DESMOND BAGLEY
The Enemy

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1977

Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1977

Cover layout design Richard Augustus © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

Source ISBN: 9780008211295

Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780008211301

Version: 2018-02-16

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Enemy

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

THE ENEMY

DEDICATION

To all the DASTards

especially

Iwan and Inga

Jan and Anita

Hemming and Annette

ONE

I met Penelope Ashton at a party thrown by Tom Packer. That may be a bit misleading because it wasn’t the kind of party that gets thrown very far; no spiked punch or pot, and no wife-swapping or indiscriminate necking in the bedrooms at two in the morning. Just a few people who got together over a civilized dinner with a fair amount of laughter and a hell of a lot of talk. But it did tend to go on and what with Tom’s liberal hand with his after-dinner scotches I didn’t feel up to driving, so when I left I took a taxi.

Penny Ashton came with Dinah and Mike Huxham; Dinah was Tom’s sister. I still haven’t worked out whether I was invited as a makeweight for the odd girl or whether she was brought to counterbalance me. At any rate when we sat at table the sexes were even and I was sitting next to her. She was a tall, dark woman, quiet and composed in manner and not very forthcoming. She was no raving beauty, but few women are; Helen of Troy may have launched a thousand ships but no one was going to push the boat out for Penny Ashton, at least not at first sight. Not that she was ugly or anything like that. She had a reasonably good figure and a reasonably good face, and she dressed well. I think the word to describe her would be average. I put her age at about twenty-seven and I wasn’t far out. She was twenty-eight.

As was usual with Tom’s friends, the talk ranged far and wide; Tom was a rising star in the upper reaches of the medical establishment and he was eclectic in his choice of dining companions and so the talk was good. Penny joined in but she tended to listen rather than talk and her interjections were infrequent. Gradually I became aware that when she did speak her comments were acute, and there was a sardonic cast to her eye when she was listening to something she didn’t agree with. I found her spikiness of mind very agreeable.

After dinner the talk went on in the living-room over coffee and brandy. I opted for scotch because brandy doesn’t agree with me, a circumstance Tom knew very well because he poured one of his measures big enough to paralyse an elephant and left the jug of iced water convenient to my elbow.

As is common on these occasions, while the dinner-table conversation is general and involves everybody, after dinner the party tended to split into small groups, each pursuing their congenial arguments and riding their hobby-horses hard and on a loose rein. To my mild surprise I found myself opting for a group of two – myself and Penny Ashton. I suppose there were a dozen of us there, but I settled in a corner and monopolized Penny Ashton. Or did she monopolize me? It could have been six of one and half-a-dozen of the other; it usually is in cases like that.

I forget what we talked about at first but gradually our conversation became more personal. I discovered she was a research biologist specializing in genetics and that she worked with Professor Lumsden at University College, London. Genetics is the hottest and most controversial subject in science today and Lumsden was in the forefront of the battle. Anyone working with him would have to be very bright indeed and I was suitably impressed. There was a lot more to Penny Ashton than met the casual eye.

Some time during the evening she asked, ‘And what do you do?’

‘Oh, I’m someone in the City,’ I said lightly.

She got that sardonic look in her eye and said reprovingly, ‘Satire doesn’t become you.’

‘It’s true!’ I protested. ‘Someone’s got to make the wheels of commerce turn.’ She didn’t pursue the subject.

Inevitably someone checked his watch and discovered with horror the lateness of the hour, and the party began to break up. Usually the more congenial the party the later the hour, and it was pretty late. Penny said, ‘My God – my train!’

‘Which station?’

‘Victoria.’

‘I’ll drop you,’ I said and stood up, swaying slightly as I felt Tom’s scotch. ‘From a taxi.’

I borrowed the telephone and rang for a taxi, and then we stood around making party noises until it arrived. As we were driven through the brightly-lit London streets I reflected that it had been a good evening; it had been quite a while since I’d felt so good. And it wasn’t because of the quality of Tom’s booze, either.

I turned to Penny. ‘Known the Packers long?’

‘A few years. I was at Cambridge with Dinah Huxham – Dinah Packer she was then.’

‘Nice people. It’s been a good evening.’

‘I enjoyed it.’

I said, ‘How about repeating it – just the two of us? Say, the theatre and supper afterward.’

She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘All right.’ So we fixed a time for the following Wednesday and I felt even better.

She wouldn’t let me come into the station with her so I kept the taxi and redirected it to my flat. It was only then I realized I didn’t know if she was married or not, and I tried to remember the fingers of her left hand. Then I thought I was a damned fool; I hardly knew the woman so what did it matter if she was married or not? I wasn’t going to marry her myself, was I?

On the Wednesday I picked her up at University College at seven-fifteen in the evening and we had a drink in a pub near the theatre before seeing the show. I don’t like theatre crush bars; they’re too well named. ‘Do you always work as late as this?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘It varies. It’s not a nine-to-five job, you know. When we’re doing something big we could be there all night, but that doesn’t happen often. I laboured tonight because I was staying in town.’ She smiled. ‘It helped me catch up on some of the paperwork.’

‘Ah; the paperwork is always with us.’

‘You ought to know; your job is all paperwork, isn’t it?’

I grinned. ‘Yes; shuffling all those fivers around.’

So we saw the show and I took her to supper in Soho and then to Victoria Station. And made another date for the Saturday.

And, as they say, one thing led to another and soon I was squiring her around regularly. We took in more theatres, an opera, a couple of ballets, a special exhibition at the National Gallery, Regent’s Park Zoo, something she wanted to see at the Natural History Museum, and a trip down the river to Greenwich. We could have been a couple of Americans doing the tourist bit.

After six weeks of this I think we both thought that things were becoming pretty serious. I, at least, took it seriously enough to go to Cambridge to see my father. He smiled when I told him about Penny, and said, ‘You know, Malcolm, you’ve been worrying me. It’s about time you settled down. Do you know anything about the girl’s family?’

‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘From what I can gather he’s some sort of minor industrialist. I haven’t met him yet.’

‘Not that it matters,’ said my father. ‘I hope we’ve gone beyond snobberies like that. Have you bedded the girl yet?’

‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘We’ve come pretty close, though.’

‘Um!’ he said obscurely, and began to fill his pipe. ‘It’s been my experience here at the college that the rising generation isn’t as swinging and uninhibited as it likes to think it is. Couples don’t jump bare-skinned into a bed at the first opportunity – not if they’re taking each other seriously and have respect for each other. Is it like that with you?’

I nodded. ‘I’ve had my moments in the past, but somehow it’s different with Penny. Anyway, I’ve known her only a few weeks.’

‘You remember Joe Patterson?’

‘Yes.’ Patterson was head of one of the departments of psychology.

‘He reckons the ordinary man is mixed up about the qualities he wants in a permanent partner. He once told me that the average man’s ideal wife-to-be is a virgin in the terminal stages of nymphomania. A witticism, but with truth in it.’

‘Joe is a cynic.’

‘Most wise men are. Anyway, I’d like to see Penny as soon as you can screw up your courage. Your mother would have been happy to see you married; it’s a pity about that.’

‘How are you getting on, Dad?’

‘Oh, I rub along. The chief danger is of becoming a university eccentric; I’m trying to avoid that.’

We talked of family matters for some time and then I went back to London.

It was at this time that Penny made a constructive move. We were in my flat talking over coffee and liqueurs; she had complimented me on the Chinese dinner and I had modestly replied that I had sent out for it myself. It was then that she invited me to her home for the weekend. To meet the family.

TWO

She lived with her father and sister in a country house near Marlow in Buckinghamshire, a short hour’s spin from London up the M4. George Ashton was a widower in his mid-fifties who lived with his daughters in a brick-built Queen Anne house of the type you see advertised in a fullpage spread in Country Life. It had just about everything. There were two tennis-courts and one swimming-pool; there was a stable block converted into garages filled with expensive bodies on wheels, and there was a stable block that was still a stable block and filled with expensive bodies on legs – one at each corner. It was a Let’s-have-tea-on-the-lawn sort of place; The-master-will-see-you-in-the-library sort of place. The good, rich, upper-middle-class life.

George Ashton stood six feet tall and was thatched with a strong growth of iron-grey hair. He was very fit, as I found out on the tennis-court. He played an aggressive, hard-driving game and I was hard put to cope with him even though he had a handicap of about twenty-five years. He beat me 5–7, 7–5, 6–3, which shows his stamina was better than mine. I came off the court out of puff but Ashton trotted down to the swimming-pool, dived in clothed as he was, and swam a length before going into the house to change.

I flopped down beside Penny. ‘Is he always like that?’

‘Always,’ she assured me.

I groaned. ‘I’ll be exhausted just watching him.’

Penny’s sister, Gillian, was as different from Penny as could be. She was the domestic type and ran the house. I don’t mean she acted as lady of the house and merely gave the orders. She ran it. The Ashtons didn’t have much staff; there were a couple of gardeners and a stable girl, a house-man-cum-chauffeur called Benson, a full-time maid and a daily help who came in for a couple of hours each morning. Not much staff for a house of that size.

Gillian was a couple of years younger than Penny and there was a Martha and Mary relationship between them which struck me as a little odd. Penny didn’t do much about the house as far as I could see, apart from keeping her own room tidy, cleaning her own car and grooming her own horse. Gillian was the Martha who did all the drudgery, but she didn’t seem to mind and appeared to be quite content. Of course, it was a weekend and it might have been different during the week. All the same, I thought Ashton would get a shock should Gillian marry and leave to make a home of her own.

It was a good weekend although I felt a bit awkward at first, conscious of being on show; but I was soon put at ease in that relaxed household. Dinner that evening, cooked by Gillian, was simple and well served, and afterwards we played bridge. I partnered Penny and Ashton partnered Gillian, and soon I found that Gillian and I were the rabbits. Penny played a strong, exact and carefully calculated game, while Ashton played bridge as he played tennis, aggressively and taking chances at times. I observed that the chances he took came off more often than not, but Penny and I came slightly ahead at the end, although it was nip and tuck.

We talked for a while until the girls decided to go to bed, then Ashton suggested a nightcap. The scotch he poured was not in the same class as Tom Packer’s but not far short, and we settled down for a talk. Not unexpectedly he wanted to know something about me and was willing to trade information, so I learned how he earned his pennies among other things. He ran a couple of manufacturing firms in Slough producing something abstruse in the chemical line and another which specialized in high-impact plastics. He employed about a thousand men and was the sole owner, which impressed me. There are not too many organizations like that around which are still in the hands of one man.

Then he enquired, very politely, what I did to earn my bread, and I said, ‘I’m an analyst.’

He smiled slightly. ‘Psycho?’

I grinned. ‘No – economic. I’m a junior partner with McCulloch and Ross; we’re economic consultants.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of your crowd. What exactly is it that you do?’

‘Advisory work of all sorts-market surveys, spotting opportunities for new products, or new areas for existing products, and so on. Also general economic and financial advice. We do the general dogsbodying for firms which are not big enough to support their own research group. ICI wouldn’t need us but a chap like you might.’

He seemed interested in that. ‘I’ve been thinking of going public,’ he said. ‘I’m not all that old, but one never knows what may happen. I’d like to leave things tidy for the girls.’

‘It might be very profitable for you personally,’ I said. ‘And, as you say, it would tidy up the estate in the event of your death – make the death duties bit less messy.’ I thought about it for a minute. ‘But I don’t know if this is the time to float a new issue. You’d do better to wait for an upturn in the economy.’

‘I’ve not entirely decided yet,’ he said. ‘But if I do decide to go public then perhaps you can advise me.’

‘Of course. It’s exactly our line of work.’

He said no more about it and the conversation drifted to other topics. Soon thereafter we went to bed.

Next morning after breakfast – cooked by Gillian – I declined Penny’s invitation to go riding with her, the horse being an animal I despise and distrust. So instead we walked where she would have ridden and went over a forested hill along a broad ride, and descended the other side into a sheltered valley where we lunched in a pub on bread, cheese, pickles and beer, and where Penny demonstrated her skill at playing darts with the locals. Then back to the house where we lazed away the rest of the sunny day on the lawn.

I left the house that evening armed with an invitation to return the following weekend, not from Penny but from Ashton. ‘Do you play croquet?’ he asked.

‘No, I don’t.’

He smiled. ‘Come next weekend and I’ll show you how. I’ll have Benson set up the hoops during the week.’

So it was that I drove back to London well contented.

I have given the events of that first weekend in some detail in order to convey the atmosphere of the place and the family. Ashton, the minor industrialist, richer than others of his type because he ran his own show; Gillian, his younger daughter, content to be dutifully domestic and to act as hostess and surrogate wife without the sex bit; and Penny the bright elder daughter, carving out a career in science. And she was bright; it was only casually that weekend I learned she was an MD although she didn’t practise.

