Break In

Twenty

I turned my back on him.

I didn’t want to see him do it; tear our lives apart, mine and his, and Holly’s and the baby’s. If he was going to do it, I wasn’t going to watch.

Time passed, stretched out, uncountable. Danielle, I thought.

I heard his voice, close behind my shoulder.

‘Kit...’

I stood rigidly still. You can’t frighten him much, Holly had said. Bobby with a gun frightened me into immobility and despair.

He came round in front of me, as white as I felt. He looked into my face. He was holding the gun flat, not aiming, and put it into my hand.

‘Forgive me,’ he said.

I couldn’t speak. He turned away blindly and made for the door. Holly appeared there, questioning, and he enfolded her and hugged her as if he had survived an earthquake, which he had.

I heard a faint noise behind me and turned, and found Maynard advancing, his face sweating, his teeth showing, the charming image long gone. I turned holding the gun, and he saw it in my hand and went back a pace, and then another and another, looking fearful, looking sick.

‘You incited,’ I said bitterly, ‘your own son to murder. Brainwashed him.’

‘It would have been an accident,’ he said.

‘An Allardeck killing a Fielding would not have been believed as an accident.’

‘I would have sworn it,’ he said.

I loathed him. I said, ‘Go into the sitting room’ and I stood back to let him pass, keeping the gun pointing his way all the while.

He hadn’t had the courage to shoot me himself. Making Bobby do it... that crime was worse.

It hadn’t been a good idea to draw him there with the express purpose of getting rid of me once and for all. He’d too nearly succeeded. My own stupid fault.

We went down the hall and into the sitting room. Pollgate and Erskine and Lord Vaughnley were all there, standing in the centre, with Bobby and Holly, still entwined, to one side. I went in there feeling I was walking into a cageful of tigers, and Holly said later that with the gun in my hand I looked so dangerous she hardly recognised me as her brother.

‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘You,’ I pointed to Maynard, ‘over there in that chair at the end.’ It was a deep chair, enveloping, no good for springing out of suddenly. ‘You next, beside him,’ I said to Erskine. ‘Then Lord Vaughnley, on the sofa.’

Pollgate looked at the spare place beside Lord Vaughnley and took it in silence.

‘Take out the stunner,’ I said to him. ‘Put it on the floor. Kick it this way.’

I could feel the refusal in him, see it in his eyes. Then he shrugged, and took out the flat black box, and did as I’d said.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘you’re all going to watch a video.’ I glanced down at the pistol. ‘I’m not a good shot. I don’t know what Pd hit. So stay sitting down.’ I held out the anorak in Bobby’s direction. ‘The tape’s zipped into one of the pockets.’

‘Put it on now?’ he said, finding it and bringing it out. His hands were shaking, his voice unsteady. Damn Maynard, I thought.

‘Yes, now,’ I said. ‘Holly, close the curtains and put on a lamp, it’ll be dark before we’re finished.’

No one spoke while she shut out the chilly day, while Bobby switched on the video machine and the television, and fed the tape into the slot. Pollgate looked moodily at the anorak which Bobby had laid on a chair and Lord Vaughnley glanced at the gun, and at my face, and away again.

‘Ready,’ Bobby said.

‘Start it off,’ I said, ‘and you and Holly sit down and watch.’

I shut the door and leaned against it as Lord Vaughnley had done in the Guineas, and Maynard’s face came up bright and clear and smiling on the television screen.

He started to struggle up from his deep chair.

‘Sit down,’ I said flatly.

He must have guessed that what was coming was the tape he thought he’d suppressed. He looked at the gun in my hand and judged the distance he would have to cover to reach me, and he subsided into the cushions as if suddenly weak.

The interview progressed and went from smooth politeness into direct attack, and Lord Vaughnley’s mouth slowly opened.

‘You’ve not seen this before?’ I said to him.

He said, ‘No, no’ with his gaze uninterruptedly on the screen, and I supposed that Rose wouldn’t have seen any need to go running to the proprietor with her purloined tape, the two days she had had it in the Towncrier building.

I looked at all their faces as they watched. Maynard sick, Erskine blank, Lord Vaughnley riveted, Pollgate awakening to acute interest, Bobby and Holly horrified. Bobby, I thought ruefully, was in for some frightful shocks: it couldn’t be much fun to find one’s father had done so much cruel damage.

