The Rain-Soaked Bride (13 page)

They got up to leave as another private security guard appeared with their bags. He dumped Toby’s suitcase inside the door and held up a battered leather holdall. ‘This yours?’ he asked Shining.

‘Yes, is there a problem?’

‘Depends what this is,’ the guard asked, holding up a ceramic jar of dense paste.

‘Gentlemen’s relish.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ the guard asked, in the manner of someone who can’t even begin to process the words he’s just heard.

‘It’s not as pornographic as it sounds,’ Shining sighed, ‘and it harms nothing but anchovies.’

‘I think we’ll have to confiscate it,’ the guard said, holding it out from his body as if worried it might bite him. ‘Until we’ve done some tests.’

‘Might I suggest you use toast rather than test tubes?’ Shining said. ‘I’d hate to think it was completely wasted.’

They left the man to his confusion at archaic spreads and climbed back up to the main body of the house.

‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Toby. ‘We’re clearly not going to find ourselves troubled by any official duties.’

‘Which, as I said before, is the solid advantage to our somewhat lacklustre reception. At least, by being ignored, we can get on with the important stuff. To hell with them, Toby, you really do need to stop worrying about what others think. People are terribly silly, by and large. Their opinions shouldn’t be sought.’

Toby smiled. ‘Fair enough. I’ll still give Rowlands a slap if the opportunity presents itself though.’

‘I’ll hold your coat.’

They stepped out of the front door, looking out across the wide expanse of lawn.

‘Do you have any of that protection stuff you can do?’ Toby asked.

Shining raised a solitary eyebrow. ‘“Protection stuff”?’

‘You know, muttering in ancient languages and drawing funny things in chalk.’

The old man nodded. ‘I do. I’m not entirely sure how effective it will be but at least a bracing stroll around the perimeter will give us a good idea of the lay of the land.’

‘And keep us away from people I might end up arguing with.’

‘A stroll it is.’

They cut across the front lawn towards the driveway and the guardhouse beyond. The lawn split up into ornamental flowerbeds, at the centre of which was a giant urn, bubbling away as a water feature spurted up through its centre. The rush of the water seemed to build in volume before resolving itself into a different noise, the air above them filled with the roar of rotor blades. Looking up, they saw a helicopter curve down towards the edge of the lawn directly in front of the house.

‘And to think,’ said Toby, ‘we had to drive.’

The helicopter dropped gracefully onto the grass and Shining and Toby watched as Clive King walked up to it, flanked by a man they had yet to meet but could guess was Ranesh Varma, the man from the Diplomatic Service.

The helicopter’s rear door opened and four people climbed out.

‘The Korean contingent,’ said Shining. ‘I wonder if they have the first idea of the mess they’re stepping into?’

‘They will soon enough,’ said Toby. ‘Come on, let’s leave them to it.’

They continued on their way towards the edge of the property. Having cleared the front garden, the land rose and then fell, an open stretch of lawn leading towards the external wall.

‘It’s like a medieval castle,’ said Shining, ‘the house itself recessed into lower ground so you can’t see it from outside.’

‘All well and good if the enemy attacks using bows and arrows.’

‘It’s still useful. As Fratfield said, it’s hard to get in here unobserved.’

‘I don’t believe for one moment you haven’t known someone in your time that could have managed it. What about that bloke you worked with in the sixties? The one who could remain unnoticed?’

‘Cyril? He’d have had a job on. It’s not as if he were invisible, after all, people were just inclined not to pay attention to him in the first place. A set-up like this is different. We have a whole stack of folk whose job it is to be alert at all times, Cyril couldn’t have snuck past them. Besides, there’s the electronic security systems, too.’

‘Security systems can be overcome, we know that.’

‘True. In fact it is often our job to do exactly that. Still, short of holding the conference in an underground bunker, we’re as secure as we could hope to be.’

They’d reached the perimeter wall now and Shining had taken a small metal case from his pocket. Opening it, he took out a piece of chalk and began to draw on the old stone. Toby glanced towards the guardhouse, where the man who had reluctantly let them in earlier was keeping an eye on them.

