Blue Blood

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘You thinking of buying one of those, chief?’ asked the cabby as he climbed back in.

  ‘Captain,’ corrected Richard thoughtlessly.

  ‘You buying one then, Captain?’ repeated the cabby cheerfully.

  ‘Continental GT. Had it on order for a while. Picking it up tomorrow.’

  ‘Not sure as I approve, mind.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s nor really British any more your Bentley, is it? I mean it’s all bits and pieces from Audis and Volkswagens. Even if they is all screwed together at Crewe.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ answered Richard thoughtfully. He too had entertained some doubts for he had always driven cars that were designed, manufactured and built in Britain. From the E-Type to the Freelander. And had been happy to do so. But there was something about what the new management had done with the post-Arnage generation of Bentleys that he found impossible to resist.

  The conversation that unwound between the captain and the cabby as the cab rolled back along Regent Street and Haymarket into Trafalgar Square and then away east towards the City, became very technical indeed. And so intense that even when they reached the corner of Leadenhall and St Mary Axe, the cabby simply switched off the meter and stayed parked until they had finished it. Though whether either of them convinced the other of his own point of view remained a thoroughly moot point.

  Richard ran over to the unremarkable little door at the side of Heritage House that opened into the lift lobby beneath the flat. He opened it and walked through into the lift. A few moments later he was shrugging off his wet coat in the all too familiar environs of the company flat. Even though he had spent much of the week here, the place seemed cold and unwelcoming. It was still and silent - as though no one had entered for years rather than days. He looked around the sterile opulence, lost in thought; suddenly a little lonely. The list of contacts in the book beside the phone did not tempt him however. Lonely, he nevertheless did not feel like company. All he felt, apart from Robin’s absence, was a stirring of hunger. He knew the contents of the fridge and fancied none of it. Nor did he particularly fancy exploring the locality in search of a supermarket. Though as it was after four on a Sunday they would most likely be closed in any case. Uncharacteristically hesitant, he stood, wavering, until the quietest of sounds distracted him.

  With the bustle of the City stilled as well, it was so quiet that Richard could even hear distant voices from the H.M. communications rooms that sat atop the huge building just a soundproofed wall away. He resisted the immediate, almost overwhelming temptation to go through and chat to the staff who manned the place 24/7, overseeing the movements of the fleets of tankers, ferries, container ships and specialist waste transporters that his company owned. Even in the Crewfinders office he would prove a disruptive distraction. Here the branch of the company he had founded himself supplied crews of any sort and any size for any purpose to any ship in any legal situation anywhere in the world at twenty-four hours’ notice. This required masterly organization, split-second timing, constant updates on the whereabouts of officers and crew on call as well as almost limitless minute-by-minute awareness of which seats were available on what flights going where; so any interruption could be fatal.

  He stood for a moment longer, therefore, looking around indecisively, then he glanced at his watch and reached for his coat again. It was well after five. And high time for Chinese.

  It was surprisingly easy to get another cab. This one also was driven by a Hong Kong Cockney, but Richard was more struck by the coincidence that a Chinese driver should be driving him to a Chinese meal than by the fact that this was the second such cabby. He stepped out of the cab at Gerrard Street and went into his favourite restaurant in the heart of Chinatown.

  Suddenly almost ascetic, he eschewed the full-flavoured, the battered and the deep-fried, in favour of a dinner that was largely steamed. The rice was plain and fragrant, served in porcelain bowls as light and fragile as the lotus blossoms on which they were modelled. Eaten slowly with the finest of chopsticks, though even their needle-ends seemed too clumsy for the little bowls. Chicken and fish served only with the lightest sauces of lemon and garlic, ginger and chilli. Noodles with the faintest deepening of sesame and soy. Tea that only the most discriminating of palates could distinguish from boiling water.

