The Indecent Death of a Madam

by Simon Parke

  Tamsin stared at the door.

  Beyond this place, this entrance, there was no going back. Open the door and, like the gladiator, you leave the tunnel and enter the arena.

  The arena would be a risk. But she had to be there. It wasn’t a choice, tonight of all nights, because she’d be crucified in the morning. The judge would see to that. Death here might be preferable . . . and with the decision made, she reached forward, took hold of the handle and turned it gently. Something gave, the mechanism clicked and slowly she pulled open the rusted door, felt the cellar chill and stepped inside.

  It was dark, so dark . . . Goss hadn’t been wrong. No light: sheer black as she pulled the door shut behind her and inched her way forward. And silence . . . the silence of a tomb, below ground and away from sound, apart from the drip-drip-drip of water.

  There was a click behind her. Was that simply the door closing? She’d pulled it shut; it could simply be the mechanism settling. It was possible. Or was it the door being locked behind her? It sounded like a locking, a dead lock. Tamsin stood terrified. Was there someone with her in the basement silence, another presence in this tomb?

  And then a hand on her wrist.

  ‘You should be dead,’ said the voice.

  ‘You should get out of here,’

  said Katrina. ‘Get out of here while you can, Abbot, before you cause trouble.’

  ‘Come over here,’ said Peter.

  ‘And you, Fran,’ said Katrina. ‘People with guns cause trouble, they do bad things. You should get out of here.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘Come over here,’ said Peter again. ‘Katrina – please.’

  She began to move towards him, leaving Fran alone in the large space, a restless silhouette by an old metal bed.

  ‘So where’s Cherise?’ he asked again. ‘She’s here, isn’t she? You told me she was here, Abbot.’ Something Peter now regretted. ‘And if she’s with that man . . .’

  And then Fran dropped to the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut, the gun removed from his hand in one swift movement. And out from behind one of the old cubicle curtains appeared another figure.

  ‘It’s not good to play with guns,’ said the voice.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t provide them,’ said Peter. ‘I always blame the suppliers. Is Fran OK?’

  Fran was moaning in pain. It had been so quick.

  ‘It’s only a broken wrist. You’re lucky – bones heal.’

  ‘Is that you, Terence?’

  ‘Don’t follow me.’

  ‘Where’s Cherise?’ asked Peter.

  ‘The detention of civilians is authorized for security reasons or in self-defence,’ said Terence. ‘So please leave now, Abbot . . . and you, Katrina. And take your friend. His pain will ease.’

  ‘Can we talk, Terence?’ asked Peter.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do. I want both of you to leave, and I ask this politely.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or it will not end well.’

  ‘So you’re a soldier again, Terence?’

  ‘It’s good to have rules of engagement. It simplifies war.’

  ‘War? I didn’t realize this was war.’

  ‘What you realize is not my concern, Abbot.’

  ‘And deadly force?’ asked Peter. ‘Is that permitted here?’

  ‘Deadly force is permitted in certain combat situations.’

  ‘Only self-defence legitimizes deadly force, Terence.’

  ‘You know your rule book, well done.’

  ‘And no one here’s trying to shoot you. Is anyone trying to shoot you, Terence?’ Again, no response. ‘And my guess is, Rosemary wasn’t either. I don’t think Rosemary was trying to shoot you, tied to the bed frame. So the war is a little one-sided. There’s a battlefield – but only one army.’

  ‘Don’t follow,’ he said, withdrawing. ‘Neither of you follow. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Why can’t we follow, Terence?’ Peter watched the image fade into the big dark.

  ‘Tactical withdrawal . . . but don’t follow . . . for your own safety.’ He was just a voice now, calling across the night ward. ‘Do you understand? Don’t follow.’

  ‘But I love you, Terence!’ shouted Katrina.

  ‘You don’t love me. You need me. They are not the same, not the same at all. Grow up.’

  The major-general was rigid with concentration. He was having to adjust, playing the game in front of him. Katrina’s arrival at the front door had not been part of the plan, neither had her discovery of his gun on the table. He should be gone by now; but he was still here. This was complex now, a different game to play.

