Risk

18

I had an everlasting picture of the five of them, in that freezing moment. I straightened to my feet, and my heart thumped, and I looked at them one by one.

Connaught Powys in his city suit, as Establishment as a pillar of the government. Coffee-coloured tan on his fleshy face. Smooth hair; pale hands. A large man aiming to throw his weight about, and enjoying it.

Glitberg with his mean eyes and the repulsive four-inch frill of white whiskers, which stood out sideways from his cheeks like a ruff. Little pink lips, and a smirk.

Ownslow the bull, with his bald crown and long straggling blond hair. He’d shut the door of the snug and leaned against it, and folded his arms with massive satisfaction.

William Finch, tall and distinguished, vibrating in the centre of the room in a tangle of fear, and anger, and unpleasant pleasure.

Trevor, silver-haired, worldly, come to dust. Sitting apprehensively in his armchair, facing his future with more sorrow than horror. The only one of them who showed the slightest sign of realising that it was they who had got themselves into trouble, not I.

Embezzlers were not normally men of violence. They robbed on paper, not with their fists. They might hate and threaten, but actual physical assault wasn’t natural to them. I looked bleakly at the five faces and thought again of the nuclear effect of critical mass. Small separate amounts of radio-active matter could release harnes sable energy. If enough small amounts got together into a larger mass, they exploded.

‘Why did you come?’ Trevor said.

‘Finchy rang and told us he’d be here,’ Powys said, jerking his head in my direction. ‘Never get another opportunity like it, will we? Seeing as you and Finchy will be out of circulation, for a bit.’

Finch shook his head fiercely: but I reckoned there were different sorts of circulation, and it would be a very long time before he was back on a racetrack. I wouldn’t have wanted to face the ruin before him: the crash from such a height.

Glitberg said, ‘Four years locked in a cell. Four sodding years, because of him.’

‘Don’t bellyache,’ I said. ‘Four years in jail for a million pounds is a damned good bargain. You offer it around, you’d get a lot of takers.’

‘Prison is dehumanising,’ Powys said. ‘They treat you worse than animals.’

‘Don’t make me cry,’ I said. ‘You chose the way that led there. And all of you have got what you wanted. Money, money, money. So run away and play with it.’ Maybe I spoke with too much heat, but nothing was going to defuse the developing bomb.

Anger that I’d let myself in for such a mess was a stab in the mind. I simply hadn’t thought of Finch summoning reinforcements. He’d had no need to: it had been merely spite. I’d believed I could manage Finch and Trevor with reasonable safety, and here all of a sudden was a whole new battle.

‘Trevor,’ I said, flatly, ‘don’t forget the photostats I left with a friend.’

‘What friend?’ Finch said, gaining belligerence from his supporters.

‘Barclays Bank,’ I said.

Finch was furious, but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t true, and even he must have seen that any serious attempt at wringing out a different answer might cost them more time in the clink.

I had hoped originally to make a bargain with Finch, but it was no longer possible. I thought merely, at that point, of getting through whatever was going to happen with some semblance of grace. A doubtful proposition, it seemed to me.

‘How much does he know?’ Ownslow demanded of Trevor.

‘Enough...’ Trevor said. ‘Everything.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘How did he find out?’ Glitberg demanded.

‘Because William took him on his boat,’ Trevor said.

‘A mistake,’ Powys said. ‘That was a mistake, Finchy. He came sniffing round us in London, asking about boats. Like I told you.’

‘You chain dogs up,’ Finch said.

‘But not in a floating kennel, Finchy. Not this bastard here with his bloody quick eyes. You should have kept him away from your boat.’

‘I don’t see that it matters,’ Trevor said. ‘Like he said, we’ve all got our money.’

‘And what if he tells?’ Ownslow demanded.

‘Oh, he’ll tell,’ Trevor said with certainty. ‘And of course there will be trouble. Questions and enquiries and a lot of fuss. But in the end, if we’re careful, we should keep the cash.’

‘Should isn’t enough,’ Powys said fiercely.

‘Nothing’s certain,’ Trevor said.

‘One thing’s certain,’ Ownslow said. ‘This creep’s going to get his come-uppance.’

