the official view.’ Pause. ‘But whether Bond was the link man … that was never proved, one way or the other. And he’s never stepped out of line since, so far as we know. Nothing known before, nothing known since.’

  The old Scottish ‘non-proven’: Trevor Anthony Bond, apparently of low intelligence, had been left pickled in doubt, innocent but unlucky, guilty but lucky, or guilty but too damn clever by half, and nobody knew which.

  Just like Colonel Butler, in fact.

  And, in the matter of Madeleine Butler’s disappearance, just like Patrick Raymond Parker too.

  Sod it!

  Question Two, then.

  ‘What did Colonel Butler have to say about him, Trevor Bond?’

  ‘Ah … now Butler was not entirely converted to the Special Branch view, you might say. Because, although he didn’t get anything out of him, he didn’t think the fellow was as stupid as he made out.’

  Frances perked up. ‘In what way?’

  ‘In what way … Well, reading between the lines say, perhaps not a traitor, but possibly an artful dodger. But he wasn’t sure after only one stab at him.’

  Only one stab at him. That had never occurred to her, and it was a bonus she hadn’t expected. She ought to have thought of that before, but better late than never.

  And the bonus gave her cash for another question.

  ‘What was Pearson Cole doing?’

  Pause.

  ‘Sorry, Fisher. Classified.’

  Frances frowned at the wall. ‘ “All I have to do is ask”. I’m asking.’

  ‘That means within the limits of the job.’

  ‘Then—it’s within the limits.’

  ‘I’m afraid it isn’t, Mrs Fisher. Colonel Butler is your concern—Colonel Butler and his lady—not Pearson Cole. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’

  His voice was very gently chiding, almost silky, so far as she could make out, and once again it struck a chord in her memory which she still couldn’t identify. The telephone was worse than last night’s darkness, in which she had at least been able to pick up Sir Frederick’s tone without distortion, even with heightened perception.

  ‘Unless I can prove otherwise, you mean?’

  ‘That would change things, naturally.’

  It was a Catch-22 situation, thought Frances bitterly. ‘And Trevor Bond?’

  ‘You can have his file, I’ll have it sent to you—or a flimsy of it … But you haven’t really justified your obsession with him, either, you know.’

  ‘It isn’t an obsession.’ Frances’s resolve to keep her own counsel weakened: although he hadn’t said as much he obviously didn’t rate her chances. ‘If he wasn’t a contact, then of course it doesn’t matter … But if he was.. .’

  ‘That’s a very big if. Do go on though—if he was?’

  ‘Then he wouldn’t have made any mistake about the time of day. It would have been pointless. So on November 13 he lied—deliberately.’

  She paused to give him time to work out the different interpretations of that: if it was a lie, then it hadn’t done Butler any harm—on the contrary, if he had confirmed it, then it would have given him an alibi for the time of his wife’s disappearance.

  But in fact the Colonel had rejected any idea of an alibi with his own detailed—but unsubstantiated—account of his own movements that morning.

  And yet, if it was a lie, then it also hadn’t done Bond himself any good—on the contrary, it had put him at risk again by bringing the Special Branch back to him when he ought to have been keeping his head down; which would only have been justified if it had done Butler harm.

  Which it hadn’t… (Indeed, if Bond had actually stuck to his original lie, and had cast doubt on the Colonel’s own account by insisting on giving him an alibi, that might have been more embarrassing. But he hadn’t done that, either.) The possibilities went round in circles, but they always came back to the same point: not one of them made any sense.

  * * *

  Suddenly, a vivid memory of Dr David Audley surfaced in Frances’s mind. David—theorising on the pitfalls of action based on faulty intelligence in the lecture room of Walton Hall-David—dear David, with his expensive suit typically in disarray, one fly-button undone (‘Dishevilled urbanity’, whispers Paul Mitchell, already star pupil in the awkward squad)—Dear David—typically illustrating bitter experience from the advice of ‘my old Latin master’ on the hazards of translating the Orations of Cicero: Since Cicero can be relied on to make sense and your translation does not make sense, then it is prudent to assume that the error is yours, not Cicero’s.

  * * *

  ‘Hmm …’ Extension 223 sounded sceptical, but cautious. ‘So … why should he do that, Mrs Fisher?’