‘I give it five minutes before he’s over here with a bucket of hot water and a jay cloth,’ said Toby.

‘He can do what he likes,’ said Shining, holding up the chalk. ‘This is somewhat specialist. Good for outdoor work. Once the sigils are drawn, they’re indelible. The act of drawing them makes them permanent. Even if he wiped away the outward signs of them, their effect would cling to the stone.’

‘A graffiti artist’s dream. So what do they do?’

‘They’re the magical equivalent of the security system. If someone comes over the wall I’ll know about it.’

‘They linked to a walkie-talkie in your room?’ Toby grinned.

‘Something like that. In modern terms, think of them as an open circuit. When someone crosses them, they close that circuit and energy flows through them. That energy will trigger an alarm in my delightfully cosy room. A candle I picked up in Peking in the eighties; its flame turns blue when the line is crossed.’

‘Of course it does.’

‘It’s the same as the bursts of coloured light you’d see when exposing different chemical elements to heat.’

‘Magic as the lost branch of physics again?’

‘Precisely. Though the candle is extremely sensitive to work at such a long distance, of course.’

‘I shall, as always, just nod wisely and trust you.’

‘Much the best way. I usually know what I’m talking about.’

‘So what else should we do?’

‘Well …’ Shining led Toby further along the wall, stopping after about twenty feet and drawing again. ‘Like so much of our work, magic will only take us so far. We’ll need to fall back on our more traditional skills too.’

‘Eyes and ears open.’

‘And expect the worst, yes. We may be superfluous given the security staff involved, but they’ll miss the sort of things we’re looking for. If nobody believes the assassin is using magical methods, they’ll discount clues that may be all-important to us.’

‘If they even strike again.’

‘Oh, I’m sure that’s a given. Anyone willing to kill three times doesn’t just give up. They’ll see this through until the bitter end.’

a) Lufford Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire

Fratfield led April to a small drawing room that lay just off the main conference room then did his best to get out alive.

‘And you’ve diplomatic experience, you say,’ asked Ranesh Varma, after Fratfield had briefly introduced them before running off in a strafe run of insults from April.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘just ten years or so, a while ago now. He made me cross, that’s all.’

‘It is to be hoped our Korean friends don’t do the same.’

‘It is, I do so hate being cross.’ She smiled and shook his hand. ‘Don’t worry, I can be a fiery old hag but I’m not such a liability as to bring the conference down in flames.’

She gave Ranesh a quick once-over: early forties, public school, terribly sweet. His eyes, always a fair measure of a man, she believed, sat gentle but inquisitive behind the lenses of a pair of wire-framed spectacles. She made an instant judgement: Ranesh Varma was, indeed, to quote her brother, ‘a good egg’.

‘I hope you won’t think me rude …’ he said.

‘Uh-oh, that’s never a good start to a sentence.’

Ranesh smiled. ‘I know, it’s like when someone prefixes a statement with “No offence, but …” I was just going to admit that we were surprised to have you sprung on us at the last minute.’

‘Entirely my fault, and I won’t tread on anyone’s toes. Probably. Or if I do, feel free to stamp on mine in return. I just felt I might be useful.’

‘And I’m sure you will,’ Ranesh replied, proving, if nothing else, that he was good at his job. ‘Do you speak Korean at all?’

‘Like a native.’

‘That is good. I don’t, I’m afraid, though I have Lucy with me who does.’

‘Lucy?’

‘Baxter. You’ll meet her just now, she should be down any minute.’

‘Now it’s my turn to be rude,’ said April, taking his arm in the hope that a bit of a cuddle might move things along, ‘but what on earth were they thinking sending someone from HDMS who didn’t speak the lingo?’

‘A good question,’ he admitted. ‘In truth, I think I just pissed off the right person.’

April laughed. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re looking forward to your time here.’

‘I was, until people started dying.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, it just adds a bit of spice.’

‘I am used to spice, Miss Shining, but this feels a little too hot even for me.’ He smiled and glanced at his watch. ‘And Lucy too, perhaps. Where is she? They’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Happy to take a look if you point me in the right direction,’ April suggested. ‘See? I’m being useful already.’

Ranesh sighed and glanced at his watch again. ‘I should go.’

