Wildtrack

  "Coffee, sir." The manservant put a large silver Thermos jug on to the table. "I've informed Mr Mulder of your arrival, sir, and he will join you as soon as he can. Would you like today's paper, sir?"

  "No. Is there a back gate to the house?"

  He hesitated, then shook his head. Which meant that if Mulder wanted to escape me then he would have to leave by the front gate and I would see him run for it. If he did, I planned to phone the police.

  But Mulder did not run for it. He kept me waiting ten minutes, but finally appeared in jeans and a sweatshirt that carried the name Wildtrack in big letters. He stood sullen and huge. He had winch-grinder's hands, a face battered by sun and sea, and the confidence of his giant size. "What is it?" he asked curtly.

  "You heard that I withdrew my charges against you, Fanny?"

  "I heard." He was suspicious.

  "But you still owe me an apology, Fanny."

  A look of hurt pride flicked over the big face, then he shrugged. "I didn't know you were a crip, man."

  I suppose that passed for a Boer apology, meaning that if he'd known I was crippled he'd have only broken one rib. I smiled. "And you've got something that I want, Fanny."

  He said nothing, but just glowered in the doorway.

  "I said you've got something I want, Fanny. Or did you find a buyer for the medal?"

  He tried to brazen it out. "What medal?"

  I crossed to the glass table, picked up the silver Thermos jug, and smashed it hard down. The smoked glass was toughened, and all I managed to do was crack it. I lifted the dented jug higher, slammed it down again, and this time the precious glass splintered into crazed fragments. Magazines, dried flowers and ashtrays collapsed among the broken glass. I smiled pleasantly at Fanny again. "You've got two minutes to find my medal, you bastard, or I break up this house."

  Fanny was staring aghast at the table's wreckage. "You're mad!"

  "One minute and fifty seconds."

  "Jesus bloody wept!" For a second I thought he was going to attack me, but he stayed rigid at the door.

  I unscrewed the jug's lid and upturned it. A mixture of hot coffee and broken vacuum lining spilt on to the fine carpet. "One minute forty seconds, Fanny. The picture over the mantel will be next."

  "I'll get it, man! I'll get it!" He held his hands wardingly towards me. "Don't do any more! I'll get it!"

  The medal arrived within one minute. Just seconds after Fanny had thrust the slim case towards me, Bannister himself appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a bathrobe of flamboyant silk. He stared appalled at the horrid mess where his table had stood, then looked at me in newly-woken astonishment. "Captain Sandman?"

  "Good morning," I said politely. "I came here to retrieve my medal. Mr Mulder was reluctant to admit that he still possessed it." I opened the lid of the case and looked down at the dull cross of bronze with its claret ribbon. "I'm sorry I had to use unfair methods to persuade him, but clearly you were making no effort at all."

  "Ah." Bannister appeared to be naked under his silk robe. He also seemed incapable of collecting his wits.

  "You told me you didn't know where Fanny was," I accused him.

  "I..." He stopped, trapped by his lie, helpless to know what to say.

  "But, as you can see, I found him." I put the medal into my pocket.

  "I can explain everything, Nick." Bannister had found his charm now, and deployed it hurriedly. "Fanny only arrived last night. I was going to talk to you about him, of course—"

  "I'm in a hurry," I cut him off. "But I also want to tell you that I've no intention of making your film, none. I'll ask my lawyer to send you a bill for Sycorax's restoration. Unless you'd prefer to write me a cheque now?"

  "Nick!" Bannister's hurt tone suggested he had been grievously wronged. "It's going to be a very good film, very good!"

  "I'd rather have a cheque," I said.

  "You've signed a contract." Angela Westmacott stepped into the room. Until now I'd been in charge of the confrontation, but her sudden appearance flabbergasted and silenced me. "You've signed a contract," she said again, "and I expect you to fulfil it." Like Bannister she was in a silk robe and, like him, she seemed to be naked under the bright garment. Her hair was loose, cascading in a golden flood down her back. She had no make-up, yet she looked very beautiful. I understood now why she always behaved with such imperiousness; she had Anthony Bannister as a lover, and she had assumed his power along with his bed. She looked with disgust at the mess I'd made. "Are you telling us that you plan to withdraw from your contract, Mister Sandman?"