All five of the faces turned my way together, and in each one, even in Trevor’s, I read the same intent.

‘That’s what we came for,’ Powys said.

‘Four bloody years,’ Ownslow said. ‘And the sneers my kids suffered.’ He pushed off the door and uncrossed his arms.

Glitberg said, ‘Judges looking down their bloody noses.’

They all, quite slowly, came nearer.

It was uncanny, and frightening. The forming of a pack.

Behind me there was the table, and behind that, solid wall. They were between me and the windows, and between me and the door.

‘Don’t leave any marks,’ Powys said. ‘If he goes to the police it’ll be his word against ours, and if he’s nothing to show they can’t do much.’ To me, directly, he said, ‘We’ll have a bloody good alibi, I’ll tell you that.’

The odds looked appalling. I made a sudden thrusting jump to one side, to dodge the menacing advance, outflank the cohorts, scramble for the door.

I got precisely nowhere. Two strides, no more. Their hands clutched me from every direction, dragging me back, their bodies pushing against me with their collective weight. It was as if my attempt to escape had triggered them off. They were determined, heavy, and grunting. I struggled with flooding fury to disentangle myself, and I might as well have wrestled with an octopus.

They lifted me up bodily and sat me on the end of the table. Three of them held me there with hands like clamps.

Finch pulled open a drawer in the side of the table, and threw out a checked red and white table cloth, which floated across the room and fell on a chair. Under the cloth, several big square napkins. Red and white checks. Tapestry’s racing colours. Ridiculous thought at such a moment.

Finch and Connaught Powys each rolled a napkin into a shape like a bandage and knotted it round one of my ankles. They tied my ankles to the legs of the table. They pulled my jacket off. They rolled and tied a red and white napkin round each of my wrists, pulling the knots tight and leaving cheerful bright loose ends like streamers.

They did it fast.

All of the faces were flushed, and the eyes fuzzy, in the fulfilment of lust. Glitberg and Ownslow, one on each side, pushed me down flat on my back. Finch and Connaught Powys pulled my arms over my head and tied the napkins on my wrists to the other two legs of the table. My resistance made them rougher.

The table was, I supposed, about two feet by four. Long enough to reach from my knees to the top of my head. Hard, covered with glass, uncomfortable.

They stood back to admire their handiwork. All breathing heavily from my useless fight. All overweight, out of condition, ripe to drop dead from coronaries at any moment. They went on living.

‘Now what?’ said Ownslow, considering. He went down on his knees and took off my shoes.

‘Nothing,’ Trevor said. ‘That’s enough.’

The pack instinct had died out of him fastest. He turned away, refusing to meet my eyes.

‘Enough!’ Glitberg said. ‘We’ve done nothing yet.’

Powys eyed me assessingly from head to foot, and maybe he saw just what they had done.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s enough.’

Ownslow said ‘Here!’ furiously, and Glitberg said, ‘Not on your life.’ Powys ignored them and turned to Finch.

‘He’s yours,’ he said. ‘But if I were you I’d just leave him here.’

‘Leave him?’

‘You’ve got better things to do than fool around with him. You don’t want to leave marks on him, and I’m telling you, the way we’ve tied him will be enough.’

William Finch thought about it, and nodded, and came halfway back to cold sense. He stepped closer until he stood near my ribs. He stared down, eyes full of the familiar hate.

‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ he said.

He spat in my face.

Powys, Glitberg and Ownslow thought it a marvellous idea. They did it in turn, as disgustingly as they could.

Not Trevor. He looked on uncomfortably and made small useless gestures of protest with his hands.

I could hardly see for slime. It felt horrible, and I couldn’t get it off.

‘All right,’ Powys said. ‘That’s it, then. You push off now Finchy, and you get packed, Trevor, and then we’ll all leave.’

‘Here!’ Ownslow said again, protestingly.

‘Do you want an alibi, or don’t you?’ Powys said. ‘You got to make some effort. Be seen by a few squares. Help the lies along.’

Ownslow gave in with a bad grace, and contented himself with making sure that none of the table napkins had worked loose. Which they hadn’t.

Finch had gone from my diminished sight and also, it appeared, from my life. A car started in the drive, crunched on the gravel, and faded away.

