NINETEEN
‘Neatly done,’ Pollgate said to Lord Vaughnley.
‘It worked out well,’ he replied, his big head nodding.
He still stood four-square in front of the door. Erskine stood similarly, with folded arms, in front of the other.
There were chairs and tables round the green walls, tables with white cloths bearing bowls of nuts and cigarette-filled ashtrays. Champagne goblets all over the place, some still with bubble contents. There would be waiters, I thought, coming to clear the rubble.
‘We won’t be disturbed,’ Pollgate told Lord Vaughnley. ‘The “do not enter” signs are on both doors, and Mario says we have the room for an hour.’
‘The lunch will be before that,’ Lord Vaughnley said. ‘The films take half an hour, no more.’
‘He’s not going to the lunch,’ Pollgate said, meaning me.
‘Er, no, perhaps not. But I should be there.’
I thought numbly: catch me first.
It had taken five days… and the princess.
‘You are going to give us,’ Pollgate said to me directly, ‘The wire-tap and my journalists’ belongings. And that will be the end of it.’
The power of the man was such that the words themselves were a threat. What would happen if I didn’t comply wasn’t mentioned. My compliance was assumed; no discussion.
He walked over to Jay Erskine, producing a flat box from a pocket and taking Jay Erskine’s place guarding the door.
Jay Erskine’s smirk grew to a twisted smile of anticipation. I disliked intensely the cold eyes, the drooping moustache, his callous pen and his violent nature; and most of all I disliked the message in his sneer.
Pollgate opened the box and held it out to Jay Erskine, who took from it something that looked like the hand-held remote control of a television set. He settled it into his hand and walked in my direction. He came without the wariness one might have expected after I’d thrown him across a room, and he put the remote control thing smoothly between the open fronts of my jacket, on to my shirt.
I felt something like a thud, and the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my back on the floor, wholly disorientated, not sure where I was or what had happened.
Jay Erskine and Lord Vaughnley bent down, took my arms, helped me up, and dropped me on to a chair.
The chair had arms. I held on to them. I felt dazed, and couldn’t work out why.
Jay Erskine smiled nastily and put the black object again against my shirt.
The thud had a burn to it that time. And so fast. No time to draw breath.
I would have shot out of the chair if they hadn’t held me in it. My wits scattered instantly to the four winds. My muscles didn’t work. I wasn’t sure who I was or where I was, and nor did I care. Time passed. Time was relative. It was minutes, anyway. Not very quick.
The haze in my brain slowly resolved itself to the point where I knew I was sitting in a chair, and knew the people round me were Nestor Pollgate, Lord Vaughnley and Jay Erskine.
‘Right,’ Pollgate said. ‘Can you hear me?’
I said, after a pause, ‘Yes.’ It didn’t sound like my voice. More a croak.
‘You’re going to give us the wire-tap,’ he said. ‘And the other things.’
Some sort of electricity, I thought dimly. Those thuds were electric shocks. Like touching a cold metal doorknob after walking on nylon carpet, but magnified monstrously.
‘You understand?’ he said.
I didn’t answer. I understood, but I didn’t know whether I was going to give him the things or not.
‘Where are they?’ he said.
To hell with it, I thought.
‘Where are they?’
Silence.
I didn’t even see Jay Erskine put his hand against me the third time. I felt a great burning jolt and went shooting into space, floating for several millennia in a disorientated limbo, ordinary consciousness suspended, living as in dream-state, docile and drifting. I could see them in a way, but I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know anything. I existed. I had no form.
Whatever would be done, wherever they might take me, whatever God-awful crime they might plant me in, I couldn’t resist.
Thought came back again slowly. There were burns somewhere, stinging. I heard Lord Vaughnley’s voice saying something, and Pollgate answering, ‘Five thousand volts.’
‘He’s awake,’ Erskine said.
Lord Vaughnley leaned over me, his face close and worried. ‘Are you sure he’s all right?’
‘Yes,’ Pollgate said. ‘There’ll be no permanent harm.’
Thank you, I thought wryly, for that. 1 felt dizzy and sick. Just as well that with lunch in view I had missed breakfast.
Pollgate was looking at his watch and shaking his head. ‘He was dazed for twelve minutes that time. A three-second shock is too much. The two-second is better, but it’s taking too long. Twenty minutes already.’ He glared down at me. ‘I can’t waste any more time. You’ll give me those things, now, at once.’
It was he who held the electric device now, not Erskine.
I thought I could speak. Tried it. Something came out: the same sort of croak. I said ‘It will take… days.’
It wasn’t heroics. I thought vaguely that if they believed it would take days they would give up trying, right there and then. Logic, at that point, was at a low ebb.
Pollgate stepped within touching distance of me and showed me five thousand volts at close range.
‘Stun gun,’ he said.
It had two short flat metal prongs protruding five centimetres apart from one end of a flat plastic case. He squeezed some switch or other, and between the prongs leapt an electric spark the length of a thumb, bright blue, thick and crackling.
The spark fizzed for a long three seconds of painful promise and disappeared as fast as it had come.
I looked from the stun gun up to Pollgate’s face, staring straight at the shiny-bead eyes.
‘Weeks,’ I said.
It certainly nonplussed him. ‘Give us the wire-tap,’ he said; and he seemed to be looking, as I was, at a long, tiring battle of wills, much of which I would half sleep through, I supposed.
