No Tears for the Lost

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A man was kneeling by the parapet barely six feet away. He had the butt of a shotgun cradled under one arm, with the barrel poking over the edge. He was dressed like the other guests and seemed to be peering over the top as if searching for someone. An empty champagne bottle lay by his side.

Rockface slipped silently through the door, Riley moving up on one side. The air up here was immediately cooler than at ground level, with a faint breeze skimming the roof. The surface underfoot was flat and faintly ridged, and Riley guessed the area was laid with strips of lead or some other weatherproofing. It should have been the same all over, but as she stepped away from Rockface, she trod on a thin scattering of something brittle, setting off a noise like miniature firecrackers.

The gunman spun round with a start, the barrel of the shotgun lifting towards them. Without thinking, Riley, who was closer, took a quick step forward and kicked the man as hard as she could in the chest.

It wasn’t technical or stylish, merely a good, old-fashioned toe punt. But it did the job. There was a muted crack as something gave way, and the shock of contact travelled up Riley’s leg. As the man groaned and dropped the shotgun, all she had to do was reach out and catch it before it fell to the floor.

As the man flopped over sideways, winded and whey-faced, Rockface stepped past Riley and kicked his hands away from his sides in case he had a backup weapon. There was no attempt at resistance and by the sounds coming from the man’s mouth, he was busy trying not to throw up.

Riley peered over Rockface’s shoulder as he flipped the gunman expertly onto his back. He was fresh-faced and looked no more than nineteen, with a slight fuzz across his upper lip.

‘Know him?’ Riley asked.

Rockface shook his head. ‘Never seen him before. These kids all look the same to me.’ He went through the man’s pockets and came up with a wallet and a silver hip flask. The wallet held documentation in the name of Charles Justin Clarke, with an address in Mayfair, London, and a folded wedding invitation. ‘Bloody hell,’ muttered the butler. ‘He’s a sodding guest!’

‘Well, there you go,’ Riley told him, beginning to feel the surge of adrenalin give way to the shakes. ‘Lucky you didn’t shoot him, aren’t you?’

Rockface grunted sourly and gently slapped the man’s face. It sounded painful. When he got no response, he went downstairs to tell Sir Kenneth what had happened and arrange for an ambulance. Riley didn’t envy him the job. No doubt Myburghe would have something to say about a guest running amok with a gun at his daughter’s wedding reception. It certainly wasn’t something he’d want splashed all over tomorrow morning’s papers while eating his egg soldiers.

Charles Clarke stirred and grunted, his breathing sounding like an old kettle. Riley squatted down and waited for him to come round. He did so by stages, the mixture of shock and alcohol probably combining to act as a mild sedative.

‘What happened?’ he croaked. When he saw Riley looming over him, he struggled to move away, but Riley put a hand on his chest to keep him still. Even in the poor light she could see his face was as pale as a fish’s belly and covered in an unhealthy sheen of perspiration. Then he flipped over and threw up. When he’d finished, he turned back and sat up, shaking his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said miserably, then gently held his ribcage. ‘Christ — what did you hit me with?’

‘My foot,’ Riley muttered. ‘Who were you shooting at?’

‘What? Nobody,’ he muttered groggily and flapped a limp hand towards the darkness. ‘The treetops… I was tree-cutting.’

She looked over the parapet, wondering if he was drunker than he seemed. A group of evergreens showed pale and silver in the light coming up from the ground. Most of them were of the same height, with a uniformity of shape and mass like racked spears pointing skywards. She couldn’t be certain, but it looked like the nearest one was missing the top few feet of spindly trunk. Myburghe was going to be even less impressed.

‘Where did you get the gun?’

‘I found it up here.’ Clarke retched some more and a thin trickle of bile dribbled from his lips.

Riley smiled unsympathetically. Come morning, apart from a monster hangover, he was going to have a mouth like a mud-wrestler’s armpit. And Myburghe’s anger to cope with. But at least he was alive.

‘You found it.’ She didn’t bother hiding her scepticism. ‘Not that it makes any difference. Ever been to court on firearms offences? It’s a prison term these days.’

Charles Clarke looked up as though it had suddenly occurred to him what he’d done, and that firing a gun in a crowded place was very stupid, not to say illegal.