  But it was good to have rules again, rules of engagement. He’d missed them. In hostage-taking, always ensure the captives understand the nature of their confinement – and the penalties for disobedience. Establish boundaries. It’s kinder . . . harsh at first but kinder in the end. People know where they stand.

  ‘Don’t follow!’ he shouted one more time.

  This is the difference between the soldier and the terrorist. The soldier has boundaries; though every combat soldier will become a terrorist on occasion . . .

  ‘I understand,’ said Peter. ‘We won’t follow. If you free Cherise.’

  And then silence in the ward – the groans of the mad, their midnight screams, long gone from this strange outpost by the sea. Only the jerky sobs of Katrina could now be heard. Terence had dissolved in the darkness, made his own way out. He’d returned to wherever he came from . . . returned to Cherise. They must be in the End Room, and now Peter wondered about Tamsin. Where was she? Had she got his message? What was happening out there? Was the place surrounded yet?

  ‘Terence!’ shouted Katrina. She got up and moved towards the darkness. ‘I want to help you!’

  ‘Katrina!’ shouted the abbot. ‘Come back!’

  ‘I want to help you, dearest.’

  She was running past the body of Fran, following the shadow.

  ‘Come back, Katrina!’

  ‘I love you, Terence!’

  ‘Come back, Katrina!’

  But it was too late. The trip-wire explosion smashed the asylum sky, a terrible flash ripping at the roof, a flying silhouette, the deafening wall-shuddering roar, the falling masonry, the settling dust . . . and the silence.

  ‘Oh my Gawd!’

  said Cherise, in terror.

  ‘Just stay calm,’ said Tamsin, handling her shock – because whatever was happening in there, they needed to stay calm.

  ‘But what the ’ell was that? What the—’

  ‘Stay calm.’

  Tamsin didn’t know what it was, and her handcuffed hand was sore from the jolt. Terence had said he was being kind. The basement door had been booby-trapped, and he’d made it safe when he saw her coming – but what could she believe?

  She’d found herself marched up some stairs and into the space where she now sat. Though God knows what was happening around them.

  ‘I heard Katrina,’ said Cherise. ‘She was shouting. I know it was her. Katrina’s here.’

  ‘We’re getting you out, all right?’

  Cherise was showing signs of panic. She needed calming.

  ‘Like that’s going to ’appen.’

  ‘We will, there’s a way.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I think so.’

  But she didn’t think so. This was not a situation they had any control over. And where was the abbot? Dead? She didn’t want him to die; she couldn’t cope with that.

  ‘And we can’t leave without Katrina,’ said Cherise.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for her,’ said Tamsin firmly.

  ‘But what’s she doing ’ere?’

  ‘I don’t know what she’s doing here. I don’t know what you’re doing here, either.’

  ‘He invited me.’

  ‘And a night out in this god-forsaken asylum seemed a good idea, did it?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that
.’

  ‘And how did she even know you were here?’

  Cherise paused for a moment. ‘Well, I told ’er. I mean, she was askin’ – she was like that. So I told ’er. I just said we was meetin’ ’ere. That ain’t my fault.’

  But why had Katrina followed her? Cherise didn’t get that. Apart from anything else, she had a client, and Katrina never missed a client. Unless – oh, of course!

  ‘We’re getting you out of here,’ said Tamsin. ‘Help is coming, you can be sure of that. The place is probably surrounded now.’

  She looked up to see Terence standing in the doorway and aiming the gun straight at Cherise.

  ‘The armed response unit takes a while, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘I trained them, you know.’

  ‘Where’s Katrina, Curly?’ asked Cherise. ‘And why the bloody handcuffs?’

  ‘Katrina had no business being here.’

  *

  Terence and Katrina had met outside Model Service last month. She’d been enjoying a fag break in the wintry morning sun of Church Street. Terence dropped his beard when trying to remove it, she picked it up, and a moment that could have been awkward became one of comedy. She laughed . . . and he laughed, and Katrina had loved his eyes. And she’d known instantly that he was military; everything about him said soldier.

