Authors: Anthony Price
‘Fisher?’ Extension 223’s patience was exemplary.
‘I’d like to see the file on Trevor Anthony Bond.’
‘Ah!’
Frances breathed a sigh of relief. There was a file on Trevor Anthony Bond, she knew that because it had been cross-referenced in the file on Colonel Butler. What she hadn’t known was whether it was an active or a passive file—it might well have been passive with effect from 11.11.69, from . the afternoon when Butler had first and last quizzed Trevor Anthony on his KGB contacts. Indeed, it might very well have been passive from 11.11.69, but that
Ah!
told her it wasn’t passive now; that it was—one will give you ten—within reach of Extension 223’s right hand on his desk, maybe.
‘He’s still alive, I take it?’
‘Oh, yes—alive and kicking.’
‘And living in Yorkshire?’
Pause.
‘Yes.’
Pause.
‘Thornervaulx Abbey.’
‘He’s still there?’ Frances shivered. Why had she assumed—why had she known before she asked—that Trevor Anthony Bond still worked for the Ministry of Public Building and Works at Thornervaulx?
‘Yes.’
Fountains, Kirkstall, Jervaulx, Byland, Rievaulx, Thornervaulx—the great ruined abbeys of Yorkshire.
They were all a blur in her recollection of the things past in another life.
Fountains, Kirkstall, Jervaulx—
Fountains had been full of people picknicking on the grass, leaving their Coke cans and sweet papers and tinfoil…
* * *
She closed her eyes.
Frances Warren, aged 10, had had a green-flowered dress with a velvet bow for dinner—dinner with Uncle John in the immense Victorian vicarage—a dress which had flared out gloriously when she pirouetted in front of the mirror … except that she had had no breasts at the time, when the unspeakable, rebarbative Samantha Perring had already owned a bra—
* * *
Kirkstall, with the marvellous museum across the road, with the Edwardian street and the penny-in-the-slot machine that reconstructed a murderer’s last hours, right down to the six-foot hanging drop—
‘
Frances! Stop working that gruesome machine!
’
* * *
Kirkstall and the Hanged Man.
Jervaulx had been too ruined and dull, without the carefully manicured lawns of Byland, with its ruined pinnacle; and the wooded beauty of Rievaulx, where they had lunched on the hillside—
Chicken legs and white wine.
‘
John darling, don
’
t give the child a
nother glass
—
you
’
ll make her quite tipsy!
’
‘
Nonsense, m
’
dear. It
’
s important for a girl to hold her liquor these days. Hold your glass
steady, wench.
’
And she had thought thereafter, and still half thought, that holding her liquor was really only a question of keeping her glass steady in her hand.
But Thornervaulx was still misty in her memory, mixed and confused with Fountains and Rievaulx … in another wooded valley
(
“
Dale, wench, dale
—
you
’
re in Yorkshire now, not
your muggy Midlands!
’
)
—
in another wooded dale—hidden from the outside world of the flesh and the devil, as the old Cistercian monks planned it to be.
Perhaps that was the effect of that second glass of Uncle John’s white wine, pale gold remembered through the sleepy warmth of a little girl’s summer afternoon, already rich with the prospect of grown-up dinner and the wearing of the new dress—perhaps not surprisingly the old abbeys had become as jumbled in the little girl’s recollections as their own tumbled stonework, while the taste of chicken legs and wine and the crisp feel of the dress were as well-remembered as yesterday—
* * *
‘
Mrs Fisher!
’
Frances found herself staring fixedly at the whitewashed wall in front of her nose.
Thornervaulx Abbey, where Major Butler had questioned Trevor Anthony Bond on the afternoon (repeat afternoon) of 11.11.69 about his recent contacts with Leslie Pearson Cole (q.v. deceased, restricted) and Leonid T. Starinov (q.v. restricted).
