His forearm was beneath Ash’s chin, like a length of hard wood, pushing against his throat, choking the life from him. Ash looked into Lukovic’s gleaming, narrow eyes that projected pure hatred between the heavy lids. The man was immensely strong, pinning him into the corner of the lift as easily as if he were a child. The investigator’s heels drummed against the wood panel. His head was already reeling from lack of oxygen. Ash was trapped and he knew that unless he broke his attacker’s hold, he would choke to death.
Lukovic maintained the force against Ash’s throat with his right arm, while his left held Ash’s right wrist hard against the polished wood panelling.
In sheer desperation Ash pushed his free left hand into his assailant’s snarling, brutish face. He thrust two stiffened fingers directly into the madman’s right eye, wincing as they passed through the half-closed lids and pushed against the repugnant softness of the eyeball itself. Then beyond, his fingers slithered over the white globe until they reached harder matter behind.
Lukovic screeched as blood gushed from the ruined eye socket, a sound amplified by the limited confines of the lift, and instinctively yanked his head backwards. But the tips of Ash’s gore-sodden fingers had curled behind the eyeball, and when Lukovic pulled his head back the eyeball popped as though sucked out and dropped against his upper cheek, held there only by thin bloody tendrils.
The Serb’s yowls of pain and panic became even louder, easily competing with the noise from the dining room one floor below. He released Ash and staggered backwards, a gush of blood spurting across the small lift.
Ash gratefully drew in several heaving breaths, restoring life to his own flagging body. The other man was throwing himself from side to side in the lift, screaming and bellowing all the while, dangerous as a wounded bull.
Ash needed to get out of there, but just as he braced himself to rush past the weaving, outraged, agonized man, the safety door expanded shut with a loud clank like a guillotine. He fell back in surprise. How . . . ?
There was no time to think. The sharp sound had startled the other man too. He stopped his bellowing. The front of his suit was a maroon mess, as was his right hand and lower arm. He’d lowered that hand, dropping it to his side. He stared at Ash with his single hate-filled eye; the other still lay on his bloodied cheek, held there by red tendrils, its pupil looking downwards as if at something it could see lying on the floor.
The good one just glared at Ash with venomous spite and, incongruously, the investigator wondered if the dangling eye still had sight, for it remained connected to the socket. What would it be like to see in two different directions at once? How would a brain handle that?
Then, the blood-soaked man lifted the palm of his blood-free hand towards Ash. Lukovic lunged towards Ash and the investigator ducked, hurling himself into the corner behind the stumbling, enraged Cyclops. Lukovic whirled round fast, for apart from being immensely strong, his years of combat had taught him to endure even when wounded, and to make the enemy suffer. His large hand caught Ash’s shoulder, but the investigator was swift and determined to avoid a wrestling match with an adversary whose strength was bound to overwhelm him.
He half turned, then drove his elbow back towards Lukovic’s injured and exposed face, smashing it as hard as he could and crushing the dangling eyeball. The roar from the crippled combatant filled the air with an unbearable sound and the Serb used his whole body to push Ash against the mirrored back wall.
Once again, Ash was fighting for his life. Powerful arms closed round his back, and as he was pulled tight against the grunting Serb, bloody spittle lashed the investigator’s face.
The bear hug tightened even more and Ash rose on tiptoe as his heels left the floor and his spine was pulled inwards. The breath left his lungs and tears were squeezed from his eyes like juice from a lemon. His mouth opened, but no sound came out as his body trembled with the unbearable pressure.
Ash felt his sight begin to dim. He tried to lift his arms but it was no use. Even as he looked into Lukovic’s remaining eye he could see the cruel pleasure there. At least the encroaching blackness would take away the agony, unconsciousness anaesthetizing the shocking pain. As he began to slip mercifully away, he thought he heard the first crack of bone. It would be over soon. Surely he must be released from the torment before much longer.
But Ash didn’t die.