Lord Vaughnley said to Pollgate uncomfortably, ‘You can’t go on with this.’
A certain amount of coherence returned to my brain. The battle of wills, I thought gratefully, shouldn’t be necessary.
‘He’s going to give us those things,’ Pollgate said obstinately. ‘I’m not letting some clod like this get the better of me.’ Pride, loss of face, all the deadly intangibles.
Lord Vaughnley looked down at me anxiously.
‘I’ll give you,’ I said to him, ‘something better.’
‘What?’
My voice was steadier. Less hoarse, less slow. I moved in the chair, arms and legs coming back into coordination. It seemed to alarm Jay Erskine but I was still a long way from playing judo.
‘What will you give us?’ Lord Vaughnley said.
I concentrated on making my throat and tongue work properly. ‘It’s in Newmarket,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to go there for it. Now, this afternoon.’
Pollgate said with impatience, ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I’ll give you,’ I said to Lord Vaughnley, ‘Maynard Allardeck.’
A short burst of stun couldn’t have had more effect.
‘How do you mean?’ he said; not with puzzlement, but with hope.
‘On a plate,’ I said. ‘In your power. Where you want him, don’t you?’
They both wanted him. I could see it in Pollgate’s face just as clearly as in Lord Vaughnley’s. I suppose that I had guessed in a way that it would be both.
Jay Erskine said aggressively, ‘Are our things in Newmarket, then?’
I said with an effort, ‘That’s where you left them.’
‘All right, then.’
He seemed to think that the purpose of their expedition had been achieved, and I didn’t tell him differently.
Nestor Pollgate said, ‘Jay, fetch the car to the side entrance, will you?’ and the obnoxious Erskine went away.
Pollgate and Lord Vaughnley agreed that Mario, whoever he was, should tell Icefall’s sponsors not to expect their guests back for lunch, saying I’d had a bilious attack and Lord Vaughnley was helping me. ‘But Mario can’t tell them until after we’ve gone,’ Lord Vaughnley said, ‘or you’ll have my wife and I daresay the princess out here in a flash to mother him.’
I sat and listened lethargically, capable of movement but not wanting to move, no longer sick, all right in my head, peaceful, extraordinarily, and totally without energy.
After a while Jay Erskine came back, the exasperating smirk still in place.
‘Can you walk?’ Pollgate asked me.
I said, ‘Yes’ and stood up, and we went out of the side door, along a short passage and down some gilded deeply carpeted backstairs, where no doubt many a Guineas visitor made a discreet entrance and exit, avoiding public eyes in the front hall.
I went down the stairs shakily, holding on to the rail.
‘Are you all right?’ Lord Vaughnley said solicitously, putting his hand supportively under my elbow.
I glanced at him. How he could think I would be all right was beyond me. Perhaps he was remembering that I was used to damage, to falls, to concussion: but bruises and fractures were different from that day’s little junket.
‘I’m all right,’ I said though, because it was true where it counted, and we went safely down to the bottom.
I stopped there. The exit door stood open ahead, a passage stretching away indoors to the right.
‘Come along,’ Pollgate said, gesturing to the door. ‘If we’re going, let’s go.’
‘My anorak,’ I said, ‘is in the cloakroom.’ I produced the ticket from my pocket. ‘Anorak,’ I said.
‘I’ll get it,’ Lord Vaughnley said, taking the ticket. ‘And I’ll see Mario. Wait for me in the car.’
It was a large car. Jay Erskine was driving. Nestor Pollgate sat watchfully beside me on the back seat, and Lord Vaughnley, when he returned, sat in the front.
‘Your anorak,’ he said, holding it out, and I thanked him and put it by my feet, on the floor.
‘The films of the races have just ended, Mario says,’ he reported to Pollgate. ‘He’s going straight in to make our apologies. It’s all settled. Off we go.’
It took ages to get out of London, partly because of thick traffic, mostly because Jay Erskine was a rotten driver, all impatience and heavy on the brakes. An hour and a half to Newmarket, at that rate: and I would have to be better by then.
No one spoke much. Jay Erskine locked all the doors centrally and Nestor Pollgate put the stun gun in its case in his right-hand jacket pocket, hidden but available; and I sat beside him in ambiguity, half prisoner, half ringmaster, going willingly but under threat, waiting for energy to return, physical, mental and psychic.
Stun guns, I thought. I’d heard of them, never seen one before. Used originally by American police to subdue dangerous violent criminals without shooting them. Instantaneous. Effective. You don’t say.
I remembered from long-ago physics lessons that if you squeezed piezo-electric crystals you got sparks, as in the flickering lighters used for gas cookers. Maybe stun guns were like that, multiplied. Maybe not. Maybe I would ask someone. Maybe not. Five thousand volts…
I looked with speculation at the back of Lord Vaughnley’s head, wondering what he was thinking. He was eager, that was for sure. They had agreed to the journey like thirsty men in a drought. They were going without knowing for sure why, without demanding to be told. Anything that could do Maynard Allardeck harm must be worth doing, in their eyes: that had to be why, at the beginning, Lord Vaughnley had been happy enough to introduce me to Rose Quince, to let me loose on the files. The destruction of Maynard’s credibility could only be helped along, he might have thought, by pinpricks from myself.
