Gunner Kelly (2 page)

His eye travelled along the shelves, down to the other end of the long room: and
there
, also, was the gazetteer in which he could pinpoint the village of Duntisbury Royal, to direct him in turn to the right inch-to-the-mile Ordnance Survey map from the shelf below, on which he could pin the gazetteer’s point exactly, if necessary.

The Mini’s engine roared outside. (Whichever of them was at the wheel, she would take the drive too fast, and the corner at the entrance too dangerously, with all the reckless immortality of youth, untainted by experience and protected only by youth’s split-second reflexes.)

(David Audley had the experience, and to spare, and a rare quality of intuition. But he also had his blind spots, and he no longer had the reflexes for field-work, unescorted.)

He listened to the engine-note, gauging the car’s exact position until it finally snarled away in the distance, on the main road, holding his breath until then. (There was nothing he could do about the girls: they were their own women now, for better or for worse, and he could only come to them when they called him. But there was a great deal he could do—and
must
do—about David Audley.)

If necessary.

No certainty animated him yet, as he moved round the big desk, and sat down behind it, and reached decisively for the red telephone, with its array of buttons. Others, more gifted with that wild Fifth Sense than he, might be able to move from the known via the unknowable to the most likely. But he could only advance by experience and the map references of information received.

He lifted the red phone and pressed two of the buttons simultaneously. Two red eyes lit up, one steady, one blinking insistently. He watched them until they both turned green.

“Duty officer? I wish to speak with Chief Inspector Andrew. When you get him, patch him through to me on this line, please.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Thank you.”

He replaced the receiver, so that one of the green eyes went out while the other turned red again, holding the scrambled line. Then he reached out, almost reluctantly, for the other phone—the ordinary humdrum Telecom instrument, beloved of Diana, Sally and Jane to his great quarterly cost, and dialled his required number, for all to hear who wanted to hear.

“The Old House.”

The childish treble rendered his next question superfluous. “Cathy—are either of your parents home?” It pained Colonel Butler’s super-ego that he was glad his little god-daughter had been closest to the phone.

“Uncle Jack! Yes—Mummy is.” The breathlessness of her evident pleasure turned the pain into a wound. “Are you coming to my birthday party next Saturday?”

“Your birthday party?” Butler feigned surprise. “Have you got
another
birthday? How many birthdays a year do you have? Are you like the Queen? Is this your
official
birthday—or your
real
birthday? You can’t expect me to keep track of all your different birthdays—I’m much too busy for that, young lady!”

“But I haven’t—” The child caught herself a second too late, birthday-excitement betraying intelligence “—if you’re too
busy …
then that’s
your
hard luck—
you
don’t get any of the cake—
and
you don’t come to the
dinner
afterwards, with Paul and Elizabeth, and pineapple Malakoff and Muscat de Beaumes de Venise in the funny bottle—
okay
?” Cathy added her special birthday pudding and its attendant wine to her other favourite grown-ups like a visiting Russian nobleman and his exquisite French mistress, joining in the game. “But Daddy’s not here, anyway—he’s in Dorset, digging up Romans and looking at tanks … but Mummy’s here, if you want her—”

Conflicting emotions warred in Butler’s breast: his much-loved and super-intelligent god-daughter had given him what he wanted—Audley was in Dorset,
digging up Romans and looking at tanks
, whatever that meant, if it was true—even though he hadn’t asked for that information, and though he had intended to play foully to get it, hoping it would come from her mother without his asking for it—

“Here’s Mummy, anyway—” The rest was lost in the surrender of the receiver, from daughter to mother.

“Jack?” Faith Audley was matter-of-fact, as always. “If you want David, he’s not here.” Then the ever-defensive and slightly-disapproving wife asserted herself. “But he’s on leave, as you well know.”

“In Dorset, digging up Romans and tanks?” Butler chuckled deceitfully at her.

“Yes.” The matter-of-fact disapproval crystallised itself. “You can get him at Duntisbury Royal 326—but only if you have to, Jack.”