  ‘My father was a soldier,’ she said.

  ‘I’m extremely sorry to hear it,’ he replied and was about to move on when he realized she was an attractive young woman who liked him. ‘You work round here?’

  He didn’t mind a short conversation. She was easy on the eye and he was not in a hurry.

  ‘Up the road, yes. I’m in hospitality.’

  ‘I have no idea what that means,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure you’re quite brilliant at it. I’ve always wanted to be good at something.’

  She knew he was single; he had to be.

  ‘Perhaps we could meet for a drink, and you could tell me what you are good at? And why you wear a false beard!’

  ‘If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,’ he joked, and she liked this funny man. Older, but that was OK.

  And they had met for a drink, and then another – and on one occasion he even came back to her flat for supper, with her son, who liked him very much. They talked about guns, after Terence had told him that you never hear the bullet that kills you – ‘because the bullet travels faster than the speed of sound’.

  ‘It’s reassuring, really,’ he added. ‘Best you don’t hear it, eh? That’s a bullet you don’t want to hear.’

  She liked him more and more. He was civil, polite, darkly humorous; a better man than her father. He didn’t need to know where she worked. Who’d be helped in the telling of that story? And neither did she know of his own interest in Model Service. Until the shocking day when, from behind the screen in reception, she saw Cherise answer the door, welcome Terence inside and then watched the two disappear together upstairs. The sense of betrayal was immense, which became anger towards Cherise, the little slut. That relationship would have to stop, there was no question about that.

  But first, she’d have to stop, get out of the business. And then he could come home to her.

  *

  ‘She loves you,’ said Cherise in the cold darkness of the asylum. ‘I know she does, I can tell.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no love on the battlefield,’ said Terence quietly. ‘Just operational imperatives.’

  ‘Operational imperatives? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, Curly?’ She was wondering where he’d gone, the man she knew. But the man she knew was struggling. Terence knew it too; different worlds invading the operational mind. You couldn’t allow that.

  ‘What happened in there, Terence?’ asked Tamsin, picking up on his hesitation.

  He remained straight-armed, gun-pointing . . . but strained. Tamsin knew the look – a dangerous look, an uncertain state. She didn’t want him making decisions from a state of distress; she’d engage him.

  ‘The consequences of war,’ he said.

  ‘And in English?’

  ‘You want a lecture?’

  ‘I’ve always enjoyed a good lecture,’ she lied. ‘It’s never too late to learn.’

  Terence smiled. ‘Is this called “playing for time”?’

  ‘Call it what you like.’

  ‘You can feign a retreat, Detective Inspector, to lure the enemy from a well-defended position. William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, for instance. He did just that and the prize was England.’

  ‘Do you have anything more contemporary to draw on?’

  ‘Harold’s infantry followed the retreat like fools and were annihilated by the Norman cavalry.’ He’d lectured at Sandhurst – easiest job in the world. An expert in hindsight, like all the rest. ‘But tonight was different.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Is that more contemporary?’

  ‘How do you mean, different?’

  ‘This was not a feigned retreat. This was a mined retreat, a protective move.’

  Cherise felt sick.

  ‘A protective move?’ said Tamsin. ‘But what are you protecting?’

  ‘The prisoner will be quiet now.’

  But Cherise took no notice, because she didn’t want to be quiet and this was Curly and he was acting like a bloody lunatic. She needed to find out.

  ‘So where’s Katrina, Curly?’

  Peter moved slowly

  across the disintegrating terrain, formerly Gladstone Ward, passing two bodies on the way.

  He could hear muffled voices in the End Room. Voices were good. Cherise must be alive, there was still time . . . though time for what, he didn’t know. Terence, it seemed, had left Civvy Street and was a soldier again with a different set of values from those of the Stormhaven Etiquette Society. But what was his plan? He must have a plan. Soldiers always had a plan. Peter thought that plans were overrated. He’d never had a plan that hadn’t fallen through, like the bomb-shattered roof now crumbling above his head.

