To the hilt

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

On Tuesday morning I went to the bank meeting in Reading and was shown into a small private conference room where the area bank manager, Margaret Morden and Tobias were already sitting round a table with coffee cups in front of them.

When I went in, they stood up.

'Don't,' I said awkwardly. 'Am I late?'

'No,' Tobe said.

They all sat. I took the one empty chair.

'Did you bring the list?' the bank man said.

I was wearing an open-necked white shirt with no tie, and carrying a jacket. I dug into a jacket pocket and handed Norman Quorn's envelope to Tobias.

They were staring at me, rather.

'Sorry about the bruises,' I said, making a gesture towards my face. 'I got a bit clobbered again. Very careless.'

Tobias said, 'I've talked to Chris. He told me about… Grantchester's barbecue.'

'Oh.'

Tobias had also, clearly, relayed to the bank man and to Margaret what Chris had said. All of them were embarrassed. I too. Very British.

'Well,' I said, 'can we find the money?'

They had no doubt of it. With a relieved air of eagerness and satisfaction they passed to each other the piece of paper, the riddle that Quorn had left; it soon became apparent that, although the numbers and names belonged to bank accounts, the brewery's Finance Director had been coy about setting down on paper which account referred to which bank. The list had been an aide memoire to himself. He had never meant anyone else to have to decipher it.

Thoughtfully they each copied out for themselves the whole list, numbers and names. (He wouldn't trust it to the office copier, the bank man said; the information was so hot it would not be allowed to leave that room.)

Each of them had brought a personal computer that was not connected to anything else and could not be hacked into from outside. Each of them fed into thek separate computer a disc recording what each of them, separately, knew. The bank had supplied a fax machine dedicated to this one job.

The room grew silent except for the tapping of keys and the drumming of thoughtful fingers when the solutions didn't quickly appear.

I waited without fret. They knew their business, and I didn't.

Tobias and the bank man wore the suits of their trade, dark confidence-builders with gravitas. Margaret had come in flowery printed wool, soft and rose-red and disarming, hiding the steel-hard brain. How ridiculous, I thought, that the male mind could often accept a female as equal only if she pretended to be in need of help. Margaret amused me. She caught me looking at her, read my thought, and winked. Men were right to be afraid of women, I concluded: the witch lived near the surface in all of them.

They burned witches… God help them.

I moved stiffly on my chair, leaning forward, resting my elbows on the table, taking shallow breaths. Body management, learned fast.

At the police station the previous afternoon Inspector Vernon had told me that Ivan's car (the wheels I'd driven to the party) had been identified by Mrs Benchmark and towed by the police and was, in fact, at that moment right outside in the station's car park.

'Can I take it?' I asked, surprised.

'If you think you're fit to drive.'

I had the car keys, among other things, in my restored trousers pocket.

Fit or not, I drove the car to Lambourn, found Emily's spare house key on its old familiar nail in the tack room, made inroads into her whisky and spent a disturbed night lying on my side in my clothes on the sofa in her drawing-room, lacking energy for anything else, feeling shivery and sick.

In the morning I'd made it upstairs to the bathroom, found a throw-away razor, combed my hair and rinsed my mouth. Well, I told myself, my physical state was my own stubborn fault: just put up with it. Swallow the tablets and be grateful for mercies.

I phoned Chris who said he'd been trying without success to reach my mobile number.

'The phone's in the car,' I said. 'I expect the battery's flat.'

'For hell's sake, charge it.'

'Yes.'

'Are you all right, Al? And where are you?'

'Lambourn. Could you drive to Paignton and then come here?'

'Today? Bring all three ladies?'

'If you can. I'll phone the hotel.'

'Chauffeur's togs coming up. Zipped bag nine.'

We disconnected on a smile. I phoned the Redcliffe and left messages for Emily and my mother. Then I retrieved the Quorn list from the back of the golf picture and drove to Reading.

By lunchtime the experts had got nowhere nearer the end of the rainbow.

They sent out for sandwiches, and we drank more coffee.

