The Alamut Ambush (2 page)

‘Get on with it, then, Jack. I can’t wait to hear why I have to keep my beard.’

Butler took a slow breath, almost a sigh. ‘On Tuesday night somebody stole a car belonging to a Foreign Office man named Llewelyn.’

Audley sat up. ‘Llewelyn? David Llewelyn would that be?’

‘You know him?’

‘I used… to know him.’ Audley began guardedly and ended casually. ‘I played rugger against him as a matter of fact.’

‘So someone pinched Llewelyn’s car,’ said Roskill after a moment’s silence. Butler had evidently hoped that Audley was going to elaborate on his acquaintance, but Audley’s mouth was tightly closed again. ‘That’s a normal occupational hazard in London these days.’

‘It was taken in Oxford.’

‘Still close enough for the city gangs.’ Butler ignored him.

‘He parked the car at six thirty p.m. in Radcliffe square, just next to All Souls – he was having dinner in All Souls that evening. By midnight it had gone. They picked it up at Bicester at seven p.m. next evening.’

Roskill looked at the map in his mind. Bicester was just north, or maybe north-east, of Oxford. And hardly more than a dozen miles away. There was an R.A.F. maintenance unit there, not far from the American base the F-111’s were moving into soon. And an Army camp – a fair-sized ordnance depot.

‘So some jokers missed the last bus home and picked their own transport. It happens.’

Butler nodded. ‘It happens – aye. In fact it’s what the police suggested. They found the car in an Army depot area, beside a public road.’

Audley began to say something, and then stopped abruptly, and looked down into his brandy glass. And if Butler was normally resistant to Faith’s charm, Audley equally could never resist hypothesising. So now they were both acting out of character.

Roskill started to stroke his chin and rather to his surprise encountered his beard: the very idea of preserving it was ridiculous, and also out of character…

Butler was a colleague, a friend even, so he must now be doing simply what he had been told to do. But Audley ranked as a friend too, and there was something which had scared him off – even though the hounds of Hell had passed him by. So there was something very wrong with the idea of some R.A.O.C. private lifting the Foreign Office man’s car.

‘What sort of car was it?’

‘Vanden Plas Princess – the 4-litre one.’

The poor-man’s Rolls-Royce, the company director’s tax dodging limousine.

‘All right, Jack. If you want me to play “spot the deliberate mistake” I’ll play it, though you could just as soon have told me. For starters – the wrong sort of car lifted from the wrong place. How’s that?’

‘Why was it wrong?’ asked Faith.

‘Too obvious. It’s not a popular make. If I wanted to get back to barracks I’d pick something easier to get into and easier to drive. And something less conspicuous.
And
I wouldn’t lift it from somewhere in the centre of Oxford like Radcliffe Square, if my memory of the place is right. I’d pick up a Mini from a dark side-street. Right, Jack?’

‘But it did turn up at the depot, Hugh,’ Faith persisted. ‘Why make a mystery out of nothing?’

‘The mystery’s all Jack’s, not mine, Faith. But as it happens it also turned up too late. If it was a substitute for the last bus it’d have been ditched within an hour. Once there was a call out for it they’d have spotted it before midday.’

‘They still could have missed it. A parked car is just a parked car if it’s not in a “no parking” zone.’

‘No, Mrs. Audley,’ said Butler. ‘They didn’t miss it, we do know that. It was parked near enough to one
of
the depot entrances to be in the way. When it was noticed the engine wasn’t even cold.’

‘All of which you could have told us in two minutes flat, Jack.’ Roskill masked his unease; again, it wasn’t like the man to go the long way round. ‘You’re being rather a bore now. Why don’t you just come to the point?’

‘The point?’

‘I don’t know what Llewelyn does, but if David doesn’t want to say, it’s probably veiled in bullshit. So some bright boy in security will have smelt the same rats I have, and after that the procedure’s straightforward: they checked it out and they found it was bugged. The point is – where do I come in?’

‘
Aye
, it smelt,’ said Butler heavily. ‘It smelt of fish and chips and it had the previous evening’s Oxford paper in it, and it was muddy. Which suggested to the local police that it was a casual job. But they had a look for prints and they couldn’t find one, not one. Which made them think again, because it was a bit too careful.’

‘I thought everyone knew enough to wipe off their fingerprints these days?’ said Faith.

