The Memory Trap (20 page)

‘Miss Franklin—‘ He caught her still in mid-gape at Mitchell ‘—so … what are the Russians doing, then?’

‘The Russians?’ She frowned at him.

‘Dr Mitchell says that everyone is—ah—“buddy-buddy”.’ He pronounced the Americanism with pretended distaste. ‘But I don’t think he was including the KGB in that happy condition—were you, Dr Mitchell?’

‘No.’ Mitchell came in happily on cue. “There’s been some interesting coming-and-going in the new trade mission, Len Aston reports. But that’s all to do with some Anglo-Soviet wooden furniture factory project, allegedly. Which they’re thinking of switching from the north-east to the Welsh valleys. Only they could be bringing in some reinforcements perhaps, he thinks. But no
glasnost
of the sort you’re suggesting—if that’s what you’re suggesting?’

‘Well, it’s about bloody-time that there was, by God! Where are you parked?’

‘Round the back.’ Mitchell frowned. ‘Why d’you want to know?’

‘I want to borrow your car.’

‘My car? Over my dead body! You’ve already got—‘ Mitchell stopped abruptly.

‘The new departmental Rover?’ He could see that Mitchell understood. But so too, unfortunately, did Mary Franklin, judging by her obstinate expression. ‘I don’t want to be followed—“protected”—where I’m going. Either by you, Miss Franklin, or by Mossad.’

She hadn’t expected that. ‘Mossad?’

‘Colonel Shapiro is upstairs, my dear. I’ve just been talking to him. And the red-headed fellow at the bar belongs to him. And they’ll be watching my car, even if they haven’t added one of their bugs to yours.’ This wasn’t betraying Jake: it was merely using him to get her off his back, he reassured himself Jesuitically. ‘I believe I now know where I can find Peter Richardson—where he is waiting for me. But if I turn up anywhere near his safe-house with anyone on my tail he’ll be off again, like on Capri. And I’m not having that.’

‘David—‘

‘I shall be perfectly safe this time. Apart from which I have work for you both.’

They looked at each other.

‘What work?’ Mitchell sighed.

‘What work, Dr Audley?’

‘I want you, Paul, to make sure I’m
not
followed.’ There wasn’t the slightest likelihood that Jake would try anything so stupid. But it would keep Mitchell occupied. ‘And I want you to contact Henry Jaggard, Miss Franklin. Because I’ve got work for him, too.’

Mary Franklin stared at him even more intently. ‘What work, Dr Audley?’

‘I want him to set up a meeting with the Russians as soon as possible.’ He met the stare arrogantly. ‘Because I don’t think we’ve got much time.’

‘Much time … before what?’

‘Either before Lukianov clinches his deal. Or before the Russians get him themselves, just as they got Prusakov. Which may be preferable. But which isn’t acceptable to me.’

She breathed out slowly. ‘Is this because of what Shapiro has told you?’

‘Partly. But partly also because, whatever Lukianov is engaged in, I’d guess that the Russians must be close to him by now, the way they’ve been pulling out all the stops. Because they’ve always had the inner track—he was
their
man before he ran … as well as a head start after Berlin, even though they were too late with Kulik.’

‘But … they haven’t got Richardson, Dr Audley.’

‘That’s exactly right, Miss Franklin: Richardson will be
our
strength. Because he was
our
man once … That is, if you don’t frighten him off now.’ He nodded at her. ‘If I can bring him in, then Henry Jaggard will have something to bargain with tomorrow. You tell him that: tell him to tell General Voyshinski that Dr Audley and Major Richardson have been talking together about the old days. That might spark a bit of much-needed
glasnost
in him.’

EVERYTHING
depended on memory now.

First, there were the old precautions, even though he was tolerably certain that, of all cars, Mitchell’s ridiculous pride-and-joy would not be bugged for easy following as the office Rover had been. But here, in the darkness and solitude of this deep Cotswold countryside of tiny roads and rolling hills, he had the advantage, anyway: no vehicle could move in it without lights, and from each crest the undisturbed night behind reassured him.

His only fear was that he wouldn’t find the place again, after so many years: here, the darkness was not his friend, forcing him to drive by the map, squinting at every signpost, noting the mileages he had memorized, and finally counting off the side-roads in the maze until he found the track on its hillside at last.

