Matlock's System

by Reginald Hill

  “In general terms. I was suspicious.”

  “And that’s what you’re doing now? Having a prowl around to see what you can pick up? I bet you were headed for the Abbot’s rooms?”

  He seemed to relapse into thought for a while, then he leapt to his feet.

  “That’s not such a bad idea still, Matt. There are one or two bits of the jigsaw I’ve lost sight of lately. I’ll join the expedition if I may. In fact, as I know the layout of this place better than you, I’ll lead it. It won’t be the first time will it, Matt? Me leading, you in charge?”

  There was nothing bitter in his voice but Matlock felt constrained to say something. He caught the old man by his arm as he brushed lightly past.

  “Carsie,” he said. “I was sorry about Edna. Truly sorry.”

  “Memories are debris, Matt. I told you that. You’d better be ready to ditch them if you’re joining the club. It’s the only rule.”

  They set off together, the old man slightly ahead and seeming to find no need for stealth. They turned left out of the Chapter House, then left again down a passage which led into a smaller covered court, and then into another corridor, the Cloister Passage which Matlock knew led to the Infirmary with a branch off to the Chapel of Nine Altars and the body of the Church. He also knew from what Phillip had said and what he had seen in the Abbey plans in the history book that the Abbot’s rooms were above the court they had just left and that his own private corridor to the Church ran parallel to and above the Cloister passage. But how to get into the rooms other than by entering the Church (impossible while the service was on) and working back he did not know.

  They now reached the right-angled offshoot to the main passage and without hesitation, Carswell turned up it. As they progressed along it, the sounds of the service in progress ahead grew louder and louder. Matlock became afraid that the old man intended to march full into the sanctuary and announce his presence. He reached forward a restraining hand.

  “Not to worry. Matt,” said Carswell reassuringly. “Nearly there.”

  “Nearly where?” hissed Matlock.

  For answer the old man stopped and began feeling the wall.

  Momentarily there was utter silence in the Church and Matlock was too intimidated by it even to whisper.

  “Uh-huh,” said Carswell. “There we are.”

  A section of the wall, to the eye solid stone, slid back smoothly and Carswell stepped into the space revealed, pulling Matlock after him.

  The stone slid behind.

  The floor rose beneath their feet so unexpectedly that Matlock’s knees buckled slightly and he stumbled against his companion who gripped his elbow.

  “Careful now. You’ve got to watch things at your age,” said Carswell with open irony. “It’s just a lift. Likes his creature comforts, does our dear Abbot. Here we are.”

  The door slid open and they stepped out into another corridor. It might have been another world. There was no ancient stone here, dimly lit by smoky flambeaux but a smooth metal wall, with a plastic coated floor, all lit by concealed fluorescent lights.

  The old man moved from one foot to another, almost dancing in his glee at the revelation.

  “Like it? Nice eh? You’ve got to be special to get up here, you see. Not one of the religious boys.”

  Matlock kept his face impassive as he looked around.

  “Yes. Very nice, Brother Adeste. You mean there really are genuinely religious monks here?”

  “Oh yes. But of course. We all are, really. But some of us have rather more esoteric Gods. But the most are your gen-u-ine Bible-punchers. Come and see.”

  Matlock followed the old man to the nearest end of the corridor. Carswell reached up to the wall and slid aside a small section revealing a peep-hole.

  “Look.”

  Matlock peered through. He found he was looking down into the Abbey at right angles to the High Altar, at which stood the Abbot, his head bent in prayer. Then he was shoved aside and Carswell peeped down.

  “Come on,” he said. “They’re skipping through it tonight. We haven’t got long.”

  As they moved back, Matlock noticed a door in the wall to his right.

  “What’s behind that?” he asked.

  “That leads into the clerestory gallery. You can get right round it into the tower. But not tonight. It’s full of people who’d ask questions. This way, if you don’t mind.”