  "I shall talk to my lawyer about it on Monday."

  "Do that. And once you've wasted his time and your money I shall still expect to see you at mid-day on Tuesday." Her scorn was biting and her voice like a whip. "Get out, Fanny," she snapped at Mulder, who fled.

  "I need Fanny, Nick," Bannister offered the feeble explanation. "If I'm going to win the St Pierre, I shall need him."

  "Do you plan to vandalize anything else in the room?" Angela did not believe in explanation, only attack. "Or did I understand you to say that you were in a hurry, Mister Sandman?"

  She made me feel clumsy and boorish. "I'm in a hurry."

  "Then don't let us detain you." She stepped back from the door to let me pass. "If you're not at the marina on Tuesday, I shall consider you in breach of contract. Your lawyer will doubtless inform you of our remedy. Good day, Mr Sandman."

  I went down the front steps into the sunlight, and I was suddenly jealous of Anthony Bannister. Angela might be a bitch incarnate, she was probably a liar, she was certainly a cheat, but I was the one who was jealous. Damn the glands, I thought, but I was jealous.

  I delivered the children safely back to their Swedish nanny at teatime. Melissa, hearing our voices in the kitchen, graciously accorded me an audience. She let me pour her a martini and myself a whiskey, then she grimaced at my clothes. "I do hope the children don't resent being seen with you. Don't passers-by think they've been kidnapped?" Melissa has a voice like a diamond gouging slate. I never liked that voice, but it hadn't stopped me marrying her.

  "I don't want to spend money on clothes," I said. "Not that I've got any money for clothes."

  "I do hope you're not going to be frightfully boring and tell me you have money problems?"

  "My money problems are no longer your concern."

  "They are very much my concern, darling," she said. "School fees. Or had you forgotten?"

  "School fees." I imitated her perfect enunciation.

  "You can't expect Mands and Pip to slum it in a state school. Be reasonable, Nick." I flinched from Melissa's nicknames for our children. Amanda was the eldest, six now, while Piers was four. I'd been in Belfast when Amanda was born and in Germany when Piers arrived; two postings that explained why I had been given no say in the choice of names. Melissa picked up an emery stick and lightly buffed the tip of a fingernail. "Or do you want them to become communist perverts, Nick? That's all they teach children in London schools these days."

  "I'm already paying their school fees," I said. "There's a standing order at the bank."

  "But in a few years, Nick, Mands will want to be at a decent boarding school and Piers will go to the Dragon. Then Eton, of course, and you can't expect Hon-John to pay. They're not his children."

  "But the Honourable John's filthy rich," I said as though it was a most reasonable objection.

  Melissa sighed. "And Mumsy and Dadsy won't pay." Melissa's parents were always called that, Mumsy and Dadsy. I imagined how very relieved Mumsy and Dadsy were that Melissa had rid herself of the jailbird's son and married the Honourable John instead. Melissa was a most beautiful rat who had abandoned the sinking ship with immaculate timing. She was also, though it pleased her to disguise it, a most clever rat. Cleverer than I was. "Or Dadsy won't pay unless you're dead," she said now.

  I put two fingers to my head. "Bang."

  "So if you're spending all your money on that silly boat, Nick, you won't have th
e funds for the school fees, will you? And then I shall have to sue you again, which will be awfully boring."

  "Jesus wept." I walked to the window. "You've got my bloody Army pension that I've hocked for their bloody school fees. You've got the Goddamned tin handshake which paid for their bedrooms in this palace. What more would you like? A pint of my blood? Or would you like to fry one of my kidneys for their breakfast?"

  "I see that being out of hospital hasn't helped your temper." Melissa frowned at her fingernail, then decided it came close enough to perfection. She smiled at me, evidently satisfied with victory in the opening skirmish and now prepared to offer a truce. "I saw you on the moving wallpaper device last night. I think it'll be jolly nice to see a proper film about you. Do you think they'll want to interview me?"

  "Why don't you ask your friend Tony. Your very close friend, Tony."

