CONTENTS
Title Page
PART I
1 09.22 Sunday 2 May 2045
2 09.12 Saturday 1 May
3 10.25 Saturday 1 May
4 08.10 Sunday 2 May
5 10.40 Sunday 2 May
PART II
6 09.35 Friday 30 April
7 13.20 Friday 30 April
8 22.10 Friday 30 April
9 13.20 Sunday 2 May
10 13.23 Sunday 2 May
11 03.00 Monday 3 May
12 09.00 Monday 3 May
13 15.08 Monday 3 May
14 20.25 Monday 3 May
15 07.00 Tuesday 4 May
16 11.33 Tuesday 4 May
PART III
17 12.05 Tuesday 4 May
18 12.25 Tuesday 4 May
19 12.45 Tuesday 4 May
20 07.46 Wednesday 5 May
21 09.10 Wednesday 5 May
PART IV
22 10.53 Wednesday 5 May
23 14.24 Wednesday 5 May
24 16.00 Friday 7 May
25 09.40 Saturday 8 May
26 10.44 Saturday 8 May
27 10.55 Saturday 8 May
28 11.02 Saturday 8 May
29 11.12 Saturday 8 May
30 11.22 Saturday 8 May
The Times Monday 10 May 2045 9 p.m. update
Copyright
PART I
CHAPTER 1
09.22 SUNDAY 2 MAY 2045
The first thing Horatio saw on entering the drawing room was the Admiral’s corpse lying prostrate on the sofa. He dared to hope death had come naturally, but an indefinable something about the room suggested murder.
As in every crisis of his life, Horatio’s first instinct was to panic and run as fast and as far as his asthma would let him. This time, however, he sat down on a chair beside the nearby escritoire and breathed deeply five or six times. He took a suck on his Salbutamol inhaler as his huge brain kick-started itself into life.
He was tempted just to retrace his steps and leave by the front door. It took something approaching a full minute of cogitation before he leant over to the phone on the desk and dialled 112. If he was being set up for this, he reasoned, that at least might work in his favour.
‘Hello? Police? Hello. Listen, I’ve just found a dead body.’
‘Who’s speaking please?’
‘Horatio Lestoq.’ For once there was no snigger at the absurdity of his name. ‘That’s L-E-S-T-O-Q.’
‘Please switch on your vid.’ It was a woman’s voice. Efficient. In control. Altogether irritating.
‘There doesn’t seem to be a screen – it’s one of those old-fashioned phones.’
‘Postcode or g-mail address?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What is the postcode there?’
‘Look,’ he answered, clearly and slowly, trying hard to suppress a sense of mounting hysteria, ‘I have just found a dead body, I’m not trying to send a sodding parcel!’
‘Please be calm. We need to know where you are.’
‘No idea of the postcode, I don’t live here. But it’s a rectory in …’
Then he saw writing paper standing in a rack on the desk.
‘Hang on. Yes … yes, here it is. RG2 4RW – Hampshire.’
There was a pause.
‘The Rectory, Ibworth, near Basingstoke?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘Police and paramedics will arrive soon. Right now, though, I need some more details.’ Horatio took another long suck from his inhaler. He hoped he’d brought a refill.
‘Name of deceased?’
‘I’m fairly sure he’s Admiral Michael Ratcliffe.’
‘You’re not certain?’
‘I’ve never met him before. But it’s his house.’
‘Spelt?’
‘R-A-T-C-L-I-F-F-E.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Don’t know. He’s just lying there. Heart attack?’ The moment he said it he knew it was not.
‘I.D. number?’ Her cool, impersonal tone had definitely got on his nerves now. Perhaps it was also the way she kept omitting the definite article.
‘How should I know? I’m not going anywhere near it, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘Not his. Yours.’
‘Oh, I see. All right, yes, it’s 478 A 34QW.’ She tapped it onto her modem.
‘Checking – 478 A 34QW.’
‘Yes.’ There was a millisecond’s pause.
‘How long has deceased been dead?’
‘No idea.’
‘According to this you’re a doctor.’
‘I’m not that kind of doctor.’
‘What first aid have you administered?’
‘None. The man’s dead for God’s sake!’
‘Are you sure?’
Horatio forced himself to look across at the body. White-haired and crumpled, it hadn’t moved a millimetre since he entered the room.
‘Yes. Pretty much … Yes.’
‘OK. Stay where you are. Touch nothing. Police will be with you momentarily.’
The police … In a moment, thought Horatio. He later prided himself on having been pedantic even in that crisis.
They arrived far sooner than he’d expected, the sirens audible through the half-open French windows almost immediately after he had replaced the receiver. He glanced around the room, trying to avoid the body, but failing. There was no sign of blood. He thanked God for that. As a child any sight of it, let alone his own, had always made him retch. Coming face to face with it now would put him off his food for months. And that would never do.
What was it about the room which alerted him to the possibility of murder? There were the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the inevitable naval prints, several silver photograph frames on the piano by the French windows. All very twentieth-century decor. The photos were mostly of a much younger man, presumably Ratcliffe himself, in naval uniform on decks, but there were a couple of a small child and one wedding shot. The groom was also wearing naval uniform, but Horatio did not think it was Ratcliffe. They were arranged carefully in rows, with three gaps. Had some been removed?
