Matlock's System

11

If he had expected quick answers to the hundreds of questions crowding his mind, he was soon disappointed.

He had heard the ancient cannon, which still boomed out the hour at one o’clock each day, twice startle the birds roosting on the ramparts. And still there was no indication of what their purpose with him might be.

He was surprised to find he had the beginnings of a cold. It was a quarter of a century since he had had a cold and he had thought his resistance had been permanently built up. But evidently the course of injections he had undergone did not cater for men of nearly seventy wading along rivers and not changing out of their damp clothes for several hours thereafter.

He was inclined, however, to blame his present quarters as much as his ducking. The apartment they had given him was sumptuously furnished and bright and airy. Too airy. He had forgotten that rooms as draughty as this could exist for people to live in. It was bad as the ancient halls his meetings had only half filled. And the sumptuousness of the furniture was appreciable aesthetically rather than ergonomically. It was all several hundred years old and the whole room reminded him of the ‘public’ apartments of the old stately homes, open for a season and an admission fee to the gawping mob. In fact, the room had exactly the same faintly dank smell as these places, the same aura of unlived-in-ness. He would not have been too surprised to wake up and find himself being observed from behind a rope of red velvet by a group of bored sightseers.

This sense of archaism did not end outside his room. He found that he was able to stroll quite freely around the battlements of the castle, though he was always aware of being overlooked. The city which lay spread out beneath him seemed incredibly old fashioned. He could look out across the New Town (New!) to the distant pale scar which was the Forth, and see almost the same view as the French prisoners held in the castle during the Napoleonic wars.

Even the shops of Princes Street, seemed still to belong firmly to the twentieth rather than the twenty-first century, while the gardens below looked as well-tended and attractive as ever.

“I see they never finished this side of the street,” he said to a soldier who had come up beside him (to stop me jumping over? he wondered). He knew this was an old Glasgow jibe at the pretensions of Edinburgh to be the nation’s capital, but was surprised to see the hostility which flared briefly in the man’s eyes.

“Just a joke,” he said, and returned to his staring.

That evening after finishing his lonely meal in his room he spoke to the orderly who came to clear it away.

“Please tell whoever is in charge here that I must speak to him.”

The man did not reply and after he had left, Matlock settled down to his reading of the only book he had been able to unearth in the room, the Complete Poems of Robert Burns. He had not read very far when there was a gentle knock at the door.

“Come in please,” he said.

The door opened to reveal Colonel Mackay.

“You wished to speak to me.”

Again the neutrality which frightened more than hate.

“To you, Colonel, or to anyone who can convey a message for me.”

“I am no errand boy, Mr. Matlock.”

“As you will, Colonel. But here’s the message all the same. I would like Mr. Boswell to be reminded that it is my seventieth birthday the day after tomorrow. Tell him I hope he will be coming to the party.”

The Colonel left without a word. Matlock wondered whether he would make any effort to deliver the message, then shrugged and returned to his book, surprised and half pleased by his own feeling of complete indifference. But his sleep that night was troubled and uneasy.

He awoke with a start and sat up. For a moment he thought that his idle imaginings had come true and a party of tourists was being shown around the room. Standing round the bed were half a dozen men all peering down at him.

The only one he recognized was Boswell.

“Thank you for your message, but you need not have bothered. You were not forgotten. Indeed quite the contrary. You have been in the very forefront of our minds day and night. Please come now.”

He started to dress but Boswell prevented him.

“It is not necessary. Just put on your dressing gown.”

Slightly uneasy, Matlock slipped his robe over his shoulders and allowed himself to be escorted from the room. They moved swiftly along bare stone corridors. No one spoke, but Boswell noticed Matlock shiver as they turned a comer and walked into a keen-edged draught, and he increased the pace still further. Matlock was reminded of his wanderings through the echoing passages of Fountains and shivered again at the strangeness of it all.

“In here, please.”

The door was held open for him and he politely muttered his thanks as he passed through. No one came after him. He heard the door close. He was in an operating theatre.

Four white-clothed, gauze-masked figures stood round the operation table, forming a tableau of terrifying hygiene.

“Take off your clothes please, Mr. Matlock, and step over here, won’t you?”