  Melissa looked at me dangerously. She is a most beautiful woman, and I, with the foolishness of lust, had married her only for those looks. She married me for my father's wealth, and once that had gone Melissa went straight to the divorce courts. By that time I was on a hospital ship. "Do I hear jealousy?" She asked me sweetly.

  "Yes."

  She smiled, liking that answer. "I know Tony quite well." Her voice swooped judiciously on the word "quite", investing it with special meaning. "He's a bit rough trade, don't you think? But of course he married frightfully well."

  "Rough trade? He seems bloody smooth to me."

  "I mean that he's not top drawer, Nick. But then, nor are you. And of course he's another sailor, isn't he? Do you think I have a weakness for sailors?"

  "All I know," I said bitterly, "is that your friend Tony has a weakness for a bloody Boer brute."

  "That's hardly surprising, is it? If you had that ghastly man threatening you, you'd have a Boer bodyguard too."

  I stared in astonishment at her. I'd spoken in resentment of the trick Angela had played with the contracts, but my words had achieved the effect of tossing a grenade into an apparently empty foxhole and being rewarded with a body. The foxhole, in this case, was Melissa's prodigious memory for gossip. "Who's threatening him?" I asked.

  The long lashes went up and the big blue eyes looked suspiciously at me. Gossip, for Melissa, was a precious coin that should not be squandered. Her first remark about someone threatening Bannister had been made on the casual assumption that I shared the knowledge, but now, upon discovering my ignorance, she was wondering what advantage there might be in revealing more.

  "Who?" I insisted.

  She put the emery board down and evidently decided there was no advantage in revealing her knowledge. "Did you have a lovely time with the children?"

  "We went to Holland Park."

  "How very thrilling for you all, but I hope you didn't fill them up with grease-burgers, Nick?"

  "I gave them fish and chips. Piers had three helpings."

  "I think that's very irresponsible of you."

  "What am I supposed to do? Feed them avocado mousse? Fish and chips is all I can afford." I scowled out of the window at the mirror image of Melissa's house across the street. The London home of the Honourable John and Mrs Makyns is one of those tall and beautiful stucco houses. The Honourable John complained that Kensington was far too far from the House of Commons, but I sensed how much Melissa loved this expensive home. Now, in spring, her road was thick with cherry blossom, in summer the stucco would reflect brightly white, while in winter the windows would reveal the soft gleam of wealth inside high-corniced living-rooms. "And talking of money," I said, "when are you going to pay me the rent you've been taking for my wharf?"

  The faintest note of alarm entered Melissa's voice. "Don't be ridiculous, Nick."

  I turned on her. "You rented my bloody wharf when you had no right to do it, no justification for doing it, and no need to do it."

  "I might have known that if I invited you up for a chat you'd become tiresome." Melissa opened her hands like a cat stretching its claws. She inspected her nails critically. "Actually, Nick, I had to rent the wharf."

  "Why? Did the Hon-John misplace one of his millions?" The Honourable John had oiled himself on to the board of a merchant bank and had somehow persuaded the selection committee of a safe Shire seat to make him their candidate. The Honourable John, in short, was sitting pretty, was already tipped as a future minister, and, so long as he wasn't caught dancing down Whitehall with a prostitute in either arm, he would inexorably rise to become Secretary of State for Pomposity, then a lord, and finally a Much-Respected Corpse. Whatever the Hon-John was, he wasn't rough trade.

  "They're not Hon-John's children, Nick," Melissa said.

  "Mands and Pip need ponies, and I really can't use Hon-John's private account for your children's necessities."

  "Why didn't you just ask me for some cash?"

  "You had some?" The interest was immediate.

  "I could have pawned the gong." I protected my flank. I had a small amount of cash, but only enough to provision a repaired Sycorax and I did not want Melissa to fritter it away on a week's supply of lip-gloss.

  "Do you have the medal?" she asked eagerly.

  "As a matter of fact I do."

  "May I see it, Nick. Please?"

  I gave it to her. She turned the medal in her hands, then held it against her left breast as if judging its suitability as a brooch. "Is it worth a lot?" she asked.

  "Only in scarcity value." I held out my hand.

  She wouldn't give it back. "Pip should have it, Nick."

  "When I'm dead, he can."

  "If you're going to lead a ragamuffin life, then perhaps it will be safer here?"

