Who Guards a Prince?

by Reginald Hill

  “So I settled down here and had a drink and waited. Oddly, the longer I waited, the less important it all seemed. Researchers should stick to research, I’d decided. Leave the news to the newshounds. Indeed, going over the evening’s events I began to see myself as merely ridiculous. When the doorbell rang just before midnight, I was in a mellow mood, ready to be gently mocked before a loving reconciliation landed us in bed, which I was now looking forward to very much.

  “I didn’t check the door, I was sure it was Baz. But it wasn’t.

  “It was the Tyler.

  “He didn’t say a word. He looked so calm, so serious, like a solicitor come to draft a will. Yes, that was it, he looked completely, professionally reliable.

  “And he was. He closed the door behind him, then hit me in the stomach. Not hard enough to bruise, he just more or less jabbed with his fingers. But it took the breath out of me and I doubled up.

  “He caught me over his shoulder, walked across the living-room to that window there. It was open. There’s a little balcony outside that overlooks the back area. He stepped out on to it.

  “And he tossed me over the side.”

  CHAPTER 7

  McHarg found himself sloshing whisky into his glass. Betty held out hers for a refill too.

  “He just tossed me over the side,” she repeated reflectively. “Sounds simple when you say it fast, doesn’t it? Over I went, down I went. I couldn’t believe it. It was too absurd to be frightening, even. Suddenly I was flying through the air! It was almost exhilarating!

  “And then I stopped flying. There was pain. Just for a moment, a flash. But so intense you could have spread it over a lifetime of visits to the dentist and still had bucketfuls to spare. And after that, nothing. Blackness. A blank. And since that moment, there have been times when I’ve recalled that pain with the kind of nostalgic longing you usually keep for the Mediterranean sun in a wet February.”

  She drank some more whisky, her face deeply troubled. Then with a determined effort at brightness, she said, “There! I’ve told somebody. Well, that’s a load off my mind. It wasn’t so bad after all.”

  It was a poor parody of catharsis. McHarg ignored it.

  “Why the hell have you been faking amnesia all this time?” he demanded. “Why not just go straight to the police?”

  She sighed deeply and shook her head.

  “You’re being a great help, McHarg,” she said. “Listen, will you? For a start, when I woke up I was full of dope, cased in plaster, and I genuinely couldn’t recall a thing. I mean, really, not a damn thing. Anything I could have remembered I’d have announced to the world. But everything had gone. My earliest recollection was months earlier, long before I’d started working on the programme. The doctors diagnosed complete amnesia, and prognosed that it might be permanent. If it bothered me, they said psychotherapy might help. Otherwise, forget it—ha, ha. The police said I must have been sitting on the rail of my balcony when a metal stanchion gave way. A couple of screws had rusted and stripped their threads. The whole thing was dangerous—not just mine, but everybody’s. They found my broken glass beside me. They also found enough alcohol in my blood to suggest I might have been a bit unsteady, easily unbalanced.

  “I accepted all this. To tell the truth, I wasn’t concerned about anything but my health. I’d had a miraculous escape, they told me. I should have been killed in the fall. After a while their stress on my good fortune got through and I realized things must be really bad. So then it came out. Paralysis. Probably permanent. Meals on wheels for life. If I could have got to another window, I’d have made a job of it this time.

  “But I couldn’t. And I didn’t. Instead I got better, or most of me did. I recovered rapidly in some ways. Only a couple of months later I was out of hospital into my chair. Well, I won’t bore you with plucky little Betty’s struggle with adversity. I did the thing properly, went to a residential training center; my aim was self-sufficiency, my motives were mixed. In the beginning mainly I wanted to be sure I had the capacity to kill myself if I ever felt like it. Great reason for recovery, eh? Then I began to get the idea that I might be able to walk again. I was sure there was still a bit of feeling there. I wasn’t going to let my muscles waste. They had to stop me half-killing myself with their therapy exercises!”

  “And all the time, no memory?”

