by M. M. Mayle
Now, shortly before seven, he passes the Sidcup exit. Then it’s Swanley, the M25, and finally the turnoff for West Maling that alerts him to watch for a Middlestone exit he hasn’t used before.
At that exit he follows directions given when it was assumed yesterday’s briefing would take place at the Weald Guest House instead of St. Margaret’s Church. But those directions assumed him to be coming from the church, not the A20, and now they have him going the wrong way for the first several blocks. Once he’s turned around, though, he sees the Weald Guest House just beyond a half-timbered pub with one of those graphic names invented for the illiterati of yore.
He parks next to a bike storage shelter toward the back of the building, contemplates entering by a side door he decides is locked at this early hour. If the limited phone service is any indication, the main door to this place may not be open, either. To his relief, it opens at his touch and a small reception desk is manned when he walks in.
“Mr. Grillo’s room, please.” The civilian title makes the request sound less urgent, Nate decides.
The clerk consults a clipboard. “His knock-up’s not scheduled for another five, not till half-seven.”
“We’re not gonna quibble over five minutes, are we? Just give him a ring. Tell him he’s got company. If there’s a problem, let him think your clock’s fast.”
“I’m sorry sir, I can’t do that.”
“Jesus, over five fucking minutes? Now going on four?” Nate flashes his watch.
“The rooms are not equipped with phones. We’re not that sort of establishment.” The clerk sniffs as though this unthinkable inconvenience should rate a Michelin Star. “At the appointed hour, when I wake Mr. Grillo in a civilized manner, whom shall I say is calling?”
“Tell him it’s his ride to London and do it now or I will.” Nate snatches the clipboard from the unprepared clerk and manages to read Grillo’s room number before the clerk snatches it back.
“Sir, I must ask you to stop. This is highly irregular!” The clerk gives chase when Nate heads for the staircase.
“Fuckin’ A it’s irregular. What is this place, Fawlty Towers?” Nate takes the stairs two at a time with the clerk in hot pursuit.
Near the end of the first floor hallway, a room number matches the one glimpsed on the clipboard. Nate raps on it loud enough to be heard half the length of the corridor. “Wakey-wakey.” He sarcastically employs the Briticism for the clerk’s benefit. “That civilized enough for you?”
“I do say!” A head pokes out from the room next door. “What sort of place is this?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking,” Nate says to a florid matron in hair curlers and flowered wrapper.
“I was hoping I’d heard the last of it after all that racket and commotion last night. So much for enjoying the genteel atmosphere of a bygone era. I think I may just have to—”
“What racket and commotion?” Nate cuts in, suddenly aware that the present racket and commotion hasn’t roused Grillo.
“Why, I was of a mind to ring the desk last night and demand immediate surcease, but of course I had no phone—would rather have defeated the whole purpose of booking a holiday away from the rude interruptions of the—”
Nate drowns out the woman’s indignation with heavy pounding on Grillo’s door. When that doesn’t produce a response, he turns to the hovering desk clerk and motions him to open the door with a passkey.
“But sir, that’s highly—”
“Open it!”
The clerk fiddles with an old-fashioned keyhole lock before discovering the bolt was never thrown, the door was never locked in the first place.
Nate shoulders the clerk aside as the door swings open onto the kind of scene he ought to be used to by now. All the lights are on, and in stark contrast to quaint furnishings and décor bespeaking another era, Detective Inspector Grillo is sprawled facedown in a massive bloodspill—an amplitude, to use the detective’s own term for a large amount. Although facedown, it’s clear that his head is very nearly detached from his body and judging by the individual pools of blood around his hands, that he suffered grievous defensive wounds. Overturned furniture and general disarray further attest to how strenuously he must have tried to fend off the attack.
“Son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch,” Nate says slow and easy. Slow and easy, the way he’s backing away from the third dead body it’s been his rotten luck to discover in a matter of months. He’s dizzied as much by that realization as by the portent of today’s find.
The clerk vomits discreetly—genteelly?—in the hallway after he’s had his look into the slaughterhouse, recovers in record time and runs madly toward the staircase shrieking “Help! Police!” along the way. In his wake, doors open and close. They blessedly remain closed as Nate brings up the rear.
He sits down on the top step of the stairs to head off any onlookers from down below, and to wait for police to arrive. Overwhelmed by déjà vu, he sees Aurora’s headless corpse drift by in his visual memory, then it’s the broken body of Mrs. Floss, followed by the indelible image of David Sebastian’s caved-in drained-dry remains. In the category of near-dead bodies, Colin’s bloodied visage fills his mind’s eye for no good reason and it’s even accompanied by Colin’s voice.
“Oi up there,” Colin shouts from the bottom of the stairs. “What in bloody hell are you doing here? I saw the Bentley in the carpark and could scarcely believe—”
“Stay where you are!” Nate struggles to his feet, struggles with the fact it really is Colin down there and not a hallucination dressed out of someone’s ragbag. Before he can take step one toward the ground floor, Laurel, wearing a bulky raincoat over a nightgown, bursts into this reality with Bemus in tow. “Get out of here now!” Nate bellows at the three of them. “Go!” He takes the stairs at a run.