Trevor went out of the room and presently returned carrying a suitcase. In the interval Ownslow sniggered, Glitberg jeered, and Powys tested the amount that I could move my arms. Half an inch, at the most.

‘You won’t get out of that,’ he said. He shook my elbow and watched the results. ‘I reckon this’ll make us even.’ He turned as Trevor came back. ‘Are all doors locked?’

‘All except the front one,’ Trevor said.

‘Right. Then let’s be off.’

‘But what about him?’ Trevor said. ‘We can’t just leave him like that.’

‘Can’t we? Why not?’

‘But...’ Trevor said: and fell silent.

‘Someone will find him tomorrow,’ Powys said. ‘A cleaner, or something. Do you have a cleaner?’

‘Yes,’ Trevor said doubtfully. ‘But she doesn’t come in on Tuesdays. My wife will be back though.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘All right.’ He hesitated. ‘My wife keeps some money in the kitchen. I’ll just fetch it.’

‘Right.’

Trevor went on his errand and came back. He stood near me, looking worried.

‘Ro...’

‘Come on,’ said Powys impatiently. ‘He’s ruined you, like he ruined us. You owe him bloody nothing.’

He shepherded them out of the door; Trevor unhappy, Glitberg sneering, Ownslow unassuaged. Powys looked back from the doorway, his own face, what I could see of it, full of smug satisfaction.

‘I’ll think of you,’ he said. ‘All night.’

He pulled the door towards him, to shut it, and switched off the light.

Human bodies were not designed to remain for hours in one position. Even in sleep, they regularly shifted. Joints bent and unbent, muscles contracted and relaxed.

No human body was designed to lie as I was lying, with constant strain already running up through legs, stomach, chest, shoulders and arms. Within five minutes, while they were still there, it had become in any normal way intolerable. One would not have stayed in that attitude from choice.

When they had gone, I simply could not visualise the time ahead. My imagination short-circuited. Blanked out. What did one do if one couldn’t bear something, and had to?

The worst of the spit slid slowly off my face, but the rest remained, sticky and itching. I blinked my eyes wide open in the dark and thought of being at home in my own quiet bed, as I’d hoped to be that night.

I realised that I was having a surprising amount of difficulty in breathing. One took breathing so much for granted; but the mechanics weren’t all that simple. The muscles between the ribs pulled the ribcage out and upwards, allowing air to rush down to the lungs. It wasn’t, so to speak, the air going in which expanded the chest, but the expansion of the chest which drew in the air. With the ribcage pulled continuously up, the normal amount of muscle movement was much curtailed.

I still wore a collar and tie. I would choke, I thought.

The other bit that breathed for you was the diaphragm, a nice hefty floor of muscle between the heart-lung cavity and the lower lot of guts. Thank God for diaphragms, I thought. Long may they reign. Mine chugged away, doing its best.

If I passed the night in delirium, I thought, it would be a good idea. If I’d studied Yoga... mind out of body. Too late for that. I was always too late. Never prepared.

Stabs of strain afflicted both my shoulders. Needles. Swords.

Think of something else.

Boats. Think of boats. Big expensive boats, built to high standards in top British boat yards, sailing away out of Britain to ship-brokers in Antibes and Antigua.

Huge floating assets in negotiable form. None of the usual bureaucratic trouble about transferring money abroad in huge amounts. No dollar premiums to worry about, or other such hurdles set up by grasping governments. Just put your money in fibreglass and ropes and sails, and float away on it on the tide.

The man at Goldenwave had told me they never lacked for orders. Boats, he said, didn’t deteriorate like aeroplanes or cars. Put a quarter of a million into a boat, and it would most likely increase in value, as years went by. Sell the boat, bank the money, and hey presto, all nicely, tidily, and legally done.

There were frightful protests from my arms and legs. I couldn’t move them in any way more than an inch: could give them no respite. It really was, I thought, an absolutely bloody revenge.

No use reflecting that it was I who had stirred up Powys and Ownslow and Glitberg. Poke a rattlesnake with a stick, don’t be surprised if he bites you. I’d gone to find out if it was they who’d abducted me, and found out instead what they’d done with all the missing money.