I dozed, woke with a start, found Pollgate’s face turned my way, his eyes watching. He was looking, if anything, puzzled.
In my rag-doll state I could think of nothing useful to say, so I didn’t, and presently he turned his head away and looked out of the window, and I still felt very conscious of his force, his ruthlessness, and of the ruin he could make of my life if I got the next few hours wrong.
I thought of how they had set their trap in the Guineas.
Icefall’s sponsors, on my answering machine, inviting me to lunch. The sponsors hadn’t said where, but they’d said tomorrow, Tuesday: today. The message would have been overheard and despatched to Pollgate, and sent from him to Lord Vaughnley, who would have said, Nothing simpler, my dear fellow, I’ll join forces with those sponsors, which they can hardly refuse, and Kit Fielding will definitely come, he’d do anything to please the princess…
Pollgate had known the Guineas. Known Mario. Known he could get an isolated room for an hour. The sort of place he would know, for sure.
Maybe Lord Vaughnley had suggested the Guineas to Icefall’s sponsors. Maybe he hadn’t had to. There were often racing celebration parties at the Guineas. The sponsors would very likely have chosen it themselves, knowing they could show the films there.
Unprofitable thoughts. However it had been planned, it had worked.
I thought also about the alliance between Lord Vaughnley and Nestor Pollgate, owners of snapping rival newspapers, always at each other’s throats in print, and acting in private accord.
Allies, not friends. They didn’t move comfortably around each other, as friends did.
On 1 October Lord Vaughnley had signed the charity letter recommending Maynard for a knighthood: signed it casually perhaps, not knowing him well.
Then later in October his son Hugh had confessed to his dealings with Maynard, and Lord Vaughnley, outraged, had sought to unzip Maynard’s accolade by getting Pollgate and his Flag to do the demolition; because it was the Flag’s sort of thing… and Jay Erskine, who had worked for Lord Vaughnley once, was in place there in the Flag, and was known not to be averse to an illegal sortie, now and then.
I didn’t know why Lord Vaughnley should have gone to Pollgate, should have expected him to help. Somewhere between them there was a reason. I didn’t suppose I would get an answer, if I asked.
Lord Vaughnley, I thought, could have been expected to tell the charity he wanted to recant his approval of Maynard Allardeck’s knighthood: but they might have said too bad, your son was a fool, but Allardeck definitely helped him. Lord Vaughnley might as a newspaperman have seen a few destructive paragraphs as more certain, and more revengefully satisfying, besides.
Before that, though, I guessed it had been he who had gone to the producers of How’s Trade, who said dig up what you can about Allardeck, discredit him, I’ll pay you: and had been defeated by the producer himself, who according to Rose Quince was known for taking more money in return for helping his victims off the hook.
The How’s Trade programme on Maynard had gone out loaded in Maynard’s favour, which hadn’t been the plan at all. And it was after that, I thought, that Lord Vaughnley had gone to Pollgate.
I shut my eyes and drifted. The car hummed. They had the heater on. I thought about horses; more honest than men. Tomorrow I was due to ride at Haydock. Thank God the racecourse doctor hadn’t been at the Guineas.
Takeovers, I thought inconsequentially. Always fending off takeovers.
Pollgate would bury me if I didn’t get it right.
Towards the end of the journey both mental and physical power came seeping slowly back, like a tide rising, and it was an extraordinary feeling: I hadn’t known how much power I did have until I’d both lost it and felt its return. Like not realising how ill one had been, until one was well.
I stretched thankfully with the renewed strength in my muscles and breathed deeply from the surge in my mind, and Pollgate, for whom the consciousness of power must have been normal, sensed in some way the vital recharging in me and sat up more tensely himself.
Erskine drove into Bobby’s stableyard at five minutes past three, and in the middle of what should have been a quiet snooze in the life of the horses, it seemed that there were people and movement all over the place. Erskine stopped the car with his accustomed jerk, and Pollgate having told him to unlock the doors, we climbed out.
Holly was looking distractedly in our direction, and there were besides three or four cars, a horse trailer with the ramp down and grooms wandering about with head-collars.
There was also, to my disbelief, Jermyn Graves.
Holly came running across to me and said, ‘Do something, he’s a madman, and Bobby’s indoors with Maynard, he came early and they’ve been shouting at each other and I don’t want to go in, and thank God you’re here, it’s a farce.’
Jermyn Graves, seeing me, followed Holly. His gaze swept over Pollgate, Jay Erskine and Lord Vaughnley and he said belligerently, ‘Who the hell are these people? Now see here, Fielding, I’ve had enough of your smart-arse behaviour, I’ve come for my horses.’
I put my arm around Holly. ‘Did his cheque go through?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, it bloody well did,’ Graves said furiously.
Holly nodded. ‘The feed-merchant told us. The cheque was cleared yesterday. He has his money.’
‘Just what is all this?’ Pollgate said heavily.
‘You keep out of it,’ Graves said rudely. ‘It’s you, Fielding, I want. You give me my bloody horses or I’ll fetch the police to you.’
‘Calm down, Mr Graves,’ I said. ‘You shall have your horses.’
‘They’re not in their boxes.’ He glared with all his old fury; and it occurred to me that his total disregard of Pollgate was sublime. Perhaps one had to know one should be afraid of someone before one was.