And there was the money. The Rolls, the Jensen and the Aston Martin in the garages, the sleek-bodied horses, the manicured lawns, the furnishings of that beautiful house – all these reeked of money and the good life. Not that I envied Ashton – I have a bit of money myself although not in the same class. I mention it only as a fact because it was there.

The only incongruity in the whole scene was Benson, the general factotum, who did not look like anyone’s idea of a servant in a rich household. Rather, he looked like a retired pugilist and an unsuccessful one at that. His nose had been broken more than once in my judgement, and his ears were swollen with battering. Also he had a scar on his right cheek. He would have made a good heavy in a Hammer film. His voice clashed unexpectedly with his appearance, being soft and with an educated accent better than Ashton’s own. I didn’t know what to make of him at all.

Something big was apparently happening in Penny’s line of work that week, and she rang to say she would be in the laboratory all Friday night, and would I pick her up on Saturday morning to take her home. When she got into the car outside University College she looked very tired, with dark smudges under her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Malcolm,’ she said. ‘This won’t be much of a weekend for you. I’m going to bed as soon as I get home.’

I was sorry, too, because this was the weekend I intended to ask her to marry me. However, this wasn’t the time, so I grinned and said, ‘I’m not coming to see you – I’m coming for the croquet.’ Not that I knew much about it – just the bit from Alice and an association with vicars and maiden ladies.

Penny smiled, and said, ‘I don’t suppose I should tell you this, but Daddy says he can measure a man by the way he plays croquet.’

I said, ‘What were you doing all night?’

‘Working hard.’

‘Doing what? Is it a state secret?’

‘No secret. We transferred genetic material from a virus to a bacterium.’

‘Sounds finicky,’ I remarked. ‘With success, I hope.’

‘We won’t know until we test the resulting strain. We should know something in a couple of weeks; this stuff breeds fast. We hope it will breed true.’

What I knew about genetics could be measured with an eye-dropper. I said curiously, ‘What good does all this do?’

‘Cancer research,’ she said shortly, and laid her head back, closing her eyes. I left her alone after that.

When we got to the house she went to bed immediately. Other than that the weekend was much the same as before. Until the end, that is – then it changed for the worse. I played tennis with Ashton, then swam in the pool, and we had lunch on the lawn in the shade of a chestnut tree, just the three of us, Ashton, Gillian and me. Penny was still asleep.

After lunch I was introduced to the intricacies of match-play croquet and, by God, there was a vicar! Croquet, I found, is not a game for the faint-hearted, and the way the Reverend Hawthorne played made Machiavelli look like a Boy Scout. Fortunately he was on my side, but all his tortuous plotting was of no avail against Gillian and Ashton. Gillian played a surprisingly vicious game. Towards the end, when I discovered it’s not a game for gentlemen, I quite enjoyed it.

Penny came down for afternoon tea, refreshed and more animated than she had been, and from then on the weekend took its normal course. Put down baldly on paper, as I have done here, such a life may be considered pointless and boring, but it wasn’t really; it was a relief from the stresses of the working week.

Apparently Ashton did not get even that relief because after tea he retired to his study, pleading that he had to attend to paperwork. I commented that Penny had complained of the same problem, and he agreed that putting unnecessary words on paper was the besetting sin of the twentieth century. As he walked away I reflected that Ashton could not have got where he was by idling his time away playing tennis and croquet.

And so the weekend drifted by until it was nearly time for me to leave. It was a pleasant summer Sunday evening. Gillian had gone to church but was expected back at any moment; she was the religious member of the family – neither Ashton nor Penny showed any interest in received religion. Ashton, Penny and I were sitting in lawn chairs arguing a particularly knotty point in scientific ethics which had arisen out of an article in the morning newspaper. Rather, it was Penny and her father doing the arguing; I was contemplating how to get her alone so I could propose to her. Somehow we had never been alone that weekend.

Penny was becoming a little heated when we heard a piercing scream and then another. The three of us froze, Penny in mid-sentence, and Ashton said sharply, ‘What the devil was that?’

A third scream came. It was nearer this time and seemed to be coming from the other side of the house. By this time we were on our feet and moving, but then Gillian came into sight, stumbling around the corner of the house, her hands to her face. She screamed again, a bubbling, wordless screech, and collapsed on the lawn.

Ashton got to her first. He bent over her and tried to pull her hands from her face, but Gillian resisted him with all her strength. ‘What’s the matter?’ he yelled, but all he got was a shuddering moan.

Penny said quickly, ‘Let me,’ and gently pulled him away. She bent over Gillian who was now lying on her side curled in a foetal position, her hands still at her face with the fingers extended like claws. The screams had stopped and were replaced by an extended moaning, and once she said, ‘My eyes! Oh, my eyes!’

Penny forced her hand to Gillian’s face and touched it with her forefinger, rubbing gently. She frowned and put the tip of her finger to her nose, then hastily wiped it on the grass. She turned to her father. ‘Take her into the house quickly – into the kitchen.’

She stood up and whirled towards me in one smooth motion. ‘Ring for an ambulance. Tell them it’s an acid burn.’

Ashton had already scooped up Gillian in his arms as I ran to the house, brushing past Benson as I entered the hall. I picked up the telephone and rang 999 and then watched Ashton carry his daughter through a doorway I had never entered, with Penny close behind him.

A voice said in my ear, ‘Emergency services.’

‘Ambulance.’

There was a click and another voice said immediately, ‘Ambulance service.’ I gave him the address and the telephone number. ‘And your name, sir?’

‘Malcolm Jaggard. It’s a bad facial acid burn.’

‘Right, sir; we’ll be as quick, as we can.’

As I put down the phone I was aware that Benson was staring at me with a startled expression. Abruptly he turned on his heel and walked out of the house. I opened the door to the kitchen and saw Gillian stretched on a table with Penny applying something to her face. Her legs were kicking convulsively and she was still moaning. Ashton was standing by and I have never seen on any man’s face such an expression of helpless rage. There wasn’t much I could do there and I’d only be in the way so I closed the door gently.

Looking through the big window at the far end of the hall, I saw Benson walking along the drive. He stopped and bent down, looking at something not on the drive but on the wide grass verge. I went out to join him and saw what had attracted his attention; a car had turned there, driving on the grass, and it had done so at speed because the immaculate lawn had been chewed up and the wheels had gouged right down to the soil.

Benson said in his unexpectedly gentle voice, ‘As I see it, sir, the car came into the grounds and was parked about there, facing the house. When Miss Gillian walked up someone threw acid in her face here.’ He pointed to where a few blades of grass were already turning brown. ‘Then the car turned on the grass and drove away.’

‘But you didn’t see it.’

‘No, sir.’

I bent and looked at the wheel marks. ‘I think this should be protected until the police get here.’

Benson thought for a moment. ‘The gardener made some hurdles for the new paddock. I’ll get those.’

‘That should do it,’ I agreed.

I helped him bring them and we covered the marks. I straightened as I heard the faint hee-haw of an ambulance, becoming louder as it approached. That was quick – under six minutes. I walked back to the house and rang 999 again.

‘Emergency services.’

‘The police, please.’

Click. ‘Police here.’

‘I want to report a criminal assault.’

THREE

They got Gillian into the ambulance very quickly. Penny used her authority as a doctor and went into the ambulance with her, while Ashton followed in a car. I judged he was in no condition to drive and was pleased to see Benson behind the wheel when he left.

Before he went I took him on one side. ‘I think you ought to know I’ve sent for the police.’

He turned a ravaged face towards me and blinked stupidly. ‘What’s that?’ He seemed to have aged ten years in a quarter of an hour.

I repeated what I’d said, and added, ‘They’ll probably come while you’re still at the hospital. I can tell them what they need to know. Don’t worry about it. I’ll stay here until you get back.’

‘Thanks, Malcolm.’

I watched them drive away and then I was alone in the house. The maid lived in, but Sunday was her day off, and now Benson had gone there was no one in the house but me. I went into the living-room, poured myself a drink and lit a cigarette, and sat down to think of just what the hell had happened.

Nothing made sense. Gillian Ashton was a plain, ordinary woman who lived a placid and unadventurous life. She was a homebody who one day might marry an equally unadventurous man who liked his home comforts. Acid-throwing wasn’t in that picture; it was something that might happen in Soho or the murkier recesses of the East End of London – it was incongruous in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

I thought about it for a long time and got nowhere. Presently I heard a car drive up and a few minutes later I was talking to a couple of uniformed policemen. I couldn’t tell them much; I knew little about Gillian and not much more about Ashton and, although the policemen were polite, I sensed an increasing dissatisfaction. I showed them the tracks and one of them stayed to guard them while the other used his car radio. When I looked from the window a few minutes later I saw he had moved the police car so he could survey the back of the house.

Twenty minutes later a bigger police gun arrived in the person of a plain clothes man. He talked for a while with the constable in the car, then walked towards the house and I opened the door at his knock. ‘Detective-Inspector Honnister,’ he said briskly. ‘Are you Mr Jaggard?’

‘That’s right. Won’t you come in?’

He walked into the hall and stood looking around. As I closed the door he swung on me. ‘Are you alone in the house?’

The constable had been punctilious about his ‘sirs’ but not Honnister. I said, ‘Inspector, I’m going to show you something which I shouldn’t but which, in all fairness to yourself, I think you ought to see. I’m quite aware my answers didn’t satisfy your constable. I’m alone in Ashton’s house, admit to knowing hardly anything about the Ashtons, and he thinks I might run away with the spoons.’

Honnister’s eyes crinkled. ‘From the look of it there’s a lot more to run away with here than spoons. What have you to show me?’

‘This.’ I dug the card out of the pocket which my tailor builds into all my jackets and gave it to him.

Honnister’s eyebrows rose as he looked at it. ‘We don’t get many of these,’ he commented. ‘This is only the third I’ve seen.’ He flicked at the plastic with his thumbnail as he compared me with the photograph. ‘You realize I’ll have to test the authenticity of this.’

‘Of course. I’m only showing it to you so you don’t waste time on me. You can use this telephone or the one in Ashton’s study.’

‘Will I get an answer this time on Sunday?’

I smiled. ‘We’re like the police, Inspector; we never close.’

I showed him into the study and it didn’t take long. He came out within five minutes and gave me back the card. ‘Well, Mr Jaggard; got any notions on this?’

I shook my head. ‘It beats me. I’m not here in a professional capacity, if that’s what you mean.’ From his shrewd glance I could see he didn’t believe me, so I told of my relationship with the Ashtons and all I knew of the attack on Gillian which wasn’t much.

He said wryly, ‘This is one we’ll have to do the hard way, then – starting with those tracks. Thank you for your co-operation, Mr Jaggard. I’d better be getting on with it.’

I went with him to the door. ‘One thing, Inspector; you never saw that card.’

He nodded abruptly and left.

Ashton and Penny came back more than two hours later. Penny looked as tired as she had the previous morning, but Ashton had recovered some of his colour and springiness. ‘Good of you to stay, Malcolm,’ he said. ‘Stay a little longer – I want to talk to you. Not now, but later.’ His voice was brusque and he spoke with authority; what he had issued was not a request but an order. He strode across the hall and went into the study. The door slammed behind him. I turned to Penny. ‘How’s Gillian?’

‘Not very good,’ she said sombrely. ‘It was strong acid, undiluted. Who would do such a barbarous thing?’

‘That’s what the police want to know.’ I told her something of my conversation with Honnister. ‘He thinks your father might know something about this. Does he have any enemies?’

‘Daddy!’ She frowned. ‘He’s very strong-minded and single-minded, and people like that don’t go through life without treading on a few toes. But I can’t think he’d make the kind of enemy who would throw acid into his daughter’s face.’

Somehow I couldn’t, either. God knows some funny things go on in the economic and industrial jungles, but they rarely include acts of gratuitous violence. I turned as Benson came out of the kitchen carrying a tray on which were a jug of water, an unopened bottle of whisky and two glasses. I watched him go into the study then said, ‘What about Gillian?’

Penny stared at me. ‘Gillian!’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re not suggesting Gillian could make that kind of enemy? It’s preposterous.’

It was certainly unlikely but not as impossible as Penny thought. Quiet homebodies have been known to lead exotic and secret lives, and I wondered if Gillian had done anything else on her shopping trips into Marlow besides buying the odd pound of tea. But I said tactfully, ‘Yes, it’s unlikely.’

As I helped Penny get together a scratch meal she said, ‘I tried to neutralize the acid with a soda solution, and in the ambulance they had better stuff than that. But she’s in the intensive care unit at the hospital.’

We had rather an uncomfortable meal, just the two of us because Ashton wouldn’t come out of the study, saying he wasn’t hungry. An hour later, when I was wondering if he’d forgotten I was there, Benson came into the room. ‘Mr Ashton would like to see you, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ I made my excuses to Penny and went into the study. Ashton was sitting behind a large desk but rose as I entered. I said, ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this awful thing should have happened.’

