He felt a powerful desire to return home. A chance to be reunited with his mother after so many years was not something to be delayed, but he was also concerned about Ruby and the Patient. He had no way of knowing if the constable would be successful in freeing them from the devious butler. Having been forced – by the absence of gin at the precise spot where the policeman had dropped him off – to walk to civilisation, Stuart would have no way to locate him either. In spite of the constable’s instructions to the contrary, and even though the thought of his mother travelling to Stiperstones and finding him absent made his stomach tie itself in knots, Ratty felt a far deeper duty in his heart. He had no option but to return to Figueres and do whatever he could to help his friends.
Close to the beach was a colourful parade of shops. An overflowing bazaar stocked nearly everything Ratty felt he would need for his disguise: wig; moustache; fake scar. At a nearby gentleman’s clothing store he bought a suit that was reminiscent of the effete finery that defined his youth. The old leather jacket went in the bin on the way to a bookshop where he purchased a dozen copies of a small, square and chunky volume about the life and works of Salvador Dalí, which he squeezed into the dozens of pockets of his utility jacket which he put on beneath his shirt. His oddly lumpy appearance would be explained away, he decided, by the cover story that he was a tourist from the United States, and, in order to make that story more convincing, he bought a rather vulgar baseball cap and put it on his head at a most unsightly angle. A half-hour taxi ride took him to the centre of Figueres and he walked through the narrow streets to the Dalí museum and surveyed the scene.
All seemed normal: the line of tourists waiting to get their museum tickets; street entertainers making some kind of music for their captive queuing audience; waiters hurrying between tightly packed tables in the square. He thought about Grant, and wondered if he had managed to get his unctuous hands on Ruby and the Patient, or whether they were sticking to their original plan of entering the museum with the other tourists and hiding out in the Mae West installation until the place closed for the night. He walked along the line of visitors to make sure his friends were not still outside. No sign of them. Either Grant had done his dirty work, or they were in the museum somewhere. Ratty joined the end of the line and began the long, slow process of shuffling towards the entrance to buy a ticket.
Once inside, he fought his way through the throng to the Mae West room and peeked through the spyhole Ruby had told him about, to peer into the hidden chamber at the back of the room. No one was inside. He spent an hour checking all of the rooms and corridors of the museum. Now came the decision he had hoped to avoid making: should he try to bluff his way into the administrative offices of the museum where he and the Patient had been locked up and where the Dalí papers were kept? Security cameras pointed at him from every corner in the public parts of the museum, but he knew that the environment was slightly more relaxed away from the works of art and the tourists with their chocolate-covered fingers and tendency to sneeze.
Did he really possess the courage to go through with this? Parts of him were screaming advice in his inner ear, and that advice was to retreat. Get to a safe place. Do anything but show his face in the museum. He shook the voices from his head and breathed in a lungful of courage. His friends were in trouble. He was going in.
There was a guard at the door to the administrative offices of the Dalí museum. He was armed with a gun in a holster on his right hip. Ratty knew that cunning and intellect were the only advantages on his side. He walked around the corner, out of sight of the guard, then sprinted back to the entrance and tugged at the guard’s sleeve urgently.
‘Something’s happened!’ he shouted, conscious that his script was diabolical. ‘Round the corner! You have to go and help!’
The guard lolloped towards the direction in which Ratty was pointing. Ratty slipped into the administrative offices and ran up the stairs. There was no sign anywhere that Ruby and the Patient were here. He peeked into rooms, opened cupboard doors, and even made it as far as the still-smouldering turret room. As he ran back down the stairs he smacked into someone coming the other way, both bodies spinning and falling onto the steps. Ratty instinctively offered the other person assistance in standing and found himself face to face with the old man. A suitcase and one of Dalí’s mannequin sculptures lay on the stairs next to him, and Ratty bent to pick the items up and hand them back.
‘Off somewhere nice?’ he asked.
‘I am finding things have become rather out of control around here of late,’ said the old man. ‘Your appalling disguise can fool no one but a fool. The Ballashiels curse upon the world has become too much for me. Your grandmother, your mother and now you, all blundering your way across this planet with no regard for the consequences, no understanding of the devastation that your family has triggered. I have waited. I have been patient. I have endured sorrows and agonies beyond anything you could imagine. Do you have any idea what seventy-two years of pain feels like?’
‘Have you tried aspirin, old chap?’
‘I’m talking about the pain that lodges in my soul. The pain I was born with. The weight of the world that bears upon my shoulders. It is guilt. It is a yearning for a world that never was. It is a passion to find a way to create the world that should have been.’
‘I’m awfully sorry, I don’t think we were ever formally introduced. Who exactly are you?’
‘That is a subject best avoided,’ replied the old man.
‘No one seems to know your name, old chap, but it would be appropriate under the circs if you could tell me. You know, given what you appear to have done to Mater for all those years.’
The old man stood still and silent. He looked Ratty in the eye.
‘You really want to know?’
‘If it’s not too much of a kerfuffle for you.’
‘My name is Mitford.’
