Tinplate
Page 19
‘You know what to do, don’t you Gus?’ He turned and gave me a weak smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not the lumbering idiot I no doubt look, old dear. I remember what you said.’
I patted his big hand, as he drove jerkily on towards Lulworth. What would I do without him? Everybody should have an occasional pain in the arse as their best friend. He dropped me off, as I’d asked him, at the end of the lane leading up to Doom Abbey.
‘I don’t like leaving you on your own,’ he muttered. ‘Ain’t right. And you should, at least, take in the diaries.’
I slammed my door and went round to his side. ‘Look, don’t argue. It’s righter for you to do what I’ve suggested, than for both of us to walk straight into the big spider’s web and give up our only bargaining point. You’re our only chance, so get going.’
He accepted the inevitable, and even spun the almost bald tyres of his car in his haste to be away. My only regret was that he wasn’t driving a Fomula One Lotus; I wanted him back in double, treble quick time. For stalling had never been my forte.
After he had bounced out of sight, diaries and all, I looked at my watch. Five minutes to go to the half hour since Treasure had called. I walked slowly, and to an innocent onlooker, I must have appeared as a leisurely, country-loving holiday-maker, with not a care in the world but his broken arm, how many skylarks would sing that day and how many Heinekens were on the cold shelf at the next hostelry. But in reality, if I wasn’t careful, I could very soon end up on a cold shelf of quite a different complexion. And maybe I wouldn’t be alone.
For once, the great door was open, like the jaws of a killer whale. I walked straight in and tried to remember everything I’d seen and read about the SAS. The trouble was, I couldn’t even remember what the initials stood for, let alone anything else.
He must have heard my footfalls, for his voice boomed out from down the passage on the left.
‘In the library, my friends. Do come in.’
I went on down, past the window I had Barclaycarded open (now repaired, I noticed) and stopped outside the second door on the right.
‘That’s it. Turn the handle, Mr Marklin, it won’t bite you.’
I did just that, and it didn’t. But the sight of the scenario inside the room scared me witless. Treasure was standing in front of the large, stone, open fireplace, holding that (to me) famous shotgun pointed at the settee, on which bound hand and foot, sat Deborah.
‘What, all alone, Mr Marklin? Or are your friends still outside?’ The gun quivered slightly in his grasp. ‘I would ask them to come in, if I were you, and bring the diaries with them.’
I cleared my throat before replying — the sign of a weak man, my mother used to maintain. I never did it normally. (But I don’t think not doing it necessarily makes you a strong man.)
‘I’m not you, Mr Treasure, and my friends aren’t outside. Nor are the diaries.’ If his eyes had had their way, I’d have been shot there and then. I went on apace. ‘I’ve come alone to arrange what you would know as a gentleman’s agreement first.’
‘You, a gentleman, Mr Marklin?’ His mouth laughed, but his eyes were grim.
‘Yes, I am, Mr Treasure. No power, no money, no old school tie, no heraldic signs, no history, no inheritance. Just what I stand up in — me. And part of that you fractured with your bloody bomb. But I reckon I’m more of a gentleman than you’ve ever been. For I don’t murder and I don’t steal and I don’t kidnap. I’m incredibly boring, and, on the whole, boringly honest.’
I could see he wouldn’t take too much more of this, but I had to spin it out, given the fact that a Ford Popular would never make Formula One with the best will in the world and Gus not driving.
He waved the shotgun towards me for an instant, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was, amazingly, still alive.
‘No, I’m not going to kill you yet, Mr Marklin. Not until I’ve heard your pathetic plan — your gentleman’s agreement.’ The barrels indicated a chair beside the settee. ‘Come and sit down where I can keep you in my sights.’
I moved across, reached out and touched Deborah’s shoulder as I went past. She whimpered, and her eyes were red-rimmed and pleading.
‘It’ll be all right, believe me,’ I whispered as I sat down, as much to convince myself as her.
‘Now we’re all comfortable I’ll tell you, Mr Marklin, what constitutes the action of a perfect gentleman in a predicament like yours and your former wife’s. You concede graciously, like a true English sportsman, and take your defeat like a man.’ He chuckled. ‘You must have learnt that at school, my dear fellow, didn’t you?’
