A Crack in the Glass (Telling Tales Book 1)

by Charles Owen

  As she stretched over him, her robe was drawn back from her shoulders. The scent of her was borne to him like a break in the weather ... the air closer ... heavier ... charged with her. The fingers of his right hand, seeking extra purchase, closed on the head rail ... he raised his head ... his lips seeking hers ... with his left hand he swept the towel free of his body. There was a sharp ‘click!’ as the steel jaws closed around his wrist.

  Julian squawked in sudden terror, ‘What's this!’ He gave a violent tug at the chain which secured him to the rail and cried out in pain as the metal sawed at his skin. ‘What … what have you done to me?’

  Suki rolled to his side. ‘It's only a game, Mr Standfast,’ she soothed. ‘I didn't mean to startle you.’

  With his free hand, Julian clutched his burning wrist. ‘You hurt me, Suki.’

  ‘I didn't mean to, sweetheart. It's only a love game.’ She shushed his moans with kisses. ‘Lie still. Abandon yourself to your feelings.’ Her fingers trotted over his body like a file of infantry in open, lightly defended country. They made little feints here, forays there, running swiftly over the exposed places, lingering in the sparse cover afforded. ‘Promise me you won't resist,’ she whispered. The fingers jogged down his left leg.

  ‘I promise,’ he mumbled. Recovering rapidly from his shock, he was beginning to enjoy himself. Why not leave everything to Suki? For one as untutored as he, there were great attractions.

  ‘Do you surrender to me, darling Mr Standfast? Unconditionally?’

  ‘I do.’ In his ears it sounded like a marriage vow. He stretched luxuriously. When she gently secured his ankle to the rail at the bottom of the bed and ran a line of kisses along the top of his toes, he merely smiled and closed his eyes.

  ‘Now you are my prisoner. You must do everything I say.’ She knelt between his knees. ‘Do you think you could do it three times, Mr Standfast, if I–’

  ‘Of course not!’ Aghast, Stanford tried to sit up but his bonds held him fast. ‘It’s im ... im ... possible!’

  ‘How do you know,’ she coaxed, ‘unless you try?’ Her eyes widened and her fingers stole into the pocket of her robe.

  ‘What have you got there?’ His voice rose in fear. ‘I'm not taking any drugs. My heart couldn't stand it. I've heard of people like–’

  ‘People like me! There's no one like me! Not in the whole wide world! Admit it!’

  ‘I admit it.’

  She withdrew her hand. ‘And they aren't drugs.’ Her tongue flicked around the inside of his lips. ‘They are medals, Mr Standfast. A bronze, a silver ... look!’ Gently, she positioned the objects in the hollows of his eyes like a jeweller's glass.

  ‘They are napkin rings.’

  ‘To me they are medals. Olympic medals. When you have won them you will be entitled to wear them.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  Stanford blinked rapidly as his brain struggled to reach any other interpretation but the obvious one. As his lips opened in stupefaction, Suki furled her tongue and drove it between them like a scoop into a bowl of cherries. As his body arched upwards, reaching for her, she whisked the towel from under him as neatly as a conjuror and threw it across the room. With a mischievous twitch of her nostrils, she poised the rings between finger and thumb.

  Horrified, he followed the direction of her eyes. ‘Not there, Suki!’ He jerked his body to one side crying out as his bonds bit into his flesh, ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’ She twirled the rings on her finger. ‘Bronze – tortoiseshell was all I could find. And silver. As for the gold...’ She picked up the foil from the champagne bottle.

  ‘You're not going to use that!’

  ‘Of course I am.’ It was the work of a few moments to fashion the third ring. ‘Now, Mr Standfast. Let's try them on for size.’

  His free hand flew to cover himself. ‘Don't do it, Suki,’ he pleaded, ‘it's not fair.’

  ‘Come on, lover. Be a sport.’

  ‘Never.’ His head was shaking like a coconut in a gale, ‘Never! Never!’

  ‘Well, if you feel like that...’ she built a small pagoda of the rings on his navel, slipped off the bed and trotted across the room.

  ‘Suki! Where are you going?’

  She did not answer. Shrugging off her robe, she pulled the door to and disappeared into the passage.