He nodded. ‘I know, Malcolm.’ His hand grasped the whisky bottle which I noted was now only half full. He glanced at the tray, and said, ‘Be a good chap and get yourself a clean glass.’

‘I’d rather not drink any more this evening. I still have to drive back to town.’

He put down the bottle gently and came from behind the desk. ‘Sit down,’ he said, and thus began one of the weirdest interviews of my life. He paused for a moment. ‘How are things with you and Penny?’

I looked at him consideringly. ‘Are you asking if my intentions are honourable?’

‘More or less. Have you slept with her yet?’

That was direct enough. ‘No.’ I grinned at him. ‘You brought her up too well.’

He grunted. ‘Well, what are your intentions – if any?’

‘I thought it might be a good idea if I asked her to marry me.’

He didn’t seemed displeased at that. ‘And have you?’

‘Not yet.’

He rubbed the side of his jaw reflectively. ‘This job of yours – what sort of income do you make out of it?’

That was a fair question if I was going to marry his daughter. ‘Last year it was a fraction over £8000; this year will be better.’ Aware that a man like Ashton would regard that as chickenfeed I added, ‘And I have private investments which bring in a further £11,000.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You still work with a private income?’

‘That £11.000 is before tax,’ I said wryly, and shrugged. ‘And a man must do something with his life.’

‘How old are you?’

Thirty-four.’

He leaned back in his chair and said musingly, ‘£8000 year isn’t bad – so far. Any prospects of advancement in the firm?’

‘I’m bucking for it.’

He then asked me a couple of questions which were a damned sight more personal than digging into my finances but, again, in the circumstances they were fair and my answers seemed to satisfy him.

He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘You could do better by changing your job. I have an opening which is ideal for a man like yourself. Initially you’d have to spend at least one year in Australia getting things off the ground, but that wouldn’t hurt a couple of youngsters like you and Penny. The only trouble is that it must be now – almost immediately.’

He was going too fast for me. ‘Hold on a moment,’ I protested. ‘I don’t even know if she’ll marry me.’

‘She will,’ he said positively. ‘I know my daughter.’

He evidently knew her better than I did because I wasn’t nearly so certain. ‘Even so,’ I said. ‘There’s Penny to consider. Her work is important to her. I can’t see her throwing it up and going to Australia for a year just like that. And that’s apart from anything I might think about the advisability of making a change.’

‘She could take a sabbatical. Scientists do that all the time.’

‘Maybe. Frankly, I’d need to know a lot more about it before making a decision.’

For the first time Ashton showed annoyance. He managed to choke it down and disguise it, but it was there. He thought for a moment, then said in conciliatory tones, ‘Well, a decision on that might wait a month. I think you’d better pop the question, Malcolm. I can fix a special licence and you can get married towards the end of the week.’ He tried to smile genially but the smile got nowhere near his eyes which still had a hurt look in them. ‘I’ll give you a house for a dowry – somewhere in the South Midlands, north of London.’

It was a time for plain speaking. ‘I think you’re going a bit too fast. I don’t see the necessity for a special licence. In fact, it’s my guess that Penny wouldn’t hear of it, even if she does agree to marry me. I rather think she’d like to have Gillian at the wedding.’

Ashton’s face crumpled and he seemed about to lose what little composure he had. I said evenly. ‘It was always in my mind to buy a house when I married. Your offer of a house is very generous, but I think the kind of house it should be – and where it should be – are matters for Penny and me to decide between us.’

He stood up, walked to the desk, and poured himself a drink. With his back to me he said indistinctly, ‘You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t interfere. But will you ask her to marry you – now?’

‘Now! Tonight?’

‘Yes.’

I stood up. ‘Under the circumstances I consider that entirely inappropriate, and I won’t do it. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go back to town.’

He neither turned nor made an answer. I left him there and closed the study door quietly behind me. I was at a loss to understand his driving insistence that Penny and I should marry quickly. That, and the offer of the job in Australia, had me worried. If this was the way he engaged his staff, not to mention picking a son-in-law, I was surprised how he’d got to where he was.

Penny was telephoning when I entered the hall. She replaced the receiver and said, ‘I’ve been talking to the hospital; they say she’s resting easier.’

‘Good! I’ll be back tomorrow evening and we’ll go to see her. It might make her feel better to have someone else around, even a comparative stranger like me.’

‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ said Penny, doubtfully. ‘She might be … well, self-conscious about her appearance.’

‘I’ll come anyway and we can decide then. I have to go now – it’s late.’ She saw me to my car and I kissed her and left, wondering what kind of bee was buzzing in Ashton’s bonnet.

FOUR

Next morning, when I walked into the office I shared with Larry Godwin, he looked up from the Czechoslovakian trade magazine he was reading and said, ‘Harrison wants to see you.’ Harrison was our immediate boss.

‘Okay.’ I walked straight out again and into Harrison’s office, sat in the chair before the desk, and said, ‘Morning, Joe. Larry said you wanted to see me.’

Harrison was a bit of a stuffed shirt, very keen on formality, protocol and the line of authority. He didn’t like me calling him Joe, so I always did it just to needle him. He said stiffly, ‘On checking the weekend telephone log I found you had disclosed yourself to a police officer. Why?’

‘I was at a house-party over the weekend. There was a nasty incident – one of the daughters of the house had acid thrown in her face. She was taken to hospital and, when the police pitched up, I was alone in the house and they started to get off on the wrong foot. I didn’t want them wasting time on me, so I disclosed myself to the officer in charge.’

He shook his head disapprovingly and tried to hold me in what he supposed to be an eagle-like stare. ‘His name?’

‘Detective-Inspector Honnister. You’ll find him at the cop-shop in Marlow.’ Harrison scribbled in his desk book, and I leaned forward. ‘What’s the matter, Joe? We’re supposed to co-operate with the police.’

He didn’t look up. ‘You’re not supposed to disclose yourself to all and sundry.’

‘He wasn’t all and sundry. He was a middle-ranking copper doing his job and getting off to a bad start.’

Harrison raised his head. ‘You needn’t have done it. He would never seriously suspect you of anything.’

I grinned at him. The way you tell it co-operation is a one-way street, Joe. The cops co-operate with us when we need them, but we don’t co-operate with them when all they need is a little setting straight.’

‘It will be noted in your record.’ he said coldly.

‘Stuff the record,’ I said, and stood up. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me I have work to do.’ I didn’t wait for his permission to leave and went back to my office.

Larry had switched to something in Polish. ‘Have a good weekend?’

‘A bit fraught. Who’s pinched our Who’s Who?’

He grinned. ‘What’s the matter? Wouldn’t she play?’ He fished out Who’s Who from among the piles of books which cluttered his desk and tossed it to me. Our job called for a lot of reading; when I retired I’d be entitled to a disability pension due to failing eyesight incurred in the line of duty.

I sat at my desk and ran through the ‘A’s and found that Ashton was not listed. There are not many men running three or more factories employing over a thousand men who are not listed in Who’s Who. It seemed rather odd. On impulse I took the telephone directory and checked that, and he was not listed there, either. Why should Ashton have an ex-directory number?

I said, ‘Know anything about high-impact plastics, Larry?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘A chap called Ashton runs a factory in Slough making the stuff. I could bear to know a little more about him.’

‘Haven’t heard of him. What’s the name of the firm?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know much. There might be a trade association.’

‘Great thinking.’ I went to our library and an hour later knew there were more associations of plastics manufacturers than I wotted of – there was even one devoted to high-impact plastics – but none of them had heard of George Ashton. It seemed unnatural.

Gloomily I went back to my office. It’s a hard world where a man can’t check up on his prospective father-in-law. Ashton, as of that moment, knew a hell of a lot more about me than I knew about him. Larry saw my face and said, ‘No luck?’

‘The man keeps a bloody low profile.’

He laughed and waved his hand across the room. ‘You could ask Nellie.’

I looked at Nellie and grinned. ‘Why not?’ I said lightly, and sat at the console.

You don’t have to cuddle up to a computer to ask it questions – all you need is a terminal, and we called ours Nellie for no reason I’ve ever been able to determine. If you crossed an oversized typewriter with a television set you’d get something like Nellie, and if you go to Heathrow you’ll see dozens of them in the booking hall.

Where the computer actually was no one had bothered to tell me. Knowing the organization that employed me, and knowing a little of what was in the monster’s guts, I’d say it was tended by white-coated acolytes in a limestone cavern in Derbyshire, or at the bottom of a Mendip mineshaft; anywhere reasonably safe from an atomic burst. But, as I say, I didn’t really know. My crowd worked strictly on the ‘need to know’ principle.

I snapped a couple of switches, pushed a button, and was rewarded by a small green question mark on the screen. Another button push made it ask:

IDENTIFICATION?

I identified myself – a bit of a complicated process – and Nellie asked:

CODE?

I answered:

GREEN

Nellie thought about that for a millionth of a second, then came up with:

INPUT GREEN CODING

That took about two minutes to put in. We were strict about security and not only did I have to identify myself but I had to know the requisite code for the level of information I wanted.

Nellie said:

INFORMATION REQUIRED?

I replied with:

IDENTITY

MALE

ENGLAND

The lines flicked out as Nellie came back with:

NAME?

I typed in:

ASHTON, GEORGE

It didn’t seem to make much difference to Nellie how you put a name in. I’d experimented a bit and whether you put in Percy Bysshe Shelley – Shelley, Percy Bysshe – or even Percy Shelley, Bysshe – didn’t seem to matter. Nellie still came up with the right answer, always assuming that Bysshe Shelley, Percy was under our eagle eye. But I always put the surname first because I thought it would be easier on Nellie’s overworked little brain.

This time she came up with:

ASHTON, GEORGE – 3 KNOWN

PRESENT ADDRESS – IF KNOWN?

There could have been two hundred George Ashtons in the country or maybe two thousand. It’s a common name and not surprising that three should be known to the department. As I typed in the address I reflected that I was being a bit silly about this. I tapped the execute key and Nellie hesitated uncharacteristically. Then I had a shock because the cursor scrolled out:

THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE GREEN TRY CODE YELLOW

I looked pensively at the screen and tapped out:

HOLD QUERY

Dancing electronically in the guts of a computer was a whole lot of information about one George Ashton, my future father-in-law. And it was secret information because it was in Code Yellow. I had picked up Larry Godwin on a joke and it had backfired on me; I hadn’t expected Nellie to find him at all – there was no reason to suppose the department was interested in him. But if he had been found I would have expected him to be listed under Code Green, a not particularly secretive batch of information. Practically anything listed under Code Green could have been picked up by an assiduous reading of the world press. Code Yellow was definitely different.

I dug into the recesses of my mind for the coding of yellow, then addressed myself to Nellie. ‘Right, you bitch; try again!’ I loaded in the coding which took four minutes, then I typed out:

RELEASE HOLD

Nellie’s screen flickered a bit and the cursor spelled out:

THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE YELLOW TRY CODE RED

I took a deep breath, told Nellie to hold the query, then sat back to think about it. I was cleared for Code Red and I knew the information there was pretty much the same as the code colour – redhot! Who the hell was Ashton, and what was I getting into? I stood up and said to Larry, ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t interfere with Nellie.’

I took a lift which went down deep into the guts of the building where there lived a race of troglodytes, the guardians of the vaults. I presented my card at a tungsten-steel grille, and said, ‘I’d like to check the computer coding for red. I’ve forgotten the incantation.’

The hard-faced man behind the grille didn’t smile. He merely took the card and dropped it into a slot. A machine chewed on it for a moment, tasted it electronically, and liked the flavour but, even so, spat it out. I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t liked the flavour; probably I’d have been struck down by a bolt of lightning. Strange how the real world is catching up with James Bond.

The guard glanced at a small screen. ‘Yes, you’re cleared for red, Mr Jaggard,’ he said, agreeing with the machine. The grille swung open and I passed through, hearing it slam and lock behind me. ‘The coding will be brought to you in Room Three.’

Half an hour later I walked into my office, hoping I could remember it all. I found Larry peering at Nellie. ‘Do you have red clearance?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Yellow is my top.’

‘Then hop it. Go to the library and study Playboy or something elevating like that. I’ll give you a ring when I’m finished.’

He didn’t argue; he merely nodded and walked out. I sat at the console and loaded Code Red into Nellie and it took nearly ten minutes of doing the right things in the right order. I wasn’t entirely joking when I called it an incantation. When faced with Nellie I was always reminded of the medieval sorcerers who sought to conjure up spirits; everything had to be done in the right order and all the right words spoken or the spirit wouldn’t appear. We haven’t made much progress since then, or not too much. But at least our incantations seem to work and we do get answers from the vasty deep, but whether they’re worth anything or not I don’t know.

Nellie accepted Code Red or, at least, she didn’t hiccough over it.

