Blood Royal

by Harold Robbins

Kramer’s mouth dropped as far as Dutton’s did. Dutton wasted no time putting distance between himself and the two officers.

  What the hell was that all about?

  The question chased itself in Dutton’s head as he hurried toward the tube station. Archer wouldn’t be polite to him even if the copper was hanging from the side of Big Ben and needed a hand up.

  It was that second police radio message. Archer had been told to stand down from arresting Dutton. There was only one reason he’d get an order like that: cover-up.

  Arresting him would put the Abbey mystery back on the front pages and open it up for him to insist upon answers. This way they could release an official statement that the matter was “under investigation.” But arresting a reporter was sure to put the heat back on.

  They obviously didn’t have Howler. Howler was two bob short of a quid from long-term drug use, but he still had the clever deviousness of chemically induced paranoia. Bleedin’ clever bastard, Dutton thought. Howler stole body parts and erected his gruesome display—why? Invited Dutton to it—why? Now he had the government covering his tracks—why?

  Why would a mockup of Henry VIII send the powers-that-be into such a titter that the Official Secrets Act was invoked?

  Dutton’s next stop was Howler’s apartment.

  “He scurried out like a rat with a dog after it,” a wino who fit into the neighborhood told Dutton. The old man had been sitting on the steps nursing a bottle in a paper bag when Dutton arrived. “The Bill came by a couple hours later looking for him.”

  “Inspector Archer? Big guy, bad temper? Female partner?”

  “These coppers were not regulars, you know what I mean.”

  “Special Branch?”

  “I saw guns, they’re the only ones that carry ’em, isn’t that the truth.”

  While most officers weren’t armed on their regular duties, Dutton knew it was a misconception to think that the London police didn’t have access to guns. Special Branch were emergency squads. They carried guns and used them in incidents involving IRA terrorists or other violence. But the timing wasn’t right for Archer to have been at the apartment with the officers. He was still back at the Abbey about the time the police came looking under the rug for Howler. From the sounds of it, Howler had been expecting them and left for another rat hole before they arrived.

  Interesting, Dutton thought. Howler had expected the police. What did he do, take an ad out in the personals telling the coppers where to look when they needed a suspect for the Abbey job? And he had skipped out and left Dutton to be grilled. Red herring. The cagey bastard threw me to the police so he’d have more time for his getaway.

  It sounded right to Dutton, but his instincts told him he was still missing pieces about why Howler had brought him into his chamber-of-horrors show. It would have been easier to use one of his brain-dead druggie pals.

  Dutton gave the man the price of a bottle. He was walking away when the wino called after him. “Grindstaff, that’s a name I heard, one of the coppers was named Grindstaff.”

  “Did Howler say anything to you about being in trouble?”

  The wino shrugged. “The whole world is in trouble. But he did say he was getting a bunch of money for a nice piece of work.”

  “That’s all, just money for work?”

  The man thought for a moment. “He said he was going to be rich … if he lived.”

  “If he lived?”

  “Isn’t that the truth, we’d all be rich if we lived long enough, isn’t that the truth.”

  Dutton left the wino redundantly pondering the mysteries of life on the stoop with his bottle. He walked for ten minutes and popped into a pub, got a pint, and settled into a dark corner with his mobile phone.

  He found the notion that the Abbey escapade might have a financial motivation intriguing. Howler had one driving force in his life—money to feed his habit. Years ago, he was caught trying to sell his own kid to feed his real love, the white lady called cocaine, after his marriage broke up.

  Dutton called a Burn source who worked in the clerical pool at New Scotland Yard. “Check your computer, luv, I need to know the assignment of an officer named Grindstaff. Probably Special Branch or RPS.”

  He got his answer in less than a minute and it surprised the hell out of him.

  “RPS,” was the reply. Royal Protection Service. That tracked with the phone number Howler’s mother had. It would fit with the wino’s belief that they were armed. Like Special Branch, they carried weapons.

  Dutton whistled through his teeth and tapped his phone on the table as he added up the score:

  Howler got an invitation to the prince’s ball.

  Uh-huh.

  Howler stuck Henry VIII and the head of one of Henry’s wives in the church where monarchs are crowned and not a few buried.

  Mondo bizarre.

  The Royal Protection coppers came storming after Howler with weapons drawn.

  Now, that was just bleedin’ nuts and it led to only one conclusion: Howler knew something the Royals wanted to keep under the rug. Laundry dirty enough to keep newspapers and the telly people from disclosing secrets that the government didn’t want revealed.

  It kept coming back to one thing in Dutton’s mind: Howler had a piece of evidence that the Prince of Wales wanted to get rid of his troublesome wife, just as one of his predecessors, old Henry, did. Only she plugged him first.

  Dutton looked up at the telly on the wall. A news broadcast during a break in a soccer game showed the scene he’d witnessed earlier, Marlowe James, the hired gun from America, going up the steps of the Old Bailey. It occurred to Dutton that not only was the American attorney the keeper of the secrets, but she probably kept them on the hard drive of her computer.

  Dutton toasted her with his pint of brew. “Marlowe, me luv, our stars are about to cross.”