‘Just so, Mrs. Audley. But only the professionals do the job really thoroughly. When the police delivered it back to London they suggested a closer look might be in order. Young Jenkins was given the job of looking – you met him last year, Mrs. Audley.’

‘I did indeed!’ Faith smiled reminiscently. ‘Lots too much hair, but very good-looking. He’s nice.’

‘He’s damn good, too,’ Roskill said. Jenkins was the star up-and-coming performer of the electronic backroom boys, which excused his hair and the irreverance that went with it. ‘If there was anything in the Princess, Alan Jenkins would have found it And
I
take it there was something?’

‘There was, Hugh.’

‘Well, for Christ’s sake, man, don’t be so mysterious. What sort of bug was it?’

‘We don’t know.’ Butler looked obstinately at Roskill, as though he wanted to look away, but couldn’t. ‘Jenkins is dead. It blew him apart, whatever it was. He’s dead.’

‘He’s what?’

It wasn’t a question: Roskill knew he’d heard perfectly well – he could hear the distant thump of the boiler and the whisper of the hot water in the pipes. It blew him apart, whatever it was …
Not Jenkins, of all people
.

‘He was told to remove any bugs he found,’ said Butler flatly. ‘Llewelyn wanted his car back on the double. Jenkins was working alone, taping his report as he went along. He’d checked out the interior of the car, and the engine and the boot. He was working in the pit underneath when he spotted this bug, just about under the driver’s seat. He started to remove it, and then said, “That’s interesting”. Just that – and then there was an explosion.’

Faith put her hands to her cheeks.

‘They haven’t reconstructed things accurately yet – it happened just after midnight, this morning. But from what he said just before it sounds as though someone took a lot of trouble. All we know is that it was one of the latest plastic explosives almost certainly, with maybe one of those new proximity activators. But it must have been attached to the bug as well – it can’t have been just bad luck, otherwise he wouldn’t have spotted something interesting.’

Not Jenkins
. Roskill groaned to himself inwardly. Lots of hair but very good-looking. But not good-looking any more.

He’d never thought of Jenkins as good-looking. Just intelligent and eager – that had been how he had looked that first time, at the Battle of Britain Open Day at Snettisham. Harry’s younger brother who was a genius with electronic gadgets and bored with his trainee managership. It had seemed such good sense to find a useful square hole for so square a peg…

‘It was quick, Hugh,’ said Butler. ‘He never knew what hit him. He wasn’t expecting it – damn it, no one was expecting it.’

No one had expected it – and bloody Llewelyn had wanted his precious car on the double. But that was half-baked, unfair thinking; of course no one expected it. Chicago in the twenties, maybe Berlin in the worst days of the Cold War. And Northern Ireland today. But this wouldn’t be an I.R.A. job: if the police had driven it all the way from Oxfordshire it was a real professional piece of work.

‘But why, Major Butler – why?’ said Faith. ‘Why should anyone want to blow Jenkins up?’

‘Not Jenkins, Mrs. Audley. Jenkins was an accident, an innocent bystander. Killing Jenkins was like poisoning a food taster – no sense to it. It was Llewelyn they wanted, and it looks as though whoever rigged the device was plain bloody-minded. But then the whole thing was a botched up affair, half clever and half stupid: if they wanted to kill Llewelyn they could have done it with much less fuss. And if they wanted to put the fear of God into him they needn’t have taken so much trouble.’

Butler was right. It was like a futile accident – as futile as a sudden skid on a patch of oil. Better to think of Jenkins skidding into a lorry: nothing anyone could do about it, and at least it was quick.

Except that this patch of oil had been deliberately spread by someone, and it would be a sweet thing to see that same someone’s face rubbed in it.

Roskill savoured the prospect for a moment: Butler had been right about that, too – for him Alan Jenkins overshadowed Snettisham. So for the first time a desire for a tangible revenge — a new sensation that – would coincide with a job.

Then he stopped short in mid-thought, suddenly at a loss. That wasn’t how things worked at all. Further, they worked the opposite way round: any sort of personal involvement, however innocent, was anathema. In this instance he ought to be the last person conscripted, not the first.

And doubly the last. Whatever Llewelyn did it had nothing to do with aviation or avionics, or he would have encountered him already. A bungled assassination was first and last a Special Branch matter, not a fit assignment for an avionics man. One might just as well despatch a chopper to intercept a bomber.