  His feet kicked some masonry on the ground, debris from on high. It made a scraping noise; cursing himself, he stood still. The asylum air was a dusty damp in the lungs, plaster still falling and bent metal creaking above. Was the roof safe? He moved on, a little quicker – and then cursed. Sharp pain. He’d walked into the mangled remains of an iron bed, his shin screaming. But his shin must wait. Breathe into the pain. He stood still surveying the traumatized landscape. There was a six-foot crater in the floor to his right, the eye of the blast, a black and open wound in the concrete offering a quick drop down into the asylum’s underground corridors.

  Ahead of him, appearing slowly in the asylum gloom, was the silhouette of a figure in the doorway . . . Terence. But who was with him? There were two other voices. Peter moved step by cautious step, breath by unarmed breath, towards the soldier . . . towards Goliath. Yes, the story of David and Goliath came to mind; a contest that was no contest, a boy who rejected the king’s wise armour for absurd weaponry of his own choice.

  Terence had a gun. What did Peter have? Where was his catapult and pebble?

  The end game had begun

  and he knew the end game well. Terence expected the armed response unit along shortly, dragged from their pre-cooked meals round the telly, out into the cold night. Most would be glad to be leaving their families for a gun spree with the boys. And he knew what was coming; he hadn’t lied when he said he trained them. They’d used the SAS facilities in Hereford. They’d always laughed at the Plods – little wannabe soldiers the lot of them. But it was the Plods who’d be laughing tonight. ‘We only took out that instructor fellow – you know, the one with all the medals!’

  It would start with the megaphone, reminding them they were surrounded. Snipers in place, the inevitable Home Office-approved psychologist feeding lines to the Operational Commander, the food sent in. ‘Is there anything else you want?’ Slowly, slowly, relationship established, the softening process, nice, nasty, nice, the guard lowered
, then – he’d taught them well, but he wouldn’t be following the script. There’d be no polite way out of this. And surprises awaited them on their arrival.

  ‘So where’s Katrina, Curly? You got to tell me.’

  Cherise was getting on his nerves, like a mouthy corporal the night before a strike. She was invading his thinking time.

  ‘Against my orders, she followed me,’ he said quietly. ‘Against my orders.’

  ‘Don’t I have a name any more?’ He wasn’t using her name and she didn’t like that. ‘She loved you, she did. Katrina loved you. Was that against your orders too? I tell you, no one loved you like Katrina did.’

  Terence felt the discomfort again. She shouldn’t speak of love, the stupid girl. She didn’t know anything about love. It wasn’t good talk. The rage in his blood and guts. ‘No one loves you like I do, Terence,’ that had been his mother’s line: ‘No one loves you like I do.’ If that was love . . .

  And then disturbance behind him. The human body is never silent, there’s always noise in the air, it just can’t help itself . . . someone was approaching from the main ward.

  ‘I know you’re there, Abbot,’ he said, adjusting the angle of the gun in his hand. He needed to cover two lines of attack.

  Peter pulled back, like one caught out on the lake, surprised by thin ice – but with nowhere to step but forward.

  Gun still pointing

  at Tamsin and Cherise, Major-General Terence Blain turned round towards the emerging form of the abbot.

  ‘I hoped you’d leave.’

  ‘I could hardly do that,’ said the abbot, rather primly,

  ‘Foolishness and courage can look alike,’ said Terence. ‘The difference is in the outcome. You’re a fool if you fail, courageous if you win. Death or glory? Welcome to the lottery.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You can join the other hostages. We won’t be long.’

  He stood back from the doorway to allow the abbot inside – inside the End Room.

  ‘Hostages, Curly?’ said Cherise. ‘Is that what we are?’

  ‘Sit down,’ barked Terence and Peter moved to obey before looking down and seeing . . . Tamsin? Impossible – but there she was in the half-light and Peter, amazed, suddenly felt better. They exchanged a look of solidarity. He sat close to her, on the other side from Cherise, backs to the wall, Terence still standing in the doorway.