'The trouble is,' the bank man explained to me, 'that we have here three lots of variables. We have to match the account numbers on the list with a name on the list and with a bank identification number that we already have, and then we have to send that combination to the bank in question and hope to get a response from them to acknowledge that that account exists. We haven't so far been able to do that. The nearest we have come is matching one of the account numbers to one of the banks, but we supplied the wrong name for the account, and the bank told us by return fax, just now, that as our enquiry is incomplete, they cannot answer it. No one is being helpful. On top of that, the account numbers are the wrong way round.'

I said, 'How do you mean, the wrong way round?'

'All the numbers on the list end with two zeros. As a rule account numbers begin with two zeros. We have tried reversing the numbers, so far without success. I am still sure that all of the numbers have been reversed, but if Quorn jumbled them up further, or multiplied by two, for instance, we are in real trouble.'

Tobias and Margaret nodded in depression.

Tobias said, 'Quorn may have sent the money on a circular route involving all of these numbers - like the beach towels on the poolside chairs - or he may have sent it direct from Panama to any one place, but so far we haven't found a single trace of it. I have been working on the belief that one of these numbers or names must mean something to the Global Bank in Panama, but they will not admit it.'

'All banks are secretive,' the big bank man said. 'And so are we.'

'Don't despair,' Margaret said, 'we'll find the money. It's just taking longer than we hoped.'

By the end of the afternoon, however, they themselves were looking cast down; they said they would think of a new strategy for the next day. The time change alone was making things difficult. It was already mid-afternoon in Reading when the bank in Panama opened for business.

They carefully shredded every scrap of used fax and working paper and locked Norman Quorn's list into the manager's private safe. I drove a shade dispiritedly back to Lambourn and found that Emily, my mother and Audrey Newton had arrived a bare five minutes before me.

C. Y. Uttley was busy unloading suitcases from the boot.

I gave my mother a minimum hug, kissed Emily and planted an air kiss beside Audrey Newton's buxom cheek.

'We've had a lovely weekend,' she said, beaming. 'Thank you ever so much. You've bruised your face, dear, did you know?'

'Walked into a door.'

Emily took Audrey and my mother into the house and Chris gave me an assessing inspection.

'You look lousy,' he said. 'Worse than Sunday.'

'Thanks.'

'Your bus-stealing Grantchester-immobilising friend no longer exists,' he assured me. 'I dumped her today, bit by bit, in a succession of wheelybins on my way to Devon.'

'So wise.'

'How do blonde bubble curls and D-cup knockers grab you?'

'I wouldn't be seen dead with her.'

'At least the lawyer didn't cauterise your sense of humour.'

'A close-run thing.'

'Do you want anything else done?'

'Just take Audrey Newton home to Bloxham.'

'After that?'

We stared at each other.

'A friend for life,' I suggested.

'I'll send my bill.'

Emily proposed that my mother and I stay the night in Lambourn and met with little resistance.

The telephone rang in the kitchen while we were sitting round the big table watching Emily search for supper in the freezer. Emily picked up the receiver and in a moment said with surprise, 'Yes, he's here. So is Vivienne.' She held out the receiver in my direction. 'It's Himself. He's been looking for you.' I took the instrument and said, 'My lord.' 'Al, where have you been? I've had Patsy on the line all day. She sounds practically hysterical. She wants to talk to you. She says you signed yourself out of some hospital she put you in. She won't tell me why she put you in hospital. What the hell's happened?'

'Er… I ran out of wall.'

'Al, talk sense.'

My mother and Emily could both hear what I said. I thought through five seconds of silence and said, 'Can I come for a drink with you at about six tomorrow evening?'

'Of course.'

'Well… please don't tell Patsy where I am. Ask her if she'll meet me at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon in the car park of the brewery's bank's head office in Reading. And tell her…' I paused. 'Tell her thanks for the help.'

Emily said, astounded, as I put the phone down, 'Patsy helped you?'

'Mm.'

They would have to know, so I told them as unemotionally as possible that Oliver Grantchester had been trying to lay his hands on the brewery's missing millions. 'He had either conspired with Norman Quorn to steal the money in the first place, or tried to wrest it from him afterwards,' I said. 'I'm not yet sure which.'

