October Men (5 page)

“That’s right,” the General nodded at him, interested curiosity written in his frown. “I read that too.”

“He’s well off, Audley is,” Boselli felt his earlier panic subsiding as he drew on the facts—and that financial fact was always a prime one in any dossier. “At least, he’s got enough money of his own not to have to worry too much. So he can afford to pick and choose where he goes on holiday—and when.”

“I fail to see—“

But this time it was Villari who was interrupted, and by the General.

“You mean, only a fool would holiday in Rome at this time of year?” The General stared thoughtfully out of the big window at the midday glare. The sound of the city was hushed not only by the heat and the
mezzogiorno
, but because it was half empty: as many of the Romans as could abandon it had already done so, as they always did at this time of year.

“Mad dogs and Englishmen,” murmured Villari. “It’s a song of theirs.”

Boselli ignored him. “Only a fool, or a beginner, or someone who had no other holiday time. And he’s none of those. Or someone who had a job to do, a job that wouldn’t wait.”

“With his family in tow—and his
au pair
?” Villari sneered.

Trust him to remember the
au pair
. But this time Boselli was ready to meet him sneer for sneer. “The best cover in the world. It’s still fooling you, anyway.”

He sensed Villari’s hackles rising—the barnyard rooster insulted by a worm just out of its reach; or would the rooster become so incensed as to injure itself in a bid for vengeance?

But the man’s instinct hadn’t altogether deserted him—or it held him back for a moment, anyway, and in the next moment the General saved him.

“Go on, Boselli, go on! I’m listening.”

He saved Boselli too, by reminding him of the priority. Convincing the General was the important thing, and he could see now that there was one advantage he had which was even greater than his own eloquence: quite simply, the General wanted to be convinced.

It had nothing to do with the Englishman, who was no more than a means to an end. And the end must be the settling of some unfinished score with Ruelle.

“You said that the man Ruelle was dangerous once?”

“Very dangerous.”

“And could still be?”

“Men like that don’t change.”

Boselli nodded. “And I say that this Englishman is dangerous too. Not as Ruelle would have been—he is not an assassin or a thug. But he goes where there is trouble, and where he goes there is more trouble, one way or another.”

He had no need of explanation, because the General would not have passed him on unread files. Yet he needed to silence Villari finally.

“You only have to read his dossier to see it—it’s spotted with accidental deaths. There was some shopkeeper in ‘69—just about the time the KGB boss, Panin, was in England. Then there were those two Egyptian officials who were drowned in the Solent—their bodies were never found. And even while he was at the University of— of—“ he floundered momentarily, knowing that it was useless to open the file, which was in total disorder now.

“Cumbria,” said the General, his eyes bright.

“Cumbria,” Boselli nodded, the sweet tightness of success in his brain. “Two more accidents: the professor and the student—that was only a few months ago.”

“A trail of accidents,” the General murmured. “He does seem to make people … accident-prone.”

With a great effort Boselli held his tongue and assumed his mask of intelligent humility, knowing how his master’s mind worked and his own role in its working. He had seen too many overstated cases fail before this, as much because the General disliked having his mind made up for him as for any internal weakness of their own. His only worry now was that he had used his ingenuity in a decidedly doubtful cause. But he could always plead caution, which was more a virtue than a failing in this work, and to see Villari’s holiday spoilt by an unprofitable assignment in Rome would be worth a few harsh words from the General.

And already the Clotheshorse appeared to be most gratifyingly chastened, sitting in silence staring at his elegant handmade shoes while the General decided his fate.

Boselli had to work doubly hard to maintain his expression as his thoughts diverged from it. It was quite beautiful really: Villari would have to read the Audley files—the gorgeously disarranged Audley files—and then the Ruelle dossier. And after that he would probably have to follow Audley, and Audley’s wife and Audley’s baby and Audley’s
au pair
, through the stifling streets of Rome—or maybe tail Ruelle in some unspeakable suburban housing estate—all to no useful purpose.

It was so beautiful that he felt like singing—Cavaradossi’s aria “Vittoria” rose like a hymn of triumph within him.

