Seven Eight Play It Straight (Grasshopper Lawns Book 4)

by EJ Lamprey

  ‘Well, it was Moira who brought me down. There’s no sign anyone else has left stuff in this room, and there’s no makeup. And you didn’t find any way down to the older cellars, either, did you? She lied to you. This is a trap,’ Edge repeated and Fiona finally started to look concerned.

  ‘You think she believed me when I said you would kill me, and she’s giving you a clear opportunity? So we’re stuck here for hours?’

  ‘I don’t know. But she has to consider I told someone I was coming in, which I did, so whatever it is will have to be quick. Maybe there’ll be gas.’

  ‘There’s a bloody awful smell.’ Fiona looked round anxiously. ‘More decaying rat than cyanide gas, though. What do we do?’

  ‘Sit down and wait,’ Edge gave up on the door. ‘For another twenty minutes. I left instructions for, er, for my contact to get the police.’ She had nearly said Gillian’s name, until it occurred to her that the room could be bugged. The thought reminded her of her own modern technology. ‘I don’t suppose my phone will work here in the cellars.’ She slid two fingers into the seam pocket concealed under the over-padded bodice and tried to work her phone free.

  ‘That is an insane outfit,’ Fiona remarked. ‘I love it, but you’re too old to wear it. Your bottom’s drooping out below the shirt. You need a longer shirt, or a perkier bottom.’

  ‘At least I have a bottom. You’re a broomstick.’ Edge shot her an unfriendly look. ‘It was all I had, and trust me, not the outfit I would have chosen to die in. Damn and blast it, there’s no signal at all.’ She walked around the walls, holding the unresponsive phone up. ‘These things are useless. Never work when you need them to, and dominate your life the rest of the time.’

  ‘I’m getting coffee, do you want some?’ Fiona seemed to have been reassured, if anything, by her rudeness and ventured out from behind the sofa towards the sideboard with the coffee. Edge shook her head urgently.

  ‘God no, it’s probably poisoned.’

  ‘I had some about half an hour ago, and I feel fine.’ She poured herself a cup and turned round to watch Edge pacing round the room. ‘I’m sorry I said that about the outfit,’ she added. ‘I just realized—you dressed up and came here to find me, even after I accused you of murder. That’s pretty good.’

  ‘Not really. Brian was the most worried, he’s been fretting. Remember, we knew it wasn’t me. Kirsty’s been suspended because of your accusations, so we had to do something. Vivian and William are here as well, among the guests, and Donald dressed up as Alice Cooper to come in as one of the artistes.’

  Fiona laughed. ‘I saw the Alice Cooper! It was a really good makeup, I wish I’d known, I could have talked to him. I’ve got a bit of a crush on Donald, to be honest.’

  ‘Really? You hid it so well.’ Edge shot her a glance heavy with irony. ‘I don’t get it. I mean he’s nice to look at, I do get that, but he’s totally chilly. Not to mention the, you know, gay bit. Makes a crush a bit pointless?’

  ‘Oh, I’m convinced he just puts that on to keep women away. There was that huge scandal, about twenty years ago, don’t you remember? Maybe longer, you and Daddy were probably still in Africa. He was on tour with Rocky Horror when some producer’s wife killed herself over him, or her husband killed her, or something. The husband was on trial, but it came in as not proven, and he walked. Anyway, another actress instantly swore Donald had dumped her and pretended to slit her wrists because of him, but that was so for the publicity. It started a chain reaction, half the theatre world insisting they’d had him, men and women both. It was that sort of show, after all. He withdrew completely, stopped performing, and next time he appeared he was choreographing and starting on the set design stuff. And as cold as ice. Frosty the snowman. I’d not mind breaking through that barrier. Fahk, I’d settle for seeing the famous tattoo.’

  Edge stared at her. Her first impulse was to reject Fiona’s gossip outright, but she had a vivid memory of his advice to Rory: to act gay to keep women at bay. Really? She also remembered all the times she had openly assumed he was gay, to his face, and flushed.

  ‘That’s horrible, that’s a foul thing to happen’’ she said finally. ‘I knew he’d stopped performing quite abruptly, but I didn’t know about the scandal. And I like him frosty. I always felt comfortable with him, because he simply wasn’t interested.’