  They pressed on back down the corridor, turning once through a right angle which confirmed Matlock’s estimate that they were following the exact line of the passage below.

  “Here we are then,” said Carswell, coming to a halt before another door. “In we go.”

  Matlock expected another great performance with concealed locks and catches, but Carswell merely thrust the palm of his hand forward and the door swung open. They passed through.

  Once again there was a change of period, not so violent as the transformation from medieval to modem, but merely the gentle step back of about a hundred years. Or more or less, depending on how you dated it. It was a style which men of wealth and culture had affected for their private studies for many many decades and Matlock didn’t know whether its origin was Edwardian, Victorian, Regency or whether indeed it was any kind of historical style at all. Oak panelling, solid comfortable furniture, silver candelabra, a wall full of leather-bound books, a huge fireplace with what looked like a potentially serviceable arrangement of logs in the hearth, old prints on the wall and what looked like an ancestral portrait over the mantel-shelf. The figure depicted there wore eighteenth-century dress. His face was familiar, but the dress confused Matlock sufficiently to delay his recognition by a few seconds.

  It was the Abbot, or someone closely related to him.

  “Oh it’s him all right,” said Carswell at his elbow. “He’s got one of himself in an Elizabethan ruffle, but we all laughed so much when he brought that one out that he’s hidden it away.”

  Matlock shrugged the picture’s fascination off him and turned to the rest of the room. There was an elegant writing bureau in the far comer and he moved purposefully over to it, ready to use violence. But it was unlocked and for the next couple of minutes he rifled quickly through all the papers it contained while Carswell stood and watched him. There was nothing there but the kind of paper one would expect to come across in the administrative centre of a place like the Abbey. Bills, accounts, work rosters, what looked like sermon notes.

  Frustrated, he dumped the lot back where he’d found them and began casting round the rest of the room.

  “What are you looking for, Matt?” asked Carswell politely.

  Matlock stopped and faced the old man. “I’m not sure, Carsie. But now I come to think of it, you showed me up here, so there must be something you hoped I’d find. You tell me what that is, and perhaps I’ll be able to tell you what I’m looking for. In fact, I think we should have a long talk now. You might be able to tell me so much that I needn’t look for anything at all.”

  The old man shrugged.

  “What do you want to know, Matt? But wait a minute. Let’s know where we are, eh? Or rather where he is.”

  He reached into a recess beside the bookcase. A television monitor slid silently forward. He flicked a switch. The screen glowed, then the High Altar appeared on it with the Abbot in clear view.

  “That’s nice. Now Matt.”

  He stood there with a kind of naive expectancy on his face. His cowl was down again and Matlock found it strangely hard to look into those still bright blue eyes.

  This was a man he had once respected as much as anyone in the world.

  But to the world it had seemed that he had used him then betrayed him.

  Finally, controlling his voice with his will, he said, “How many of you are there here? Over the top, I mean.”

  “One hundred and sixty-three over. Twenty-two waiting.”

  “Who are these men?”

  Carswell grinned.

  “Oh, all sorts and conditions. Lot
s of old friends. Thurlow, my Chancellor — you’ll remember him; Jenkins; Whitmarsh from the Treasury; Field Marshall Curwen — he’s a great help — Sir Augustus Terce, the old King’s physician; Herb Slattery of Force Physics Inc.; oh you could write a Who’s Who from our ranks, or rather a Who Was Who, eh?”

  “Tell me about this place, Carsie.”

  The old man settled into one of the voluminous armchairs drawn up by the hearth, lighting a cigar from a box on one of the many stone ledges of the fireplace. As an after-thought he pressed a switch near the floor and instantly the logs burst into flame.

  “You fool,” said Matlock. “He’ll know.”

  Carswell smiled and moved the switch again. The flames died. The logs were unchanged.

  “It’s like hell. All-consuming flames which never consume. Here we go again.”

  The flames licked their way up the chimney once more.

