Blue Blooded

by Emma Jameson

  India 98 had set him and the hostages down on Leadenhall Street. Neera, Jeremy, and Edwin were loaded into yellow and blue ambulances and taken to St. Thomas’s Hospital with an MPS escort following to debrief them. Ordinarily the City was lightly traveled after dark, but that night the streets around the Dolphin and One-oh-One were crowded with people, many pushing against the red police barriers. Some were evacuated residents, impatient to know what was happening. Others were curious Londoners drawn by cable breaking news.

  At first, the media presence was ordinary. Then someone found out the shattered body under a foil thermal blanket was Sir Duncan Godington. Fifteen minutes after word got out, plastic barriers weren’t enough. In their place was a line of bonnet-to-boot police cars to keep out the cameramen, producers, and trench coat-clad correspondents.

  The wait for the paramedics to bring down Tony and Kate seemed to last forever. Chatter on police radio kept mentioning a bloody axe found on the roof. The very idea of Sir Duncan with a machete-like weapon gave Paul, who’d disembarked from India 98 already shivering, a violent case of the shakes. Since he refused to take an ambulance ride until he’d seen his friends, he, too, ended up draped in a foil blanket, just like Sir Duncan.

  Finally, the sliding glass door beside One-oh-One’s big revolving door whooshed open. Out came Tony, on a gurney and wearing an oxygen mask. He was whisked out of the Leadenhall building and loaded into an ambulance with such dispatch, Paul had no chance to speak to him. But his old guv nevertheless gave him something to cling to by waving at Paul before the doors closed. Thus Paul knew two things for sure: Tony was conscious, and at least one limb was still attached.

  About ten minutes later, the paramedics brought down Kate. This coincided with the time a separate ambulance crew blocked the street to collect Sir Duncan’s corpse from the point of impact. The operation was so gruesome, the City of London police formed a human shield inside the MPS vehicle barrier to further confound the paparazzi. That meant the dead man’s bits wouldn’t be plastered all over YouTube in real time. But one of the career photogs would get a picture for the tabloids. They always did.

  Paul cast off his foil blanket to watch the crew work. He wasn’t immune to human carnage. Had Tony come down in pieces like the corpse of Sir Raleigh Godington, the sight would have put Paul on his knees. But as he watched the technicians collect Sir Duncan, a process of scraping and bagging, all he felt was detached relief. On a parallel street, of course, another biohazard-suited crew was probably doing the same with Kyla. But he stuck his feelings about that in a deep, dark, emotionally subterranean compartment and shot the bolt.

  “Hey,” Kate said weakly. Like Tony, she was on a gurney and wearing an oxygen mask. Despite her distress, the blocked street gave the paramedics no choice but to wait in the street until it was clear to pass.

  Paul went to her side. She had an angry red welt on her chin, a bigger one in the well of her throat, bruises on her forearms, and a stabilizer brace on her right leg. He grinned down at her. “You look beautiful.”

  She had two words for him. They were music to his ears.

  “Now I know you’ll live. They were so bloody long bringing you down, I was bricking it.”

  “I went a little mental. Made them stop the lift on our floor and prove to me that Henry and Ritchie were okay,” Kate said. “They only did it was because I kept screaming I was Baroness Hetheridge.”

  One of the paramedics, positioned beside the gurney to monitor Kate’s vital signs and until that moment discreetly feigning deafness, said, “That wasn’t why.”

  “Was it because you’re a mum?” Paul asked.

  “Because I’m a human being,” the paramedic shot back. “Thank God the boys were okay. If it had been bad news, I would’ve knocked you out with Versed and let someone else break it to you later.”

  “Who’s with them?” Paul asked.

  “My intern. She’s the cuddly type. Kiddies love her,” the paramedic said.

  “That’s a start,” Kate said, clearly making an effort to sound grateful. “Paul. I need you to call someone. I can’t remember the number. She’s ex-directory, so you might need to use a little black magic to get it. My sister.” Kate’s voice broke. “Maura.”

  “Er… Really? Is that smart when she’s suing for full custody of Henry? On the premise that you and Tony’s work is too dangerous?”