  ‘Suki!’ he yelled. ‘Come back!’ He heaved at his fetters and then fell limply back once more. Don't panic, you fool, he told himself. There's nothing to get so stewed up about. Suki had left her shoulder bag in the passage. She had probably gone to do things about herself. Woman's business. How naive she must think him. How foolish he was to have shouted. Any moment now she would be back. His throat was dry. If he could reach the bottle ... his eyes fell on his watch. The time! He couldn't see the face. What was the time? He brought his free arm across his body ... but no ... he couldn't get his fingers near the table.

  Making his hand as small as possible, he tried to force it through the ring which held it. It was no use. He was powerless. Things couldn't go on like this. It must be getting late. Mr Sprague would expect him back. With the deal done.

  Putting all the authority into his voice that he could muster, he raised his voice once more. He spoke slowly and severely. ‘Suki! Miss Renouf!’ Was she Miss or Mrs – or even Ms? Why hadn't he been given more information about this woman? It was intolerable. He would speak to Mr Sprague about it. Or to Mr Fallow if he had to.

  ‘Suki! There are one or two things we need to get straightened out. At once! Admirals Court is the best property that we have on our books. There is a lot of interest in it. The views from the ninth floor...’ his voice tailed off. She knew about the views. Get to the point. Behave like Liz Makin. Punchy. Assertive. ‘It is obvious that you like it here, Suki. And you say the rent is not a problem.’ What was the rent? Had he been told? He couldn't remember discussing it with Suki. Wasn't that one of the first questions people asked? ‘So let's get down to business, Suki. Time marches on...’ he concluded miserably.

  This was getting him nowhere. There was a limit to how far one could pursue unilateral negotiations. ‘Suki!’ he bellowed, ‘Come back! Immediately!’ Where was she? When he considered all the trouble he had been put to. ‘Suki!’

  He shivered. There was a chill in the air. If he could reach the edge of the sheet where it tucked in, pull it out and over him. But no, it was impossible. And it was torture trying. He lay back with a groan.

  He started at a different sound. Above the hum of the world beyond the window, the clunk of metal on metal. A grapnel hooking onto a rail. It would sound just like that. A short length of rope swung past the window. A sharp intake of breath. She would be stretching up, grasping the rope, pulling her light, lithe body up to the balcony above. Then a thin scratching like chalk on a blackboard – or a diamond cutting into a glass pane. Then, a faint rustling sound. He knew that noise. Venetian blinds disturbed by a window being opened.

  Then footsteps, the sound muffled by a thick carpet. With his eyes he tracked the steps across the ceiling until they stopped immediately over the dressing table. A patter like hailstones. The Skordias jewellery. Priceless gemstones scattered for inspection, selection, retention.

  Footsteps again, padding over to the door, now receding. Then silence. Then the murmur of the lift ascending, passing his floor, rising to the penthouse flat above him. He strained his ears for the gentle sigh of doors opening and closing. The lift descending once more. Suki leaving. Going down, down, down to the netherworld from which she had come. Leaving with everything she came for. Leaving without him. Leaving him here. Alone.

  How cold it was. As cold as a tomb. With his free hand he tried to chafe his skin, rub some warmth into his limbs. His medals, unearned, unclaimed, rolled off his body to the floor. He wished that it was all over. That he was dead, extinct, like a starfish beached by the tide, inert when the gulls, wheeling and screaming, swooped down with their ravening beaks.<
br />
  With the passing of time, faint stirrings of hope returned to him. Victor Skordias was an important visiting businessman entitled to the protection of the host country. His trust had been betrayed, his possessions pillaged. The government would do everything to prevent the news getting out. There would be a top-level cover-up. The Secretary of State for the Environment would come around in person in the dead of night and remove the number from the door. The apartment would be walled up and all records of the ninth floor of Admirals Court expunged from public records. He would simply be left there. Mr Sprague would be bribed with a knighthood to keep quiet. It would be as if he had never existed, as if what had taken place here had never–

  The hum of the lift again. Doors opening. Voices. A man and a woman. The woman's voice high, nasal, with a captious ‘nothing but the best will do’ edge to it. ‘It's a long way up. I certainly hope it's worth it.’

  The man ingratiating, ‘The views are quite remarkable, I assure you, Madam.’ Mr Sprague!

  ‘Well, we shall soon see.’ The key turning in the latch. The voices more distinct.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, Stanford heaved at his chains. But it was futile. Not an inch did they give. ‘O God!’ he babbled, ‘don't let them come in ... do something ... something appalling ... an earthquake ... a volcanic eruption ... a tidal wave! You know You can do it if You try!’