“Make up your bleedin’ mind, you just told me to stay put!” Colin protests at close range.
Before they can attract the attention of the overwrought desk clerk with the phone clamped to his ear, or the pair of apparently deaf retirees reading the morning papers in one corner of the combination parlor-reception area, Nate herds his charges into a small darkened dining room. “Go home,” he says in a muffled tone that conveys more urgency than shouting. “Go there directly. Do not stop for anything and do not leave there under any circumstances.”
“You’d better have a bloody good reason,” Colin says too loudly.
“Grillo’s been killed.” Nate cranks down to a harsh whisper. “I discovered his body only minutes ago. There’s no question who did it and if you don’t get out of here right now, you’ll be held as material witnesses.”
That gets them moving without further outbursts from Colin.
“I’ll be in touch as soon . . .” Nate breaks off, no match for the distinctive sound of approaching police vehicles.
— THIRTY-NINE —
Morning, September 29, 1987
“What were you thinking, running off like that without a bodyguard? Were you thinking at all?” Laurel heaps scold on top of scold all the way to the guest house carpark. “Good lord, Colin, do you realize what could have happened to you?” She keeps it up when they’re locked inside the Jaguar and squealing out of the carpark. “Can there be any doubt in your mind after what Nate just told us? Can you deny how serious this threat is?” She swivels round in the passenger seat to make sure that Bemus is virtually on their bumper in the Range Rover. “Can you?” She swivels back, grabs his forearm. “I’m asking . . . can you?” She squeezes his arm. Hard. “Answer me please.”
“I will when you let go my arm and get a grip on yourself.”
She complies with the letting go, but it’s hard to tell if she’s settling down because now she’s not talking at all and she won’t look at him when he glances her way.
Maybe she’s remembering—as he is—when she first went ballistic over the posing of serious threat, causing the row Anthony overheard and thought meant the end of the wedding plans. She might
even be thinking about a time when the shoe was on the other foot, when he was the one maintaining a threat could exist and she was the one with her head in the sand.
“Paris?” he ventures as they approach the turnoff for their road. If she is remembering the argument they had in the Paris hotel suite, she might also be remembering how it was resolved.
“Yes. Yes, of course . . . the horrible clash in Paris,” she murmurs.
“Where concessions were made, where words were said to the effect that you couldn’t bear to lose me.”
“That was the driving force . . . yes. And nothing about that’s changed. I cannot lose you, Colin . . . I simply cannot. And that’s all there is to it.”
Out of the corner of his eye he sees her chin come up, her eyes narrow, her jaw set. “I didn’t do enough, baby girl . . . I didn’t do enough,” he says.
“May we please not go through that again—the blame foolishness. I do not want to hear you say the detective’s death—however he happened to die—is your fault. I will not stand for it.”
“That’s not the direction I was taking, but now that you mention it, I am—”
“No. Don’t even start.” She grabs his arm again, this time not quite so hard.
He turns into their drive, pulls to one side and motions Bemus to precede him.
“Why are you stopping? What’s wrong? Is something wrong?” Laurel demonstrates how stirred up she actually is, darting glances every which way till she understands they’re stopped only because there’s no remote for the gates in this car.
Her reaction to the unannounced stop would have decided the matter if his mind weren’t already made up. Instead of dropping her off at the porte-cochère, he heads straightaway to the garages, where he hopes to find Sam Earle.
Sam’s not there, but one of the groundskeepers says the estate manager can be found at the far north end of the main house.
“I’m going inside.” Laurel starts for the house. “It’s time for Anthony to leave for school and Simon’s undoubtedly awake and wanting—”
“They can wait.” Colin catches up with her, grabs her hand, pulls her along in a northerly direction. “I want you with me for this,” he says and picks up the pace to a near trot.
They find Sam overseeing the long-postponed removal of the aggressive wisteria, the first step towards demolishing the ramshackle iron stairs it held in its grasp.
“Is this your idea of a distraction?” Laurel says. “Is this supposed to be a surprise? Are you forgetting I nagged loudest to get this done?”
“The way you’re carryin’ on now, how in bleedin’ hell could I forget?” He motions Sam to come to the fence of the enclosure that’s been off-limits from day one for containing any number of hazards, not the least of which is the massive verdigrised armillary centering the untended niche garden. Sam sucks on an unlit pipe, pretending not to notice that both the lord and lady of the manor look like street people and sound like bickering pensioners.
“You still have the list of the home security outfitters Nate recommended?” Colin asks.
Sam flickers as much interest as he ever shows and does a slow calculated nod.
“Brilliant. Figure out which one’s best—don’t bother with competitive bids or background checks, no time for that. Just trust that a security firm looks after its own security and get on with it. I want ’em on the job day before yesterday and I’ll want motion sensors, closed circuit telly, electronic everything, and whatever all else is called for short of digging a moat and bringing in sharp shooters and attack dogs. This takes precedence, so removing that wreckage can wait a bit longer.” Colin indicates the now denuded iron stairs. “And we’ll have to kill the oasthouse project till we’re past this bad patch. See to that too, then.”