It was a pleasant, reassuring voice and Matlock began to undress without hesitation, unaffected by the dispassionate professional eyes that watched him. But as he moved over to the table he sensed that at least one pair of eyes was anything but dispassionate and professional. The amount of emotion which can be registered by the two inch strip of face below the hairline and above the nose is obviously limited. It was equally unidentifiable, but Matlock felt there was something familiar about those eyes. Their owner stood behind the other three as though she were an onlooker rather than a participant in whatever was going to happen.

“Just a wee operation,” said the reassuring voice, “and then you can

enjoy your birthday.”

“You mean, you’re going to take it out?” asked Matlock.

“Of course we are. Lie down here please.”

Matlock climbed on to the table.

“Turn your head slightly.”

He turned his head and looked up into the brown eyes which he was so near now to recognizing. A name came scrambling up to the top of his mind as one of the others leaned down and pressed an anaesthetizing disc to the side of his neck. He blinked once and spoke.

“Lizzie.”

She leaned down over him, unmasked now, her long black hair freed from the unbecoming restrictions of a surgical cap.

“Hello, Matt. How are you feeling?”

“Why, fine. Fine.”

He looked around. He was back in his bed and there was a dressing taped to his chest.

“Is it done?” he asked incredulously, then he laughed. “That’s a stupid bloody question, isn’t it?”

“Yes it’s done,” she said, her face strangely solemn.

“But you, Lizzie, here! This is marvellous!” Matlock said, pushing himself upright on the bed.

“Today I should be dying, but I’ll live. And with my life I get you!”

For a moment the sheer joy of the moment so pressed in on him that his head began to swim and the room seemed to stir slightly on its foundations. Lizzie reached out to him anxiously but his head cleared almost instantly and he pulled her down beside him and pressed his lips deep into her hair.

“Oh Matt, Matt!” she whispered.

“Lizzie!” he whispered in reply. “My darling.”

His right arm tightened over her shoulders and his left hand moved down from her face, along the slimness of her neck and came to rest on her breast. For a second she thrust herself against him, then gently pushed him away.

“Later, Matt, later. But now, before they come, we have to talk.”

“Before who comes? Anyway I don’t give a damn who comes. You come here!” He reached out for her laughing and caught her hand. “Some of the early doctors seriously suggested that the warmth of a naked girl was the best palliative for the illnesses of age. I think they may have been right.”

But Lizzie leaned back so that the whole of her weight pulled on his arm and he could not move her.

“No, Matt. Please listen. They’ll be here soon. They want your help, Matt. They need you. You must help, Matt.”

He let go of her hand and dropped his arm, but the tension between them did not fade with the relaxing of tendon and muscle.

“Why must I help?”

“Because you are here, helpless. You can look at it that way if you like. But also because it’s right that you should help, Matt. It’s the only way to achieve what you’ve been aiming at.”

There was a note of passionate sincerity in her voice which filled him with foreboding. She was standing over him now her face flushed with emotion, her body within easy reach, but he made no move to touch her.

“Why are you saying this to me, Lizzie? What are you doing here anyway? How did you escape?”

“What does it matter, Matt? I am here, that’s all that matters, and you are too, and there’s an opportunity to do what’s seemed so important to us both for so long. Overthrow Browning.”

Matlock fixed his eyes steadily on her face.

“The Abbot tried to tell me you were one of Browning’s spies, but I wouldn’t believe him. I told you, remember? Did you laugh as I told you?”

“No, Matt. No!”

“Did the Abbot just get the employer wrong? Was that all?”

“No, no. Please try to understand.”

But he only understood what was now obvious. Lizzie was in the pay of the Scots and had been since the beginning nearly twenty years before.

He turned his head away and stared blindly at the wall.

“Yes, try to understand, Mr. Matlock.”

When he looked round again, Boswell had appeared from somewhere and stood at the foot of the bed.

“Do not be hard on Miss Armstrong. She has served you at least as well as us over the years. She could have been moved from the assignment any time she wished after it became apparent that your real political value had disappeared completely. It’s only in the last four or five years that you began to become important again. For the rest of the time there was nothing in it for her as an agent. And at no time was there ever any real clash of interests.”

“How convenient for her,” said Matt dully.

