Blood Royal (40 page)

“I know what I had to go through, and it didn’t include being raised in a palace and pampered by servants. Pardon me if I have a hard time sympathizing with people who never had to work a day in their lives because they were born rich.” She sighed. “Okay, I see that you’re determined to bring me to tears, so tell me what he went through.”

“When you went to school, were you expected to be a brilliant student? A dynamite athlete? A natural-born leader?”

“Lots of kids are pushed by their parents to succeed.”

“He wasn’t just pushed by his parents, there were sixty million Brits and a billion other former British subjects around the world watching him, judging him, evaluating him, every moment of every day. Any slipup, any screwup, the slightest hint that he had human frailties, appeared on the front pages. Boarding school was hell for him, even sleeping in a dorm was a terror. If he snored at night he’d not just get hit by a flying shoe, but it would become a school joke and make it into the papers. When he was out on the playing field participating in sporting events, the boys took turns knocking him down and getting in a punch, so someday they could brag that they bowled over the king and put an elbow in his ribs.

“He was tested every day, in every way. If he was sensitive, if he couldn’t roll with the punches, he wouldn’t have lasted a week at boarding school or in the military. He had to take the punishment, keep—”

“A stiff upper lip.”

“And maintain a stoic countenance to the world. How could the princess expect him to show emotion toward her? He’d never been permitted to show anger, hate, love, or anything more than mild interest in anything or anyone—and God help him if he showed the wrong sort of interest.” He grinned at her. “Have you ever farted in public or picked your nose while driving? Front-page stuff if he did it. Taken a shower with a bunch of other school chums who bragged that their dick was bigger than yours?”

“Not lately.”

“He’d never done it, because if he did, some slime publication would put it on the front pages. At sixteen he flunked his O levels in math. The press tore him apart. Can you imagine what they would have done if he had had a premature ejaculation? The prince lived under a microscope from the moment he was born. He walked, talked, loved, and acted like an institution because
he was one.
This was a guy who’d probably never bought a pair of socks, didn’t carry money because he paid for nothing, wouldn’t know how to tip in a restaurant because he’d never picked up a check. If he went into a store to buy a jock strap, a large crowd would gather, the police would have to set up barricades and the Royal Protection Service would be sweating it because anyone within range could put a knife into their charge, and the papers would have twelve theories as to why he needed his balls tucked up.

“Think of it, luv, this was a guy who didn’t even dress himself. He changed several times a day, more if he was on tour. He had something like fifty suitcases when he traveled because he might have to change five or six times in a day. It’s easy to see why he got into polo and the hunt. They’re both games for the privileged few—and no one got to knock him on his arse.

“Can you imagine going through your entire life under a microscope, in which your every move was watched and evaluated and even criticized? It wasn’t until he was out of the military and into his twenties that he could even sleep alone with the knowledge that he could snore if he wanted to.”

“So you think it’s all a downside, this bit about being a prince.”

“Oh, no, the other Royals have it made. They get all the benefits and little of the flack that goes with the job. Like I told you, it’s only the Prince of Wales and his mum who face the firing line twenty-four hours a day, whose lives are dictated by duty, duty, duty to all of us unwashed Brits. And yes, luv, it’s a job I wouldn’t like. Would I change places with the guy? you ask. Hell, yes, if I could do it knowing what I know today, but not if it meant being switched at birth. My dick’s my own business and I don’t need the guys in the shower room sizing it up.”

“That’s a very intelligent way to think of it.”

“It is a very intelligent way to think of it, and you’re not getting it because you’re thinking of the prince as an institution and forgetting the person. The things you do naturally, being a mall rat, going to a movie, buying a new sweater, he couldn’t do any of it. Movie stars can’t do those things, either, but most of them had a normal childhood and they chose their fate, busting their buns to get the fame because they wanted it.”

They drove in silence for a while, then he asked, “Well, do you understand the prince now? Do you see why the queen had to raise him tough, for his own protection and for the sake of the nation?”

