War Game by Anthony Price Page B

for Special Branch work, that’s all.”
    “Recruiting for the Special Branch isn’t one of my duties, that I promise you.”
    Audley returned the look. “But you think this is shaping into a Special Branch case?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You didn’t, no.” Not much, by God. That was further confirmation of the as yet unasked question. But they’d come back to that when the time was right. “So … bright, but not flashy. A good copper. A real thief-taker.”
    “Aye.” Weston was no slouch himself: he was tensed up for the next question already.
    “And yet he’s a member of this … this Double R Society.”
    One controlled nod. “That’s correct, sir.”
    “And the Roundhead Wing of it, presumably, yes?” That was mere deduction: the one thing the Brigadier had said about Digby was that he’d been down by the stream throughout the battle, a mere stone’s throw from the scene of the killing.
    Another nod. So Sergeant Digby was a Roundhead.
    “Who are perhaps a little weird?”
    “Some of them are. And some of the Royalists too,” Weston admitted. “But not Sergeant Digby.”
    “It doesn’t surprise you that he’s a member?”
    “There are plenty of perfectly respectable citizens on both sides.” Weston was doing his best to sound matter-of-fact rather than defensive. “Amateur historians and teachers and such like—a few retired army officers too. … And the prospective Labour candidate for this area is a Roundhead officer, actually.”
    Audley shook his head, smiling. “You haven’t answered my question—actually.”
    Weston shrugged. “We encourage our men to have their own hobbies. Sergeant Digby attended one of these mock-battles when he was a uniformed constable.”
    “On duty, you mean?”
    “That’s right. We always have three or four men at these things, for crowd control and such like—they can draw as big a crowd as a second division football match, these mock-battles. We’ve had up to ten thousand people for a big one. So the Society asks us for men, and pays for them … and we throw in half a dozen special constables for free.”
    “I see. And he attended one and then became interested?” Audley nodded. One of those eleven ‘O’ levels had to be History, and maybe one of the ‘A’ levels too. And for a bet, the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was still more popular among schoolmasters than that of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries now, just as it had been in his own schooldays. So that figured well enough.
    But it damn well wasn’t the only thing that figured—and that figured even better, Audley thought triumphantly as he stared at Weston.
    We encourage our men to have their hobbies.
    I’ll bet we do!
    “Have you ever been to one of these battles, Superintendent?” Try as he would, he couldn’t make the question sound innocent.
    “I have, yes.” And try as he would, Weston had the same trouble with his reply. “Have you, sir?”
    “No. Not my … scene, as they say.” And not Superintendent Weston’s scene either, for a hundred-to-one bet. “But I’m learning fast—about the police as well as the Civil War.”
    For a moment they stared at each other. Then, as abruptly as it had disappeared a few minutes before, the smile came back to Weston’s mouth. But this time the humour spread, crinkling up the whole face.
    Finally Weston grinned broadly. “All right, Dr. Audley—I give you best there. He did get interested, I told you no lie. It was partly because he is interested in history, too.”
    “But you were interested too, eh?”
    Weston beamed. “It’s a pleasure to do business with you, Dr. Audley.”
    “Even your own business?”
    “Better you than some fool who thinks he knows all the answers.”
    “Quite so. Whereas I don’t even know all the questions yet. … So he came to you and asked permission to join?”
    “Not to me. This was while he was still in uniform as a constable.”
    “Of course. I was