Here Be Monsters (32 page)

‘Turn right, Mr Richardson. I have absolutely no desire to visit the underground car park at Avignon. So let’s go to St Servan.’

Richardson drove, as he was told: signalled, slowed, drove … slowed again, signalled again, and finally accelerated without another word, letting his silence pronounce his disapproval.

Elizabeth stared out of the window, trying to see what she found herself looking at. She had always wanted to visit Provence: it was one of those places every schoolteacher ought to know, the land of van Gogh and Cezanne, and Madame de Sevigne, and Daudet and his mill, and
Tartarin de Tarascon
, and St Louis at Aigues-Mortes, and above all the monumental relics of the Romans. But in Father’s time she had never travelled anywhere, and now she couldn’t see anything at all—just a rich foreign countryside like a great busy market garden full of fiercely growing things glimpsed in gaps in cypress hedges and lattices of bamboo.

Why was nothing ever as it ought to be, not even freedom and power and adventure?

‘Hah-hmm … ’ Audley cleared his throat, as though to attract her attention. ‘Quite right, Elizabeth. For the record.’

She looked at him in surprise. ‘For the record?’

He smiled. ‘You didn’t ask me for advice. You did your own thing. But, for the record, I am advising you nevertheless … to go on to St Servan.’ He tapped Richardson on the shoulder, somewhat urgently. ‘Got that, Peter Richardson? “
Dr Audley insisted
—“—got that?’

‘Uh-huh.’ They burst out of a shadowy avenue of cypresses into open country at last, with hills ahead, and other hills behind misting into a heat haze. ‘”There is the enemy—there are the guns”: if Captain Nolan comes back from the Valley of Death he will dutifully recall what Lord Lucan said to Lord Cardigan. Just so he comes back all in one piece is all he cares about now. But he will dutifully and gratefully recall every last word and syllable afterwards. If there is an afterwards.’

Elizabeth still looked at Audley, trying hard not to feel affection for him. Because sentiment was always dangerous in this game, and with someone as devious as David it might well be dangerously misplaced, too. ‘Why, David?’

‘I was going to ask you the same question, my dear.”

Why?’

‘I asked first.’

‘But you’re in charge. I am but a soldier-of-the-line - … Or, in these parts, a time-expired legionary cheated in his discharge.’

‘Then, if I’m in charge, I can pull rank on you, David.’

Another smile. ‘And I recruited you, didn’t I? So I have no one else to blame, except myself?’ He also chuckled. ‘Fair enough!’

It wasn’t fair enough: if they had played dirty with her, they’d played even dirtier with him. But it was a dirty game, and no one had forced him to play it. And she had other, dirtier doubts about him, anyway.

‘I’m too old for this sort of thing. But, more than that—
much
more than that—I’m too busy: I have much more urgent and important things to do, than worry about some allegedly horrendous mistake I made, years ago—That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools—

‘So now I must stop what I ought to be doing, and manoeuvre to protect my back from my enemies on my own side. And I can’t blame them, that’s the trouble. Because, in their shoes I might be doing just the same thing. Because there is something bloody queer about all this—I know that, if I know nothing else.’

Audley fell silent and Peter Richardson drove furiously. And the orchards and almond-groves had fallen behind them: now there were vineyards, immaculately cultivated, with distant ruined castles on the low hills on either side of them. ‘What we’re doing, Elizabeth, is running out of time. Because this whole affair revolves around time, I suspect. Because Parker didn’t need to call on Haddock Thomas the way he did—he could have taken his time to set up that meeting. And why did he go over that cliff at the Pointe du Hoc? They could have taken him out
any
time—just as they could have taken out Haddock Thomas.’

‘And Major Turnbull?’

‘Turnbull?’ The car swerved slightly. ‘What’s with old Brian at the moment? I heard Jack Butler had acquired him after he’d lost his cover. Is he in on this?’

‘Mmm … ?’ Audley pretended not to have heard the question properly. ‘What about him? Brian
alias
Turnbull?’

‘Nothing. Difficult old sod.’ Richardson shook his head. ‘Remember me to him, though. And … just tell him it wasn’t my fault, that business about his cover. But if he’d stayed where he was he’d have been on borrowed time—tell him that.’