‘Mr Graves,’ I said conversationally to the two proprietors and one journalist, ‘is removing his horses because of what he read in Intimate Details. You see here in action the power of the Press.’
‘Shut your trap and give me my horses,’ Graves said.
‘Yes, all right. Your grooms are going in the wrong direction.’
‘Jasper,’ Graves yelled. ‘Come here.’
The luckless nephew approached, eyeing me warily.
‘Come on,’ I jerked my head. ‘Round the back.’
Jay Erskine would have prevented my going, but Pollgate intervened. I took Jasper round to the other yard and pointed out the boxes that contained Graves’s horses. ‘Awfully sorry,’ Jasper said.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said, and I thought that but for him and his uncle we wouldn’t have rigged the bell, and but for the bell we wouldn’t have caught Jay Erskine up the ladder, and I felt quite grateful to the Graveses, on the whole.
I went back with Jasper walking behind me leading the first of the horses, and found them all standing there in much the same places, Jermyn Graves blustering on about not having faith when the trainer couldn’t meet his bills.
‘Bobby’s better off without you, Mr Graves,’ I said. ‘Load your horses up and hop it.’
Apoplexy hovered. He opened and shut his mouth a couple of times and finally walked over to his trailer to let out his spleen on the luckless Jasper.
‘Thank God for that,’ Holly said. ‘I can’t stand him. I’m so glad you’re here. Did you have a good time at your lunch?’
‘Stunning,’ I said.
They all heard and looked at me sharply.
Lord Vaughnley said, mystified, ‘How can you laugh…?’
‘What the hell,’ I said. ‘I’m here. I’m alive.’
Holly looked from one to the other of us, sensing something strongly, not knowing what. ‘Something happened?’ she said, searching my face.
I nodded a fraction. ‘I’m OK.’
She said to Lord Vaughnley, ‘He risks his life most days of the week. You can’t frighten him much.’
They looked at her speechlessly, to my amusement.
I said to her, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’ and she shook her head slightly, half remembering but not sure.
‘This is Lord Vaughnley who owns the Towncrier. This is Nestor Pollgate who owns the Flag. This is Jay Erskine who wrote the paragraphs in Intimate Details and put the tap on your telephone.’ I paused, and to them I said, ‘My sister, Bobby’s wife.’
She moved closer beside me, her eyes shocked.
‘Why are they here? Did you bring them?’
‘We sort of brought each other,’ I said. ‘Where are Maynard and Bobby?’
‘In the drawing room, I think.’
Jasper was crunching across the yard with the second horse, Jermyn shouting at him unabated. The other groom who had come with them was scurrying in and out of the trailer, attempting invisibility.
Nestor Pollgate said brusquely, ‘We’re not standing here watching all this.’
‘I’m not leaving Holly alone to put up with that man,’ I said. ‘He’s a menace. It’s because of you that he’s here, so we’ll wait.’
Pollgate stirred restlessly, but there was nowhere particular for him to go. We waited in varying intensities of impatience while Jasper and the groom raised the ramp and clipped it shut, and while Jermyn Graves walked back several steps in our direction and shook his fist at me with the index finger sticking out, jabbing, and said no one messed with him and got away with it, and he’d see I’d be sorry. I’d pay for what I’d done.
‘Kit,’ Holly said, distressed.
I put my arm round her shoulders and didn’t answer Graves, and after a while he turned abruptly on his heel, went over to his car, climbed in, slammed the door, and overburdened his engine, starting with a jerk that must have rocked his horses off their feet in the trailer.
‘He’s a pig,’ Holly said. ‘What will he do?’
‘He’s more threat than action.’
‘I,’ Pollgate said, ‘am not.’
I looked at him, meeting his eyes.
‘I do know that,’ I said.
The time, I thought, had inescapably come.
Power when I needed it. Give me power, I thought.
I let go of Holly and lent into the car we had come in, picking up my anorak off the floor.
I said to Holly, ‘Will you take these three visitors into the sitting room? I’ll get Bobby… and his father.’
She said with wide apprehensive eyes, ‘Kit, do be careful.’
‘I promise.’
She gave me a look of lingering doubt, but set off with me towards the house. We went in by long habit through the kitchen: I don’t think it occurred to either of us to use the formal front door.
Pollgate, Lord Vaughnley and Jay Erskine followed, and in the hall Holly peeled them off into the sitting room, where in the evenings she and Bobby watched television sometimes. The larger drawing room lay ahead, and there were voices in there, or one voice, Maynard’s, continuously talking.
I screwed up every inner resource to walk through that door, and it was a great and appalling mistake. Bobby told me afterwards that he saw me in the same way as in the stable and in the garden, the hooded, the enemy, the old foe of antiquity, of immense and dark threat.
Maynard was saying monotonously as if he had already said it over and over, ‘… And if you want to get rid of him you’ll do it, and you’ll do it today…’
Maynard was holding a gun, a hand gun, small and black.
He stopped talking the moment I went in there. His eyes widened. He saw, I supposed, what Bobby saw: Fielding, satanic.
He gave Bobby the pistol, pressing it into his hand.
‘Do it,’ he said fiercely. ‘Do it now.’
His son’s eyes were glazed, as in the garden.
He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t…
‘Bobby,’ I said explosively, beseechingly: and he raised the gun and pointed it straight at my chest.
