Skeleton-in-Waiting (14 page)

“If you do hear from him will you let Father know?”

“Um.”

“It's important, darling. It isn't for us, mainly it's for Soppy.”

“Um still. It seems to me not a question of the motive, but what your father—or rather his minions—would then do with the knowledge. I would very much prefer Alex to hand the papers over, but even for Soppy's sake I will not be involved in underhand methods of forcing him to do so. I will if you like explain the position to him and tell him as forcefully as I can that in my opinion he ought to do as you wish.”

“My turn to um. I mean, I know it's outside the contract, you going that far. I really appreciate it. The trouble is, if you tell him what's up … Do you believe him when he says he's doing all this just out of respect for Granny's wishes?”

“Nobody does anything for a single motive. All actions are the outcome of a series of inner compromises, mainly unconscious. I don't, as a matter of fact, think Alex is very interested in the money, though no doubt it plays a part. If I had to choose a dominant motive, I would guess that, haying been brought up as a fringe member of what had once been a dominant family but which itself had been suddenly marginalised by the Russian Revolution, a family whose chief activity must have seemed to a child to be the interchange of minor personal details, Alex would like to be taken seriously as a practitioner in that field.”

“I love it when you get to the end of sentences like that.”

“He is clearly a skilled gossip. He would like his skill recognised in the publication of a book. If gossip were a degree course—and a lot of them aren't much more—he'd already have a chair and a string of publications to his name.”

“So we aren't going to be able to buy him off.”

“I wouldn't have thought so. I can tell you from experience that if that is his motive, it is a very strong one.”

“Can I tell Father? He'd understand.”

“Suggest that he aims for a compromise.”

“When they've seen Aunt Bea's collection they'll have a clearer idea what they're talking about.”

“You fixed that?”

“I'm going to collect them on Wednesday. I won't tell you how I did it. My methods were underhand, but I wasn't ashamed. I'm still not. I think Mrs Walsh is off her rocker. You remember that book, the one you got Mr Brown to read for me? I told you she'd asked if she could have it because it was the last copy, and I got Mrs Suttery to get permission for me to give it to her—I think she's burnt it. She lives in an almost totally bare flat, no carpets, curtains, just sticks of furniture, no heating except an old stove—she showed me round. She'd been burning paper in the stove. I know it could have been anything. I just have an intuition.”

“I have a counter-intuition that I am about to fall asleep.”

“Me too. Sleep well.”

MARCH 1988

1

“T
hat you? Now listen, because this is the last time I'm calling you. You've got just this one chance, and for both of our sakes you better bloody take it …”

2

The rover came to rest while Louise was still on the car-phone. It was a bad spot, blanking the signal completely.

“Hell,” she said. “We're too close to the building. I thought brick was OK.”

John was leaning across to unbelt the nest-egg. He looked round. “It'll be the scaffolding over on the other wing, ma'am. That's not that far. Shall I back up then?”

“Don't bother. You can do it when I'm out. Joan was trying to check something with me about a change in the Portsmouth visit. Tell her to call me on Lady Surbiton's number—give me a couple of minutes. OK?”

“Very good, ma'am.”

He got out, opened the door for her and handed her the nest-egg. Davy woke as the now familiar lift doddered up. When it stopped he would think about yelling, but for the moment the movement kept him happy. He had his Edward VII look strongly today, the heavy eyelids and the rolls of blubber.

“You're a smug, self-satisfied little piglet,” said Louise.

He blinked at the sound of her voice and blinked again as the lift bumped to a stop. Louise pushed the inner gate aside, the outer door was opened for her and held by a smiling man in paint-splodged overalls.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You're welcome.”

As she stepped past him he moved, leaping against her and clamping her body violently to his, pinioning her arms. Her shout was still in her throat when a hand closed over her mouth from behind, another hand forced her head right back till she could no longer clench her jaw shut, and a roll of dry fabric was forced between her teeth and lashed there with a cloth. The nest-egg was prized from her grip. A moment later Davy's scream of fright was muffled, though not stopped. The man who had opened the door for her let go, gripped her left wrist, bent and jerked her over his shoulder in a fireman's lift.

Louise had already gone limp. After Chester Father had insisted on everyone doing a course in how to react if something like this happened. You control the useless urge to struggle and scream, you signal to your attackers any way you can that you're going to do what they want, you wait for help from outside. She even knew what a gag felt like, and how not to choke on it.

The man turned not to Aunt Bea's door but to Mrs Walsh's. It must have been already on the latch. Upside down, under his arm as he carried her up the stairs, Louise caught glimpses of the other man. He had the nest-egg under his arm, and one large hand with a tea towel clamped over Davy's face. The ridiculous little arms and legs threshed against the belts of the nest-egg.

The man carrying Louise strode along the bare boards of the top landing. He twisted to ease her through the door of the main room so that she didn't see what happened to Davy, but she could hear from the muffled yells that he was being taken somewhere else. The man bent and slid her from his shoulder, still holding her wrist and spinning her as she straightened so that he could force her arm up behind her back.