Try as he might to avoid it, Horatio’s gaze kept swivelling back to the body, which was dressed in the sort of clothes someone might have worn a century ago. Tweeds, cavalry twills, an old cardigan, even the frayed end of an M.C.C. tie was visible. One of the sofa cushions lay over and partly covered what Horatio could see was a well-polished pair of vintage, dark brown brogues.
Looking away again, Horatio’s eyes rested upon an even stranger anachronism. On the desk there was a sheet of white blotting paper, set in dark green leather. Otherwise virgin, it was stained at the very bottom by some thin ink marks.
Police autos were speeding up the drive around the other side of the house. He could hear gravel flying. On an impulse, unusual in someone who thought of himself as a congenital coward, Horatio tore off the marked piece of blotting paper – about three centimetres by ten – and crossed the room to the large mirror above the mantelpiece to read what was reflected.
‘Mrs Robson,’ he saw, and, underneath, ‘your roving godfather,’ and below that, ‘Michael.’ The investigative hack in him got the better of the law-abiding citizen. He folded it in half, put it in his mouth and salivated hard.
‘Here!’ he shouted, chewing, as the police got to the front door, ‘first on the left!’
Two armed men burst in. Horatio swallowed.
The first – the one pointing the N-series machine gun – showed no gratitude for Horatio’s directions. ‘On the floor!’ he yelled. ‘Face down! Hands and legs apart!’
Horatio did as he was told. The second man came forward to frisk and then handcuff him. In the police
auto he was told that by law he was required to speak and that everything he said would be videoed for certain use against him. He was then driven the four miles to Basingstoke police station, where he was asked to hand over all sharp objects. His cash, pager, watch-phone, I.D. card and belt were also taken, after which he was led away to what they termed the ‘custody suites’.
Horatio did not protest. He decided, for the thousandth time in his twenty-nine years, that discretion would probably be the better part of valour.
Once in the cell he lay on the bed, fingers interlaced behind his head. It was his deep-thought mode. Ignoring the camera in the ceiling, the graffiti and Inmates’ Charter on the walls, the all-pervasive stench of urine and the likelihood of catching scabies off the filthy mattress, he put to use the one sharp implement the police could not confiscate.
His brain.
He hadn’t got a double-starred first in the logic paper of his Finals for nothing, he told himself. He presumed this would not be a case London would let the local force keep. Assuming C.I.D. used the M3 special lane, and allowing for the fact that police autos were not fitted with speed governors, he probably had an hour. In that time he must work out for himself exactly what was going on.
And for that, he must go back to the beginning.
CHAPTER 2
09.12 SATURDAY 1 MAY
The moment he opened his eyes that Saturday morning, Horatio wished he hadn’t. He was lying on his side facing the wall, curled up in the foetal position against the coming onslaught. The hangover reminded him of the bombardments in old black-and-white films of the First Nationalist War. Constant, rolling, heavy, booming thuds. Here an H.E. shell, there a landmine. Once again he told himself he really could not go on drinking like an undergraduate.
The bedroom wall was about two metres away. It kept coming in and out of focus. The print of All Souls had fallen down over a month ago but he still had not got round to putting it back up. It had been a rather unimaginative present from his mother to celebrate his Prize Fellowship seven years ago. Pretty much the only present she had ever given him, he thought self-pityingly. Then there was the empty space where Leila’s photo had been. Not filling it was a kind of tribute to her. Stupid, really. The other gap was where his Paul Johnson watercolour had hung. He’d bought it at Sotheby’s in the days when he was flush. That had gone to pay last month’s Atlantic Gas bill. His life, he thought, was better summed up by what was missing from that wall than what was on it.
The capacity for recall returned only very gradually. He had the kind of hangover they had used to call a ‘stonker’ at Oxford. He was almost proud of it.
It had been May Day Eve. Marty had given the traditional bash at his flat. Horatio must have put away more units last night than the latest Alcohol Consumption Directive prescribed for a month.
Someone had brought along a case of contraband bourbon. He remembered peeling off one of the ‘Produce of the United States of Europe’ labels on the back of a bottle to read ‘Made in Kentucky’ stamped underneath. Had it been the two Excise men? It wouldn’t have surprised him. Especially the sort Marty would know.
That was definitely when disaster had struck. One could hardly turn down genuine American whisky when some brave and enterprising soul had gone to all the trouble of smuggling it over for you.
What had happened though, other than the boozing? He’d been very popular, he thought. And he’d been kissed during a power cut.
By whom?
He remembered chatting up two girls, both pretty glamorous. An American blonde and …
Horatio suddenly remembered the rest. He turned over.
She was lying on her side. Head resting in her palm. Looking at him. Smiling. Not the Yank. The other one.
He smiled back, fumbling for the name. Unusual. Ancient world. Bathsheba? Aspasia? Some show-offy name like that anyhow.
The first thing he noticed was that she had shaven armpits, in defiance of the prevailing federal fashion. Great. The second was that she was easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Was that just the hangover talking? No. He double-checked. She was pitilessly beautiful.