I keyed in:

RELEASE HOLD

and waited with great interest to see what would come out. The screen flickered again, and Nellie said:

THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE RED TRY CODE PURPLE

Purple! The colour of royalty and, possibly, of my face at that moment. This was where I was stopped – I was not cleared for Code Purple. I was aware it existed but that’s about all. And beyond purple there could have been a whole rainbow of colours visible and invisible, from infrared to ultra-violet. As I said, we worked on the ‘need to know’ principle.

I picked up the telephone and rang Larry. ‘You can come back now; the secret bit is over.’ Then I wiped Nellie’s screen clean and sat down to think of what to do next.

FIVE

A couple of hours later I was having a mild ding-dong with Larry. He wasn’t a bad chap but his ideals tended to get in the way of his job. His view of the world didn’t exactly coincide with things as they are, which can be a bit hampering because a man can make mistakes that way. A spell of field work would have straightened him out but he’d never been given the chance.

My telephone rang and I picked it up. ‘Jaggard here.’

It was Harrison. His voice entered my ear like a blast of polar air. ‘I want you in my office immediately.’

I put down the phone. ‘Joe’s in one of his more frigid moods. I wonder how he gets on with his wife.’ I went to see what he wanted.

Harrison was a bit more than frigid – he could have been used to liquefy helium. He said chillily, ‘What the devil have you been doing with the computer?’

‘Nothing much. Has it blown a fuse?’

‘What’s all this about a man called Ashton?’

I was startled. ‘Oh, Christ!’ I said. ‘Nellie is a tattle-tale, isn’t she? Too bloody gossipy by half.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Just talking to myself.’

‘Well, now you can talk to Ogilvie. He wants to see us both.’

I think I gaped a bit. I’d been with the department for six years and I’d seen Ogilvie precisely that number of times; that’s to talk with seriously. I sometimes bumped into him in the lift and he’d exchange pleasantries courteously enough and always asked to be remembered to my father. My monkeying with Nellie must have touched a nerve so sore that the whole firm was going into a spasm.

‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ snapped Harrison. ‘He’s waiting.’

Waiting with Ogilvie was a short, chubby man who had twinkling eyes, rosy cheeks and a sunny smile. Ogilvie didn’t introduce him. He waved Harrison and me into chairs and plunged in medias res. ‘Now, Malcolm; what’s your interest in Ashton?’

I said, ‘I’m going to marry his daughter.’

If I’d said I was going to cohabit with the Prince of Wales I couldn’t have had a more rewarding reaction. The clouds came over Mr Nameless; his smile disappeared and his eyes looked like gimlets. Ogilvie goggled for a moment, then barked, ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m going to marry his daughter,’ I repeated. ‘What’s the matter? Is it illegal?’

‘No, it’s not illegal,’ said Ogilvie in a strangled voice. He glanced at Mr Nameless as though uncertain of what to do next. Mr Nameless said, ‘What reason did you have for thinking there’d be a file on Ashton?’

‘No reason. It was suggested jokingly that I try asking Nellie, so I did. No one was more surprised than I when Ashton popped up.’

I swear Ogilvie thought I was going round the twist. ‘Nellie!’ he said faintly.

‘Sorry, the computer.’

‘Was this enquiry in the course of your work?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was personal and private. I’m sorry about that and I apologize for it. But some odd things have been going on around Ashton over the weekend and I wanted to check him out.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Someone threw acid into his daughter’s face and …’

Mr Nameless cut in. ‘The girl you intend to marry?’

‘No – the younger girl, Gillian. Later on Ashton behaved a bit strangely.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ogilvie. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Last night.’ I paused. ‘I had to disclose myself to a copper, so it came through on the weekend telephone log. Joe and I discussed it this morning.’

Ogilvie switched to Harrison. ‘You knew about this?’

‘Only about the acid. Ashton wasn’t mentioned.’

‘You didn’t ask me,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t know Ashton was so bloody important until Nellie told me afterwards.’

Ogilvie said, ‘Now let me get this quite right.’ He stared at Harrison. ‘A member of your staff in this department reported to you that he’d been involved in police enquiries into an acid-throwing attack, and you didn’t even ask who was attacked. Is that it?’

Harrison twitched nervously. Mr Nameless paused in the act of lighting a cigarette and said smoothly. ‘I think this is irrelevant. Let us get on with it.’

Ogilvie stabbed Harrison with a glance which told him that he’d hear more later. ‘Of course. Do you think this is serious?’

‘It could be very serious,’ said Mr Nameless. ‘But I think we’re very lucky. We already have an inside man.’ He pointed the cigarette at me just as Leonard Bernstein points his baton at the second violins to tell them to get scraping.

I said, ‘Now, hold on a minute. I don’t know what this is about, but Ashton is going to be my father-in-law. That’s bringing things very close to home. You can’t be seriously asking me to …’

‘You’re not being asked,’ said Mr Nameless coolly. ‘You’re being told.’

‘The hell with that,’ I said roundly.

Momentarily he looked startled, and if ever I thought those eyes had twinkled it was then I changed my mind. He glanced at Ogilvie, and said, ‘I know this man has a good record, but right now I fail to see how he achieved it.’

‘I’ve said it once this morning, but I’ll say it again,’ I said. ‘Stuff my record.’

‘Be quiet, Malcolm,’ said Ogilvie irritably. He turned to Harrison. ‘I don’t think we need you any more, Joe.’

Harrison’s expression managed to mirror simultaneously shock, outrage, curiosity and regret at having to leave. As the door closed behind him Ogilvie said, ‘I think a valid point has been made. It’s not good for an agent to be emotionally involved. Malcolm, what do you think of Ashton?’

‘I like him – what I know of him. He’s not an easy man to get to know, but then I haven’t had much chance yet; just a couple of weekends’ acquaintanceship.’

‘A point has been made,’ conceded Mr Nameless. He twinkled at me as though we were suddenly bosom friends. ‘And in rather unparliamentary language. But the fact remains that Mr Jaggard, here, is on the inside. We can’t just toss away that advantage.’

Ogilvie said smoothly, ‘I think that Malcolm will investigate the circumstances around Ashton as soon as it is properly explained to him why he should.’

‘As to that,’ said Mr Nameless, ‘you mustn’t overstep the limits. You know the problem.’

‘I think it can be coped with.’

Mr Nameless stood up. ‘Then that’s what I’ll report.’

When he had gone Ogilvie looked at me for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘Malcolm, you really can’t go about telling high-ranking civil servants to get stuffed.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said reasonably. ‘I told him to stuff my record. I didn’t even tell him where to stuff it.’

‘The trouble with people like you who have private incomes is that it makes you altogether too bloody independent-minded. Now that, while being an asset to the department, as I told his lordship before you came in, can make things difficult for your colleagues.’

His lordship! I didn’t know if Ogilvie was being facetious or not.

He said, ‘Will you take things a bit easier in future?’

That wasn’t asking too much, so I said, ‘Of course.’

‘Good. How’s your father these days?’

‘I think he’s a bit lonely now that Mother’s dead, but he bears up well. He sends you his regards.’

He nodded and checked his watch. ‘Now you’ll lunch with me and tell me everything you know about Ashton.’

SIX

We lunched in a private room above a restaurant at which Ogilvie seemed to be well known. He made me begin right from the beginning, from the time I met Penny, and I ended my tale with the abortive checking out of Ashton and my confrontation with Nellie. It took a long time to tell.

When I had finished we were over the coffee cups. Ogilvie lit a cigar and said, ‘All right; you’re supposed to be a trained man. Can you put your finger on anything unusual?’

I thought a bit before answering. ‘Ashton has a man called Benson. I think there’s something peculiar there.’

‘Sexually, you mean?’

‘Not necessarily. Ashton certainly doesn’t strike me as being double-gaited. I mean it’s not the normal master-and-servant relationship. When they came back from the hospital last night they were closeted in Ashton’s study for an hour and a half, and between them they sank half a bottle of whisky.’

‘Um,’ said Ogilvie obscurely. ‘Anything else?’

‘The way he was pressuring me into marrying Penny was bloody strange. I thought at one time he’d bring out the traditional shotgun.’ I grinned. ‘A Purdy, of course – for formal weddings.’

‘You know what I think,’ said Ogilvie. ‘I think Ashton is scared to death; not on his own behalf but on account of his girls. He seems to think that if he can get your Penny away from him she’ll be all right. What do you think?’

‘It fits all right,’ I said. ‘And I don’t like one damned bit of it.’

‘Poor Ashton. He didn’t have the time to polish up a scheme which showed no cracks, and he sprang it on you too baldly. I’ll bet he pulled that Australian job out of thin air.’

‘Who is Ashton?’ I asked.

‘Sorry; I can’t tell you that.’ Ogilvie blew a plume of smoke. ‘I talked very high-handedly to that chap this morning. I told him you’d take on the job as soon as you knew what was involved, but he knew damned well that I can’t tell you a thing. That’s what he was objecting to in an oblique way.’

‘This is bloody silly,’ I said.

‘Not really. You’ll only be doing what you’d be doing anyway, knowing what you know now.’

‘Which is?’

‘Bodyguarding the girl. Of course, I’ll ask you to bodyguard Ashton, too. It’s a package deal, you see; one automatically includes the other.’

‘And without knowing the reason why?’

‘You know the reason why. You’ll be guarding Penelope Ashton because you don’t want her to get a faceful of sulphuric acid, and that should be reason enough for any tender lover. As for Ashton – well, our friend this morning was right. A commander can’t tell his private soldiers his plans when he sends them into battle. He just tells them where to go and they pick up their feet.’

‘The analogy is false, and you know it,’ I said. ‘How can I guard a man if I don’t know who or what I’m guarding him against? That’s like sending a soldier into battle not only without telling him where the enemy is, but who the enemy is.’

‘Well, then,’ said Ogilvie tranquilly. ‘It looks as though you’ll have to do it for the sake of my bright blue eyes.’

He had me there and I think he knew it. I had an idea that Mr Nameless, whoever he was, could be quite formidable and Ogilvie had defused what might have been a nasty situation that morning. I owed him something for it. Besides, the cunning old devil’s eyes were green.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But it isn’t a one-man job.’

‘I’m aware of that. Spend this afternoon thinking out your requirements – I want them on my desk early tomorrow morning. Oh, by the way – you don’t disclose yourself.’

I opened my mouth and then closed it again slowly before I swore at him. Then I said, ‘You must be joking. I have to guard a man without telling him I’m guarding him?’

‘I’m sure you’ll do it very well,’ he said suavely, and rang for the waiter.

‘Then you’ll be astonished at what I’ll need,’ I said acidly.

He nodded, then asked curiously, ‘Hasn’t it disturbed you that you’ll be marrying into a rather mysterious family?’

‘It’s Penny I’m marrying, not Ashton.’ I grinned at him. ‘Aren’t you disturbed for the same reason?’

‘Don’t think I’m not,’ he said seriously, and left me to make of that what I could.

SEVEN

When I got back to the office Larry Godwin looked me up and down critically. ‘I was just about to send out a search party. The griffin is that you’ve been given a real bollocking. I was just about to go down to the cellar to see if they really do use thumbscrews.’

‘Nothing to it,’ I said airily. ‘I was given the RSPCA medal for being kind to Joe Harrison – that’s all.’

‘Very funny,’ he said acidly, and flapped open a day-old copy of Pravda. ‘The only time you’ll get a medal is when you come with me when I get my knighthood.’ He watched me putting a few things in a bag. ‘Going somewhere?’

‘I won’t be around for a couple of days or so.’

‘Lucky devil. I never get out of this bloody office.’

‘You will one day,’ I said consolingly. ‘You have to go to Buck House to get a knighthood.’ I leaned against the desk. ‘You really should be in Slav Section. Why did you opt for General Duties?’

‘I thought it would be more exciting,’ he said, and added sourly, ‘I was wrong.’

‘With you around, the phrase “as happy as Larry” takes on an entirely new meaning.’ I thought he was going to throw something at me so I ducked out fast.

I drove to Marlow and found the police station. My name presented to the desk sergeant got me Honnister in jig time. He shared an office with another inspector and when I indicated a desire for privacy Honnister shrugged and said, ‘Oh, well; we can use an interview room. It’s not as comfortable as here, though.’

‘That’s all right.’

The other copper closed a file and stood up. ‘I’m going, anyway. I don’t want to pry into your girlish secrets, Charlie.’ He gave me a keen glance as he went out. He’d know me again if he saw me.

Honnister sat at his desk and scowled. ‘Secretive crowd, your lot.’

I grinned. ‘I don’t see you wearing a copper’s uniform.’

‘I had one of your blokes on the blower this morning – chap by the name of Harrison – threatening me with the Tower of London and unnameable tortures if I talk about you.’

I sat down. ‘Joe Harrison is a silly bastard, but he means well.’

‘If anyone knows how to keep secrets it’s a copper,’ said Honnister. ‘Especially one in the plain clothes branch. I know enough local secrets to blow Marlow apart. Your chap ought to know that.’ He sounded aggrieved.

