lost the smile fast – this was where the crunch came. ‘Christ, no! I didn’t know a damned thing about him until yesterday, and I don’t know much more now. Believe me when I say it was something I stumbled into by accident.’
She was disbelieving and contemptuous. ‘And just what did you stumble into?’
‘I can’t tell you that because I don’t know myself.’
She shook her head as though momentarily dizzy. ‘That man in the hall – those men outside: are they in your department, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’d like to talk to the man in charge.’ She stood up. ‘I’d like to tell him just what I think of all this. I knew Daddy was under pressure. Now I know where it was coming from.’
I said deliberately, ‘You’re talking to the man in charge, and you’re dead wrong.’
That stopped her. She sat down with a bump. ‘You are in charge?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you don’t know what you’re doing?’ she laughed hysterically.
‘I know what I’m doing, but I don’t know why. There’s a hierarchy of levels. Penny – wheels within wheels. Let me tell you how I got into this.’
So I told her. I told her everything, holding nothing back. I told her about Nellie and the colour codes; I told her about Ogilvie and Lord Cregar. I told her a damned sight more than I ought to have done, and to hell with the Official Secrets Act.
She heard me out, then said thoughtfully, ‘Your people aren’t very trusting, are they?’
‘They’re not in the trust business.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘The pressure didn’t come from us, Penny. We threw no acid. We came into it after that, and my brief was to watch over your father and protect him – your father, you and Gillian, and Benson, too, if I thought it necessary.’ I walked over to the window and looked at the cars. The gang had all arrived. ‘I’ve not done a very good job so far.’
‘It’s not your fault that Daddy went away.’ Her words hung heavily in the air, and she seemed to take another look at her father. ‘That he ran away.’
I turned to her. ‘Don’t start blaming him without knowing what you’re blaming him for.’
She said pensively, ‘I wonder if he’d still want me to marry you, if he knew what I know now?’
‘I’ll ask him as soon as I catch up with him,’ I said grimly.
‘You’re not going after him?’ She picked up her letter. ‘He said …’
‘I know what he said. I also know he’s regarded by my people as a very important man, and he may be going into danger without knowing it. I still have my job to do.’
‘But he doesn’t want …’
I said impatiently, ‘What he wants or doesn’t want is immaterial.’ I plucked the letter from her fingers and scanned it. ‘He says he doesn’t want you to go looking for him. Well, you won’t – I will. He says not to involve the police. Right; they haven’t been told. He says, “I will come to no harm because my old friend, Benson, will be looking after me.” Good God, Penny, how old is Benson? He must be pushing sixty-five. He’s in no position to protect himself, let alone anyone else.’
She started to weep. She didn’t sob or make an outcry, but the tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She cried silently and helplessly, and she was shivering as though suddenly very cold. I put my arm around her and she clung to me with a fierce grip. One of the worst things that can happen is when a hitherto cosy and secure world falls apart. An icy wind seemed to be blowing through that pleasant panelled study from the greater and more vicious world outside.
‘Oh, Malcolm, what am I to do?’
I said very quietly, ‘You must do what you think is best. If you trust me you will help me find him, but I wouldn’t – I couldn’t – blame you if you refuse. I haven’t been open with you – I should have told you about this yesterday.’
‘But you were under orders.’
‘A common plea,’ I said. ‘All the Nazis made it.’
‘Malcolm, don’t make it harder for yourself than you have to.’ She put my arm aside, stood up, and went to the window. ‘What are your men waiting for?’
I took a deep breath. ‘For your decision. I want to search the house, and I can’t do that without your permission.’
She came back to the desk and read her father’s letter again. I said, ‘He wrote to me, too,’ and produced the letter. ‘You can read it if you like.’
She read it, then gave it back to me. ‘Bring in your men,’ she said tonelessly.
We found a number of surprising things in that house but nothing that did us much good, at least, not then. In the basement there was a remarkably well-equipped workshop and chemical laboratory, way beyond amateur standard. There was also a small computer with a variety of input and output peripherals including an X – Y plotter. Still on the plotter was a sketch which had been drawn under computer control; it seemed to be a schematic of a complicated molecule and it made no sense to me, but then I’m no expert. For bigger problems with which the little computer couldn’t cope there was a modem and an acoustic coupler so that the little chap could be used as a terminal to control a big computer by way of the post office land lines.
In the workshop was a bench on which a thingamajig was under construction. Whatever it was intended to do it was going to do under computer control because there were no fewer than fifteen integrated-circuit microelectronic chips built into it, and that’s a fair amount of computing power. Also coupled into it was a laser, a cathode ray tube, a lot of laboratory glassware and a couple of gadgets I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t snap any switches or push any of the unlabelled buttons because I didn’t know what would happen if I did. Instead I said to Larry, ‘Any of Ashton’s firms connected with electronics or computers?’
‘No, just chemicals and plastics moulding. Some of the chemical processes might be computer-controlled, though.’
I grunted and had the entire basement sealed. The boffins from the department would have to check it out, and I wasn’t going to touch anything until they had done so.
Penny had the combination for the safe in the study, and I knew by that we were unlikely to find anything of consequence in it. I was right. There was a bit of money, less than £50, which was not much considering Ashton’s resources – I suppose it was emergency pocket money. There were some account books on which I wasted some time until I discovered they related to the running of the household, the stables and the cars. All very orderly. There was a whole sheaf of balance sheets headed with the name of the firm of accountants, Howard and Page. A quick glance at the bottom lines told me that George Ashton was doing very nicely, thank you, in spite