Mid to late twenties? He was no good at estimating age. Sin-black hair. Aquiline nose. Tanned complexion. The lips were a feature, as well, although he couldn’t quite describe them just then. He could devise plans for them though.
‘Hello,’ she said.
Were those tinted contact lenses, or were her eyes really that shade of green? Turquoise, really. Shipping could get lost in them.
‘Hello.’
‘How do you feel?’ Definitely a Queen’s rather than an Estuary-Grunge accent. That was better news than the armpits; Horatio had long since given up pretending he wasn’t a rampant snob.
‘Terrible. Terrible.’
‘Same here.’
She didn’t look it. Too corny to say that though.
‘What’s the time?’ She checked her watch-phone.
‘Twenty past.’
‘Past what?’
‘Nine hundred.’ He groaned.
‘What time did it end?’
‘It probably hasn’t,’ she answered, ‘it was still going strong when we left.’
‘When was that?’
‘About oh-three hundred. Maybe a bit later.’
‘I’m reminded of a line in Lucky Jim. Do you know it? By a twentieth-century writer called Kingsley Amis.’
‘He’s banned, isn’t he?’ Horatio thought quickly.
‘Well, more discouraged.’ Christ, how idiotic of him. She worked with Marty, and was thus probably a spook of some kind. Yet there he was, blithely about to quote from a discouraged writer. Worse still, one who was Dead, White, Anglo-Saxon and Male. Better backtrack. ‘I read him at school, before the Directive. Anyhow it’s a funny line, not sexist or ageist or anything-ist.’
‘I couldn’t mind less if it were. Tell me.’
They couldn’t be contact lenses, she’d only woken up. They really were that colour you only see in seas, and then only in travel brochures on the Caribbean, and then only when a tint has been slipped over the camera lens. Her complexion, which last night he’d assumed had been made up, was, on closer inspection, just silky healthiness.
‘Well, the hero wakes up with an award-winning hangover and Amis describes him as “spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning”. Then there’s something about his mouth having been “used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum”.’ She laughed.
Hallelujah!
Getting into his stride now, Horatio continued: ‘He also felt like “he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then had been expertly beaten up by secret police”.’ He was proud of his quoting ability. That particular one was something of a morning-after favourite. Not that he’d had many girls to try it out on. And certainly none like this.
‘Well, that’s rather what did happen, didn’t it?’ She smiled. ‘I work in P.I.D., which I suppose means I’m about as close to a secret policeperson as you can get. And although it was nothing masochistic like a cross-country run, we did get quite … physical last night.’
The way she said ‘physical’ had his guts – and there were plenty of them – trying to leap into his throat. Stay calm, he told himself. This must not be allowed to degenerate into a one-night stand.
Her unexpected forwardness broke any remaining ice. He’d begun to worry that the way they had made love the night before had – so far as he could remember – contravened about six provisions of the Sexual Hygiene Directive. It had been so long since anyone had come back with him that he’d forgotten where he’d put the diggle forms. So she hadn’t signed any, which, as it was his flat, was his responsibility. On both the Health & Hygiene and the Harassment Protection fronts, therefore, he was vulnerable. If this girl – it started with a ‘C’, he remembered: Cassandra? Clytemnestra? – put in an official complaint it could cause him real trouble professionally, ev
en as a freelance.
‘I can’t remember much about the party,’ she said, still lying there, looking at him. ‘What was it like?’
‘Dreadful. No wonder I drank so much. Full of H.R.G.s.’ She looked quizzical. ‘It’s an acronym Marty and I use sometimes. Stands for Hunky-Regular-Guys-At-Ease-With-Their-Own-Bodies. You know the type. The enemy for someone like me. Rugger friends of Marty’s.’
‘But Marty’s a bit hunky and regular himself, isn’t he?’
‘Physically, yes. But in personality he’s a million kilometres away from a true one.’
‘Such as who, then?’
‘Oh, I don’t know … Alex Tallboys, say.’ The name seemed to register with her.
‘The tall blond with the blue eyes?’
‘That’s it.’
‘You don’t think much of him?’
‘No, I don’t. Classic H.R.G. material. Did you see him last night? Telling notoriously old anecdotes. I mean some truly ancient chestnuts. So old they should be listed by the Culture Commission. What’s worse, he was telling them really badly, and then he started pretending they’d all happened to him. It was cringe-making.’
‘How do you know him?’
Alex Tallboys was one of those who had bullied and taunted Horatio at Oxford into what Robert Virgil and another doctor had both diagnosed as something approaching a nervous breakdown. He wasn’t going to tell her that though.
‘University. He was in the year above. God knows why Marty keeps inviting him. Must be because they work together.’
‘Have you met his wife?’
‘No.’ It was his turn to look puzzled, by the infinitely sad look on her face. ‘I’m sorry? Are they friends of yours? I suppose you must work with him too. I’m sorry if I’ve put my foot in it. He might be really nice now for all I know.’ He was backtracking fast, but could tell it was nothing like fast enough.
‘He’s not. You’re right about him. That’s why I’m getting a forty-eight-hour quickie divorce from him next week.’
The Aachen Memorandum Page 1
