Matlock's System

by Reginald Hill

  The first check was the worst. The guard was surprised to see him, but instantly accepted the potential authority of the pass, fitting it into his check-machine and offering it to Matlock to press.

  He said a prayer and his knees went weak as he heard in reply a clear two-tone whistle.

  After that it was easy and he was only challenged twice after leaving the castle, the second time being both challenge and opening signal at the door of the television station.

  As he had hoped there were only two technicians there. Even their presence was obviously superfluous; they were sitting playing cards. They stopped as he entered, obviously surprised to be interrupted at all, let alone by him.

  The older of them looked even more surprised and went very pale when Matlock beat his companion unconscious which took two blows from his gun.

  “You can work this equipment?” he demanded.

  “Aye, sure,” said the old man placatingly.

  “Then let’s make a film,” said Matlock. “It’s quite simple. I’m going to speak for a bit. I want it put on video-tape. Now if you misbehave yourself when setting up the equipment I’ll shoot you. When I’m actually speaking, I’ll be holding my gun to the head of your friend here who’ll be lying on the floor. If you misbehave then, he gets it. Understand?”

  “Aye,” said the technician, glancing surreptitiously at the wall clock.

  “And also,” continued Matlock, “if I see any indication that you’re trying to delay matters till four-thirty, then I’ll kill you both. Now move!”

  The man didn’t speak another word, but went about his business with quiet efficiency. For all that it was nearly four o’clock when Matlock finished his short speech.

  “Now play it back,” he said. He didn’t want a critical viewing — there was no time for a retake — but he had to make sure that the man hadn’t fooled him in any way, that the speech was actually on the tape.

  It was. He nodded in satisfaction.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, one last job. You were here yesterday when they recorded my other speech, weren’t you?”

  The man nodded.

  “Well, I want that bit of tape removed from tonight’s broadcast and this put in.”

  The man didn’t move.

  Now he knows what it’s all about, thought Matlock. I hope to God he’s not the martyr type.

  “What’re we waiting for?” he demanded.

  “I can’t do it, Mr. Matlock,” the man said with a dignity made all the more impressive by his obvious terror. “It’d mean they’d know about the attack. It’d mean the death of hundreds of our boys.”

  Matlock sighed. This man’s very virtue was going to be his weakness. He should know. He was himself a bit of an expert on weakness.

  “Perhaps so,” he said. “If you don’t, though, it’ll mean the certain death of this boy here.”

  He prodded the unconscious man with his toe and pointed his gun down.

  “I’ll count three,” he said. “The first one will be in his stomach.”

  He didn’t even have to start counting. Quietly the man went to work.

  It was four-ten.

  Matlock watched him closely. Video-tape equipment on a small scale was sufficiently common in households now for him to have some idea of what the man was doing. He might even have been able to manage it himself but it would have taken him much longer. Too long.

  As it was, it was after four-twenty when the job was finished. But he still had to check. He picked up the stretch of tape which had been removed.

  “Now play this,” he said.

  It was the right piece. He pressed the accelerator switch and it whizzed across the screen at a great rate.

  It was nearly four-thirty.

  “Where are the unused tapes?” he asked. “The other three versions of this?”

  The man took him to a store cupboard and silently pointed out three cylinders. Matlock saw his name on them. Quickly he removed the tape from each and replaced the cans on the shelf.

  Distantly he heard the two-tone bell. Someone had arrived.

  “Pick him up,” he said, pointing to the unconscious youth. “Now let’s go.”

  They made their way out of the studio, down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs.

  Behind them doors were opening and shutting.

  “Angus!” cried a voice. “Are you there? Where are you man?”

  Matlock pressed his gun to the unconscious man’s throat.

  “Answer him,” he said.

  “I’m up here, Jimmy,” called the man.

  “Tell him you’ll be off home in a minute. Tell him to enjoy himself. Be natural!”

  “I’m just off, Jimmy,” the man called again. “See you later. Enjoy yourself.”

  “I will,” came the reply. “When I sign off, I will!”

  Silence fell. Matlock listened long enough to make sure no one was after them.

  “On we go,” he said.

  They stopped finally in a small office which did not look as if it received very frequent use. Matlock still did not know what to do with these men. Perhaps it was his very concern with this problem which helped him solve it. The older man, Angus, had laid his friend on a desk. As he turned he must have noticed the break in Matlock’s concentration. Or perhaps he had just reached the point of desperation. Whatever the cause, he leapt forward. He might have succeeded if he’d been faster, come in lower, used his feet. Instead he came swinging a punch at Matlock’s head like an old-fashioned pugilist.

  Matlock shot him twice before the blow could land, and fired a third time as he fell. This shot burned a hole in the side of the young man’s head.

  An accident. Matlock mouthed the words silently as though they could help. But he knew how little of an accident it was.

  There was a key on the inside of the door. He took it out and locked the room behind him as he left.