‘Mitford, eh? Any relation to the Mitfords?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Of course. The name is the clue. Silly me. Granny was very close to the Mitfords back in the day. Perhaps she knew your father?’
‘I am named after my mother. I never met my father.’
‘Gosh, what rotten luck. Do you have a Christian name?’
‘I was not baptised, but my first name is Alois.’
The name connected with nothing in Ratty’s mind.
‘If you’re a Mitford, and the Mitfords and Granny were pals, is this whole mystery a family feud?’
‘In a sense, but it is far deeper than that. I really don’t have time to discuss it.’
Mitford started to walk away, heaving the suitcase and the mannequin with him.
‘Slow down, old boy, you’ll do your back in if you lug them like that,’ said Ratty, chasing after him.
‘With so little time remaining, the state of my spine has absolutely no relevance. Leave me alone.’
‘So Granny did something that peeved you?’
Mitford stopped and faced Ratty once again.
‘Look, your grandmother made the greatest mistake in the history of mankind, and I am one of millions who must bear the burden that she created.’
‘And this mistake was something that happened when she came to Catalonia with Dalí in 1937?’
‘It is.’
‘And it is something to do with the Keo time capsule?’
‘It is.’
‘And it is also connected to the room that she locked up at Stiperstones?’
‘Most certainly.’
‘And whatever she locked away was the thing that Mother found in 1975 and caused her to come here and never return?’
‘Correct.’
‘And why are you admitting all this, old boy?’
‘Because nothing matters any more. Keo finally has a launch date. The pain of my life and that of the world of the past seventy years will shortly be healed. There is nothing any Ballashiels family member can do to screw things up this time.’
‘
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, old fellow. I happen to be quite adept in the screwing up department, don’t you know!’
‘No, Your Lordship. Even at your most incompetent you will not be able to destroy the world that I am about to restore to its health.’
Ratty was unsure whether that was intended as a compliment or not, so he let it pass.
‘I came here for my friends,’ he said. ‘What have you done to them?’
‘Your former butler is taking care of them. There is nothing you or I can do for them, and soon it will not matter anyway. Perhaps he has failed, just as Constable Stuart appears to have done, but it really is of no importance. Look for them if you want. Kill Grant if you prefer. It makes no difference to me or to this world.’
‘Right-o. Before I bash off to find them, just tell me this. Which Mitford was your mother?’
‘The most tragic one. The saddest of all the Mitford stories. The one whose life was blighted due to your grandmother’s decision. My poor mother was Unity.’
‘Unity? Didn’t she –’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘And doesn’t that mean you could be the son of –’
‘Yes, it does.’
The old man looked to the floor, as if shamed.
‘Goodness me,’ whispered Ratty, after a suitably lengthy and sympathetic pause.
‘Go look for your friends. Go to England. Go anywhere. Nothing you ever do or have ever done is important. Now just leave me.’
The old man’s Mitford ancestry intrigued and horrified Ratty. It sent shivers through him and gave him all the incentive he needed to do as the man wished and get away. No wonder his mother had been imprisoned for so long, he realised, as he scampered along a hollow corridor. A man with genes inherited from such a tainted paternal source was not going to be sympathetic to the needs of any individual. But he had to overlook that; he had to forget his mother and the copies of the Dalí diaries that the constable had stashed somewhere in the building. The only thing that was of immediate concern was the safety of Ruby and the Patient. Grant was clearly a bad egg, a rotten apple. He might be subjecting his friends to all kinds of ghastliness. But where? What was it Ruby had said about getting on with her life? Something about going flying in a tunnel. Back in Empuriabrava. He cursed silently in Latin. By coming to Figueres he had wasted time. Now it could be too late to save them. He ran outside, looking for a taxi that wasn’t being driven by any current, or former, employees of his family.
***
‘Volamos?’ asked the sign above her head. ‘Shall we fly?’ Ruby gritted her teeth, determined to fly, adamant that normality would return to her life and her schedule. Figueres, the Dalí museum and all the odd and unsettling things related to it were ten miles away now. It felt sufficiently far to provide a buffer of safety. She led the Patient up the steps to the main level of the wind tunnel building at Empuriabrava. The cavernous room housed a vertical tube in its centre, made of thick, reinforced glass, surrounded by an amphitheatre of café tables from where viewers could enjoy watching people floating, flying and performing acrobatics in the wind. The tube disappeared below the floor level where it curved back towards the immense fans that provided the wind. It also disappeared above the ceiling level, seeming to rise to a dark and forbidding infinity.
‘You look good in your flight suit,’ said the Patient. ‘I think it suits you.’
‘And you look exactly the same as you always do,’ Ruby replied. ‘This blue flying gear is just like your normal outfit.’
‘When will your students arrive?’ he asked.
‘They’re flying in the slot after us. They’ll be here shortly.’
A flight instructor tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Ready to fly?’ he asked. Ruby looked round to see a handsome young Spaniard, dressed in an instructor’s flight suit, smiling at her. ‘My name is Fred. I’ll be giving you a short training session downstairs in a moment. Come and join me in the briefing room in five minutes.’
