by Jemma Harvey
‘You didn’t see these guys,’ said Roo. ‘They aren’t going to be stopped because you’re a big star and the police are on the way, believe me.’
Fenny had come in and was sniffing at Elton’s body, making bewildered whimpering noises.
‘Better get him out of here,’ Harry said, distracted. ‘He may be a Rottweiler at heart, but he doesn’t have the physique to go with it.’
I swept him up in my arms, trying not to look at poor Elton. ‘I’ll shut him up in one of the bedrooms. Back in a sec.’
I went out, then halted at the foot of the stairs. It would take several minutes to get to the nearest bedroom, and I didn’t want to be gone that long. Anything could happen. Besides, I really needed a weapon. I could just see myself as a modern-day Amazon, defying the forces of violence and thuggery. Of course, the danger of seeing yourself in a particular role is that it might inspire you to actually go for it . . . I made my way to the old hall, still clutching Fenny. There was a sort of study beyond it which had been used as a dressing room during the re-enactment scenes; I could shut the puppy in there. In passing, I grabbed a leftover bottle of stage blood. It suggested something to me – not a plan, more a scenario. When I shut the door, Fenny barked and scratched on it, but that couldn’t be helped. ‘Quiet!’ I ordered, dragging a chair on to the vast hearth. Fenny paid no attention to me, still barking furiously, and I did my best to pay no attention to him. I climbed up on the chair and lifted the claymore down from the chimney-piece.
Ruth
I’m not quite a stranger to violence, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Once, in Bucharest, Kyle had been interviewing a kidnap-victim-turned-prostitute when some heavies showed up and we’d had to get out fast, for her sake. Another time, investigating corruption in famine relief in Africa, someone had pointed a gun at us: I still remember very clearly how it felt, staring into that little black hole, knowing that at a touch – just a touch – death would come out of it. But I’d never met anyone who frightened me quite as much as Attila the Suit, with his civilised clothes and his civilised smile and the visible brutality just under the skin.
And there was Elton on the floor with his head beaten in. Whoever had hit him hadn’t just done it once to knock him out – they’d gone on hitting him, and hitting him, enjoying it, enjoying the violence and the blood and the act of killing . . . And now they were out there, prowling through the fog, seeking a way into the castle (there were dozens), coming for Harry, ready to crush anyone who got in their way. Delphi was brave, but she didn’t understand. She thought her superstar temper – the terror of directors and researchers alike – would have an effect on people to whom all her second-rank fame meant less than nothing. HG was older but hardly wiser; he’d spent his whole life in splendid isolation. And Ash, though accustomed to the dark side of human nature, generally encountered it in the form of the supernatural, which doesn’t usually come armed with a club.
But Harry knew. He was pale and tense and resolutely practical. ‘I think you should all go upstairs,’ he said. ‘Ruth, go after Delphi – keep her out of here. This is my problem; I’ll deal with it.’
‘How?’ Ash asked bluntly.
And from HG: ‘This is my home – my castle. I’m not running away from anyone.’
‘Sir—’ Morag spoke, from the door through to the back. ‘Have ye got a minute, sir?’
We knew instantly something was wrong. Her voice was pitched a little too high, and none of the staff ever called HG ‘sir’.
Besides, it was much too normal a request for Morag, containing as it did no references to God or the devil.
HG said: ‘Yes?’
She came in, slowly. ‘These men, sir . . . They want tae see Harry.’
They were behind her. The fat skinhead had the cosh; he was slapping it on his palm like a tough guy in a film, which was such a cliché it should been funny, but nobody laughed. Then there was greaseball: he seemed to be literally trembling with anticipation, or the effort of holding his natural urges in check. And lastly Attila. Attila the Suit. When he saw Harry his smooth veneer seemed to slip sideways, so you saw something else peering out – something ancient and savage. He smiled his alligator smile, full of gleamy teeth.
There was a sharp intake of breath close by, but I didn’t know if it was Harry, or Ash, or possibly me.
‘Well, well,’ Attila said. ‘Harry – my old mate. Where have you been hiding yourself? Me and the boys, we’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
Thump . . . thump . . . went the cosh in Skinhead’s fat palm.
