Waking Caliban
Page 10
Shrugging, I returned to the room and my Shakespeare biography. The next time I looked at the clock, it was 8.45 and there was still no sign of Marr. I told myself that provincial academics wouldn’t have the military approach to punctuality with which I’d been raised, but the situation was still making me uneasy. I put the book down on the bedside table and returned to the corridor. The place was still deserted and the only sound was that of the lift, creaking along on another endurance run and then chiming as it stopped on my floor.
The lift doors slid open and I caught sight of a figure in the lift cage. He was leaning against a wall, his hands against his stomach, his close-set eyes tight with pain and something like surprise. There was something familiar about him: simultaneously, I recognized him as the man who had met Roden in the pub garden and realized that this had to be Stephen Marr. He was wearing tan-colored trousers and a hound’s-tooth sports jacket with leather elbow patches but what really caught my eye was the red stain across his shirt and the blood that was dripping through his hands.
He tried to move towards me and staggered sideways, one hand still clutching his gut, the other against the lift door. I ran forward and lowered him gently to the floor. He tried to lift his head and then slumped against the threadbare carpet, looking up at me with an expression of bemusement, as though he had no idea where he was.
I could see a splattering of blood and shredded intestine on one wall of the lift cage. It wasn’t hard to piece together what had happened. Someone had shot him, then got out of the lift and pressed the button to send it to my floor. He groaned piteously and I wondered what I could do to help him. I glanced back along the corridor, grabbed the laundry trolley, wadded a handful of small towels, placed them over his stomach. His eyes flickered open but I wasn’t sure he could see me. I tried to think calmly. I was already viewed as something less than an upright citizen by the local police. If anybody found me like this, I could be in deep trouble.
I reached up and pressed the button to send the lift back in the direction of the hotel lobby. Then, as the doors finished creaking shut, I flicked the ‘stop’ switch. The lift screeched to a halt. I would, at least, have a few moments undisturbed while I checked Marr’s injuries and figured out what the hell to do.
I bent over the wounded man again, conscious of the rasping in his throat as he tried to breathe. His eyes were still open but blood was seeping through the towels I’d placed over the wound. As gently as I could, I lifted his hands and looked at the bullet wound. It didn’t look good. Like Roden, he’d been shot with a heavy-caliber weapon. I could only see one hole in his flesh but the bloody mess on the wall meant that the bullet had passed through him. I knew that, if I turned him over, I’d see a massive exit wound in his back. Substantial parts of his stomach and intestines would probably be missing and, that being the case, attempts to get help for him would be futile. I’d seen men shot like this before, in Kosovo and the Middle East. The only uncertainty was how long it took the victim to die.
I saw his lips move as he tried to speak and I bent my head closer to his face.
“You’re Hastings?” His voice was faint but audible.
“Yes. You’ve seen me before. In the garden of the pub by the river. You talked to Dr Roden.”
He nodded and then sobbed. I felt overcome with pity for him. He was a museum curator, for God’s sake. I guessed that his only crime was that, when he’d come into possession of something worth more money than he’d earn in a hundred lifetimes, he’d got greedy. He started to talk to me and then stopped. I guessed he was in shock but his eyes, which had been half-closed, suddenly opened wide.
“I’ll be OK,” he said. “It’s not too bad.” His breath was ragged and dots of blood were appearing on his lips like plague spots. “Roden told me you were a professional. I can pay you to look after me.”
“Sure I’ll look after you.” There was nothing else to say. I raised my free hand and touched the side of his face. His skin was cold and clammy, as though, irrespective of what was going on in his mind, his body had accepted the inevitable and was closing down its systems in readiness for death. I leant closer to his ear. “Can you tell me who did this to you?”
“I was coming to see you,” he said, “as we’d arranged.” His words were coming more slowly now, as if he was becoming sleepy. “Two men. Here, in the lift. They got in after me. Stopped the lift between floors and…”
“What did they do?”
“They stole from me.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him right. “Stole? Stole what?”
He sighed as if frustrated by my lack of comprehension. “I was bringing papers to show you.”
“And these people got them from you?”
He nodded and then, to my astonishment, he smiled. “They were fakes. I wasn’t going to give you the originals. I copied them. Changed details…”
“What details?” I asked.
“Where to look…”
“Look for what? What were these papers?”
His gave no sign of hearing me. I knew it was a question of minutes or even seconds before he died. Again, I felt a surge of compassion. He didn’t deserve to end his life on the floor of this crummy old lift. Sweat ran down his cheek and I wiped it away with a fresh towel. The touch brought him back to me.
“The papers are the key,” he said softly.
I leant still closer in order to hear him. “The key?”
“To what was buried. Long ago.” For a few moments, his voice grew fractionally stronger. “First cache was in cellar. Under the house.”
“The first cache?”
“I was working with... Archaeologists... Warwick University… I found them… Hid them from the others…”
“And there are more caches?”
“Of course. Still there… Hidden in the well. Hamnet Sadler’s well.”
