Tomorrow's ghost Read Online Free

cut him off: the Jaguar they had elbowed out of the road flashed by triumphantly.
    ‘If you would be so good as to follow us, we’ll clear the way for you, sir. There’s a hold-up about six miles ahead … we’ll get you past it.’
    ‘Thank you very much, officer.’ Paul’s politeness to the Civil Power was impeccably according to the regulations. ‘We’ve a scheduled stop just beyond Wetherby, at the Crossways Motel. We shall be there for fifteen minutes. If you can give us ten miles after that it will be sufficient, thank you.’
    ‘Very good, sir.’ The policeman saluted. ‘Just follow us.’
    Paul turned to Frances. ‘Well, at least the system is working now. I was supposed to be cleared all the way down, but I nearly got arrested for reckless driving instead.’ He glanced down. ‘And if I’d had you with me I probably would have been arrested—the view isn’t conducive to careful driving. Not that it isn’t enchanting also … though I thought suspender belts were strictly for the kinky trade.’
    ‘Keep your eyes on the road.’
    ‘Pull your skirt together and I’ll try to.’
    Frances draped her plastic raincoat across her knees. ‘You said “yes and no”.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘The top name on the list.’
    ‘Oh, yes … in Yorkshire. Well, it isn’t normally, but it is today.’
    ‘Is where?’
    ‘At the University of North Yorkshire, for the conferring of honorary degrees and the opening of the new English Faculty Library.’
    ‘You mean … he’s receiving a degree?’
    ‘That’s right. A Doctorate of Civil Law, to be exact. For trying to make peace in Ireland, a doctorate in England … and a death sentence in Ireland. He shouldn’t have tried so hard.’
    ‘The Minister?’
    ‘Ex-minister … no, the Minister, that’s right. It’s the ex-minister who’s conferring the degree—he’s the Chancellor of the University now. He tried hard too, so he’s also on the list. A damned unforgiving lot, the IFF, putting him on the list is purely vindictive if you ask me. And the IRA’s not much better—I can’t help thinking that they leaked this to us in the first place just to screw us up in knots.’ Paul shook his head. ‘Which, of course, is what it’s doing.’
    He shook his head again, and Frances observed him with a mounting sense of disquiet. This wasn’t the cool analysis that accompanied proper security, it was more like an acceptance of the inevitable, the sort of fatalism she imagined soldiers in the very front line must have on the eve of an enemy offensive.
    But if that was so then the doubling of the targets didn’t make sense.
    ‘But Paul—d’you mean to say we’ve let two people on the list get together in the same place?’
    ‘Three, actually.’
    ‘ Three? ’ Frances heard her voice rise. ‘You’re joking!’
    ‘No.’ Paul appeared to concentrate on the police car ahead. ‘The Lord-Lieutenant will be there, and he was General Officer Commanding in Ulster a few years back. Now he’s one of the top advisers to the Minister’s opposite number on the shadow cabinet—which puts him right at the head of the list, alongside the Minister himself in fact. Because he’s a smart fellow.’
    Frances found herself staring in the same direction, at the flashing hazard lights of the police car, as they overtook a clot of traffic which had formed behind two juggernaut lorries racing each other up the motorway. With Michael O’Leary on the loose it was nothing short of insanity to assemble three prime targets on one spot; or, at least, on one spot away from the maximum security zone of Westminster and Whitehall where such assemblies were acceptable.
    ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Paul.
    But Frances was by no means sure what she was thinking. There was obviously some sort of emergency, no matter what Paul had said to the contrary. It was difficult not to jump to the conclusion that it was directly related to the insanity—the irresistible bait which