He couldn’t have given me a better opening.
‘And what did you learn at school, Mr Treasure? Especially that fateful year during the war — 1944.’
His eyes blazed immediately, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. He tried to shift position. ‘Mr Marklin, I know you’re playing for time for some reason. I just hope you haven’t told the police, for I’m quite willing for us all to die together, if need be.’
‘No, I didn’t tell the police because I knew you were fanatical enough to do something like that after your little explosion at sea. But don’t change the subject.’ I was surprised at the firmness of my voice. ‘You kept a diary for 1944, didn’t you? And I don’t think it was destroyed by a German bomb, because it was the cause of everything, wasn’t it, Mr Treasure? And poor Veronica paid the price for finding it, didn’t she? What was so terrible in its childish pages?’
‘That’s no concern of yours. A diary is a personal record, not a public one.’
‘But you’ve made it a public one, haven’t you? Or rather, your wife did.’
The gun shook in his hand, and Deborah, not knowing what I was about, shot me a glance to shut me up.
‘So you have been doing a little reading, have you, Mr Marklin? I’m afraid it won’t aid you in any way. For neither you nor your ex-wife will go free until I have the diaries. Once that happens, that one diary will be reduced to ashes. Then it will be your word against mine. And I assure you once again, my word is worth a great deal in all the places where it really matters. I wouldn’t try to check it out if I were you.’
I looked at my watch. I still needed to play for time — that’s all I had on my side. ‘There’s still 1944, Mr Treasure. Your special diary.’
The gun quivered once more. I felt like imitating it, and I think I did, more than once.
‘Come on, Mr Marklin. Forget me. Let’s talk about you and Deborah. And come to think of it, Arabella, whom you’d better get over here fast, together with the diaries. And our little code of silence for the future. There’s so much for you …’
‘No,’ I interrupted, ‘let’s talk about that very important year of the war. The year of D-Day and the Allied landings, the vis and V2s. But more importantly, the year of the Dorniers.’ I watched his eyes, and went on. ‘The unmistakable drone of those German engines, the siren, perhaps, sounding too late for you to get to the school shelters. Do you remember, Mr Treasure … ?’
‘Be quiet. Damn you, be quiet.’ Treasure’s voice showed the first sign of uncertainty, the first shaft of fear.
‘No, I won’t be quiet. Any more than those bombs were quiet all those years ago. Those whistling, crunching, killing, metal containers of death and destruction …’
‘Shut up. Shut up! Or I’ll …’ His gun really shook in his hands now, and Deborah let out a scream, a horrible scream.
‘Do what he says,’ she cried, ‘or he’ll kill us. He’s mad. You’re just making him worse …’ She broke down and sobbed into the arm of the settee.
‘He won’t kill us,’ I said with more confidence than reality dictated. ‘He’s done enough killing, haven’t you, Mr Treasure?’
‘Be quiet. For God’s sake, be quiet.’ For the first time the timbre of Treasure’s voice began cracking.
I went on. ‘And those bombs. You’ll never forget those bombs, will you?’
He did not respond in
any way, almost as if he were going numb. I could not stop now. ‘They rained down on everything you loved: your school, your possessions, perhaps your favourite books and toys. And, in all probability, on your favourite people. Is that right, Mr Treasure?’
Again, no response. Deborah’s sobs were now like a child’s at the end of a bad dream, punctuated by sharp intakes of breath.
‘You saw your best friend killed, didn’t you? Your very best friend.’
Treasure slowly moved the line of the shotgun to the right. It was now pointing directly at me. I wondered how much longer I would have to wait. All I could do was keep my mind on the present, and that meant Treasure’s past.
‘What was his name, Mr Treasure,’ I continued, ‘from that roll-call of boys? Was it Julian? Or Simon? Or Matthew? Anthony, perhaps? John? Michael? Peter? Paul?’ At the last mentioned, Treasure shuddered, and moved towards me.
‘Shut up, I told you.’ I could see tears in his eyes. ‘Don’t you ever bring up his name again, do you hear?’
The muzzle was now uncomfortably near my vital parts. I prayed that Gus would not be much longer. For there was little joy in being shrewd in one’s guesses, if, as the royal family would put it, one was dead.