  “None. Baz was around a lot, most attentive. Everyone was very touched. I came home—I insisted on staying here even though it’s so high. I had some insurance money and I got the place fitted out for a cripple. And I wanted to start work again. Baz said he’d fix it. And he could too. His career had taken a rocket turn upwards in the months since my accident. He had got himself into the executive policy-making bracket. He had a lot of experience in news and current affairs when he first started and now he was widely tipped for a top controlling job there. He got me back on to the Crime series which was still in the planning stage. So everything was about as fine as it could be in the circumstances.

  “The only thing that really got to me, oddly, was Jim Morrison’s attitude. He came to see me in hospital once. He was so upset he could hardly talk. But he didn’t come back. And on the odd occasion I came near to meeting him again once I was out and about in my chair, he backed off like a scared rabbit. I heard he was heavily on the bottle. It’d always been his weakness. Now it sounded like it was going to be his death.”

  McHarg thought, it probably was, and the woman covered her eyes momentarily as though he’d spoken aloud.

  “I’d told Baz that I’d no intention of marrying him by this time—that is, a month or so after I’d come out of hospital. It wasn’t noble self-sacrifice or anything like that. I just didn’t want to, and he was mightily relieved. But he still kept close to me. I thought it was friendship with just a touch of conscience. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was all a coincidence…”

  She tailed off. McHarg didn’t speak.

  “He’d got himself a house on the river down towards Windsor. He was really doing well. I stayed there one weekend. Sunday morning it was misty and quiet, not too cold but beautifully still, like we were a million miles away from town. Baz suggested we breakfast on the water, not the kind of daft romantic idea he usually went in for, but it really appealed. A jug of coffee, half-a-dozen hot croissants, some fresh orange juice and a rug. It was lovely. He lifted me into the tiny skiff he owned, and off we went into the mist. His intention was to moor on a little eyot about fifty yards down-stream. Then out of the mist ahead of us appeared another boat. It came slowly towards us almost on a collision course.

  “There was only one person in it, a man, and naturally all I could see of him was his back. It was enough.

  “Suddenly doesn’t describe how I remembered. It’s not violent enough. Like a rubber stamp on a blank sheet of paper. Now it’s blank. Bang! Now it’s not.

  “Recognizing him from behind probably saved me. In the two seconds, less, that I had, my mind ran like a Grand Prix engine. This wasn’t coincidence. This was at the very best a test. I had to pass it. I stopped my thoughts from running on to what would happen if it wasn’t a test but simply an ambush.

  “Our oars were going to hit so I gave a shout. That helped too, having a reason for shouting, for being a little afraid.

  “Both men glanced round and shipped one of their oars. The boats came close together. The Tyler took hold of our gunwale as though to steady them and looked right into my face.

  “I managed to laugh. It was a bit quavery, but I hoped that sounded like relief. He said, That was close. I said, Worse things happen at Henley. He said, It’s going to be a lovely day. I said, Yes, but I think I prefer it like it is now, before the river gets crowded. He said, Yes, it’s so easy to collide with someone then. And we laughed again. His eyes never left my face. Then he seemed to make up his mind and he pushed us apart. A few seconds later he was out of sight.

  “We went on and had our picnic. Baz chattered away happily, was very attentive. And I responded a
s best I could. But all the time I was looking at him and wondering how much he knew. Had he connived at this meeting? Was his exuberant mood caused by relief that I’d passed the test? Perhaps I should have felt touched to believe so. But I didn’t. I was wondering what the bastard would have done if I’d failed. The water flowed past, deep, grey and treacherous. I’d survived my brief moment as a bird, I’d no hope of getting by as a fish.

  “I got through the day somehow. I’d no idea what to do. Go to the police? I didn’t think much of the police then, McHarg.”

  “I’m beginning to agree with you,” said McHarg.

  “My story sounded simply hysterical. I’d suddenly remembered that six months earlier I’d been thrown out of my flat window! And why? Because I’d tried to gate-crash a Masonic Lodge meeting! No, it had to be something to do with Partington.

  “Next day I went to the library and got the back numbers of the papers for the week of my accident.”