‘I’m sorry. I’m still here—I’m just thinking…’
‘About Trevor Bond? There isn’t much in the file, I can tell you. He didn’t have much to say for himself.’
No, thought Frances. But what he had said had been distinctly odd.
‘He gave Colonel Butler an alibi at first, though—didn’t he?’
‘Which Butler promptly contradicted. And when the Special Branch went back to him, Bond simply said he’d got it wrong—that he made a mistake. What’s the point of double-checking that, may I ask?’
No point, of course, thought Frances.
And that was the point.
‘It seems a funny sort of mistake—to say “morning” instead of “afternoon”. It couldn’t have been more than a week afterwards, when they came to check up on him again, probably not so long. He must have a very short memory.’
For a moment he said nothing. ‘I don’t think it was quite like that.’
He’d read the file quite recently, but the details-hadn’t registered with him as being important. It had merely been a minor matter of routine for him, just as it had been for the Special Branch originally. So minor that now he couldn’t recall the details precisely.
‘What was it like?’
‘Hmm … Hold on a minute, and I’ll tell you …’ His voice faded.
It wasn’t quite fair to Colonel Butler to say that he’d contradicted Bond, reflected Frances. He would have put in his report independently, in which the afternoon interview with Bond had been recorded. And almost certainly the Special Branch men who had subsequently checked it out with Bond would never have seen that report, which must have had a security classification. The discrepancy between Butler’s ‘afternoon’ and Bond’s ‘morning’ would only have been spotted when the two reports reached the same desk.
And then, quite naturally, it would have been re-checked, because all discrepancies had to be resolved. But it would still have been only a minor matter of routine because it had been Butler himself who had established that he had no alibi for the material time of his wife’s disappearance:
Although I had
originally planned to interrogate Bond in the morning I decided
on reflection that the afternoon might be more productive. Having approximately
three hours on my hands, and there being no other duties scheduled for the day, I
adjusted my route to take
in my home town of Blackburn, arriving there at 1020
hours and departing at 1125. While in Blackburn I spoke to no one and recognised
no one. I then proceeded to Thomervaulx, via Skipton and Blubberhouses,
purchasing petrol at the Redbridge Garage, near
Ripley (A61), at 1305 hours,
arriving at 1425 after lunch at the Old Castle Hotel, Sutton
-
on
-
Swale.
As a not-alibi that could hardly be bettered, Frances concluded. If the Colonel had been trying to set himself up, that change of plan plus
I
spoke t
o no one and recognised no
one
had done the job perfectly. Trevor Bond’s conflicting ‘morning’ stood no chance against such an admission, and once Bond had obligingly changed his tale to conform with it there had seemed no point in the Special Branch men treble-checking him any further. It was 9 o’clock in the morning that they were after, not 3 o’clock in the afternoon, 200 miles north.
* * *
‘Hullo there, Mrs Fisher.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re quite right. He does seem to have a remarkably poor memory, does Master Bond. Even worse than you thought, actually.’
‘Yes?’
‘It was only two days. Butler visited him on the 11th—Tuesday the 11th. And the Special Branch checked him two days later, the first time, November 13th, when he said Butler was there in the morning … And then they did the re-check on Monday the 17th, when he changed it to the afternoon … So—only two days … But they do appear to have been perfectly satisfied with his explanation.’
Yes, thought Frances, but it had just been routine for them. For Butler, on the 11th, Trevor Bond had been a suspect in a security matter. But on the 13th and the 17th, for the Special Branch, he had merely been an alibi witness in a missing persons case in which they were only indirectly involved—and in which Bond himself was also only indirectly involved, come to that.
‘Is there a verbatim?’
‘For the 13th? There’s a statement for that … a very brief statement. But to the point, nevertheless:
“
A man came to see me on Tuesday morning, when I was having my tea at
about 11 o
’
clock,
and asked me a lot of silly questions about people talking to me. I never did understand what he
was on about.