  The voices approaching up the passage. ‘One or two small things out of place...’ A hint of unease in Mr Sprague's portentous delivery. ‘Perhaps we should start at the master bedroom ... I know you will be impressed with that.’

  ‘Has the daily woman been here? You do have a daily woman who comes in?’

  ‘Not since ... not since this morning, Madam. One of our negotiators had a viewing here this afternoon. Sometimes one or two little things get disarranged.’ The voices very near now.

  No closer, Stanford prayed ... please no closer ... don't let them open the door ... let me off this ... this last time ... I'll never ask for anything else ... I'll do anything ... I'll grow up ... wear a suit all the time like father ... sit at a desk all day ... become old and angry ... have tufts in my ears...

  The voices as loud as the trumpets on the Day of Judgement. Stanford's eyes bulged in his head, the muscles in his face went solid like quick-drying cement, his free leg writhed despairingly ... with his hand he tried to cover himself.

  ‘The negotiator? He's a young chap called Julian Stanford. Joined us a week or two ago.’ The voices at the door now. ‘A most promising lad,’ the handle turning, ‘and really keen to show us what he's made of...’

  In Brief

  Charles Owen writes the Army obituaries for the Daily Telegraph. He has been variously a stockbroker, a merchant banker, a cavalry officer, a Ministry of Defence contractor and an engineering export salesman. Cry Cassandra! and Fiamma were published recently. Four collections of short stories – A Crack in the Glass, The Mark of the Beast, Man Overboard and Escapade – are now being published simultaneously.

  Meet the Author, Charles Owen

  I was born in 1935. When the Second World War broke out a few years later, I was shipped off from a Devonshire hill farm to Australia. My father, who was wounded in the First World War, was then in MI5. He believed that the Germans might invade and probably wanted my mother, sister and myself out of the way.

  In 1942, we were returning to England when we were torpedoed by a German submarine in the North Atlantic. The ship was sent to the bottom but after taking to the waves in a lifeboat we were all rescued by the US Navy.

  Aged 12, I went to Eton. Top hats were being phased out. They were routinely maltreated until the boys wearing them looked like something out of the music hall. But if the school was slowly changing, the house where I boarded lacked all mod cons and was later pulled down.

  In 1956, in my first term at Cambridge and despite the objections of the Foreign Office, I set off to Budapest in the hope of helping the Hungarians in their revolution against the Soviets. My involvement made little difference to the outcome of that tragic affair but the experience provided the inspiration for my forthcoming book, The Dido Decrypt.

  I did my National Service with a cavalry regiment in Germany. Our job was to discourage the Red Army from crossing the Rhine. As a tank commander, it was wise to keep well in with your driver. If he was cross with you, he would give you a bumpy ride which would loosen every tooth in your head.

  A spell in stock-broking and merchant banking persuaded me that I was better at making things than making money and there followed many productive years as the export director of an engineering company. We were contractors to the Ministry of Defence and there was a lot of travelling to the Middle East. The work was absorbing, exacting and, sometimes, frightening.

  In 2000, for the Daily Telegraph, I began writing up the stories of the surviving men and women who had been awarded the Victoria Cross or the George Cross. That led to writing the obituaries of those who had had adventurous and distinguished careers in the British Army. To date, several hundred of these can be read on the internet.

  In the course of reading private papers and unpublished memoirs that have passed through my hands, I became fascinated by the exciting and often perilous careers of servicemen and women who were involved in Intelligence operations; spies and counter-spies, secret agents and members of the Special Operations Executive who were parachuted into enemy-occupied countries to train and arm the Resistance. The Voce Vendetta, relating the fictional exploits of Captain Rohan Voce, will be published in 2016 and will, I hope, bring an account of some of these clandestine operations to a wider readership.

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks go to Georgie, my daughter, who helped to unravel the seemingly impenetrable mysteries of the word processor, also to my son, Jamie, whose guidance has proved invaluable in my wanderings through the trackless wastes of journalism; and to Pierre, my brother-in-law, whose expertise, unstintingly shared, kept my spirits up and my blood pressure down when the hardware and software sulked or threatened to mutiny. I have nothing but praise for the unwinking editorial eyes of the proof-readers. Rosie, heroically volunteered to give the manuscript a final vetting. Any errors that remain are my responsibility.