First Horseman, The

by Chambers, Clem

  ‘Come on now. Take my hand and let’s get going.’ He threw a glance at her hidden left hand.

  She saw him cast his eye to the table, but she blocked his view. ‘OK,’ she said hesitantly, holding out her right hand.

  He grabbed it – and she lunged at him, the scalpel disappearing into his belly. He cried out and let go of her hand. His knees buckled and he fell.

  She bent down, grabbed her bag and leapt for the door. She swung it open and slammed it behind her. Then she whirled around: there was a key in the door. She turned it in the lock and took it out of the key hole as Renton groaned. There was blood on her left hand. She let out a little cry.

  ‘You’re in trouble now,’ she heard Renton roar. ‘Better come back in and finish me off because I’m going straight to the police. You’re an animal-rights terrorist, and you’ve tried to kill a simple researcher for your twisted politics.’ He gave a crazy giggle.

  Then she heard him pick himself up and walk heavily to the table. ‘Amazing what a one-inch blade can’t do. There’s not even much blood.’ Something fell to the floor with a clatter. She started. It had sounded like a bundle of keys. He might have a key to the door. She turned and ran.

  Renton peeled off his lab coat, opened his shirt and stuck a plaster on the cut. Then he took the keys from his lab coat and went to the door, unlocked it and walked out stiffly. He sat down carefully on his chair and opened his screens. There she was, running up the stairs and out of the building. She was heading to the car park. He got up and threw on his jacket.

  He took out his phone and called her, watching her running away till she stopped, pulled out her phone and looked at it. She might guess it was him.

  ‘You,’ she said, before he had spoken.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘me. You have twenty minutes before every policeman in Cambridgeshire is looking for you. Better run, rabbit, run.’

  ‘I’m going straight to the police.’

  ‘And what will you tell them? There’s nothing to see here but lab equipment, silly girl. Nothing but my stab wound against your crazy story.’

  He watched her shoulders sag in the CCTV shot. ‘Run, rabbit, run,’ he shouted, into the microphone. She would flee and he would follow and, if circumstances allowed, he would strike.

  She was holding something. A worm of anxiety slithered through him and he glanced back to his workspace. She had the specimens. He disconnected the call and let out a howl of rage.

  She looked at the phone. He’d ended the call. He might be coming after her right now. She sprinted for her car.

  32

  Renton sat uncomfortably in the driving seat of Cardini’s silver Mercedes. He was hot and in pain. He had forced himself, with great discomfort, to get upstairs and be in place to follow the girl. Pain was a fitting punishment for letting her get away. The place just below his ribs where the tiny blade had penetrated was burning. It was little more than a flesh wound, he calculated. She hadn’t twisted the blade, just stabbed with it. It was hardly a wound at all.

  He would treat it himself later, but first he had to discover where she would run to. He watched her on his android phone as she drove out of the car park, taking a route that, while out of site of the campus cameras, would bring her past the entrance to the lab. It was the fastest route to the rest of the world that she could take. Going left would have been smarter – it would have been harder for him to find and catch the little blue Ford Focus. Instead she was going to drive straight past him and he would follow her wherever she went.

  The blue Focus flicked by, followed by a white van. Renton pulled out behind it and fell back a little so he could see the faintest glimpse of the girl’s car.

  Kate was shaking as she drove, her arms numb, her grip feeble as if her hands might fall off the steering-wheel. She was sobbing to herself in frustration.

  ‘Call the police, call the police,’ she kept saying to herself. She had stabbed Renton, that much was obvious. What would he do? Go to the police? Surely a sicko like him wouldn’t do that. She started to rummage in her bag for her phone. Her fingers caught a sharp piece of card. Jim’s. Her eye glimpsed something in the wing-mirror. There it was again – a flash of silver behind the white van that was following her.

  Was it Renton?

  She went back to rummaging in her bag. ‘Phone, please,’ she begged, ‘please.’ She shook the bag sharply and suddenly her phone was in her hand.

