‘That will make it too heavy to make it to orbit,’ said Rocco. ‘It won’t follow its planned trajectory and its automated flight termination system will blow it up.’
‘Don’t you see, that’s exactly what Mitford wants?’ Ruby’s voice was contracted with emotion as she climbed down from the fence. ‘He’ll die up there but that won’t make any difference because he’ll have ceased to exist. And so will all of us.’
A spark ignited beneath the Ariane rocket, followed by a fireball, silent at first and then an intense roar as the sound waves reached the witnesses.
‘So this is the end of the line for half of the world?’ shouted Ratty above the relentless thunder. ‘Quite a turn-up. Not something we expected.’
A wide grin appeared on Rocco’s face. He made no attempt to hide it, and seemed to relish the effect it was having upon his companions who were having difficulty enough in coming to terms with their erasure from history without having to cope with a rocket scientist who had gone insane under the pressure of the situation. When the smile burst into a full scale laugh, Ruby slapped him on the cheek.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that since I first met you!’ she yelled.
‘Relax guys,’ screamed Rocco amid his own manic, uncontrollable giggles. ‘Enjoy the fireworks. Everything will work out just fine.’
The Ariane rocket had now cleared the tower and was accelerating in an arc that took it out over the Atlantic. Ruby, Ratty, Charlie and the Patient clung to hope, figuring that a rocket that still burned still had a chance of success. The powerful engine and its twin solid fuel boosters could surely cope with an unexpected hitchhiker. Computers would counteract the drag and alter the course accordingly. Somehow it would reach its designated orbit.
Lady Ballashiels was silently resigned to her fate, meditating calmly as she watched the spectacle.
Rocco snorted into his hands, attempting feebly to suppress his laughing fit.
A piece fell from the Ariane. Through the heat haze it was indistinct, but the flash that it created in the ribbon of fire beneath the rocket was unmistakeable. An audible gasp erupted from all who witnessed it. Had they just seen the demise of Mitford? Had he been shaken from his shackles and tumbled directly into the intense fire, incinerated in a moment, high above the Atlantic? Those who yearned for a miracle drew strength from that incident. Mitford’s mass was no longer affecting the airflow, speed and direction of the rocket. There was a chance it could recover and still make it to orbit.
Ruby found herself hugging Ratty so tight that he could barely breathe. Charlie began yelling,
‘Go baby, go!’
But the rocket was off-course. It was too low to reach orbital velocity. Mission control was out of options. With no warning, the trajectory of white smoke ended with a dazzling explosion, and the rocket rained down upon the ocean in a million fragments.
Ruby let go of Ratty and stared at Rocco, as if appalled that he had made it to heaven with her, especially when she had never believed in any kind of afterlife in the first place. Everyone pinched themselves and each other, unsure whether their unexpected conscious reality was a permanent fixture or a temporary blip. Charlie’s attempt to pinch Lady Ballashiels was met with a firm slap across his cheek.
‘How dare you, boy?’ she screeched. ‘Keep your gelatinous hands off me. I don’t even know who you are. Or you, for that matter,’ she added, looking at the guffawing Rocco. ‘And if you don’t stop laughing, young man, I will –’
‘Mater, calm yourself. We’re alive. I think that’s more important than formal introductions.’
Rocco’s laughter slowly faded as he brought himself under control.
‘Madam, my name is Doctor Rocco Strauss,’ he announced, with only the slightest of giggles.
‘Charlie,’ said Charlie. ‘How’s it hangin’?’
‘What rot,’ the old lady replied. ‘I don’t need you here. Go back to whatever you were doing.’
When the last of the fragments had fallen from the sky and the smoke began to dissipate in the sea breeze, Rocco cleared his throat and spoke without the distraction of accompanying laughter.
‘Sorry about all that,’ he said. ‘Always been a bit of a practical joker, haven’t I?’
Part of the assembled group nodded reluctantly.
‘In what way is the explosion we have just witnessed a practical joke?’ asked the Patient.
‘We are not amused,’ said Ruby.
‘It wasn’t a joke on you. The joke was on Mitford. You see,’ explained Rocco, ‘Mitford got half of what he wanted. The half in which his life was ended, and all the guilt and crap he was carrying on his shoulders is gone. But he didn’t get the other half. He didn’t get to stop Keo from launching.’