“A well? Why a well?”
“They lined it with bricks,” he murmured. His voice was growing fainter again, each word a struggle. “Six feet down… Niche in the wall…”
“A place to hide things.”
“Yes. There was religious persecution... They concealed things… Like bibles… Prayer books.” He winced as a spasm of pain hit him.
“Maybe you’d better not talk.”
“No. I want to tell you. The papers have answers… Where the well used to be… More…”
More sweat ran down his cheeks and I wiped it away as gently as I could. “If the papers they stole from you were copies, where are the originals?”
“Hidden. In his head. In Shakespeare’s head…”
He continued to talk but his voice was fading and was hard to hear. I did my best to understand, repeated his words back to him: he nodded and his eyes closed. He gripped my hand and I saw his lips move again. His voice was tremulous with fear. “I’m going to be all right, aren’t I?”
“Sure you are,” I told him.
For a few seconds, I could hear the rattle of his breath like marbles in a tin can. Then everything was quiet.
Chapter 13
I stood and leaned against the wall of the lift cage, forcing myself to breathe calmly and consider my prospects. If I called the police with my latest snippet of news, at best, they’d take me in and hold me for days for questioning. At worst, they’d put me right in the middle of the frame for Marr’s murder. I thought about Tench and Rainbow, who were already convinced I was a cold-blooded murderer from way back, and decided that the worst case scenario was by far the most likely. I realized that this whole scene could have been set up to take me out of the picture.
I knew I couldn’t stay still and wait for the rap to land on my head. There was no chance that I could get the body out of the hotel unnoticed, but I couldn’t afford to be found with it. Given that the lift was already part-way between floors, I decided I had no choice but to restart the mechanism and then stop at the first floor. If there was anyone waiting there, I was in trouble. If not, I’d send the lift on down to the lo
bby and run back up the stairs to my own room. I’d have to work quickly: even the Almoner’s Arms’ customer service staff might stir themselves into action if they found a dead body slumped in the lift.
I looked down at myself. I had blood, literally, on my hands. I rubbed them on one of the hand-towels and then, trying to remember what I’d touched apart from Marr’s body, wiped the walls and the lift controls. Then, with the towel draped over my fingers, I flicked the switch to restart the lift and pressed the button for the first floor.
The lift staggered its way downwards and then came to its usual juddering halt. I braced myself as the doors started to open. If there was anyone standing outside, I could find myself facing a murder charge within a few hours.
The doors opened with infuriating slowness and the first floor corridor gradually came into view. I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out with a gasp. The corridor was empty.
I stepped out and, carrying the incriminatingly blood-stained towel, was already part-way through the doors to the stairwell before the lift doors closed behind me.
***
I locked the door of my room and tried to calculate how long it would be until the police returned to my door. I knew it would take time for them to cordon off the lobby, stop people leaving the building and call in the detectives and forensic experts. It meant there’d be a hiatus before I saw them. I needed to use the time wisely.
I ripped the bloody hand-towel into pieces and flushed it down the toilet. Then I stripped off and checked the clothes I’d been wearing. I could see no signs of blood on them but I knew that modern forensics would find the tiniest spot. I went into the bathroom and gave the clothes a thorough wash in the bath before climbing under the shower and scrubbing myself down. Moving quickly but carefully, I dried myself and stuck a fresh dressing on my wounded arm.
When I walked back in the bedroom, I could hear the first sirens and, for a few seconds, I watched at my window as the flashing lights of a squadron of police cars converged on the hotel. I put on a fresh tee shirt and a pair of jeans before taking the wet clothes and stuffing them into one of the hotel’s plastic laundry bags. I pulled my pistol from the dresser drawer and it followed the clothes as soon as I’d wiped it clean of fingerprints. Holding the two bags, I opened the door to my room and peered out. Despite the commotion I guessed would be going on in the lobby, the second floor corridor was still empty.
I hurried back in the direction of the lift, knelt down and inspected the linen trolley. It was made of polished steel and, in the lower parts of its chassis, contained a series of compartments hidden behind small doors. I was bending to explore further when I heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell. I swore softly and ducked behind the trolley, dropping the laundry bags at my feet. I could hear raised voices. A man and a woman, coming down the stairs. When they reached the second floor, they stopped by the door for a moment, continuing to argue. I kept still and held my breath until the sound of footsteps started again and the quarrelling couple continued down the stairs.
Looking around to make sure I was still alone, I opened one of the trolley’s compartment doors. The space behind it was part-filled with cardboard boxes full of soap tablets. I pulled the boxes out and pushed the bag containing the Smith and Wesson into the back of the compartment, jamming the boxes back in front of it. The bag of wet clothes went into a second compartment. I guessed the police crime scene teams would eventually check the trolley but, hopefully, it wouldn’t be for a while: even when they did, I didn’t think they’d be able to connect either the clothes or the weapon to me. It was a shame to lose the gun but better that than have the police search my room and find it stuck under the mattress.