The interview finished, to be replaced by the Perrysides telling how they’d lost Metavane, with George Tarker and his son’s suicide after, and Hugh Vaughnley, begging to go home; and finally Maynard again, smugly smiling.

The impact of it all on me was still great, and in the others produced something like suspended animation. Their expressions at the end of the hour and thirteen minutes were identical, of total absorption and stretched eyes, and I thought Joe would have been satisfied with the effect of his cutting, and of his hammer blow of final silence.

The trial was over: the accused, condemned. The sentence alone remained to be delivered.

The screen ran from black into snow, and no one moved.

I peeled myself off the door and walked across and switched off the set.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘now listen.’

The eyes of all of them were looking my way with unadulterated concentration, Maynard’s dark with humiliation, his body slack and deep in the chair.

‘You,’ I said to Lord Vaughnley, ‘and you,’ I said to Nestor Pollgate. ‘You or your newspapers will each pay to Bobby the sum of fifty thousand pounds in compensation. You’ll write promissory notes, here and now, in this room, in front of witnesses, to pay the money within three days, and those notes will be legal and binding.’

Lord Vaughnley and Nestor Pollgate simply stared.

‘And in return,’ I said, ‘you shall have the wire-tap and the other evidence of Jay Erskine’s criminal activity. You shall have complete silence from me about your various assaults on me and my property. You shall have back the draft for three thousand pounds now lodged in my bank manager’s safe. And you shall have the tape you’ve just watched.’

Maynard said, ‘No’ in anguished protest, and no one took any notice.

‘You,’ I said to Maynard, ‘will write a promissory note promising to pay to Bobby within three days the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which will wipe out the overdrafts and the loans and mortgages on this house and stables, which you and your father made Bobby pay for, and which should rightfully be his by inheritance.’

Maynard’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

‘You will also,’ I said, ‘give to Major and Mrs Perryside the one share you still own in Metavane.’

He began to shake his head weakly.

‘And in return,’ I said, ‘you will have my assurance that many copies of this tape will not turn up simultaneously in droves of sensitive places, such as with the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club, or among the patrons of the civil service charity of which you are the new chairman, or in a dozen places in the City.’ I paused. ‘When Bobby has the money safe in the bank, you will be safe from me also. But that safety will always be conditional on your doing no harm either to Bobby and Holly or to me in future. The tapes will always exist.’

Maynard found his voice, hoarse and shaken.

‘That’s extortion,’ he said aridly. ‘It’s blackmail.’

‘It’s justice,’ I said.

There was silence. Maynard shrank as if deflated into the chair, and neither Pollgate nor Lord Vaughnley said anything at all.

‘Bobby,’ I said, ‘take the tape out of the machine and out of this room and put it somewhere safe, and bring back some writing paper for the notes.’

Bobby stood up slowly, looking numb.

‘You said we could have the tape,’ Pollgate said, demurring.

‘So you can, when Bobby’s been paid. If the money’s all safely in the bank by Friday, you shall have it then, along with Erskine’s escape from going to jail.’

Bobby took the tape away, and I contemplated Pollgate’s and Lord Vaughnley’s expressionless faces and thought they were being a good deal too quiet. Maynard, staring at me blackly from his chair, was simple by comparison, his reactions expected. Erskine looked his usual chilling self, but without the smirk, which was an improvement.

Bobby came back with some large sheets of the headed writing paper he used for the bills for the owners, and gave a sheet each to Nestor Pollgate and Lord Vaughnley, and with stiff legs and an arm outstretched as far as it would go, gave the third to his father with his head turned away, not wanting to look at his face.

I surveyed the three of them sitting there stonily holding the blank sheets, and into my head floated various disjointed words and phrases.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Don’t write yet.’

The words were ‘invalid’, and ‘obtained by menaces’, and ‘invalid by reason of having been extorted at gun point’.

I wondered if the thought had come on its own or been generated somewhere else in that room, and I looked at their faces carefully, one by one, searching their eyes.

Not Maynard. Not Erskine. Not Lord Vaughnley

Nestor Pollgate’s eyelids flickered.

‘Bobby,’ I said, ‘tack that black box up off the floor and drop it out of the window, into the garden.’

