FOUR

Slumped bleary-eyed and woolly-headed aboard the 8.30 train to Paddington the following morning, his thoughts as blurred as the passing landscape, Harry winced at a scalding sip of plastic-cupped coffee and wondered if a cigarette would sharpen his mental processes. The answer was almost certainly, but he had forsworn smoking when Daisy was born and his lungs worked the better for it even if his brain did not. Besides, First Great Western in their corporate wisdom did not permit smoking.

That was just one of the ways in which life had changed since he had last travelled to Kilveen Castle, with Chipchase, in a succession of fug-filled third-class carriages, back in the early spring of 1955. They had probably puffed their way through fifty or sixty cigarettes in the course of their tortuous journey, which had begun at Stafford before dawn and had ended, well after dark, at Lumphanan, the closest station to the castle, thirty miles west of Aberdeen on the Deeside branch line. Harry shivered at the memory of stumbling off the train into the bone-numbing chill of an Aberdeenshire night. 'Bloody hell,' he remembered Chipchase gasping. 'There've sent us to Siberia.'

But Siberian their exile had not turned out to be. Far from it. Their three months at Kilveen had been cushier than even they would have claimed to deserve. 'Never mind Clean Sheet,' Chipchase had remarked after only a few days of Professor Mac's gentle regime. 'We've got ourselves a bloody feather bed here, Harry.'

There had in truth been much to be thankful for. 'You've all been given a second chance,' the CO from Dyce had told them during his one and only visit to the castle. 'Be sure you make the most of it.' And so they had, though not necessarily in the way the CO had envisaged. As to whether their second chance had had any lasting effect… time was about to tell.

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry headed straight into the ticket office when he reached King's Cross and felt grateful for the twenty minutes he still had in hand before the Aberdeen train was due to leave. The queue was long enough to remind him of the days of rationing. He was not destined to make much progress towards the front of it, however.

'Ossie.' A gravelly voice sounded in Harry's ear. He turned to confront a tall, broad-shouldered, big-bellied man wearing a loose and expensive-looking overcoat over jeans and a sweatshirt. His large, smiling face was familiar, though only faintly so in its current condition of broken-veined puffiness. His hair was even shorter than the day after an RAF short-back-and-sides and Persil white into the bargain. The stud gleaming in his left earlobe was likewise no aid to recognition. But there had been a cockney twang to the one word he had so far spoken, which was as much of a clue as Harry needed.

'Judder.'

'Good to see you, mate.' Bill Judd bestowed on Harry a crushing handshake and a pat to the shoulder that felt more like a clout. 'Come and meet the others. They're out on the concourse.'

'I haven't got my ticket yet.'

'We've got it for you, in case you left it till the last moment to turn up. You always were a tardy bugger. Come on.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Lloyd had said seven were travelling up on the train. Harry therefore expected to see a sizeable huddle of half-remembered figures ahead of them as Judd piloted him out of the ticket office. What he actually saw, however, was Lloyd and Askew standing together in front of the information screens — and no sign of anyone else.

'Expect you're wondering where they've all got to,' was Lloyd's prescient greeting.

'Well…'

'Tapper's already on board. Seems he preferred resting his arse on some first-class upholstery to waiting for you on these hard-as-nails benches out here.'

'They've just called the train, Harry,' said Askew, nodding up at the screens.

'Yeah. We'd better get a wiggle on, boys,' said Judd. 'Some of us don't move as fast as we used to.'

'Did you say first-class, Jabber?' Harry asked as they hefted their bags and joined the general rush towards platform six, where the 10.30 to Aberdeen awaited. 'Isn't Tapper travelling with us, then?'

'We're all in first, mate,' Judd shouted over his shoulder. 'I bumped us up when Tapper showed his hand. I think he was hoping for a quiet journey. We'll knock that idea on the head, hey?'

'But—'

'Don't worry about it. My treat.'

