Morpho

by Philip Palmer

  Hugh was already at the top of the hill, waiting. She knew how much it vexed him to walk at her slow pace and she’d stopped insisting that he keep her company. She guessed he’d been for a run at dawn. His skin was a ruddy brown. He was braced upon his stick but she knew it was chiefly decorative, on his part. Whereas she needed every bit of the support her two ebony canes gave her.

  Her old skin was cold, despite the sun. She focused on locating her centre of gravity, trying to keep her back straight. She knew that if she took a tumble, at her age, bones would break. It happened every now and then and each time the damn bones got more brittle.

  There was a sheen of sweat on her wrinkled brow as she heaved up the hill. When she finally reached him Hugh was staring up at the sky.

  ‘Good morning,’

  ‘And good morning to you, my lovely,’ he rumbled, gallantly. She gave him a brief smile. That always charmed him. Less now than it did in the old days, when a smile usually promised hours of playful intimacy beneath the sheets. But still, charm was charm, and she did have a shard or so of it left.

  They shared the view together, peaceably. Purple heather and rippling mountains. Distant rocky crags shadowed by clouds. A wilderness of Munros that could be ticked off a list yet would always be untamed. Hugh’s estate was large as a Western ranch. An expanse of lonely beauty in a land of still lochs and craggy peaks.

  She studied his face and saw it light up. She guessed he’d heard something. A helicopter approaching, perhaps.

  ‘Is that Marlowe?’ she hazarded.

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘Punctual as ever.’

  ‘You won’t be tempted back, will you?’ Gwendolyn said. ‘To the Old Firm, I mean? For “one last job”, isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘That’s what bank robbers say. I was never that, my dear.’

  ‘Well of course not.’

  Lady Rothbury – Gwendolyn – had been a great beauty once. Now she was a princess long past her prime. Her grey hair was wispy, her back was crooked. She was almost vulture-like with her Roman nose and skeletal arms. Her perfect face was marred with wrinkles and blotched with liver spots. Her hands were stiff with arthritis, claw-like and undextrous. She was eighty-eight years old and she could, on a good day, so she boasted, pass for eighty-one.

  ‘Oh no, no no, my dear,’ Rothbury told her, smiling. ‘Those days I fear are long past.’ He was two inches taller than her now; she’d shrunk and he hadn’t. His hair was grey too; but only because he dyed it. He could run a mile in just under four minutes. His eyesight was perfect. The spectacles, she had realised long ago, were clear glass and just for show.

  They’d met when in London at a soirée, at a time when evening events were still called soirées. She was an heiress and radical feminist of twenty-one years of age, he was a soldier on furlough, and according to his papers he was twenty-five. That meant that now, in the twilight years of their tempestuous yet happy marriage, he had to admit to being ninety-one years old. And yet he still carried himself like an athlete.

  Gwendolyn could see the metal bird in the sky now. The thudda thudda thudda swamped the sound of the woodpigeons. There was a patch of flat green on the top of this hillock. The chopper descended on to it, landing with barely a shudder. A chubby, balding man jumped out, wearing a tweed suit and possessed of impeccable poise. He waved, then ducked under the rotors and ran across to them. For a few brief moments he sprinted, like quicksilver slithering across a tray of glass.

  But then the balding man slowed, and became visibly out of puff; the walk turned into a waddle. In this fashion Marlowe approached them, as they stood on the summit of a hillside just an arrow’s flight from Rothbury’s grand castle.

  ‘He’s put on a bit of weight,’ said Rothbury.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Lady Rothbury.

  ‘Hello, Marlowe,’ Rothbury said, as the chubby man trudged towards them.

  ‘You look, as always, enchanting, my lady,’ Marlowe said gallantly to Gwendolyn. It was heavy-handed flattery but at her age, you took what you got. And so, charmingly, she smiled.

  The two men spent the day locked in the old library, hard at work, peered upon by rows of ancient volumes bought by the yard. Every now and then Rothbury would grunt something and Marlowe would take a look. And they would bicker about a minor detail and sometimes tempers would be raised and voices would get louder over a point of principle on which, in fact, they concurred.