‘What rot. We just saw Keo explode, boy,’ said Lady Ballashiels.
‘No, we saw a rocket explode. Not Keo. Keo still sits safely on the other launch pad. I couldn’t tell the team at launch control about Mitford because I didn’t know who might be on his payroll. I couldn’t alert anyone to the threat he posed, but I’ve been at ESA for over ten years, I have contacts, obviously. I got the launch pads swapped on technical grounds. Whoever Mitford had on the inside didn’t get to him in time to tell him of the last minute change of plan.’
‘That somewhat costly firework we just witnessed was not Keo?’ asked Ratty.
‘No. Keo is still safe. It’s there, on the other pad.’
‘Does that really mean the world is safe, then? Nothing bad is going to happen?’ asked Ruby.
‘Keo will launch,’ said Rocco. ‘Dalí and Ratty’s grandmother will see the message in the sky in1937, at the ruins of Opoul castle near Perpignan in France. It will definitely happen there, and not in our lifetimes.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ asked Ruby.
‘Because I’ve added my own message to the Keo database asking the recipients to do precisely that.’
‘You asked them to send a message to Dalí in 1937?’ asked Ruby.
‘Just as an insurance policy. We never knew why the message appeared so early in the first place. Now we can be sure that it will happen. I mean, will have happened. Or something.’
‘But does that not mean,’ began the Patient, ‘if I may extrapolate the situation, that you, Rocco, have become the person responsible for ensuring the Second World War went ahead?’
Heads turned to him, accusingly.
‘Hey, guys, don’t look at me like that. You only exist thanks to me.’
‘And you only exist thanks to yourself,’ said Ruby. ‘Isn’t that a paradox?’
‘True. Guess I might vanish in a puff of smoke after all. But listen, nothing bad will happen now, because all the bad things have already happened. The war was a terrible wrong for the world, but to undo all of its consequences is an even greater evil. I had to leave history untouched.’ The intense stares heading his way caused him to deflect the subject. ‘Now this is over, anyone interested in my next project?’ He ignored the shaking heads and continued. ‘The millionaire priest in France. Saunière. Died a century ago without revealing where he found his money. Or where he left it. It’s a huge conspiracy, of course, and I’m going to crack it.’
A Mona Lisa smile inched across the face of Lady Ballashiels.
‘You know the story?’ asked Rocco.
‘The legend is not entirely unfamiliar to me,’ she replied.
‘Then you’ll know there’s a fortune waiting to be found.’
Lady Ballashiels looked down, saying nothing further.
‘A fortune?’ muttered Ratty, his eyes widening, not realising he had said it aloud.
***
Lady Ballashiels fussed with the reclining chair, trying to adjust it to a more dignified position, and preferably one that would enable her to sip her cocktail safely. She had been the last of the group – with the exception of Charlie who had embarked on a doomed mission to find a donut store in Kourou – to arrive at the poolside bar and the first to shatter the otherwise triumphant moo
d.
‘Call this a gin and tonic?’ she whined. ‘Tastes almost neat. Bloody waiter chap didn’t even measure the units. And he certainly took his time to prepare this atrocity.’
‘Relax, Mater. We have all the time in the world,’ said Ratty. ‘Stop fussing and sit down properly.’
‘Can’t get comfortable on this bloody chair, boy.’
‘Take your towel thingy away,’ Ratty suggested. ‘Probably creased.’
‘Not my towel,’ she snapped.
‘If it’s not your towel then it’s not your seat, Lady Ballashiels,’ said Ruby.
‘What rot. These chairs all belong to the hotel, girl.’
‘Yes, but perhaps some unfortunate fellow was sitting there before we tootled on down here,’ said Ratty. ‘They may want their seat back.’
Lady Ballashiels stood up and whipped the towel off the chair, throwing it disdainfully upon the ground, and revealing that a paperback book hidden beneath it had been the source of her discomfort.
‘Problem solved, Mater. A book always makes for an uncomfortable behind. As I often found at school when I was due for a beating.’
