Snatched (28 page)

‘I brought this black box for my notes,' Indippe remarked. ‘And the notes of one other. They're going to have to be under strict lock and key. “Sensitive” is not the word!'

So, not more sandwiches.

For a little while, Indippe gave up the bellowing and switched to a gentle, wooing voice to entice the birds, the way people talked to babies or kittens. ‘Here we are then, my sweeties, see what Ber
nard
has brought for you. Come on, my little chicks, come, come, come.' Then he spoke to Lepage, ordinary voice. ‘Of course, Sally Jill and the whole Butler-Minton Society in Kalamazoo were very upset when they heard Her Ladyship and Trudy, the researcher, might get together to destroy his image. Some countering had to be arranged. Well, you can see why Sally Jill and the rest of the Society, myself included, grew disturbed: here they were, striving for the right to sponsor a monument to him, really working on your government after that initial refusal by the museum's Conclave, and then, suddenly, they hear somebody is going to say he was nothing, or worse. No, not just
some
body.
Two
bodies, both of which he had known extremely well. Incidentally, the Bible belt in the States is going to find it very difficult to understand how two women join together like this, when the husband of one of them was adulterously fucking the other. Anyway, it became even more imperative to discover the real facts, and to protect Eric Butler-Minton's name.'

Around the base of the tip men seemed to be gathering in a posse.

Indippe looked up at the gulls, though. ‘I guess I feel a kind of connection with Flounce out here,' he said. ‘It's a thrill. Do you get that feeling, too, George? As if we were sort of linked to him by the sandwiches? Well, not just linked. For myself, I have the sensation now and then that I actually
am
Flounce, an
alter ego
able to engage in aspects of his very life. It's as if I have been, oh, sort of
flooded
by him, like a blood transfusion. But perhaps you wouldn't regard that as very scientific. I'd have to concede the point.'

The birds seemed to have lost interest. They still circled, but further off now, and their cries were less frequent and not so committed: there might be a general objection to being used willy-nilly in an experiment. Indippe had taken one of the sandwiches from his pocket and was displaying it again. The gulls gave it the big ignoral. ‘Bastards,' he muttered. ‘Ungrateful horde. Think of Flounce, you jerks.'

Lepage felt startled. ‘“Think of Flounce”? Why should they? Who or what is Flounce to them? These wouldn't be the same birds who attacked him, if any did.'

‘They're so damn choosy. So damn pampered.'

‘Whereas?'

‘Whereas Flounce – try to imagine, George, what he'd have given for a sandwich like this – even a fragment of a sandwich – at the worst moments in the Mrs Cray sequence. Oh, yes.'

‘I don't think I follow this, Ber
nard.
Are you saying Butler-Minton was in some ways a
victim
of Mrs Cray?'

‘Oh, sure, eventually – for a while.'

‘We've heard rumours, of course, but there's never been any suggestion of that sort. Is this what you meant when you asked whether she was Satan? Most of us have thought that if there was any villainy it most probably came from Flounce, though everything remained terribly vague – some involvement of a whippet, and haversack straps, but no detail of what this involvement was.'

‘And the air-sock. Did you hear of that?'

‘The air-sock, yes. Flounce apparently muttered about these things on his death bed. A nurse heard him. Lady Butler-Minton had slipped away to the betting shop. The stuff is garbled.'

‘I think they're coming, George,' Indippe replied.

In a wide arc the men who'd been waving and shouting from the base of the tip began to climb towards them. It was late afternoon, and in the dwindling winter light they looked sinister, threatening. But for the absence of baying bloodhounds it might have been a manhunt scene from one of those old Devil's Island movies.

‘They don't understand,' Indippe said. ‘I tried to explain to them, but they'd never even heard of Butler-Minton. Doesn't that of itself plead the cause for the monument, George? This was a man who, on his own, without the help of your MI6 or the CIA, attempted to rescue from behind the Wall one of the greatest … Of course, suddenly, months ago, the Wall came down – is only a memory. It's increasingly difficult for people to recall its appalling effects, and the dangers it brought to those deemed to be disloyal and rebellious, even the most distinguished scholars. But …' Spinning around he confronted a gaggle of gulls who were lying off behind him, obviously interested in the food, yet remaining at a distance. ‘Come on, come on, you craven crew,' he called. He'd given up the soft approach. He glared at the birds, and his chubby, lined face with its tight little NCO's grey moustache had grown sombre, even vindictive.