I cursed Harrison and his ham-fisted approach; if he’d queered my pitch with the local law I’d string him up by the thumbs when I got back. I said, ‘Inspector, I told you last night I had no official connection with Ashton. It was true then, but it is no longer true. My people now have a definite interest.’

He grunted. ‘I know. I’ve been asked to make an extra copy of all my reports on the Ashton case. As though I don’t have enough to do without producing a lot of bloody bumf for people who won’t even give me the time of day without consulting the Official Secrets Act.’ His resentment was growing.

I said quickly, ‘Oh, hell; you can forget that nonsense – just as long as I can see your file copies.’

‘You got authority for that?’

I smiled at him. ‘A man has all the authority he can take. I’ll carry the can if there’s a comeback.’

He stared at me and then his lips curved in amusement. ‘You and me will get on all right,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘First, how’s the girl?’

‘We haven’t been allowed to talk to her so she must be pretty bad. And I need a description. I don’t even know the sex of the assailant.’

‘So that means no visitors.’

‘None except the family. Her sister has been at the hospital most of the day.’

I said, ‘I think I might be able to help you there. Suppose I got Penny to ask Gillian for a description. That would do to be going on with until you can ask her yourself.’ He nodded. ‘I won’t be seeing her until later. Where will you be tonight?’

‘Theoretically off duty. But I’ll be sinking a couple of pints in the Coach and Horses between nine and ten. I’m meeting someone who might give me a lead on another case. You can ring me there. Doyle, the landlord, knows me.’

‘Okay. Now, how have you got on with the acid?’

Honnister shrugged. ‘About as far as you’d expect. It’s battery acid, and the stuff’s too common. There are filling stations all around here, and then it might have come from somewhere else.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘To me this has the smell of a London job.’

‘Have you seen Ashton?’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve seen Ashton. He says he can think of absolutely no reason why his daughter should be attacked in such a manner. No reason whatsoever. It was like talking to a bloody stone wall.’

‘I’ll be talking to him myself tonight. Maybe I’ll get something.’

‘Does he know who – and what – you are?’

‘No, he doesn’t; and he mustn’t find out, either.’

‘You blokes lead interesting lives,’ said Honnister, and grinned crookedly. ‘And you wanting to marry his daughter, too.’

I smiled. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘Just pieced it together from what you told me last night, and from what one of the uniformed boys picked up when talking over a cuppa with the Ashtons’ maid. I told you I hear secrets – and I’m not a bad jack, even though I say it myself.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Tell me a few secrets about Ashton.’

‘Not known to the police. Not criminally. The CPO had a few words with him.’

‘CPO?’

‘Crime Prevention Officer. There are a lot of big houses around here full of expensive loot worth nicking. The CPO calls in to check on the burglar-proofing. You’d be surprised how stupid some of these rich twits can be. A man will fill his house with a quarter of a million quids’ worth of paintings and antiques and balk at spending a couple of thousand on keeping the stuff safe.’

‘How is Ashton’s burglar-proofing?’

Honnister grinned. ‘It might rank second to the Bank of England,’ he conceded.

That interested me. ‘Anything more on Ashton?’

‘Nothing relevant. But he wasn’t the one who was attacked, was he?’ He leaned forward. ‘Have you thought of the possibility that Gillian Ashton might have been sleeping in the wrong bed? There are two things I think of when I hear of an acid attack on a woman; the first is that it could be a gangland punishment, and the other is that it’s one woman taking revenge on another.’

‘I’ve thought of it. Penny discounts it, and I don’t go much for it myself. I don’t think she’s the kind.’

‘Maybe, but I’ve been doing a bit of nosing around. I haven’t come up with anything yet, but I can’t discount it.’

‘Of course you can’t.’

I stood up, and Honnister said, ‘Don’t expect too much too quickly. In fact, don’t expect anything at all. I’ve no great hopes of this case. Anyway, we’ve not gone twenty-four hours yet.’

That was so, and it surprised me. So much had happened that day that it seemed longer. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in touch tonight.’

EIGHT

I drove in the direction of Ashton’s house and cruised around slowly, making circuits on the country roads and looking for anything out of the ordinary such as cars parked on the verge with people in them doing nothing in particular. There was nothing like that so after an hour of futility I gave up and drove directly to the house.

The gates were locked but there was a bell-push which I pressed. While I waited I studied the gates in the light of what Honnister had said about Ashton’s burglar-proofing. They were of ornamental wrought-iron, about ten feet high, very spiky on top, and hung on two massive stone pillars. They barred an opening in an equally high chainmesh fence, unobtrusive because concealed by trees, which evidently circled the estate. All very good, but the gates hadn’t been closed the day before.

Presently a man came down the drive, dressed in rough country clothes. I hadn’t seen him before. He looked at me through the gates and said curtly, ‘Yes?’

‘My name is Malcolm Jaggard. I’d like to see Mr Ashton.’

‘He’s not in.’

‘Miss Ashton?’

‘They’re not in, either.’

I tugged thoughtfully at my ear. ‘What about Benson?’

He looked at me for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll see.’ He stepped to one side behind one of the stone pillars and I heard a click and then the whirr of a telephone dial. There’s a phrase for what was happening; it’s known as closing the stable door after the horse has gone.

The man came back into sight and wordlessly began to unlock the gate, so I got back into the car and drove up to the house. Benson, in his courtly Boris Karloff manner, ushered me into the living-room, and said, ‘I don’t expect Miss Penelope will be long, sir. She rang to say she would be back at five.’

‘Did she say how Gillian is?’

‘No, sir.’ He paused, then shook his head slowly. ‘This is a bad business, sir. Disgracefully bad.’

‘Yes.’ I had always been taught that it is bad form to question servants about their masters, but I had no compunction now. Benson had never struck me as being one of your run-of-the-mill house servants, least of all at that very moment because, unless he’d developed a fast-growing tumour under his left armpit, he was wearing a gun. ‘I see you have a guard on the gate.’

‘Yes; that’s Willis. I’ll give him your name so he will let you in.’

‘How is Mr Ashton taking all this?’

‘Remarkably well. He went to his office as usual this morning. Would you care for a drink, sir?’

‘Thank you. I’ll have a scotch.’

He crossed the room, opened a cabinet, and shortly came back with a tray which he put on a small table next to my elbow. ‘If you will excuse me, sir.’

‘Thank you, Benson.’ He was not staying around to be questioned, but even if he had I doubted if I could have got much out of him. He tended to speak in clichés and bland generalities, but whether he thought that way was quite another matter.

I had not long to wait for Penny and was barely half way through the drink when she came into the room. ‘Oh, Malcolm; how good to see you. What a blessed man you are.’ She looked tired and drawn.

‘I said I’d come. How’s Gillian?’

‘A little better, I think. She’s getting over the shock.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it. I had a talk with Honnister, the police inspector in charge of the case. He wants to interview her.’

‘Oh, Malcolm; she’s not ready for that. Not yet.’ She came to me and I took her in my arms. ‘Is it that bad?’

She laid her head on my chest for a moment, and then looked up at me. ‘I don’t think you know how bad this sort of thing is for a woman. Women seem to care more for their appearance than men – I suppose we have to because we’re in the man-catching business, most of us. It’s not just the physical shock that’s hit Gillian; there’s the psychological shock, too.’

‘Don’t think I’m not aware of it,’ I said. ‘But put yourself in Honnister’s place. He’s in a jam – he needs a description. Right now he doesn’t even know if he’s looking for a man or a woman.’

Penny looked startled. ‘I hadn’t even thought of that. I assumed it would be a man.’

‘Honnister hasn’t made that assumption. He hasn’t made any assumptions at all because he has damn-all to go on. Is Gillian talking to you?’

‘A little, this afternoon.’ Penny made a wry face. ‘I’ve kept off the subject of acid-throwing.’

‘Could you go to the hospital tonight and see what you can get out of her? Honnister is really at his wits’ end about this. Your father couldn’t help him and he’s stuck.’

‘I suppose I could try.’

‘Better you than Honnister; he might not have your understanding. I’ll come with you; not into the ward, but I’ll come along.’

‘Will eight o’clock be all right for you? Not too late?’

‘All my time is at your disposal.’ I didn’t tell her that was literally true, by courtesy of one Ogilvie and paid for by the taxpayer. ‘You look as though you could do with a drink.’

‘I could stand a gin and tonic. Bring it into the kitchen, will you? I have to do something about dinner – Daddy will be home soon.’

She went away and I fixed the drink and took it into the kitchen, I offered to help but she laughed, and said. ‘You’d just be in the way. Mary is coming down to help.’

‘Mary who?’

‘The maid – Mary Cope. You find yourself something to do.’

I went away reflecting that what I really wanted to do was to give Ashton’s study a good shake-down. But if it’s bad form to question the servants I don’t know what the devil it would be called to be found searching through your host’s private papers in his sanctum sanctorum. Moodily I walked out into the garden.

I was knocking croquet balls about on the lawn when Ashton pitched up. There was a worn and honed look about him as though he was being fined down on some spiritual grindstone. His skin had not lost its tan but he looked paler than usual, and there was still that hurt look in his eyes. It was the look of a little boy who had been punished for something he hadn’t done; the anguished look of the injustice of the world. It’s hard to explain to a small boy that the world isn’t necessarily a just place, but Ashton had been around long enough to know it.

I said, ‘Penny’s in the kitchen, if you want her.’

‘I’ve seen her,’ he said shortly.

‘She tells me Gillian’s better this evening.’

He looked down, kicking the turf with the toe of his shoe. He didn’t speak for some time and I began to think he’d misheard me. But then he looked up and said abruptly, ‘She’s blind.’

‘Christ; I’m sorry to hear that.’

He nodded. ‘I had a specialist in this afternoon.’

‘Does she know? Does Penny know?’

‘Neither of them know. I had it kept from them.’

‘I can understand not telling Gillian, but why keep it from Penny?’

‘Unlike many sisters they’ve always been very close even though they are so unalike in temperament – perhaps because of it. I think if Penny knew, Gillian would get it out of her, and she couldn’t stand the shock now.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘Don’t tell her.’

Now that was all very logical and carefully thought out, and he had just given me a direct order, there was no doubt about that. ‘I won’t tell her,’ I said. ‘But she might find out anyway. She’s medically trained and nobody’s fool.’

‘Just so that it comes later rather than sooner,’ he said.

I thought I’d better start to earn my pay. ‘I saw Honnister this afternoon. He tells me he didn’t get much change out of you this morning. Don’t you have any idea why Gillian should be attacked?’

‘No,’ he said colourlessly.

I studied him carefully. His jacket was much better cut than Benson’s but no amount of fine tailoring could hide the slight bulge under his arm. ‘You haven’t had threatening letters or anything like that?’

‘Nothing like that,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’m at a loss to understand it.’

I felt like asking him, ‘Then why carry a gun?” My problem was that I didn’t know why he was on our files. Men were listed for many reasons, and to be listed did not make them villains – far from it. The trouble was that no one would tell me which class Ashton came into, and that made this job damned difficult. Difficult to know how to push at him; difficult to identify the cranny into which to push the wedge that would crack him.

But I tried. I said practically. ‘Then the reason must lie somewhere in Gillian’s own life. Some crowd she’s been mixed up with, perhaps.’

He became instantly angry. ‘Nonsense!’ he said sharply. ‘That’s a monstrous suggestion. How could she get mixed up with types like that without me knowing? The type who could do such a dreadful thing?’

I was acting the part of the impartial onlooker. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said judiciously. ‘It happens all the time judging by what we read in the newspapers. The police arrest a kid and uncover a whole series of offences, from mainlining on heroin to theft to get the cash to feed the habit. The parents are shocked and plead ignorance; they had no idea that little Johnny or little Mary was involved. I believe them, too.’

He took a deep breath. ‘For one thing, Gillian isn’t a kid; she’s a grown woman of twenty-six. And for another, I know my family very well. You paid me a compliment last night: you said I’d brought up Penny too well. That goes for Gillian, too.’ He drove his toe viciously into the turf. ‘Would you think that of Penny?’

‘No, I don’t think I would.’

‘Then why should you think it of Gillian? It’s bloody ridiculous.’

‘Because Penny didn’t have acid thrown in her face,’ I reminded him. ‘Gillian did.’

‘This is a nightmare,’ he muttered.

‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope you’ll accept my apology.’

He put his hands to his face, rubbing at closed eyelids. ‘Oh, that’s all right, Malcolm.’ His hand dropped to his side. ‘It’s just that she was always such a good little girl. Not like Penny; Penny could be difficult at times. She still can. She can be very wilful, as you’ll find out if you marry her. But Gillian …’ He shook his head. ‘Gillian was never any trouble at all.’

What Ashton said brought home to me some of the anguish parents must feel when things go wrong with the kids. But I was not so concerned with his agony that I didn’t note his reference to if I married Penny, not when I married her. Evidently the fixation of the previous night had left him.