‘You were beaten at school, boy?’ asked Lady Ballashiels.
‘Frequently, Mater.’
‘Good. Glad to hear they haven’t gone soft.’ She picked up the paperback from her chair. ‘What a ghastly tome,’ she exclaimed, looking at the cover and then holding it at arm’s length in disgust. ‘Confessions from a Holiday Camp. Ugh.’
‘May I see?’ asked the Patient. He put his cocktail down and walked towards Lady Ballashiels. He was still a couple of steps away when she flicked the book at his chest. He caught the spiralling pages and returned to his chair.
‘It’s that Timothy Lea writer chappy, isn’t it?’ asked Ratty.
‘Part of the same series of books in the gamekeeper’s cottage,’ said the Patient. ‘This is a copy from the same era. An original.’
‘Just put the frightful rag in the bin, boy,’ said Lady Ballashiels.
The Patient shook his head. ‘I fear that would not be propitious,’ he said, flicking through its pages. ‘Ratty, we have a problem.’
‘Can’t decide whether to have a pina colada or a caipirinha, old coconut?’
‘No. This volume is not just from the same era as the books in the cottage. It is from the same set. It is a book from the former gamekeeper’s collection.’
‘What rot,’ announced Lady Ballashiels. ‘How would that rapscallion’s literature make it all the way to South America?’
‘It does seem an unlikely coincidence,’ said Ruby.
‘How can you tell, old raspberry? Did the blighter write his name in them?’
‘Each of the books in the collection of the gamekeeper had been read in a particular way. Instead of using a bookmark he would fold the corner of a page as a marker. His books were full of such folds.’
‘I hate to inform you, Patient chappy, that such a system of bookmarking is, to my everlasting regret, common practice amongst the relatively small sector of the great unwashed who possess something akin to basic literacy.’
‘I am aware of that,’ replied the Patient. ‘But how many of them fold the bottom corner of the page, rather than the top? And how many do so by creating a perfect right isosceles triangle every time? See?’He showed everyone the neat creases that scarred many of the book’s pages. ‘Obviously this does not constitute valid evidence to anyone who is unfamiliar with the rest of the collection back at Stiperstones, but I can assure you that this looks to be an indication of the presence of the gamekeeper, here in Kourou.’
‘Even so, it seems a little unlikely that out of all the bars in all the hotels in this town, that Lady Ballashiels should sit on this man’s book,’ said Ruby.
‘I conject that the presence of this book could be deliberate,’ said Ratty, paying no attention to his mother’s shaking head and tut-tutting. ‘He is here, and he knows we are here, and he wants us to know that he knows that we are here. It might be his way of warning us to keep away from him. Staking his territory with the towel and wotnot. Psychological doodahs and all that.’
‘What’s the big deal about some gamekeeper?’ asked Rocco.
‘The covinous rogue used to be a servant at the manor,’ explained Ratty. ‘But like all the others he must have been secretly in the payroll of Mitford.’
‘You really think he’s here?’ asked Rocco. ‘That’s bad. That’s very bad. The Keo rocket still hasn’t launched. This guy could still stop it. It could be Mitford’s last stand from beyond the grave. I might not get to solve the Saunière mystery after all.’
‘Looks like this frightful business isn’t over, then,’ said Ratty. ‘Such a pity. I was looking forward to going home and taking Mater to see Billy Elliot.’
‘I saw Billy Elliot,’ said a stranger, standing behind Ratty. ‘Ten years ago. Prison film club. Loved it. But then, books and films were the only things I had to live for. I see you have been perusing my favourite Timothy Lea novel.’
Ratty looked back at the man’s face, but he had already recognised the voice. The last of the old gang of servants. The rugged lines in his skin had always been there, as if his strong jaw were held up by tight strings around his head. Everything about his powerful demeanour seemed to signify that this was a man destined for life outdoors, and yet he had been forced to spend half of his life in sunless incarceration. The final rogue in Ratty’s personal gallery of wayward staff. Huxtable.
‘You!’ screeched Lady Ballashiels.
‘Remember me, then, do you? The name’s Brian. Brian Huxtable for those of you who haven’t made my acquaintance before. Pleased to meet you all. And from Her Ladyship, of course, I hope to receive a special welcome.’
