by Neil Rowland
The next thing he knew:
“Are you all right, my dear chap,” he heard. “Do you require any medical attention? Should I telephone for an ambulance?”
A quite elderly gentleman, in Bermuda shorts and a flowery shirt, came into his vision. The chap was still brandishing a croquet mallet. This was the instrument which had been brought down on the thug’s skull. Further up the lawn was a young lady, in lime green spandex shorts, who was also holding a croquet mallet. She was gazing down at them with anxious curiosity, as if her father had pulled off an unconventional shot, which involved a criminal’s cranium.
“No, I should be good,” Pitt assured him.
“Why don’t you have a nip of gin? To make you feel better?” he volunteered.
“You haven’t killed him, I hope?” Clive asked ironically. He examined the lumpy suit spread over the grass, as if training to be a door mat.
“He’ll pull through.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Pitt said, looking the guy over.
“We were having our little game... when we noticed you running across the garden...and this brute of a chap bounding after you... what did he want you for, huh?”
“A loan shark,” Clive declared. “Yes, that’s what he is. I already made a full payment, but it wasn’t enough. No, they intended to make me pay up. There are two other guys around this area. So best be careful, mate.”
“We’ll notify the police before he comes around.”
“That’s up to you,” Pitt informed them, recomposing himself.
“You advise not to involve them?”
“Let him dream about his motherland,” Pitt replied.
As an accused rapist he was in no hurry to be interviewed by the police force. There was a heap of circumstantial evidence ready to be accessed.
“If that’s what you advise. Don’t want to be nosey!” the chap said, jauntily.
“Be careful to lock your windows this evening...as a precaution.”
“Rather over-dressed for a day like today,” observed the gentleman.
“Yes they can be bloody formal. Although I definitely tried to loosen his collar,” he said bitterly.
“Shark is the right name for these chaps,” the gentleman judged. “They’re all in bed with the tax man, you know.”
“There’s something to be said for the tax man,” Clive replied. “Can I leave by the side gate?”
He began to stagger up the slope of their extensive garden, trying to shake off thick mental cobwebs after that involuntary cat nap.
“What happens if this brute begins to revive?” asked the young woman, as he went by on wobbly legs.
“Take another free shot,” Clive suggested.
He escaped back into a gravelly private road outside. He gave an exhausted laugh at his luck, while trying to navigate back to his parking spot.
To find her Carrera Pitt had to fathom a maze of streets, wary of the other two suits in circulation and tracking him like drones. In the brightness he buckled at the knees, mentally faltered, as if he required a power source. He finally got back to the car - at least it stood out - trying to beat down his rampaging heart. Pitt let himself back in, relieved that it hadn’t been vandalised. He composed himself and began to re-familiarise the dials. After all, like many aspects of his life, it didn’t belong to him.
While doing this he took note of a black Humber down the road, like a massive safe box, parked ominously half over the pavement. This was their style in edgy capital cities the world over, as if the rules didn’t apply to them because they were special. They would park where they pleased, even to get a quick bite to eat. Such a casual style was a calling card to the masses and a reminder of their contempt for any official rule or retribution. Anyway paying a parking fine around their London playground was a mere nuisance.
As he hit the ignition and pulled away smoothly, Pitt had an opportunity to get ahead of them, assuming they hadn’t already guessed his next move. Clive had done well but he still felt traces of sticky fibres against his skin.
He continued through these north London suburbs until forking off to the motorway. After a ninety degree circulation he emerged at the southern end, venturing towards Winchurch’s country retreat.
He was keeping ahead of his enemies. But for how long?
29
Going by Pixie’s descriptions the house was near a Buckinghamshire village called Featherington. She explained that Sep’s country estate had been purchased by an ancestor during Jane Austen’s day. This banker raised bonds for Spencer Perceval to finance war against Bonaparte in Spain.