There was nothing to do now but wait. I returned to my room and switched on the television. BBC1 was showing a documentary about violent crime in our major inner-cities. They should, I thought, take a look at our sleepy tourist destinations.
When the knock finally came on the door, I was unsurprised to find Tench and Rainbow waiting in the corridor. I guessed that they’d both have been off-duty but would have insisted on coming in and giving me their personal attention. They kept their pleasure at seeing me again carefully concealed.
“I heard the commotion,” I told them. “What’s going on?”
“You don’t know, Major?” Rainbow had the ability to invest a whole world of sarcasm in a single phrase. “Can we come in?”
I stood aside and the two of them pushed past me. Rainbow, ignoring the ‘no smoking’ sign on top of the television, pushed a cigarette into his mouth and lit it, using a disposable lighter. Tench, meanwhile, walked over to the television and hit the ‘off’ button.
“There’s been some trouble,” Tench told me. “We wonder if you’d care to accompany us to the station so we can discuss it properly.”
“What kind of trouble?” I asked.
“We’ll tell you when we get to the station. After we’ve had a quick look around here. That’s if you’ve no objections.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve had time to get a warrant?”
He smiled at me and he and Rainbow conducted a quick but thorough search of my room. The fact that they found nothing incriminating did nothing to improve their moods. A couple of minutes later, we walked down the stairs together and shared a pleasant stroll through the lobby and past Dandruff Dan the gawping clerk.
The brisk ride in the police car was equally enjoyable.
Chapter 14
I managed to get Isbey on the phone and, after I’d persuaded him to give me her number, the agency’s lawyer. Amanda Rogan-Smythe didn’t seem too keen to spend her Friday evening driving from London to Stratford to represent me, until I told why the police were holding me. Lawyers, of course, love murders: they’re the most exciting cases they can get and a juicy homicide looks great on a CV. Amanda brightened considerably at the good news that I was a prime suspect in a slaying, and told me she’d be with me as early as possible in the morning. In the meantime, she told me to say nothing to the police. I’d seen enough LA Law reruns to think of that for myself but I thanked her anyway for the advice.
Later, Tench and Rainbow came to see me again and, when I said I’d been advised not to speak to them, implied that they were concerned about me doing a runner and invited me to spend the night in one of their cells. As they were good enough to explain that, should I decline their hospitality, they would charge me and put me under arrest, I shrugged and nodded my acceptance.
It was past midnight by the time I was finally locked into my cell and left alone. I’d bedded down in some miserable places during my army career but my present surroundings were right up there with the worst of them. The walls were a drearier shade of gray and were splattered with mindless graffiti, the effect tempered only by the peephole-studded metal door and the aluminum toilet next to the cot. The room improved a whole lot when they turned the lights out.
I sat on my cot and, holding my hand over my injured shoulder, tried to turn my enforced inactivity to advantage by thinking through everything that had happened over the last few days. I suppose I had some idea that I might spot some small but crucial clue that I’d previously missed. It didn’t work, though.
After a while, my mind started its old trick, insisting on dredging up thoughts that I didn’t want to think. Maybe it was Tench and Rainbow’s mention, during our first meeting that evening, of what had happened in Kosovo. But it was earlier times than Kosovo that my brain latched onto. There were things I hadn’t even told Geordie Thorpe, when we drank beer in the London pub, about our first engagement. We’d been in the desert at night when we came under attack. I was aware of shots ringing out and one of my men collapsing, crying out in pain.
I committed the worst crime any field commander could commit. I froze, couldn’t move, couldn’t give orders. Then some bastard from the other side appeared in front of me and aimed a bayonet at my guts. Even then I couldn’t move. I fell to me knees and waited for death.
Later that night, after we’d made camp somewhere in the desert, Browning found my fox-hole and slithered in to sit beside me, his shoulder jammed against mine. He lit a cigarette and I told him how much I owed him and promised that, if he ever needed it, I would repay him.
There was a thin breeze and smoke blew back into his face. He squinted sideways at me. “You’d fall on the grenade for me, would you?”
“Come again?”
He smiled and his eyes fixed on the opposite wall of the small ravine that sheltered our camp. “Every regiment has its legend about the man who fell on the grenade to save his comrades.”
“Well, any time you have a grenade that needs dealing with, just send for me.” I plucked one of the small yellow flowers that covered parts of the desert this time of the year and examined the veins in its petals. “Seriously, though, Browning. You saved my skin, in more ways than one. Thanks.”
“Oh, think nothing of it,” he said cheerfully. But, as he inhaled on the cigarette, I saw his face darken. “You can promise me just one thing. If the day ever comes when I’m not here, don’t let the family think badly of me. That’s the one thing I couldn’t stand, Hastings. If they ever thought I’d let down the ancestral name, after all those centuries of heroes. If they ever thought I was a coward or a wrong ’un, know what I mean? I don’t care what it takes but make sure they remember me the way I’d want them to.”