‘But then, if the Koreans arrive, you won’t be here to greet them. Much more embarrassing. Just point me in the direction of her room and I’ll rustle her up.’

‘Very well. Are you in the East Wing?’

‘Let’s not go into that just now, or I’ll start swearing again. I can find it.’

‘Hers is the Ophelia room. They are all named after Shakespeare characters.’

‘Of course they are.’

‘You enter the East Wing, walk along the corridor and it’s …’ he had to think for a moment, ‘third on the left.’

‘Perfect,’ she began to stride back towards the entrance hall. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’

By the time she entered the East Wing, she was still complimenting herself on how terribly charming she could be when she wanted. She was only too aware that her brother and Toby considered her a liability while at Lufford Hall but there was life in the old dog yet and, while she may have slipped into the habits of increased age, giving not a brace of hoots about what she said or did on a day-to-day basis, she wasn’t quite so far gone that she couldn’t be politic when needed.

She walked along the long corridor, taking a moment to study the grumpy old restoration gentlemen in the oil paintings that lined the walls. ‘All wigs and flatulence,’ she decided, then reminded herself she was supposed to be being quick. She looked at the nameplates on the doors. Rosalind, Juliet and … third on the left, Ophelia.

She knocked on the door. ‘Lucy?’ she called. ‘Ranesh is wearing out the carpet with worry.’

There was no answer. She knocked again. ‘Miss Baxter? Lucy?’

Probably overslept, April decided, then, thinking of the reason August and Toby were here, her thoughts grew darker.

She tried the door. It was unlocked.

The room beyond was dark, the heavy curtains blocking any light from the windows. ‘Lucy?’ she called, ‘are you all right?’

She ran her hand across the wall on the inside of the door, searching for a light switch, but not finding it.

‘Save me from old houses with weird wiring,’ she muttered, rooting around in her handbag for her cigarette lighter.

It was a battered old Zippo with a picture of James Dean on it and she’d owned it for longer than she could remember. Hadn’t an old boyfriend bought it for her? Probably. One’s memory of such things began to blur.

She ignited the Zippo and made her way inside. ‘Lucy? Sorry to intrude, dear. If you’re even in here …’ It suddenly occurred to her that the girl could be walking around the grounds or downstairs having breakfast. No doubt she’d be over the moon to discover a stranger was poking around her room.

Then again, she thought of the three people who had already lost their lives to whoever was preying on members of the delegation and decided now was not the time for pussyfooting around people’s privacy.

She made her way over to the main curtained window and pulled the heavy drapes back, letting the light in.

The room was beautiful. The walls an eggshell blue, the furniture even older than her. The floor was thickly carpeted in cream, a nightmare for stains, she thought, of which there were many.

She followed the dark brown patches –
blood
, she thought,
it’s blood
– into the en-suite bathroom. Which is where she finally found Lucy. She was lying back in the bathtub, fully clothed, her legs sticking up in the air. One shoe hung off a cold set of toes, the other foot was bare. There were further bloodstains on the bathroom floor but it was behind the poor girl’s head that most of it had pooled. It seemed that she had slipped, fallen backwards into the bath, hitting her head on the jutting-out soap tray as she’d done so.

One arm was folded beneath her but the other was lying across her chest. There was a deep cut on her thumb, a further bloodstain having spread out from that to bloom across the belly of the bright white shirt she had been wearing.

‘Oh, Lucy,’ April sighed.

April glanced back into the bedroom. It looked like the girl had cut her thumb somehow, bad enough to bleed on the carpet as she made her way into the bathroom, no doubt hoping to wash and dress it. Then she had slipped on something and fallen back into the bath.

An accident. Or at least, that would have been the obvious conclusion were it not for …

April moved back through into the bedroom and placed her hand on the carpet. It was wet.

b) Lufford Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire

April closed the door behind her. She would have preferred to report the girl’s death to her brother before anyone else, but as neither he nor Toby had their mobile phones she didn’t know how best to find him.

As she began to head back down the corridor she became aware of the sound of a helicopter approaching the building.

‘Oh Lord,’ she said, ‘here they bloody come.’