Duntisbury Royal 326

“I haven’t the slightest interest in Duntisbury whatever— and even less in Romans and tanks, Faith dear—”
What had Romans and tanks got to do with Duntisbury Royal and General Maxwell, lately dece
ased
? “—and least of all with your husband … I am at home, attempting to enjoy my weekend, if you can believe that … I was merely calling about next weekend, as a matter of fact. Your daughter’s birthday, remember?”

There was a pause. Butler’s eye ranged over his desk, and as it did so one of the blank red eyes on the console of the red telephone started to blink at him redly, off and on, on and off, to inform him that the duty officer was back on that line, holding Chief Inspector Andrew for him, from another ruined weekend somewhere.

“I’m sorry, Jack. Of course! But …” It started as an apology, then the voice became edged with doubt “… he is on leave, isn’t he?”

There it was, thought Butler with bleak sympathy: the bomber pilot’s wife’s question, redolent with uncertainty about the actual whereabouts of her husband, who could be drinking in the Mess with his crew this morning, but then
Flying Tonight
: that, even after a dozen years’ safe landings, and in spite of his age and seniority, was the nightmare with which Faith Audley lived, on her pillow in the dark, in her washing-up bowl in the light, and everywhere she went in-between when he was out of her sight, and nothing would change that.

“If he isn’t, it’s news to me.” That at least was true! “I was just calling to confirm next weekend—” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, covering the untruth of a phone-call he would not have needed to make if Jane had not spoken to him with the truth of what he had already done in honour of his goddaughter’s birthday “—I’ve got her a first edition of Kipling’s collected poems, and a signed copy of
Little Wars
, plus something for her bottom-drawer, which she can put into her savings account.”

“Jack—” Her voice trailed off, and he heard her despatch Cathy out of ear-shot “—Jack, that’s much too generous—”

“Nonsense. She’s my god-child. Just don’t tell David that I’ve called—” Butler’s eye strayed from the winking red light on the red phone to the gazetteer, wedged blue-black in its shelf:
Duntisbury Royal
—Faith and Jane both agreed on that, and Cathy had added
Dorset
—and
Romans
, and
tanks
—

What the hell was David Audley up to, adding
General Maxwell
to all that—?

And
murder
—?

Faith was mouthing good-mannered platitudes at him and he had to get rid of her gently and circumspectly: Diana was well, and enjoying her job … and Sally’s horses were well, and appeared to be enjoying what Sally made them do … and Jane was enjoying Law at Bristol University, together with all the other things that Law students did—

In the end he managed to extricate himself from her convincingly, if without the luxury of honour, and returned to the red phone.

“Hullo, sir,” said Andrew cheerfully. “Trouble?”

“Wait.” There was a red eye still, next to the green one. “Thank you, Duty Officer—that will be all.”

The red eye closed abruptly.

“Andrew.” Weekend or not, Andrew had been accessible. And—what was better than availability—Andrew could be trusted. “Maxwell. Major-General Maxwell—in the newspapers recently … and there was a routine circular on him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you know about him?”

There was only a fractional pause. “Not a lot, sir. You want the Anti-Terrorist Squad for him.”

“If I wanted them I’d be talking to them.”

Another pause: as a detective-inspector, Andrew had been one of the brightest sparks in the Special Branch, but it still sometimes took a moment for him to adjust to the eccentric politics of Colonel Butler’s service. “Right, sir.”

“Very well. It was a car bomb in Bournemouth, about a fortnight ago, as I recall. We accused the IRA Proves or the INLA, with the odds on the INLA. They both denied responsibility. Go on from there.”

“Yes, sir.” Only the very slightest South London whine betrayed Andrew’s Rotherhithe origins: for some people he turned it on full, complete with rhyming slang, as a tactical device, but with Colonel Butler he never tried it on, it was the Honours graduate in Law who spoke. “It was an Irish bomb, undoubtedly, Inertia-type—pop the parcel under the seat, and just withdraw the pin … Good for soft, unsuspecting targets: off they go, and the first time they slow down
up
they go … It’s one they’ve used before—not too difficult to put together when you know how, but not crude.”

“Professional?”

“Professional—yes … to the extent that there are three known training-schools in the Soviet bloc which include it in their syllabuses—schools which handle foreign trainees …one in East Germany, one in Czechoslovakia … and the KGB one, naturally.”

