Death of a Raven (6 page)

At the moment that he realised I wasn’t acting and drew away, perplexed, Mark ran into the room and beat him off with his riding crop. Such was the state I was in that, for a few moments, I let young Hartland’s temper run riot. After that few moments Mark himself would have been in danger. Something cold and calculating within me allowed the whip to fall once more across Patrick’s shoulders and then I got up and grabbed Mark’s arm.

“You filthy bastard,” he mouthed at the sordid figure lying on the floor, backing away, white with anger.

Somehow I bundled him out of that squalid room and down the stairs. Then I must have fainted.

Chapter 6

Perhaps that cold calculating quality within me was the prompting of my writer’s brain, the same mechanism that functioned as a watchdog over my own behaviour and at the same time collected data and memorised faces, mannerisms and information for future use. Whatever the true nature of this phenomenon it carried on quite ruthlessly presenting me with a picture of the world while I was, to all intents and purposes, unconscious.

I was lying on the sofa in Emma’s room, covered by a blanket and in the company of several hot water bottles. This much I knew to be fact and not dream even though at the same time I felt many miles and many years away.

“Stalky,” whispered someone, and then closer, “Stalky — Stalky’s coming!”

Then, perhaps in dream, perhaps in reality, I wept for the second time that day, seeing a skinny boy going through a school gate and out into the street. That was the first school rule he broke on that fateful occasion. The second was to approach a member of the public and shout, deride, jeer and insult him until the infuriated man chased him away. Patrick had run slowly. Stalky, being what he was, travelled behind at a shambling canter, arms waving. At that speed he had seemed even more terrifying to me than when he had crept up on us behind hedges and peered at us through holes in the playground wall, and made signs to us girls that most of us couldn’t understand but which frightened us witless all the same.

“Oh, God forgive me,” whispered what sounded like my own voice.

“He’ll have to go,” said Emma, and I heard a door close. Mark sat on one end of the sofa, still breathing rather quickly, a frown on his normally good-natured face. “You weren’t apologising to us,” he said when he saw me looking at him.

“To Freddie,” I told him. “He didn’t mean it.”

“He tried to rape you and didn’t mean it?”

“He resurrected a childhood nightmare without meaning to,” I corrected him softly.

“Mother’s gone to phone the doctor.”

“There’s no need. How’s your wrist?”

“It aches a bit. If it hadn’t been for that I’d have really given the bastard what for. I’d swear in court he threw a handful of gravel at the animal’s hind legs.”

When the doctor arrived, in her early twenties, black and with the kind of fizzing energy that always makes me feel old and utterly exhausted, it soon became apparent that Emma had not told her the reason for my present fragility. I couldn’t really blame her, no one likes to admit that a member of their staff has violently attacked a guest in their house. Thus I was examined and told there was nothing to worry about. Afterwards the doctor departed. I did not imagine for a moment that we would have to call her out again that same night.

Freddie had very wisely made himself scarce by the time Hartland arrived home. But it seemed to me, watching and listening while pretending to read in the living room, that the search for him was perfunctory and that Hartland had other more pressing matters on his mind. So he contented himself with bawling out Emma for allowing it to happen and demanding to know of me why I had visited Freddie’s quarters in the first place.

“I never dreamt that he’d be housed over the stables,” I retorted. “I went up to watch some swallows nesting in the roof.” This glibness came regrettably easily but at least the birds had taken up residence over Freddie’s head, they had been skimming in and out through a broken window. But I was not happy. If Patrick had obeyed orders and worked from within the house then there would have been no necessity for our charade. But he had insisted that he had his reasons and breaking his cover by a fake rape also had a purpose. Would the Hartlands sack him quietly, call the police or hire a couple of thugs to run him out of town?

“Robin Hughes,” said Hartland, gazing at the man using that name as he entered the room having just arrived with all the others. “That isn’t your real name, is it?”

“You know it isn’t,” replied Terry. “At your own request you —”

“Is that so-called gardener one of your subordinates?”

“Most certainly not.”

“Do I have your word on that?”

“Of course,” Terry said, getting just the right tone of injured surprise into his voice.

“I was told there would be two of you,” Hartland persisted.

“He is not working for me,” said Terry in a manner that made Hartland change the subject.

Mark, however, was made of sterner stuff. “So where is he then?”

“Behind the third spruce tree along from the left. How the hell should I know?”

“That’s no answer.”