'I can't—'

'Don't argue, Ossie,' said Lloyd in an undertone. 'You'll queer the pitch for the rest of us.' He nodded ahead at the lurching figure of Judd. 'I reckon bricks and mortar have served him well. Just look at the cut of that overcoat.'

'All right. I won't argue. But where are the others? You mentioned seven.'

'Didn't you read Danger's notes?'

'Yes, but—'

'Gregger and Paradise live up the line. Gregger's joining us at Peterborough, Paradise at York.'

'That still only makes six.'

'Not if we count you.'

'But you weren't counting me. Were you?'

'No. Bit of a change of plan where Magister's concerned, actually. I'll fill you in when we're on board. You'll have to get over the shock of meeting Tapper first.'

'Shock? Why should it be—'

'Just you wait and see.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry followed the others onto the train mentally preparing himself for his first sight of Gilbert 'Tapper' Tancred's time-ravaged features. Perhaps, it occurred to him, there was worse to be faced than the imprint of the years. Disability; disfigurement: who knew what?

Then he saw Judd move ahead of him down the aisle between the seats and touch the shoulder of one of the passengers already aboard. The passenger looked up at Judd, then rose and turned towards Harry.

The shock, it turned out, lay in the ease of recognition. Tancred was as slim and erect as he had been at twenty. His black hair had been lightened by no more than a few strands of grey. There were more lines about his pale, high-cheeked face, but fewer than might have been expected. All in all, he was quite astonishingly unaltered. If he had swapped his smartly tailored jacket and rumple-free trousers for his old RAF uniform, the effect would have been positively uncanny.

'Ah. You found him, then.' Tancred's voice had altered. A career in merchant banking had given him a syrupy drawl that Harry did not recall. 'Well met, Ossie.'

Harry advanced to shake his hand. 'Life treating you well, Tapper?'

'Can't complain, old boy. Yourself?'

'Oh, fair to middling.'

'Are you, er, staying here?' Tancred frowned at Lloyd's hoisting of his bag onto the rack.

'Thought we'd join you in first, Tapper,' said Judd, grinning broadly. 'Keep you company, like.'

'Really?' Tancred smiled. 'Excellent. I'd have joined you, of course, once we were under way. But this… is better all round.'

'Supercilious sod,' Lloyd whispered to Harry as Judd's manhandling of his bag briefly shielded them from Tancred.

'What were you going to tell me about Magister, Jabber?' Harry asked, loudly enough to be heard by everyone.

'Oh, he's flying up. That's all. Meeting us there.'

'That's not quite all, Ossie,' said Tancred as they sat down. Harry joined Lloyd, Askew and Judd in occupation of the quartet of seats on the other side of the aisle from Tancred. 'Magister, we're told, has to attend an auction this afternoon in Geneva, so he's flying from there to Aberdeen tonight. Such is the life of the international art dealer.'

'He's not… retired, then?' asked Askew.

'Doesn't wish to be thought retired, at all events,' said Tancred. 'There's a spot of one-upmanship in this breathless announcement of his hectic schedule, I suspect.'

'One-upmanship's not something you'd know anything about, though, is it, Tapper?' Lloyd enquired sarcastically.

'Sniping before the train's even pulled out of the station,' said Judd, pressing several podgy fingers to his brow. 'Blimey, we've gone straight back to how it was in that Nissen hut.'

'Pax,' said Tancred, holding up a hand and bowing his head in a gesture of humility. 'We're the lucky ones, gentlemen, for being alive and well enough to undertake this journey. Yes, we often used to irritate one another and may do so again before the weekend's out. But to meet again is nonetheless cause for celebration. Shall we try to put half-remembered petty grievances aside and concentrate on the task in hand?'

'I'm all for that,' said Judd.

Lloyd shrugged. 'So am I.'

'Me too,' said Harry.

'But…' Askew looked thoughtful. 'What task would that be… exactly?'

'Why, enjoying ourselves, of course.' Tancred beamed benignly at Askew. 'What else?'