The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (41 page)

I said, ‘Take it easy, George,’ and put my hand inside his coat. I felt a warm wetness.

He scrabbled in his pocket for something, and said, ‘The…the…’ His hand came up before my face with the fist clenched. ‘The…the…’ Then he fell back, his eyes still open and looking at the sky with deeper surprise. A snowflake fell and settled on his left eyeball, but he didn’t blink.

In the distance mortars thumped and machine-guns rattled, and there were more single shots, again from quite close. I looked down at Ashton and cursed quietly. Brent crunched over the snow. ‘Dead?’

I withdrew my hand and looked at the blood. Before wiping it clean on the snow I said, ‘You try his pulse.’

I stood up as Brent knelt and thought of the unholy mess we -
I
- had made of the operation. The snow around Ashton’s body was changing colour from white to red. Brent looked up at me. ‘Yes, he’s dead. From the amount of blood here the aorta must have been cut. That’s why he went so fast.’

I had never felt so bad in all my life. We had driven Ashton towards the guns as beaters drive an animal. It was so stupid a thing to do. I didn’t feel very human at that moment.

Henty came crunching down the slope, carrying a pistol negligently in his right hand. ‘I got him,’ he said matter-of-factly.

I could smell the faint reek of cordite as he came closer. ‘Got who, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Benson.’

I stared at him.
‘You shot Benson!’

He looked at me in surprise. ‘Well, he shot Ashton, didn’t he?’

I was stupefied. ‘Did he?’

‘Of course he did. I saw him do it.’ Henty turned and looked up the slope. ‘Maybe you couldn’t see him from this angle - but I did.’

I was unable to take it in. ‘
Benson
shot Ashton!’

‘He bloody nearly shot me,’ said Henty. ‘He took a crack at me as soon as I showed myself up there. And if anyone shoots at me I shoot back.’

It had never occurred to me to ask Henty if he was armed. Nobody else was on Ogilvie’s instructions, but Henty was from another department. I was still gaping at him when there was a grinding rattle from above and a tank pointed its nose over the crest and began to come down into the valley. Its nose was a 105 mm high-velocity tank gun which looked like a 16-incher as the turret swivelled to cover our small group. They wouldn’t have bothered to use that, though; the machine-gun in the turret of that Centurion was capable of taking care of us much more economically.

As the tank stopped I dropped to my knees next to Ashton’s body. The turret opened and a head popped out, followed by a torso. The officer raised his anti-flash goggles and surveyed us with slightly popping eyes. Henty moved, and the officer barked,
‘Stopp!’
With a sigh Henty tossed his pistol aside in the snow.

I opened Ashton’s clenched fist to look at what he had taken from his pocket. It was a crumpled railway timetable of the route from Stockholm to Göteborg.

I don’t know what sort of heat was generated at a higher level but the Swedes never treated me with anything less than politeness - icy politeness. If I had thought about it at all that cold correctitude would have been more frightening than anything else, but I wasn’t thinking during that period - I was dead inside and my brains were frozen solid.

The Swedes had found two dead men and four live men on army territory. One of the dead men had two passports, one stolen and the other genuine; the other had three passports, all false. The passports of the four live men were all genuine. It was claimed that one of the dead men had shot the other and, in turn, was shot and killed by one of the live men, an Australian living and working in Sweden. He had no permit for a gun.

It was all very messy.

Ogilvie was out of it, of course, and so were Michaelis and Gregory. Michaelis had waited with the van at the road, but when a squad of infantry in full battle order debouched from the forest and systematically began to take my car to pieces he had tactfully departed. He drove back into Strängnäs and rang Ogilvie who pulled him back to Stockholm. And what Ogilvie heard from the Embassy made him decide that the climate of London was more favourable than the chilliness of Stockholm. The three of
them were back in London that night and Cutler was saying, ‘I told you so.’

