Death of a Raven (5 page)

“So they mounted the great silver bird — the great bird that flattens the buttocks, confuses the thoughts and dulls the spirits. And thus they came upon the abode of the wizards, a tall white spire that pierced the very clouds. And the wizards were indeed strange beings.”

He seemed to have run out of ideas so I took over. “Those who lived below the clouds were rough ogres, steeped in black arts, committing few of their secrets to parchment, telling those who lived above the clouds nothing. Those who lived above the clouds were even stranger, writing and speaking a profusion of curious tongues, committing their multitude of thoughts to monsters with many baleful green eyes.” 

“And those in the middle,” said McAlister, “who lived in the clouds were strangest of all for they worked in a perpetual fog, huddled together for comfort and protection and holding hands. And their feet were permanently cold.”

Robin had collected his thoughts. “‘Help us! Help us! For we have travelled far and are in great turmoil,’ cried the horde, but the tower remained silent. ‘Help us! Help us! For we have travelled far, are in great turmoil and these sacks of gold are very heavy,’ cried the horde. Trumpets sounded. ‘Welcome,’ boomed the tower and the horde passed into the hands of the wizards of the east.”

The minder then became quite helpless, apparently oblivious to a member of his audience approaching with singular lack of humour.

“Call yourself a bloody bodyguard!” Lawrence shouted. “You’re so inept it makes me nervous to be in the same room with you.”

Robin, suddenly sober, looked up at him derisively.

“If an armed man came through that door you’d wet yourself,” Lawrence went on, if anything shouting more loudly.

“Cool it!” Redding ordered sharply. “You’ve had too much rye.”

“If you’d like to go out and then come in again,” Robin offered helpfully, “I’ll be quite happy to blow your ears off.”

Only he did not say ears.

I put out a hand to place it restrainingly on Robin’s shoulder but his acute hearing had already alerted him to something. The door opened precipitately and in burst a young man.

“Hi, everyone!” yelled Mark Hartland.

The bullet missed him but only, I discovered later, because Mark is a seasoned squash player and dived sideways when he saw a stranger pointing a gun. A split second later Robin was sitting on him on the floor.

Emma was the first to recover from the shock. “How many times do I have to tell you to ring and let us know you’re coming?” she shrieked.

“It was meant to be a surprise,” said Mark, rubbing a shoulder. He grinned up at Robin. “Show me how to do that — eh?”

Further surprises followed in the shape of three burly members of the RCMP, armed and bearing a vociferously complaining Freddie whom they had come upon heading in furtive fashion towards the house.

The explanations were somewhat lengthy.

Chapter 5

Redding and Lawrence left immediately, receiving from Hartland a curt nod indicating that he would smooth things out. I was rather relieved about this for Robin was still clearly in a mood to vent on Lawrence his glorious displeasure.

While Hartland spoke, proving to all of us that he was a master of diplomacy, and Freddie stood placidly in a Mountie’s strong grip smiling gently at the bottle of Scotch, I suddenly wished that a secret camera was filming the proceedings and that Daws could one day view his team in action.

Greatly daring, and still not altogether sober, Robin pushed the Scotch nearer to Freddie. With all outsider attention still on Hartland there was no one to notice the look of horror flit across expressive features that denoted his displeasure at being expected to drink out of the bottle. Robin fetched a clean glass. Then, Hartland busy explaining that the prisoner was a member of his staff, the gentleman in question slithered through his captor’s hands like a freshly landed fish and poured himself a consoling drink.

With three days’ growth of beard, grimy hands, fingernails packed with dirt, Patrick sat on the floor cross-legged and sipped his whisky. He has always had a theory that ordinary people notice nothing and was about to prove that the average policeman is no exception. Beneath the grime, filthy jeans and equally dirty tee-shirt, was the
soigné
army officer who had accompanied me to many parties and was always one of those to sit on the floor when there were not enough chairs. I felt like cheering.

This joy of joys, alas, soon came to an end. Hartland roughly told him to finish his drink and leave and was so infuriated by the leer “Freddie” then bestowed on me that he ordered out the Mounties as well, telling them that he no longer required them to provide outside surveillance.

“That was a mistake,” Robin said, coldly angry, to Hartland a few minutes later. The three of us were the last to leave the room.

“I’ll thank you to leave all exterior security to me,” Hartland snapped, and walked out.

“Still thirsting for blood?” I enquired.

“These mikes …” said Robin pensively, and from his expression it seemed to me that he was not so much thirsting for blood as already wallowing knee deep in the stuff.

“What mikes?” I said, giving him a chance to undo the damage.

There was a short but violent inner skirmish between his self-control and professionalism on the one hand, and anger and tiredness on the other.