He looked bewildered, but did as I asked, the November air blowing in a great gust through the curtains into the room.

‘Now the gun,’ I said, and gave it to him.

He took it gingerly and threw it out, and shut the window again.

‘Right,’ I said, putting my hands with deliberation into my pockets, ‘you’ve all heard the propositions. If you accept them, please write the notes.’

For a long moment no one moved. Then Lord Vaughnley stretched out an arm to the coffee table in front of him and picked up a magazine. He put the sheet of writing paper on the magazine for support. With a slightly pursed mouth but in continued quiet he lifted a pen from a pocket inside his jacket, pressed the top of it with a click, and wrote a short sentence, signing his name and adding the date.

He held it out towards Bobby, who stepped forward hesitantly and took it.

‘Read it aloud,’ I said.

Bobby’s voice said shakily, ‘I promise to pay Robertson Allardeck fifty thousand pounds within three days of this date.’ He looked up at me. ‘It is signed William Vaughnley, and the date is today’s.’

I looked at Lord Vaughnley.

‘Thank you,’ I said neutrally.

He gave the supporting magazine to Nestor Pollgate, and offered his own pen. Nestor Pollgate took both with a completely unmoved face and wrote in his turn.

Bobby took the paper from him, glanced at me, and read aloud, ‘I promise to pay Robertson Allardeck fifty thousand pounds within three days of this date. It’s signed Nestor Pollgate. It’s dated today.’

‘Thank you,’ I said to Pollgate.

Bobby looked slightly dazedly at the two documents he held. They would clear the debt for the unsold yearlings, I thought. When he sold them, anything he got would be profit.

Lord Vaughnley and Jay Erskine, as if in some ritual, passed the magazine and the pen along to Maynard.

With fury he wrote, the pen jabbing hard on the paper. I took the completed page from him myself and read it aloud, I promise to pay my son Robertson two hundred and fifty thousand pounds within three days. Maynard Allardeck. Today’s date.’

I looked up at him. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Don’t thank me. Your thanks are an insult.’

I was careful, in fact, to show no triumph, though in his case I did feel it: and I had to admit to myself ruefully that in that triumph there was a definite element of the old feud. A Fielding had got the better of an Allardeck, and I dared say my ancestors were gloating.

I gave Maynard’s note to Bobby. It would clear all his debts and put him on a sure footing to earn a fair living as a trainer, and he held the paper unbelievingly, as if it would evaporate before his eyes.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said cheerfully, ‘bankers’ drafts by Friday, and you shall have the notes back, properly receipted.’

Maynard stood up, his greying fair hair still smooth, his face grimly composed, his expensive suit falling into uncreased shape; the outer shell intact, the man inside in shreds.

He looked at nobody, avoiding eyes. He walked to the door, opened it, went out, didn’t look back. A silence lengthened behind his exit like the silence at the end of the tape; the enormity of Maynard struck one dumb.

Nestor Pollgate rose to his feet, tall, frowning, still with his power intact. He looked at me judiciously, gave me a brief single nod of the head, and said to Holly, ‘Which way do I go out?’

‘I’ll show you,’ she said, sounding subdued, and led the way into the hall.

Erskine followed, his face pinched, the drooping reddish moustache in some way announcing his continuing inflexible hatred of those he had damaged.

Bobby went after him, carrying his three notes carefully as if they were brittle, and Lord Vaughnley, last of all, stood up to go. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, spread his hands in a sort of embarrassment.

‘What can I say?’ he said. ‘What am I to say when I see you on racecourses?’

‘Good morning, Kit,’ I said.

The grey eyes almost smiled before awkwardness returned. ‘Yes, but,’ he said, ‘after what we did to you in the Guineas...’

I shrugged. ‘Fortunes of war,’ I said. ‘I don’t resent it, if that’s what you mean. I took the war to the Flag. Seek the battle, don’t complain of the wounds.’

He said curiously, ‘Is that how you view race-riding? How you view life?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it, but yes, perhaps.’

‘I’m sorry all the same,’ he said. ‘I had no idea what it would be like. Jay Erskine got the stun gun... he said two short shocks and you’d be putty. I don’t think Nestor realised himself how bad it would be...’

‘Yeah,’ I said dryly, ‘but he agreed to it.’