The four of us were taken to the army barracks in Strängnäs, HQ the Royal Södermanland Regiment and HQ East Military Command. Here we were searched and eyebrows were lifted at the sight of our communication equipment. No doubt conclusions were duly drawn. We weren’t treated badly; they fed us, and if what we ate was representative of army rations then the Swedish Army does a damned sight better than the British Army. But we were not allowed to talk; a stricture reinforced by two hefty Swedes armed with sub-machine-guns.

After that I was led into an empty room and, just as I thought the interrogation was about to begin, a civilian arrived and began being nasty to the military. At least, that’s the impression I had judging by the rumble of voices from the office next door. Then an army colonel and a civilian came in to see me and, having seen me, went away without saying a word, and I was transferred into a cell in which I spent the next three weeks apart from an hour’s exercise each day. During that time I didn’t see the others at all, and the Swedes wouldn’t give me the time of day, so I ought to have been pretty lonely, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything at all.

I was awakened one morning at three a.m., taken into an ablutions block and told to take a shower. When I came out I found my own clothes - the army fatigues I had been wearing had disappeared. I dressed, checked my wallet and found everything there, and put on my watch. The only things missing were my passport and the radio.

I was marched smartly across the dark and snow-covered parade ground and shown into an office where a man dressed in civilian clothes awaited me. He wasn’t a civilian, though, because he said, ‘I am Captain Morelius.’ He had watchful grey eyes and a gun in a holster under his jacket. ‘You will come with me.’

We went outside again to a chauffeur-driven Volvo, and Captain Morelius didn’t say another word until we were standing on the apron of Arlanda Airport over three hours later. Then he pointed to a British Airways Trident, and said, ‘There is your aircraft, Mr Jaggard. You realize you are no longer welcome in Sweden.’ And that is all he said.

We walked to the gangway and he handed a ticket to a steward who took me inside and installed me in a first-class scat. Then they let on the common herd and twenty minutes later we were in the air. I had good service from that steward who must have thought I was a VIP, and I appreciated the first drink I had had for nearly a month.

When we landed at Heathrow I wondered how I was going to get by without a passport; I certainly didn’t feel like going into tedious explanations. But Ogilvie was waiting for me and we walked around Passport Control and Customs. Once in his car he asked, ‘Are you all right, Malcolm?’

‘Yes.’ I paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave the explanations for later.’

Going into town he talked about everything except what had happened in Sweden. He brought me up-to-date on the news, talked about a new show that had opened, and generally indulged in light chit-chat. When he pulled up outside my flat he said, ‘Get some sleep. I’ll see you in my office tomorrow.’

I got out of the car. ‘Wait! How’s Penny?’

‘Quite well, I believe. She’s in Scotland.’

‘Does she know?’

He nodded, took out his wallet, and extracted a newspaper cutting. ‘You can keep that,’ he said, and put the car into gear and drove away.

I went up to the flat and its very familiarity seemed strange. I stood looking around and then realized I was
holding the newspaper cutting. It was from
The Times,
and read:

KILLED IN SWEDEN

Two Englishmen, George Ashton (56) and Howard Greatorex Benson (64) were killed near Strängnäs, Sweden, yesterday when they wandered on to a firing range used by the Swedish army. Both men died instantaneously when they were caught in a shell explosion.

A Swedish army spokesman said that the area was adequately cordoned and that all roads leading into it were signposted. Announcements of the proposed firing of live ammunition were routinely made in the local newspapers and on the radio.

The dateline of the story was five days after Ashton and Benson died.

When I walked into my office Larry Godwin was sitting at his desk reading
Pravda
and looking as though he had never left it. He looked up. ‘Hello, Malcolm.’ He didn’t smile and neither did I. We both knew there was nothing to smile about.

‘When did you get back?’

‘Three days ago - the day after Jack Brent.’

‘Henty?’

He shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen him.’

‘How did they treat you?’

‘Not bad. I felt a bit isolated, though.

‘Has Ogilvie debriefed you?’

Larry grimaced. ‘He emptied me as you’d empty a bottle of beer. I still feel gutted. It’ll be your turn now.’

