A Fairly Dangerous Thing

by Reginald Hill

  ‘No. Here! Use this!’

  In a fever of excitement Joe dragged his black sweater over his head and began to undo his trousers at the same time. Jim started back as though threatened by a madman.

  ‘Merge with the background!’ yelled Joe. ‘Come on!’

  It said much for the speed of Jim’s mind and more for the speed of his reactions that he was naked first.

  Leaving Chubb thrusting matches into their nylon masks, they straddled the balustrade of the gallery, hung free for a moment, and, as the Chippendale chair gave way, spilling a gaggle of constables into the gallery, they dropped on to the Conga chain below.

  The confusion was less than might have been imagined. The arrival of the police (now visible also at the downstairs doors) had not yet impinged upon the revellers, who seemed disposed to regard the descent of two new men as a kind of manna from heaven. Lord Jim especially, squat, muscular, and generously endowed, was an object of great admiration. Joe broke away from the pack, staring desperately around for an uncovered exit. There was none to be found. The police still hesitated where they stood, probably struck with the same wondering fascination he had felt on first being confronted by the scene. At least there was no sign of Jock. He’d probably keep very much in the background. Whatever his part in summoning the law, he would see no reason to advertise it.

  A hand placed itself very familiarly upon his body. Startled he spun round. Standing beside him, still naked, was the woman whose gaze he had met as he swung on the ladder outside the bathroom window. She was about forty, (young for this company) well-made, a bit dishevelled but not unattractive.

  ‘Haven’t we met?’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Perhaps we bumped into each other in the crowd,’ he answered brightly.

  They’d have to bluff it out. If they could. The police would want names, addresses. Was it an offence to have a private orgy? God alone knew. But the ‘pot’ … They’d be on to that in a flash.

  ‘I don’t think so. I usually remember,’ she said, smiling boldly. He nodded politely and turned away but she maintained her gentle grip on him. It was not unpleasant. But there was no time for pleasure.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’

  Someone was shouting. A few heads turned.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’

  It was one of the police in the gallery. The voice was oddly familiar. The revellers were slowly becoming aware of the presence of the constabulary. One or two well-bred shrieks went up.

  ‘Ladies! Gentlemen!’

  Joe looked up this time. Dressed in plain clothes, his hands cupped round his mouth, a white-haired man was doing the shouting.

  ‘Police!’ cried the woman, releasing him.

  Prince! thought Joe. Sergeant bloody Prince! There’d be no bluffing him.

  He flung his arms round the woman, who was retreating, probably in search of clothes, and pulled her down on top of him behind a chaise-longue.

  ‘My God!’ she said struggling. ‘I’ll try most things. But not in front of policemen!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Joe, trying to infuse passion into his voice. ‘It’s not illegal.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I am a police officer. Please stay where you are. We would like you all to help us in our inquiries.’ Prince let an audibly ironic note drift into his voice.

  ‘Get—off—me!’ choked the woman out of the side of her mouth as Joe went through the motions of kissing her, though without any real conviction. Suddenly she applied her former grip. For one rather frightening moment he thought she was capitulating. Then she twisted, hard.

  His long surprisingly high-pitched shriek triggered off a general uproar. Four or five women made a rush for the doors and grappled with the uniformed policemen, who gave every evidence of enjoying their duties. Prince shouted instructions from above. And another voice, not so strong, but more imperious, more attention-grasping, also began to demand quiet.

  Joe looked up from the bent-double position which seemed to give him most ease. Standing on a fine mahogany table, white hair flowing back from a noble brow, eyes flashing, arms upraised, a most prophet-like mien, was Lord Trevigore, tenth earl of that ilk.

  Like nearly all his guests, he was stark naked.

  ‘My friends!’ he said. ‘Dignity! I beg of you! Compose yourselves. You are in my house and no harm shall befall anyone who has come under my protection.’

  He now raised his face towards Prince. He was very well preserved for a man of his age.