  Fiona shot her a glance bright with malice over the rim of her cup. ‘You’re with Brian anyway, remember? And Donald certainly wasn’t ever interested in you, or he wouldn’t have helped Brian and you get together. Brian said he really egged him on.’

  ‘True.’ In a moment of honesty she added frankly, ‘I’ve always thought him the most self-contained, passionless man I ever met, but now I wonder if I know him at all. And I never heard anything about a tattoo.’

  Fiona giggled wickedly. ‘It’s in a very private place. All the people pretending they’d slept with him, well, only a very select few know what the tattoo really is, the rest were all lying.’ She looked straight at Edge, who was still frowning. ‘You can’t get all the boys, Edge. Leave one or two for the rest of us.’

  Edge was too annoyed by the ridiculous comment to reply. She held her phone high against the door and gave a startled squeak. ‘Signal! Only one bar, but maybe if I stand on something;’

  She was still looking up at the phone when there was a gasped cry from Fiona, the crash of breaking china and a muffled thud behind her, wood on wood, like a padded door slamming.

  She froze. ‘Fiona?’

  Nothing.

  She looked over her shoulder nervously. No Fiona. She turned round completely. The room was empty. The broken coffee cup lay on the floor next to the Persian rug.

  Kirsty recruits some deputies

  Kirsty rang Brian back, sounding despairing. ‘Iain says there’s nothing he can do. He says if Edge has gate-crashed a private high-security rock star party dressed as a guest, and hasn’t come out, the chances are the security guards rumbled her and they’ve got her locked up until they can be bothered to phone the polis to pick her up, which could be at the end of the party, or tomorrow.’

  ‘And you explained all the rest: that Donald didn’t appear, that nobody’s phones are working, our suspicions about the Murdochs, you told McLuskie all that, and there’s still nothing he can do? God!’ Brian paced the room, his beagle watching him alertly. ‘I can’t believe this, Kirsty. What if there was a real emergency, if one of the guests had to be called to a dying relative—there must be some way of making contact!’

  ‘Iain did try, honestly, that’s why it took so long for me to call you back. And I’m calling from my car, I’m already on my way over to you. Apparently an officer has already been to the house earlier, he was told categorically that Fiona wasn’t there. When I phoned Iain, he rang the house on the land-line and identified himself to the security guard, and asked after Edge. The guard said a Blondie had tried to get in but had been turned away. Then he asked why they had said Fiona wasn’t there when she’d been taken to the house by the polis themselves? The guy said he’d been told to say she wasn’t there, whoever asked, for safety reasons. So Iain demanded to speak to Mr or Mrs Murdoch and got Mrs, who was not impressed and will probably put in a complaint, and she said Fiona had been staying there, and had been at the party, but no-one had seen her in over an hour. She also said it was pretty likely she was either shacked up in a bedroom with one of the guests, or had got bored and was out enjoying the Festival. And that if Iain thought he was going to invade the most important social event in the Edinburgh calendar with a polis search party he had better bring the Commissioner with him. Then Iain asked to speak to William or Donald and she hissed at him to get the Commissioner to ask, and put the phone down. I’m turning into the Lawns now. You’re in number twenty, right?’

  He wrenched the door open and strode outside, shading his eyes against her headlights as the little car pulled up onto the verge. She was getting out almost as it stopped moving, and he blinked to see her i
n full uniform.

  ‘I thought you were suspended?’ His eyebrows rose as the passenger door opened and Drew got out, also in police uniform. ‘And when did you join the polis?’

  Drew flashed his irrepressible grin but replied with some dignity. ‘I prefer to think of myself as a deputy sheriff, stranger. This lady swore me in fifteen minutes ago, if you must know.’

  ‘Aye?’ Brian looked back at Kirsty, who grimaced.

  ‘We came by to see if you wanted to be the hero again. I know Edge is there. She’d never have left a message like that, then not phone back to say she’d been turned away. I’ve got a big Hi-Vis jacket in the back of the car, never mind who from, which will hopefully fit you, if you want in.’