'Not Oliver!' my mother protested in total disbelief. 'We've known him for years. He's always been Ivan's solicitor, and the brewery's too…' her voice faded. 'Ivan trusted him.'

I said, 'Ivan trusted Norman Quorn. Quorn and Grantchester… they were two normal men, good at their jobs, but fatally attracted by what looked like an easy path to a bucket of gold - and I'm not talking about the literal bucket of gold, the King Alfred Gold Cup, which Grantchester thought he could lay his hands on as a consolation when the serious prize slipped through his fingers. Grantchester may have been a good lawyer but he's an inefficient crook. He hasn't got the Gold Cup and he hasn't got the brewery's money, and Patsy has woken up to the fact that her dear darling avuncular Oliver had been trying his damnedest to rob her, as she now owns the brewery complete with its losses.'

My mother had her own concern, 'You didn't really walk into a door, did you, Alexander?'

I smiled. 'I walked into Grantchester's fist man. You'd think I'd know better.'

'And no one took hostages,' Emily said thoughtfully, with much understanding.

We went to bed. Emily expected and invited me between her sheets, but I simply had no stamina left for the oldest of games.

She asked what was under the bandages that was making me sweat.

'The wages of pride,' I said. 'Go to sleep.'

I drove my mother to Reading in the morning and saw her onto the London train, promising to spend the evening and night in Park Crescent after my six o'clock date with Himself.

Frail from grief, my calm and exquisite parent showed me in a single trembling hug on the railway platform how close we both were to being stretched too far. I understood suddenly that it was from her I had learned the way to hide fear and pain and humiliation, and that if I'd extended that ability into material things like hilts and chalices and dynamite lists, it had been because of her ultra-controlled outer face that I had all my life taken to be an absence - or at least a deficiency - of emotion.

'Ma,' I said on Reading station, 'I adore you.'

The train came, quiet and rapid, slowing to whisk her away.

'Alexander,' she said, 'don't be ridiculous.'

In the bank Tobias, Margaret and the big financial cheese were gloomily studying the electronic messages on the one machine they had left alive to receive them overnight.

Useful information from around the globe: zero.

The experts had drawn up ways of approaching the problem from so far untried angles, but nothing worked. By lunchtime they were saying they couldn't dedicate more than that afternoon to the search, as they had other unbreakable commitments ahead.

When I asked if I could bring Patsy to the afternoon session they said I could do anything I liked but Tobias, chewing hard on a toothpick, asked if I remembered what had happened to me four days ago, on the one time I'd believed in her good faith.

I was leaning forward, elbows on table, the morning's pills wearing off. I remembered, I said, and I would rely on Tobe to defend me from the maiden.

I could joke, he said, but I should also remember the sirens whose seductive songs lured foolish sailors to shipwreck and death.

Not in this bank, I said.

I met her in the car park, as arranged.

'Hello,' I said.

'Alexander…'

She was unsure of herself. Awkward. I'd never seen her like that.

She wore a shirt, a cardigan, long skirt, flat shoes: wholesome, well-groomed.

I explained that she should come into the bank with me and listen to the difficulties that had arisen in finding the brewery's millions.

For someone whose main fears for twelve years or so had been that I would somehow manage to rob her, she seemed less than anxious about the success of the search.

'I promise you,' I said, 'they are trying everything they know to find your money.'

'My father's money,' she said. 'Everything you have done was for him, wasn't it?'

'I suppose so.'

'You would never have done it for me.'

I said, 'His whole life was the brewery. He built it up. It was his pride. The heartless betrayal of Norman Quorn devastated him, and yes, I believe it killed him. And for his sake, and for my mother's sake I would have done anything to put things right. I've tried. I haven't managed it. I want the bank people to tell you that I am not trying to steal from you. I am trying to restore what Ivan built.'

'Alexander…'

'I did believe on Saturday,' I said, 'that you were sincerely offering a truce. I hope you didn't know exactly what you were beckoning me into. I know you tried to stop that little lark with the barbecue… I could hear you. I know you got me help. Anyway,' I finished, running out of impetus, 'will you come into the bank?'

She nodded speechlessly and went with me into the conference room, where of course her looks and natural charm immediately enslaved the bank man who hadn't encountered her before. He fussed over a chair for her and offered her coffee, and she smiled at him sweetly, as she could.