Paid for boats. The mention of boats had produced the menace, not the mention of abduction. Boats paid for by the taxpayers, the electronics firm, and the Nantuckets of New York. Gone with the four winds. Exchanged for a pile of a nice strong currency, lying somewhere in a foreign bank, waiting for the owners to stroll along and collect.

Trevor linked them all. Maybe the boats had originally been his idea. I hadn’t thought of William Finch knowing Connaught Powys: certainly not as well as he clearly did. But through Trevor, along the track from embezzlement to ship building... along the way, they had met.

The pains in my arms and legs intensified, and there was a great shaft of soreness up my chest.

I thought: I don’t know how to face this. I don’t know how. It isn’t possible.

Trevor, I thought. Surely Trevor wouldn’t have left me like this... not like this... if he had realised. Trevor, who had been so distressed at my dishevelled appearance in the police station, who as far as I could see had really cared about my health.

Ye Gods, I thought, I’d go gladly back to the sail locker... to the van... to almost anywhere one could think of.

Some of my muscles were trembling. Would the fibres simply collapse, I wondered. Would the muscles just tear apart; the ligaments disconnect from the bones? Oh for God’s sake, I told myself, you’ve got enough to worry about, without that. Think of something cheerful.

I couldn’t, off-hand. Even cheerful subjects like Tapestry were no good. I couldn’t see me being able to ride in the Whitbread Gold Cup.

Minutes dragged and telescoped, stretching to hours. The various separate pains gradually coalesced into an all pervading fire. Thought became fragmentary, and then, I reckon, more or less stopped.

The unbearable was there, inside, savage and consuming. Unbearable... there was no such word.

By morning I’d gone a long way into an extreme land I hadn’t known existed. A different dimension, where the memory of ordinary pain was a laugh.

An internal place; a heavy core. The external world had retreated. I no longer felt as if I were any particular shape: had no picture of hands or feet, or where they were. Everything was crimson and dark.

I existed as a mass. Unified. A single lump of matter, of a weight and fire like the centre of the earth.

There was nothing else. No thought. Just feeling, and eternity.

A noise dragged me back.

People talking. Voices in the house.

I saw that daylight had returned and was trickling in round the edge of the curtains. I tried to call out, and could not.

Footsteps crossed and recrossed the hall, and at last, at last, someone opened the door, and switched on the light.

Two women came in. I stared at them, and they stared at me: on both sides with disbelief.

They were Hilary Pinlock, and Jossie.

Hilary cut through the red checked table napkins with a small pair of scissors from her handbag.

I tried to sit up and behave with sangfroid, but my stretched muscles wouldn’t respond to directions. I ended somehow with my face against her chest and my throat heaving with unstoppable half-stifled groans.

‘It’s all right, Ro. It’s all right, my dear, my dear.’

Her thin arms held me close and tight, rocking me gently, taking into herself the impossible pain, suffering for me like a mother. Mother, sister, lover, child... a woman who crossed the categories and left them blurred.

I had a mouthful of blouse button and was comforted to my soul.

She put an arm round my waist and more or less carried me to the nearest chair. Jossie stood looking on, her face filled with a greater shock than finding me there.

‘Do you realise,’ she said, ‘that Dad’s gone?’

I didn’t feel like saying much.

‘Did you hear?’ Jossie said. Her voice was tight, unfriendly. ‘Dad’s gone. Walked out. Left all the horses. Do you hear? He’s cleared half the papers out of the office and burned them in the incinerator, and this lady says it is because my father is an embezzler, and you... you are going to give him away to the Nantuckets, and the police.’

The big eyes were hard. ‘And Trevor, too. Trevor. I’ve known him all my life. How could you? And you knew... you knew on Sunday... all day... what you were going to do. You took me out, and you knew you were going to ruin all our lives. I think you’re hateful.’

Hilary took two strides, gripped her by her shoulders, and positively shook her.

‘Stop it, you silly girl. Open your silly eyes. He did all this for you.’