“Sure, I’m real sorry that I was lucky enough to be born poor while your prince had to lick his silver spoon. I feel bad that I had to work for everything I ever had, that I had to wait tables and get my ass pinched in a casino lounge in order to get through school instead of playing soccer at a school for spoiled, privileged kids.”

He shook his head. “Didn’t hear a word I said.”

“I heard the part about duty, duty, duty, the princess was overwhelmed by her duties. I’ll give you this much about the two of them, the prince and the princess, they were a couple of birds who got their wings clipped at an early age and were put on display in a gilded cage.”

Marlowe and Dutton sat in the car in the dark parking lot in front of the mental institution where they expected to find Howler and a royal secret. It was a four-story building, built of dull gray concrete and sitting at the far end of an oversized parking lot.

“There will be only one Royal Protection officer on duty,” Dutton said.

“Why?”

“There’s only four of them assigned to cover twenty-four hours a day. The other three will be sleeping, resting, or playing pool at that pub down the road.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“We go to Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“We go back to London and have three days of kinky sex before you fly back to the States and I go back to making up stories about alien rape.”

“You really know how to make a woman feel needed for something besides sexual gratification.”

“That’s the police car in front.”

Marlowe squinted at the car parked in front of the main entrance. “How do you know? There’s no markings on it.”

“It’s in the no-parking fire zone. There’s a security guard at a desk right inside the front door. See him?”

“Yes.”

“He’d make the driver move it if it wasn’t a coppers’ car. I’ll be just around the corner to the right. When you create the diversion, I’ll walk in.”

Marlowe was ready to bite her fingernails. “I don’t like this. We could get arrested.”

He patted her knee. “Not to worry, luv, I’m here to protect you.”

“That’s what’s got me most worried.”

He got out of the car and made his way through the dark parking lot to the side of the building. When he got to the corner of the building, he waved.

She started the car and took a deep breath. “Why me, Lord, why didn’t I stay in Modesto and be a farmer’s wife?”

She let up on the clutch and the car jerked, jumped, and shimmied to a stop. “Damn.” The best-laid plan had a flaw—her American driving skills in a British car. She had to sit on the wrong side, to steer from the wrong side, which was doable without practice because she was in a parking lot, but she was used to driving an automatic transmission. The car had a typical center-mounted stick shift. She had to use her left hand to shift gears and her left foot on the clutch while keeping her right foot on the gas and somewhere along the line have a foot for the brake.

She got the car moving across the parking lot. “An accident waiting to happen,” she said aloud. That fit in nicely with the plan.

When her car was near the front entrance, she stopped. Trying to force the gearshift into reverse caused a grinding that made her nerves raw. She saw the security guard inside the door look up at the sound. He got up and came around his desk to look out. The gear suddenly went into reverse and she popped the clutch. The car lurched back, hitting the side door of the police car with a bang.

That was the plan, but it didn’t include making enough noise to wake the dead.

She put her head down on the steering wheel. “Jesus.”

The security officer hurried up to her open window. “You okay?”

“Yes, uh, I messed up. Can you find the car’s owner?”

“Bad luck for you, it’s a copper’s car. Don’t go anywhere.” He started back inside, but spun around and came back and wrote down the license plate number. He smiled and waved his notebook at her and disappeared back inside.

She stuck her head out the window and got a look at Dutton at the corner of the building. He made a gesture, it looked like he gave her the finger, but it was too dark to see and she concluded he probably gave her an “OK” sign.

She got out the driver’s license Dutton had prepared for her. “A real license,” he had told her, “except that the picture belongs to the woman who owns the car. If they check, it’s all up and up.” She resisted the temptation to add up the number of crimes she was committing or was an accessory to. She knew she had passed the grounds for disbarment.

When the security guard returned with a man hurrying toward her, Dutton started for the front doors.

*   *   *

D
UTTON NODDED AND FLASHED
his RPS ID card at the woman on the phone behind the reception desk as he headed for the elevator. “Going up,” he said.

She put her hand over the phone receiver. “What’s happening outside?”