“So it doesn’t have to be Irish?”

“It doesn’t have to be—no. Except that they’re the only ones who’ve used similar devices, so far …”

“Yes?” Was that uncertainty in the man’s voice?

“Yes … well, there is an element of doubt on this one, it’s true. In fact… doubt is about all there is, apparently.”

“Doubt?”

“About it being Irish, sir.”

Butler’s heart sank. David Audley was not an Irish specialist, and notoriously avoided any involvement with the Irish problems which came their way even peripherally. He had pinned most of his hopes on that, he realised now.

“Why?” And
why
, come to that, was Andrew so well-informed about the case, in spite of that ‘not a lot’ disclaimer?

“No motive, sir.”

“Since when did the INLA need a motive?”

“No connection, then. General Maxwell never served in Ulster—he wasn’t remotely Irish … and he was ten years into his retirement—more than ten years … before this lot of Irish ‘troubles’, anyway. The nearest thing he had to an Irish connection was his servant, Kelly, and he hardly qualifies as Irish within the meaning of the word, any more than Maxwell himself does—did.”

“Kelly?” Butler could recall no mention of any Kelly, either in the newspapers or in the intelligence circular. But as a name Kelly was Irish of the Irish.

“
Gunner
Kelly.” Andrew emphasised the rank. “Irish for the first seventeen years of his life, until he joined up at Larkhill in 1938, like his father before him—father went through the ‘14-’18—DCM at Loos, bar at Ypres … son went through the ‘39-’45—Dunkirk, Tunisia, Italy—Maxwell’s regiment … Peace-time soldiering afterwards, then drove a taxi up north somewhere… . Came back to the General about four years ago—totally devoted to him… . What they say is, if he’d known the General’s name was on a bomb, he’d have scratched it out and put his own in its place, most likely.”

Butler thought for a moment. “Could he have been the target, then—a lackey of the bloody British?”

“A
60
-year-old lackey?” Andrew echoed the idea scornfully.

“Since when has the INLA been choosy?” It was too feeble though—even for the INLA. Much too thin.

“If they’re going to start blowing up all the Kellys, then they’ll need a nuclear bomb, not a pound of jelly under the seat …sir.” Andrew paused. “But they did check him out. Because it’s true he could have gone up with the General—in fact, if the General hadn’t sent him off on some errand, he
would have
gone up… . He was going to drive, but the old boy wanted a parcel of books collected—all above board and kosher, in front of witnesses… . But that isn’t the point, you see.”

“So what is the point?” For Kelly to be a non-starter there had to be a point, of course: that was implicit in Del Andrew’s scorn.

“They weren’t expecting this bomb, sir—neither the Provos nor the INLA—that’s the fact of it, the word is … It caught them both with their trousers down—right down by their ankles.”

“How so?” ‘Not a lot’ was indeed turning out to be quite a lot. So now he also needed to know why Andrew had done so much more than read the circular on General Maxwell’s assassination.

“Well, sir … after the Hyde Park bombing there was a lot of recrimination—killing Brits was one thing, but killing horses was another—that was bad medicine on the other side of the Atlantic … like, in the cowboy films you can have the Indians bite the dust, and the cowboys, and the horse-soldiers … but you can’t have the
horses
with their guts blown out, or trying to stand up on three legs—that’s the unacceptable face of terrorism … And if there’s one thing the Irish themselves are soft on, it’s horses—they can put their shirt on them, and lose it, but they can’t blow six-inch nails into them and then stroll away whistling about Donegal and Connemara, like nothing has happened. … So we got more mileage out of those pictures of dead horses, and Sefton in his stable, than we did from Airey Neave and Earl Mountbatten being killed, you see.”

“Yes.” That was another plus for Chief Inspector Andrew: he saw life as it was, not as it ought to be, with a hot heart but a cool head.

“Yes. So they weren’t planning anything for the rest of this summer. And after the heat had gone off, when things had settled down a bit, they started to reorganise quietly—both the Provos and the INLA … But then, out of the blue, General Maxwell’s bomb goes up in the middle of Bournemouth, and all hell breaks loose again when they weren’t battened down—as they would have been if they’d planned it, sir.”