“Oh, Matt,” cried Lizzie in a voice husky with strain, “Matt, I love you. I’ve loved you for years. All I wanted was to marry you, it didn’t matter for how short a time. And I believed in you and all you were trying to do. I couldn’t foresee all this, Matt, not this. I thought all this was over for you years ago.”

“But it wasn’t,” interjected Boswell swiftly. “Now, Matlock, the position is this. At the expense of much time and energy, we have got you safely away from the wrath of your countrymen. But back in England, Browning is still firmly in control, men who have worked with you, for you, even if you did not know it, are now in danger, are now being arrested. Imprisoned. Murdered. We in Scotland are preparing to intervene in support of the forces of democracy before it is too late.”

“Intervene then. What do you want with me?”

“We need you to show our goodwill. There are many hundreds of thousands of your countrymen ready to take up arms against the dictator, but they will be reluctant to support what Browning will surely designate as an invading army. If we’re not careful, our intervention could make him stronger, not weaker. But with you at our head, there would be no room for doubting our motives.”

Matlock laughed.

“Motives? And what are your motives?”

“Can’t you see, Matt?” Lizzie came forward again, her hands raised as though she would force conviction down on him. “We want to help. Both our countries are failing because they each lack what the other has. The North of England at least belongs with us geographically, economically. We can create a new and greater nation than ever before.”

“A second act of Union!” sneered Matlock. “Tell me, Boswell, why didn’t you come over the Border a week ago when Browning started his purge? Then we needed help. Then we would have welcomed you. Could it be that you were happy to see all the top men chopped down? Could it be that you didn’t want an underground movement as well organized as ours to be in existence when you made your own bid for control?”

“Oh, Matt, why won’t you understand?”

“Why won’t you understand, Lizzie?” asked Matlock gently. “I suspect that there’s even more than meets the eye at stake here. Who’s in charge at the moment, Boswell? Glasgow? Hardly. Inverness? Or is it really Edinburgh? Is that what’s been going on these past few days while I’ve been lying here listening to my life tick away? You’ve been sitting round the table waving your tartan banners and rattling your claymores at each other, trying to reach a compromise. And you’ve come out on top. A bit precariously perhaps, but still on top. Perhaps because you convinced the rest that I’m a king-pin in the invasion plans. And I belong to you. But only if I’ll play.”

Boswell fingered the hollow in his head and smiled slightly.

“You paint us blacker than we are. And more primitive. But there is not time enough to reason your co-operation out of you. I am sure we could, even if it was only by appealing to your sense of history. You can’t afford to wait another thirty years for your chance, Matlock. You have some power now. But only by using it can you preserve it.”

“I am sorry you can’t be bothered to reason with me,” said Matlock. “I should have been interested to hear your plans.”

Boswell was unperturbed by the gibe.

“I can do better than that. You shall see them in action. We mobilize in forty-eight hours.”

“I will not help without reason,” said Matlock, “and I have heard no hint of reason yet. Only promises. Vague claims.”

Boswell came round the side of the bed now and stood over him, a menacing figure, but his voice was still calm.

“Here are two reasons then. The first is, we are attacking through Carlisle. Your birthplace I believe. We will try to talk our way in. If not, we will smash our way in. You are a well-known talker.”

He relaxed and turned as if to go.

“And the second reason?” asked Matlock.

Boswell leaned forward and tapped the dressing on his chest, then nodded at Lizzie.

“She’ll tell you,” he said as he left. “I’ll be back later. You’ll want to talk with your military advisers.”

Matlock pressed his hand against the dressing and seemed to feel his heart beating dangerously near the surface.

“What did he mean, Lizzie?” he asked tightly. “What is it? Didn’t they take the clock out?”

Lizzie turned her back to him so he could not see her face. Her shoulders were rounded and he knew without needing to see that she was crying.

“Yes Matt. They took it out. But they put in one of their own making. It will have to be reset daily. Without Boswell, you can never have more than twenty-four hours to live.”

There was no weakening of the flesh. His vision did not blur, his head did not swim. His mind felt as alert as he had ever known it and his muscles seemed stronger than at any time since his arrival in Edinburgh.

But he felt something die in him at that moment and he smiled to himself without humour.

“For the past many days I have been an ally worthy of everyone’s wooing,” he murmured. “Now at last I think my enemies have made of me an enemy worthy of their hating.”