  Call the police, said the voice in her head, for the umpteenth time.

  What if he wasn’t following her? Then the police would think they were dealing with a mad woman saying she was being followed by a man she had stabbed, with his stolen property in her footwell.

  ‘Why did you take that?’ she muttered. Because I thought it would have stuff in it that would prove Renton was planning to do horrible things to me. It was an evil-looking box and whatever was inside it was evil too. It was black, functional and secure: it looked like it was meant to hold something nasty. But it was light: perhaps he’d meant to put something in it, something of hers. She shuddered.

  She picked Jim’s card up and read the address. Jim was a rich guy: he would have lawyers, he would know people: he would help her, she knew he would – she prayed he would. ‘Oh, God,’ she moaned. Now she was praying for help from a stranger who wasn’t even in the country.

  She punched Jim’s address into her beaten-up old GPS. It said she could be there in thirty-seven minutes. What harm could another thirty-seven minutes do?

  Stafford was standing in front of the main door at the top of the steps as the Ford Focus came to a halt. There was a young woman in the driving seat, a local, perhaps, who had come to enquire about a fundraiser or the use of a field for some event or other.

  She got out and looked up at him. He cut an imposing figure, he knew, in his grey striped trousers and black jacket. She smiled and walked up the steps to meet him. ‘Good day,’ he said. She looked extremely nervous. His right eyebrow rose. She’s not nervous, he thought. She’s terrified. ‘How may I help you?’ he said, smiling kindly.

  ‘Jim,’ she said. ‘Jim said I could come and stay whenever I liked, so here I am.’

  ‘I’m afraid—’ began Stafford.

  ‘That Jim’s gone away to America.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘I know, but he asked me to come anyway.’ She looked quickly over her shoulder.

  Stafford followed her gaze up the drive, then turned back to her. There was a desperate determination in the girl’s eyes. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Let me fetch your bags.’ He made to go down.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t bring any.’

  Stafford stood back to attention. ‘Very good. Will they be following?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I have to speak to Jim, to work out what I’m doing.’

  Stafford watched her face twitch involuntarily. She was in shock. ‘Please come in,’ he said. ‘Allow me.’ He tried to take the small black box in her left hand.

  She smiled. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and appeared to sag in relief.

  He held the door open and she walked into the mansion’s hall. The floor creaked as she crossed it and their footsteps echoed.

  She climbed the ancient wooden staircase behind Stafford to the gallery, then followed him along a corridor. The carpet was ragged and worn and ran irregularly down the passage, whose polished boards groaned with every step. The pictures on the walls were portraits of well-painted but ugly noblemen and women set against beautifully painted but contrived country scenes. The smell of polish filled her senses. The house was as perfect as a museum.

  Stafford opened two large doors and ushered her into a giant bedroom filled with ancient furniture, a huge bed set against the far wall. Four windows looked out on to the parkland beyond.

  ‘Please feel free to wander about,’ said Stafford, ‘but be careful not to disturb anything in the master’s study, especially near his computers.’ He held out a small wooden block with a button set in the middle of its len
gth. ‘If you need anything, press this and I will be on hand.’

  She took it. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  Stafford stood at the edge of the ha-ha, the light gently fading. In another hour it would be dark. He watched Lady Arabella riding around the cornfield towards him. Two wood pigeons swooped from above the tree to his left – he could have snapped his shotgun breech closed and despatched them. However, as he imagined they knew, he preferred not to shoot. He watched them fly off. He was a little disappointed, but meeting Lady A as she passed on her daily patrol would more than make up for it.

  ‘Good evening, my lady,’ he greeted her. Her long chestnut hair was flared out behind her; no riding helmet today.

  ‘Good evening, Stafford,’ she said, smiling down at him. She rubbed the horse’s neck. ‘You seem to have someone parked at the bottom of your drive looking rather shifty,’ she added, her voice high and clear. ‘Mercedes, about thirty metres to the right of the gatehouse. Unsavoury, if you ask me.’