  The Old Firm was well and truly back.

  Rothbury had an old typewriter on which they summarised their notes; the files were then locked in the under-floor safe. Rothbury had never taken to the digital age; he was delighted when, post-Snowden, manual typewriters once again became the tool of choice for the global spy.

  At eight they dined. Gwendolyn had authorised the baking of a trout. Moira and Henderson served. Moira wore a demure blue rayon dress with detachable apron and collar. Henderson wore a black morning coat and white wing collar dress shirt. Rothbury was a stickler for such things.

  The fish was a giant: Henderson had caught it himself, early that morning. It was one of his many talents. His jacket was bespoke tailored for his needs; you’d have to be an expert to spot the bulge at the back of the coat where he kept his Glock 17.

  ‘Potatoes, Peter?’

  ‘Oh ra-ther,’ said Marlowe, in his braying old Etonian voice.

  Moira served the potatoes, standing on Marlowe’s right-hand side, expertly using fork and spoon like tweezers. Marlowe waited for her to move away then sipped his wine, rosy-cheeked.

  ‘We’ll go shooting in the morning, I think,’ said Rothbury.

  ‘Jolly good,’ Marlowe informed him.

  ‘That old stag, his day has come, I feel,’ Rothbury said complacently.

  ‘Surely not,’ Gwendolyn interceded.

  ‘He’s a magnificent beast.’

  ‘Then let him live.’

  ‘That’s not how it works, Lady Rothbury,’ Marlowe said.

  She yielded the point by pretending there had been no dispute in the first instance.

  ‘But really, Peter,’ Gwendolyn said to Marlowe. ‘You’re too old for these long days of hunting. Especially in this weather. You’ll catch your death of cold, you know. And it’s been raining, the ground is treacherous.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ Rothbury assured her.

  She harumphed, and fixed her husband with a scornful gaze. ‘Just take care. You can’t afford another fall.’

  He shrugged, accepting the scolding in good part. ‘I have a stick now,’ Rothbury admitted to Marlowe. ‘Booked in for a hip replacement.’

  ‘What?’ Gwendolyn observed.

  Rothbury turned to his wife. ‘I’m booked in for a hip replacement.’

  ‘Yes I know that,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘I was just telling old Marlowe. He didn’t know, you see.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Of course.’

  ‘Age comes to us all, old girl, eh?’ Marlowe said reassuringly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Age comes to us all,’ Marlowe explained to her again, over-enunciating.

  ‘Ah yes. True, very true.’

  ‘Also, I’ve got arthritis in my hands.’ Rothbury massaged his hands, wincing.

  Gwendolyn was nodding, listening carefully. ‘Yes, it’s true what he says, I have arthritis in my hands,’ she told Marlowe. ‘Didn’t you have a twinge of it yourself, darling?’

  ‘I did, I had a little twinge,’ her husband conceded.

  Henderson was there, with impeccable timing, and poured him another glass of the Bordeaux. Rothbury raised a hand; enough. Only half a glass was poured and he sipped it cautiously.

  Later the men retired and Gwendolyn fell asleep over her book in the parlour. When she woke she couldn’t remember where she was, and when she picked up the book she had no idea what it was about. She placed the bookmark back at the start of Chapter 1 and vowed to try again in the morning.

  She rang the bell for Henderson. When he arrived, she
couldn’t recall why she summoned him. Eventually she said, ‘We shall need a new vase for that table.’

  The vase on the side table was Edwardian, cobalt blue, and Gwendolyn had always cherished it.

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘A replica if possible.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Gwendolyn picked up her two sticks and hobbled over to the vase.

  ‘It’s older than me, this thing,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Gwendolyn raised a stick and smashed the vase. She still had some grip in her hand; it was a clean break and made a satisfyingly loud noise. The broken pieces flew, then lay scattered on the Axminster carpet. Henderson didn’t flinch but she sensed his disapproval.

  ‘A replica if possible,’ said Gwendolyn.

  ‘Yes, my lady, you said, my lady.’

  ‘Did I?

  ‘You won’t tempt me back,’ Rothbury lied.