As he emerged from the spiralling well of darkness into which he’d been almost lethargically sinking, the pain returned as if to welcome him back. He became aware of a terrible shaking. At first he thought it was a reaction from his own body. But it wasn’t: it was coming from all around them, from somewhere inside the small lift itself.
The Serb still held him in his grip, though now almost tenderly. The pressure on his back eased and he almost swooned with relief. Slowly, his sight returned.
The big, Slavic face, still only inches from his own, looked around him in panic, the drooping red-veined, white mush of his dislodged eye swinging across the man’s broad cheek. Then Lukovic gawped at the ceiling, where the lightbulb was glowing then paling, glowing then paling . . .
And all the while, the shuddering of the lift increased in violence. The metal safety door rattled, the walls vibrated. A thumping noise came from all around.
Lukovic’s untouched eye looked at Ash, confusion fighting with fear. Ash, just as bewildered, could only stare back at him, while words tried to form in his throat, impatient to impart their message. A message of warning.
The lift cage juddered violently. Then again. The two men, face to face, could only focus on each other in dismay.
The wooden panels around them vibrated, the safety door clattered metallically while the heavy entrance door beyond remained sealed, unaffected by the lift car’s convulsions.
Lukovic tottered back a step, his hands still gripping Ash by his shirt. But it was the investigator who came to his senses first. Seeing the Serb’s sudden loss of balance, he pushed him back hard, but the bigger man’s grip on Ash’s shirt took the investigator with him, and they both toppled to the floor. As they lay part-winded, part-paralysed with shock, the shuddering of the lift increased alarmingly. Then, suddenly, with a tearing screech, the lift plunged downward at tremendous speed into the seemingly bottomless shaft.
For a brief, almost pleasant moment Ash felt his body in free-fall; then their descent was arrested by a massive jolt, a seismic crash.
Lukovic screamed as the lift plunged into the pitch-black pit, which was not bottomless after all.
It was far worse than that.
40
Kate McCarrick looked across the candlelit table at the friend she’d known for – oh, for forty years at least, she thought. They had grown up together, had been playmates, living in a quiet avenue of semi-detached houses, a road of very few parked cars, where boys waited impatiently each season for the horse chestnut trees – council-planted in grassy areas along the wide pavements – to shed their prickly green-cocooned conkers.
‘Glo’, as Kate had always called Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Gloria Standwell of New Scotland Yard, who sat on the opposite side of the restaurant’s intimate round table and was now wearing a trim Jaeger black jacket and pencil skirt rather than her formal police uniform, had also collected conkers and delighted in smashing her opponents’ to smithereens, which she used to do at least seven times out of ten.
But Kate knew her friend’s secret, because she’d helped her soak the shiny brown nuts in vinegar and bake them in the oven for ten minutes so that the conker became a formidable weapon. Kate smiled inwardly.
Without doubt, her pretty friend had been a tomboy in those days, although she also loved playing with dolls and skipping and doing other girlish things. Their bond was tight, from their toddler years, through confusing, exciting puberty and later going on giggly foursome dates together with pimply adolescent boys only too pleased to be their escorts. That was until Glo’s socially mobile parents had decided to move up in
the world and buy a much grander, detached house somewhere beyond the suburbs, opposite a large park with a lake so big that people actually sailed on it. It was a different world from Kate’s, a world of drives, garages and posh cars. It was a place Kate had loved to visit for weekends and during school holidays. Not that she ever resented returning to her own more humble home. She envied Glo and her new lifestyle, but was never jealous; she loved her friend too much for that. Too soon, they had gone their separate ways, choosing different universities and making whole new sets of friends.
Kate had been surprised when Glo married early – she thought her friend too career-minded for that – but she’d happily attended the wedding as chief bridesmaid. Glo had joined the police force soon after leaving uni – no surprise to Kate – and her groom was a high-ranking police officer, which had also been unsurprising. Glo had risen swiftly through the ranks while still managing to bring up two children, a boy and a girl, and juggling the usual household commitments.