  The food was so simple but so exquisite, it transported Richard back to the years that he and Robin had spent in Hong Kong themselves. Years when he had mostly been stressed and exhausted; irate and almost impossible to live with. Not that he was all that much better now, allowing her to go down and face the inquiry alone while he ran off like some kid in a toyshop after his boy’s-toy Bentley. He was suddenly overwhelmed with a disorientating combination of guilt and tenderness so powerful it verged on self-pity. Chewing on a strand of ginger, he found himself wondering how on earth Robin had ever put up with him over all these years.

  And whether she would bother to keep up her indulgence in the future.

  He pulled himself to his feet, paid and left. He hesitated at the door, pulling on his coat and looking out into the drizzling murk. He would walk back to Heritage House, he decided. The weather would suit his mood. He pulled up his collar, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and strode out towards Cambridge Circus. He was lost so deeply in his thoughts that he never really registered how quiet things around him had become. It was after six on a wet Sunday evening. The rabbit warren of streets that form the border between Chinatown and Theatreland were empty and shadowed. He knew them as well as he knew any of his past commands, however, and he wove his way decisively homeward, like a well-programmed robot. He had no idea at all that he was being followed.

  The three muggers hit him all at once. He was big and they were teenagers so they used as much impact as they were capable of. One swept his legs from under him while a second hit him over the head with a makeshift club - a mercifully skimming blow that glanced off without doing much harm. And the third, following up with a kick to the temple, fortunately forgot that he was wearing trainers. Then they all fell to rifling his pockets as swiftly as they could.

  Richard himself was only faintly aware of most of this of course. For a moment he was certain he had slipped and hit his head. By the time the stunning reality of the situation hit him fully, he was really too late to do anything other than to roll over and try to pick himself up. But even as he did so, he found himself at the eye of a different kind of storm. Three figures became six. Hissing of rain on the pavement was lost in the gasping of breath mingled with squeaking of footsteps on slick slabs. The rumble of the gusty wind was lost in the grunting of fighters and the soft thunder of blows. Then there were only three figures once again, the steady, strong shapes gathering around him as the other three ran off.

  He was too disorientated even to think of defensive action as they reached down towards him. But these hands had come to help him not to hurt him. They helped him to his feet and held him there as he regained his breath and faculties. As his vision cleared he saw three tough-looking Chinese teenagers, none of whom was even faintly familiar to him. They were holding his wallet and his cellphone.

  ‘You all right, Captain?’ one of them asked quietly. For a disorientating moment it was as though he were talking to the first cabby.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Fine.’

  ‘Good. You want we call a cab? Cab be safer now.’

  ‘I’d rather call the police!’

  ‘Police not such good idea, Captain. Those three will be punish; we see to that. You call cab. Go back Heritage House now. Get your rest.’

  It struck him then. These youngsters knew him. Really. Personally. He recognized not one of them but they all knew exactly who he was.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  The leader of the trio smiled and he saw that she was a girl. ‘My name is May Chung,’ she introduced herself, handing back his wallet and taking his phone from her colleague. ‘I was an officer cadet on Goodman Ric
hard. I detailed to help the wounded but you help me bettah. You heave me on to Lionheart by the seat of my pants, Captain. You really save my ass.’ She gave a throaty chuckle and he found himself smiling in return. He remembered her very clearly indeed.

  The cellphone began to ring and she held it out to him. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, and stepped back into the shadows.

  It was Robin, gruffly reporting her safe arrival. By the time he finished talking to her - a brief and monosyllabic conversation which mentioned nothing of attempted muggings - a cab had pulled up at the end of the street. Its driver’s window wound down to reveal a cheerful Chinese face which was calling, ‘You go Heritage House now, Captain?’ in Hong Kong Cockney tones.

  Chapter 11: The Gathering Storm

  Richard stood naked in the bathroom of the company flat and surveyed the damage, thinking of May Chung’s words and deciding whether or not to call the police after all. His knees were bruised - but no more badly than at the end of the last game of football he had played with the twins. His torso and ribs were OK. Arms and elbows likewise. Better, in fact, than they had been at the end of that brutally energetic game. The twins’ version of football was by no means a non-contact sport.