“Woman backed into one of our cars.”

He took the elevator to the fourth floor and flashed his ID at the nurses’ station.

“Here for Mr. Smith, are you? Haven’t seen you before. What happened to McKinzie?”

“Be back up, little fender bender with the car.”

Howler was held in a room at the end of the corridor. A comfy chair, TV, and table with coffee and magazines was set out in front of it for the Royal Protection officer on duty. He had assured Marlowe that there would be only one on duty at a time, but had held his breath until he confirmed it.

He opened the door and walked in. Walter Howler, aka John Smith, was on the bed in the room, wide wake, watching the telly.

“Hello, How-ee, how the bleedin’ hell are you?”

Howler stared at him. “Do I know you?”

“Off your medicine? Don’t recognize your old pal, the one you set up for that chamber of horrors you created at the Abbey?”

He squinted at Dutton. “You’re that arse of a reporter.”

Dutton moved next to the bed. “I’m your savior, your old school pal come to make you healthy and wealthy.”

“Fuck you, you ain’t got nothing I want, you don’t have a pot to piss in. I’m selling my story for millions.”

“And who do you plan to sell it to? Those coppers who have you imprisoned here? I can get you out of here and see that you have a villa on the Costa del Sol—”

Howler laughed hysterically. “A piece of shit like that? You measly little man, I’m going to have a palace, not a house.” He got off the bed and stood up, still bending over laughing. “The prince is going to pay me ten million pounds, that’s my demand, ten million—and maybe a baronage or an earldom, too, take it from his estates in Cornwall.”

“For a letter that says what?”

Howler blinked at him. “Letter?”

“The letter, you have the princess’s letter, the one in which she says her husband’s going to do her in.”

Howler stared at him wild-eyed. “Bing-bing, wrong answer, bing-bing, wrong answer. You lose, you lose.”

“What are you talking about?” Dutton grabbed him by the front of his hospital pajamas. “What do you know about the killing?”

“I sent a letter, but I’m not going to tell you about it, it’s under the rose, you have to look under the rose. Here.” He kneed Dutton in the groin. The blow didn’t connect well, but it made Dutton let go of Howler’s collar and go off balance. Howler gave him a shove that knocked him off his feet and flew out of the room.

Dutton scrambled to his feet and raced after him. As Dutton came out the door, Howler was running down the corridor, flying by the nurses’ station. “Stop him!” she yelled. Dutton went by her as Howler ran past a door marked
STAIRWAY
and into a room. Dutton heard the door lock as he got to it.

“He’s locked it,” Dutton told the nurse. “But at least he didn’t get away.”

“He doesn’t want to get away, that’s where the drugs are kept.”

She banged on the door. “Open this door immediately, Mr. Smith! Open it right now!”

Dutton heard the elevator chime that it had reached the fourth floor. Without waiting to see if it contained an RPS officer, he ducked through the door marked
STAIRWAY
.

They were in the car on their way out of the parking lot when Marlowe looked back. “Someone’s out on a ledge.”

Dutton slammed on the brakes and stuck his head out the window. A male figure in white pajamas had climbed out a fourth-floor window. “It’s Howler.”

With his back to the building, the man scooted sideways along the ledge. Another man, the RPS duty officer, stuck his head and shoulders out the window. He reached over for Howler’s pants leg. And Howler stepped off the ledge.

“Oh, my God!” Marlowe cried.

Dutton got the car moving. “We’ll go to York and leave the car at a car park, I’ll arrange to have it driven back later. We can take the train back to London.”

“That man, he has to be dead.”

Dutton shrugged. “Best thing that ever happened to him. His mind was dead long ago.”

“We’re in trouble—”

“Not a bit of it,” Dutton said. “You’ve been a lawyer too long. We haven’t violated any laws. Howler was being held illegally by the Royals, kidnapped and imprisoned. They’re probably happy he’s out of the way. They certainly aren’t going to place charges against us, are they? What did we do? Visited an old friend in hospital, that’s the only thing we did.”

“I—”