“Very good!” The General looked from one to the other of them. “Boselli has read the files, Armando, and you haven’t had the chance yet—if you had I think you might very well have agreed with him.” He leant forward towards them with his elbows on the table, the knuckles of his clenched fists coming together with an audible crack. “When two potentially troublesome men like Audley and Ruelle come together then we cannot afford to ignore them. I’m inclined to believe that either the British or the Russians are up to something. With the progress of the Common Market negotiation they are both taking a hard line towards each other at the moment. The Russians don’t want the British to sign the Treaty of Rome, and the British know it. And as
we
know, they’re both prepared to play dirty to get what they want.”

Boselli’s jaw dropped in surprise. It wasn’t like the General to justify his decisions, least of all with aspects of high policy—and with mention of the Treaty of Rome he was lifting this non-starter into the realms of very high policy indeed.

“In any case,” the General went on harshly, “I do not intend them to create a scandal in Italy.”

“You mean—we send Audley packing?” There was a sudden hopeful note in Villari’s voice. “And there are plenty of ways of shutting up Ruelle—“

“That is exactly what I do
not
mean. You should know better than that, boy! We would simply be swapping men we know for others we might not.” The General gave Villari a pitying look and turned towards Boselli. “First I need to know why Audley is here, and why Ruelle is interested in him. And for that—“ he paused, and in that moment’s pause Boselli saw an awful unthinkable possibility bearing down on him, “I’m putting you both to work.”

Villari and Boselli stared at him speechlessly.

“Together,” said the General.

IT DIDN
’
T NEED
a ruddy genius to guess that someone had dropped their drawers, or wetted ‘em—or even lost the little darlings; not when they’d pulled him out of Dublin at ten minutes’ notice and bundled him on the first available flight, and all after they’d just turned down his transfer application flat.

It could be that the rumoured offensive against the Russian industrial espionage
apparat
was on at last; all they needed was an excuse, and the way the Moujiks had been chancing their arm recently, there ought to be one by now.

But Richardson knew enough now not to waste deep thought on infinite possibilities, which could vary from the sublime to the ridiculous. Better to conduct a requiem in his mind for the Guinness, which would be a ruddy sight dearer now, and for little Bernadette, who might worry for a day or two about the sudden disappearance of her passionate Italian boyfriend. She’d probably blame the British, as she always did, and just this once she’d be dead right.

Then he saw the familiar signpost.

It was like the poet said—Chapman’s Homer and stout what’s-‘is-name silent on his peak in Darien: Upper Horley meant Steeple Horley, and Steeple Horley meant David Audley, and David Audley meant something one hundred per cent better than pissing around Dublin pubs on wet evenings.

He hadn’t asked the driver because it was bad form as well as agin’ the rules to ask. But now he didn’t need to pop the question:
It was David
.

David was a shit, and maybe you couldn’t trust him much. And there were times when he was more than a bit of a bore, when he started theorising and moralising and soul-searching.

But David was also nobody’s yes-man. He didn’t give one damn for the bosses—he had proved that when the crunch came. And—this above all—David always got the really interesting jobs which nobody else dared touch. At least, he always got ‘em in the end.

He grinned to himself and stretched for sheer joy—and caught the driver beside him grinning too. So the man had noticed his reaction to the signpost, and understood it and even shared it. And that was interesting in itself, if not a brand new piece of information: it was the people below David who liked him, for his courtesy if for nothing else, while the people alongside and just above him disliked him in what was probably an inverse ratio to how much they needed him.

Good old David! There were inverted chevrons on his coat-of-arms, which was carved over the door of the Old House, but there ought to have been two fingers, raised and improper.

The shock came when they were halfway up the drive to the house, when the rain-caped policeman materialised out of a gap in the hedge to stop the car.

The driver clicked the door lock and wound down the window the regulation half-inch.

“We’re expected,” he said casually, before the policeman could speak. “Bennett and Captain Richardson.”

“Would you please show me your identification, sir?”

“After I’ve seen your warrant card.”