HG said with commendable calm: ‘Get out of my house.’
Attila glanced at him as if he were a child or a pet, someone powerless and insignificant.
‘This the big star? Not that big really, is he? D’you know, I could break him with one hand? I could snap his neck like a chicken. Maybe I should do that. Way past his best, isn’t he? Maybe it would be a kindness. Anyway, I’ve never killed a star.’
‘If you touch me,’ HG said, ‘you’ll go down for a very long time.’
Attila laughed. ‘Talks big, don’t he? He don’t know about me and the courts. Pals with all the judges, I am. Got my own little witness protection scheme.’
(Thump . . . thump . . .)
‘Let them go.’ Harry spoke with evident difficulty. ‘You’ve got no quarrel with any of them.’
The rest of us just stood there. Frozen.
I was thinking: they’ll have knives somewhere. Maybe a gun. (Please God, not a gun.) I looked for a bulge under the suit, but Attila seemed to be all bulges, as if the muscles were bursting out of his body, straining at his clothes. Or possibly the suit just didn’t fit.
I was thinking: we have to fight.
I’d never been in a physical fight in my life.
‘Nah,’ Attila said. ‘I’d rather let them watch. If they’re good, we’ll give them a treat.’ He came right up to me. ‘This one looks good. Bit small in the tit department –’ he flipped my breast with a finger – ‘but really quite tasty. I love posh pussy.’
Greaseball made a noise which might have passed for a snigger.
Beside me, I sensed Ash’s tautness, though we didn’t touch.
Thump . . . thump . . . went the cosh.
Seeing Attila from so close, I was nearly sure there was no gun bulge.
I was thinking: any moment now, Delphi’s going to walk in.
Shit . . .
Greaseball said, ‘Someone brought the dog in.’ He shoved Elton’s body with his foot. ‘Where’re the minders?’
‘Outside,’ Attila said easily. ‘Looking for us in the fog. Great stuff, fog. Keeps everyone out – and everyone in. Anyone else here we should know about?’
Cedric in the kitchen . . . Dorian upstairs . . . Delphi.
Harry said: ‘No.’
‘I hope you’re not lying to me,’ Attila said. ‘I don’t like liars. And your record isn’t very good, is it? Pretending to be one of us, one of the team, fighting for the cause – all the time a traitor. A lying, cheating sneak working for the establishment press, betraying your own people for a load of blacks and Pakis and Jews. What d’you think you deserve, selling out your own kind?’ He was unbuttoning his jacket as he spoke, pulling something out of an inside pocket. A glove. A glove which clinked. He tugged it on, flexed his fingers. Metal studs gleamed on the knuckles. ‘I’ll give you a clue. I didn’t come here to hand you a fucking award.’
Skinhead had stopped thumping the cosh. Greaseball seemed to be wetting himself in his eagerness.
No more time for thinking.
Attila’s fist moved so fast that for all the build-up Harry was caught off guard. The blow took him in the stomach, doubling him up. Then Attila grabbed him by the hair and the metal glove smacked him full in the face. Blood spurted from a dozen cuts. Ash leaped for Attila, but Greaseball knocked him sideways – I tried to get hold of his arm to pull him away from Ash but he shook me off. A knife flashed in his hand.
/> HG yelled: ‘Stop it! The police are coming!’
Then Delphi came back.
Delphi, with the claymore gripped in both hands, the blade dripping red. Delphi, with blood daubed on her face and arms, with scarlet spatter on her clothes. Delphi, wild-eyed and mop-haired, giving off rage like an electric storm. Move over Xena, Warrior Princess. Here comes Delphinium Dacres . . .
‘LEAVE HIM ALONE!’ she screamed, meaning Harry.
Skinhead charged. She swung the claymore – he tried to dodge but too late. The blade ploughed along his belly, bunching his T-shirt, leaving a red stain in its wake. The end of the swing caught Greaseball in the arm, making him drop the knife. Ash and I both pounced on him and we all collapsed in a squirming heap. Meanwhile, Harry used the diversion to lunge for Attila, getting in too close for blows. HG tried to help and failed. Morag, with amazing enterprise, picked up a table lamp and smashed it down on Skinhead’s skull – he subsided like a limp blancmange.