Terry held Mark’s gaze until the youngster flushed. Further silent scrutiny caused him to jump up from his seat and slam out of the room. Emma and her husband exchanged glances.

“I’m sorry,” Terry said to them. “But you know I can’t discuss that kind of thing.”

I turned my back on the room and looked out of the window. It seemed to me that the most innocent parties were the only ones being hurt and that the entire mission was swinging crazily between tragedy, ineptitude and pure farce. And why did I imagine that working deeply in cover was turning Patrick’s brain?

*

“Any clues as to whether the writer of the threatening note was a nutter?” Hartland asked Terry after dinner, quite mellow after several glasses of claret.

“No clues of any sort,” Terry replied, relaxed and carefully polite after one glass. “London postmark — posted in Ealing the previous night.”

“Where does Fraser live?”

“Yelverton — Devon. About twenty minutes’ drive from Plymouth,” McAlister answered after Terry admitted that he didn’t know.

“Has something happened?” I asked.

“His cars had acid thrown over them.”

“When?” Drew shouted to make himself heard over the cries of dismay.

“Yesterday.”

“Not his lovely Lotus and Range Rover,” Margaret Howard said in a low moan, and suddenly I wanted to know exactly how upset she had been by Andy’s death.

“Outside the office?” enquired Paul.

“No, his garage was broken into.”

“But there are dogs!” This again from Margaret.

“Apparently they didn’t make a sound.”

“Then surely that suggests that they recognised whoever did it.”

Hartland clearly did not want to be drawn into a discussion about Chris Fraser’s dogs. “I’ve no idea. The police are investigating.”

“But you don’t understand,” she went on. “They’re Dobermanns. Even the post and papers have to be left in a box at the gate.” 

“Postman and paperboys can’t afford steak,” commented Terry wryly.

“The Germans use them as police dogs,” Margaret said dismissively. “Quite the most savage dogs.”

“That’s correct,” Terry replied. “When they’re trained never to take food from strangers. The average Dobermann kept as a pet will run for its life if you slap it over the muzzle or be your friend if you produce a lump of beef.”

“Experience talking,” Paul smiled. “My guess is that it depends heavily on who is doing the clandestine visiting.”

“Have the police —?” McAlister started to say but was drowned out by the Newfoundland, an animal which until that moment had resembled nothing more than a friendly hearthrug. It lumbered to its feet and let out the loudest bark I had ever heard. Then it careered to the window, paws skidding on the polished floor, and from there to the door. Finding it shut the animal commenced to howl like a banshee.

In the general confusion of everyone running into the hall, falling over each other and the dog, finding coats and becoming even more agitated when we heard Marcus frantically neighing and the unmistakable sound of him kicking at the walls of his box, I was aware of Terry quietly strapping on his gun harness and slipping out through the kitchen. I followed him.

Our subtlety proved to be of no avail for we all met outside and it took every ounce of Terry’s authority to quieten the babble of voices and slow everyone down. He went on ahead and I contrived to be just behind him.

“There’s a pick-up parked behind the stable,” I heard Emma say.

“Probably ours,” Hartland grunted.

“Don’t be stupid, David. It’s piled high with lobster pots.”

My inner watchdog noted a sky bright with stars, a faint nimbus around the moon promising frost and the smooth lawns silvery in its light. I ignored all of this and focussed my attention on the squares of light that were the door of the stable and the two windows, one on each side of it. 

Marcus neighed again, angry and frightened, and there were more bangs as he kicked out at the wooden partition. As we reached the doorway Mark ran out, almost straight into Terry’s arms nearly knocking him over, recoiled hesitating and then dashed off into the dark.

“What the devil …!” Hartland shouted. “Mark? Mark!”

The first thing I saw when I ran into the stable behind Terry was Marcus, eyes rolling with fear but still thankfully secure in his box. Queen was in one of the two stalls, alarmed and staring over the top of the partition at what was taking place in the empty one next to her. More correctly, she was boggling at the man in the hay rack in the stall next to hers, Patrick, trying to evade the lunges being made at him with pitchforks wielded by three men built like wrestlers. Then, two of them threw these aside and with greedy grasp hauled their victim from on high and threw him onto the floor.

Emma screamed.