On the long return through the arcade, Laurel wraps his arm with both of hers the way she did that treasured day at the New Jersey shore.
“You’re the very air I breathe, you know . . . you’re the rest of me . . . the best of me . . . you make everything feel like the first time for me . . . like I’m brand new . . .” He delivers a shambling sampling of themes deemed, only hours ago, too tired and hackneyed to be rendered into lyrics, let alone speech. “You are my sunshine, Laurel Grace.” He finishes with the homeliest and best way of describing the exalted place she occupies in his universe.
By the half-amused, half-gratified look on her face she might be about to say something equally heartfelt and cocked up. But before she can deliver, Anthony explodes from the kitchen door.
“I’m gonna be late,” the lad bleats, hopping from one foot to the other. “C’mon, somebody, or I’m gonna be dead-late for school!”
His uproar attracts three of the dogs and Cyril, the rooster. Whatever was left of the tender moment with Laurel is gone.
“Da-ad . . . Come on or I’ll get—”
“Leave off, Anthony. You’re not going to school today. You won’t be going to a regular school till . . . till things get back to normal,” Colin says.
Laurel fairly radiates relief when she presses against him and whispers a hurried thanks before they’re both subjected to Anthony’s pestering. The lad most wants to know what brought about this sudden change and neither is willing to say. Or prepared to say. Not till Nate’s heard from and it’s decided how much the lad actually needs to know. And before that’s decided, Colin has a million questions of his own, starting with where to bury the information the slain detective was set to deliver to Scotland Yard.
— FORTY —
Afternoon, September 29, 1987
At Terra Firma, Nate, Colin, Laurel, and the two American bodyguards await the arrival of the London contingent that is due any minute. The precedent for delaying a full explanation until all the principals are in place was established in the aftermath of David’s death when, ironically enough, Detective Grillo was the one they waited for.
Shortly after three, Emmet’s black sedan enters the perpetual shadow cast by the porte-cochère, where Nate has done his waiting with a lager and a cigar he stubs out when the passengers alight.
He’ll never believe it wasn’t a premonition that made him leave Amanda behind this morning. As things turned out, she was more help in London than she would have been in Middlestone. Her own initiative, along with his phone updates, has her up to speed about all but the very latest developments. She walks into his open arms without comment.
Brownell Yates, the other passenger, is also silent when he appears, and Emmet’s only comment is unintelligible.
Nate’s job—as it’s been too many times before—is to distill the myriad opinions overheard at the crime scene into a concise theory of how Detective Inspector Grillo happened to meet his end in a quaint Kentish guest house. While still considered a suspect, Nate was given an insider’s view to the workings of the Kent County Constabulary—what they were willing to accept at face value and what they were not. But by the time his input freed him to go, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about who they were looking for.
The troops, as he thinks of them, assemble on the terrace under an overcast that’s imposed by subject matter as well as weather conditions. Once everyone is seated and refreshments made available, Nate delivers an unbroken account of what’s known so far.
“Questions?” he says after a brief pause for details to sink in.
“Hector Sandoval, you say?” Colin responds.
“Yeah, that’s what he’s calling himself now. That’s the name Jakeway registered with at the guest house—the name on the passport he’s using—the passport already determined fake by the Bureau,” Nate replies.
Emmet chimes in, confirms contact with the Bureau’s Special Agent Bell, who was convinced to light a fire under the U.S. passport agency.
“Fingerprints?” Laurel asks as she did when it was David’s slaughter and her father’s questionable death she was trying to adjust to.
Amanda answers, “According to Emmet’s contact at the Yard, a match was established a li
ttle over an hour ago. The local authorities were able to lift clear examples at the crime scene and from the room Sandoval—Jakeway—occupied at the guest house, and Scotland Yard had his prints on record, probably at Grillo’s insistence, but I’m not a hundred percent about that.”
“Freshen my mind,” Brownie speaks up. “The Jakeway creep was already staying at this place before Grillo checked in?”
“That’s what the records show and no one has an explanation for that other than the most wretched of coincidences,” Emmet answers.
“An’ I suppose nobody knows how Jakeway found out the Grillo guy was on his case,” Bemus says.
“That’s unfortunately true,” Nate says. “That’s what all the agencies are centered on and may never learn without extracting the information from Jakeway himself.”
“I’d like to know what brought this freak to Middlestone, anyway. Why there? How’d he know that’d be the logical staging area for here?” Brownie makes a sweeping gesture that’s as all-encompassing as the threat it implies.
“I’ve not got a clue and I’m sorely afraid that may never be known, either. Not unless it comes direct from Jakeway, as just pointed out,” Emmet says.
“Description?” Laurel says in a small voice.
“They’re working on a composite drawing from witness accounts. Once they have it, it’ll be distributed to all the media. Our people are poised to cooperate any way they can,” Amanda says.
“Did I hear you say this sorry bloke’s been gettin’ round on a bicycle? Is that what you said?” Colin asks offhandedly, as though trying to take some weight off the proceedings.
“Yes, that is what I said,” Nate replies. “Bicycle. According to staff at the guest house, Sandoval—Jakeway—had an expensive touring bike and camping gear delivered there shortly after he checked in.”