“OK,” he said. “One peep or wriggle from you and the baby gets a bullet. Understand?”

Louise nodded.

Three chairs had been placed facing the near wall, behind the door. Aunt Bea and Mrs Walsh sat in the further two. Louise knew them by the shapes of their bodies and their clothes but their heads were hidden in coloured pillow-cases. Mrs Walsh's grey toque lay on the floor by her chair. Their wrists and ankles were lashed to the chairs. The man pushed Louise to the empty place. She sat without his having to force her down and placed her legs and arms ready.

“Look at the wall and don't move,” said the man.

Louise stared at the beige surface. Her ears strained for Davy's voice, still yelling, still muffled, but different now, she thought, not the yells of fresh fright and outrage, but outrage remembered, as if someone was trying to calm him. Not daring to move her head she squinted down over the blur of her cheek at the back of the man's head as he knelt to lash her legs. Close-cropped blond hair, faintly coppery, the glint of the metal earpiece of his spectacles. Purposefully she reconstructed the memory of his face, seen for those two seconds in the dimness of the landing below. She was good at faces. Flattish, snub-nosed, eyebrows strong and level, chin dented but not dimpled. She would know him again.

He rose and stood behind her. She heard the rustle of cloth, but before he pulled the pillow-case down over her head he bent and whispered into her ear.

“All right. Ten minutes and we'll be going. We're taking the kid with us. He'll do—we've got people who know about kids. Then when we're safe away we'll call your police and tell them where you are. They'll come and get you. Now I'm giving you a message for them, so listen. They won't be seeing the kid again, nor will you, nor will anyone, without they do what we'll be telling them. You got that?”

Louise nodded.

“So it's down to you. You see that they play along with us and you'll have your boy back inside of a week, not a hair of his head touched. Right?”

As Louise nodded again the pillow-case slid deftly down over her head. She gazed dry-eyed at the yellow unfocussable blur. Footsteps dwindled across boards. A hinge moaned. She seemed to have nothing inside her but a chilly, timeless hollow, far bigger than her own real body. She tried to think about the time. A couple of minutes, she'd told John. Joan would ring Aunt Bea's, get no answer, wait, try again—the Portsmouth decision was urgent—then ring the car again. Ten minutes, the man had said, and they'd be going, so if Joan didn't call John soon … Could she have fought for time, held things up, pretended not to understand what the man was telling her? He would just have thought she was being stupid. Stupid. Oh, they were stupid, these people. Not stupid, blind. Couldn't they see that whatever happened, whatever it was they wanted, they couldn't have it in exchange for Davy? Suppose she'd sold everything she owned—several million pounds it would come to—and offered them that? For herself she'd do it, of course, or given her own life or anything else that was hers to give, but she'd never be allowed to, never. Father, Mrs T., everyone else … Couldn't they see that? It was so obvious, but you'd never persuade them. For them the world simply had to be the shape and way they imagined it was so as to justify the things they did, the maimings, the bombings … These were weary old thoughts, rehearsed again and again, every time something happened in the news or she did a visit to Ulster. Now they reeled through her head, useless, repetitive, the old imaginary scenes of argument and pleading … not that they'd ever give you the chance …

Her body leaped in her chair, jerking against the bonds, actually teetering the legs off the ground so that she thought it would topple. By the time it was still the signal that had set it off, Davy's scream of pain, was muffled again. She willed the tension away. What were they doing? Not a hair of his head, the man had said. But they'd have to keep him quiet. Yes, of course, that must have been the needle going in. He loathed jabs. Oh, please, please, let there be someone who knew to get the dose right! Oh, let them be competent, please! Ghastly, cruel, wrong, but not idiots. She drew a deep breath of the dank air in the pillow-case and tried again to relax. The jerking about, the automatic attempt to yell out, had shifted the pad in her mouth, almost choking her. Trying to work it back in its proper place brought a bubble of vomit up. Carefully she swallowed it back down. Davy was still crying. It wasn't one of those instant knock-outs, then. Oh, let them wait, not try a double dose, let them think how much more use he was to them alive …

Closer, right in the room, a new noise, the three quick tones of the pager. It had been in her handbag. They must have dropped that in the room somewhere. John would wait, say, a minute, and try again. She counted the seconds. Had they heard? Davy was yelling still, but she could tell from the tone that any moment now he would give up, and between one indrawn breath and the next yell fall with hardly a whimper into darkness. What would John do if she didn't answer this time? There, again the pager, and almost at once hurrying steps on the boards. The pillow-case off, hands at her neck, the gag plucked free, the voice at her ear.

“Someone calling you, then? Careful, now, look straight at the wall. What's up?”

“My secretary was going to ring me at Lady Surbiton's. It was something urgent, so when I didn't answer she must've rung the car and asked my detective where I was. That's him paging me.”

“What'll he do now?”

“Try once more, and then probably come and look for me.”