Her children were adults now, and Glo had divorced her husband. ‘Irreconcilable differences’ had been the reason given, but Kate wondered if her friend’s superior rank had been the underlying cause of the rift between them. She also suspected Glo had waited for her son and daughter to come of age and so be able to understand and cope before she took such a drastic decision. On her visits, Kate had always noticed an undercurrent of tension between Glo and Tim, her husband, so when the break-up was announced, it had come as no great surprise.
She and Glo had remained in touch socially over the years, though less frequently than before, and their paths crossed professionally whenever the Met needed some help from the Psychical Research Institute. Kate felt Glo was embarrassed by the divorce. It was the one big failure in her otherwise successful life.
Now Kate smiled openly at Deputy Assistant Commissioner Gloria Standwell, the candlelight softening her friend’s features and catching the short hairstyle that framed her face. Glo caught the look, raising her slim glass of Taittinger Nocturne champagne as a toast in return.
‘It was good to hear from you after such a long time,’ the policewoman said in mild reproach.
Kate sipped her wine before replying, ‘Hope my call didn’t give you too much of a shock.’
Glo leaned forward on the tabletop to give her response, which was spoken almost in a whisper, even though the Pimlico restaurant Kate had suggested for the meeting was the epitome of ‘private’. Kate had been a client there for more years than she cared to count, and she often wondered just how many clandestine discussions had taken place within these hushed surrounds.
‘It was the name you mentioned that was the shock,’ Glo replied. ‘The Inner Court remains top secret as far as the Met and the SIS are concerned. What do you know about it?’
‘Well, I know it owns a perfect hiding place for those with lots of money to spend.’
‘You’ve put me in a tricky position, Katie. You must already know there’s nothing I can tell you.’
Kate had always been perceptive. ‘That doesn’t mean you don’t want to,’ she responded quietly. ‘Look, Glo, I’m really concerned about one of my operatives who’s on an assignment there as we speak.’
‘Can I ask who?’
‘David Ash.’
Gloria gave a wry smile. ‘How is he these days?’
It was a pointed question, and Kate dealt with it easily. ‘He’s fine. I wouldn’t have assigned him otherwise.’
The policewoman knew of her friend’s casual on-off romantic involvement with Ash and Kate knew she thought he was too far on the good side of forty for her. Gloria understood Kate’s anxiety for this enigmatic colleague of hers, a man the Met had covertly used on one or two baffling cases. Gloria liked him a lot, even though he could sometimes be moody and withdrawn. He claimed not to be psychic, and if that were true, then he at least had some kind of genius for picking up vital clues that her colleagues had often missed.
‘David is at Comraich Castle.’ It was a statement, not a question.
Kate nodded, but kept silent as a waiter arrived to take away the empty plates that had held their hors d’oeuvres.
‘Would you like to wait a little while before I bring your main course, mesdames?’ the French waiter suggested tactfully, for he’d observed the two women were deep in conversation before he’d approached their table.
‘Thank you, Vincent,’ said Kate, smiling up at the waiter.
Gloria placed her glass on the table and leaned towards her friend. ‘Now, tell me the problem and I’ll try to help as much as I can.’ Years of training had allowed her to discreetly examine other clients in the small downstairs dining room and, although it was dimly lit, she was satisfied there were no other diners of whom she should beware.
Kate also leaned forward on the table, the stem of her glass held loosely in her fingers. ‘The problem is, I can’t contact him.’
‘And he can’t reach you.’ Again, it wasn’t a question.
‘You know about that? And the Inner Court?’
‘We may need a while on this. First, I have to ask what you know about the Inner Court.’
‘Don’t go all policewomanly, Glo.’
‘I’m not, I promise. But you’ve raised a very delicate issue for me. And it could be dangerous for you.’
Kate didn’t even blink. ‘It’s David I’m worried about.’
‘I can understand that. You still haven’t answered my question, though. What do you know about the Inner Court? And who gave you the information?’ she added.