TWENTY
I turned my back on him.
I didn’t want to see him do it; tear our lives apart, mine and his, and Holly’s and the baby’s. If he was going to do it, I wasn’t going to watch.
Time passed, stretched out, uncountable. Danielle, I thought.
I heard his voice, close behind my shoulder.
‘Kit…’
I stood rigidly still. You can’t frighten him much, Holly had said. Bobby with a gun frightened me into immobility and despair.
He came round in front of me, as white as I felt. He looked into my face. He was holding the gun flat, not aiming, and put it into my hand.
‘Forgive me,’ he said.
I couldn’t speak. He turned away blindly and made for the door. Holly appeared there, questioning, and he enfolded her and hugged her as if he had survived an earthquake, which he had.
I heard a faint noise behind me and turned, and found Maynard advancing, his face sweating, his teeth showing, the charming image long gone. I turned holding the gun, and he saw it in my hand and went back a pace, and then another and another, looking fearful, looking sick.
‘You incited,’ I said bitterly, ‘your own son to murder. Brainwashed him.’
‘It would have been an accident,’ he said.
‘An Allardeck killing a Fielding would not have been believed as an accident.’
‘I would have sworn it,’ he said.
I loathed him. I said, ‘Go into the sitting room’ and I stood back to let him pass, keeping the gun pointing his way all the while.
He hadn’t had the courage to shoot me himself. Making Bobby do it… that crime was worse.
It hadn’t been a good idea to draw him there with the express purpose of getting rid of me once and for all. He’d too nearly succeeded. My own stupid fault.
We went down the hall and into the sitting room. Pollgate and Erskine and Lord Vaughnley were all there, standing in the centre, with Bobby and Holly, still entwined, to one side. I went in there feeling I was walking into a cageful of tigers, and Holly said later that with the gun in my hand I looked so dangerous she hardly recognised me as her brother.
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘You,’ I pointed to Maynard, ‘over there in that chair at the end.’ It was a deep chair, enveloping, no good for springing out of suddenly. ‘You next, beside him,’ I said to Erskine. ‘Then Lord Vaughnley, on the sofa.’
Pollgate looked at the spare place beside Lord Vaughnley and took it in silence.
‘Take out the stunner,’ I said to him. ‘Put it on the floor. Kick it this way.’
I could feel the refusal in him, see it in his eyes. Then he shrugged, and took out the flat black box, and did as I’d said.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘you’re all going to watch a video.’ I glanced down at the pistol. ‘I’m not a good shot. I don’t know what Pd hit. So stay sitting down.’ I held out the anorak in Bobby’s direction. ‘The tape’s zipped into one of the pockets.’
‘Put it on now?’ he said, finding it and bringing it out. His hands were shaking, his voice unsteady. Damn Maynard, I thought.
‘Yes, now,’ I said. ‘Holly, close the curtains and put on a lamp, it’ll be dark before we’re finished.’
No one spoke while she shut out the chilly day, while Bobby switched on the video machine and the television, and fed the tape into the slot. Pollgate looked moodily at the anorak which Bobby had laid on a chair and Lord Vaughnley glanced at the gun, and at my face, and away again.
‘Ready,’ Bobby said.
‘Start it off,’ I said, ‘and you and Holly sit down and watch.’
I shut the door and leaned against it as Lord Vaughnley had done in the Guineas, and Maynard’s face came up bright and clear and smiling on the television screen.
He started to struggle up from his deep chair.
‘Sit down,’ I said flatly.
He must have guessed that what was coming was the tape he thought he’d suppressed. He looked at the gun in my hand and judged the distance he would have to cover to reach me, and he subsided into the cushions as if suddenly weak.
The interview progressed and went from smooth politeness into direct attack, and Lord Vaughnley’s mouth slowly opened.
‘You’ve not seen this before?’ I said to him.
He said, ‘No, no’ with his gaze uninterruptedly on the screen, and I supposed that Rose wouldn’t have seen any need to go running to the proprietor with her purloined tape, the two days she had had it in the Towncrier building.
I looked at all their faces as they watched. Maynard sick, Erskine blank, Lord Vaughnley riveted, Pollgate awakening to acute interest, Bobby and Holly horrified. Bobby, I thought ruefully, was in for some frightful shocks: it couldn’t be much fun to find one’s father had done so much cruel damage.
The interview finished, to be replaced by the Perrysides telling how they’d lost Metavane, with George Tarker and his son’s suicide after, and Hugh Vaughnley, begging to go home; and finally Maynard again, smugly smiling.
The impact of it all on me was still great, and in the others produced something like suspended animation. Their expressions at the end of the hour and thirteen minutes were identical, of total absorption and stretched eyes, and I thought Joe would have been satisfied with the effect of his cutting, and of his hammer blow of final silence.
The trial was over: the accused, condemned. The sentence alone remained to be delivered.
The screen ran from black into snow, and no one moved.
I peeled myself off the door and walked across and switched off the set.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘now listen.’
The eyes of all of them were looking my way with unadulterated concentration, Maynard’s dark with humiliation, his body slack and deep in the chair.
‘You,’ I said to Lord Vaughnley, ‘and you,’ I said to Nestor Pollgate. ‘You or your newspapers will each pay to Bobby the sum of fifty thousand pounds in compensation. You’ll write promissory notes, here and now, in this room, in front of witnesses, to pay the money within three days, and those notes will be legal and binding.’