He disillusioned me immediately. ‘Have you given any thought to what we discussed last night?’

‘Some.’

‘With what conclusion?’

‘I’m still pretty much of the same mind,’ I said. ‘I don’t think this is the time to present Penny with new problems, especially if the girls are as close as you say. She’s very unhappy, too, you know.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said dispiritedly, and kicked at the grass again. He was doing that shoe no good at all, and it was a pity to treat Lobb’s craftsmanship so cavalierly. ‘Are you staying to dinner?’

‘With your permission,’ I said formally. ‘I’m taking Penny to the hospital afterwards.’

He nodded. ‘Don’t tell her about Gillian’s eyes. Promise me that.’

‘I already have.’

He didn’t answer that, but turned on his heel and walked away towards the house. As I watched him go I felt desperately sorry for him. It didn’t matter to me then if Nellie had him listed as a hero or a villain; I still felt sorry for him as a simple human being in the deepest of distress.

Penny and I got to the hospital at about half past eight. I didn’t go in with her but waited in the car. She was away quite a long time, more than an hour, and I became restive because I had promised to call Honnister. When she came out she said quietly, ‘I’ve got what you wanted.’

I said, ‘Will you tell it to Honnister? I have an appointment with him.’

‘All right.’

We found Honnister standing at the bar of the Coach and Horses looking broodily into a glass of beer. When we joined him he said, ‘My man’s been and gone. I’ve been hanging on waiting for your call.’

‘Inspecter Honnister – this is Penny Ashton. She has something to tell you.’

He regarded her with gravity. ‘Thank you. Miss Ashton. I don’t think you need me to tell you that we’re doing the best we can on this case, but it’s rather difficult, and we appreciate all the help we can get.’

‘I understand,’ she said.

He turned to me. ‘What’ll you have?’

‘A scotch and …’ I glanced at Penny.

‘A gin and tonic.’

Honnister called to the man behind the bar. ‘Monte, a large scotch and a gin and tonic.’ He turned and surveyed the room. ‘We’d better grab that table before the last-minute crowd comes in.’

I took Penny over to the table and presently Honnister joined us with the drinks. He wasted no time and even before he was seated, he said, ‘Well, Miss Ashton, what can you tell me?’

‘Gillian says it was a man.’

‘Aah!’ said Honnister in satisfaction. He had just eliminated a little more than half the population of Britain. ‘What sort of man? Young? Old? Anything you tell me will be of value.’

He led her through the story several times and each time elicited a further nugget of information. What it boiled down to was this: Gillian had walked back from church and, coming up the drive towards the house, had seen a car parked with the bonnet open and a man peering at the engine. She thought he was someone who had broken down so she approached with the intention of offering assistance. As she drew near the man turned and smiled at her. He was no one she knew. She was about to speak when he slammed down the bonnet with one hand and simultaneously threw the acid into her face with the other. The man didn’t speak at any time; he was about forty, with a sallow complexion and sunken eyes. She did not know the make of car but it was darkish in colour.

‘Let’s go back a bit,’ said Honnister yet again. ‘Your sister saw the man looking at the engine with the bonnet open. Did she mention his hands?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Is it important?’

‘It might be,’ said Honnister noncommittally. He was a good jack; he didn’t put his own ideas into the mouths of his witnesses.

Penny frowned, staring at the bubbles rising in her glass, and her lips moved slightly as she rehearsed her thoughts. Suddenly she said, ‘That’s it, Inspector. Gillian said she walked up and the man turned and smiled at her, then he took his hands out of his jacket pockets.’

‘Good!’ said Honnister heartily. ‘Very good, indeed!’

‘I don’t see the importance,’ said Penny.

Honnister turned to me. ‘Some cars have a rod on a hinge to hold up the bonnet; others have a spring-loaded gadget. Now, if he had his hands in his pockets he couldn’t have been holding the bonnet open manually; and if he took them out of his pockets to close the bonnet and throw the acid at the same time then that bonnet was spring-loaded. He wouldn’t have time to unhook a rod. It cuts down considerably on the makes of car we have to look for.’ He drained his glass. ‘Anything more to tell me?’

‘I can think of nothing else, Inspector.’

‘You and your sister have done very well,’ he said as he stood up. ‘Now I have to see a man about a dog.’ He grinned at me. ‘I really mean that – someone pinched a greyhound.’

Penny said, ‘You’ll let us know if …’

‘You’ll be first to know when something breaks,’ promised Honnister. ‘This is one villain I really want to get my hands on.’

As he walked out I said, ‘He’s a good copper.’

‘It seems so,’ said Penny. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of the significance of the way a car bonnet is held open.’

I stared into my glass. I was thinking that if I got hold of that acid-throwing bastard first there wouldn’t be much left of him for Honnister to deal with. Presently Penny said, ‘I can’t say, “A penny for your thoughts”, or you might get the wrong idea; but what are you thinking?’

I said it automatically; I said it without moving my mind. I said, ‘I’m thinking it would be a good idea if we got married.’

‘Malcolm!’

I’m pretty good at detecting nuances but there were too damn many in that single two-syllable word to cope with. There was something of surprise and something of shock; something, I was afraid, of displeasure and something, I hoped, of delight. All mixed up together.

‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’ I watched her hunt for words. ‘But don’t say, “This is so sudden!”’

‘But it is so damned sudden,’ she said, and waved her hand at the room. ‘Here, of all places.’

‘It seems a good pub to me,’ I said. ‘Does the place matter?’

‘I don’t suppose it does,’ she said quietly. ‘But the time – and the timing – does.’

‘I suppose I could have picked a better time,’ I agreed. ‘But it just popped out. I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a good idea. Your father does, too; he wanted me to ask you last night.’

‘So you two have been discussing me behind my back. I don’t know that I like that.’

‘Be reasonable. It’s traditional – and courteous, too – for a man to inform his prospective father-in-law of his intentions.’ I refrained from saying that it had been Ashton who had brought up the subject.

‘What would you have done if he had been against it?’

‘I’d have asked you just the same,’ I said equably. ‘I’m marrying you, not your father.’

‘You’re not marrying anyone – yet.’ I was thankful for the saving grace of that final monosyllable. She laid her hand on mine. ‘You idiot – I thought you’d never ask.’

‘I had it all laid on, but circumstances got in the way.’

‘I know.’ There was melancholy in her voice. ‘Oh, Malcolm; I don’t know what to say. I’ve been so unhappy today, thinking about Gillian, and seeing her in such pain. And then there was that awful task you laid on me tonight of questioning her. I saw it had to be done, so I did it – but I don’t like one bit of it. And then there’s Daddy – he doesn’t say much but I think he’s going through hell, and I’m worried about him. And now you come and give me more problems.’

‘I’m sorry, Penny; I truly am. Let’s put the question back in the deep freeze for a while. Consider yourself unasked.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t unask a question. In a way that’s what my work is all about.’ She was silent for a while. I didn’t know what she meant by that but I had sense enough to keep my mouth shut. At last she said, ‘I will marry you, Malcolm – I’d marry you tomorrow. I’m not one for non-essentials, and I don’t want a white wedding with all the trimmings or anything like that. I want to marry you but it can’t be now, and I can’t tell you when it will be. We’ve got to get this matter of Gillian sorted out first.’

I took her hand. ‘That’s good enough for me.’

She gave me a crooked smile. ‘It won’t be the usual kind of engagement, I’m afraid, I’m in no mood for romantic frivolities. Later, perhaps; but not now.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Do you remember when I asked you to come here and meet Daddy? It was the night we had the Chinese dinner in your flat.’

‘I remember.’

‘It was a diversion. I had to stop myself from doing something.’

‘Doing what, for God’s sake?’

‘Marching into your bedroom and getting into your bed.’ She disengaged her hand and finished her drink. ‘And now you’d better take me home before I change my mind and we start behaving badly.’

As I escorted her to the car my heart was like a singing bird and all the other guff poets used to write about. They don’t any more; they leave it to the writers of pop songs, which is a pity. I drove her home and stopped the car before the gates, and we had five minutes’ worth of love before she got out. She had no key and had to press the button for someone to come.

I said, ‘We won’t announce the engagement, but I think your father ought to know. It seems to be on his mind.’

‘I’ll tell him now.’

‘Are you going to London tomorrow?’

She shook her head. ‘Lumsden has given me a few days off. He’s very understanding.’

‘I’ll pop out to see you.’

‘But what about your job?’

I grinned. ‘I have an understanding boss, too.’

There was a rattle at the gate and it swung open, pushed by Wills, the dour and unfriendly type who had let me in that afternoon. Penny kissed me and then slipped inside and the gate clanged shut. I stepped up to it, and said to Willis, ‘Escort Miss Ashton up to the house, see her safe inside, and make sure the house door is locked.’

He looked at me for a moment in silence, then smiled, and it was like an ice floe breaking up. ‘I’ll do that, sir.’

NINE

I was in the office early next morning and first I had an extended chat with Nellie. I had just moved to the typewriter when Larry came in with a pile of newspapers which he dumped on his desk. ‘Thought you were out on a job.’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘I’m not here. I’m a figment of your imagination.’

I finished my list and took it in to Ogilvie, and wasted no time in getting down to the bones of it. I said, ‘I don’t mind fighting with one hand tied behind my back but I object to having both hands tied. I’ll need a list of Ashton’s present overt activities and affiliations.’

Ogilvie smiled and pushed a file across the desk. ‘I anticipated you.’

In return he got my sheet of paper. ‘That’s more of what I need.’

He scanned it. ‘Six men, six cars, telephone ta …’ He broke off. ‘Who do you think we are – the CIA?’

I looked studiously at the back of my hands. ‘Have you ever been in the field, sir?’

‘Of course I’ve …’ I looked up and found him smiling sheepishly. The smile disappeared as he said irritably, ‘I know; you people think we desk-bound types have lost touch. You could be right.’ He tapped the paper. ‘Justify this.’

‘I have to do a twenty-four hour secret surveillance of three – perhaps four – people. It’ll be …’

He caught me up on that. ‘Which three or four?’

‘First Ashton and Penny Ashton. Then Gillian Ashton. Just because she’s been attacked once doesn’t give her a lifelong exemption. I might be able to arrange with Honnister to have one of his chaps at the hospital if I ask him nicely enough. That’ll take some of the load off us.’

‘And the fourth?’

‘Benson. I pushed the lot of them through the computer until I lost them in Code Purple.’

‘Benson, too?’ Ogilvie thought about it. ‘You know, the computer might be going by the address only. Anyone living there might be classed with Ashton.’

‘I thought of that and it won’t wash. Mary Cope, the maid, lives in and I put her through as a control. Nellie has never heard of her. If Ashton is so damned important then he’s six-man-important.’

‘I agree – but you can’t keep an eye on four people with six men. I’ll let you have eight.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I must be going soft-headed. If Harrison was handling this he’d cut you down to four.’

I was taken aback but rallied enough to discuss who we were going to use on the operation. I said, ‘I’d like to take Laurence Godwin.’

‘You think he’s ready?’

‘Yes. If we don’t use him soon he’ll go sour on us. I’ve been keeping an eye on him lately; he’s been right more times than he’s been wrong, which is not bad going in this trade.’

‘Very well.’ Ogilvie returned to my list. ‘I agree that Ashton’s telephones should be tapped. If he’s being threatened we want to know about it. I’ll have to get authorization from upstairs, though; but I’ll be as quick as I can. As for the postal surveillance, that’s trickier but I’ll see what I can do.’ He put his finger down. ‘This last item worries me. You’ll have to have a damned good reason for wanting a pistol.’

‘Benson’s carrying a gun in his oxter, and Ashton is carrying another. If they are expecting that sort of action I think we should be prepared.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

‘Dead certain. I’d like to know if they have gun permits.’

Ogilvie considered it. ‘Under the circumstances Ashton might. I don’t know about Benson. I’ll check.’ I’d have given a lot to know what those circumstances were but I didn’t ask because I knew he wouldn’t tell me.

We settled a few more minor details, then Ogilvie said, ‘Right, that’s it. Round up your boys and brief them. I want a recording made of the briefing, the tape to be given to me personally before you leave. Get on with it, Malcolm.’ As I was leaving he added, ‘I’ll authorize two pistols.’

I went back, and gave Larry a list of names. ‘Get on the blower. I want those men in my office ten minutes ago.’ I paused. ‘And put yourself on the bottom of the list.’

His expression was a study in pure delight. ‘You mean …’

I grinned. ‘I mean. Now get busy.’ I sat at my desk and opened the file on Ashton. It was very thin. The names and addresses of his firms were given, but his other associations were few, mostly professional men – lawyers, accountants and the like. He was a member of no club, whether social, sporting or intellectual. A millionaire hermit.

The team assembled and I switched on the tape-recorder. The brieling didn’t take long. I outlined the problem and then told how we were going to handle it, then allocated jobs and shifts. One pistol would be carried by the man over-seeing Ashton, whoever he happened to be at the time; the other I reserved for myself.

