Gunner Kelly by Anthony Price

could not so easily ask their elders.”
    “Yes?” The Special Branch man was there.
    “I thought I was cultivating them . But now I’m not sure that it wasn’t the other way round—that they were questioning me … And that they were watching me more closely than their elders could have done—that the woman, and the second man … they were the back-up, watching over the boys, rather than watching me.”
    “Yeah—y eah!!” Chief Inspector Andrew at least didn’t find it outrageous. “I’ve seen little kids look out for their elder brothers, on a job … Nothing like this, of course. But if you’ve got a bright kid …” He nodded at Butler.
    “God bless my soul!” The Colonel took a moment to adjust to the idea. “Children?”
    “These were clever children, sir.” Benedikt himself still couldn’t quite accept the little girl at the water-splash. “They were at… is it ‘secondary school’, you call it?”
    “Comprehensive? Grammar?” hazarded Andrew. “Public?”
    “It was named after a king of England. And they both learnt Latin.”
    “They still learn Latin at comprehensive schools, or some of them do,” said Andrew. “Thank God!”
    “They had scholarships—”
    “Never mind!” snapped Butler. “What you’re saying … what you are saying is … the whole village?” The adjustment still taxed him, too. “The children … the tractor driver—and the Land Rover driver … the woman on the bicycle, and the man with the shot-gun … ?”
    “The petrol-station attendant at the garage,” supplemented Andrew. “Him too. And the publican.”
    “And Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith.” The Colonel added to the roll-call. “And Audley.”
    Benedikt began to feel foolish. Behind the Iron Curtain was one thing, from the Elbe to the Vistula and along the Danube … But not in England, surely! Or … if in Toxteth and Brixton, maybe … not in Duntisbury Royal, anyway—
    Yet Colonel Butler was nodding at his Chief Inspector. “That could be it. Remember how she said ‘we’?‘ We really have a chance’?”
    Benedikt stopped feeling foolish. “A chance of what, sir?”
    Butler came back to him. “Let us get this absolutely straight, Captain. You believe, having been to Duntisbury Royal, that they are waiting for a man to arrive there?”
    “A man—or men, perhaps.” Benedikt nodded. “Or someone.”
    “With hostile intent?”
    He could only shrug. “I cannot tell that. But they had no flags out—no garlands of welcome. They wished to be warned of the approach of strangers, and they were concerned to identify such strangers.” In the end he had to commit himself. “What I am saying is … subjective, of course. Since you asked me to look there, I went there looking for something. And there was Audley …”
    “And there was Audley.” A corner of the Colonel’s mouth twitched. “And you would know that where Audley goes there is trouble—that would be on your computer.”
    “Yes.” No point in denying that, even though Audley had not operated in Germany for many years. He stared at the Colonel. “Hostile intent… yes. Or the intent may be with the stranger. So perhaps defensive intent, sir.”
    “And the whole village is involved in this … defensive intent?”
    That was still the sticking point. “I did not meet the whole village. It seems … unlikely.”
    “Unlikely?”
    “In England unlikely. There are places where it would not be unlikely—places where the government of the country is hated, and where strangers are feared and distrusted—where the laws are unjust and oppressive … And also in peasant communities, where there is still traditional leadership and strong feelings of local solidarity. In such places it is the objective of the regime to cut off such leadership and undermine such feelings, but sometimes such efforts have the opposite effect. But… .”
    “But?”
    “But I do not think I am describing England in the last quarter of the twentieth