  “She’s right.” Kate sobbed weakly. “Tell Maura to bring all the court papers guaranteeing her right to visitation. She’ll need them to reassume custody.”

  “Lady Hetheridge.” The paramedic’s tone was no-nonsense. “You’re emotional. This isn’t the time to make decisions that can’t be undone.”

  Ignoring her, Kate blinked away tears and addressed Paul. “Sir Duncan got Henry to buzz him onto the floor. He was in the apartment. Gave Ritchie that Lego thingie to keep him quiet. Told me—” She took a moment to collect herself. “Told me he used the cattle prod on Henry. 5,000 volts.”

  “But he didn’t,” the paramedic said. “I checked that boy myself. He wasn’t best pleased to have been locked in his room. But once he saw his uncle was A-OK and heard his parents were all right, he stuck his chin out. Grew an inch taller right before my eyes.”

  “Tony and I aren’t his parents,” Kate said miserably.

  “That’s not what he told me.” The paramedic smiled down at Kate. “He said, ‘Tony Hetheridge is my dad. His wife, Kate, is my mum.’”

  Kate stared at her. “Did he really?” she whispered.

  “Ask him if you don’t believe me.”

  “I’m glad Sir Duncan didn’t hurt Henry or Ritchie,” Paul said. “Surprised, if I’m being honest. But glad.”

  “I guess some part of his old persona was still in there,” Kate said. “He liked animals because they were simple, and pure. Maybe Ritchie and Henry both fell under the same category.”

  “Maybe. Does your hand hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He squeezed it gently. “What happened to your leg?”

  “Remember that all-or-nothing roundhouse kick? I tried it. Got nothing.”

  “Tell me the bastard didn’t really come after you with an axe.”

  “Not me. Tony. Hit him in the face. Thank God the plastic safety thingie was still on the blade.”

  Paul felt nauseous again. Now his old guv’s wave was even more significant. “So is that how Sir Duncan fell? Swinging the axe like a maniac?”

  “No. Tony killed him. Then threw his body off the roof.”

  “Oh. What did he kill him with?”

  “His hands.”

  Paul glanced at the paramedic. Eyes wide, she’d mouthed, “Hands?”

  The mix of City of London police and MPS officers were still buzzing—“The chief did for Sir Duncan with his bare hands” — long after Kate had been loaded into an ambulance to join Tony at St. Thomas’s. For some reason, the memory of that gossip making the rounds always made Paul smile. Score one for the Toff Squad. It would be a long time before anyone accused them of being unwilling to get their hands dirty.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Briarshaw, drowsy and golden in summer, had become Kate’s favorite place in the world. Rehabilitation after her knee surgery meant moving about, and lots of it, first with a scooter, of all things. After a full patellectomy and ACL repair, she’d been forbidden to put the slightest weight on her knee for four full weeks. Fortunately, Briarshaw, like Wellegrave House, had a Gilded Age-era lift to trundle Kate from floor to floor. The house’s low-pile vintage carpets didn’t slow down her scooter, or the Zimmer frame that followed. Great country homes like Briarshaw, built in the eighteenth century in the Palladian style, seemed to contain a secret around every corner. Kate had spent the month of May nursing Tony, nursing herself, and soaking in the house’s endless eccentricities. But now it was mid-June. The days were hotter and dryer, she’d been issued a pair of crutches, and every day was an adventure out-of-doors.

  Briarshaw was
two parts farm and one part garden—the rustic sort, not one of those excessively manicured showplaces Kate associated with France. The trees were old, their massive roots making the lawn difficult to cut, except by non-motorized, bladed mower. The groundskeeper thought that was too much trouble, so with Tony’s blessing, he simply allowed the nannies and kids to graze there twice a week. Sometimes they got into the Queen Anne’s Lace and had to be lured away with sweetfeed. Kate enjoyed helping wrangle the goats, especially the babies. She would have let them pick the shrubberies clean, but the groundskeeper wouldn’t stand for it.

  Kate started most mornings by exploring the garden. It was slow going on crutches. The paths weren’t concrete or earth, but rather loosely-packed pebbles, which could be tricky. Twice she’d fallen and had to shout for assistance. It was no fun lying on the ground awaiting rescue, but she was beginning to accept the idea of physical limits. The NHS doctors had declined to speculate on whether or not she’d do roundhouse kicks again, but the private orthopedic specialist had given it to her straight. Her titanium knee and transplanted ligaments would allow her to walk, run for short bursts, and traverse some stairs. But it would never be as flexible as the original, nor would it be as stable.