Thoughts jostled Elizabeth’s mind, relevant and irrelevant. She had the other half of his name now, which she had never known, or even needed to know: the unimportant (and quite inappropriate) half.
Brian
—

‘I’ll do that. If I see him.’ What Richardson didn’t need to know Audley wisely didn’t tell him. ‘You wanted to know, Elizabeth—
why
, was it?’

If someone, somewhere, had wanted Major Turnbull dead, for whatever reason, then it would have been no problem putting a contract out on him: that didn’t prove anything more than Richardson had already done, with that message of his. The fact of Fordingwell—the terminal event—was less important than its timing; which was what Audley had been saying.

‘We have to go on, Elizabeth, because we don’t have any choice in the matter. That’s all.’ Audley leaned forward. ‘Would that be Bomb Disposal logic, from your Royal Engineers days, Captain Richardson?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Richardson held the wheel tightly, letting the car drive itself along a Roman-straight road towards the hilltop ahead, which boasted a
tricolore
above its ruined tower. ‘But there were such things as anti-handling devices even in our day, designed to blow us up. So we didn’t just hit it with a hammer because it wasn’t actually ticking.’ He half-turned towards Audley. ‘And you seem to think your bomb is still ticking, if I heard you correctly?’

‘My bomb?’ Audley sniffed, and turned to Elizabeth. ‘There speaks a peace-time bomb disposal officer, my dear. When my old chemistry master was a bomb disposal officer in London in 1941 he always had half-a-dozen bombs—and a couple of land-mines—on the go, in the Blitz. He always used to say that it wasn’t a question of
when
he’d be blown up, so much as
where
. In fact, the last time he came back he got the Head to set the sixth-form scholarship class a variation on the old
Would you save the baby or the Elgin Marbles
? question:
Would you save a row of houses in the East End or the local sewage works
? And, I tell you, that really stretched us. Because we’d never seen a sewage works, let alone an East End house.’

‘So what was his answer?’ Richardson fell into the trap.

‘He never got round to telling us.’ Having caught his man, Audley returned happily to Elizabeth. ‘If I’m wrong about Haddock, it’ll take you months to get any sort of lead, And if I’m not wrong it’ll take you forever. But in the meanwhile I want to get back to a bomb of my own at Cheltenham, which could go up any minute. So let’s hit this one with a bloody hammer … And if it goes off in our faces—if he laughs at us, and tells us that there isn’t one damn thing we can do now … because there isn’t one damn thing we
can
do—except maybe I can resign, and you can get a feather in your cap, if you want to wear a feather … if he laughs at us, that’ll be something better than nothing.’

‘I don’t want that sort of feather, David. But what if he doesn’t laugh?’

‘Oh, he’ll laugh—old Haddock’ll see the joke, whether it’s on him or us. He won’t have changed. Aged, maybe … but not changed.’ Audley nodded. ‘He should be just about ready for drinking now: aged in the wood.’ Another nod: he was excited, rather than pleased, at the prospect. ‘Besides which … if I don’t quit—and I’m damned if I’m going to quit for Oliver St John Latimer—what can they do to me? The way things are at Cheltenham, they need me more than I need them right now.’ Another nod. But this time the excitement was smoothed by rather smug confidence. ‘So what can they do to me?’

‘Oh, great! Bravo!’ murmured Richardson. ‘Vintage patriotism, 1984: “My country needs me—but it’s paying less than the going rate”. But you’re asking the wrong question, I suspect.’

‘And what is the right question?’

‘You may well ask!’ But Richardson didn’t seem disposed to answer.

Audley waited, and Elizabeth decided to wait too.

The landscape was closing in on them again. There were more orchards now, as well as vineyards—peaches, or almonds maybe, or even olives, but something exotic, anyway; but, more strange than the
flora
(and there was no sign of any
fauna
, except Frenchmen in French vehicles, which made the road even more foreign), was the suddenly-jagged landscape.

‘It’s not worth looking, Miss Loftus.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Just because you can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Or, anyway, that they haven’t got us covered. They’re at St Servan, anyway.’

‘I was looking at the countryside, actually.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Richardson drove in silence for a time. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Myself, I don’t like the French. But then my mother was Italian, so I suppose I’m biased. However … your Italian—he has his faults, but he wants to be a gentleman, even when he’s picking your pocket, or cutting your throat. But your Frenchman—he’s got style, but no one would ever accuse him of being a gentleman.’