  It was quarter past eleven. The two men were in the smoking room. It was Rothbury’s favourite room in the house: a club-like den with leather chairs and acres of unread books, crossed swords on one wall, muskets on another, the remaining areas of wall cluttered with barely competent portraits of his ancestors.

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing,’ lied Marlowe.

  Ah the old routines.

  ‘How’s the port?’

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘A hundred years. I laid it down, oh, well, after that Gibraltar incident,’ Rothbury said, remembering.

  Marlow shared the memory. It was a terrible memory but time had turned ignominy into a lasting bond.

  The smoking room was dimly lit, and the gloom was exacerbated by the sombre colours and cracked chiaroscuro of the Rothbury ancestors. There, above the fireplace, was the 1st Lord Rothbury, who had fought with the Young Pretender. There, his treacherous son the 2nd Earl of Rothbury, who loyally served the Dutch king, and doubled his landownings in Scotland through some clever banking deals. The 3rd Earl of Rothbury built Georgian terraces in London and Bath and tripled the family fortune. The 4th Earl drank himself to death, allegedly, securing a graceful exit from criminal charges being brought against him. The 5th Earl had been a crusty Victorian. The 6th and 7th Earls had served with the Foreign Office and MI6 respectively, and had earned a commendable reputation for their spying skills. The 8th Earl had served his country loyally through the tribulations of the Second World War.

  Rothbury was the 9th Earl.

  ‘Brief me,’ Rothbury said, after the ports from the decanter had been supped, and cigars had been smoked.

  Marlowe nodded and began. His voice was calm, authoritative, sensible. Life, for him, was a series of random facts that cried out to be sifted and turned into order. He had always been so, even as a child.

  ‘The hardliners are in control. Drummond has been appointed as head of the Acronym. He’s hardcore, a career soldier, the imagination of a slug. And under his leadership they’re eradicating nests in England, Wales and Scotland. They take no prisoners. They believe in zero tolerance. Frankly, it’s carnage, and the enemy are dying in their thousands.’

  Rothbury scowling, shaking his head; playing the gavotte of two old-timers returning to their favourite rants.

  ‘Ah, we’ve seen it all before, Peter, haven’t we? It always goes to extremes, for a while. Then the middle way prevails. That’s just the way of it.’

  ‘Maybe not this time. The truth is, there aren’t many of us left, Hugh. The old guard, I mean.’

  ‘Call me Alan. Please. Otherwise, well. It’s hard to keep track.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What about Jane Carter? Was her body retrieved from the mortuary in Leeds?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And is she alive?’

  Marlowe hesitated, tempted to lie. He knew his old master well.

  ‘Well yes. Astonishingly, she is. She sustained some terrible injuries. There was some kind of – fight.’

  ‘Fight?’

  ‘In the mortuary?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In Yorkshire, they brawl in mortuaries now it seems.’

  ‘She’s in intensive care, connected up to a vat of fresh blood.’

  ‘A lot of trouble to go to.’

  ‘The plan is to bring her to trial then execute her.’

  ‘Oh no. What a terrible waste of resources. Bring her to me.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘That was her intended destination, was it not?’

  ‘I’m not authorised to bring her to you, sir.’

  ‘Do it anyway. Humour me.’

  Marlowe had seen this coming; he disapproved but didn’t really mind.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Fake her death, if you have to. Bringing her back to life then executing her! What the hell are these parvenus playing at?’

  Marlowe laughed.

  ‘What about the other rogue? Warkworth’s steward’s boy, wasn’t he? Billy Franco?’

  ‘Still on the run.’

  ‘Any other loose ends?’

  ‘One. The lorry driver who crashed into her. It was an accident, but he saw some things at the scene which should not have been seen. And he is considered to be – volatile.’

  ‘How unfortunate. Does he have a name?’

  ‘You don’t need to know.’

  ‘Will he be a problem for us?’

  ‘Not any more. He wrote a few blogs, created some questionable hashtags. But nothing serious. He’ll soon be forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten? Are you saying that we –’ Rothbury stifled his words. He was no longer the Chief. He had no control over the way things were run.