“What do you say, Matt?” asked Lizzie anxiously.

He smiled up at her.

“Nothing, my dear. Fetch Boswell back, would you? We have things to discuss.”

Tears of joy welled up in her eyes.

“Oh Matt!” she cried. “Matt! It is the right thing, the only thing! For you, for the country. For us. When it’s done, when it’s finished, then we can begin to live!”

Begin to live? he wondered as she left the room, almost running in her haste to find Boswell. Poor faithful Lizzie! Loyal to too many things. Able to reconcile all she loved.

A year ago, a month ago, I would have tried to persuade her, used words, arguments. A liberating army whose own country has already developed its own heart-clock technology! She would have seen the paradox, understood the dangers. She might still — if there were time. But now there is never more than twenty-four hours. Never more than another sunrise. Whatever I can do I must do in a day!

Boswell’s plan was simple. His forces were massed in readiness for the invasion which was timed for seven o’clock in the evening two days hence. At six-thirty on that same evening, it was his intention to over-ride all the usual English television transmissions with a broadcast of his own. They had the signal power to be able to do this with a hundred per cent success in the Border Counties and this was where success was most important. The main feature of the broadcast was to be a speech by Matlock.

“Live?” he asked hopefully.

Boswell shook his head with a cynical smile.

“Taped,” he said. “We wouldn’t like to lead you into temptation.”

The script was much what Matlock expected. It contained much that he had been saying in draughty twentieth-century slum halls for years. But it was more forceful, more violent, more emotional. It could go down very well, for he had to admit it was beautifully written. He felt something almost like pleasure at the thought of the vastness of the audience being offered to him. Then he thought of William Joyce, of poor Ezra Pound, of others who had broadcast for and given help to the enemy in long past wars.

He had to make the speech four times before Boswell was satisfied with the video-tape.

“How much help do you think this will be?” he asked the Scot. “I’m not universally loved in England, you know.”

“More than you think,” replied Boswell. “This will get us well into Cumberland without more than token resistance. Your home town has a reputation in history for opening its gates to the Scots whenever they decided to march south! And once in, with the help of follow-up broadcasts, we’ll have a popular uprising to support us right down to the Midlands. Your supporters have been keyed up for this for a long time, Matt. We’ve got our own intelligence network widely spread.”

“I know,” said Matlock glancing at Lizzie who, along with Ossian, was now his constant companion.

Boswell looked at his watch.

“I must go now,” he said. “Only twelve hours till the start. You’re lucky, Matlock. I’ll be lucky to sleep again in two or three days. You can go back to bed now for the rest of the day.”

He looked mockingly at Lizzie.

“You forget,” said Matlock. “At ten o’clock every morning I have an appointment to keep.”

He tapped his chest.

Boswell nodded.

“Of course. Don’t forget it, will you? And don’t forget to watch this evening. We’ll fetch you down as soon as we need you again. Look after our guest, Ossian.”

With a casual wave, Boswell left. How sure of himself he looks, thought Matlock. His plans are all perfectly prepared. And mine?

He poured himself another cup of coffee and settled down to wait.

There were two key times in his day. The first was ten o’clock when he was re-wound-up, as he was beginning to think of it, for another twenty-four hours.

The second was four-thirty p.m.

This was the time that the full technical staff would come on duty at the television transmission station which he could see from the castle ramparts spread out over that other rocky eminence once known as Arthur’s Seat. These stations were automated to the point where they could almost run themselves. But for tonight’s transmission, Boswell was taking no chances, and a full staff would be on duty. But not till half past four.

The hours moved by slowly. Matlock tried to act normally, but normality in such conditions was hard to define. Lizzie, chameleon-like, took her own cue from Matlock’s mood and there was little conversation between them.

Ossian sat in the comer, squat, toadlike, watchful.

He’d love an excuse to set about me, reflected Matlock.

And outside in the courtyard of the castle, at all exits, were guards whose orders too were to keep him inside.

He turned his mind away from them and thought of all he had tried to do with his life.

The one o’clock gun boomed, making him start. It would take a lot of getting used to.

It would soon be time.

At three o’clock he knew he could wait no longer. He stood up.

This was the most hateful bit of the plan.