  He approached the glass. There was a welt across his cranium he could feel - in both senses of the word: as a lump and as a sore patch - but which he couldn’t see. His temple seemed muddy - grimed, like his raincoat, rather than bruised - but nothing that a little cleaning wouldn’t put right. No more wounds seemed apparent. No more aches and pains. Nothing, in short, that a good soak in a hot bath wouldn’t fix. And a visit to the dry-cleaner’s for his coat.

  His cellphone was undamaged - as Robin’s call had proved. There was nothing missing from his wallet and nothing else missing from his pockets.

  Very well then. Nothing to worry Her Majesty’s Finest over. He turned away and ran the bath.

  An hour later he was stretched sleepily on the sofa wrapped in snowy terry-towelling, steaming contentedly as the video player sprang to life. It was a video he had been dying to watch - but one that he had hardly dared put on when Robin was anywhere nearby. The picture cleared. The enjoyable prickle of guilt returned. The voice-over began:

  ‘No sooner had the First World War ended than British motoring exploded into life. Scores of ambitious individuals decided to start making cars. Motor companies sprang up in sheds and garages all over the country - most of them one-man enterprises. But very few would even survive the 1920s.

  ‘One of those who did survive was Bentley Motors, guided by its founder, W. O. Bentley himself.

  ‘Walter Owen Bentley, seen here at the wheel of the very first 3 litre prototype which took to the road at the end of 1919, was born in London in 1888...’

  Richard was up well before eight and found himself to be surprisingly hale and supple, given his adventures of the previous evening. He bathed, shaved and dressed, then he did go through into Heritage House proper. He was starving and by no means inclined to forage for himself. But years of experience had taught him that Bridget, the cook whose genius enlivened the directors’ dining room every lunchtime (and, indeed, the staff canteen come to that), arrived a little after nine, always well-supplied and usually happy to indulge him in the matter of bacon, eggs and coffee. And so it proved today.

  At 9.40, replete and restless, he called down to James the doorman for a cab and left the raincoat with Sam the lobby porter - who agreed to get it cleaned a.s.a.p. - on the way out at 9.45. This time he did not talk to the cabby, preferring to let the man concentrate on getting out of the City and into Mayfair by 10.

  At 10 a.m. precisely, he strolled off Conduit Street and into the gleaming reception area of the Bentley showroom, his heart pumping like that of a schoolboy out on his first hot date. At 10.01 he was seated in the office of Sales Director Andrew Assay and the final formalities were getting under way over two sizeable cups of Blue Mountain coffee and cream.

  The car itself was waiting for him just behind the showroom and he talked inconsequentially to Andrew Assay, trying to contain his impatience as one of Andrew’s acolytes ran a soft cloth over its gleaming, slightly silvery, steel-grey paint work for one last time. ‘We have set the seats for yourself and Mrs Mariner,’ Andrew was saying. ‘Though we could have been just that bit more accurate if she could have come and sat in it. And we have programmed that information into the keys of course. This is yours and when you use it everything in the cockpit will be set for you. It’s easy enough to readjust if there’s a mix-up and you use Mrs Mariner’s key of course. Or one of the spares that haven’t been pre-programmed.’

  Andrew handed over a bunch of electronically enhanced keys and cards. Continuing to explain the security and safety systems, he crossed to the car at last and opened the driver’s door. The interior light glistened off walnut veneer as dark as tortoise-shell, and battleship leather with that same parade-ground gleam as his shoes. The aroma of the cockpit filled the showroom as though this were Chanel, not Bentley.

  Richard slid into the seat, easing his long legs out and finding the practical patterned steel of the pedals perfectly at his feet. As was the steering wheel to his fists. The winged B gleamed in the lozenge of battleship leather almost level with his heart. He glanced up. The rearview mirror was precisely set.

  The door clicked shut. Automatically, moving with almost dream-like intensity, he reached for the safety harness, his eyes flicking to the door-mounted rear-view, each as perfectly positioned as all the rest. His left hand settled on the gear lever. Andrew slipped into the passenger seat beside him. ‘Now, Captain, just before you start her up, there are one or two more things here to remind you about. Then we’ll try one final little test drive, shall we? The tank is full of course and, as you see, the tax disc is current. We’ve paid today’s congestion charge too. You updated your insurance as we discussed...?’