  ‘You, whoever you are. I’ve no doubt that you believe you have some legal justification for this intrusion. Well, we’ll put this to the test. But it’s not fitting to discuss the matter here in front of my guests. Damn it, man, have you no sense of responsibility? Of common decency? There are ladies present!’

  It was a fine attempt in the circumstances. But Prince was unimpressed.

  ‘We don’t mind the ladies, my lord. If they have clothes with them, they may get dressed. But nobody leaves this room without first proving their identity to my officers.’

  ‘How do those without clothes prove their identity, may I ask?’ said Trevigore with heavy irony. He had a beautiful line in aristocratic scorn, thought Joe, admiring despite himself.

  Prince’s answer to this interesting question was unexpected. He opened his mouth and let out the most hideous, cacophonous, ear-rending scream Joe had ever heard. At least, so it seemed for the long seconds it took for his mind to come to some tenuous compromise with this massive offensive of noise.

  He felt himself seized by the shoulder and cowered away, fearing another attack from the woman. But it was Lord Jim, brushing off a gaggle of excited and frightened women.

  ‘It’s the alarm!’ Jim mouthed.

  Cess and the others! thought Joe. After so much care, someone must have blundered.

  The police at the doors were obviously uncertain what to do. There was no chance of any instructions shouted from the gallery penetrating the din. But they were still maintaining a very effective barrier.

  Things seemed worse than ever. What little chance of a bluff there might have been would disappear once the robbery was discovered. It would need a miracle to get them out of this, thought Joe bitterly. And miracles had been scarce this year.

  He turned his face accusingly to heaven. And felt the first spots of rain.

  Others felt them too. It was no illusion. The first cold drops were accelerating into a steady downpour. It was like being thrust unexpectedly under a cold shower and a general outcry arose as the chilly water jetted against the naked bodies all around.

  The explanation came as suddenly. Above on the gallery a door burst open and a small fat figure staggered out to rest up against the railings in a great puff of black smoke. But he did not look unhappy.

  Chubb had succeeded in destroying his film. But the fire he had started had triggered off the ultra-sensitive reactions of the new sprinkler system.

  ‘Fire!’ someone cried.

  ‘Fire; Fire!’ Joe and Jim echoed with a common enthusiasm. ‘Fire!’

  There was no stemming the rush for the door this time. The policemen’s hearts were no longer in it and Joe let himself be carried out into the corridor on the height of the naked tide. Jim was close behind, like all experts ready to defer to the expertise of others in different fields. The field in this case being the geography of Averingerett. Under his arm which was muscled like that of Popeye the Sailorman, he carried a bundle.

  ‘What’s that?’ yelled Joe above the hubbub of the fleeing matrons.

  ‘Clothes,’ said Jim. ‘We can’t get home like this.’

  That a normal humdrum existence still waited for him outside this madhouse, that it was yet possible he might return freely to it, these were thoughts Joe himself had long since banished from his mind. Now Lord Jim’s words seemed like a reaffirmation of basic tenets of human morality. He could have kissed him heartily, which was more or less what a purple-rinsed grandame with a nice line in half-nelsons was try
ing to do. One good turn deserves another, and he dislodged her from Jim’s back with a heavy chop to the kidneys, then steered his friend (for so he now thought of him) out of the mainstream of the carnal torrent through a familiar door.

  It led to the Book Room, which Joe resented more than any other part of the house. The sprinkler system was operating with less enthusiasm here, mere summer-shower force, though still icy cold.

  ‘Where now?’ grunted Jim.

  ‘Through that door. Across the gallery. Looks out over the gardens,’ Joe panted in reply.

  ‘Right,’ said Jim pushing open the door. Joe hesitated, looking round the crowded shelves with love and envy. He was glad to see the water jets were hardly touching the majority of books. The smell of old leather and paper brittle with age hung like sweet perfume on every side, stronger in the damp. He knew he should go, but for a second all this was his and he was loath to give it up for ever.

  ‘Bugger it!’ he said finally and with a precise remembrance which took its images from the heart not the mind, he plucked down from a high shelf the copy of Political Justice he had coveted so long.

  Like Eve and the apple in the garden, he thought ironically.