I said, ‘Now we have radios so we use them. Stay on net and report often so everyone is clued up all the time. Those off-shift to be findable and near a telephone. You might be needed in a hurry.’

Simpson asked, ‘Do off-shift men go home?’ He’d just got back from his honeymoon.

‘No. Everyone books into hotels in or near Marlow.’ There was an audible groan. ‘As soon as you’ve done it report which hotel together with its phone number so we can find you. I’m at the Compleat Angler.’

Brent said, ‘Living it up on the expense account.’

I grinned, then said soberly, ‘I don’t think we’ll have much time for that on this exercise. I might add that this is an important one. You can judge its importance by the fact that Ogilvie raised the team from six to eight on his own initiative and without me having to needle him. In the light of our staff position that says a lot. So don’t lose any of these people – and keep your own heads down. Right; that’s all.’ I switched off the recorder and rewound the tape.

Larry said, ‘You haven’t given me a job.’

‘You stick with me. I’ll be back in a minute – I’m going to see Ogilvie.’

As I walked into his outer office his secretary said, ‘I was about to ring you, Mr Jaggard. Mr Ogilvie wants to see you.’

‘Thanks.’ I went on in, and said, ‘Here’s the tape of the briefing.’

He was frowning and said directly, ‘Did you cancel a request given to Inspector Honnister for copies of his reports on the Ashton case?’

I put the cassette on his desk. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I thought it was a lot of bull,’ I said bluntly. ‘It was getting in the way of good relations. What Harrison did was bad enough.’

‘Harrison! What did Joe do?’

I related Harrison’s flat-footed approach and Honnister’s reaction to it, and then his views on providing extra copies of his reports. I added, ‘If we’re going to ask Honnister to provide a guard at the hospital we need to keep in his good books.’

‘Very good thinking,’ said Ogilvie heavily. ‘But for one thing. This department did not request those copies. It came from elsewhere, and someone has just been chewing my ear off by telephone.’

‘Oh,’ I said, rather inadequately, and then, ‘Who?’

‘Need you ask?’ said Ogilvie acidly. ‘The gentleman you met yesterday is sticking his oar in – which, I might add, he is perfectly entitled to do.’ He rubbed his jaw and amended the statement. ‘As long as he restricts himself to requests for information and does not initiate any action.’

He pondered for a moment, then said, ‘All right, Malcolm, you can go. But don’t take any precipitate action without referring back to me.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, sir.’

He waved me away.

TEN

There was nearly an hour of bureaucracy to get through before Larry and I could drive to Marlow. On the way I gave him the score up to that point, and his reaction was emphatic. ‘This is downright stupid! You mean Ogilvie won’t tell you what’s behind all this?’

‘I think his hands are tied,’ I said. ‘This is real top-level stuff. He has a character from Whitehall like a monkey on his back.’

‘You mean Cregar?’

I glanced sideways at Larry. ‘Who?’

‘Lord Cregar. Short, chubby little chap.’

‘Could be. How did you get on to him? Did you bug Ogilvie’s office?’

He grinned. ‘I went to the loo yesterday and saw him coming out of Ogilvie’s room while you were in there.’

I said musingly, ‘Ogilvie did refer to him as “his lordship” but I thought he was joking. How did you know he was Cregar?’

‘He got divorced last week,’ said Larry. ‘His photograph was splashed on the middle inside page of the Telegraph.’

I nodded. The Daily Telegraph takes a keen interest in the marital ups-and-downs of the upper crust. ‘Do you know anything more about him, other than that he’s wifeless?’

‘Yes,’ said Larry. ‘He’s not womanless – that came out very strongly in the court case. But beyond that, nothing.’

We crossed the Thames at Marlow, and I said, ‘We’ll check the hospital first, then go to the police station and I’ll introduce you to a good copper. How good are you at grovelling? I might need a few lessons.’

The hospital car park was full so I put the car illicitly into a doctor’s slot. I saw Jack Brent, who was trailing Penny, so that meant she was in the hospital; he was talking to someone over his radio. I was about to go over to him when someone hailed me, and I turned to find Honnister at my elbow.

He seemed quite cheerful as I introduced Larry. I said, ‘I got some wires crossed yesterday. My people didn’t ask for reports; the request came from elsewhere.’

He smiled. ‘I thought the Super was a bit narky this morning. Not to worry, Mr Jaggard. A man can’t do more than his best.’

‘Any progress?’

‘I think we have the make of car. A witness saw a Hillman Sceptre close to Ashton’s place on Saturday afternoon. The driver fits the description of the suspect. A dark blue car and spring-loaded bonnet, so it fits.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘I’m beginning to think we stand a chance on this one. I want to get this man before Miss Ashton for a firm identification.’

I shook my head. ‘You won’t get it. She’s blind.’

Honnister looked stricken. ‘Christ!’ he said savagely. ‘Wait till I lay hands on this whoreson!’

‘Stand in line. There’s a queue.’

‘I’m just going up to see her. The doctor says she’s fit to talk.’

‘Don’t tell her she’s blind – she doesn’t know yet. And don’t tell her sister.’ I pondered for a moment. ‘We have reason to believe another attack may be made on her. Can you put a man in the hospital?’

‘That’s asking something,’ said Honnister. He paused, then asked, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with the bloody force? Too many chiefs and not enough Indians. If there’s a multiple smash on the M4 we’d be hard put to it to find four uniformed men for crowd control. But go into the nick in Slough and you can’t toss a pebble in any direction without it ricocheting off three coppers of the rank of chief inspector or higher.’ He seemed bitter. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

I said, ‘Failing that, give the hospital staff a good briefing. No stranger to get near Gillian Ashton without authority from you, me or the Ashton family. Pitch it to them strong.’

Brent left his car and joined us and I introduced him to Honnister. ‘Everything okay?’

‘She’s inside now; that’s her car over there. But this town is hell on wheels. She went shopping before she came here and led me a devil of a dance. There’s nowhere to park – I got two tickets in half an hour.’

‘Hell, we can’t have that.’ I could imagine Penny being abducted while my man argued the toss with a traffic warden. I said to Larry, ‘I want CD plates put on all our cars fast.’

‘Oh, very tricky!’ said Honnister admiringly.

Larry grinned. ‘The Foreign Office won’t like it.’

‘Nothing to do with the Foreign Office,’ observed Honnister. ‘It’s just a convention with no legal significance. A copper once stopped a car with CD plates and found a Cockney driver, so he asked him what CD stood for. The bloke said, “Cake Deliverer”. And he was, too.’ He shrugged. There was nothing he could do about it.’ He nudged me. ‘Coming in?’

‘I’ll join you inside.’

Jack Brent waited until Honnister was well out of earshot before saying, ‘I thought it best not to talk in front of him, but Ashton and Benson haven’t been found.’

‘Ashton isn’t at his office?’

‘No, and he isn’t at home, either.’

I thought about it. In the course of his business Ashton might be anywhere in the Home Counties; he might even have gone to London. And there was nothing to say that Benson was a prisoner in the house; he had to go out some time. All the same, I didn’t like it.

I said, ‘I’m going to the house. Come on, Larry.’ I turned to Brent. ‘And you stick close to Penny Ashton. For Christ’s sake, don’t lose her.’

I drove a little faster than I should on the way to Ashton’s place, and when I got there I leaned on the bell-push until Willis arrived wearing an annoyed expression. ‘There’s no one in,’ he said abruptly.

‘I want to make sure of that. Let me in.’ He hesitated and then opened the gate reluctantly and I drove up to the house.

Larry said, ‘He’s a surly devil.’

‘But reliable, I’d say.’ I stopped before the front door, got out, and rang the bell. It was a fair time before the door opened and I was confronted by the maid who looked surprised to see me. ‘Oh, Mr Jaggard, Miss Penny’s not here. She’s at the hospital.’

‘I know. Mr Ashton’s not in?’

‘No, he’s out, too.’

‘What about Benson?’

‘I haven’t seen him all morning.’

I said, ‘Mind if we come in? I’d like to use the telephone.’

In response she opened the door wider. Larry and I walked into the hall, and I said, ‘You’re Mary Cope, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you seen either Mr Ashton or Benson at all today?’

‘No, sir.’

‘When was the last time you saw them?’

‘Well, not really to see,’ she said. ‘But they were in the study last night; I heard them talking. That would be about nine o’clock. Just before, really, because I was going up to my room to catch the nine o’clock news and I switched on five minutes early.’ She paused, wondering if she was right in talking of the doings of the family. After all, I hadn’t been around all that long. She said nervously, ‘Is this anything to do with what happened to Miss Gillian?’

‘It could be.’

‘Mr Ashton’s bed wasn’t slept in,’ she volunteered.

I glanced at Larry who raised his eyebrows. ‘What about Benson’s bed?’

‘I haven’t looked – but he always makes up his own bed.’

‘I see. I’ll use the telephone if I may.’

I rang the hospital, asking for Penny, and told the operator she’d be in or near the intensive care unit. It was a long time before she came on the line. ‘I hope you haven’t waited long,’ she said. ‘I slipped away for a cup of tea. Gillian’s much better, Malcolm; she’s talking to Honnister now, and she doesn’t mind a bit.’

I said, ‘Did you tell your father about us last night?’

‘No. He’d gone to bed when I got in.’

‘Did you tell him this morning?’

‘No. I slept late and he’d gone out when I got up. I expect Mary made breakfast for him.’

I didn’t comment on that. ‘When did you last see Benson?’

Her voice was suddenly wary. ‘What’s the matter, Malcolm? What’s going on?’

I said, ‘Look, Penny, I’m at your house. I’d like you to come home because I want to talk to you about something. I expect Honnister will be at the hospital for quite some time, and there’s nothing you can do there.’

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ she said.

‘Not really. I’ll tell you when I see you.’

‘I’m coming now.’ She rang off.

I put down the receiver and looked around, to see Mary Cope regarding me curiously from the other end of the hall. I jerked my head at Larry and gave him my keys. ‘In the special compartment of my car you’ll find a file on Ashton. There’s a list of the cars he owns – on page five, I think. Nipround to the garage and see what’s missing. Then go down to the gate and ask Willis what time Ashton and Benson left here.’

He went quickly and I walked into Ashton’s study. On his desk were two envelopes; one addressed to Penny and the other to me. I picked up mine and broke the seal.

The note might have been enigmatic to anyone else, but to me it was as clear as crystal. It read:

My dear Malcolm,

You are far too intelligent a man not to have seen what I was driving at in our more recent conversations. You may be acquainted with the French proverb: Celui qui a trouvé un bon gendre a gagné un fils; mais celui qui en a recontré un mauvais a perdu une fille.

Marry Penny with my blessing and make her happy – but, for her sake, be a bad son-in-law.

Yours,

George Ashton.

I sat down heavily and had a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew we’d botched the job. I picked up the telephone to ring Ogilivie.

ELEVEN

I didn’t wrap it up for him. ‘Our pigeons have flown the coop,’ I said baldly.

He was incredulous. ‘What! All of them?’

‘Just the two cock birds.’

He was silent for a moment, then said slowly, ‘My fault, I’m afraid. I ought to have given you your team yesterday. How certain are you?’

‘He left me a note.’ I read it out.

Ogilvie put the French into English. ‘“He who has found a good son-in-law has gained a son, but he who has picked up a bad one has lost a daughter.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

I said, ‘It may be my fault that he’s cut and run. He tackled me again last evening about marrying Penny, and I gave him another refusal. I think that since he couldn’t get her to cut loose from him, he has cut loose from her. If you read the note in that context you’ll see what I mean.’

‘Um. What was his attitude last evening?’

‘He was a walking disaster,’ I said flatly.

‘How much start have they had?’

I sorted through the details I had picked up, then checked the time. ‘I don’t know about Benson, but for Ashton say fifteen hours maximum. I might get to know a bit more in the next few minutes.’

‘We don’t know that he went,’ said Ogilvie objectively. ‘He might have been taken. That note to you may be a fraud. Either case is serious, of course.’

‘I don’t think he was taken. The note is too accurately pointed, and this house is well protected.’

‘Yes, it would be.’ Ogilvie knew enough of the background to make a statement like that. ‘How’s the girl taking it?’

‘She doesn’t know yet. Ashton left her a note, too. I haven’t opened it – I’ll let her do that. I’ll let you know anything that’s relevant.’

‘Think she’ll tell you?’

‘Yes. It’s a funny thing, sir, but I did ask her to marry me last night and she accepted. She was going to tell Ashton when she got home but she said he’d gone to bed. I think he’d already left. If he’d waited another couple of hours he might have decided not to go.’

‘Yes,’ said Ogilvie meditatively. ‘But don’t blame yourself for that.’ I looked up as Larry came into the study. Ogilvie said, ‘Did you disclose yourself to her?’

‘No.’