We all sat down round the table. The bank man obligingly outlined all the measures so far taken to keep the brewery alive, and he explained that they were trying to find the missing millions by using the list.

'That list!' she murmured. 'What's on that list?'

'Don't let her see it,' Tobe said abruptly.

The bank man asked, 'Why ever not?'

'Because of what it cost to bring it here. Al may sit at this table with us hour after hour pretending there's nothing the matter, but he's halfway to fainting most of the time…'

'No,' I objected.

'Yeah, yeah.' He waved his toothpick in my direction. 'It was Oliver Grantchester, I'll bet you, who got Patsy to offer you a truce and to inveigle you into that garden. He may be in the lock-up at this moment, but he'll get out sometime, and he may know a way of using this list that we haven't fathomed, and he may have told her what to look for, so don't let her see it.'

There was an intense silence.

Patsy slowly stood up.

'Oliver used me,' she said. 'You are right. It's not easy to admit it.' She swallowed. 'I didn't know anything about any list before Oliver tried to make Alexander give it to him. Don't show it to me. I don't want to see it.' She looked directly at me, and said, 'I'm sorry.'

I stood up also. She gave me a long look, and a nod, and went away.

At the end of the afternoon that produced nothing but baffling frustration I drove back to London and Chesham Place and told my uncle, over a tumblerful of single malt, that three clever financial brains had spent two whole working days trying to make sense of Norman Quorn's list of bank accounts, and failing.

"They'll succeed tomorrow,' he said encouragingly.

I shook my head. 'They've given up. They've got other things they have to do.'

'You've done your best, Al.'

I was sitting forward, forearms on knees, holding my glass with both hands, trying not to sound as spent as I felt. I told him about Patsy's visit to the bank and about her understanding of Oliver Grantchester's intention of robbing the brewery. 'But between them,' I said, 'he and Norman Quora have fumbled the ball. The millions are lost. I'm glad Ivan didn't know.'

After a while Himself asked, 'What were you doing in hospital? Patsy wouldn't tell me.'

'Sleeping, mostly.'

'Al!'

'Well… it was Grantchester who sent the thugs to the bothy, thinking you'd given me the King Alfred Gold Cup to look after. He didn't tell them exactly what they were looking for, I suppose because he was afraid they would steal it for themselves if they knew how valuable it was. Anyway, when he found out I had that damned list, that has proved useless, he got the same thugs to persuade me to hand it over, but I still didn't like them - or him - so I didn't.'

He looked aghast.

'Some of my ribs are cracked. Grantchester's in a police hospital ward. Patsy and I may come to that truce in the end. You're making me drunk.'

My mother and I ate an Edna-cooked dinner and afterwards played Scrabble.

My mother won.

I took a pill at bedtime and stayed asleep for hours, and was astounded to meet Keith Robbiston on the stairs when I dawdled on my way down to breakfast.

'Come in here,' he said, pointing me into Ivan's lifeless study. 'Your uncle and your mother are both worried about you.'

I said, 'Why?'

'Your mother said she beat you at Scrabble and your uncle says you're not telling him the whole truth.' He studied my face, from which the swelling and bruises had largely faded, but which did, as I had to acknowledge, show grey fatigue and strain. 'You didn't tell either of them about any burns.'

'They worry too much.'

'So where are these burns?'

I took off my shirt, and he unwound the bandages. His silence, I thought, was ominous.

"They told me,' I said, 'that there wasn't any sign of infection, and that I would heal OK.'

'Well, yes.'

He got from me the name of the hospital and on Ivan's phone traced the grandmotherly doctor. He listened to her for quite a long time, staring at me throughout, his gaze slowly intensifying and darkening. 'Thank you,' he said eventually. 'Thank you very much.'

'Don't tell my mother,' I begged him. 'It's too soon after Ivan.'

'All right.'

He said he would not disturb the synthetic skin dressings, and re-wrapped the damage from armpits to waist.

"They gave you several injections of morphine in the hospital,' he said. 'And those pills I've given you, they too contain morphine.'

'I thought they were pretty strong.'