  She spent a long time in the garden, drifting from flower to flower. Once her physical therapist allowed her to kneel, or at least stoop, she planned to start weeding. Briarshaw’s decorative areas were too large for one man to care for properly, and nowhere did it show more than the garden, where “natural” had become an excuse for weedy and overgrown. Lifelong Londoner and proud urbanite Kate had even learned, with the help of a botany manual from Briarshaw’s dusty old library, the names of the flowers she visited daily: cornflowers, dahlias, daisies, freesia, gardenias, and lisianthuses. The yellow hyacinths and purple larkspurs were in particularly fine form that day. The smell was heavenly. How had she gone so many years taking the green bits of this earth for granted?

  Sometimes lunch was big and communal, but most often it was private, in the solarium with Tony. They’d become one of those couples some people didn’t get, the sort who frequently ate together in silence. Most of the meals at Briarshaw were farm to table, simple but delicious. Even egg salad sandwiches for lunch meant this morning’s eggs, yesterday’s loaf of bread, and December’s canned pickles. Food that good was meant to be savored. Besides, Tony liked to read while he ate. Kate liked to stare out the window, watching the black and white cows on green rolling hills. Sometimes she watched her husband, too.

  He’d had three surgeries since the fight with Sir Duncan—one to repair the small bones between his nose and ocular orbit, one to remove the traumatic cataract in his left eye, and another to remove the age-related cataract in his right eye. The unexpected news that his right eye was “ripe” for cataract surgery, and that such a thing was still called a “senile” cataract by some, had seemed to bother him far more than the trauma to his left eye.

  His gaze flicked up from his ereader, catching her in the act. “Hmm?”

  “Nothing.” The ophthalmologist, a private specialist, had worked her magic, as had the oculoplastic surgeon, the NHS doctor who’d repaired the facial fractures. Two days after events on “the roof,” as they euphemistically referred to the event so as not to upset Ritchie, Tony’s ocular swelling had gone down enough for Kate to see the damage. She’d immediately assumed he’d be scheduled for a prosthetic, or at least a swashbuckler’s eyepatch.

  Temporarily blinded by the traumatic cataract, which had formed within hours of the direct blow, Tony’s left eye had drifted to the wall. At the time, just forty-eight hours after her own surgery, Kate had been angry, weepy, grateful to be alive and enraged by the unfairness of life. She’d always thought of her husband’s eyes as ice blue. To see one with a frozen white center, drifting away from its rightful place like a chunk of glacier broken off from the floe, had made her want to gather Sir Duncan’s ashes, resurrect him, and kill him all over again.

  But now Tony looked like himself again. The cataracts, traumatic and age-related, were gone, and the vision in both eyes was restored, thanks to microscopic silicone lens implants. It was one of those everyday miracles of the modern age that people took for granted. Kate was overjoyed. Though if he’d been forced to wear a black leather eye patch, she had no doubt he would’ve made it sexy, just as he made reading sexy.

  “Will you visit the lake this afternoon?” he asked, putting the ereader aside.

  “Yes. Edith will be out with the cygnets. I’ve decided to call them Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.” She’d named the white swan and her fluffy gray chicks after famous English authors.

  “How do you know some of them aren’t male?”

  “I don’t. Unless you want to play dribbly-end peerer.”

  “No, thank you. I’m sure the pen knows if they’re boys or girls, and has named them accordingly.” He smiled. “I came down there yesterday, you know. About four o’clock, to see if you wanted a late tea. You were asleep in a chaise with the most deliciously satisfied look on your face. I crept away without disturbing you. I couldn’t help but think you’d turned a corner.”