Ash said: ‘Back off, Ruth, I can handle it,’ while Greaseball tried to gouge out his eye.
Attila broke free of Harry’s grip, flicked HG aside like a gnat. He pressed something on the glove, and tiny blades unsheathed like claws at the tip of each finger.
God knows what films he’d been watching. Probably Enter the Dragon.
Then Cedric arrived, hefting a spit and yelling a war cry which sounded like Aiieeoolii! Attila’s glove was evil, but it didn’t have the reach of spit or claymore. Outnumbered and outgunned, he sprinted for the door. Greaseball wriggled free and followed him. Footsteps pounded across the hall. We heard the front door open, then the fog swallowed them.
Delphi dropped the claymore and ran to Harry.
‘What’ve you done to yourself?’ he said.
‘Stage blood – I’m fine – your face –!’
He was breathing hard and obviously in pain. Both HG and Ash had facial damage that would soon darken to bruises. Nobody cared.
When HG said, ‘Everyone all right?’ everyone said, ‘Yes.’ We all hugged each other a lot, even Morag. I think I wept a bit; I know Delphi did. Everyone said everyone else was wonderful. And meant it.
Then Morag started cleaning up Harry’s face and HG called a doctor from two villages away and Delphi explained again about the stage blood and how she’d summoned Cedric on the in-house phone before making her entrance – and could someone please let Fenny out? Ash and Cedric tied up Skinhead in case he came round, using handcuffs on his wrists. (‘Good thing I’ve got these,’ Cedric said. ‘Don’t get to use them much up here, worst luck.’) Dorian wandered into the middle of things and, once he had grasped what had happened, accused his father of deliberately excluding him, as if he’d been left out of a particularly good party. HG said his being left out was the one good thing about the whole business. I grabbed a chance to tell Dorian how brave and supercool his dad had been, concluding, ‘See if Joshua Thingummy-Wotsit can match that.’ We all had several restorative drinks.
Jules and Sandy came back with Sting, mortified to have missed the fight and saying they couldn’t find the enemy in the fog. Weather conditions also slowed down the arrival of the police and the doctor, who finally showed up about two hours later. Harry had several stitches in his face and was escorted off by the police to make formal statements in protective custody.
‘You going to write about all this?’ HG said, by way of farewell.
Harry’s grin was uncomfortable; his face had swollen up. ‘Eventually. But don’t worry: it’s a wrench, but I’ll leave you out. If that’s what you want. I owe you that much.’
‘That’s what I want.’
Hesitantly, they shook hands.
‘You were a good butler,’ HG said. ‘We’ll miss you.’
Ash and I both said, ‘Good luck.’ There were more hugs.
Delphi said, ‘Harry . . .’
Harry said, ‘Delphi . . .’
And: ‘You’re a star. You really are.’
Then the police dragged him off to be protected and there wasn’t time for any more.
The superintendent left considerably later, having collected statements from all and sundry and arrested Skinhead, who had come round and was deeply pissed off. The humiliation of being taken out by two women, one of whom was over sixty, so demoralised him that he decided his tough-guy cred was gone for good and finally pleaded guilty to everything. Our friend Taggart treated us with the mixture of suspicion and respect any cop would feel for a household which can produce an antique skeleton and a clutch of fascist thugs in the same week. He left people to assist Jules and Sandy in watching the castle in case Attila & co. came back, but there was no sign of them. We all talked things over several times and then sat down to a rather casual dinner – Cedric’s equilibrium had been seriously ruffled – before heading early to bed.
‘I’ve got Fenny,’ Delphi said, ‘and I’m going to lock my door. You never know: they might get past the police guard. In films, psychopaths always do.’
‘This is real life,’ I pointed out. ‘Though sometimes I wonder.’
‘You can stay with me,’ Delphi offered, ‘if you’re nervous.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll take care of Ruth,’ Ash said.
We were in the purple gallery at the time. Delphi, on her way out, turned on her heel, gave him a glare, said, ‘Excuse me,’ and dragged me to one side.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t see why you should have all the fun,’ I said.