  The serpent, in duplicate, was waiting in the gallery.

  Standing between Lord Jim and the windows were two very solid policemen looking fairly unimpressed by the aggressive stance of the squat nude in front of them. Water dripped comically from the peaks of their helmets.

  ‘Evening all,’ shrilled Joe, forcing a fatuous grin on to his face. ‘Ah, there you are, Jim old son. What’s new on the Rialto?’

  Second-rate pastiche Bertie Wooster, he thought gloomily. But it would have to do.

  ‘May we have your name, sir?’ asked one of the policemen politely.

  ‘Of course. Like my telephone number as well, perhaps. Eh? Eh?’ Joe laughed inanely. ‘Trevigore’s the name. Julian of that ilk.’

  The policemen exchanged enigmatic glances.

  ‘Oh,’ said the policeman. ‘One of the family, are you, sir?’

  ‘That’s damn sharp of you, Officer,’ said Joe. ‘Damn sharp. Well, we’d best be tootling along, I dare say. Come on, Jim.’

  He turned and moved back into the Book Room, Jim close behind. For a second he thought it might work. Then a fastidious finger tapped his bare shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the talking policeman. ‘I must ask you to go with us and prove your identity to the officer in charge.’

  ‘But I’ve told you who I am!’ said Joe with as much outrage as he could manage, thinking gloomily what unlikely-looking ornaments of the peerage he and Lord Jim were.

  Talking-Policeman was adamant and Silent-Policeman looked ready to wade in with those actions which according to tradition speak louder than words.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Joe.

  He looked in silent appeal at Jim. All his bluff was going to do was carry them back to trouble. Any other answer to this situation had to come from the professional.

  The professional rose to the occasion by the simple expedient of sinking his fist in Talking-Policeman’s belly and his knee in Silent-Policeman’s groin. Their roles were instantly reversed, TP opening and closing his mouth goldfish-like, producing no sound; SP sinking to his knees muttering, ‘Holymarymotherofgodohyoubastard.’ Joe would not have believed that such menace could be reduced so swiftly to such impotence. But it was clear that, like the phoenix, they would shortly rise more terrible than before and he didn’t want to be around.

  The alarm sirens stopped as they reached the window in the gallery, though not the sprinklers. For a moment the sudden silence seemed a beautiful gift from whatever god might be overlooking their activities. Then it was broken by the desperate shrilling of a police-whistle behind. Silent-Policeman was finding a better use for his breath than mere prayer.

  Happily the window only caused a little delay, though this was enough to permit Talking-Policeman to come in with his whistle, which was a semi-tone lower, providing a not displeasing counterpoint to the other. As they fell out into the garden, doors were slamming distantly within as the police in the house tried to reach the source of the SOS whistling.

  But worse, round the corner of the house, though some considerable distance away, appeared a couple of tall-helmeted figures.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jim, breaking into a trot, his short legs covering a surprising amount of ground.

  Joe needed no encouragement. Whistles were sounding outside now and there were cries of instruction and direction floating up into the night air behind them. The ground was hard and, now they had cleared the lawn, stony beneath his bare feet. And the shrubbery they forced their way through seemed to consist entirely of stinging nettle and briar rose. His imagination shrank from imagining what it was doing to his body.

  The initiative was back with Joe now as the topographical expert and Jim followed the twists and turns of his chosen route without comment.

  We make a good team, thought Joe with surprise. Joe and Jim. Burglaries by appointment. Book early to avoid disappointment.

  He almost smiled at the thought and instantly this brief flash of merriment seemed to be externalized. Which was absurd, of course.

  ‘Christ!’ said Jim, who had suddenly become clearly viable.

  ‘Christ indeed,’ said Joe.

  Some smart copper had switched on the floodlights used to illuminate the house and gardens on certain special occasions. Son et lumière. And the extra lumière was matched by a perceptible increase in son. Pausing in the concealing shadows of the azalea grove, they looked back at the brightly-lit scene.