‘That was because,’ Lord Vaughnley explained with a touch of earnestness, wanting me to understand, perhaps to absolve, ‘because you ignored all his threats.’

‘About prison?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Sam Leggatt warned him you were intelligent... he said an attempt to frame you could blow up in their faces, that you would get the Flag and Nestor himself into deep serious gritty trouble... David Morse, their lawyer, was of the same opinion, so he agreed not to try. Sam Leggatt told me. But you have to understand Nestor. He doesn’t like to be crossed. He said he wasn’t going to be beaten by some... er... jockey.’

Expletives deleted, I thought, amused.

‘You were elusive,’ he said. ‘Nestor was getting impatient...’

‘And he had a tap on my telephone?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Is it Maynard Allardeck who is trying to take over the Towncrier?’

He blinked, and said ‘Er —’ and recovered. ‘You guessed?’

‘It seemed likely. Maynard got half of Hugh’s shares by a trick. I thought it just might be him who was after the whole thing.’

Lord Vaughnley nodded. ‘A company... Allardeck is behind it. When Hugh confessed, I got people digging up Allardeck’s contacts. Just digging for dirt. I’d no idea until then that he owned the company... his name hadn’t surfaced. All I knew was that it was the same company that nearly acquired the Flag a year ago. Very aggressive. It cost Nestor a fortune to cap their bid, far more than he would have had to pay otherwise.’

Holy wow, I thought.

‘So when you found out that Maynard was the ultimate enemy,’ I said, ‘and knew also that he’d recently been proposed for a knighthood, you thought at least you could put paid to that, and casually asked Pollgate to do it in the Flag?’

‘Not all that casually. Nestor said he’d be pleased to, if it was Allardeck who had cost him so much.’

‘Didn’t you even consider what hell you were manufacturing for Bobby?’

‘Erskine found he couldn’t get at Allardeck’s phone system... they decided on his son.’

‘Callous,’ I said.

‘Er... yes.’

‘And appallingly spiteful to deliver all those copies to Bobby’s suppliers.’

He said without much apology, ‘Nestor thought the story would make more of a splash that way. Which it did.’

We began to walk from the sitting room into the hall. He’d told me what I hadn’t asked: where the alliance began. In common enmity to Maynard, who had cost them both dear.

‘Will you use the tape,’ I asked, ‘to stop Maynard now in his tracks?’

He glanced at me. ‘That would be blackmail,’ he said mildly.

‘Absolutely.’

‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ he said. ‘That tape’s cheap at the price.’

We went into the kitchen and paused again.

‘The Towncrier is the third newspaper,’ he said, ‘that has had trouble with Allardeck’s company. One paper after another... he won’t give up till he’s got one.’

‘He’s obsessive,’ I said. ‘And besides, he’s wanted all his life to have power over others... to be kowtowed to. To be a lord.’

Lord Vaughnley’s mouth opened. I told him about my grandfather, and Maynard at nine. ‘He hasn’t changed,’ I said. ‘He still wants those things. Sir first, Lord after. And don’t worry, he won’t get them. I sent a copy of the tape to where you sent your charity letter.’

He was dumbstruck. He said weakly, ‘How did you know about that letter?’

‘I saw it,’ I said. ‘I was shown it. I wanted to know who knew Maynard might be up for a knighthood, and there it was, with your name.’

He shook his head: at life in general, it seemed.

We went on through the kitchen and out into the cold air. All the lights were on round the yard and some of the box doors were open, the lads working there in the routine of evening stables.

‘Why did you try to stop me talking to Hugh?’ I asked.

‘I was wrong, I see that now. But at the time... by then you were pressing Nestor for large compensation. He wanted us simply to get back the wire-tap and shut you up.’ He spread his hands. ‘No one imagined, you see, that you would do all that you’ve done. I mean, when it was just a matter of disgracing Allardeck in the public eye, no one could have foreseen... no one even thought of your existence, let alone considered you a factor. No one knew you would defend your brother-in-law, or be... as you are.’

We walked across the yard to the car where Pollgate and Erskine were waiting, shadowy figures behind glass.

‘If I were you,’ I said, ‘I’d find out if Maynard owns the bookmakers that Hugh bet with. If he does, you can threaten him with fraud, and get Hugh’s shares back, I should think.’