  ‘Thank you, m’ lady,’ said Stafford. ‘I’ll attend to it right away.’

  She smiled at him, as she had when their paths had first crossed where Jim’s grounds met her family’s estate. Somehow he would make a point of being in the same places at the same times and she appeared to do likewise. Their meetings had become a pleasant unofficial appointment in the day.

  There was something fascinating about the butler, something unusual, she thought. Of course, there was no such thing as a butler any more. It was a fiction, a reconstruction of a relic, an invention worthy of a Disney movie. A butler, if you ever met one, was a costumed manager, as much a servant as any vice president of marketing she might meet socially. Stafford was clearly a gentleman, and the retainer of allegedly the richest young bachelor in Europe. She fancied getting a look at his boss: Stafford was clearly gatekeeper to him and a very charming one at that.

  She was happy to flirt a bit with the old man. If she looked at him through narrowed eyes, she could see him as he had been in his prime, beneath the older, heavier form. Beneath his servile exterior, she sensed the strength and character of her late father; a man guided by principles as archaic as the estate she rode around.

  ‘I hope to see you tomorrow,’ said Stafford, raising his green checked cap.

  She smiled in acknowledgement as the horse walked on.

  Stafford’s shadow passed across the driver’s window of the Mercedes and he rapped on the glass. The man inside sat up with a jolt and lowered the window. His eyes were fixed on the broken shotgun under the butler’s arm.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ asked Stafford, imperiously. The car was parked so that its occupant could observe the house’s gates. The terrified young girl and this vehicle were linked, he felt sure. Something was afoot, but he had no idea what it was. Without doubt Jim would be mixed up with it.

  ‘Resting,’ said the bearded man, in a friendly but unctuous way that made Stafford bristle.

  ‘You had better move along,’ he said.

  The man started his engine.

  Stafford took this as conclusive evidence that he was up to no good. An innocent person would have shown shock or enquired as to why he had to move off a public highway.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the man, putting his seatbelt on. ‘I didn’t mean to trespass.’

  Stafford got a good look at his face. He had apologised for something he was planning to do but had not yet attempted. He stood back from the car to let it pull out and away. Was that blood on the driver’s shirt? He memorised the number plate. Lady Arabella had been right: the situation was fishy, very fishy indeed. How observant of her, how clever. And how negligent of himself not to have CCTV that could see on to the road at the perimeter. He huffed to himself and set off towards the gate.

  There was a sudden eruption to his left and a horse crashed across the bank and down on to the road. Lady Arabella trotted over to him. ‘So, what do you think?’ she said, appearing slightly excited.

  ‘Up to no good,’ said Stafford. ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘I’ll make sure the estate keeps a keen eye open,’ she said.

  ‘Much appreciated,’ said Stafford, sketching the faintest of bows.

  ‘I shall probably see you tomorrow,’ she said gaily, turning the horse around.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Stafford, knowing full well that he would be standing on the ha-ha apparently waiting for pigeons when she rode by.

  It would be another wonderfully bitter moment. He retained the desires of a man in his prime but not the reach. Thirty years previously he would have made a play for her, but now, like a decrepit climber, he had to stand back and admire the magnificent prospect of the peak rather than risk humiliation and injury by attempting to conquer it.

  He wondered why she indulged him by always riding by at the same time each day. She must be, as he was, a creature of habit, routine and discipline.

  He allowed his head to drop as he walked to the gate.

  33

  Kate looked out of the window of the large salon. She could see Stafford trudging up the gravel drive, shotgun over his arm, looking like the master of the estate. The mansion was huge, empty and strangely friendly for an echoing and potentially scary old house. She had imagined that big houses like this would feel cold and haunted, like a vandalised mausoleum in an abandoned wood. Instead the massive building felt like a home that had been loved and filled with comfort. It would be a haven from which she was sure to be ejected as soon as Jim made contact with his butler. Then she would be adrift in the freezing seas of a dangerous world.