  In short, nonsense must be wrong … And by the same token, even though our adversaries are rarely men of Cicero’s calibre, when your interpretation of their actions does not make sense it is prudent to assume that the error is yours—and that you have been taken for a bloody ride according to plan. Until proved otherwise, therefore, nonsense must be wrong.

  * * *

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea—I don’t know.’ But what she did know, thought Frances, was that she missed David Audley’s counsel now; and more, that in the matter of Colonel and Mrs Butler she missed it twice over. ‘But I think that nonsense must be wrong until proved otherwise.’ For a moment there was no sound from the telephone, and then it emitted an odd crackling growl, as though the source of the nonsense theory was known, and disliked.

  ‘All right, Fisher—‘ Extension 223’s voice was strangely harsh: the growl had definitely been his, not the phone’s ‘—but I think that you’re clutching at straws—‘

  ‘Straws are all I’ve got,’ said Frances.

  ‘Don’t you believe it! Keep plugging at Mrs Butler, that’s my advice. But I’ll do what I can with Bond in the meantime.’ The harshness was gone, like a distant rumble of summer thunder only half-heard and far away, and the voice was all velvet encouragement again. ‘The flimsy of the Bond file I can get to you today … and I think I’ll run a quick present-whereabouts-and-status check on him too, just in case—so as not to risk wasting your time. The last one we’ve got is nearly three months old, I see.’

  Frances felt complimented—so as not to risk wasting her valuable time, indeed!—and then the last words registered as significant.

  They had never proved anything against Trevor Bond, but they had nevertheless run PWS checks on him for nine whole years—three-monthly checks for nine blameless years. And although PWS checks could safely be left to the local police that confirmed what she had already begun to suspect about Pearson Cole from Extension 223’s reluctance to talk about him: that whatever he’d been up to once upon a time, all those years back, it must have been something red-hot—and so hot that it had even kept the dull Trevor Anthony Bond file warm, so it would seem.

  And that was decidedly interesting—‘And Pearson Cole?’ Nothing venture, nothing gain.

  ‘I can’t promise anything there. Fisher. The odds are against, but I’ll pass the word on … That’s the most I can do, and the best … just for you. Fisher, I’ll do that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Frances meekly. David Audley would know because he knew almost everything, but David was out of bounds; and Paul Mitchell might know, because he often knew what he wasn’t supposed to know, but he was out of rea
ch, at least temporarily. And if Extension 223 really was doing his best for her such thoughts were treasonable, anyway.

  ‘You just concentrate on Colonel Butler in the meantime. And on the wife.’ Pause.

  ‘On this hunch of yours, whatever it is.’

  Promotion, riches and fame, the voice promised her: not a witch-hunt—perish the thought!—but if you bring Colonel Butler’s head on a platter, Fisher, the world is at your feet.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Frances felt seduced, on her back.

  ‘That’s fine, then. And now I have one little bit of good news for you: those expensive gloves of yours have been found.’

  Gloves?

  Those expensive gloves of yours?

  Those expensive gloves of yours have been found?

  ‘Oh—‘ The white-washed wall blazed in front of her. ‘Oh?’

  Gloves? She had a pair of black gloves at home, bought for Robbie’s funeral and never worn since; she could remember clenching ice-cold hands in them as the rifles fired over the grave. Once she had had a pair of grey woollen mittens, when mittens were all the rage in the Fifth Form … And Robbie had bequeathed her a pair of dirty white-and-green cricket gloves and a well-worn Fives glove…

  She never wore gloves.

  ‘Yes?’ She stared at her left hand, with its short life line on the palm. Mustn’t be superstitious—and don’t let him ask her to describe them until she knew more about them, these expensive gloves of hers which had been found, but never lost, never even possessed.

  ‘Young Mitchell found them … somewhere in the Library, in the Common Room, I think he said. Khaki-colour—are those the ones?’

  Frances looked at her sleeve. Paul had seen this suit yesterday, and it would be like a man—and particularly like Paul—to describe this beautiful new Jaeger green so insultingly.

  ‘Green—yes.’ She committed herself to Paul and the gloves.

  ‘Good. I’ll get him to post them on to you—not to worry.’

  Frances worried furiously. That couldn’t be what Paul intended with the mythical gloves. But what the hell did he intend?

  It could only be communication. Since he couldn’t know where she was, he had to tell her where he was.