As a leading financier of his day, and a Treasury advisor, Joseph Arthur Winchurch purchased a rundown Jacobean farmhouse, as well as the land attached and several large houses besides, using his handsome profits after the Peninsula War had been won. A new hunting lodge had been built over the original foundations. During the following century Joe Winchurch, and his sons and grandsons in turn, expanded and improved the property further. It became an impressive family home, right until the twenty first century, as Lady and Sir Septimus Winchurch, with their only child Esmeralda, continued to reside there, at least at weekends and during school holidays.
Clive undertook a lengthy drive into the green belt. Or so it felt to him, as the effects of extreme exertion set in, putting him into shock; something like physical shut down, following that brawl on the grass; with cortisol spreading numbness around his body. Psychologically he was feeling isolated and under severe pressure. Where was the escape key in his mind? Mentally he was groping in the dark with his face shoved into a concrete wall. Was there a concealed catch or number pad? Would the combination ever come back? Or was he just a rogue banker waiting to be deleted from the system?
In Clive’s job he was used to a crowded agenda, a packed diary, bustling with people, activity and communication, meetings scheduled and unscheduled; leaps around town on a hunch, last ditch video conferences with clients around the world. Not only had his enemies locked him into the dark, he had lost connectivity or even simple human connection. This was unnerving, isolating. What’s more at this stage he couldn’t allow himself to fully trust Pixie. If he was being honest he couldn’t entirely trust himself either.
They were both; Pixie and he; trained as double dealers on the markets. For all its excitement and rewards his job was a game of bluff and trumps. Arguably it was trained into their genes to trick competitors, to best their rivals in other firms, to dissemble and distract; despite team cooperation. That was exactly the point; did she regard him as the team leader any longer? She’d been schooled from infancy to conceal her true intentions, to guard her best interests, not just vulnerable feelings. She was a player in the City too, a leading risk management/ quantitative analyst. Therefore she’d be keeping her true opinion - her final verdict - tightly to her chest.
Pitt was cut off from his wife, family and friends as well. He was receiving contradictory, negative information about his own personality. This was the strategy of his enemies at the company and at the hedge fund. They were leading him to assassinate his own character, to lose faith with himself. How much longer could he endure the assault? The vicious internal assault on his identity? His thoughts drifted back to that lost period, as if he might fall asleep at the wheel. The experience was like speeding along a dangerous auto-route at night, with an unmarked surface and blankness on all sides; his obsessed concentration an unbroken beam of headlight.
Clive scrunched over the wheel, eyes burning as he was without shades. He was trying to recognise features of the passing landscape. He must have taken this route on the day of the fateful garden party. Presumably he must have driven himself to the area. He mourned the disappearance of his own lost car. Or had he hired or stolen a different car, or had someone given him a lift? Not Pixie. The bulk of his memories had been liquidated,
yet he was forced to live with the consequences.
A view of the scorched countryside didn’t revive his mind. Only the memory of a trip to the south coast with his wife and son - a few years back. There was no problem at retrieving those memories, beyond the missing year. Doreen had an aunt in Dover, and they’d come down from London, went to stay with this spinster aunt over the summer, rather like David Copperfield. Yes indeed, he had now taken to fighting butcher boys, like David Copperfield on his journey. He’d no doubt that the mafia butcher boys would have climbed back into their Humber. At least there was some advantage in taking Pixie’s car.
The hilly fields and meadows looked familiar, vaguely, as he considered (trying to get a spark of memory) although tinder dry and straw brown. Only wild flowers were winners this summer; pointillist explosions against the baked fields. They were casting their seeds, their ancient genetic codes - memory chips of infinite space. Simplicity and complexity combined, if only humans could design something like that.
Why hadn’t they killed him back there? They had a clear sight to eliminate him, without fuss. Taken him out. Of course they required his memory. That was it, he told himself, because he’d put his memory somewhere for safe keeping. The problem was that the hiding place was too safe, of course. Yes it was just like losing your damn car keys somewhere around the house. When he used to own a house that was. His enemies must still believe that he, Pitt, knew where he’d put his evidence. Was it transferred to a mass storage device?