  Was she wanted by the police?

  Where could she go?

  Home to her parents to face the music?

  She had nowhere else to run to.

  Was the maniac Renton looking for her?

  She felt trapped by a series of binding problems, penned in by an infinity of awful outcomes.

  She was tugging at her hair, she realised. She dropped her hands, then flicked away the strands she had broken or torn out and let out a little groan. If only she was smart enough to know what to do. If only she could fly above it all and see her whole predicament laid out in a simple diagram. If only she could just evaporate and reappear somewhere else at some other time.

  34

  ‘Really?’ said Jim, as Stafford’s voice cut in and out, beamed across the international network. Kate had shown up at the house and was staying there. That was unexpected. Perhaps it meant that Jane would magically reappear in his life at the most impossibly awkward moment. He smiled at how ironic that would be.

  He liked the idea that Kate had sought him out. She was his kind of girl. And he was as lonely as hell. ‘Of course,’ he said, in reply to Stafford’s enquiry as to whether she could stay.

  The connection was frustratingly fractured and he was unsure whether the choppiness was creating the concern in Stafford’s voice or whether it was real.

  ‘Anything else I need to know?’ he asked.

  ‘No … stage.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘… stage.’

  ‘Say again,’ said Jim, looking out at the South Carolina forest.

  ‘Not at this stage.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jim, ‘over and out.’ He hung up. He gazed across the fawn leather back seat of the Lincoln Town Car to Cardini, who sat impassively, like a marble statue in a suit. ‘So tell me about your client McCloud,’ he said.

  ‘When the environment is right, I will be happy to do so, but it would not be appropriate in this car.’ Cardini looked at him gravely. ‘We should be at his compound in about another hour, inside what is allegedly the largest private home constructed in America in the last fifty years. It is a house of truly palatial proportions. Even the kings of France would have approved.’ He went on reflectively, ‘Though it must be said that modern methods render the construction of titanic buildings a modest challenge. No more are giant structures works of genius, like the European cathedrals or the monuments of the anc
ients.’

  ‘How big is his place?’ asked Jim, scratching his head.

  ‘Big enough for a small army,’ said Cardini. ‘Perhaps even a large one.’

  The countryside was impressive to a British guy. There were no fields or villages or towns. Instead there were miles and miles of forest. It had been burnt down by the early settlers, who had washed the ashes for potash, then shipped back the extract of a whole ecosystem to Britain as fertiliser. Just as they had killed the buffalo for its skin and the birds for a few feathers, they had murdered the virgin abundance of America for a fraction of the whole.

  The land had been farmed until the pillaged soil could no longer support agriculture. Then, abandoned, the forest had returned and reclaimed it. In a few hundred years all that outrage and turmoil had come and gone and left no trace.

  The Town Car slowed and pulled off the highway. After about half a mile they arrived at a gatehouse. A guard came to the driver’s window and the driver signed a form. The guard glanced into the car and returned to his gatehouse. The barrier in front of the vehicle dropped into a hole in the road and the gate with its hinged fence swung up. The car drove forward and up a hill. Jim looked around, expecting to see a large house at any second, but as they went over the brow there was nothing except another hill, covered with trees.

  ‘You may wish to sit back,’ said Cardini. ‘We have several miles to go yet. The McCloud compound is on a quarter of a million acres.’

  ‘I don’t do acres,’ said Jim. ‘How big is that?’

  ‘Four hundred square miles.’

  Jim sat back as instructed. ‘Huge.’

  Cardini nodded. ‘Much of it is mountain. No use for anything except hunting.’

  They passed up a steep rise.

  ‘You’ll see the house when we come over this ridge.’

  Jim sat forward.

  The nose of the car dropped and the car turned around a curve that looked down into a broad valley. Jim’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s not a house. It’s like a Vegas casino without the flashing signs.’