I nodded, picked up the telephone, and told Ogilvie’s sceretary I was available. Then I sat down to contemplate my future and couldn’t see a damned thing in the fog. Larry said, ‘Someone knew the right strings to pull. I tell you, I wasn’t looking forward to a stretch in a Swedish jail. They’d have put us in their version of Siberia - up in the frozen north.’

‘Yes,’ I said abstractedly. I wondered what
quid pro quo
the Swedes had claimed for our release and their silence.

Ogilvie called me in twenty minutes later. ‘Sit down, Malcolm.’ He bent to his intercom. ‘No more calls for the rest of the morning, please,’ he said ominously, then looked at me. ‘I think we have a lot to talk about. How are you feeling?’

I felt he really wanted to know, so I said, ‘A bit drained.’

‘The Swedes treat you all right?’

‘No complaints.’

‘Right. Let’s get to the crux. Who killed Ashton?’

‘Of my own knowledge I don’t know. At the time I thought he’d caught a couple from the Swedes - there was a lot of shooting going on. Then Henty told me Benson had shot him.’

‘But you didn’t see Benson shoot him.’

‘That’s correct.’

Ogilvie nodded. ‘That fits with what Godwin and Brent told me. Now, who killed Benson?’

‘Henty said he did it. He said he saw Benson shooting at Ashton so he drew his own gun and went after him. Apparently Benson was at the top of the slope in the trees. He said that Benson shot at him, too, so he shot back and killed him. I didn’t even know Henty was armed.’

‘Have you thought why Benson should have killed Ashton? It’s not the normal thing for an old family retainer to do to his master.’

A humourless thought crossed my mind: in the less inventive early British detective stories it was always the butler who committed the murder. I said, ‘I can think of a reason but it doesn’t depend on Benson’s status as a servant.’

‘Well?’

‘Henty was coming up on my right, and Brent and Godwin angling in from the left. Ashton was just above, but there was a big boulder screening me from the top of the slope. I didn’t see Benson and I don’t think he saw me. But
he did see Larry, and Larry was a Russian, remember. When Ashton stopped and turned, and showed signs of coming down, then Benson shot him.’

‘To prevent him falling into the hands of the Russians. I see.’

I said, ‘And that makes him something more than a family servant.’

‘Possibly,’ said Ogilvie. ‘But I’ve been going into the history of Howard Greatorex Benson and the man is as pure as the driven snow. Born in Exeter in 1912, son of a solicitor; normal schooling but flunked university entrance to his father’s disappointment. Did clerical work for a firm in Plymouth and rose to be the boss of a rather small department. Joined the army in 1940 - rose to be a sergeant in the RASC - he was an ideal quarter-master type. Demobilized in 1946, he went to work for Ashton, running the firm’s office. There he ran into the Peter Principle; he was all right as long as the firm remained small but, with expansion, it became too much for him. Remember he never rose to be more than a sergeant - he was a small-scale man. So Ashton converted him into a general factotum which would seem to be ideal for Benson. There’d be nothing too big for him to handle, and he was glad to be of service. Ashton probably got his money’s worth out of him. He never married. What do you think of all that?’

‘Did you get that from the computer?’

‘No. The brains are still baffled. They’re telling me now Benson can’t be in the data bank.’

‘They’re wrong,’ I said flatly. ‘He popped up when I asked Nellie.’

Ogilvie looked at me doubtfully, then said, ‘But what do you think of his history as I’ve related it?’

‘There’s nothing there to say why he should kill Ashton. There’s nothing there to say why he should be carrying a gun in the first place. Did he have a pistol permit?’

‘No.’

‘Have you traced the gun?’

Ogilvie shrugged. ‘How can we? The Swedes have it.’ He pondered for a moment, then opened a quarto-sized, hardbacked notebook and took the cap off his pen. ‘I wanted to go for the main point first, but now you’ll tell me, in detail, everything that happened right from the time Ashton and Benson left their flat in Stockholm.’

That took the rest of the morning. At quarter to one Ogilvie recapped his pen. ‘That’s it, then. Now you can go home.’

‘Am I suspended from duty?’