Jossie tore herself free. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

‘He didn’t want your father to go to prison. Because he’s your father. He’s sent others there, but he didn’t want it to happen to your father, or to Trevor King. So he warned them, and gave them time to destroy things. Evidence. Paper and records.’ She glanced back at me. ‘He told me on Saturday what he planned... to tell your father how much he knew, and to offer him a bargain. Time, enough time, if he would destroy his tracks and go, in a way which would cause you least pain. Time to go before the police arrived to confiscate his passport. Time to arrange his life as best he could. And they made him pay for the time he gave them. He paid for every second of it...’ She gestured in frustrated disgust towards the table and the cut pieces of cloth, ‘...in agony.’

‘Hilary,’ I protested.

There never had been any stopping Hilary Pinlock in full flight. She said fiercely to Jossie, ‘He can put up with a lot, but I reckon it’s too much to have you reviling him for what he’s suffered for your sake. So you just get some sense into your little bird-brain, and beg his pardon.’

I helplessly shook my head. Jossie stood with her mouth open in shattered shock, and then she looked at the table, and discarded the thought.

‘Dad would never have done that,’ she said.

‘There were five of them,’ I said wearily. ‘People do things in gangs which they would never have done on their own.’

She looked at me with shadowed eyes. Then she turned abruptly on her heel and walked out of the room.

‘She’s terribly upset,’ Hilary said, making allowances.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘No.’

She made a face. ‘I’ll get you something. They must at least have aspirins in this house.’

‘Tell me first,’ I said, ‘how you got here.’

‘Oh. I was worried. I rang your cottage all evening. Late into the night. And again this morning, early. I had a feeling... I didn’t think it would hurt if I came over to check, so I drove to your cottage... but of course you weren’t there. I saw your neighbour, Mrs Morris, and she said you hadn’t been home all night. So then I went to your office. They were in a tizzy because some time between last night and this morning your partner had taken away a great many papers, and neither of you had turned up for work.’

‘What time...’ I said.

‘About half past nine, when I went to the office.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s a quarter to eleven, now.’

Fourteen hours, I thought numbly. It must have been at least fourteen hours, that I’d been lying there.

‘Well, I drove to Finch’s house,’ she said. ‘I had a bit of trouble finding the way, and when I got there, everything was in a shambles. There was a girl secretary weeping all over the place. People asking what was going on... and your girl Jossie in a dumbstruck state. I asked her if she’d seen you. I said I thought you could be in real trouble. I asked her where Trevor King lived. I made her come with me, to show me the way. I tried to tell her what her father had been doing, and how he’d abducted you, but she didn’t want to believe it.’

‘No.’

‘So then we arrived here, and found you.’

‘How did you get in?’

‘The back door was wide open.’

‘Wide...?’

I had a sudden picture of Trevor going out to the kitchen, saying it was to fetch some money. To open the door. To give me a tiny chance. Poor Trevor.

‘That package I gave you,’ I said. ‘With all the photostats. When you get home, will you burn it?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Mm.’

Jossie came back and sprawled in a red armchair, all angular legs.

‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly.

‘So am I.’

‘You did help him,’ she said.

Hilary said, ‘Do good to those who despitefully use you.’

I slid my eyes her way. ‘That’s enough of that.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jossie demanded.

Hilary shook her head with a smile and went on an aspirin hunt. Butazolidin, I imagined, would do more good. Things were better now I was sitting in a chair, but a long old way from right.

‘He left me a letter,’ Jossie said. ‘More or less the same as yours.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Dear Jossie, Sorry, Love, Dad.’

‘Oh.’

‘He said he was going to France...’ She broke off, and stared ahead of her, her face full of misery. ‘Life’s going to be unutterably bloody, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘for a long time to come?’

‘Mm.’

‘What am I going to do?’ The question was a rhetorical wail, but I answered it.

‘I did want to warn you,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t... before I’d talked to your father. I meant it, though, about you coming to live in the cottage. If you thought... that you could.’

‘Ro...’ Her voice was little more than a breath.

I sat and ached, and thought in depression about telephoning the Nantuckets, and the chaos I’d have to deal with in the office.

Jossie turned her head towards me and gave me a long inspection.

‘You look spineless,’ she said. Her voice was half-way back in spirit to the old healthy mockery; shaky, but doing its best. ‘And I’ll tell you something else.’ She paused and swallowed.

‘When Dad went, he left me behind, but he took the detestable Lida with him.’

There was enough, in that, for the future.