'You'll get addicted, Al. And I'm not being funny.'

'I'll deal with that later.'

He gave me enough pills for another four days. I thanked him, and meant it.

'Don't take more than you can help. And driving a car,' he observed, 'is only making things worse.'

I phoned Tobe's office and didn't get him. He had gone away for the weekend.

'But it's only Thursday,' I protested.

He would probably be back on Monday.

God damn him, I thought.

Margaret was 'unavailable'.

The big bank cheese had left me a message. 'All the King Alfred Gold Cup race expenses will be honoured by the bank, working closely with Mrs Benchmark who is now organising everything for the day at Cheltenham.'

Bully for Patsy. Big cheeses were putty in her hands.

I drifted through a quiet morning and companionable lunch with my mother and in the afternoon drove to Lambourn, arriving in the hour of maximum bustle; evening stables.

Emily, in her natural element, walked confidently around her yard in her usual fawn cavalry twill trousers, neat and businesslike, instructing the lads, feeling horses' legs, patting necks and rumps, offering treats of carrots, delivering messages of positive love to the powerful shining creatures that rubbed their noses against her in response.

I watched her for some time before she realised I was there, and I vividly understood again how comprehensively she belonged in that life, and how essential it was to her mind's well-being.

While I was still sitting in Ivan's car, a horsebox drove into the yard and unloaded Golden Malt.

He came out forwards, muscles quivering, hooves placed delicately on the ramp as he sought for secure footing, the whole process jerky and precarious: once out, he moved with liquid perfection, his feet on springs, his chestnut coat like fire in the evening sun, the arrogance of great thoroughbreds in every toss of his head.

Impossible not to be moved. He had twice let me lead him into misty unknown distances, taking me on faith. Looking at his splendid homecoming, I didn't know how I'd dared.

I stood up out of the car. Emily, seeing me, came to stand beside me, and together we watched the horse being led a few times round the yard to loosen his leg muscles after the confines of his journey.

'He looks great,' I said.

Emily nodded. 'The short change of scene suited him.'

'And Saturday?'

'He won't disgrace himself.' Her words were judicious, but trembled with the hard-to-control excitement of any trainer who felt there was a chance of winning a big race.

We went into the house where it proved impossible for her to do anything as ordinary as cooking dinner. I hadn't the energy, either.

We ate bread and cheese.

At ten o'clock she went out into her stable yard, as she was accustomed, to check that all her charges were happily settled for the night. I followed her and stood irresolutely in the yard looking up at the stars and the rising moon.

'Em,' I said, as she came towards me, 'will you lend me a horse?'

'What horse?' she asked, puzzled.

'Any.'

'But… what for?'

'I want…' How could I explain it? 'I want to go up onto the Downs… to be alone.'

'Now?'

I nodded.

'Even for you,' she said, 'you've been very silent this evening.'

'Things need thinking out,' I said.

'And it's a matter of the hundred and twenty-first psalm?'

'What?'

'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,' she said, 'from whence cometh my help.'

'Em.'

'And the Downs will have to do, instead of your mountains.'

Her understanding took my voice away entirely.

Without questions, without arguing, she went across to the tack room and reappeared with a saddle and a bridle. Then she crossed to one of the boxes in the yard and switched on its internal light.

I joined her there.

'This is one of Ivan's other horses. He's not much good, but he's a friendly old fellow. I suppose he's mine now… and as you're Ivan's executor, you've every right to ride him… but don't let him get loose if you can help it.'

'No.'

She saddled the horse expertly, pulling the girth tight.

'Wait,' she said, and made a fast detour back to the house, returning with the blue crash helmet and a padded jacket. Looking at my cotton shirt, she said, 'It'll be cold up there.'

She held the jacket for me to put on. Even though she was careful, it hurt.

'Oliver Grantchester can burn in hell,' she said.

'Em… how do you know?'

'Margaret Morden phoned me today to ask how you were feeling. She told me. She thought I knew.'

She bridled up the horse and unemotionally gave me a leg-up onto his back. She offered me the helmet, but made no fuss when I shook my head. She knew I preferred free air, and I was not going out to gallop.

"Thanks, Em,' I said.