  All he had to do now was keep out of the way till the broadcast was over. It would probably have been as safe as anything for him to have remained in the transmission building, but something drove him out into the fresh air. He paused only to drop the rolls of tape he was carrying into a refuse shaft. Then he abandoned caution for a while as he strode down into the town again, feeling the fresh east wind clutching at his cheekbones. But once the buildings began to grow up around him again, he realized just how foolhardy this was and turned away from the broad thoroughfare he was approaching into darker, meaner streets that would have been a Curfew Area in England.

  Here, he thought, there will be less chance of recognition, more chance of finding somewhere to hide. But as he turned out of the narrow streets to go down an even narrower, darker passageway between two ancient buildings, he cannoned into a long, stooping figure who cursed him violently in good, broad Scots at first, then stopped, peered closely at him and said in perfect English, “Dear God. Matlock!”

  “Oh, no,” said Matlock. “Not you too.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said the man as he thumbed his force-gun to stun and applied it to Matlock’s head. “Sorry, Matt. But you’re going to have to come back and answer for yourself.”

  Matlock made a hopeless gesture towards his own gun, the force-gun popped gently and he fell forward into darkness and the arms of his one-time friend and agent, Colin Peters.

  12

  The first thing he saw as he clawed his way up out of darkness was the wall clock. It read nine-forty-five.

  So it was over. Nearly three hours over. The broadcast would have been stopped of course. They must have checked. The invasion would have proceeded without it. Or perhaps they’d made copies of the tapes he’d destroyed. Perhaps they had just gone ahead according to plan. If they had, they might still want to use him. They might keep him alive a bit longer.

  The thought came as no comfort to him.

  He would have to face Lizzie again, he supposed. At least they would be rid of pretence. That was one thing he had done with, pretence. He had had enough of it forever.
From himself. And from others. From professionals like Browning and the Abbot, you expected it. But Lizzie. And now, Colin. Colin! It just didn’t make sense. Browning’s police had captured him. He had seen them capture him, long ago, on that rooftop as he rose up in Francis’ helicopter.

  The door opened and Colin came in.

  “Feeling better?” he asked brightly.

  “Better than what?” asked Matlock.

  “Ah, you are feeling better. Smoke?”

  “No thanks,” said Matlock, swinging his legs out of bed. He saw for the first time his clothes had been changed again. He was now wearing a kind of loose fitting house-suit.

  Everyone’s at it, he thought. Stripping my clothes off as soon as I close my eyes.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Matt,” said Colin.

  “Yes. You showed it.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know.”

  “Know what. And where am I?”

  The room was strange and at the same time faintly familiar. He shook his head in an effort to clear away either the strangeness or the familiarity, but both remained.

  Colin looked at him and laughed.

  “Where are you? What a question. Here!” he said and reached up to the window and pulled up the Venetian blind.

  For a moment Matlock thought he had fainted again. There stretched out before him was an unforgettable, unforgotten panorama.

  It was the skyline of London. And from a familiar viewpoint.

  He realized now where he was. He was in a room of the Prime Minister’s apartments in the House of Commons.

  But something else struck him as well. The light outside. It wasn’t the light of late evening. It was the light of morning.

  It was now nine-fifty-five in the morning.

  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. There wasn’t time to do anything. The Scottish machine was not the same as the English. It would have to be an operation. And why should they want to do anything in any case?

  And why should he want anything done either? He was weary of it all. Now was the time to go.

  But perhaps a few answers first.

  “So you were with Browning all the time?” he said.

  “With Security,” corrected Colin.

  “And you weren’t captured on the rooftop? You were in pursuit?”

  “I’m afraid so, Matt. I’m sorry, but I was just doing my job. You became quite a problem, you know. Browning was very concerned about you for a long time. You should have accepted his offer. He did everything in his power to persuade you. Why. I even had to blow a hole in your window with a force-gun to give you a scare!”

  “That was you?”

  “Yes. But without harmful intent. I thought you’d be still in the lounge. Browning really wanted you, you know. It wasn’t till I reported on your traffickings with the Abbot that he decided on the crash-budget and the security blitz. It was really all your fault in a way.”

  “It’s all been my fault, it seems,” said Matlock bitterly. “Tell me, how did we get here?”

  “Well, I’d just been planted in Edinburgh — I’d only been in the place about twelve hours when we met! — to find out what was going on. There’d been a bit of a purge, it seems, and lots of our men had been picked up. We thought you’d be there. We believed you’d be helping them, but we had to find out more. You can imagine how I felt when I bumped into you like that, wandering around unattended in that part of town! Anyway, I got in touch with my contact on the Wall right away, put you in the back of my car and drove out, up into the hills where a ’copter picked us up. I didn’t know about the broadcast till we got back here. I’m sorry, if I’d have known, there wouldn’t have been any need to knock you out. It would have made things easier for both of us. But I thought you’d really gone over!”

  “Broadcast!” snapped Matlock. “You mean it went off all right? What’s happened?”

  “Let me tell you that, Mr. Matlock,” said a voice from the door. Matlock turned and stared at the tall, grey-haired figure who stood there, recognizing the thin face, long nose and archaic steel-framed spectacles.