Lord Vaughnley and Nestor Pollgate simply stared.
‘And in return,’ I said, ‘you shall have the wire-tap and the other evidence of Jay Erskine’s criminal activity. You shall have complete silence from me about your various assaults on me and my property. You shall have back the draft for three thousand pounds now lodged in my bank manager’s safe. And you shall have the tape you’ve just watched.’
Maynard said, ‘No’ in anguished protest, and no one took any notice.
‘You,’ I said to Maynard, ‘will write a promissory note promising to pay to Bobby within three days the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which will wipe out the overdrafts and the loans and mortgages on this house and stables, which you and your father made Bobby pay for, and which should rightfully be his by inheritance.’
Maynard’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
‘You will also,’ I said, ‘give to Major and Mrs Perryside the one share you still own in Metavane.’
He began to shake his head weakly.
‘And in return,’ I said, ‘you will have my assurance that many copies of this tape will not turn up simultaneously in droves of sensitive places, such as with the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club, or among the patrons of the civil service charity of which you are the new chairman, or in a dozen places in the City.’ I paused. ‘When Bobby has the money safe in the bank, you will be safe from me also. But that safety will always be conditional on your doing no harm either to Bobby and Holly or to me in future. The tapes will always exist.’
Maynard found his voice, hoarse and shaken.
‘That’s extortion,’ he said aridly. ‘It’s blackmail.’
‘It’s justice,’ I said.
There was silence. Maynard shrank as if deflated into the chair, and neither Pollgate nor Lord Vaughnley said anything at all.
‘Bobby,’ I said, ‘take the tape out of the machine and out of this room and put it somewhere safe, and bring back some writing paper for the notes.’
Bobby stood up slowly, looking numb.
‘You said we could have the tape,’ Pollgate said, demurring.
‘So you can, when Bobby’s been paid. If the money’s all safely in the bank by Friday, you shall have it then, along with Erskine’s escape from going to jail.’
Bobby took the tape away, and I contemplated Pollgate’s and Lord Vaughnley’s expressionless faces and thought they were being a good deal too quiet. Maynard, staring at me blackly from his chair, was simple by comparison, his reactions expected. Erskine looked his usual chilling self, but without the smirk, which was an improvement.
Bobby came back with some large sheets of the headed writing paper he used for the bills for the owners, and gave a sheet each to Nestor Pollgate and Lord Vaughnley, and with stiff legs and an arm outstretched as far as it would go, gave the third to his father with his head turned away, not wanting to look at his face.
I surveyed the three of them sitting there stonily holding the blank sheets, and into my head floated various disjointed words and phrases.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Don’t write yet.’
The words were ‘invalid’, and ‘obtained by menaces’, and ‘invalid by reason of having been extorted at gun point’.
I wondered if the thought had come on its own or been generated somewhere else in that room, and I looked at their faces carefully, one by one, searching their eyes.
Not Maynard. Not Erskine. Not Lord Vaughnley
Nestor Pollgate’s eyelids flickered.
‘Bobby,’ I said, ‘tack that black box up off the floor and drop it out of the window, into the garden.’
He looked bewildered, but did as I asked, the November air blowing in a great gust through the curtains into the room.
‘Now the gun,’ I said, and gave it to him.
He took it gingerly and threw it out, and shut the window again.
‘Right,’ I said, putting my hands with deliberation into my pockets, ‘you’ve all heard the propositions. If you accept them, please write the notes.’
For a long moment no one moved. Then Lord Vaughnley stretched out an arm to the coffee table in front of him and picked up a magazine. He put the sheet of writing paper on the magazine for support. With a slightly pursed mouth but in continued quiet he lifted a pen from a pocket inside his jacket, pressed the top of it with a click, and wrote a short sentence, signing his name and adding the date.
He held it out towards Bobby, who stepped forward hesitantly and took it.
‘Read it aloud,’ I said.
Bobby’s voice said shakily, ‘I promise to pay Robertson Allardeck fifty thousand pounds within three days of this date.’ He looked up at me. ‘It is signed William Vaughnley, and the date is today’s.’
I looked at Lord Vaughnley.
‘Thank you,’ I said neutrally.
He gave the supporting magazine to Nestor Pollgate, and offered his own pen. Nestor Pollgate took both with a completely unmoved face and wrote in his turn.
Bobby took the paper from him, glanced at me, and read aloud, ‘I promise to pay Robertson Allardeck fifty thousand pounds within three days of this date. It’s signed Nestor Pollgate. It’s dated today.’
‘Thank you,’ I said to Pollgate.
Bobby looked slightly dazedly at the two documents he held. They would clear the debt for the unsold yearlings, I thought. When he sold them, anything he got would be profit.
Lord Vaughnley and Jay Erskine, as if in some ritual, passed the magazine and the pen along to Maynard.
With fury he wrote, the pen jabbing hard on the paper. I took the completed page from him myself and read it aloud, I promise to pay my son Robertson two hundred and fifty thousand pounds within three days. Maynard Allardeck. Today’s date.’
I looked up at him. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Don’t thank me. Your thanks are an insult.’