There was a pause. ‘You take your duties very seriously, don’t you, Malcolm?’

‘I try to. Hang on a minute.’ I looked up at Larry. ‘Well?’

‘There’s an Aston Martin short, and both Benson and Ashton left last night at about half past nine, and didn’t come back.’

The Aston Martin was Penny’s car. I said to Ogilvie, ‘We’ve got a pretty firm time. They left together at nine-thirty last night, probably in a hired car.’ He seemed to be a long time digesting that, so I said, ‘What’s the next step?’

‘There’s going to be a row, of course,’ he said, not sounding too perturbed. ‘But I’ll handle that. What you do is to go through that house like a dose of salts. See if you can find anything to indicate where Ashton has gone. Anything you don’t understand bring here for evaluation.’

I said, ‘That will blow my cover with Penny. I can’t search the house without giving her an explanation.’

‘I know.’

‘Hold on.’ I turned to Larry. ‘Get on the radio – I want everyone here as soon as possible.’

‘Off-shift boys included?’

‘Yes. And go to the gate to make sure they can get in.’

Before speaking to Ogilvie again I glumly contemplated the explanation I’d have to give Penny. It was a hell of a thing to tell a girl you’ve just proposed to, and I had the feeling that our relationship was about to alter for the worse.

I pushed it out of my mind, and said, ‘Do we bring the police in on this?’

I could almost hear Ogilvie’s brains creaking as he thought that one out. At last he said, ‘Not at this stage. I’ll have to push it upstairs for a ruling. Police security is not too good on this sort of thing – they have too many reporters watching them. How long do you think you’ll be there?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a big house and I can see at least one safe from here. If we can’t find keys we may have to take extreme measures. I’ll give you a ring in an hour. I’ll have a better idea by then.’

‘I can’t hold this for an hour. If you look towards London in fifteen minutes you’ll see flames rising from Whitehall. Do your best.’ He rang off.

I put down the telephone and looked thoughtfully at the letter addressed to Penny, then crossed to the safe. It had a combination lock and the door didn’t open when I turned the handle. I went back to the desk and gave it a quick once-over lightly in the hope of finding something useful immediately. There was nothing. Five minutes later I heard a car draw up outside and, thinking it might be Penny, I went outside.

It was Peter Michaelis, one of the team. He came over with an enquiring look on his face, and I said, ‘Stick around.’ He had given Larry a lift from the gate, so I called him over. ‘Take Ashton’s file and start ringing around – his office, factories, every address you find in there. If Ashton is seen he’s to ring his home immediately.’ I shrugged. ‘It won’t work but we must cover it.’

‘Okay.’

An Aston Martin was coming up the drive so I braced myself. ‘Use the telephone in the hall. I want to use the study.’

Larry walked towards the house as Penny’s car came to a fast halt, braked hard. She tumbled out, looking uncertainly at Michaelis, then ran towards me. ‘I’m being followed,’ she said, and whirled around, pointing at the car coming up the drive. ‘He followed me into the grounds.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, as Brent’s car stopped. ‘I know who he is.’

‘What’s happening?’ she demanded. ‘Who are these men?’ Her voice caught. ‘What’s happened to Daddy?’

‘As far as I know he’s all right.’ I took her elbow. ‘I want you to come with me.’

I took her into the house and she paused in the hall as she saw Larry at the telephone, then quickened her pace again. We went into the study and I picked up the letter from the desk. ‘You’d better read this.’

She looked at me uncertainly before glancing at the superscription. ‘It’s from Daddy,’ she said, and ripped open the envelope. As she read the note she frowned and her face paled. ‘But I don’t … I don’t understand. I don’t …’

‘What does he say?’

Wordlessly she handed the letter to me, then walked over to the window and looked out. I watched her for a moment, then bent my head and read:

My dearest Penny,

For reasons I cannot disclose I must go away for a while. The reasons are not disreputable, nor am I a criminal, although that imputation may be made. My affairs are all in order and my absence should not cause you any trouble financially. I have made all the necessary arrangements: for legal advice consult Mr Veasey of Michelmore, Veasey and Templeton; for financial advice go to Mr Howard of Howard and Page. They have been well briefed for this eventuality.

I do not know for how long I shall have to be away. You will be doing me a great service if you make no attempt at all to find me and, above all, I do not wish the police to be brought into this matter if that can be avoided. I assure you again that my reasons for leaving in this manner are purely private and personal. I will come to no harm because my old friend, Benson, will be looking after me.

It would give me the greatest peace of mind if you would marry your Malcolm as soon as is practically possible. I know that you love him and I know that he wants to marry you very much, and I have a great respect for the intelligence and character of the man you have chosen. Please do not let the matter of poor Gillian impede your plans to marry and, on the occasion, please put a notice in The Times.

I have the greatest confidence that the two of you will be very happy together, and I am equally sure that you will both look after Gillian. Forgive me for the abrupt manner of my departure but it is in the best interests of all of us.

Your loving father,

George.

I looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Penny.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ she cried desolately. ‘Oh, Malcolm, what’s happened to him?’

She came into my arms and I held her close. ‘I don’t know – but we’ll find out.’

She was still for a while, but pushed herself away as two cars arrived in quick succession. She stared from the window at the gathering knot of men. ‘Malcolm, who are all those men? Have you told the police? Daddy said not to.’

‘No, I haven’t told the police,’ I said quietly. ‘Sit down, Penny; I have a lot to tell you.’ She looked at me wonderingly, and hesitated, but sat in the chair behind the desk. I hesitated, too, not knowing where to begin, then thought it best to give it to her straight and fast.

‘I work for the firm of McCulloch and Ross, and I’ve told no lies about what the firm does. It does everything I’ve said it does, and does it very well, too. Our clients are most satisfied, and they ought to be because of the amount of public money going into their service.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘McCulloch and Ross is a cover for a sort of discreet government department dealing mainly with economic and industrial affairs in so far as they impinge on state security.’

‘State security! You mean you’re some sort of secret agent. A spy?’

I laughed and held up my hands. ‘Not a spy. We’re not romantic types with double-o numbers and a licence to kill – no nonsense like that.’

‘But you were watching and investigating my father like a common spy.’ Anger flamed in her. ‘And was I just a means to an end? Did you snuggle up to me just to get to know him better?’

I lost the smile fast – this was where the crunch came. ‘Christ, no! I didn’t know a damned thing about him until yesterday, and I don’t know much more now. Believe me when I say it was something I stumbled into by accident.’

She was disbelieving and contemptuous. ‘And just what did you stumble into?’

‘I can’t tell you that because I don’t know myself.’

She shook her head as though momentarily dizzy. ‘That man in the hall – those men outside: are they in your department, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’d like to talk to the man in charge.’ She stood up. ‘I’d like to tell him just what I think of all this. I knew Daddy was under pressure. Now I know where it was coming from.’

I said deliberately, ‘You’re talking to the man in charge, and you’re dead wrong.’

That stopped her. She sat down with a bump. ‘You are in charge?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you don’t know what you’re doing?’ she laughed hysterically.

‘I know what I’m doing, but I don’t know why. There’s a hierarchy of levels. Penny – wheels within wheels. Let me tell you how I got into this.’

So I told her. I told her everything, holding nothing back. I told her about Nellie and the colour codes; I told her about Ogilvie and Lord Cregar. I told her a damned sight more than I ought to have done, and to hell with the Official Secrets Act.

She heard me out, then said thoughtfully, ‘Your people aren’t very trusting, are they?’

‘They’re not in the trust business.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘The pressure didn’t come from us, Penny. We threw no acid. We came into it after that, and my brief was to watch over your father and protect him – your father, you and Gillian, and Benson, too, if I thought it necessary.’ I walked over to the window and looked at the cars. The gang had all arrived. ‘I’ve not done a very good job so far.’

‘It’s not your fault that Daddy went away.’ Her words hung heavily in the air, and she seemed to take another look at her father. ‘That he ran away.’

I turned to her. ‘Don’t start blaming him without knowing what you’re blaming him for.’

She said pensively, ‘I wonder if he’d still want me to marry you, if he knew what I know now?’

‘I’ll ask him as soon as I catch up with him,’ I said grimly.

‘You’re not going after him?’ She picked up her letter. ‘He said …’

‘I know what he said. I also know he’s regarded by my people as a very important man, and he may be going into danger without knowing it. I still have my job to do.’

‘But he doesn’t want …’

I said impatiently, ‘What he wants or doesn’t want is immaterial.’ I plucked the letter from her fingers and scanned it. ‘He says he doesn’t want you to go looking for him. Well, you won’t – I will. He says not to involve the police. Right; they haven’t been told. He says, “I will come to no harm because my old friend, Benson, will be looking after me.” Good God, Penny, how old is Benson? He must be pushing sixty-five. He’s in no position to protect himself, let alone anyone else.’

She started to weep. She didn’t sob or make an outcry, but the tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She cried silently and helplessly, and she was shivering as though suddenly very cold. I put my arm around her and she clung to me with a fierce grip. One of the worst things that can happen is when a hitherto cosy and secure world falls apart. An icy wind seemed to be blowing through that pleasant panelled study from the greater and more vicious world outside.

‘Oh, Malcolm, what am I to do?’

I said very quietly, ‘You must do what you think is best. If you trust me you will help me find him, but I wouldn’t – I couldn’t – blame you if you refuse. I haven’t been open with you – I should have told you about this yesterday.’

‘But you were under orders.’

‘A common plea,’ I said. ‘All the Nazis made it.’

‘Malcolm, don’t make it harder for yourself than you have to.’ She put my arm aside, stood up, and went to the window. ‘What are your men waiting for?’

I took a deep breath. ‘For your decision. I want to search the house, and I can’t do that without your permission.’

She came back to the desk and read her father’s letter again. I said, ‘He wrote to me, too,’ and produced the letter. ‘You can read it if you like.’

She read it, then gave it back to me. ‘Bring in your men,’ she said tonelessly.

TWELVE

We found a number of surprising things in that house but nothing that did us much good, at least, not then. In the basement there was a remarkably well-equipped workshop and chemical laboratory, way beyond amateur standard. There was also a small computer with a variety of input and output peripherals including an X – Y plotter. Still on the plotter was a sketch which had been drawn under computer control; it seemed to be a schematic of a complicated molecule and it made no sense to me, but then I’m no expert. For bigger problems with which the little computer couldn’t cope there was a modem and an acoustic coupler so that the little chap could be used as a terminal to control a big computer by way of the post office land lines.

In the workshop was a bench on which a thingamajig was under construction. Whatever it was intended to do it was going to do under computer control because there were no fewer than fifteen integrated-circuit microelectronic chips built into it, and that’s a fair amount of computing power. Also coupled into it was a laser, a cathode ray tube, a lot of laboratory glassware and a couple of gadgets I didn’t recognize.

I didn’t snap any switches or push any of the unlabelled buttons because I didn’t know what would happen if I did. Instead I said to Larry, ‘Any of Ashton’s firms connected with electronics or computers?’

‘No, just chemicals and plastics moulding. Some of the chemical processes might be computer-controlled, though.’

I grunted and had the entire basement sealed. The boffins from the department would have to check it out, and I wasn’t going to touch anything until they had done so.

Penny had the combination for the safe in the study, and I knew by that we were unlikely to find anything of consequence in it. I was right. There was a bit of money, less than £50, which was not much considering Ashton’s resources – I suppose it was emergency pocket money. There were some account books on which I wasted some time until I discovered they related to the running of the household, the stables and the cars. All very orderly. There was a whole sheaf of balance sheets headed with the name of the firm of accountants, Howard and Page. A quick glance at the bottom lines told me that George Ashton was doing very nicely, thank you, in spite of the economic recession.

And that was all.

Ashton’s own quarters were a bit more productive. He had a suite-bedroom, bathroom, dressing-room and sitting-room which were as clean as a whistle. He seemed to live somewhat spartanly; there was less than the usual amount of junk which a man tends to accumulate and it was all very clean and tidy. There was nothing at all in any of the pockets of the clothes hanging in the wardrobes; whoever did his valeting – Benson probably – did a good job.

But a considerable amount of panel-tapping discovered a tambour which, when slid aside after a complicated procedure involving switching on certain lights in all four rooms thus releasing an electrically-controlled lock, revealed a massive metal door of armour-plated steel. The way I’ve described that might make you think we were lucky to find it, but it wasn’t luck. The boys were good at their jobs.

Not good enough to open that vault door, though. After Simpson had done some architectural measuring with a tape I knew that beyond that door was not merely a safe but a sizeable room, big enough to swing a kitten in, if not a cat. Now, any man who would put a door like that as entrance to a room would be sure to take other precautions. The walls, floor and ceiling would be very thick concrete, well reinforced with toughened steel, and the whole package would weigh a lot even when empty. It was on the second floor which meant that a special underpinning structure must have been built to support it. I made a note to look up Ashton’s architect.

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