  "May I have it, please?"

  She closed her hand over it. "Think about it, Nick. In all fairness it ought to go to your son, shouldn't it? I mean, you can always come back here and see it, but it will be much safer if I keep it for you."

  I limped to a side table and lifted a porcelain statuette of a shepherd girl surrounded by three soppy-looking lambs. For all I knew the ornament might have been bought in a reject shop, but it looked valuable. This tactic had worked in Richmond this morning, and a tactic that works should never be abandoned. I hefted the porcelain, aiming its dainty delicacy at one of the big window panes.

  "Nick!" Melissa contritely held the medal out to me and I tenderly restored the statuette to its side table. "I was only asking," she said in a hurt tone.

  "And all I'm asking, Melissa dear"—I put the medal back into my pocket—"is why you rented Lime Wharf to Bannister."

  "You were crippled, weren't you? That frightfully pudgy doctor said you'd never walk again, so it seemed hardly likely that you'd ever need the boat, let alone the smelly wharf. And your boat was nothing but scrap, Nick! It was a wreck! No one was looking after it."

  "Jimmy Nicholls was. Except he was ill."

  "He certainly wasn't doing a very good job," Melissa said tartly. "And frankly, Nick, I thought you could do with the extra money. For the children, of course, and I really think, Nick, that you should thank me. I was only doing what I thought right, and it took quite a lot of my time and a great deal of effort to arrange it."

  The nerve of it was awe-inspiring. I reflected that if the boat's registration papers had not been safe in my lawyer's office Melissa would have sold Sycorax off to get herself a new hat for Royal Ascot. "How much rent is loverboy paying you for the wharf?"

  "Don't be crude, Nicholas."

  I met her gaze and wondered how many times she'd been unfaithful to me during our marriage. "How much?" I asked again.

  The door opened, saving Melissa the need to answer, and the Honourable John came into the room. He looks every inch as expensive as his wife. The Honourable John is tall, thin, very pin-striped, with sleek black hair that lies close to a narrow and handsome head. He checked as he saw me. "Ah. Didn't know you were here, Nick. I hear you're going to be a telly personality?"

  "They want me to encourage the nation to its duty."

  "Splen
did, splendid." He hovered. "And are you recovering well?"

  "Fine most of the time," I said cheerfully, "but every now and then a fuse blows and I go berserk. I killed an investment broker last week. The doctors think the sight of a pin-striped suit makes me unstable."

  "Jolly good, jolly good." The Honourable John was uncomfortable with me, and I don't much blame him. It's probably fitting that a man should be nervous around the ex-husband he cuckolded. "I just came in," he explained to Melissa, "for the Common Market report on broccoli."

  "In the escritoire, darling, with your other thrillers. Nick was being tiresome about his wharf."

  "And quite right, too. I said you didn't have any right to rent it out." The Honourable John shot up in my estimation.

  Melissa glared at her husband. "It was for Mands and Pip," she said.

  "Like auctioning my golf-clubs! I don't suppose there's a child born who's worth a good iron, what?" He dug about in the papers on the desk and found whatever he wanted. "I'm off to see someone. Will I see you for dinner, darling?"

  "No," I said. They ignored me, kissed, and the Honourable John left.

  "Don't take any notice of him," Melissa said. "He's really very fond of Mands and Pip."

  "Does he know about you and Anthony Bannister?" I asked.

  She twisted like a disturbed cat. "Do not be more tiresome than you absolutely need to be, Nicholas."

  I stared into her face. A wedge-shaped face, narrowing from the broad clear brow to the delicate chin. It was, as my father had liked to say, a face where everything was wrong. Her nose was too long, her eyes too wide apart, her mouth was too small, yet altogether, with her pale, pale hair, it was a face that made men turn on the pavements as she went by. It was impossible, watching her now, to imagine that I had once been married to this pale and silky beauty.

  "Who," I said, returning to the earlier question that Melissa had avoided answering, "is threatening Anthony Bannister?"

  My previous question had been about Melissa's relations with Bannister and she smelt blackmail. "My marriage is very happy, Nick. Hon-John and I are both grown up." Melissa said it in a warning tone of voice.