I was careful, in fact, to show no triumph, though in his case I did feel it: and I had to admit to myself ruefully that in that triumph there was a definite element of the old feud. A Fielding had got the better of an Allardeck, and I dared say my ancestors were gloating.
I gave Maynard’s note to Bobby. It would clear all his debts and put him on a sure footing to earn a fair living as a trainer, and he held the paper unbelievingly, as if it would evaporate before his eyes.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said cheerfully, ‘bankers’ drafts by Friday, and you shall have the notes back, properly receipted.’
Maynard stood up, his greying fair hair still smooth, his face grimly composed, his expensive suit falling into uncreased shape; the outer shell intact, the man inside in shreds.
He looked at nobody, avoiding eyes. He walked to the door, opened it, went out, didn’t look back. A silence lengthened behind his exit like the silence at the end of the tape; the enormity of Maynard struck one dumb.
Nestor Pollgate rose to his feet, tall, frowning, still with his power intact. He looked at me judiciously, gave me a brief single nod of the head, and said to Holly, ‘Which way do I go out?’
‘I’ll show you,’ she said, sounding subdued, and led the way into the hall.
Erskine followed, his face pinched, the drooping reddish moustache in some way announcing his continuing inflexible hatred of those he had damaged.
Bobby went after him, carrying his three notes carefully as if they were brittle, and Lord Vaughnley, last of all, stood up to go. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, spread his hands in a sort of embarrassment.
‘What can I say?’ he said. ‘What am I to say when I see you on racecourses?’
‘Good morning, Kit,’ I said.
The grey eyes almost smiled before awkwardness returned. ‘Yes, but,’ he said, ‘after what we did to you in the Guineas…’
I shrugged. ‘Fortunes of war,’ I said. ‘I don’t resent it, if that’s what you mean. I took the war to the Flag. Seek the battle, don’t complain of the wounds.’
He said curiously, ‘Is that how you view race-riding? How you view life?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it, but yes, perhaps.’
‘I’m sorry all the same,’ he said. ‘I had no idea what it would be like. Jay Erskine got the stun gun… he said two short shocks and you’d be putty. I don’t think Nestor realised himself how bad it would be…’
‘Yeah,’ I said dryly, ‘but he agreed to it.’
‘That was because,’ Lord Vaughnley explained with a touch of earnestness, wanting me to understand, perhaps to absolve, ‘because you ignored all his threats.’
‘About prison?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Sam Leggatt warned him you were intelligent… he said an attempt to frame you could blow up in their faces, that you would get the Flag and Nestor himself into deep serious gritty trouble… David Morse, their lawyer, was of the same opinion, so he agreed not to try. Sam Leggatt told me. But you have to understand Nestor. He doesn’t like to be crossed. He said he wasn’t going to be beaten by some… er… jockey.’
Expletives deleted, I thought, amused.
‘You were elusive,’ he said. ‘Nestor was getting impatient…’
‘And he had a tap on my telephone?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Is it Maynard Allardeck who is trying to take over the Towncrier?’
He blinked, and said ‘Er –’ and recovered. ‘You guessed?’
‘It seemed likely. Maynard got half of Hugh’s shares by a trick. I thought it just might be him who was after the whole thing.’
Lord Vaughnley nodded. ‘A company… Allardeck is behind it. When Hugh confessed, I got people digging up Allardeck’s contacts. Just digging for dirt. I’d no idea until then that he owned the company… his name hadn’t surfaced. All I knew was that it was the same company that nearly acquired the Flag a year ago. Very aggressive. It cost Nestor a fortune to cap their bid, far more than he would have had to pay otherwise.’
Holy wow, I thought.
‘So when you found out that Maynard was the ultimate enemy,’ I said, ‘and knew also that he’d recently been proposed for a knighthood, you thought at least you could put paid to that, and casually asked Pollgate to do it in the Flag?’
‘Not all that casually. Nestor said he’d be pleased to, if it was Allardeck who had cost him so much.’
‘Didn’t you even consider what hell you were manufacturing for Bobby?’
‘Erskine found he couldn’t get at Allardeck’s phone system… they decided on his son.’
‘Callous,’ I said.
‘Er… yes.’
‘And appallingly spiteful to deliver all those copies to Bobby’s suppliers.’
He said without much apology, ‘Nestor thought the story would make more of a splash that way. Which it did.’
We began to walk from the sitting room into the hall. He’d told me what I hadn’t asked: where the alliance began. In common enmity to Maynard, who had cost them both dear.
‘Will you use the tape,’ I asked, ‘to stop Maynard now in his tracks?’
He glanced at me. ‘That would be blackmail,’ he said mildly.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ he said. ‘That tape’s cheap at the price.’
We went into the kitchen and paused again.
‘The Towncrier is the third newspaper,’ he said, ‘that has had trouble with Allardeck’s company. One paper after another… he won’t give up till he’s got one.’
‘He’s obsessive,’ I said. ‘And besides, he’s wanted all his life to have power over others… to be kowtowed to. To be a lord.’
Lord Vaughnley’s mouth opened. I told him about my grandfather, and Maynard at nine. ‘He hasn’t changed,’ I said. ‘He still wants those things. Sir first, Lord after. And don’t worry, he won’t get them. I sent a copy of the tape to where you sent your charity letter.’
He was dumbstruck. He said weakly, ‘How did you know about that letter?’