She understood that it was a comprehensive sort of gratitude.

'Get going,' she said.

King Alfred, I thought, had perhaps sat on a horse on the exact place where I'd reined to a halt after a slow walk uphill from Lambourn.

I was on one of the highest points of the Downs, looking east to the valleys where the uplands slid away towards the Thames, that hadn't been a grand waterway in Alfred's lifetime, more a long winding drainage system from the Cotswolds to the North Sea.

King Alfred had been a scholar, a negotiator, a poet, a warrior, a strategist, a historian, an educator, a lawgiver. I wished a fraction of him could be inhaled to give me wisdom, but he had ridden this land eleven hundred and more years ago, when villainy wore its selfsame face but nothing much else was familiar.

It was odd to reflect that it was, of all things, ale that was least changed. The brewery named for the king still flowed with the drink that had sustained and comforted his people.

Ivan's horse walked onwards, plodding slowly, going nowhere under my aimless direction.

The clear sky and weak moonlight were millions of years old. Chill threads of the earth's wind moved in my hair. The perspective of time could cool any fever if one gave it a chance.

One could learn, perhaps, that failure was bearable: make peace with the certainty that all wasn't enough.

I came to the long fallen tree trunk that many trainers on the Downs made use of to give young horses an introduction to jumping. I slid off Ivan's horse to let him rest and sat on the log, holding the reins loosely while the horse bent his head unexcitedly to graze. His presence was in its own way a balm, an undemanding kinship with the natural ancient world.

I had caused in myself more pain than I really knew how to deal with, and the fact that it had been for nothing had to be faced.

It was five days now since I'd been dragged into Grantchester's garden. Five days since the thug called Jazzo, with his boxing gloves and his well-trained technique, had cracked my ribs and hit me with such force that I flinched from the memory as sorely as I still ached in places. I hadn't been able to dodge or in any way defend myself, and the helplessness had only added to the burden.

I could call him a bastard.

Bastard.

It didn't make anything better. Cracked ribs were like daggers stabbing at every movement. Much better not to cough.

As for the grill…

I looked out over the quiet age of the Downs.

Even with the pills, I was spending too long on the absolute edge of normal behaviour. I didn't want to retreat to a drugged inertia while my skin grew back, but it was an option with terrible temptations. I wanted not oblivion but fortitude. More fortitude than I found easy.

The horse scrunched and munched, the bit clinking.

What I had done had been irrational.

I should have told Grantchester where to find the list.

There was no saying, of course, that even if I'd told him the minute I'd set foot in his garden, he would have let me walk out of there untouched. I had seen the sickening enjoyment in his face… I'd heard from Bernie's confession to the police that Grantchester had burned Norman Quorn even though the frantic Finance Director would have told him anything to escape the fire. Grantchester's pleasure in prolonging Quorn's agony had directly led to Quorn's sudden death… from heart failure, from stroke or from shock; one or another. Grantchester's pleasure had in itself denied him the knowledge he sought. The only bright outcome of the whole mess.

Poor Norman Quorn, non-violent embezzler, had been sixty-five and frightened.

I'd been twenty-nine… and frightened… and irrational… and I'd been let off in time not to die.

I'd been let off with multiple bars of first, second and third degree burns, that would heal.

I'd been let off in time to know that burning had been a gesture for nothing, because whatever information Norman Quorn had entrusted to his sister in that benighted envelope, it hadn't turned out to be an indication of what he'd done with the brewery's money.

I could admit to myself that I'd burned from pride.

Harder to accept that it had been pointless.

Essential to accept that it had been pointless, and to go on from there.

I stood up stiffly and walked for a while, leading the horse.

If I'd been in Scotland I would have gone up into the mountains and let the wild pipes skirl out the raw sorrow, as they always had in turbulent history. Yet… would a lament be enough? A pibroch would cry for the wounded man but I needed more - I needed something tougher. Something to tell me, well OK, too bad, don't whine, you did it to yourself. Get out the paints.

When I went back to the mountains, I would play a march.

I rode for a while and walked by turns through the consoling night, and when the first grey seeped into the dark sky I turned the horse westwards and let him amble that way until we came to landmarks we both recognised as the right way home.