Face immobile, the policemen felt under his cape for the folder and then posted it through the gap. Behind him Richardson could see a civilian and another uniformed man. He caught a glimpse of sergeant’s stripes on the arm that was lifted to take back the warrant card and collect their own folders.

They’d got a sergeant on the gate, checking the visitors—a sergeant in the rain, doing the job while his underlings looked on. Christ! It shook him almost as much as the first sight of the high blue helmet: first the discretion—no police cars parked in view anywhere so far— and then this too-high-ranking gateman, two sure signs of the worst sort of trouble.

The car crawled up the last few yards of drive slowly, and the house was still standing at least. But neither David’s new grey Austin nor Faith’s white Mini were among the half dozen cars parked in the forecourt. He scanned them for one he could identify, but without success.

“Captain Richardson?”

Another policeman had come out to intercept them. The place was crawling with them.

“Would you like to go straight in, sir?”

Inside the front door there was another policeman. And there was also Oliver St. John Latimer.

Richardson and Oliver St. John Latimer regarded each other with concealed distaste. Ordinarily he would not have worried Richardson in the least, because although he was considerably senior and brainier, he was also in Richardson’s carefully considered opinion a pompous, arse-licking timeserver—you couldn’t throw a snowball at Sir Frederick Clinton’s backside without hitting Fatso in the back of the neck.

But he was also an enemy of David’s, and here he was walking about David’s house as though he owned it, with an insufferably smug smile on his chops. So it was necessary to tread a little carefully.

“Where’s David?” Richardson smiled sweetly. “And where’s Faith, come to that? What’s up?”

Latimer returned the smile with a smirk. “You’d better ask Brigadier Stacker, old boy.”

“I’ll do just that when I know where he is—or is that a secret too?”

“Just follow me, old boy.”

Fighting off the temptation to kick the fat backside undulating just ahead of him, Richardson followed Latimer to the long, low-beamed sitting room.

“Ah, Peter!” Stocker took the pipe from his mouth and held out his other hand in welcome—a friendly gesture which somehow seemed as insincere as a whore’s smile, at least in this setting; Stocker was another one with not so much breeding as brains, or he wouldn’t have tried to welcome one man at another man’s hearth. Nevertheless, there was a good, tough peasant streak under this ersatz behavior, which made him a man to reckon with, as well as an acceptable boss.

“Hullo, sir.” Richardson decided to keep things as casual as possible, if only to give Oliver St. John Latimer less gratification. But the cold question was unavoidable. “Where’s David and his missus?”

“As far as I know, they’re both in Rome at this moment,” replied Stocker, eyeing him unblinkingly.

“Oh …” He couldn’t quite keep the relief out of his breath. “… then what are all the bluebottles for? I was beginning to think there’d been a death in the family.”

“There’s been a death right enough. A burglar was shot dead here last night.”

Richardson stared at him, his brain adjusting to the information and amending it. Not a burglar, that was for sure—not a burglar. For whatever Brigadier Thomas Stocker and Master Oliver St. John Latimer were interested in, it wasn’t dead burglars.

“Who was he?”

“The burglar? We don’t know.”

It hardly needed amplifying: the sort of person who broke into David Audley’s home and interested Stocker and Latimer wouldn’t be carrying his home address and next of kin.

“We’re working on it though,” continued Stocker. “We don’t have his—a—face to go on, but his prints are undamaged.”

“He got it in the face?”

Stocker nodded.

“From whom? Who shot him?”

“David’s handyman or gardener, I’m not quite sure which he is.”

“Old Charlie?”

“That’s right. Charles Clark. It seems he thought some young hooligans had broken in—they seem to have been causing trouble round here—at least that’s what his wife said at first. But we haven’t been able to get a coherent word out of him so far.”

Charlie was big and slow—slow in mind and body. Yet he was also slow to anger, not the sort to shoot first and ask second.

“You’re quite sure it was Charlie?”

“Not the least doubt about it. His wife had gone to fetch the village policeman—they found him sitting at the foot of the stairs crying his heart out, with his shotgun across his knees. And on the top of the landing there was this chap with half his head blown off.”