He advanced, arms outstretched, towards Lady Ballashiels.
‘Kill him, boy! Get him out of here! Throw his body in the sea!’ she shouted, squirming in her seat, agitated and terrified.
Rocco and Ratty sprang out of their seats, each taking one of the gamekeeper’s burly arms.
‘Don’t you think killing him might be construed as a tad excessive, Mater? We have him now. Let’s just tie the old green-fingered chap to a tree until the rocket goes up.’
‘After what happened today,’ began Rocco, ‘I am sorry to tell you that the Keo rocket must inevitably face a considerable delay. The Ariane launch system is usually very reliable. There has not been a catastrophic failure in the last fifty-five launches, until this one. They will have to analyse the data and learn lessons from the incident before they can risk another launch. It will take months. And even if we can do our bit to keep the rocket safe from interference in all that time, there is still the possibility of technical failure or of human foul-ups on the day.’
‘What are we to do with this scoundrel for all that time?’ asked Ratty.
‘Just get him out of my sight!’ shouted Lady Ballashiels.
But Huxtable was grinning. ‘Lady Ballashiels … or shall I call you Sarah? Been a long time, hasn’t it?’
‘You say another word and I’ll order them to slit your devious throat,’ she growled.
‘They won’t do that, because if they do they’ll never get to hear what I have to say, and I think they’re going to be very interested in my story. About the true reason you disappeared in 1975.’
Lady Ballashiels sank back in her chair. The fight was gone from within her. Huxtable was trouble. No one present could realistically be expected to cause the man physical harm and she didn’t have the emotional strength to try to stop him.
‘You’re not here about the rocket, are you?’ she sighed. ‘Just tell me what you want from me. Let’s bloody well get this over.’
Huxtable shuffled out of the loosened grip of his captors and walked to the bar, returning after a short time with a beer. ‘French lager. Never could stand this stuff. No good asking for a pint of best bitter round these parts, though.’ He pulled up a chair besides Lady Ballashiels and sat down. She refused to lo
ok him in the eye when he stared at her. ‘Still got that same cute nose,’ he said. ‘And those curves –’
‘I say,’ cut in Ratty, ‘no need for familiarity and all that how’s your father, Huxtable. Most inappropriate.’
‘You really don’t know, do you?’
‘How does a man ever know what he does not know?’ asked the Patient.
‘Mmm. Justin, your mother and I go way back,’ said Huxtable.
‘Well, obviously,’ replied Ratty. ‘You were a servant. You carried out her daily instructions.’
‘I suppose you could say that, in a manner of speaking,’ the gamekeeper agreed, grinning.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ burst out Lady Ballashiels, ‘just bloody well get on with it and tell them that we had an affair.’
Ratty almost dropped his glass. Huxtable drank deeply from his. He now had the rapt attention of all present. ‘Well that seems to have broken the ice,’ he announced.
‘Now say whatever else is on your mind and bloody well get out,’ snarled Lady Ballashiels.
‘Well, as Sarah has just mentioned, we had a little something going on between us way back when. A fling. A romance. Some might even call it love.’
‘Love? What rot.’
‘Whatever,’ said Huxtable, ‘but it was proper intimate stuff, if you know what I mean. Filling in where His Lordship was lacking.’
‘You mean, he’s my real Pater?’ asked Ratty, tearfully.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, boy. You were already at boarding school by this time.’
‘And I think any boy of mine would have been a little more, how can I put this … physical,’ said Huxtable.
‘Physical?’ asked Ratty.
‘More of a man. A real man. You know the sort.’
Ratty’s attempt to adopt a more manly pose failed to have the desired effect.
‘Anyway,’ Huxtable continued, ‘love or not, I paid dearly for our relationship.’
‘And you think I didn’t, too? Listen, boy,’ she turned towards her son, ‘I want you to know that this was just a bit of summer madness. Everyone was doing it back then. The concept of free love was finally reaching the shires. But I loved your father and tried to cool Huxtable’s ardour. When I told him it was over, he threatened to tell His Lordship.’
The Dali Diaries (The Ballashiels Mysteries Book 2) Page 27