”
And there’s a note from the detective-sergeant to the effect that Bond couldn’t actually remember Major Butler’s name, but only that it had been a red-headed man in a brown check tweed suit with a red Remembrance Day poppy in his lapel who’d been a ‘Major someone or other’. Which they took to be a positive ID in the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’
Extension 223 coughed. ‘The sergeant thought Bond was a near-idiot. “Apparently of low mentality”, to be exact.’ He paused. ‘A judgement subsequently confirmed on the re-check. Do you want to hear it?’
Frances’s heart sank. Low mentality’s natural travelling companion was a bad memory.
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. I quote—or rather a certain
Detective
-
Constable Smithers quotes:
“
In the
morning
—
yes, as I was having my tea. Oh bugger, I tell a lie. It was in the afternoon I was
having my tea, not the morning. I was sweeping up the l
eaves by the high altar, they blow in
therefrom the trees at the back, where the wall
’
s down at the comer there. In the morning I was
repairing the wall of the infirmary cloister, I had my tea there in the morning. It was when I was
having my tea in the
afternoon when he comes up to me. I
’
d been sweeping the leaves round the
altar. It
’
s all these questions. Why are you asking all these questions? Haven
’
t you got anything
better to do? It was the afternoon, not the morning. But I put my name to that b
it of paper. I was
mixed up, that
’
s all. I have a thermos in the morning, for my elevenses, and I make another
thermos for the afternoon in the winter, when it
’
s cold
…
”
Do you want me to go on, Mrs Fisher?’
‘Oh bugger’ was right, thought Frances. Her tentative theory on Trevor Anthony Bond looked to be as much in ruins as Thornervaulx Abbey, where the autumn leaves blew in over the site of the great golden altar under which the bones of St. Biddulph had once rested.
‘No.’ But there were still two questions to be asked, the answers to which had not been in Butler’s file, and no matter how dusty the answers they still had to be asked.
‘Was anything ever established against Bond?’
‘You mean … other than the fact that Pearson Cole and Starinov each spoke to him on consecutive days? Actually, it was Starinov who spoke to him first, then Pearson Cole …
That was established, certainly. They were both being tailed.’
‘Did they know they were being tailed?’
‘That’s anybody’s guess.’ He sniffed. ‘Pearson Cole … probably not … Starinov was a pro of course. But then so was the man who set up the surveillance on him … That makes it anybody’s guess.’
‘And they did make contact?’
‘Pearson Cole took the high jump just as we were about to pick him up. Starinov was diplomatic—he took the next plane home. It’s fair to assume those two events weren’t unconnected, that was the official view.’ Pause. ‘But whether Bond was the link man … that was never proved, one way or the other. And he’s never stepped out of line since, so far as we know. Nothing known before, nothing known since.’
The old Scottish ‘non-proven’: Trevor Anthony Bond, apparently of low intelligence, had been left pickled in doubt, innocent but unlucky, guilty but lucky, or guilty but too damn clever by half, and nobody knew which.
Just like Colonel Butler, in fact.
And, in the matter of Madeleine Butler’s disappearance, just like Patrick Raymond Parker too.
Sod it!
Question Two, then.
‘What did Colonel Butler have to say about him, Trevor Bond?’
‘Ah … now Butler was not entirely converted to the Special Branch view, you might say. Because, although he didn’t get anything out of him, he didn’t think the fellow was as stupid as he made out.’
Frances perked up. ‘In what way?’
‘In what way … Well, reading between the lines say, perhaps not a traitor, but possibly an artful dodger. But he wasn’t sure after only one stab at him.’
Only one stab at him.
That had never occurred to her, and it was a bonus she hadn’t expected. She ought to have thought of that before, but better late than never.
And the bonus gave her cash for another question.
‘What was Pearson Cole doing?’
Pause.
‘Sorry, Fisher. Classified.’
Frances frowned at the wall. ‘ “All I have to do is ask”. I’m asking.’