“The ones you were asking me about — for your dictating machine.”

“I’m with you now,” I told him, feeling quite shaky.

“I’ve got a catalogue. I’ll let you have it tomorrow.” He plodded from the room.

This exchange had been a demonstration of the real hazard of Patrick’s disobeying orders. Terry might be younger and able to soak up the immense amount of information that I was sure McAlister had been cramming into him, but he could not cope with prolonged tension in a situation where his considerable courage and flair in an active role was not called into play. The day after day tedium of being cooped up with increasingly bad-tempered people who looked to him to protect them virtually twenty-four hours a day could not be permitted to go on much longer.

I had no doubt that Patrick had reasons for placing himself outside the Hartland household. Equally certain was that he had been on the same mission as the men from the RCMP, to discover why a shot had been fired, and it had suited his purpose to be brought indoors by them. Now you know as much as I do, I thought, and you’ll have to break your own cover. I did not even contemplate that he would do something as simple as knock on the front door and say who he was. The situation was too eccentric for that.

I went upstairs wondering what Terry had been about to tell me concerning the bugging devices.

*

The next morning there was a hint of spring in the air and everyone was in good spirits, Terry included. I made a point of giving him a bright smile to tell him that I had no intention of reporting his lapse to a higher authority. He grinned back. He always knows what I mean.

The question uppermost in my mind had been answered. Asleep, the night before, I had suddenly become aware of someone in my room. Again, I had not been alarmed. Intruders with malice in their hearts do not normally sit on the end of their intended victim’s bed ravenously devouring what I discovered to be half a cold roast chicken. So I had merely smiled into the pillow and, later, taken him into my arms. He had washed and shaved and, with the radio switched on, both of us buried beneath the luxurious comforter, we had slowly and languidly made love.

Afterwards, replete in all senses, he must have thought it all out. In a while he had slid out of bed, put on the light and begun to crawl around on the floor. Then I heard him huffing and puffing as he wriggled beneath the bed.

A hand and arm bearing aloft what looked like a hearing aid battery with two short pieces of wire had come into my line of vision. 

“Is that a declaration of war?” I had asked.

The head had reappeared wearing a ferocious squint and then gone away again.

“You look a right lunatic crawling around with nothing on.”

My nail file had been acquired and utilised to unscrew the minute device and perform untold havoc on its insides. Then he had replaced it from whence it had come.

“If anyone investigates, it will merely look as though it’s failed.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Shivering, he had come back into bed. “Terry has a theory that Hartland had them put in to check on Emma’s night time activities.”

I had already discovered, by a little sleuthing of my own, that Emma slept alone and her husband had a study cum bedsitter in what had originally been servants’ quarters over the garages. Also that Leander Hurley had returned to Ravenscliff on the night of the Wednesday after I had arrived, climbed the tree outside Emma’s bedroom window and stayed until about five the next morning. Her room was next to mine and presumably Emma didn’t care if I knew for she had made a lot of noise during what must have been fairly wild lovemaking.

“Hartland’s impotent,” Patrick had said.

“How d’you know?”

“Terry told me.”

“So how does Terry know?”

“Emma told him — in bed.”

Which was why my smile to Terry had been a bright one but the eyebrows raised.

As far as I was concerned the mood of slight elation departed with the DARE team, escorted by Terry, on their way to work. I found myself shivering upon perceiving the look Terry received from his commander, the message not losing anything in the distance separating them across the expanse of lawn. However provoked, the look said, you do not drink too much and let off reckless shots indoors. I doubted if it was the last that Terry would hear of it. Patrick had angrily brushed aside my explanation of how obnoxious Lawrence had been.

I strolled in the garden and pondered on what we were about to do. On the surface of it what Patrick had planned was preposterous, melodramatic and even dangerous. But in order to get skeletons from cupboards, he had pointed out, you sometimes have to dynamite off the padlocks.

The man that everyone but Terry and I knew as Freddie gazed across at me and, holding a rake, went into a robotic dance routine. This, I realised, was for Hartland’s benefit. He was the last to leave and approaching Emma’s car, keys ready in one hand to unlock the door. Hartland stopped in his tracks. Everyone always does. Patrick is a horribly realistic robot.

“Get on with your work!” he shouted, and bad-temperedly stabbed the key in the lock.

Then, the most odd feeling came over me. As in a dream I saw Hartland get in the car and drive away, spraying Freddie with gravel as he speeded past. I saw the expression on my own husband’s face after this had transpired and did not recognise him, only viewed someone less than quite sane.