  ‘I’m sure you will deal with the danger appropriately,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes, Sir Alan, ra-ther.’

  Rothbury tried not to think about the human cost of loose ends.

  ‘My lord,’ said Marlowe cautiously, then paused.

  ‘Yes, Marlowe?’

  ‘My lord,’ Marlowe said again, and paused again.

  ‘What is it you want me to do, Marlowe?’

  ‘It’s time for you to move on, my lord.’

  Rothbury made a face. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You need another son.’

  ‘I’m all out of sons.’

  ‘A nephew then, or still better, a great nephew. You need to lose sixty years and rejoin the fray.’ Marlowe spoke gently now, prodding at old memories like a man with a stick poking a sleeping tiger. ‘The Crusade continues, Sir John, in a new form, and in a new age, and you have your part to play in God’s work.’

  This time Rothbury didn’t correct him.

  ‘I haven’t the heart for it,’ said Rothbury softly.

  ‘We need you, my lord,’ Marlow coaxed.

  The consequences of these words were understood clearly by both men. In order to create a new heir, Rothbury’s current wife would have to be disposed of. A retirement home was the preferred option in this instance; there Gwendolyn could live out her twilight years. But Rothbury knew she would hate it. And for her, the greatest love of his very long life, he had a soft spot.

  ‘A drop of something stronger?’ Rothbury asked.

  Marlowe smiled. ‘I would be a cur to decline.’

  Rothbury led Marlowe across the room, not troubling to use his stick. His companion followed briskly and with a familiar sense of anticipation towards their target: the antique liquor cabinet, made of dark Spanish oak.

  Rothbury shuffled through his keys and unlocked the cabinet. He opened up the false back and took out the vials of blood. He poured a vial each into two Waterford brandy glasses.

  Then the two men sat in the Robert Adam giltwood chairs on either side of the hearth, occasionally resting their glasses on coasters; feeling like the elegantly debauched Georgian gentlemen that once they were.

  ‘Sláinte’.

  ‘For God and Jerusalem.’

  The
y sipped the blood.

  ‘I agree with you, Drummond and his people, they are zealots,’ said Rothbury, continuing their discussion. ‘They have no sense of the necessary balance of things. We should – Oh, hello my dear?’

  Gwendolyn was at the door. She was flushed and a little drunk. She began walking towards her husband at the far end of the room, her two sticks replacing the power that used to be in her legs. It took a while. The men were unabashed, still sipping blood from their brandy glasses.

  ‘I thought I’d join you,’ she puffed.

  There was a wild look in her eye which Rothbury knew of old and which he had thought he would never see again.

  Marlowe retained a quiet presence, as befitted a man who just a few minutes ago had been plotting to have his hostess incarcerated in an old folks’ home so that she might die wretched and alone.

  ‘I know I’m old fashioned,’ said Rothbury, bluffly. ‘And it’s a tradition much in abeyance, for the men to retire separately for their port. But I do feel –’

  ‘Hush, darling. What on Earth is that that you’re drinking?’

  ‘Well, port, of course.’

  ‘Liar.’

  She still had a few yards to travel. Marlowe stood and offered her his giltwood chair, which she gratefully accepted.

  ‘You eat like a horse, Marlowe,’ she told him acidly. ‘At dinner you really did pack it away, didn’t you?’

  ‘I fear that is the case.’

  ‘And yet you don’t savour it. The food I mean. You just eat as if you’re obliged to. Furthermore, you’ve been slim as a rake ever since I met you. How long ago was that? Twenty years? Thirty? So how is it you’ve suddenly put on so much improbable weight? Are you actually trying to get fat?’

  ‘One gets greedier with –’

  ‘It’s a clever trick, it makes you look less youthful. Those jowls, that spare tyre you’re carrying on your hips. But you have to eat like two men to look even remotely chubby. And the hair.’ She raised her stick and waved it at his bald head.

  ‘What little there is of it,’ Marlowe joshed.

  ‘I can see the razor rash. You shave your head. You pretend to be bald. Don’t you? You’re not. You pretend to be fat. You’re not. You’re as youthful now as you ever – let me taste that.’