‘Flounce attempted to rescue a great scholar?' Lepage asked.

‘A great and unforgivably subversive scholar, as the East German regime saw him.'

Lepage's memory got to work. ‘You're talking about Uwe Koller, are you? But I'd always thought—'

‘Shot by guards on the Wall when he tried to make a dash to the West. Koller had been in hiding in East Berlin. Flounce knew him well – camaraderie of scholars – and was trying to get him out. The East German authorities rightly suspected Butler-Minton had secret knowledge about Koller, including his hideaway. They took Flounce in for interrogation, sometimes in East Berlin, sometimes in Rostock, up on the Baltic. Koller seems to have thought that Sir Eric would betray him. Koller panicked and had a go at escape himself. It failed.'

‘Koller? But, look, I thought—'

‘You believed Koller was given away by Flounce and eliminated in a deliberately fixed incident? I'm very familiar with the disgusting rumour, obviously, though I haven't found where it started – not yet. Would Mrs Cray deliberately spread disinformation? It's possible. She's a Brit, a widow, but very fond of the old East German regime – employed by it in some high secret-police post. I gather Flounce would never talk about what actually happened. He hated failure, even a failure brought on by the errors of others. It's possible this biog by Penny Butler-Minton and the researcher will use the same old misinformation.'

Indippe bent down and picked up the iron box. ‘I think we have done as much as we can here, George. I guess there has to be a large question mark over the seagull as cause of Flounce's face scar. We will have to look for other explanations. But that's scholarship, isn't it?' He flung the remains of the sandwiches on to the tip and the birds hurled themselves down at the food.

Indippe and Lepage began to run over the rubbish in the opposite direction from the advancing men and towards a skimpy, fog-shrouded copse. The main group of birds, seeming to sense that all chance of the food might be leaving with Indippe, zoomed in close again and increased their din. The men approaching seemed satisfied to have shifted Lepage and Indippe off the high point of the tip and towards the trees and exit. The platoon turned back and began to descend.

Lepage found it hard work running over the old washing machines and discarded carpets and infinitely stained mattresses. Indippe, carrying the box, and hampered by his long coat, began to gasp.

‘Take care here,' Lepage said. They had come to some dumped, rusted coils of old barbed wire.

Looking at them, Indippe said: ‘It seems so damn appropriate for this tale – reminiscent of the Wall.'

Lepage put out a hand to help him. Indippe would not have that, or not at first. He staggered slightly, and strands of the wire fixed dedicatedly on to the leg of his drill trousers. Lepage had to crouch down and slowly unhook him. Indippe stood there, like some trapped animal, proud and defiant, but grown sloppy with age. Lepage freed him. They resumed their trek. At a slight downward slope on the very edge of the tip Lepage found what remained of a blue, two-seater Utility settee. ‘We can rest here,' he said. ‘The pursuit is off, and, in any case, they can't see us because of the dip.' They both sat down, Indippe with the box at his feet. His grey hair had been cut ruthlessly
en brosse,
perhaps to suggest virility and youthful spirit. It wasn't too bad a try, but the wheezing messed it up.

For a while he was silent, amassing some breath. Then he said: ‘It was Mrs Cray, in her professional security role, who devised that foully cruel, parody banquet.'

‘Banquet? I don't know of this.'

‘Yes, the banquet: simple and barbaric. After Flounce had been starved and questioned for two days in an abortive attempt to make him disclose Koller's whereabouts, Mrs Cray put on a banquet-stroke-picnic, as if in his honour, but a sardonic, malevolent meal, sort of
Dérision sur l'herbe.
You never heard of this, and the menu, George?'

‘No.'