He looked at me from lowered eyebrows. ‘There are a few people around who would like to see you fired. Others favour a transfer to the Outer Hebrides so you can counter industrial espionage into the production of Harris Tweed; they’re talking about a twenty year tour of duty. Have you any idea of the trouble this enterprise of ours has caused?’

‘I have a good imagination.’

He snorted. ‘Have you? Well, imagine how the Swedes felt about it, and imagine their reaction when we began to put on the pressure at a high level. It got up to the Cabinet, you know, and the Ministers aren’t at all happy. They’re talking about bungling amateurs.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. ‘No, you’re not suspended from duty. What you did was under my instruction, and I can’t see that you could have done differently given the circumstances. Neither of us expected Benson to kill Ashton, so if anyone carries the can it’s me, as head of the department. But this department is now under extreme pressure. There’s an inter-departmental meeting tomorrow morning at eleven at which the screws will begin to turn. You will be required to attend. So you will go away now and come back here at ten-fifteen
tomorrow, rested and refreshed, and prepared to have a hard time. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I would be obliged if you do not disclose to the committee that you are aware of the Ashton file in Code Black. We’re in enough trouble already.’

I stood up. ‘All right, but I’d like to know one thing - what happened to the bodies?’

‘Ashton and Benson? They were brought back to England two weeks ago. There was a funeral service in Marlow and they are buried in adjoining graves in the cemetery there.’

‘How did Penny take it?’

‘As you might expect. Both the daughters were hit rather badly. I wasn’t there myself, of course, but I was informed of the circumstances. I managed to have word passed to Miss Ashton that you were in America but were expected back in the near future. I thought that advisable.’

Advisable and tactful. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Now go away and prepare your thoughts for tomorrow.’ I walked towards the door, and he added, ‘And Malcolm: regardless of how the meeting goes, I want you to know there is much still to be explained about the Ashton case - and it will be explained. I am becoming very angry about this.’

As I left I thought that Ogilvie angry might be formidable indeed.

I was left to my own thoughts for a long time while the committee meeting was in progress; it was twelve-fifteen before an usher entered the ante-room and said, ‘Will you come this way, Mr Jaggard.’ I followed him and was shown into a large, airy room overlooking an inner courtyard somewhere in Westminster.

There was a long, walnut table around which sat a group of men, all well-dressed and well-fed, and all in late middle-age. It could have been the annual meeting of the directors of a City bank but for the fact that one of them wore the uniform of a Commander of the Metropolitan Police and another was a red-tabbed colonel from the General Staff. Ogilvie twisted in his chair as I entered and indicated I should take the empty seat next to him.

Chairing the meeting was a Cabinet Minister whose politics I didn’t agree with and whose personality I had always thought of as vacillating in the extreme. He showed no trace of vacillation that morning, and ran the meeting like a company sergeant-major. He said, ‘Mr Jaggard, we have been discussing the recent Swedish operation in which you were involved, and in view of certain differences of opinion Mr Ogilvie has suggested that you appear to answer our questions yourself.’

I nodded, but the colonel snorted. ‘Differences of opinion is putting it mildly.’

‘That has nothing to do with Mr Jaggard, Colonel Morton,’ said the Minister.

‘Hasn’t it?’ Morton addressed me directly. ‘Are you aware, young man, that you’ve lost me my best man in Scandinavia? His cover is blown completely.’

I concluded that Morton was Henty’s boss.

The Minister tapped the table with his pen and Morton subsided. ‘The questions we shall ask are very simple and we expect clear-cut, unequivocal answers. Is that understood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well. Who killed Ashton?’

‘I didn’t see who shot him. Henty told me it was Benson.’

There was a stir from lower down the table. ‘But you don’t know that he did, other than that you have been told so.’

I turned and looked at Lord Cregar. ‘That is correct. But I have, and still have, no reason to disbelieve Henty. He told me immediately after the event.’

‘After he had killed Benson?’

‘That’s right.’

Cregar regarded me and smiled thinly. ‘Now, from what you know of Benson, and I’m assuming you had the man investigated, can you give me one reason why Benson should kill the man he had so faithfully served for thirty years?’