  “Sedgwick,” he said, recognizing the leading Minister of Browning’s cabinet, the man who had taken over his old office when he resigned all those years before. He too had been young then.

  “We haven’t met for a long time, have we?” said Sedgwick.

  “You were saying about the Scots ...”

  “Ah yes. Well, the broadcast came on at six-thirty. I do not know how you got that piece of film in, but I take it that it was not part of the original programme. Boswell spoke briefly, saying that a Scots force was being sent at your request to assist the uprising against the Browning government. Then you came on. If you had spoken in support, I dread to think what kind of civil war might have resulted. As it was you picked your words quite magnificently. You were only on thirty seconds before they cut you, but it was more than enough.”

  “And the invasion?”

  Sedgwick looked serious.

  “I’m afraid that we are in a state of war with Scotland. They managed to breach the Wall in several places and despite the slight warning we had and fierce resistance, they have managed to occupy most of the Carlisle multicity but we are holding them at a line along the fells north of Kendal. Where they would have been if your broadcast had supported the attack it is impossible to say. We are most grateful.”

  Matlock began to laugh. He lay back on the bed and let the great peals of mirth come forth unhindered.

  “So this is it!” he gasped between outbursts. “So the net result of all my efforts has been to save Browning! I bet he’s grateful. I bet he laughed all the way to the House this morning.”

  Exhausted, he lay still regaining his breath.

  “No, Mr. Matlock,” said Sedgwick sternly. “You are wrong. The crisis facing the country as a result of the Scottish invasion has had far reaching effects. A vast number of members of this House in view of Mr. Browning’s recent performance could not feel any great confidence in his ability to cope with this situation. He had assured the country only two days ago that he had had long talks with the Scottish Ambassador and that the situation was well in hand. There was no chance of war, he told us. And in any case, such was the state of our Northern defence line, that the Scots would be quite incapable of breaching it. He has been proved miserably wrong on every count. This morning, acting on the advice of his Cabinet, Mr. Browning has recommended to his Majesty that you, sir, be invited to form a new government. We have transport waiting outside to take you to the Palace. I am here, sir, to say that if you accept, you will have behind you the unanimous support of the Uniradical Party and, I believe, of all the minority parties in the House.”

  “But ...” said Matlock. “But ...”

  He stared wildly round, his eyes finally coming to rest on the clock.

  It was ten-fifteen.

  Sedgwick followed his gaze and smiled coldly.

  “You were examined on your arrival, sir,” he said, “and when it was realized you had a heart clock which would not respond to our own Adjusters, you were sent for Op. The clock has been removed.”

  Matlock’s hand automatically went to his heart.

  “No. Nothing has replaced it. We have an X-ray machine available if you wish to check.”

  “Yes,” said Matlock gently, his mind beginning to surface from the whirlpool into which it had been sucked. “Yes. I will check. But later. Later. I must not keep his Majesty waiting. Are there clothes? I cannot go dressed like this.”

  “Through here, Prime Minister,” said Sedgwick, leading the way into a neighbouring room.

  Matlock paused in the doorway.

  “Colin,” he said. “What happened to Ernst? Was he one of . . . ?”

  He left the question unfinished.

  “Oh no,” said Colin. “The bloody fool. He was killed resisting arrest.”

  “I see,” said Matlock half to himself. “The fool. He was the fool. The other f
ool.”

  He went to change his clothes.

  As he drove back to Westminster some time later he was only dimly aware of the cheering crowds lining the streets. Already the need for decision was pressing hard upon him. There were the immediate decisions to be made about the conduct of the war. Should he use planes to smash the enemy armies occupying the Carlisle multicity? Should low-fall-out nuclear weapons be employed against the Scottish towns? And then there was the composition of his Cabinet. Dare he omit such old enemies as Sedgwick whose support he realized was linked more with personal survival than altruistic patriotism? And then in the long run there were the questions of his policy for the future. What support could he expect for economic and age reforms once the war was over?

  And the question kept on bobbing up to the surface of his mind like a playful dolphin — would he be able to afford such reforms after the expense of such a war?

  And how much would it matter to him if he couldn’t?

  He walked quickly into the House not responding to anyone.

  Where was Lizzie? Would they ever meet again? And poor Ernst? The fool. The poor loyal fool.

  “The House is assembled, Prime Minister. The Members are waiting to hear you.”

  It was Sedgwick. Courteous, deferential. Could he be trusted? Or rather, how far should he be distrusted?

  “Give me one minute please,” he said, turning into the Premier’s great office. As he did so, he recalled the last time he had been here, listening to Browning’s offer. The miniature was back on the wall he noticed.

  And tidying up the desk with care and affection was an old, bent, familiar figure.

  “Hello, Mr. Matlock, Prime Minister, sir,” said Jody with a welcoming smile. “It’s very good to see you back again.”

  Matlock looked around carefully, thoughtfully. And a whole minute elapsed before he said in a low voice, as though speaking to himself:

  “Yes Jody. It’s good to be back.”

  About the Author

  Reginald Charles Hill FRSL was an English crime writer and the winner of the 1995 Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.