Fred went to talk to someone else, leaving Ruby and the Patient with little to do but sit and watch the entertainment in the glass tube. A young girl was experiencing her first flying lesson, learning to balance on the jet of air before the instructor took her spiralling to the top of the wind tunnel, out of sight of those in the café. There were gasps of shock from the viewers as she vanished from sight, followed by audible collective relief when the girl returned safely with a huge smile on her wind-blown face.
‘Excuse me, terribly sorry to interrupt. My name is Grant. I wonder if I could trouble you both to come with me?’
The hushed voice was scarcely audible above the hubbub of the busy café and the muffled noise of the wind tunnel. Ruby glanced up to see a rounded face leaning down from a position that was rather too close to her own, his piggy eyes staring at her and yet focussed on an undefined point in the distance, almost as if he were peering through to another time than the present.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, leaning back from him defensively.
‘There is a matter of the gravest significance that we need to discuss,’ he replied. ‘Time is short, I am afraid. So if you would be awfully kind and follow me?’
‘Take a seat, then. Talk,’ said Ruby.
‘Not in this establishment, madam.’
‘Why not?’ challenged Ruby. His excessive politeness provoked discomfort and suspicion within her.
‘Please,’ whispered Grant, leaning closer to her in order to maintain his intrusion of her personal space, ‘you must come with me. Now.’
‘When were you born?’ asked the Patient.
‘I’m sorry?’ Grant stood up straight again, tripped by the unexpected tangent of the question.
‘What year was it?’ continued the Patient.
‘What has that to do with anything, sir?’
‘Are you working for the old man at the museum?’
‘He is not my employer in any strictly contractual sense, no.’
‘But you are part of his organisation?’
‘Just come with me, if you would be so kind.’
‘I fear,’ said the Patient, ‘that your answers to my questions have failed to give me the confidence I need in order to commit to embarking on any kind of journey with you.’
‘Then perhaps this will provide the answers you need?’ Grant pulled out a small handgun from his inner pocket, just far enough for them to see without attracting attention in the café.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ shrieked Ruby.
‘Quiet, madam, please. Just follow me out of the building and everything will be fine. You have my word as a gentleman’s gentleman.’
Ruby and the Patient exchanged glances, trying to read each other’s intentions without speaking. Ruby drew strength from the calm serenity exhibited by the Patient. She felt safe in his presence.
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ she told Grant.
‘In that case you must listen very carefully,’ he replied. ‘In the late Seventies I was removed from my post at Stiperstones Manor and served thirty years in a British jail for my beliefs. So I am asking you both very nicely to come with me and do not allow me to utilise the burning rage that three decades of incarceration has produced.’
‘Three decades?’ echoed the Patient. ‘I was falsely imprisoned for more than four decades. I used my time constructively. I studied philosophy, medicine, history, languages. I emerged smiling and content with myself and the world. You could have done likewise. Your anger will serve no purpose, for you cannot change the past.’
‘I don’t need to be a goody two-shoes like you, sir. For you are wrong. Things can be undone. My past can be changed.’
Ruby and the Patient looked at each other again to confirm their mutual feelings that Grant was crazy. The former butler released the safety catch on his pistol and pressed the weapon into Ruby’s back. The Patient nodded at her and stood up. Without further hesitation Ruby stood also, accepting defeat.
Grant nudg
ed them towards the staircase. No one in the café paid any attention to them, such was the complete distraction of the spectacle of human flight within the wind tunnel. The arrival of a group of young people temporarily obstructed the staircase. Ruby recognised her archaeology students, about ten of them, full of excitement and bravado for their upcoming flights. When they recognised Ruby they ran to her and attempted to kiss her in greeting, not noticing the gun held against her back.
Finding himself in the midst of a crowd, Grant slipped the gun into his pocket and stepped away from his would-be captives. He was woefully outnumbered. The current flyers in the wind tunnel finished their session and exited. The Patient saw an opportunity. He grabbed Ruby’s hand and led her to the entrance to the wind tunnel. It wasn’t yet their turn, and they had skipped the instructor’s briefing, but the Patient felt strongly that the public exposure provided by the glass tube would make it impossible for Grant to continue his attack upon them. Grant needed them to be secluded, shielded from view, to be able to use his weapon. There was nowhere more public than the tunnel. It even carried a video feed to a plasma screen on the outside of the building.
Ruby attempted to protest at being thrown into the vortex, but the noise and the wind made impossible any kind of verbal communication. She felt herself being lifted high into the rushing air, and watched as the Patient attempted to orient himself to a position that afforded him a view of an exasperated-looking Grant. Balancing on the column of air was harder than it looked. She drifted towards the glass and had to put out her hands to arrest her forward momentum, which created more lift and sent her rocketing up to the roof where she panicked and placed her hands on her head, which reduced her lift and sent her plummeting towards the wire mesh that separated flyers from the source of the wind. She landed uncomfortably, bounced high as if in reduced gravity, and tried to achieve the kind of equilibrium that seemed to come so naturally to the Patient who was floating serenely beneath her.
The Dali Diaries (The Ballashiels Mysteries Book 2) Page 20