  36

  Old Bailey

  “Is this the courtroom we will be in for the trial?” Marlowe asked Philip Hall.

  “No, the princess will be tried in a larger one.”

  They were seated in the gallery above the action on the courtroom floor. A rape case was in progress on the floor of the courtroom below them. A police officer on the stand was being questioned by V. C. Desai, a Crown Prosecutor.

  “What do you think of our prosecutor?” Hall whispered.

  She couldn’t judge the man’s legal talents in five minutes of mundane courtroom action—he was asking about Desai’s persona.

  “Definitely of star quality, much too dynamic to be a character actor. He dominates the stage.”

  Desai’s looks were theatrical. And Marlowe instantly understood Hall’s earlier remark that inferred the prosecutor could play hero or villain. He had that much stretch as an actor. The opposing barrister, whom Hall identified as a junior by his robe, was not in Desai’s class, either as an advocate or as a movie idol.

  Desai was of Indian ancestry. “Both his parents are London-born,” Hall said, after they left the gallery when the court went into recess.

  Hall went on to explain that the fact that Desai was a third-generation Londoner, bright, well educated, and spoke the queen’s language more precisely than a BBC announcer, did not stop an occasional query from strangers as to how long he’d been in the country.

  “An elderly barrister from the old school,” Hall said, “the school that didn’t have people of color in it, once made the mistake of calling Desai a sand nigger, rather rudely, to his face.”

  “I hope Desai punched his lights out.”

  “Actually, he did worse. The word was put out that no client of the barrister would get a plea bargain and that Desai would personally try every case the man brought to court and see that the defendant was maxed out at sentencing. Desai is the best advocate in the Crown Prosecutor’s Office, he’s never lost a case. Since most criminals have overwhelming evidence against them and want an attorney who can get them a good deal, it was a disaster for the barrister. The last I heard, the barrister now
works for an insurance company.”

  Hall told her that the prosecutor had grown up in a poor slum area of London, and that when he first came to work for the Crown Prosecutor’s Office there had been rumors that his mother had been a prostitute.

  “Desai is sharp, very much so. He came from poor circumstance and had to struggle twice as hard as anyone around him. His left arm is shriveled, a result of a childhood injury that wasn’t properly cared for. I’m sure it must remind him of his struggles against the Establishment each morning when he dresses.”

  “He’s anti-Establishment?”

  “He’s quiet about his feelings, isn’t known to really harbor any overt political tendencies, but quite by accident when I was in his office a few months ago, I noticed literature from a socialist party on his desk. One could see why he would be attracted to a political theory that espouses, however falsely, egalitarianism. Hardworking, intelligent, ambitious, he’s of a skin color that keeps many doors closed to him, no matter how we pretend that everyone gets an equal opportunity. Desai is no fool, he has to deep down resent the system that holds his humble beginnings and skin color against him. It’s the impression of the committee that Desai harbors anti-monarchy feelings and that he may use the trial to smear and ridicule the princess, and through her the queen herself.”

  Hall gave her a sideways glance. “I understand you had to work your way though college.”

  “College and law school, waiting on tables. I guess you can say that I have a few anti-Establishment feelings myself.”

  Desai was about forty, with a youthful face and prematurely stark-white, silky hair. With his narrow face and thin lips, he reminded Marlowe of a bird of prey, a proud hawk. Bright and ambitious, Hall called him. “He can be unscrupulous when it comes to winning. Very much believes in the advocacy system of justice—the courtroom as a gladiatorial match. I sometimes feel that he seeks redress for whatever wrongs have been done to him by society by winning in the courtroom. Most prosecutors have an attitude that justice must be served and that their job is to put the facts before a jury. If the jury finds for the defendant, justice is still served, and they have performed their duties. My impression of Desai is that he equates winning with justice served, somewhat like playing God.”

  “Playing God?”

  “Rather, in a manner of speaking. I think his view of the advocate is an old-fashioned, medieval view. I’m sure you recall that the adversarial system of justice rose from trial by combat in which guilt or innocence was decided by a test of arms. Clergy, children, women, and persons disabled by age or sickness had the right to nominate champions to fight on their behalf. The theory was that God intervened on the side of the right, that it was the judgment of God that determined the winner. So Desai, in his mind, is the right hand of God.”

  “He has to be,” Marlowe said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “His left hand is crippled.”

  37

  The princess again greeted Marlowe with a firm handshake, but she was not as vibrant as she had been the first time Marlowe met with her. Her eyes were puffy, either from crying or a lack of sleep, Marlowe thought.

  “I need to ask you something,” she told Marlowe, as soon as the two were seated and coffee and tea was served. “I want to know what you think of me.”

  Marlowe stared at the sparkling blue eyes of the princess for a moment. “I haven’t really had enough time to get to know you well enough to answer that question.”

  “We all get first impressions, don’t we? After hearing about my undistinguished academic record, I think we can go beyond a first impression.”

  “Well, I … I think that you’re not really asking me what I think of you, but rather seeking some kind of approval.”

  The princess clutched her coffee cup tightly with both hands and looked Marlowe directly in the eye. “Why do you say that?”