Patrick’s answer to this was effective and, in the circumstances, quite stylish. Lithe as a ballet dancer he uncoiled upwards from the floor, a fist ramming into the side of one man’s jaw sending him sideways and down. His other hand, quite independently, swung up to shoulder height to smash bloodily into the nose of another who had been coming from behind to grab him by the throat. The third, who had had a foot raised to kick his ribs in, fell to Terry.

I loathe violence but this astounding affray, a kind of antithesis of a nightmare, the frog turning into a prince, the happy ending after impossible odds, caught at my throat. I glanced around at white, shocked faces, saw Terry grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and then had to get out of the way quickly as the three thugs were on the run.

“I enjoyed that,” murmured Terry, twitching his sweater straight, but no one was looking at him.

“You lied to me,” said Hartland, not taking his eyes off his erstwhile gardener who was dusting himself off, reminding me irresistibly of a bird of prey rearranging its plumage after a kill.

“No one has lied to you,” Terry said.

“I very much regret that my son has been responsible for forcing him into the open like this,” Hartland bellowed at Terry, “but I insist that you confirm that this man is one of yours.”

“He’s one of mine,” said Patrick, still fastidiously picking strands of hay from an otherwise unspeakably dirty tee-shirt. The voice was now the one I knew so well, no longer Freddie’s nasal whine. But deceptively quiet, with just a hint of a cutting edge.

“And you are?” Hartland enquired.

Patrick told him.

Emma struck a theatrical pose and, with resignation, I waited for her little scene-stealer. “Your husband!” she cried, staring triumphantly at me.

To my fury, I blushed as seven pairs of eyes fixed unwaveringly on me.

“Oh dear,” said Emma with a giggle. “Poor Mark.”

“Who are those characters?” Patrick asked Hartland.

“They take him fishing,” Emma chimed before he could reply. “I’m cold — can we talk indoors?”

“There’s blood on your leg,” Margaret told Patrick. She had been one of those tossed aside when the attackers had fled and was also removing hay from her clothes. She was remarkably cool under the circumstances.

Patrick glanced down. “A few prods with a hay fork.”

“Tetanus,” I said. “Jabs up to date?”

The grey eyes regarded me in a fashion that made Margaret’s coolness look like hysterics. Talk about laid back. “Are you all right, Ingrid?”

“I’ll make out my report in triplicate,” I said, getting the message right across.

Chapter 7

Emma insisted on calling the doctor to attend to Patrick’s ugly-looking puncture wound. Also, having watched her carefully since my arrival and aware that Hartland might have told her more about Patrick than she had mentioned, I suspected that she wished to get as much mileage from the situation as possible.

The heating having mysteriously gone off when the doctor arrived, Patrick had to have his leg dressed in the living room. It was too cold anywhere else, Emma insisted. So we had to have the whole rigmarole: Patrick having to remove his jeans behind the scant privacy of the settee with its back turned to the room, a tetanus jab, everything, while I sweated with embarrassment for him.

Not that he is particularly coy concerning the result of his injuries in the South Atlantic, long hospitalisation has seen to that. Also, had his disability been made known previously to those present I’m sure they would have taken themselves off to bed. Now it was too late.

I felt like an extra in an extremely third-rate movie sitting alongside him on the settee waiting for the young black doctor’s interest to penetrate the buzz of polite conversation behind us. She asked him about percentage mobility and a lot of other technical questions that he seemed to be able to answer, and by the time the wound was dressed everyone in the room must have been aware of the man-made construction of the lower part of his right leg.

The doctor departed and the patient was once more attired, this time in clean clothes provided by Terry, when Emma produced the apparent cause of all the trouble, piloting him in Patrick’s direction with a shove.

“You’ve been sick,” said Patrick observantly, one eyebrow quirked.

It occurred to me then that the best kinds of pleasure and the worst of cruelty involve anticipation, and that this young man had been thoroughly prepared by Emma for his comeuppance at the hands of an expert.

Mark, it seemed, was beyond making a reply to this.

“You were sick before you even came into the stable,” continued Patrick in a quiet voice. “Those men — the biggest one was Bryce, the dark-haired one Lanny … Who was the third?”

“Rab,” whispered Mark, and then his legs buckled.

Patrick caught him, dispelling any lingering doubts as to his mobility, and lowered him on to the settee with his head between his knees. “Give him a brandy with some ginger ale,” he said to the room at large. “I wouldn’t mind some as well.”

The elegant reproduction clock in the dining room struck eleven in the silence that followed. Emma turned away with a small frown.