  Seating himself opposite the old man, Matlock found that the scene — the dark panelled room, the great fire, the whitehaired benevolent looking old monk, his features now sharp now shadowed in the shifting light of the fire — was having a strangely soporific effect upon him. It was like moving into the archaic world of a picture on a Christmas card. He had to wrest his mind round to full attention to the old man’s words. He had dropped the flip, casual style of speech he had effected since their meeting, and reverted to the old lectorial style Matlock remembered very clearly.

  “The main difficulty of beating the Age Laws has always been one of organization. Any fool with enough money can go for Op, skip the country and lead whatever precarious semi-legal life his wealth can buy him in whatever other country will let him in. Switzerland’s the only real answer in Europe and they’re so full of Age-Law refugees of all nationalities that they work an unofficial quota system — and only the very very rich even get on the waiting list.

  “Scotland’s the only other European country without Age Laws and at best all an Englishman can expect there is confiscation of his assets and a labour camp. Utopian rumours of certain South American states reach us from time to time. But what trust can you put in rumour? and we’re all so isolated now.

  “And in any case, escapes of this nature immediately lay all one’s family open to the rigours of the Age-Law Evasion Act. Of course, that bothers some people less than others. I must confess that were the penalties applicable to relations by marriage, I might have made my evasion public just for the satisfaction of doing you down.”

  The old man rocked forward and back, letting an occasional whimper of his amusement escape. Matlock cursed him for being so long winded and glanced at the monitor but the Abbot still seemed to be fully occupied.

  “Hurry it up,” he said.

  Carswell gave him a reproachful look and sucked at his cigar.

  “As I say, what was needed was a comfortable life with no comeback on the nearest and dearest. Indeed, an opportunity for them to join you when their time was up. Like the ‘In Memoriam’ poems.

  ‘He waits for us behind the door, Not dead, but merely gone before.’

  “So one or two old friends got together and had one or two chats. And gradually the idea evolved of this place. Not an evasion of the law, but an extension of it. The kind of extension which you as a pragmatic politician, Matt, must have regarded as logical, but unfortunately like many ideas reasonable in themselves it was quite impossible democratically. The public accepted, albeit reluctantly, the notion of limited exemption for active members of the Government. But further than that they would not go, though I need hardly list for you the arguments for not terminating the existence of certain peculiarly important men in the key walks of life. So our organization had to be clandestine. You take my point?”

  “Oh yes,” said Matlock. “I take it. Was this started before or after I left the Party?”

  “Oh before. Just before. We thought of approaching you, but it didn’t seem worth taking the risk at the time. You were so sincere. And so young. It seemed best to let a bit of age and experience fix your ideas rather more firmly. And you see, we were right.”

  Matlock felt something like admiration as he looked at that smiling old face.

  You cunning bastard! he thought. And I believed I was using you too much. And the whole world thought you were my puppet on my string! Dear God! Is there a time in my life when someone somewhere hasn’t been using me?

  “So you formed the Meek?” he asked.

  “Oh no. Certainly not. The Meek formed themselves. We just joined them. Never create your own cover if someone else will create it for you. One of the first principles of Security.

  “But then, you never really had much to do with Security during your term of office, did you Matt? That’s the P.M.’s prerogative. Even if he is just a figurehead.

  “But to continue. The Meek existed, a vague religious group whose reaction to the Age Laws was the kind of pure unreasoning emotionalism which men dignify by words such as spiritual or mystic. They would have died away in a twelvemonth if we hadn’t injected them with a bit of firm positive purpose. I mean, of course, our dear Abbot.”

  They both turned and looked at the figure on the screen for a moment. He was now facing the congregation, his arms outstretched, a look of exultation on his face. Matlock felt vaguely uneasy. Carswell shook his head.

  “Sometimes I feel that he really did join them. Then he does something so amorally Machiavellian that all doubts end. At least all those doubts. We poured a bit of money in. There was no shortage. And this place came into being. So there you have it. A retreat where the best and most important minds of our age may be preserved instead of prematurely destroyed. What can be wrong with that?”