But then, quite suddenly, he was sure, against all doubt. There were dangers out there—all the old horrors, and the
negotium perambulans in tenebris
—
the Foul Fiend himself, if not General Lukianov. But they were far away. And this was the place. Because, in a world of untruth and half-truth, Her Majesty’s Ordnance Survey maps and his own memory never lied.

Even … although the track was narrower than he remembered, and the hedges higher … he was prepared for the unavoidable potholes, including the boggy stretch where the spring on the hillside above oozed out of the bank and crossed the track without the luxury of a culvert.

Everthing depended on memory
—

The cottage comforted him even more, it was so photographically exact. The years had added a few feet to the slow-growing holly-trees, and to the magnolia which had struggled bravely annually with the English winters and the late spring frosts, just as his own did at home. And the Porsche’s fiercely-glaring headlights yellowed the Cotswold stonework and turned the moss black on the slates of the roof while taking out all the colour from the autumn flowers by the porch. Yet every difference served only to confirm his memory of the place.

For a moment after he extinguished the car’s lights the darkness engulfed him again, and the newly-loosened knot in his stomach tightened again. Then the porch-light snapped on before he reached the door.

As he stepped into the circle of light he heard a chain jangle on the other side of the door, then the snap of a bolt. Then the door opened as far as the chain would allow.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I hope so, Mrs Kenyon.’ She had spoken so softly that he didn’t even try to recall the voice. And she was standing at such an angle to the porch-light that he couldn’t see her face while she could see his. ‘Is it Mrs Kenyon?’

‘What d’you want?’

The relief which came after certainty was almost an anti-climax. ‘You remember me, Mrs Kenyon. I came here once, with a friend of yours—one morning long ago. We stayed for lunch. Your husband was in hospital at the time. You were busy planting the garden—begonias and petunias. It was in May … My name’s Audley—David Audley. You remember me, don’t you?’

She breathed out: it was as though she had held her breath as he had re-created his day in May long ago for her. ‘I remember you, Dr Audley.’

‘Then you know what I want, Mrs Kenyon. Can I come in?’

Sophie Kenyon chewed on that for a moment. ‘I remember you. But I’d still like to see your identification.’

‘Of course.’ He waited patiently. ‘Very sensible.’

‘Thank you.’ But she remained unmoving. ‘Is there anyone with you?’

‘No. I am quite alone, Mrs Kenyon. I have been very careful, I do assure you.’ He smiled at her. ‘Quite alone. Quite unarmed. And quite cold.’

She unchained the door. One step down, he remembered. And then mind the beams (although that did not call for any special memory-trick: the old English had been a stunted race, and he had learnt to stoop automatically in parts of his own home from his fifteenth year onwards).

The smell of the house refined remembrance further. Every house had its smell, but old-house smells were more individual and distinctive, mostly derived from the working of damp on their building materials. And in this house the damp had been memorable; although now there were hints of wood-smoke and hot cooking added to it, as one might expect in October. And also, just possibly,
dog
(he wrinkled his nose at that:
dog
he couldn’t recall from that last time, as he surely ought to if there had been one: it would have barked its way into his memory then; and, as an after-dark visitor
now
, it ought to have barked even louder at his arrival this evening).

‘You know where to go?’ There was a curious intentness in the question.

‘It’s this door, isn’t it?’ There damn-well
was
a dog-paw scratch mark on the lowest corner of the door, all the same—he caught himself staring at it.

‘Yes. What’s the matter?’

Warmth and more pronounced wood-smoke greeted him. The curtains and the chair-covers and the carpet were different, but the room and the major things in it were the same.

‘Have you got a dog?’ In spite of himself, he couldn’t resist the question.

‘Yes.’ She stared at him, for a fraction of a second incredulously, but then with a slow smile. ‘So it
is
true, then.’

‘What’s true?’

‘He said you’d come. Would you like a drink?’

What he would like, he thought, was to follow up that cooking smell: it promised something he hadn’t had for more days than he cared to think about, never mind since the day before yesterday: a good square English home-cooked dinner—preferably with cabbage. ‘Thank you. A very small scotch?’ In the full light of her sitting-room he could study her for the first—or, more accurately, the
second
time. ‘What’s true, Mrs Kenyon?’