The sensation of uneasiness persisted. I walked away from him, no longer feeling the sun’s warmth even though it was now full in my face. Since arriving in Canada I had experienced a feeling of general malaise and had put it down to jet lag. Now I was not so sure. If I was being reduced to a trembling ninny when witnessing my husband in one of his more bizarre roles, it suggested that I was losing my nerve. Even worse, I could no longer face him being near to me while playing the part of Freddie — and the plan he had put forward meant that Freddie and I would get very close indeed.

I sat on a stone garden seat and, appalled with myself, continued to tremble. In rare moments of real illness and emotional upset I seem to be a spectator of my own weaknesses. So here was a woman getting on for forty who had been entrusted with a little make-believe, the outcome of which would make her the centre of sympathetic attention. Spectator raked ham actor with ruthless gaze. There was no more than had regarded me in the mirror that morning; black bobbed hair, green eyes, a face a little paler than was normal. Nothing to suggest incipient panic.

I stood up and my ears roared, the lawn, trees, and greenhouse tilting and spinning crazily. Somehow I carried on walking towards the stables where I knew Mark was getting his horse ready for a ride.

“Faith, the woman’s drunk,” said a voice close behind me, and then laughed when I broke into a run.

“Who laughed?” asked Mark, leading Marcus, his horse, out into the sunshine.

“Freddie,” I replied, leaning on a wall.

“I can’t imagine why Dad employed such a lunatic.”

“Old Bill recommended him,” I said and stroked the chestnut, remembering how I myself had used the same expression not so long ago.

“Really? I wonder how much money changed hands.”

Marcus danced at the shadows, snorting, and then wheeled around with a squeal when a pigeon flew up in his face. Mark, hopping around with one foot in the stirrup, swore and then led the animal down the drive for a short distance to calm it down.

I watched him. The similarity in name was no accident, the horse had been an eighteenth birthday present. But not the kind of animal, I reasoned, that could be expected to behave itself when ridden perhaps only one weekend in four.

“You keep away!” Mark shouted when he saw that the gardener was making as if to help him mount the plunging creature. “Clear off!” he yelled. “You’ll only make him worse.” 

I did not stop to witness the outcome of this but quickly ran up the wooden staircase on the outside wall of the building. The door into the loft room must have been ajar for I do not remember opening it, only becoming aware of sitting on a bale of hay and feeling not scared but sick and faint. Already the plans had gone wrong. Mark had gone out earlier than expected. He was to have witnessed our play acting.

I gazed around me. Most of the space in the roof was taken up with bales of hay and straw, sacks of animal feeding stuffs, both cubes for the horses — Marcus and Emma’s mare, Queen — and dog meal and biscuits for the Newfoundland, or Newfie as it was nearly always referred to. A thin partition across one end separated the store from where Freddie slept.

I simply couldn’t believe that Old Bill had inhabited this sleazy corner. There was a camp bed with rickety legs, the blankets on it smelling of wet dogs and mothballs, a chest of drawers, one corner propped up by a couple of books, a tap dripping into a filthy sink with nothing to clean it. This was how a wealthy British family housed their supposedly mentally retarded employee. I seethed, not just because the man involved was my husband but for all people thus treated. It seemed that the padlock on the cupboard containing skeletons was already well and truly off.

And, of course, the magazines, a great pile of them by the bed. They dated back several years. In spite of myself I flipped through a couple and probably received the same kind of shock that comes to any woman who has previously regarded herself as broad-minded when she first encounters hard porn. Had he really lain in bed looking at these?

In a kind of daze I flipped the top blanket aside to reveal grey sheets and a pillow lumpy with age. There was a thin mattress of sorts. I slid my hands beneath it and, kneeling at the side of the bed, felt along its length. In the middle but at the foot end was a sock rolled up around something hard. It was the gold Rolex watch I had given Patrick shortly after we remarried. 

I wept, wondering, “Fool, fool, what’s the matter with you?”

Standing up, I took a knife from the draining board, wiped off the stickiness on a dirty tee-shirt and, back on my knees, examined the floor. There were several loose boards and after prising up three I found what I was looking for.

At this point the man called Freddie nudged me quite gently on the bottom with a toe.

“That’s a damn stupid and obvious place to hide a gun,” I said, dangling the Smith and Wesson under his nose.

“Mark will be back,” announced the man in my life. “He’s just been thrown and hurt his wrist.”

“No mikes up here?”

“None. You’ll have to scream quite loudly.”

“You bastard,” I whispered, surprised by my own venom.

Grinning at my good acting he lunged at me and bore me down onto the campbed. I think I went a little bit mad myself then without knowing why, and this was what really frightened me. I fought him off, at one point remembering my training well enough to send him hurtling to the floor. And all the time I screamed until he silenced me with his mouth, an altogether too brutish, bruising kiss.