  “My feeling is that you tend to seek approval from others. I suspect it’s related to your belief that you were a disappointment to your family, starting with that business of not being a boy.”

  “Do I come across as someone who is buttering up people because I need their pats? Like a puppy dog brushing up against one’s leg?”

  Marlowe didn’t want her answer to be unkind or dishonest, but she also didn’t want to lie. She chose her words slowly and carefully, not quite sure what the princess’s reaction would be. “You come across as someone who is kind and considerate, witty and spirited, with your greatest strength lying in people skills rather than academic skills.” She let that sink in for a moment and then added, “But you also come across as someone who is overly concerned about what other people think of you. Now, you can beat yourself with a horsehair whip or we can go on with our discussions about your past.”

  The princess’s jaw worked for a moment as she struggled with an impulse to blow at Marlowe—then she burst into a loud laugh.

  “I see why you have Trent and his lot in a tither. You are blunt, aren’t you?”

  “I have to be, in my profession. Would you prefer I lie?”

  “No, that’s what they’re doing, or if not that, at least not telling me all the truth.”

  Marlowe wasn’t surprised at her answer. She didn’t dislike Trent, she hardly knew the man, but she didn’t quite trust him, either.

  “They think I’m erratic, hiring you and all that. They’re worried I might fire them and hire another firm. Wouldn’t that take the air out of their tires, being booted off the case?”

  “I’m sure it would.” She took out the pad of paper with her notes on it. “Let’s continue where we left off yesterday. You were eighteen and had moved into your first apartment in London.”

  “Right. The flat was my coming-of-age present from my parents, physically coming of age, not mentally, of course,” she said with a smile. “But anyway, there I was, eighteen and all on my own in London. I was looking forward to it. I invited three of my girlfriends to share my flat with me. I suppose you can say that I had a quiet life in that first year on my own. I didn’t smoke or drink and wasn’t into partying. Read those romances I get criticized so much for, watched a bit of telly, sat around and talked to friends. The people I related with were pretty much out of the same coop.”

  “Formal, restrained, rich?” Marlowe asked.

  “Yes, but there’s also something called breeding. I suppose a psychologist would say we were trained like puppy dogs to all bark alike. We dressed pretty much alike, nothing extravagant unless someone special appeared in our lives, dated the same sort of men, clean-cut, well mannered, although I really wasn’t into dating. It was considered to be vulgar to be pretentious or ostentatious.”

  “What did you do for fun?”

  “Girl things, I suppose, maybe even silly things sometimes. We might ring up people with funny names and crack a joke about it or go out and ring doorbells in the dead of night. If a boy let us down by not showing up for a date or not treating us with the respect we demanded, we would throw eggs and flour on his car. You look a bit puzzled. Didn’t you do things like this when you were young?”

  “Not beyond the age of twelve.”

  “Is that what I did? Acted like a juvenile? I suppose they were silly things, now that I think about it.”

  “I’m not judging you, I’m still trying to understand you so I can explain you to a jury. Actually, the things you did sound like harmless fun. They remind me of friends who live in a farm community in Utah and whose children go to barn dances and hay rides. What you described is a joy of innocence you rarely see today among young people. Teenagers nowadays know more about drugs, sex, and rock and roll than naive pranks.”

  “What did you do when you were eighteen?”

  “I was working as a waitress in a greasy spoon.”

  “Why a waitress?”

  “It’s a job a woman can get when she doesn’t have training for anything else. It’s not easy, you’re on your feet for eight hours, taking flak from customers and the c
ook, putting up with people who think their three-dollar special should taste like pheasant under glass, warding off men with wandering hands, letting them know they better keep them in their pockets if they still want to have all their fingers but not so firmly that it kills a tip.”

  “It sounds perfectly horrid.”

  “It’s survival when you need it.”

  “When you don’t get a three-bedroom flat for your coming-out present, is that what you mean?”

  “We came from different backgrounds. If I had your upbringing, I’m sure I would have been one of those girls getting an apartment.”

  “I was an immature girl doing silly things while I waited to get married and be taken care of for the rest of my life—that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” The princess held up her hands to ward off Marlowe’s protest. “I’m sorry, I’ll go on. There I was, eighteen, and as my swim instructor would have put it, I was treading water rather than completing laps. But they were happy times, thinking back now, the happiest I’ve ever had. I even took a cooking class. My mother encouraged it. I suppose it was part of the finishing school I never finished. I learned how to make borscht and yummy chocolates and ended up with a few more pounds on me than when I started.”

  “Did the added pounds bother you?”

  “No, at that time it was just some extra weight, not something that dominated my life.”

  “Did you have any future plans for life? Any game plan for finding a suitable husband?”

  “Not really, I just knew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I had to remain a virgin.”

  Marlowe cleared her throat. “Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a virgin before marriage, though it does sound a bit medieval, the husband showing the wedding guests the bloodstains on the sheets the next morning.”

  “My God, that’s a dreadful thing to say. That isn’t at all what I meant.”

  Marlowe shook her head. “We seem to be constantly on a collision course. I’ve interviewed dozens of women in cases and I’ve never acted like an ax murderer, but I seem to bludgeon you every time I open my mouth.”