‘An old university friend. A man called Simon Maseby.’
‘Oh, that little slimeball,’ she said, leaning back.
Kate felt distinctly uncomfortable, having slept with said slimeball the night before. ‘You know him, then,’ she said flatly.
‘Oh, the Met knows all about Maseby, although he’s done nothing illegal as far as we can tell. But we are aware he’s a go-between for the IC.’
Kate nodded. ‘Simon was just a mite drunk when he told me a bit more about the organization than he probably should have after we’d signed the contract in my office.’
Gloria moved her glass of wine further away from her and leaned forward again. Her manner became more serious.
‘Right. What I’m going to tell you could cost me my job and maybe even more, Katie. I’m only telling you because David might be in trouble up there.’ She continued in an intense whisper. ‘You’re right to be worried: these people can be very dangerous.’
‘That’s very reassuring,’ came the acerbic response.
‘No. I didn’t mean to worry you more, but I think you need to understand about this organization. But I must warn you, this information is strictly between us. It’s only because I know and love you that I’m breaking the rules. I need your word that you’ll never repeat what I tell you.’
Kate reached forward and laid her hand over Gloria’s, where it rested on the tabletop. ‘You know I won’t, Glo.’
Gloria took another longer sip of the excellent wine and drew in a deep breath, as though she were about to plunge into an ice-cold pool.
Then she began.
‘In this country we have layers of unelected elitist pecking orders under the monarchy with the Royal Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, restricted to members of the royal family, at the top. Prince William took the title in 2008. You may have seen the coverage on the television news, where he wore a black ostrich-plumed hat and various bits and pieces including a garter strapped below his left knee.’
‘And very fetching it was too,’ put in Kate.
‘Don’t mock.’ Gloria gave her a small scowl, which was spoilt by the immediate smile on her lips. ‘All this pomp is important for the country’s tourism industry as well as making the so-titled feel more important. Then there are the twenty-four Royal Knights Companion of the Garter, who are usually made up of former prime ministers, public figures, ex-cabinet secretaries, field marshals and public-spirited aristocrats wi
th one or two industrialists thrown into the mix. Unlike Prince William, who is a Royal Knight, the Knights Companions’ costumes are a little less overblown – only a little, mind – and the grandeur and ritual that go with them suits the wearers. But then, with the fancy regalia the chiefs in the Met sometimes have to wear, you’ll hear no hypocrisy from me.’
Both smiling, they sipped at their wine together.
‘Okay, now,’ Gloria went on, placing the glass back on the table within easy reach, ‘even more important and much more exclusive than the Knights of the Garter are the Queen’s own personally chosen counsellors. This group is called the Order of Merit, whose membership is limited to twenty-four of the most illustrious people in the Commonwealth. Apart from each chosen member wearing a small blue and crimson cross with a tiny laurel wreath in the centre and an itsy gold inscription that says, “For Merit”, there is no other regalia they’re obliged to wear. Formal lounge suits and appropriate dresses for the ladies with the OM badge pinned to clothing is the only dress code required.
‘When next they sit down for lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace it will be only the eighth time since its formation a hundred or so years ago that this exclusive coterie has met with the reigning monarch.’
‘Who are the members – are they the Queen’s favourites?’ asked Kate, now intrigued.
‘Oh, much more than that. Each one has a special talent or skill that not only enables the Queen to keep the country sound, but also helps the Crown endure. And what an intellectually diverse body they are. They include the great mathematician, Sir Roger Penrose, the zoologist Lord May and Neil MacGregor of the British Museum, to name just three.’
‘They seem a pretty dry lot,’ said Kate. ‘Not many jokes over the lunch table.’
‘Don’t you believe it. There are those from the arts present also. Men like Tom Stoppard and David Hockney. David Attenborough and Betty Boothroyd.
Kate leaned back in her chair and almost whistled. ‘That’s one disparate and interesting lot. Can you imagine the conversations that go on?’