‘Tell me,’ I said, in an altogether more gentle and sympathetic tone (and that’s the prize coward in me getting the upper hand), ‘why Paul meant so very much to you?’
‘You’re far too intelligent not to know, Mr Marklin.’ A tear fell onto the waxed stock of the gun, and beaded instantly. ‘I loved him. I loved him. And he loved me. Can you understand that? The intensity of it, imprisoned as we were in that boarding school during the war. The intensity of being fourteen. He was all I thought of, every minute of every day …’
I considered jumping him — but only for a split second. For he was like a wounded bull, the more dangerous and unpredictable because of the pain. And I had a bloody great plaster.
‘But why did you kill your wife, whom you loved with just the same burning intensity, Mr Treasure? That I still don’t understand. The confession of your love for a boyhood friend surely was not motive for murder?’
‘That, sir,’ his voice now seemed to indicate a certain degree of recovery, ‘you will never understand. For you will never find the diary for 1944. Ever. Ever. Ever.’
He started to move back from me, and the gun’s aim was readjusted to Deborah once more. ‘Now I’ve had enough of this, Mr Marklin. I don’t care about your blundering friend, Gus Tribble, but I want Arabella here now, and with each and every diary.’ He accidentally banged the stock against the stone surround of the fireplace. ‘And I mean now, now, now,’ his voice crescendoed, ‘otherwise you can kiss goodbye to your ex-wife.’
I prayed Gus had had the sense to break into my garage and steal my Beetle (a thing I hadn’t, in my panic, thought to tell him) so as to be back faster than his Ford could ever manage.
‘I … er … er.’
‘You … er … er … what?’ he asked vehemently.
‘I’ll … er … have to make a phone call. That’s the arrangement. But that’s only after you have released Deborah.’
Treasure’s laugh was brimful of scorn. And rightly so, I guess, but I was at my poor wits’ end.
‘You’ll make that phone call, now, and Deborah will stay trussed like a chicken until I’ve got those diaries, or …’
‘Okay, okay. I’ll phone.’ I looked around the room, hoping not to find a phone. I found one.
‘To whom, pray?’ Treasure smiled.
‘To … er … Lady Philippa Stewart-Hargreaves.’ I was glad she had such a long name — it took longer to say. Our lives, I reckoned, were now hanging on how lengthy my words and sentences were.
I sat immobile, but not for long.
‘Well, get on with it, Marklin. I take it Arabella’s there, her little heart pounding about the fate of her new hero. Maybe she thinks by backing you, she’ll somehow expiate her own guilt. First it’s a daddy figure, and now a …’
Her guilt about what, I thought, but his gun was now pointing to the phone, and I guessed I had to obey its command and not worry about enigmatic remarks.
I dialled slowly thanks to my plaster. And, heaven be praised, Philippa took ages answering it. She must have been up at the glasshouses.
‘Look, don’t talk too much. Just listen, Philippa. Lives depend on it.’
She is a very clever woman. She talked. I let Treasure hear the gabbling by holding the receiver towards him.
‘Get on with it,’ he shouted. She must have heard that, with any luck.
‘Now listen, Philippa. It’s just as we arranged, only he won’t release Deborah … No, not until Arabella’s here with all the diaries … Yes, all the diaries, Philippa, including the 1981 one … Yes, the one for 1981, you know …’ (She was doing awfully well) ‘… yes, I know her Golf has broken down, but she will have to come in yours … It can’t be helped it’s an old red Peugeot 404 estate. Tell her to put her foot on the gas.’
‘That’s enough,’ Treasure boomed across. ‘Tell her I give her twenty minutes to get here, or she can forget her new friend and his ex-wife.’
‘Did you hear that? Yes, twenty minutes. Get her here in the fastest car you can lay your hands on. With the diaries. Right. But he’s got a gun, so tell her to be ultra careful when she arrives. Bye.’
I replaced the receiver and sat myself down again. I just prayed she would read between my every telephone line, or we’d soon have a shoot-out at Doom Abbey, with, afterwards, only the police to tell the tale. But, at least, I’d bought us another twenty minutes, if something didn’t go wrong in the meantime. Like where the hell was Arabella? Now if she walked in before the twenty minutes were up … I felt violently sick as I realized Arabella was our Achilles heel. I prayed and prayed to whomever it was who was watching over her. ‘Please, please,’ I be-seeched, ‘don’t guide her footsteps here, whatever you do.’ I didn’t get a reply, unless more nausea was the sign.