‘I saw it,’ I said. ‘I was shown it. I wanted to know who knew Maynard might be up for a knighthood, and there it was, with your name.’
He shook his head: at life in general, it seemed.
We went on through the kitchen and out into the cold air. All the lights were on round the yard and some of the box doors were open, the lads working there in the routine of evening stables.
‘Why did you try to stop me talking to Hugh?’ I asked.
‘I was wrong, I see that now. But at the time… by then you were pressing Nestor for large compensation. He wanted us simply to get back the wire-tap and shut you up.’ He spread his hands. ‘No one imagined, you see, that you would do all that you’ve done. I mean, when it was just a matter of disgracing Allardeck in the public eye, no one could have foreseen… no one even thought of your existence, let alone considered you a factor. No one knew you would defend your brother-in-law, or be… as you are.’
We walked across the yard to the car where Pollgate and Erskine were waiting, shadowy figures behind glass.
‘If I were you,’ I said, ‘I’d find out if Maynard owns the bookmakers that Hugh bet with. If he does, you can threaten him with fraud, and get Hugh’s shares back, I should think.’
We stopped a few feet from the car.
‘You’re generous,’ he said.
We stood there, face to face, not knowing whether or not to shake hands.
‘Hugh had no chance against Maynard,’ I said.
‘No.’ He paused. ‘I’ll let him come home.’
He looked at me lengthily, the mind behind the grey eyes perhaps totting up, as I was, where we stood.
Even if he hadn’t intended it, he had set in motion the attacks on Bobby; yet because of them Bobby would be much better off. From the dirt, gold.
If he offered his hand, I thought, I would take it.
Tentatively, unsure, that’s what he did. I shook it briefly; an acknowledgement, a truce.
‘See you at the races,’ I said.
When they had gone I went and found the pistol and the stun gun outside the sitting-room window, and with them in my pockets returned to the kitchen, where Holly and Bobby were looking more dazed than happy.
‘Tea?’ I said hopefully.
They didn’t seem to hear. I put the kettle on and got out some cups.
‘Kit…’ Holly said. ‘Bobby told me…’
‘Yeah… well… have you a lemon?’ I said.
She dumbly fetched me one from the refrigerator, and sliced it.
Bobby said, ‘I nearly killed you.’
His distress, I saw, was still blotting out any full realisation – or celebration – of the change in his fortunes. He still looked pale, still gaunt round the eyes.
‘But you didn’t,’ I said.
‘No… when you turned your back on me, I thought, I can’t shoot him in the back… not in the back… and I woke up. Like waking from a nightmare. I couldn’t… how could I… I stood there with that gun, sweating at how near I’d come…’
‘You frightened me silly,’ I said. ‘Let’s forget it.’
‘How can we?’
‘Easily.’ I punched his arm lightly. ‘Concentrate, my old chum, on being a daddy.’
The kettle boiled and Holly made the tea; and we heard a car driving into the yard.
‘They’ve come back,’ Holly said in dismay.
We went out to see, all of us fearful.
The car was large and bewilderingly familiar. Two of its doors opened and from one came Thomas, the princess’s chauffeur, in his best uniform, and from the other, scrambling and running, Danielle.
‘Kit…’ She ran headlong into my arms, her face screwed up with worry. ‘Are you… are you really OK?’
‘Yes, I am. You can see.’
She put her head on my shoulder and I held her close, and felt her trembling, and kissed her hair.
Thomas opened a third door of the car and helped out the princess, holding the sable coat for her to put on over the silk suit against the cold.
‘I am glad, Kit,’ she said calmly, snuggling into the fur, ‘to see you are alive and well.’ She looked from me to Bobby and Holly. ‘You are Bobby, you are Holly, is that right?’ She held out her hand to them, which they blankly shook.
‘We are here,’ she said, ‘because my niece Danielle insisted that we come.’ She was explaining, half apologising for her presence. ‘When I went home after the Icefall luncheon,’ she said to me, ‘Danielle was waiting on the pavement. She said you were in very great danger, and that you were at your sister’s house in Newmarket. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain. She said that we must come at once.’
Bobby and Holly looked astounded.
‘As I know that with you, Kit, telepathy definitely exists,’ the princess said, ‘and as you had disappeared from the lunch and were reported to be ill, and as Danielle was distraught… we came. And I see she was right in part at least. You are here, at your sister’s house.’
‘She was right about the rest,’ Holly said soberly. ‘He was in that danger… a split second from dying.’ She looked at my face. ‘Did you think of her then?’
I swallowed. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Holy wow,’ Holly said.
‘Kit says that too,’ Danielle said, lifting her head from my neck and beginning to recover. ‘It’s awesome.’
‘We always did,’ Holly said. She looked at Danielle with growing interest and understanding, and slowly smiled with pleasure.
‘She’s like us, isn’t she?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never known what she was thinking.”
‘You might, after this’; and to Danielle, with friendship, she said, ‘Think of something. See if he can tell what it is.’
‘OK.’
There was a silence. The only thought in my head was that telepathy was unpredictable and only sometimes worked to order.
I looked at the princess, and at Bobby and Holly, and saw in their faces the same hope, the same expectation, the same realisation that this moment might matter in all our futures.
I smiled into Danielle’s eyes. I knew, for a certainty.
‘Dustsheets.’ I said.