‘Really? Fricassee of haversack straps in thick Melba sauce, followed by braised whippet, with a tennis ball in its mouth, all served in a field at Rostock on a vast, brilliant, mocking tablecloth cut from an airfield windsock. Genuine antique fish knives and forks for Flounce, travesty acknowledgements of his top-notch country house breeding.' An aged but still sticky fly-trap paper covered with corpses that must have lain between the settee cushions fixed itself to the professor's leather coat and Lepage's jacket, and, for a time, they fought to unlink themselves, and then to get the remains off their fingers.

‘One thing I love is the fucking ivory tower of research,' Indippe said. ‘Flounce devoured those straps and the whippet, though leaving the tennis ball, and then told Cray to send out for more, especially of the straps. Yes,
especially
of the straps, my source says. B-M was too much for them, George. I can understand why people want to be like him – why people even imagine they are part of him. As I said, I do myself now and then. The Hulliborn and Britain should be proud, and yet there is argument about a measly commemorative bust. Cray and the others gave up. Flounce was released, but not in time to save Koller.'

They strolled on again and reached the trees. Lepage found a track and went ahead, looking back occasionally to check that Indippe and the box kept up. The professor waved him forward each time, and seemed to be recovered, though it was hard to see him properly in the gathering shadows. He appeared to grow ghostly, insubstantial, his grey hair merging eerily with the foliage. A piece of the fly-paper still clung to the breast of his coat and caught the occasional, very low sunbeam that made it through the trees, glowing like a distant navigation buoy in harsh seas.

When they had been traipsing for about ten minutes, Lepage glanced behind again and could not spot Ber
nard
at all. Lepage listened and then called, but there was no sight of him and no sound of footsteps on soil. The fly-paper's gleam had passed away. For a tiny part of a second, and for no reason he could pinpoint, Lepage recalled that line in a radio broadcast just before the war: ‘The lights are going out over Europe.' As he emerged from the little wood and made for the road, the gulls clustered above him, perhaps thinking that on his own he could be bullied more efficiently. They restarted their hullabaloo, and a few swooped down towards him, beaks fierce-looking, their brilliant white bellies plump with tip spoils, almost certainly in some cases Indippe's sandwiches. ‘Get lost,' he yelled. ‘Not me, you sods, not me. Do you hear? I'm not the one who wants to be the new Flounce.'

In the night at home, Lepage had another phone call, this time from the police. He was sleeping well and, for a few seconds, had difficulty taking in the message. When he could, he did not feel much happier. ‘Director, we wondered whether you'd mind going up to Lady Butler-Minton's property. One of our patrols has run into a situation there.'

‘Situation?'

‘Yes, sir, what does seem to amount to a situation.'

‘Now? What time is it?' He saw Julia was not home yet, but that didn't tell him much.

‘It's one fifty a.m., sir.'

‘What's happened?'

‘People acting in suspicious fashion, Director. Two have mentioned your name as a sort of reference.'

‘Two? Who? How many are there altogether, then?'

‘We don't like giving personal details over the telephone, sir. But I see no harm in telling you that at least three people are involved. That's our present knowledge. The patrol is still dealing with the matter, sir. It can't leave at this stage. This is why we'd be so grateful if you could go. It might be of great assistance in clearing things up.'

‘I'm thinking of getting right out of this fucking job, you know.'

‘Sir?'

‘OK, I'll go.' He dressed and drove out to Penelope's. A uniformed constable met him at the gates of the drive. Indippe stood near him, looking delighted.

‘This American gentleman gave your name, sir,' the constable said, when Lepage came from the car.

‘What the hell's been happening to him? Have you people roughed him up?' Lepage replied. ‘This is a professor and distinguished archivist from a country which is one of our closest allies. Do you realize that?'

‘He was attacked by a cat in the dark, sir.'

‘George, look at it,' Indippe cried, pushing his wounded head rapturously towards Lepage. ‘Enteritis did this.'

‘Pardon me, sir,' the constable said, ‘but you don't get a deep facial cut like that from enteritis.'

‘You see the significance, George?' Indippe demanded joyfully. ‘I simply tried to befriend that cat in the garden, and it flew at me, entirely unprovoked. As one scholar to another, do you think we can say after this we have a workable hypothesis – I put it no stronger for now – we have a workable hypothesis that Flounce's scar was, indeed, the—'