“The Gaspereau brothers,” Patrick went on. “It was written on the side of the pick-up.”

Irritably Hartland said, “He told them you tried to rape a guest at the house, and then the whole damn fool lot got drunk and decided to do something about it. You have my apologies.” He didn’t sound sorry.

Patrick took the drinks from McAlister, placed one on a table and succeeded in getting Mark to swallow most of the other. He choked and leaned back with a groan, his head on Patrick’s shoulder. Quite naturally Patrick’s arm went round his back, keeping him in a secure upright position.

Hartland said, “If you know who they are, then why ask?”

“Checking on the level of co-operation,” he was told.

Mark sat up with another groan and put his head in his hands.

“If you throw up again in here you can pack your bags forever,” Emma said, tight-lipped.

“Beer and a Chinese take-away is a dreadful combination,” Patrick observed, placing a metal waste paper bin at Mark’s feet and tapping him on the arm to draw his attention to it.

I smiled behind my hand. Even after all this time, familiar as I am with his methods, I find myself in awe of Patrick’s gift of handling people. I had no doubt that had Mark displayed any lesser degree of co-operation, either by making a rude remark or refusing to reply because of his nausea, he would have received a box around the ears that would have guaranteed his vomiting on to the carpet. Now, Patrick would draw his gun rather than permit anyone to lay hands on his charge. Recognise and acknowledge his authority and you come under the aegis of Patrick Gillard. It is like joining a select club.

Margaret’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I can’t understand why he knocks around with such a rough bunch.”

“They take him fishing,” said Emma, not for the first time.

I looked at Mark, the educated son of a wealthy influential family, and then across to Hartland who had a boat but would concern himself more with stocking the bar than providing fishing tackle. I had seen pictures of the
Dancing
Sprite
and could not imagine that bait and fish scales would ever be permitted to sully its gleaming decks whereas it was easy to picture a young Mark in the Gaspereau brothers’ fishing boat, a lobster pot at his back, a tin of beer within reach, enjoying long, lazy, sun-soaked afternoons a million miles from his studies or his parents’ social graces. In exchange for a few dollars to buy the beer, and the chance to chip away at Mark’s middle-class good manners, the three Maritimers would tolerate his company.

But would they risk beating up his father’s gardener? The answer to this surely, was that drunk they would do anything.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said to the floor.

“That’s not good enough,” Emma snapped.

I was thinking that their son’s lapse had definitely brought out the worst in his parents when Emma spoke directly to me, unrecognisable as the pleasant woman who had met me at the airport.

“You’re not saying much. I suppose what happened over the stable started off as a furtive amatory frolic.”

I felt like being immensely rude to her but, since coarse quotes always find their way into the media, refrained. “No,” I said with a smile. “He and I have never felt the need to play at being furtive,” Make of that what you will, I thought. Perhaps it was sufficiently obtuse to make you forget to be beastly to your son for a while.

Mark gazed somewhat fearfully at Patrick but before he could speak was pulled to his feet.

“There’s nothing for which you have to apologise. My reaction would have been precisely the same if I’d found you lying on top of Ingrid. Go to bed.”

Whereupon someone shrieked with laughter. I’m afraid that person was me.

Mark wanly wished everyone goodnight and went from the room. I was inwardly promising him explanations and apologies when it occurred to me that they might be unnecessary. Mark’s sports car had been parked by the fishermen’s pick-up in a position that suggested he had arrived first. Had he come to warn Patrick, terrified of the trouble he had stirred up? His full tilt exit from the stable certainly suggested that he had been on his way to get help.

The DARE people collectively took the hint and went to bed. Paul lingered and then bashfully came over to Patrick and held out his hand.

“You’ll think I’m daft,” he said, “but that was absolutely bloody marvellous. Thank you.”

Patrick can be seen to be lost for words perhaps once in every ten years. This was one of those occasions but he smiled and gripped Paul’s hand warmly. No more was necessary.

That was where the pleasantries ended. Emma sat tight until an unrelenting stare from Patrick unnerved her. Even Terry was caught in the fall-out from this and rose to go.

“Sit down,” said Patrick.

Terry sat.

David Hartland meanwhile had been going through the motions of reading a newspaper, turning the pages with angry jerking movements. When the door closed behind his wife he threw the paper down and commenced to swear at Patrick with all the ingenuity and verve of a man who has been made a thorough fool of.