‘ME? I mean . . .’ she lowered her voice. ‘Me? You’re the one who has HG trying to get off with you, and practically every guy in the place pouring out his heart to you, on account of you being such a good listener, while all I do is shag the butler – who isn’t actually a butler anyway. Ash isn’t remotely your type—’
‘You always object to my type.’
‘—and he’s gay.’
‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ I said.
‘Maybe he . . . he shops on both sides of the street. That’s a situation you don’t want to get into. Some irate ex-boyfriend could come crawling out of the woodwork and turn really nasty—’
‘Go to bed,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long day.’
Reluctantly, she went. ‘In the morning,’ she admonished, ‘you tell me everything. Right?’
‘I promise.’
Ash walked me to my door. ‘She looks out for you,’ he said.
‘And I for her.’
‘Mm. I like that.’
There was something in his tone which made me say, ‘Didn’t anyone ever look out for you?’
‘My elder brother.’ I’d opened the door. He hesitated to follow me, till I smiled.
‘Where is he now?’
‘He died when I was sixteen. Car accident.’
‘Was that why . . . ?’
‘Why I got interested in the afterlife? No. I always was.’ He put his arms around me. It felt right, as if I’d been waiting for this for a very long time. ‘Let’s leave my life story for the moment. I know it all anyway, so it’s dull to go through it again. You blamed me for not kissing you.’
‘Not blamed, exactly . . .’
‘I was hoping to make up for that.’
In due course, inevitably, it was morning. But it was Sunday morning, which is in a different league from other mornings. I didn’t have to get up, Ash didn’t have to get up. On Sundays, he assured me, well-behaved Scottish ghosts take the morning off and go to church, on account of being good Presbyterians. If Delphi knocks on my door, I thought, I definitely won’t answer. I need to catch up on sleep.
Some of the time, we slept.
‘What will HG say?’ Ash asked at one point.
‘HG must’ve dished out a hell of a lot of kisses over the years,’ I said. ‘He’s not going to miss that one. Or want it back.’
‘He’s not getting it back . . .’
Eventually, we went downstairs just before lunch. Nigel had returned, very pl
eased with himself for having tracked down the Courtney DNA (though it would take a few days for the testing to be completed) and duly shocked by the tale of our adventures. The fog had lifted long before, and the police were still searching for Attila and Greaseball; they hadn’t gone back to their rooms in the village or been seen by anyone since rushing out of the castle after the fight.
‘I’m not going on a search party for them,’ Delphi announced.
In the afternoon, she and I retired to her room, where she talked about Harry and I talked about Ash. The trade-off that’s part of being female. It’s like holiday snaps: you bore me with yours, I’ll bore you with mine. Only if you’re real best friends you don’t get bored, whether it’s holiday pix or men.
‘Is Ash serious about you?’ Delphi wanted to know. ‘You’re serious, I can tell. You always are.’
‘Bit early to say.’ I mustn’t spoil the moment by worrying about the future.
Anyway, he’d already talked about things we would do back in London . . .
‘What about you and Harry?’
‘Oh no. No, of course not. It was just a quickie. Ships that collide in the night – and sink. That sort of thing.’
She added, belatedly, ‘I don’t even have his number.’
‘You could call the Indy.’
‘I’m not going chasing after him! He’s not even good-looking. He’s got sandy hair, and he’s a bloody journalist. Can you imagine us having a high-profile celebrity wedding?’
‘Aha,’ I said. ‘So you’re thinking about marriage.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Later that evening, the police called to tell us they’d arrested Greaseball. He was trying to hitch a lift on the road out of Lochnabu, covered in mud and apparently very scared, though it wasn’t clear what of.
We buried Elton in the garden, with Sandy reading from the ballad of Beth Gelert, though it wasn’t entirely appropriate, and Dougal McDougall playing the bagpipes. (It didn’t sound anything like the ones I’d heard in the wee small hours.) Delphi wept into Fenny’s fur and Sting looked lost without his brother, glancing round every few minutes as if expecting him to be there. I suppose it’s the same with animals as with people, only we’re supposed to understand, though of course we didn’t. HG planted a Peace rose on top of the grave.