She poured two very small scotches and handed one of them to him. The years, he thought, had been kind and not-kind to her: she still had her figure and the natural grace to go with it. But fifteen Cotswold winters, at least some of which must have been lavished on her dying husband (and the rest of which had presumably been wasted on loneliness and good works? But now he was making pictures!) … those fifteen winters had added Cotswold grey to her.

‘He’s not here at the moment, Dr Audley,’ she said simply.

‘No?’ He took comfort from the lack of emphasis on “here”. ‘But not too far away, I hope?’

She considered him and his question together across her small untouched scotch. ‘You really are alone, Dr Audley?’

‘You called me “David” once—after Peter had introduced me, Mrs Kenyon. And I then called you “Sophie” over lunch, I remember.’

The smile, slow as before but gentler for the memory, returned. ‘And what did we have for lunch … when we were “David” and “Sophie” … David?’

‘I don’t remember. Salad, was it?’

‘So you’re not perfect!’ She nodded, nevertheless.

She was not an enemy. But she was something much more worrying than that to a man running out of time. ‘Not quite perfect. But alone.’ He felt time at his back. ‘I do need to see him very badly, though. And the longer you delay our meeting, the less certain I can be that either of us will be able to stay out of trouble.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘What sort of trouble?’

It was always the same: to get more he had to give more. ‘He told you what happened on Capri, did he?’

The eyebrow came down. ‘Yes. But he doesn’t know why it happened, he also told me.’

‘He thinks he doesn’t, perhaps.’ He shook his head at her. ‘But he does.’

She stared at him for another over-long moment. ‘What he thinks … is that you are a very dangerous man, David. You were in the old days. And you still are.’

Audley sighed. It was not unreasonable on Peter Richardson’s part that he should think that—however unjustly. ‘I don’t know about dangerous. More like
endangered, I
would say.’

Another long stare. But for that ailing husband and her Catholic scruples she would have been Peter Richardson’s woman long ago, not just his friend and his friend’s wife. So now she was more than all of that.

‘But you get people killed.’ It was a statement, not an accusation.

He had to correct it, nevertheless. ‘When I make mistakes, people get killed sometimes. Peter was a soldier—he should understand that.’ He felt the iron entering his soul. ‘And now, if I don’t get to talk to him very soon, more people are going to get killed.’ He could almost taste the iron: it was because, if he let himself be, he was tired as well as hungry. ‘Almost certainly, whatever we do, I think that more people are going to get killed. But it may be within our power … how many. Or whether they’re the innocent ones or the guilty.’

She didn’t reply. But this time she nodded, and then reached down into the hearth. Audley watched her as she lit a candle with a thin wooden spill and placed the brass candlestick on the ledge of a tiny window to the right of the stone chimney-breast.

Then he met her eyes. ‘Did he go out as soon as he heard the car?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s been indoors all day—ever since I collected him late last night, in fact.’

He must have got his skates on
! Audley thought admiringly. But then, in his line of retirement-business and with his training, Peter would have had his contingency plans worked out, right down to passports, spare cash and safe houses.

Which, of course, brought him to the old moment-of-truth, which they had rehearsed together on that unfor-gettable-unforgotten night, straight out of Kipling, on which they had both relied now:
If
one told thee that all had been betrayed, what wouldst thou do?
—
I
would run away. It might be true
!

Now she smiled again at him. ‘He wanted a breath of air, he said. But … he’s been watching all day, through John’s old field-glasses, out of the attic windows front and back.’ The smile trembled slightly, and the corner of her unpainted lip turned down. ‘He said that, if anyone came in daylight, it wouldn’t be you. But he didn’t think you’d be so quick—or so careless.’ She looked down at his glass. ‘Would you like another drink, David?’

He looked down at his glass, which had somehow emptied itself. ‘Only if I’m not driving—and if you’ve got enough supper for three—?’

‘I always make too much.’ The smile turned up again. ‘Although Peter’s done most of the cooking: we’re having spaghetti bolognese. Only with a lot more meat than is proper, apparently. So there’ll be enough, I’m sure.’