  There were displeasingly large numbers of policemen in sight, but the bulk of the extra noise came from Lord Trevigore’s party guests who, driven by the image of fire and the reality of water, had spilled out of the house on to the lawn. Some were struggling desperately into odd garments which they had rescued, and disputes over ownership seemed to be breaking out.

  Joe was reminded of the bundle still tucked under Jim’s arm. It seemed a good moment to see what they had got.

  ‘Let’s dress,’ he said to Jim, who nodded agreement as though he’d been invited to change for dinner.

  Division of the spoils was easy. It had not seemed the kind of party to which anyone would wear tails, but somebody had. A small thin man by their fit, thought Joe as he struggled into the trousers. Jim’s bulk made them quite impossible for him. Fortunately the small thin man in tails must have been taken by the charms of a corpulent woman in a purple-flowered trouser-suit.

  Joe laughed so much he had to sit down. There was a hysterical note in his laughter, he realized, but also a great deal of real amusement. He laughed so loud that it was some time before he realized that someone else was sharing the joke. And it wasn’t Jim.

  A figure stood among the azaleas, darkly outlined, shaking with amusement.

  ‘What’s going on?’ it finally spluttered. ‘You two … oh dear! … Old Mother Riley meets the Western Brothers!’

  ‘Maggie!’ said Joe. ‘What are you doing … how did you get out…?’

  For a second the fear flashed across his mind that he had been wrong about Jock, that it was Maggie who’d brought the police. He crossed to her protectively, fearing Jim might be ready to exact vengeance.

  But Maggie was smiling almost fondly at the other.

  ‘He untied me,’ she said. ‘Made me promise to stay in the cave. I’m sorry, though. There was so much noise, and lights, I just had to come out to see what was going on. What is going on?’

  ‘Later,’ said Joe. ‘At the moment what we’ve got to do is move out of here.’

  ‘And quick,’ said Jim, pointing down the garden. A line of policemen was moving steadily towards the azalea grove. With them was Jock Laidlaw.

  ‘They’ve seen us,’ said Joe. ‘And Jock’ll have told them that we can only get as far as the barrier round the park.’

  ‘There must be another way out,’ cried Maggie, clinging to him
. It was comforting that she identified herself so completely with the hunted, not the hunters, but not the kind of comfort that was of any practical use.

  ‘Only the main gate out of the car-park and no one’s going to get through that,’ said Joe.

  ‘The cave,’ said Jim, hitching up the flared bottoms of his silk trousers and setting off through the grove.

  ‘What’s he mean?’ asked Maggie as they followed him.

  Joe merely grunted and shook his head. His own interpretation of Jim’s words was not one he cared to share.

  It was confirmed, however, the moment they entered the cave and their eyes grew accustomed to the dimmer light Jim was down on his knees, scrabbling away at the loose rock Bertie had so carefully packed into the gap above the single great boulder blocking the passage. The loose stuff came out easily and Jim was able to reach both arms into the dark hole and take a grip on the boulder. Then, shifting his position so that he was no longer kneeling, but squatting with his feet braced against the sides of the cave, he began to heave.

  For a moment nothing happened. Every line of his body showed tremendous strain, all the greater because of the perfect stillness of the scene. In his purple trouser-suit, thought Joe, he looked like a piece of butch statuary, symbolizing something quite unimaginable.

  Then the balance was broken. There was a tearing, grating noise and the boulder began to move.

  Joe exhaled noisily, realizing for the first time he had been holding his breath.

  Behind him, Maggie spoke quietly, thoughtfully.

  ‘Am I right in guessing this cave leads through into the park?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe.

  ‘Which is full of lions?’

  ‘Not full,’ said Joe firmly. ‘A dozen. Twenty. And it’s a very big park.’

  ‘Very big. And we’ve got to cross it in the company of a dozen, or twenty lions, and get out of the other side.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe.

  Jim had got a great deal of way on the almost spherical boulder now and was retreating before it in a series of little kangaroo jumps. His purple silk had split embarrassingly across the seat.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Maggie. ‘It’s crazy! We can’t! Don’t be so bloody stupid!’