Pitt got this vital point, while he was speeding down the motorway. Powerful players urgently required his memory back.
That was the end game for the deal. Those ZNT guys and Sep needed his dossier intact, which didn’t stop them from screwing with his head; or treating his body like a paper bin in their way. He wasn’t sure that anyone knew or if the data survived. They were concerned that his evidence was accessible in some form, if it fell under the wrong eyes, perhaps to the authorities. This was despite the fact that Pitt couldn’t remember exactly how he had gathered the information. How effective were the regulatory bodies, even if he was able to hand over the evidence? What other option was there, if he could save himself ?
His enemies would try to extract the information by force. After that they would dispose of him. Sep and friends were confident that they had destroyed him, professionally and personally. Somebody in ZNT was counter-plotting against Sep. But the snag was that all the evidence was replicated. Clive’s case had vanished from his mind, but it was stored safely elsewhere; his dossier was in a virtual hiding place, waiting for the right moment to destroy both Sep and ZNT, like a killer drone ready for an order to take off. Great, he was thinking, but who will give the order for the attack?
They knew his dossier contained incriminating data, copies of documents and letters, electronic trails and other evidence of fraud and theft. Their ruthless pursuit proved to Clive that they were afraid of this scenario. Clive too had to hunt down and locate his lost dossier. How was that going to be achievable? His brain had been sent back to a pre-technological condition.
There was just one accessible road into Featherington village.
Pitt had grown so hungry and thirsty that he decided to call into a local pub. He swung her pink Porsche into the rear car park. From there he gingerly locked up and walked stiffly around the side of the building, looking around warily, into the porch and then into the lounge bar.
His exertions in Hampstead had shaken him to the core. Pitt decided to take a risk to get a pub meal and a pint at last, before his adventures continued. He struggled to keep on top of his shaking and trembling. He decided to call into the Gents’ to repair his appearance somewhat. There was only so much he could do. When he came out and approached the bar, staff and patrons made concerned enquiries about his well-being.
“Are you a’right, sir? Anything bad happen to you?” said the male publican.
This guy surely knew Septimus, in name and person; but Clive wasn’t going to mention him. He already guessed that his own torn appearance would stick in their minds. But he was grateful for their concern, their lack of suspicion. Pitt took a shadowy table at the back, trying to avoid curiosity in a friendly way. Although when a lady - the female publican - discussed her problems with putting young children to bed, he added his pennyworth, as a father, sardonic and knowing. Then he tucked into his locally produced gammon steak and a pint of Red Kite bitter; almost ferociously. Part of him wanted to stay in that bar all day and get properly juiced. Unfortunately, however big the temptation, that was a fool’s paradise.
Later, returning outside, replete, the world seemed back in focus. But he knew there was still a job to be done. From here he had no need to ask directions to Winchurch’s estate. As he stood in the pub’s front garden, admiring the quaint houses and lanes nearby, he could see the upper gables of the financier’s substantial house. The property was perched on a hill, maybe an artificial landmark, albeit half concealed behind cypress trees and Lebanese pine trees. The tended gardens stood out on one side of the acclivity, for miles around, like a painted oasis. Still, even as Clive gazed towards the almost fantasy residence, no fragment of his original visit came back into his thoughts.
A short drive into the village revealed an oak sign reading “Close Copse House - Traders’ Gate: 10am - 4.30pm. Announce Yourself”. This afternoon Septimus or his family was unlikely to be at home. The financier would be at work as usual, and the family would be residing at their London house. But the banker would keep some staff at his country estate to keep an eye on things.
Pitt understood that Emmy and her friends would hang-out during holidays. As well they might, when they could enjoy a swimming pool, tennis courts, a gym and other facilities. Clive was careful in leaving Pixie’s chichi 4S parked up a quiet lane for safekeeping. As he looked back it resembled a rocket powered lipstick. He didn’t want to lose her car into the bargain. It was better to explore by foot - while keeping her wheels and his return journey in the bag.