  McHarg interrupted, “And you found that the day afterwards, the London office of Partington’s company was bombed by terrorists claiming to be exacting vengeance for the company’s part in repressing their black brothers in Zimbabwe, but also incidentally destroying all relevant records.

  “And two days after that, when Partington returned from his Swiss sanatorium, he ’discovered’ his flat had been burgled and his private papers stolen along with all his valuables. He put it down to the wide publicity given to his absence from the country.”

  “So Partington came off clean,” said Betty. “He’s got powerful friends, but everyone knows that. What I knew was just how ruthless they would be to protect their interests. And I was terrified, I tell you. The kind of people I’d glimpsed at that meeting weren’t to be taken lightly. And if I couldn’t even trust my friends, like Baz Younger and Jim Morrison, who the hell could I trust?

  “Only myself, was the answer. An amnesiac cripple would surely get no hassle. I gave up my therapy classes, let it be known I was resigned to a life in this chair. And I’ve had to learn off by heart what it is I’m supposed to have forgotten. There’s a million ways you can give yourself away, you’d be amazed. Like when that silly old fart Hunsingore came prancing up to me at the reception. Of course I remembered I’d interviewed him right at the start of my research for The Master Builders. Like half the House of Lords, his family’s been into Masonry for years. But it was just at the edge of my alleged blank period. Christ, but it’s hard being consistent—and never knowing who’s watching. I’ve lived on a knife-edge, McHarg. I’d got a plan, but it was a long-term one. I’ve got a sister in California. She’s married to a doctor, a gynecologist. She’s been writing to me ever since the accident, asking me to come out there to live with them and try what good old American know-how can do for my legs. I’ve had to write back that there’s no hope. Christ, I don’t even trust the mail! But I’ve been keeping on with the therapy up here as best I can, McHarg. I won’t give up hope, not of that, not of that. I won’t!”

  She began to cry again and instinctively McHarg reached to take her in his arms but she pushed him away.

  “That’s where I’ve been. I’d planned to give it a year, make it look natural…But after you’d been here… I told you I was on a knife-edge. That’s why I’d invited you back. You looked honest to me, McHarg. You were asking questions about Jim Morrison, you were giving evidence against Partington, and you sounded like a straight-up guy. So on an impulse I thought I’d take a chance. I wanted a broad shoulder to cry on, some hefty muscle I could trust. Unfortunately things didn’t work out right.”

  “You mean, I couldn’t manage it and you didn’t really want it?”

  “Oh, don’t make me your alibi, McHarg. I wanted it, right enough. It would have been the first time since I got smashed up. I was surprised to find how much I wanted it once we got on the bed! But it was one way traffic and we never got into that nice post-coital confession time. When I heard next day you’d been beaten up after leaving here, I got scared again. I didn’t know if there was a connection, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out! I headed west as fast as I could move.”

  “Leaving word you were in the Cairngorms?”

  “You checked that? Well, it gave me a breathing space. My sister was delighted to see me. Brad, that’s her husband, arranged for me to have some tests in the paraplegic unit of this huge hospital he works at. I’m still waiting for the results, but I thought, sod it! I can’t take London any more, being surrounded by people I don’t trust. If Partington had got sent down, I might have risked coming out in the open. But he didn’t. So I came back to do a quick tidy up of my affairs. I’ll need money. I own the lease of this place and it’s worth a hell of a lot by today’s prices. Also I’ve got some insurance money left, and a handful of stocks and shares. Two days. That was all I needed to be clear and away. Two measly days! And the first thing I find when I arrive is you, McHarg. Christ, why does every time you visit here have to be a disaster?”

  McHarg regarded her coldly.

  “There are worse visitors than me,” he said. “I think you’ve had one of them already.”

  As he told her about the scratches on the lock, the speed with which her thin facade of self-containment crumbled into the grey dust of fear made him wish he’d held his tongue. This time she didn’t resist when he put his arms about her.

  “It’s OK,” he reassured her. “Nothing to worry about. It’s OK. They’ve been, they’ve looked, they’ve gone. There’s no reason for them to come back. It’s OK.”

  “You’re sure?” she said trembling against him.