So what the devil was Butler up to? Roskill felt a cold tingle of caution crawl up his back. Butler was a good fellow, solid and sensible, but an establishment man to the core, prepared to put his hand to any awkward job loyally. And notoriously he was given such awkward jobs…

But it would be useless to ask outright for the truth. Butler would be ready to fend off such a question. Better simply to play it straight, with caution.

‘And why would anyone want to blow up Llewelyn?’

‘Perhaps Dr. Audley could tell us that.’

Audley slowly put down the empty glass he’d been nursing and stared at Butler.

‘The last time I set eyes on the man was maybe ten years ago. It was in a pub in Richmond – he apologised for treading on my hand in the game we’d played that afternoon. He’d trodden on it deliberately, of course; it was just part of
his
game. And that was the last time I met him. Ten, maybe eleven years ago.’

‘But you know
of
him, then,’ Butler prodded.

Audley looked at Butler reflectively.

‘Too late, I did. He was a bastard,’ Audley turned towards Roskill. ‘But he knows what he wants – just as Butler here knows what he wants. Unfortunately for him, he’s not going to get it.’

‘David, what on earth are you talking about?’ Faith’s face, turned towards her husband for the first time, seemed thinner and whiter in the candlelight.

‘That’s your cue, love,’ said Audley. ‘In a moment you’re going to start disapproving of me. So will Hugh. Or on second thoughts maybe Hugh won’t. Hugh’s a downier bird than they think – not just an overgrown ex-fighter pilot with a crafty streak. I think Hugh’s smelt a rat too.’

A rat, certainly. But what sort of rat?

‘Hugh’s not talking, very sensibly, love. And Major Butler’s not talking either now! Perhaps I’m being rather unfair to Butler, though. He’s only doing his job.’

‘Unfair?’ The irritation was plain in Faith’s voice. ‘Aggravating and pompous. And under the circumstances callous too, I think.’

‘There – you’ve started to disapprove.’ Audley’s sudden enjoyment of the situation
was
aggravating: this was the old Audley, one maddening step ahead of the play and relishing the fact. Again, it was all very well for Audley to enjoy himself; Butler hadn’t come for him.

Or had he?

It flashed across Roskill’s mind that Audley was now behaving exactly as he himself had done when Butler calmly cancelled Snettisham: wriggling in the snare. But Audley was an altogether more formidable creature. When it came to traps he would be a wolverine, almost untrappable…

‘You never did finish your story about the hounds of Hell, David, did you?’ Roskill murmured. ‘I take it that the rake was lucky: the hounds passed him by and he turned into a prodigal? The question is, which of us are the hounds going to take?’

Audley smiled appreciatively. ‘You were just a touch slow there, Hugh, but you got there in the end. I think they were after me all the time, don’t you?’

Faith looked from one to the other of them. ‘What hounds?’

Roskill watched Butler. ‘What David means, Faith, is that Jack there could just as easily have waited for me at home if he wanted to preserve my beard. More easily, in fact. But instead he had to come here and tell you all about it, and make a great performance of it, when strictly speaking he shouldn’t have done so at all.

‘
And
normally he wouldn’t have done. But he did – didn’t you, honest Jack? Because it wasn’t me you wanted at all. It was David!’

Butler lifted his chin. ‘Audley can help. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Well, why the bloody hell – pardon, Faith – can’t you ask him straight out?’

‘Simple again. He might have refused.’

‘No one gives orders to him any more? Are you an over-mighty subject now, David?’

‘No “might” about it. I have refused. In this matter I
am
an over-mighty subject, as it happens. Llewelyn can stew in his own juice…’

‘David!’ Faith was outraged. ‘You can’t say that, not when someone wants to murder him – not when they’ve already murdered Alan Jenkins. Don’t you want to catch the people who did
that?’

Audley shook his head at her. ‘Faith, love – can’t you see that’s what you’re supposed to say to me? Can’t you understand that nobody’s ever going to catch whoever booby-trapped Llewelyn’s car? He’ll be away and long gone. And even if he wasn’t, and we caught him, then we’d only have some stupid devil who thought he was doing his patriotic duty.

‘And that wouldn’t stop them blowing up Llewelyn if they’re set on it, any more than it would bring young Jenkins back to life. And they don’t want me to avenge Jenkins, anyway – no one’s ever going to do that.’