  He was right. When she’d arrived at Briarshaw for their healing sabbatical, she’d been so prone to fits of emotion, she’d wondered if knee surgery had poisoned her blood, or watered it down to the strength of a damp Kleenex. When she woke up after surgery in a comfortable ward with Henry and Maura smiling down at her, she’d cried. When Harvey brought her a Starbucks Toffee latte and a slice of lemon pound cake, she’d cried. When Lady Margaret and Lady Vivian turned up for a visit and promptly got into a row over whether or not Lady Vivian’s lollipop bouquet was at all appropriate, she’d cried, and when Lady Margaret told her to stop, she’d cried even harder. And when Paul visited with DCI Jackson in tow—a man who looked about as natural offering sympathy as a hedgehog teleported to Mars—it had taken every ounce of Kate’s strength to hold back her tears until they departed. Even her mother Louise’s phone call, never quite getting to “I love you” but going as far as “take care,” had thrust a knife through that wet Kleenex and into her soul.

  But perhaps what didn’t kill you really did make you stronger. The first time she’d come to Briarshaw, she’d been overawed by the estate, worried about saying the wrong thing to the staff and afraid Ritchie might fall in the lake. This time, with nothing else to do and the necessity of moving slowly, she’d made friends with the house, farm, and garden. It was hers now, as much as Tony’s, for as long as he lived. And Ritchie had a local carer named Tabitha who performed many indispensable tasks, including keeping him from falling in the lake.

  “I wonder how Henry’s doing?”

  “Call him.” Tony picked up his ereader again.

  She felt in her tweed coat—another vintage find in a house that hadn’t been redone since 1945—and pulled out her iPhone. Aaron Ajax and the No-Hopers were all in remand, awaiting trial. Therefore she’d traded that Met-issued secure mobile for her preferred handheld distraction.

  When Henry answered, she put the call on speaker so Tony could hear.

  “What?”

  “Did you just answer, ‘What?’ Cheeky monkey,” Kate said.

  “I knew it was you. I’m polite to strangers.”

  “Oh, well, in that case. How’s tricks?”

  “Okay. Maura’s smoking.”

  “I had one fag. Half a fag, before this nosy parker made me stub it out,” Maura called from nearby. “Six months clean and sober. Six months! And our Henry reads me the riot act for a puff of tobacco.”

  “Cancer, Maura! God!” Henry shouted.

  “Don’t shout at Maura,” Tony said without looking up from his book.

  “Sorry,” Henry muttered. “What are you doing?”

  “Finishing lunch,” Kate said. “You?”

  “Birdwatching. Up on the roof.” He paused. “You wouldn’t want to come up, would you?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Something about s
urviving a major trauma made people want to issue proclamations and swear vows. At least, that’s how it was for Kate. In the time between discharge from the hospital and her arrival at Briarshaw, she’d determined the following:

  First, none of them were returning to One Hundred and One Leadenhall. A moving company was dispatched to pack up all their possessions. They would stay in Briarshaw until Wellegrave House was ready in August. Kate initially hoped she wouldn’t be away from the Yard that long, but her absence was allowing DI Paul Bhar to shine. And when she returned as DI Kate Hetheridge, she was determined to be at one hundred percent.

  Second, she was issuing amnesty to her mother, Louise, and her sister, Maura. The past was the past. She hadn’t survived being dangled fifty-two stories above London to whinge about who burned breakfast twenty-five years ago. Bang. Amnesty.

  Third: at some point, when she was back in London, she’d visit Lady Isabel’s grave. Perhaps even lay a wreath. Kate didn’t condone Lady Isabel’s choices, but then again, Kate hadn’t come under Sir Duncan’s influence in her formative years. Perhaps the family’s explanation for their violent members, the blue blood of a king’s bastard denied his royal prerogative, was a load of wank. But Lady Isabel had told Paul the unvarnished truth, as near as Scotland Yard could reconstruct, and saved many lives in the bargain. She’d died horribly, staring into the face of her half-brother, and her love. Surely that balanced the cosmic scales a bit.

  Fourth: the little matter of rooftops. They’d be easy enough to avoid. Except Kate had already spent a magical evening with Tony on the roof of Briarshaw. It was the sort of roof made for small parties or family gatherings, adorned with three mysterious female statues and overlooking the Devon hills. So being afraid of rooftops was not an option. Only the stairs had kept Kate from visiting until now. With her crutches, and considerable care, she made it up to where Henry and Maura awaited her. The breeze felt lovely.