We stopped a few feet from the car.

‘You’re generous,’ he said.

We stood there, face to face, not knowing whether or not to shake hands.

‘Hugh had no chance against Maynard,’ I said.

‘No.’ He paused. ‘I’ll let him come home.’

He looked at me lengthily, the mind behind the grey eyes perhaps totting up, as I was, where we stood.

Even if he hadn’t intended it, he had set in motion the attacks on Bobby; yet because of them Bobby would be much better off. From the dirt, gold.

If he offered his hand, I thought, I would take it.

Tentatively, unsure, that’s what he did. I shook it briefly; an acknowledgement, a truce.

‘See you at the races,’ I said.

When they had gone I went and found the pistol and the stun gun outside the sitting-room window, and with them in my pockets returned to the kitchen, where Holly and Bobby were looking more dazed than happy.

‘Tea?’ I said hopefully.

They didn’t seem to hear. I put the kettle on and got out some cups.

‘Kit...’ Holly said. ‘Bobby told me...’

‘Yeah... well... have you a lemon?’ I said.

She dumbly fetched me one from the refrigerator, and sliced it.

Bobby said, ‘I nearly killed you.’

His distress, I saw, was still blotting out any full realisation — or celebration — of the change in his fortunes. He still looked pale, still gaunt round the eyes.

‘But you didn’t,’ I said.

‘No... when you turned your back on me, I thought, I can’t shoot him in the back... not in the back... and I woke up. Like waking from a nightmare. I couldn’t... how could I... I stood there with that gun, sweating at how near I’d come...’

‘You frightened me silly,’ I said. ‘Let’s forget it.’

‘How can we?’

‘Easily.’ I punched his arm lightly. ‘Concentrate, my old chum, on being a daddy.’

The kettle boiled and Holly made the tea; and we heard a car driving into the yard.

‘They’ve come back,’ Holly said in dismay.

We went out to see, all of us fearful.

The car was large and bewilderingly familiar. Two of its doors opened and from one came Thomas, the princess’s chauffeur, in his best uniform, and from the other, scrambling and running, Danielle.

‘Kit...’ She ran headlong into my arms, her face screwed up with worry. ‘Are you... are you really OK?’

‘Yes, I am. You can see.’

She put her head on my shoulder and I held her close, and felt her trembling, and kissed her hair.

Thomas opened a third door of the car and helped out the princess, holding the sable coat for her to put on over the silk suit against the cold.

‘I am glad, Kit,’ she said calmly, snuggling into the fur, ‘to see you are alive and well.’ She looked from me to Bobby and Holly. ‘You are Bobby, you are Holly, is that right?’ She held out her hand to them, which they blankly shook.

‘We are here,’ she said, ‘because my niece Danielle insisted that we come.’ She was explaining, half apologising for her presence. ‘When I went home after the Icefall luncheon,’ she said to me, ‘Danielle was waiting on the pavement. She said you were in very great danger, and that you were at your sister’s house in Newmarket. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain. She said that we must come at once.’

Bobby and Holly looked astounded.

‘As I know that with you, Kit, telepathy definitely exists,’ the princess said, ‘and as you had disappeared from the lunch and were reported to be ill, and as Danielle was distraught... we came. And I see she was right in part at least. You are here, at your sister’s house.’

‘She was right about the rest,’ Holly said soberly. ‘He was in that danger... a split second from dying.’ She looked at my face. ‘Did you think of her then?’

I swallowed. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Holy wow,’ Holly said.

‘Kit says that too,’ Danielle said, lifting her head from my neck and beginning to recover. ‘It’s awesome.’

‘We always did,’ Holly said. She looked at Danielle with growing interest and understanding, and slowly smiled with pleasure.

‘She’s like us, isn’t she?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never known what she was thinking.”

‘You might, after this’; and to Danielle, with friendship, she said, ‘Think of something. See if he can tell what it is.’

‘OK.’

There was a silence. The only thought in my head was that telepathy was unpredictable and only sometimes worked to order.

I looked at the princess, and at Bobby and Holly, and saw in their faces the same hope, the same expectation, the same realisation that this moment might matter in all our futures.

I smiled into Danielle’s eyes. I knew, for a certainty.

‘Dustsheets.’ I said.