As he began to prowl around, Pitt knew that estate stewards would not hail his arrival like an unexpected royal visitor. He hoped to get some ideas and clues, to restore familiarity. If he could achieve those reboots he could join again with Pixie. Together they could go on a fact-finding visit to the financier’s hospital.
Pitt discovered a set of neglected iron side gates. These had been kept locked and tethered with wire for ages, apparently, but he had no problems getting over the spikes. This gave him an unconventional path into the estate; which would help to cover his steps. Even from this distance he noticed drawn drapes and shutters over upstairs and downstairs windows of the great house, as well as numerous fat padlocks. At the entrance to the estate’s gardens and attached farmland, he came across prolific “No Trespassers!” signs, hammered into the ground.
There was an aura of violence and tragedy about the place, Clive felt. There had been a dreadful event here (he could pick this up) that had ripped the spirit out of a beautiful place, as it had destroyed the unity and feeling of a particular family. The modified façade of the house revealed this as subtly, but as unmistakeably, as a human face. Pitt slinked watchfully around the perimeter, which was wide and eccentric in shape. The house showed traces of numerous historical periods: fortunes gained, and sometimes lost; gambles bringing profits, allegiances rewarded, fortunes made or lives quietly lost. The rear had pretentious porticos and Greek style columns. Despite Sep’s colourful historical pedigree there was a parvenu quality to his recent additions.
Still, the grounds were beautiful, despite the apparent grief of the house; such an expansive and venerable house. Clive found a rear terrace, from where Septimus held his party to celebrate the completion of the deal; as well as to welcome ZNT members on to his board. It must have been a huge and landmark transaction, because it ensured his personal survival as a big beast in the City, not only his employees’ positions.
&nb
sp; Clive fought to gain purchase on his personal involvement, some flash or detail of memory, now that he’d arrived on the scene, to unlock a few of those secrets in his mind. To this point his mind refused to yield. He just felt like a ghost returning to the scene of its colourful life.
He wondered if Winchurch had abandoned the place entirely. Or was he keeping away temporarily, allowing those terrible memories and consequences to settle. The banker wanted to concentrate on his struggle to regain Pitt; to regain not merely profitability but his peace of mind. During her summer break Emmy had enjoyed a run of the house and gardens. In addition to those other facilities, there were stables, containing a group of white horses as pretty as a singing group. There was even a bar and of course servants at hand. Quite a place to bring your college mates back to.
But Clive had to remain vigilant as he poked around, because he spotted a trio of black suited stewards. One of them had a shotgun slung across his shoulders. Fortunately he was then warned about their presence and they were in the distance. But he knew this wasn’t a stroll around the park with them patrolling around. Maybe those guys didn’t expect him to be there. Maybe they were not in a suspicious frame of mind this afternoon. Yet he couldn’t be absolutely certain about that. The security people must be in communication with each other. They knew that ‘Lucifer’ was free and they needed to be alert.
Keeping eyes in the back of his head Pitt walked across the patio (imagining the busy scene earlier in the summer). He walked around the rim of the now empty swimming pool, intended for Emmy’s enjoyment alone, until tragic events had intervened. A huge kidney shaped hole.
Pitt moved away from those shuttered windows, tricked off a set of limestone steps. He walked in to another flower garden and to a stagnant carp pond at the next level. It contained a Neptune statue which, he thought, resembled Sep himself. From there he waited, still and anxious, as he’d watched a second group of stewards - or were they security people? - wandering around greenhouses. Able to breathe again, Clive pressed on around beds of succulents. Further from the house flowers were allowed to grow somewhat wildly. Lush, spoilt vegetation ruffled in the hot breeze. There were signs of recent gardening, with a wheel-barrow and split compost bags at the ready.