“Just the one of him?”

“He'll tell the men in the other car what he's doing.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Got the number for your car?”

“In my Filofax. I think I can remember it.”

“Right. I'll call him for you, and you can tell him you're all right. No, wait. We'll have him up here. Give him a reason, tell him to just say to the others he'll be here in the next twenty minutes.”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“Give us that number, then.”

The pager sounded again through the beeps of the portable telephone as the man pressed the keys. Then the usual long wait. Then John's voice.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” she said. “Princess Louise here.”

The name sounded unreal on her tongue. She never used it herself if she could help it. Surely the man would notice, or notice John's pause …

“Uh … They've been trying to call you at Lady Surbiton's, ma'am. They want, uh, to know if you've heard anything from Miss Lucy Ford. They're sorry, ma'am, but it might be urgent.”

Louise could feel the faint pressure of the man's hand on her hair where he was holding his own head as close as he could to the earpiece. She kept her muscles tense, trying not to signal her relief that John had picked up her breach of the security code, and answered in a way that showed he had.

“Quite urgent,” she said. “Tell Mrs Pennycuik I'll call her as soon as I'm free. She couldn't get me at Lady Surbiton's because we're in Mrs Walsh's flat. When you've spoken to Mrs Pennycuik could you come up? We aren't ready yet, but we've got a load of papers to shift. We could do with a strong arm. You could tell the others you'll be about twenty minutes.”

“Mrs Walsh's flat, ma'am?”

“The door straight opposite the lift.”

“Very good, ma'am. I understand.”

“Thanks.”

The telephone bipped once as the man switched off. The gag went back in Louise's mouth and the pillow-case slid over her head. She heard quick movements close by but didn't understand them till the man spoke.

“Now, you, lady. We'll have you at the top of the stairs. The door will be on the latch. He'll knock, and you'll call to him to come up. You'll stand by and send him on in here. No tricks. You try anything, and your friend's dead, dead as him next door. Right?”

“I do not know that I can stand,” said Mrs Walsh's voice, loud and tremorless.

“I'll help you up. You've got a minute or two yet—he's a call to make. Steady now.”

“I shall need my stick.”

“Take my arm. There's a table out there, you can hold on to that—keep you in the one place, right.”

The footsteps receded. Louise felt her self-control beginning to give. In his hurry the man hadn't pulled the pillow-case right down over her shoulders, and she had to force herself not to try and thresh it free. Her heart thudded. The unusable adrenalin pumped round her bloodstream. Footsteps returned—two men, she thought, waiting just inside the door ready to jump John. What would he have done? Called Security, alerted the other car—there'd be an AI alert by now, red-red, cars and men flooding in. Then he'd have to come up, alone, because that was what she'd asked. With his pistol ready? No—not yet. He wouldn't want any shooting … slam, slam, slam, went her heart. She was going to faint. She could feel the dark drumming vapour welling up … perhaps if she let them think she'd fainted … She slumped herself forward as far as the cords would let her, forcing her head down. The movement shifted the pillow-case a couple of inches, letting fresher air in. Faint but clear the whine of the lift-motor. Whispers from the men by the door. Silence. John's knock. Mrs Walsh's voice, dispassionate, totally under control.

“The door's open. Please come up.”

John's steps climbing the bare treads, two at a time. Mrs Walsh again. “In there please.”

Three more steps.

“Freeze! Hands on your head.”

“I got the bugger …”

Then the explosion, stunning loud, right in the room. Louise's body leapt at the sound and this time she deliberately converted the movement into a lurch that unbalanced the chair completely.
If they start shooting, throw yourself flat.
The crash of her fall belted the breath out of her. It took her a moment to realise that not all the noise had been caused by her hitting the floor—there'd been another shot as she fell. The pillow-case was almost clear. She tried to thresh it away. No use. Her head still rang with the first explosion—perhaps it had had been one of those stun-bombs and not a shot. Through the ringing she heard new noises, grunts, thuds, threshings, gasps, the whole floor juddering with the movement. The fight rolled suddenly towards her. Something heavy and solid—a shod foot, she realised as the pain cleared—crashed against her forehead and swept by, taking the pillow-case with it. She could see.

She was lying on her side, looking slantwise across the room towards the corner between the windows and the door. The struggle was going on out of sight behind her head. Straight in front of her, face down on the bare boards, lay a man in blue paint-splashed overalls. His metal spectacles were twisted against his cheek. His cropped hair had been blond but was now a mess of blood. The back of his head was the wrong shape. Beyond the body Mrs Walsh sat slumped against the door-post. Her face was blue-white, her lips purple, moving as if she was muttering her prayers. A patch of blood was spreading across the grey wool of her suit, fresh glinting beadlets still seeping from the wound behind. Her toque lay upside-down against the skirting, the jewel hidden. As Louise watched she tried to reach for it, almost toppled, and then pulled herself into something like her proper erect posture. Her head came up and she noticed Louise. A last spark flashed into the death-dulling eyes.