‘I did — I promise!’ At the thought of prison, Clarke looked horrified. ‘I came up here — OK, that was out of order, maybe. But I needed a drink — something stronger than bubbly, that’s all. The key was in the lock, so I thought, why not? It was boring downstairs, anyway. When I stepped outside, I nearly tripped over the gun. It was lying there. I mean, why should I lie?’ His voice was shrill with youthful protest and indignation. He broke off and coughed, and Riley told him to lie still.

She was tempted to explain to him what might have happened if Rockface had come through the door by himself, but that really would have spoiled his night. Instead she stepped across the roof and placed the shotgun out of the way, then peered over the parapet.

The crowd downstairs had already forgotten the fuss and were back to their partying, milling in and around the marquee as if gunfire was a regular wedding day occurrence. No doubt some of them would have concluded it demonstrated supreme sang-froid, a spin-off of good breeding and schooling. Riley preferred to think that with no bodies cluttering up the lawns, the young blue bloods merely figured it was safe to continue drinking and having a good time until someone died.

Her radio crackled. It was Palmer. She told him they’d found what seemed to be a drunken prank gone wrong, and that Sir Kenneth might want to check his gun cabinet. She also mentioned Rockface being armed.

‘That figures,’ he replied, sounding not the least surprised. ‘See you down here.’

Riley clicked off and had another scout round the roof, then went to see how Clarke was doing. He seemed to be on the road to recovery, although not quite fit to trot. Moments later, Rockface returned, and after slinging the youth over his shoulder with no more effort than a pillow, carried him downstairs, oblivious to his groans of pain. Evidently, the possibility of cracked ribs didn’t rate highly on the butler’s list of medical problems, or if they did, he didn’t care.

Riley followed, carrying the shotgun.

‘That was quick thinking, what you did up there,’ Rockface commented as they neared the ground floor. His voice even held a faint hint of respect, a whole continent away from his earlier displays of mild contempt. ‘Where’d you learn that?’

‘Ballet school,’ Riley quipped. ‘He was lucky — if I’d used my entrechat, I’d have probably killed him.’

He turned and gave a faint scowl. ‘Right. Big secret, is it?’

‘Something like that.’ She handed him the shotgun and went in search of Palmer.

She found him by the fountain, halfway down the drive. Someone had switched on a number of large ground lights, illuminating the scene like day. A group of partygoers had congregated, clutching bottles and glasses, most of them in much the same state of drunkenness as the unfortunate Charles Clarke. The women were in strappy dresses and delicate heels, while the men were mostly jacket-less, ties undone to show wads of manly chest hair. They were uniformly blasted and some of them watched the approach of Palmer and Riley with undisguised hostility.

In the centre of the group, a young woman was being propped up by two companions. She was tall, thin and coltish, with long, honey-blonde hair slipping in damp disarray around her face, a girl barely on the edge of womanhood.

‘Annabel,’ Palmer murmured quietly, nodding towards the girl. ‘I told her to stay close to the house but she went walkabout.’ He paused and looked closely at Riley. ‘You okay?’

‘No problem. The butler’s got the shooter in a stranglehold. I think he’s one of the guests. I may have broken one of his ribs.’

‘Serves him right.’

It became clear, the closer they got, that Annabel had been in the fountain. Her thin dress was soaked through and she was shivering in the cooling air, holding a clutch purse close to her chest. Her face was wet and smeared with mascara, as if she’d been given two black eyes, and she was staring around with the vague lack of focus that accompanies the fairly stoned. She didn’t look happy.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t the faithful old bloodhound, Frank Palmer!’

The speaker was a heavy-set man in his thirties. He was clutching a champagne bottle in one meaty fist and had the swagger and sneering expression of someone accustomed to getting his own way. His tone was challenging and sour, and he looked a little too old for this group of mainly younger people, one of whom called him Henry. ‘I thought you’d given up hanging around the girls, Palmer,’ he taunted nastily. ‘Vicks had a narrow escape, in my opinion. No saying what would have happened to the bloodline if you’d got in there, eh?’

Palmer ignored him and stepped up to Annabel. He reached out and gently held her face, peering into her eyes with evident concern. There was little obvious reaction from the girl. ‘You’d better get her inside and changed,’ he said calmly to her companions. Then he eased the clutch purse from her hand and opened it, shaking the contents out onto the gravel.

A female voice rose in protest, echoed by a couple of men at the front of the crowd. Riley was about to say something as a powder compact, lipstick, cigarette lighter and a surprising amount of other, normal handbag stuff women seem able to pack into a confined space tumbled to the ground. Then came a trickle of small tablets… and two small plastic envelopes containing white powder.

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