‘I can think of no sound reason,’ I said.

His lip curled a little contemptuously. ‘Can you think of any unsound reasons?’

Ogilvie said tartly, ‘Mr Jaggard is not here to answer stupid questions.’

The Minister said sharply, ‘We shall do better if the questions are kept simple, as I suggested.’

‘Very well,’ said Cregar. ‘Here is a simple question. Why did you order Henty to kill Benson?’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I didn’t even know he was armed. The rest of us weren’t; those were Mr Ogilvie’s instructions. Henty was in a different department.’

Colonel Morton said, ‘You mean Henty acted on his own initiative?’

‘I do. It all happened within a matter of, say, twenty seconds. At the time Benson was killed I was trying to help Ashton.’

Morton leaned forward. ‘Now, think carefully, Mr Jaggard. My men are not in the habit of leaving bodies carelessly strewn about the landscape. What reason did Henty give for shooting Benson?’

‘Self-defence. He said Benson was shooting at him, so he shot back.’

Colonel Morton leaned back and appeared satisfied, but Cregar said to the company at large, ‘This man, Benson,
seems to be acting more and more out of character. Here we have an old age pensioner behaving like Billy the Kid. I find it unbelievable.’

Ogilvie dipped his fingers into a waistcoat pocket and put something on the table with a click. ‘This is a round of 9 mm parabellum found in Benson’s room in Marlow. It would fit the pistol found with Benson’s body. And we know that the bullet recovered from Ashton’s body came from that pistol. We got that from the Swedes.’

‘Precisely,’ said Cregar. ‘All you know is what the Swedes told you. How much is that really worth?’

‘Are you suggesting that Benson did not kill Ashton?’ asked Morton. There was a note of sourness in his voice.

‘I consider it highly unlikely,’ said Cregar.

‘I don’t employ men who are stupid enough to lie to me,’ said Morton, in a voice that could cut diamonds. ‘Henty said he saw Benson kill Ashton, and I believe him. All the evidence we have heard so far does not contradict that.’

Ogilvie said, ‘Unless Lord Cregar is suggesting that my department, Colonel Morton’s department and Swedish Army Intelligence are in a conspiracy to put the blame for Ashton’s death on Benson and so shield the killer.’ His voice was filled with incredulity.

The uniformed commander guffawed and Cregar flushed. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I’m just trying to get to the bottom of something damned mysterious. Why, for instance,
should
Benson shoot Ashton?’

‘He is not here to be asked,’ said the Minister coolly. ‘I suggest we stop this chasing of hares and address ourselves to Mr Jaggard.’

The Commander leaned forward and talked to me around Ogilvie. ‘I’m Pearson - Special Branch. This Swedish operation isn’t my bailiwick but I’m interested for professional reasons. As I take it, Mr Ogilvie did not want Ashton
to become aware that British Intelligence was taking note of him. Do you know why?’

That was a tricky one because I wasn’t supposed to know who Ashton really was. I said, ‘I suggest you refer that question to Mr Ogilvie.’

‘Quite so,’ said the Minister. ‘It involves information to which Mr Jaggard is not privy.’

‘Very well,’ said Pearson. ‘At the same time he wanted Ashton out of Sweden because the Russians had become attracted, so he put pressure on Ashton by having a man pretend to be Russian and thus “explode Ashton out of Sweden”, as he has put it. What I don’t understand is why this kidnapping attempt in Strängnäs was necessary. Why did you try it?’

I said, ‘They took tickets from Stockholm to Göteborg. That was all right with me. I intended to shepherd them along and, if they took ship from Göteborg to find out where they were going. The important thing was to get them out from under the Russians in Sweden. But when they gave us the slip and went to Strängnäs it became something more complex than a discreet escort operation. Stronger measures were necessary as sanctioned by Mr Ogilvie.’

‘I see,’ said Pearson. ‘That was the point I misunderstood.’

‘I misunderstood something, too,’ said Cregar. ‘Are we to assume that your instructions precluded the disclosure of yourself to Ashton?’

‘Yes.’