  Brian bumped his fist against his forehead, then started to laugh helplessly. ‘You’d better come in. It’ll take me a few minutes to find my jacket and hat. Edge isn’t the only person who goes to fancy dress parties.’

  ~~~

  Kirsty stood in the bachelor apartment trying not to look at the king size satin-sheeted bed that dominated the room, while Drew studied the photos on the walls, all of climbers against spectacular backdrops.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ Brian called through from his box room and she turned to face the study alcove with relief.

  ‘I’m going to wing it. In so far as I have a plan, I’m going to double-check with that Gillian Campbell who rang me, then knock on the door and say I have an urgent life-and-death message for Vivian. If Edge is being held as a nuisance gate-crasher, seems to me they’ll be happy to seize the chance to give her over to such handy polis. If not, Vivian will at least be able to tell us when she saw Fiona or Donald, or both. And I give you fair warning right now: if Fiona and Donald are off shagging in one of the rooms, I will arrest them both. Failing all else I will phone Central direct, tell them my aunt is being held against her will and has been for the last—well, it will be over an hour by the time we get there. In the meantime, Iain has promised to monitor for any mention of any of them, as of course my Airwave was taken away, and will let us know, so we won’t be committing to anything until the very last minute.’

  ‘Good.’ Brian emerged, tugging down his jacket with his free hand, a heavily braided peak cap in the other. ‘So—think this will get us in?’

  ‘Brian!’ Kirsty felt as if the breath had been punched out of her lungs. ‘Oh God, they won’t just fire me, I’ll be shot at dawn. You ken it’s a crime to impersonate a police officer, right? I don’t even begin to know what the penalty is for impersonating a Deputy Chief Constable!’

  ‘Excellent!’ Drew said admiringly and Brian adjusted his hat and grinned mirthlessly at him.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he looked back at Kirsty. ‘I’m attending a fancy dress party. And,’ his face hardened, ‘getting my woman out of danger, because when the polis were asked to do it they couldn’t. Let’s go.’

  The trap is sprung

  Edge gave a little gasp of fright and pressed up against the door. She looked at the phone in her hand and lifted it high above her head again. The one bar of signal reappeared. She crept forward into the room until she could reach the side table, then pulled it back to the door and climbed on it. The table shook and creaked dismally, but the signal flickered between one and two bars and she tried to dial Brian’s number. Unsuccessful, but thinking of him reminded her of the ‘where are you’ app on the phone and maybe that would show up, even on such a faint signal.

  She had just succeeded in balancing the phone on a jutting out brick above the old door when the table gave up the ghost and dumped her unceremoniously and painfully on the floor. She sprawled where she had landed, shaken by the second assault in just a few hours, and fighting back tears. This was a farce. She was a sedate middle-aged widow who should be quietly watching television and would have long since turned off a show about a second-rate overripe heroine who, far from coming to the rescue, had probably just enabled a murder and would in all likelihood be accused of committing it.

  On the bright side, the pain was receding, and the phone had stayed in place above the door. And nothing seemed to be broken. Even the seams of her insane costume had held, so when rescue finally arrived, she wouldn’t look a complete idiot. On the down side. . . She stared at the coffee cup. The coffee spill wasn’t spreading, but draining away into a crack between the floorboards. Fiona had probably been walking towards her. Could the rug conceal a trapdoor?

  She pushed herself across the floor, feet first, and thumped it cautiously with her left foot. No give at all, but there was the slightest echo. She repeated the thump on the wooden floorboards with her right foot. No echo at all. Swivelling on her leather-clad bottom, she propped herself on one elbow on the floorboards and cautiously tried to lift the edge of the rug with her free hand. It resisted, and she tugged harder. The rug was glued, or nailed, to the floor. So. . . she kicked off her shoes and pushed herself gingerly to her feet, careful to keep well clear of the rug. If there was a trapdoor under there, it presumably gave way when someone stood on it, then bounced back into place. That made sense. So, open the trapdoor somehow, and prop it open. Call down to Fiona—