‘Balderdash!’ said Audley. ‘Poppycock!’

‘Possibly,’ agreed Richardson equably. ‘But when it comes to self-interest—call it
La France
, if you like—he can be mean and smart, is what I mean.’

‘It isn’t what he means at all, Elizabeth,’ said Audley. ‘Come to the point,
Pietro
.’

‘Okay. Have it your own way.’ Richardson shrugged. ‘The further we drive up this pretty road—and if those clouds weren’t in the way you might just see Mont Ventoux, Miss Loftus—the further we drive up it, the queasier I feel.’ Another shrug. ‘If we were just tourists … but no one’s ever going to accuse
you
of being just a tourist, David … And if Andy Dale got just a whiff of KGB up there, at St Servan, before he glimpsed this French DST fellow … And now you say that it was the Yanks led you to this old boy in the first place—‘ Shrug ‘—God knows what he’s done—I don’t want to know, not now: I want to be able to say
Mein Gott! I voss only obeying orders: I voss only drivink ze car! —
just so we get in quickly, and then get out quickly. Will you at least do that?’

It was looking less and less like a good idea, and more and more like a stampeded amateurish error, thought Elizabeth. ‘We won’t stay for lunch, Mr Richardson. All right?’

‘I hope you won’t, Miss Loftus—I hope you won’t!’

‘There’s a two-star restaurant in St Servan,’ said Audley.

‘La Vieille Auberge.’ Richardson nodded. ‘Have you ever been in a French slammer, Miss Loftus?’

‘Shut up, Peter,’ said Audley. ‘Just drive.’

‘Onomatopoeic, Miss Loftus,’ said Richardson. ‘American slang for the sound of the prison door closing. And I’ll bet there isn’t a CIA man to be found in a thirty-mile radius of us now. Because they’re not nearly as stupid as their allies like to think.’

‘Shut up, Peter,’ said Audley again. ‘Just drive.’

Peter Richardson just drove.

‘Have you been in the field long, Miss Loftus?’ he said at length.

‘Drive, Peter,’ said Audley.

She couldn’t even concentrate properly on the countryside, after she found she couldn’t think straight. Not even when she saw a strange field, and caught a stranger smell. ‘Lavender,’ said Richardson obligingly. ‘Or a sort of lavender. What they grow is some sort of hybrid—the real stuff grows wild, higher up, with thyme and rosemary. I remember stopping off up here—oh, it must have been fifteen years ago—when I was driving my first girl down to Amalfi, to see my mother’s folks. We stopped off further north, though—Buis-les-Baronnies, it was … It was okay then, because there were no missiles on the Plateau d’Albion … Now, when I come over, I keep to the autoroute, just to be on the safe side.’

Eventually he stopped, quite deliberately.

‘Phone-box here, just round the corner. Got to make a call.’

Elizabeth sat in silence, until it became oppressive.

‘Have I made a mistake, David?’

Audley stared down the village street, in which nothing moved. ‘We all make mistakes. Maybe I made a mistake, a long time ago. If I did, then maybe we’ve both made another one now. Join the club.’

Richardson came back.

‘That’s okay. He’s just gone out on his terrace, to read his morning paper. He’ll have his coffee. And then some more coffee. By the time we get there he’ll be thinking about his first drink.’ He let in the clutch.

‘But I still don’t think I made a mistake, Elizabeth,’ said Audley.

Peter Richardson just drove, again.

There were hills now, and twisting valleys, up and down, and through and around, with scrubland rising up here and there above fertile fields, hinting at the wilder country of Peter Richardson’s real lavender. And—

And that had been the country to which Haddock Thomas had taken his beautiful scheming Delphi, long ago. And had he returned here to die here, because this was where he had once been happy?

And there were villages, set high up on one side, or low down on another—low down, but still on promontories in their valleys, each with its ruined medieval castle tower and its church—each at once different from the last one, yet identical.

It was perched on the side of a ridge—a plateau, almost—also just as different, but just the same—

‘I’ll go straight in, and drop you off outside his place. I can turn round at the top, somewhere … I have to come down a different way, but I’ll sound the horn—one short, one long, one short—as I come by, underneath his terrace. Then I’ll fill up the tank at the gas station, and I’ll have a drink at the
auberge
—
for an hour?’ Richardson glanced over his shoulder at Audley. ‘Same signal -okay?’