He went across to Lizzie and leaned over her ostensibly to look at the book she was reading. He let his hand brush against her breast, gently at first then with greater urgency.

Surprised, she looked up at him. He grinned down at her and motioned with his eyes towards the bedroom door. For a moment he thought it had gone wrong. He saw doubt, suspicion, in her face. Then it vanished. She smiled widely, moistened her lips and stood up.

Ossian watched without revealing any thought, any emotion on his great flat face.

They walked together to the bedroom door and went in, Lizzie first.

She stopped just inside the bedroom, her back still to him as he locked the door.

“Matt,” she said in a low voice. “I love you. I know you don’t want to make love to me now. Whatever it is you want to do, do it quickly.”

He struck her sharply with the edge of his hand along the side of her neck and caught her as she fell. Quickly he gagged and bound her with the strips of sheet he had tom up earlier in the day and rolled her under the bed. Then he took from inside his pillow the one object he had borne with him through all his vicissitudes since that now so distant mad escape through the streets of London.

It was the small package he had taken from the Technical Education Board, Browning’s forgery centre.

Now he opened it, as he had done once before at the Abbey. It contained a single flat oblong of a material which seemed half metal, half plastic. At first sight he had suspected what it was. Since arriving in Edinburgh he had had his theory confirmed by seeing them in use.

It was a top-level security pass. If the electronic code printed on the reverse side were the one currently in use, there would be a repeated two-tone whistle from the check-machine into which it was pressed by the thumb of its owner — if the thumbprint electronically printed on the other side matched the presser’s thumb.

There were a lot of ‘ifs’. Too many, thought Matlock. He could only hope that Browning’s security men were up-to-date in their knowledge of the Scottish coding. And that the thumb space had been activated but blank till he pressed his own thumb into it.

But before he could find out this he had to deal with Ossian. Ossian would not contravene his orders even at the direct command of God Almighty, let alone for a mere security pass. He possessed the unbluffability of the single-minded.

It would take the full persuasion of the small gun Matlock had removed from Lizzie’s side.

He undid his tie, and ruffled his hair. It was only three-ten. Ossian might be suspicious of such a rapid performance, but he could wait no longer.

He opened the door and stepped out yawning.

Ossian watched him unblinkingly, then suddenly some animal instinct made him grab for his gun.

Matlock shot him carefully between the eyes.

Lizzie was coming round as he pushed Ossian’s body under the bed beside her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but that was all he could find to say, so he went quickly, leaving her with her grisly companion.

The first check was the worst. The guard was surprised to see him, but instantly accepted the potential authority of the pass, fitting it into his check-machine and offering it to Matlock to press.

He said a prayer and his knees went weak as he heard in reply a clear two-tone whistle.

After that it was easy and he was only challenged twice after leaving the castle, the second time being both challenge and opening signal at the door of the television station.

As he had hoped there were only two technicians there. Even their presence was obviously superfluous; they were sitting playing cards. They stopped as he entered, obviously surprised to be interrupted at all, let alone by him.

The older of them looked even more surprised and went very pale when Matlock beat his companion unconscious which took two blows from his gun.

“You can work this equipment?” he demanded.

“Aye, sure,” said the old man placatingly.

“Then let’s make a film,” said Matlock. “It’s quite simple. I’m going to speak for a bit. I want it put on video-tape. Now if you misbehave yourself when setting up the equipment I’ll shoot you. When I’m actually speaking, I’ll be holding my gun to the head of your friend here who’ll be lying on the floor. If you misbehave then, he gets it. Understand?”

“Aye,” said the technician, glancing surreptitiously at the wall clock.

“And also,” continued Matlock, “if I see any indication that you’re trying to delay matters till four-thirty, then I’ll kill you both. Now move!”

The man didn’t speak another word, but went about his business with quiet efficiency. For all that it was nearly four o’clock when Matlock finished his short speech.

“Now play it back,” he said. He didn’t want a critical viewing — there was no time for a retake — but he had to make sure that the man hadn’t fooled him in any way, that the speech was actually on the tape.

It was. He nodded in satisfaction.

“Good,” he said. “Now, one last job. You were here yesterday when they recorded my other speech, weren’t you?”

The man nodded.