  The Queen Anne chair resisted her first attempts to move it but finally groaned and shifted a few inches. Encouraged, she got behind it and pushed, one leg braced against the wall to give her more leverage. It finally rumbled as far as the rug and stopped stubbornly. With a grunt of exertion she lifted one corner and swivelled it at the same time so that the foot would land on the rug. Still nothing. With her skin shrinking, she perched on the arm of the chair to bring her weight to bear. With a sudden click the rug dropped away and the chair tilted into a yawning gap exactly as wide as the rug, and about a yard square—and jammed itself there, holding the trapdoor open. Heart hammering, Edge knelt on the edge of the dark gap, almost gagging at the foul smell of mould and decay that wafted up from below.

  ‘Fiona!’

  She called twice more before there was a faint reply.

  ‘Edge!’ Fiona’s wavering voice sounded terrified. ‘Oh fuck Edge, help me!’

  ‘How? Where are you?’

  ‘I’ve landed on somebody.’ Fiona’s voice broke on a sob. ‘Oh God, I may have killed him, there was the most horrible sound as I landed. And I’ve broken my arm. And probably my back. Oh God.’

  ‘Can you move your toes?’

  There was a tiny pause, then, ‘Yes. Okay, not my back. Or my legs. But definitely my arm.’

  ‘Can you see anything at all, any light anywhere?’

  ‘N-no. Only from where you are.’ After a pause she said, sounding slightly calmer, ‘My coat is on one of the chairs. There’s a lighter in the pocket that’s also a torch. Can you throw that down to me?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Edge backed away from the trapdoor on all fours and crawled to the chair behind the door, where Fiona’s beautiful brocade jacket was draped. She found the pocket with lighter and cigarettes, poked and tore a hole in the frayed chair cushion with her thumbs and pushed both the cigarettes and the lighter inside before crawling back to the trapdoor.

  ‘Fiona? I’m sending it down in a cushion, so it doesn’t break on impact.’

  ‘Thanks. Send my fags too, will you?’

  ‘Already done. Coming down on three. One, two, three.’

  She dropped the cushion and blinked at the delay before she heard a squawk from below.

  ‘Bloody hell, Fiona, you’re more than a single level down.’

  ‘Tell my broken arm. It knows.’

  A thin light sparked from below. About seven feet down a very old lathe and plaster level sagged towards a dusty jagged hole punched through the centre, and Edge could see Fiona’s ghostly shadow in a lower room as the light moved round.

  ‘Well?’ she called down and Fiona caught back a sob.

  ‘It’s biggish, no windows, ancient-looking door. I landed on Elvis.’

  Edge felt a bubble of hysteria. ‘Well, there always were rumours,’ she called bracingly and
Fiona’s voice strengthened.

  ‘The young Elvis, you stupid cow. An impersonator, in jeans and a black shirt, not white leather. And there are sk-kulls and b-bones, and bodies that still look m-m-manky, it isn’t funny. It’s a fucking crypt down here, and the smell. . .’

  ‘Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to be flippant.’ Edge was genuinely remorseful. ‘You’re being unbelievably brave. Is Elvis definitely dead?’

  ‘N-no. There’s a pulse in his neck, but he looks hideous. Blood in his sideburns and the top of his head is all c-c-crooked.’ Her voice shook again with horror and Edge shuddered.

  ‘Could it be a wig slipped to one side? There was an Elvis earlier in jeans, with a pompadour hairstyle.’

  ‘Yes. Yes it could.’ Fiona sounded relieved. ‘Oh God, Edge, there’s a half-rotted body sort of slumped against the door. I’m guessing it doesn’t open, then, unless you come down and help me. Maybe we can force it together.’

  ‘Not going to happen.’ Edge was emphatic, and Fiona stopped under the hole and looked up.

  ‘You’d rather stay there and be finished off in person by that psychopathic bitch?’

  ‘The side table broke when I climbed on it. I’ll use one of its legs as a weapon, or find a poker, or something. I’d rather die here than kill myself jumping down, and what if we can’t get that door open? It could be wedged shut by a century’s worth of rubble on the other side. Then we’re both goners.’ Edge looked nervously over her shoulder at the big door as she said it. What would she do if Moira came in?

  ‘I just nearly fell over a coil of rope here. That’s a lot of fucking use, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Fiona, actually, it could be. If I could find something long enough to lower to you, and you could tie on the end of the rope, I could pull it up, then work out some way to pull you up. Hang on. I’ll be back in a second.’