Treasure moved back slightly, so that he could see the Westminster chime clock on the mantelshelf. ‘Eighteen minutes, Mr Marklin,’ he observed grimly. I looked at Deborah. Her eyes were now closed and her head had slumped. Every now and then her body twitched within its bonds, the only sign of life.
Nobody spoke for what seemed like a lifetime, and the old ‘ding, ding, ding, ding’ of the Westminster chimes reminded us unnecessarily that tempus fugit. (I can’t hear one of those clocks now without reliving part of the horror of it all.) I wondered where Gates was. I guessed Treasure had dismissed him for the night. For henchmen often aren’t allowed to see the sticky black mess that is at the very bottom of their bosses’ souls, only the dying vegetation at the top layers of the pit. Even Gates’s ruddy features would, I reckoned, blanch at murder at first hand. After all, a bomb in a boat could kill when the bomber was miles away. Every minute now, I expected to hear the evidence of Gus’s return, but there was sweet Fanny Adams. Where the hell had Gus got to? Had his old car broken down? Was it upside-down in some ditch (its favourite pastime) or had he been arrested trying to steal my car from its plywood home? I was starting to despair, because if something didn’t happen soon, Lady Philippa and the Dorset constabulary would beat him to it. The siege of Doom Abbey would start and these affairs had a nasty habit of ending with stretchers and black plastic sheets, and some rather unfeminine television reporter stating that the police had done everything they could to save life. (Except save life.)
‘Ten minutes, Mr Marklin. Arabella should be well over half way here by now, or …’
He didn’t finish his alternative. Was it a sign of weakness, or a growing realization that our deaths might now be almost inevitable? I shivered at the thought. And then, suddenly, the whole room seemed to shiver, as a bloody great explosion went off somewhere outside. As I had planned, Treasure’s attention was diverted for just long enough for me to lunge forward to get his gun. Long enough to lunge forward, maybe, but not, bugger it, long enough for me to
wrench the weapon from his hairy grasp with my only good hand. For he turned his attention back from the window almost instantly. And I felt his number elevens kick me explosively in the head; the shock unlocked my hold on the shotgun and I sensed myself rolling over, not quite knowing any longer where I was. I shook my head and looked up into the sideways figure eight of the ends of both barrels.
‘So that’s what you were waiting for, Mr Marklin, was it? A little diversion and you’d overpower me, and be the Studland wonderboy, eh?’ Treasure laughed.
I painfully and slowly got back on my feet. So much for my big bang theory. But bully for Gus. He’d done his bit. I’d just failed with mine, and my plastered arm now hurt like hell.
‘Must be your friend Gus. Am I right? Well, I’ll make him very welcome if he cares to join us in here.’
I prayed Gus would have the nous to stay outside, once he’d seen we weren’t likely to emerge safe and sound down the front steps. But you never knew with Gus.
Deborah by now was whimpering, and, with my head throbbing, I went over and sat next to her. Curiously, Treasure didn’t object to my move. I put my arm around her, and we rocked gently together like babes in the wood. I looked at the clock as soon as my head was clear enough for my eyes to focus. Only three and a half minutes left. Three and a half bloody minutes, and then … And I heard the footsteps. I saw Treasure’s finger take first pressure on the first trigger. Deborah stopped rocking. Hell, it must be Gus, the stark staring idiot. He’s walking straight in, like it was Liberty Hall. And he was obviously trying to keep the noise of his footfalls down to the minimum, for they sounded quite dainty for Gus.
I wondered if my chance had come round once more, but Treasure’s eyes had not moved from the settee. Once bitten.
The footsteps stopped outside the door. We saw the brass handle turn very slowly, the door open, and then he came in. And the sight took my breath away. This was no Gus. This was a young boy of fourteen or so, dressed in a sober grey suit, grey shirt and a Trenton School tie. But that wasn’t the shock. It was what had happened to his head. It was covered in the red, sticky wetness of blood which seemed to ooze from the top of his skull.