“Well, I want that bit of tape removed from tonight’s broadcast and this put in.”

The man didn’t move.

Now he knows what it’s all about, thought Matlock. I hope to God he’s not the martyr type.

“What’re we waiting for?” he demanded.

“I can’t do it, Mr. Matlock,” the man said with a dignity made all the more impressive by his obvious terror. “It’d mean they’d know about the attack. It’d mean the death of hundreds of our boys.”

Matlock sighed. This man’s very virtue was going to be his weakness. He should know. He was himself a bit of an expert on weakness.

“Perhaps so,” he said. “If you don’t, though, it’ll mean the certain death of this boy here.”

He prodded the unconscious man with his toe and pointed his gun down.

“I’ll count three,” he said. “The first one will be in his stomach.”

He didn’t even have to start counting. Quietly the man went to work.

It was four-ten.

Matlock watched him closely. Video-tape equipment on a small scale was sufficiently common in households now for him to have some idea of what the man was doing. He might even have been able to manage it himself but it would have taken him much longer. Too long.

As it was, it was after four-twenty when the job was finished. But he still had to check. He picked up the stretch of tape which had been removed.

“Now play this,” he said.

It was the right piece. He pressed the accelerator switch and it whizzed across the screen at a great rate.

It was nearly four-thirty.

“Where are the unused tapes?” he asked. “The other three versions of this?”

The man took him to a store cupboard and silently pointed out three cylinders. Matlock saw his name on them. Quickly he removed the tape from each and replaced the cans on the shelf.

Distantly he heard the two-tone bell. Someone had arrived.

“Pick him up,” he said, pointing to the unconscious youth. “Now let’s go.”

They made their way out of the studio, down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs.

Behind them doors were opening and shutting.

“Angus!” cried a voice. “Are you there? Where are you man?”

Matlock pressed his gun to the unconscious man’s throat.

“Answer him,” he said.

“I’m up here, Jimmy,” called the man.

“Tell him you’ll be off home in a minute. Tell him to enjoy himself. Be natural!”

“I’m just off, Jimmy,” the man called again. “See you later. Enjoy yourself.”

“I will,” came the reply. “When I sign off, I will!”

Silence fell. Matlock listened long enough to make sure no one was after them.

“On we go,” he said.

They stopped finally in a small office which did not look as if it received very frequent use. Matlock still did not know what to do with these men. Perhaps it was his very concern with this problem which helped him solve it. The older man, Angus, had laid his friend on a desk. As he turned he must have noticed the break in Matlock’s concentration. Or perhaps he had just reached the point of desperation. Whatever the cause, he leapt forward. He might have succeeded if he’d been faster, come in lower, used his feet. Instead he came swinging a punch at Matlock’s head like an old-fashioned pugilist.

Matlock shot him twice before the blow could land, and fired a third time as he fell. This shot burned a hole in the side of the young man’s head.

An accident. Matlock mouthed the words silently as though they could help. But he knew how little of an accident it was.

There was a key on the inside of the door. He took it out and locked the room behind him as he left.

All he had to do now was keep out of the way till the broadcast was over. It would probably have been as safe as anything for him to have remained in the transmission building, but something drove him out into the fresh air. He paused only to drop the rolls of tape he was carrying into a refuse shaft. Then he abandoned caution for a while as he strode down into the town again, feeling the fresh east wind clutching at his cheekbones. But once the buildings began to grow up around him again, he realized just how foolhardy this was and turned away from the broad thoroughfare he was approaching into darker, meaner streets that would have been a Curfew Area in England.

Here, he thought, there will be less chance of recognition, more chance of finding somewhere to hide. But as he turned out of the narrow streets to go down an even narrower, darker passageway between two ancient buildings, he cannoned into a long, stooping figure who cursed him violently in good, broad Scots at first, then stopped, peered closely at him and said in perfect English, “Dear God. Matlock!”

“Oh, no,” said Matlock. “Not you too.”

“I’m afraid so,” said the man as he thumbed his force-gun to stun and applied it to Matlock’s head. “Sorry, Matt. But you’re going to have to come back and answer for yourself.”

Matlock made a hopeless gesture towards his own gun, the force-gun popped gently and he fell forward into darkness and the arms of his one-time friend and agent, Colin Peters.