  Matlock did not speak for a while. He sat with half-hooded eyes considering the defensive note on which the old man had ended. The broad outline of the scheme he grasped easily and this was enough, he felt, for his purposes. But the details still niggled away in his mind.

  “What actually happens when your E.O.L. is up?” he asked finally.

  The old man waved his hands airily.

  “Oh, death is reported, all the necessary records completed. You know the drill. You helped to work it out, after all.”

  Smiling, he began to rise. But Matlock reached forward and pressed him back into his chair.

  “Yes. I helped work it out. And we made it foolproof. Or as near as possible. Carsie, there’s got to be a body. The Public Registrar or his representative has got to see it before the funeral. Carsie, you had a state burial. I saw it on the tele. Who was buried, old man? Who was buried?”

  With surprising agility, Carswell leapt up and made for the door, but Matlock had him in a couple of strides. Slowly he bent the old man’s head back till his eyes began to stand out like balls of marble and an inhuman rattling came from his throat.

  “Let’s have it, Carsie. The truth. Or else I’ll do the job your heart clock should have done years ago.”

  He slackened the pressure on the old man’s neck, but didn’t let go. Carswell coughed and spluttered for several minutes, his face changing from streaky purple to a mottled grey.

  “Now talk.”

  “All right. You always were a physical man, Matlock. Not enough mind. All right. Not again. I haven’t survived this long to let myself be strangled by a failure. So there has to be a body. So we help ourselves to a body — one of the faithful, the true believers. So far as the rest are concerned he’s just joined the Hooded Chapter, to fill the vacancy which will be caused by the imminent death of one of these specially devout brethren. Does that make you happy now you know? Are you glad you asked?”

  Stunned, Matlock slackened his grip and the old man pulled free and stood almost spitting at him, his head pushed forward, his long bony neck bruised by Matlock’s fingers, his eyes full of venom.

  “That’s the way it goes Matt. You started it. You should have learned by now that all democracy does is to ensure the survival of the very fittest.”

  “Fit for what?” said
Matlock dully. “I had come to think that I’d caused many evils. But this is the worst of them all.”

  Still coughing, the old man turned to go. Matlock made no move to stop him. But as he reached the door, he spoke.

  “Carswell.”

  “Yes.”

  “One last thing. There must be more. You might be able to fool local Registrars and Enforcement Officers by substituting bodies. But everything goes back to the Ministry. Identi-Cards. Thumb-prints. Cardio-X-rays. It’s foolproof. You can fool the rest. You can’t fool the Minister.”

  He didn’t recognize at first the cracked sound which came almost visibly from the old man’s throat. It was laughter.

  “Don’t you know? Why, Matt, you’re even more naive than you used to be? But you must know! They’re all on the waiting-list. All the top people come here. It’s one of the perks of public service. Didn’t Browning tell you?”

  “Browning?” said Matlock, feeling himself gawping, but unable to do anything about it. “Browning is in on this?”

  “How could we survive otherwise?”

  The old man laughed again, then the cracked notes died away.

  “If you don’t know about Browning, then why are you here, Matt? You don’t know, do you? Then bringing you here’s even more dangerous than I thought.”

  He glanced anxiously at the monitor screen. The Abbot was still addressing the congregation. Reassured, he turned again to the door.

  “I must bid you good-night, Matt. I’ve got to talk to one or two people. Things are worse than I thought. I wouldn’t hang around here too long if I were you.”

  He opened the door and stopped in his tracks for a moment, then took two or three uncertain steps backwards.

  “Good-evening, Brother Adeste. Those were wise words. Probably your wisest tonight. Good-evening, Mr. Matlock.”

  Into the room stepped the Abbot.

  Matlock glanced from him to the monitor.

  “I thought his gestures were a little too flamboyant,” he said as coolly as possible.