  “Certain,” he said. “It’s OK.”

  The doorbell rang.

  CHAPTER 8

  McHarg said, “Go through into the bedroom.”

  “No!” she cried. “I can’t, I won’t, oh Jesus…”

  McHarg struck her cheek with the flat of his hand, lightly, but enough to be felt.

  “It’s probably someone selling encyclopaedias,” he said.

  “Then they’ll go away,” she said, rubbing her face.

  The bell sounded again.

  “Into the bedroom,” McHarg ordered.

  This time she obeyed. McHarg waited till she had closed the door before going out of the living-room into the hall, carefully closing that door behind him too.

  The bell rang once more, the knuckles rapped imperiously against the door and a familiar voice said, “Doug, for God’s sake, open up if you’re in there!”

  Surprised but still cautious, McHarg opened the door a fraction, stepping back from it instinctively.

  The man outside pushed the door fully open and stepped inside.

  It was Freddie Grossmith, his normally inexpressive face crinkled with mingled relief and concern, but it turned to surprise as McHarg, body hunched forward aggressively, said, “Hold it right there, Freddie. And don’t move a muscle till you tell me how you knew I’d be here.”

  “I worked it out, Doug,” said Grossmith. “I used to be a detective too, remember, before I got shoved upstairs. Partington says you tried to murder him and he’s got the marks to prove it…”

  “Hold on,” said McHarg. “Partington? Why should he complain, I wonder. And especially to the Commander of International Division.”

  “Why shouldn’t he complain?” said Grossmith in surprise. “Though to tell the truth, it was more that secretary of his running round Mayfair naked and hysterical! And it wasn’t to me directly, but evidently she claimed to have overheard some reference to Inspector Elkin. When CIB come to question my chief assistant, Doug, I make it my business to know what’s going on.”

  McHarg relaxed slightly. CIB was the police internal investigation unit. It made sense, to a point.

  “And you came here because…” he prompted.

  “I worked it out,” said Grossmith smugly. “You were following up what happened to you after the reception that night. Partington, Wesson—the next step, had to be Miss Woodstock. They told me at the BBC she was off il
l. So I came round on the off-chance. Doug, you’re in big trouble. Once CIB get hold of you, they won’t let me near. So I thought if I could get your version first, I might be able to help. Is Miss Woodstock at home, by the way?”

  “No,” lied McHarg. “She’s still in Scotland, I suppose.”

  “So you broke in? Christ, Doug, you really go looking for trouble, don’t you?” said Grossmith with feeling, pushing the door shut behind him.

  As he did so the door into the living-room opened and Betty came rolling out in her wheelchair.

  McHarg looked at her in exasperation. Mavis had been just the same, incapable of obeying even the simplest instruction.

  Then he saw her expression change and his exasperation fled. It was fearful to see such terror on a human being’s face. It made her shocked reaction when she first arrived seem like a welcoming smile. All color faded, her mouth sagged open but no sound came, only her eyes spoke and what they said was betrayal.

  There was only one explanation of their message and McHarg couldn’t believe it.

  He turned round to have his disbelief confirmed.

  Grossmith had taken a pair of thin black leather gloves out of the pocket of his elegant and expensive camel topcoat and was drawing them on.

  “So you have come back, Miss Woodstock,” he said pleasantly. “Well, that’s convenient.”

  “Freddie!” said McHarg. “What the hell is this?”

  “No time for explanations, Doug. I doubt if you could take it in anyway. You should have stuck to crofting and let the Kirk look after your thought processes.”

  “But Elkin and CIB?” he said stupidly.

  “A little embroidery,” said Grossmith. “I had hoped to persuade you to go somewhere a little more private, but now Miss Woodstock’s back, here will have to do for you both. It was Elkin and a friend who found Partington at the Thanes’ Lodge. You must have been quite close, Doug. Elkin contacted me straightaway. He’s learned his lesson since he panicked last time when he saw you going off with Miss Woodstock. That assault on you was very unprofessional. I apologize, Doug. It wouldn’t have happened, but I was busy elsewhere.”