Patrick sat, left leg crossed over right, toe swinging gently, and waited for him to finish. Finally, Hartland ran out of steam and was reduced prosaically to demanding an explanation.

Patrick said, “When you request help from home base, it doesn’t mean you can call the tune. You know that.”

Hartland took a deep breath. “Tell me one useful piece of intelligence that you discovered whilst engaged in this ridiculous and, I take it, self-motivated exercise.”

Helping himself to a big handful of peanuts from a dish on a side table, Patrick said, “Well, for a start your Newfoundland’s likely to be in pup, courtesy of the Great Dane down the road.”

For a moment I thought Hartland was actually contemplating physical assault. This possibility came alarmingly closer when Patrick delivered his next remark.

“Also that your wife seems to possess roughly the same inclinations as a bitch in heat. A security risk, wouldn’t you say?”

I began to see why he had ordered Terry to stay.

“She’s had every man in this house barring McAlister and myself. And you, of course.”

I couldn’t help it. I glanced across at Terry who steadfastly refrained from looking at me.

“You’re lying,” Hartland said.

“Why should I? Anyway, you knew about it. You suspected her and had microphones installed in every room.”

“No — no. They were already here. I took this place over from the Canadian Secret Service.”

“But still operational. Several thousand dollars’ worth of equipment humming away behind a false wall in the laundry-room. Even a child would want to know why a cupboard door has such expensive locks on it.”

“It facilitates certain —” Hartland began, but Patrick cut him short.

“I’m sure it bloody does. Perhaps Emma’s in the know too and gets them talking if she can. In return for which you allow her certain freedoms.”

“That’s filthy slander, Major!” Hartland burst out. “Andy Quade was on his way to meet her at a motel the evening he was killed.”

“Kitchen gossip?”

Patrick nodded gravely. “You find out an awful lot when you live backstairs. But I did check. She was careless enough to book the room in her own name.”

Hartland gazed wildly around the room and seemed to find inspiration. “This has absolutely nothing to do with your brief to ensure that the DARE team stay alive.”

“Carte blanche,” Patrick drawled. “I’m still trying to work out why you invited them here. Were you hoping there was a rotten branch to be discovered by you — with Emma’s help, of course? Does the prospect of an eventual knighthood make personal torment worth while?” 

Was this revenge for a cold, damp room, I wondered, or was he trying to goad Hartland into some kind of confession? Or was he hoping for an excuse to get really tough? I didn’t have long to wait for the answer.

Hartland got to his feet, deadly calm after his initial outburst. “I suggest to you, Major, that your behaviour is as outrageous now as it was when you were posing ineffectively as my gardener. I further suggest that you are taking this matter to a quite unwarranted personal level. For a moment I shall do likewise. I would be interested to know if your present attack on me is fuelled by something you yourself just said. I take it that McAlister is faithful to his wife — was your forbearance something to do with the injuries you received during the Falklands War? The grapevine did hint at serious genital damage …” Hartland’s voice trailed away and he smiled sadly at me. “Forgive me but I did a little checking on Ingrid’s private life and husband when I knew she was coming.”

The fool. With the kind of mandate Patrick has he could have put a bullet between the man’s eyes, there and then, and probably got away with it. Terry, still painfully learning to keep his dearest and most blood-thirsty ideas to himself, would have lovingly laid Hartland out on his own carpet and not begrudged the two cent pieces to keep his eyes closed.

But despite Patrick’s knowing that being left with only part of one testicle has not affected his masculinity and that those who matter, in this case Terry and I, are fully aware of it, I saw the taunt strike home. The expression that I had witnessed that morning flickered across his face and suddenly he wasn’t Patrick any more but the epitome of choking hatred and disgust. He’s only human and to him Hartland represented his deepest fears.

Then Terry cleared his throat and Patrick followed his gaze to where the bullet had splintered the woodwork of the door frame. There was no magnificently moral sequel to this for Patrick then progressed with deliberation to the laundry-room, opened the cupboard by deftly bypassing the locks with a credit card, and then proceeded to inflict terminal damage on the equipment concealed inside it. But, whatever Hartland thought, here was not a man mindlessly smashing but a thoroughgoing professional who knew what he was doing.

At last, he twitched out a final electrical lead and looked around in the manner of a small boy hunting for another bubble to pop. Then, having tossed a few cassettes of tape over his shoulder into a corner by way of an encore, he sat on the washing machine and regarded Hartland solemnly.

What could anyone say?