  Oddly, considering the way he felt about the Bentley, Richard was never nervous about driving it. Even the first time he eased the sleek, steely body out of the narrow gates and swung left down Conduit Street, he seemed to know the size of the car as though he had been driving it for years already. The immediate surge of power under his right foot was always under perfect control. The power-steering was so firm and precise. The combination of drive-controls on the steering wheel and the solid gear lever under his left hand was so unfussy that he was soon happy to experiment with the automatic system before settling on to the manual gearing he preferred - and upon which he had insisted from the outset.

  ‘Those test drives at Crewe seem to have been an excellent investment,’ observed Andrew, as the Bentley swung out of Bond Street into Brook Lane, heading for Grosvenor Square. The satellite navigation system tracked them round the street-map of London, observing rather than directing, because no destination had been keyed in as yet.

  ‘It’s fine,’ agreed Richard made terse by excitement. ‘Once round the square, if they’ll let us past the American Embassy, then back to Conduit Street if that’s OK.’

  ‘Fine.’

  On Andrew’s word, Richard’s phone began to ring.

  ‘Can I get that for you?’

  ‘Thanks. It’s in my jacket pocket.’

  Andrew slid the phone out and opened it. Then he placed it in the cradle of the hands-free system and pressed a button.

  ‘Richard? Hello, Richard? Are you there?’ Robin’s voice came out through the hands-free speakers. They were sensitive enough to register every nuance of her tone - and she sounded very worried indeed.

  ‘Yes, Robin?’

  ‘Richard. Thank God. Look, darling, something’s not right here. You should have received a summons, apparently, and they’re talking about contempt of court or some such. But that’s not all. It’s all turning into a witch - ’ The signal began to break up outside the American Embassy. Richard guided the Bentley round the square, licking his lips and waiting for her to come back on. ‘...Andrew Balfour. When can you get here?’

  And
rew Assay whispered, ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Penzance. Robin, I didn’t catch that last bit. Shall I get Andrew?’

  ‘Talk to him. I’ll text him. Bring him if you can. But get here.’

  ‘Six hours to Penzance...’ whispered Andrew. ‘I can be there in six hours...’

  ‘Four if you disregard the speed limit.’

  ‘I’ll try to get Andrew and bring him with me. See you in six or so. Don’t worry, darling.’ He broke contact but carried on speaking. ‘No point in getting speeding fines, Andrew. Court’ll be closed at four.’

  ‘Sounds nasty.’

  ‘It does. But I don’t know why. Can I drop you on the corner of Conduit Street? I need to get to Heritage House then on down.’

  ‘Certainly. And remember, if things get tense, she’ll do 198 mph or so.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Richard, slowing, ‘will ever get that tense.’

  * * *

  Richard drove from Conduit Street to Heritage House and risked the single yellow line outside the side door as he ran up to the flat. Because he was still on the Crewfinders list himself, he always had a case there packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. He grabbed this, looked around, decided nothing else would be needed that he could not get hold of down there and returned to the car. A traffic warden in her late teens was standing beside the gleaming wing, pen poised but immobile. Her eyes were wide and almost worshipful. Inconsequentially, Richard thought, And I thought traffic wardens hated cars! ‘I’m just moving now,’ he said, keying the central locking and popping the boot. He slipped the case inside and closed it. She still hadn’t moved. He opened the driver’s door and climbed in. ‘It was an emergency,’ he said to her. ‘Thanks for being so understanding.’

  ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  Glad of the congestion charging that kept the once-choked streets clear, Richard guided the Bentley into Threadneedle Street, then down to Bank with Mansion House and Ludgate Hill beyond. Careful not to be distracted by the suggestions of the satellite navigation system, he negotiated his way down Fleet Street into the Strand and up through Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly, then back towards Mayfair, heading for Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner and the A4. The Bentley had its own ideas about the best route and to begin with these did not sit well with his own preferred pathways.