TBB: Chapter Six

[caulkhead]

I had contemplated every alternative before I finally resorted to Sherlock's laptop (I had won the battle for log-on privileges when I pointed out that if we alternated our exposure to that woman's on-line ravings it would halve the chances of one or the other of us being forced to stab our eyes out with a spork. He had not, apparently, come across this phrase before – or had 'deleted it' as he somewhat pretentiously describes his short-term memory problems – and the ensuing research into the homicidal possibilities of plastic disposable cutlery fortunately distracted him for several hours from that blasted violin. It may be a Stradivarius, but to those of us of the feline persuasion it's nonetheless a gratuitous reminder of centuries of intestinal appropriation).

By then dawn had broken and Sherlock and John had not returned. Which, if John had taken a few obvious steps, such as laying in breakfast supplies somewhere a starving cat might reasonably get his paws on them, would not have worried me in the slightest. What is night for but wandering and fights, after all?

VOIP has made this cat's life considerably easier, I have to say. It took little more than a few nudges at keyboard and mouse-pad with my nose before Mycroft's face appeared on the screen before me, against a background of tartan wall-paper whose gloomy greens and blues and virulent stripes of red and yellow were not merely an aesthetic disaster but provoked the most unwelcome memories.

"Can't you tell the Windsors either that wallpaper goes or you do?"

"I fear the line has been used before. Without success. What can I do for you?"

"Could you arrange a visit from your minions? With catfood."

"Catfood?" He raised his eye-brows pointedly. "For you?"

"I am, after all, a cat. There seems to be a tolerable sort of little fishmongers in the neighbourhood. Their lobsters were more than passable. Perhaps a small sea bream? Or turbot? Or something freshwater. I gather tilapia is becoming increasingly available in this country."

"Ah, I see. Catfood. But not, I take it, catfish. I'll see what I can arrange. But, Toby, you know the drill. There's no such thing as a free tench. Information, please. What happened last night?"

I have always valued Mycroft for his listening skills, and, indeed, for his understanding that my cat's eye view of matters offered him the chance of an insight which would – for all the vaunted scope of his surveillance network – otherwise be unavailable to him. Also, he doesn't display (at least not to me; his brother and the good doctor are another matter) that tiresome human trait of determining in advance which matters in a narrative are or are not relevant and making annoying demands to "cut to the main point'.

Accordingly, he bore with only mild eye-rolling my account of our blogger's post-dinner parlour game. In the interests, allegedly, of tapping into the house's "authentic historic vibes" and "aiming to spiritually connect with Manchester's awesome Victorian energy" she'd demanded that everyone in turn read aloud a passage from the library copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles she'd produced from her bag. My suspicions that this was a species of audition were highlighted when she selected John as the first reader.

However, her plans were scuppered by John's discovery that some previous reader had annotated the selected scene with marginalia which John proceeded to read in counterpoint to the main text with a degree of sangfroid I could only consider truly super-beast: "Blood soaked through ceiling of lower room and dripping. From an alleged stab to the heart in bed??? Crime scene appearance could only have been produced had victim been inverted and suspended from ceiling before death caused by single swipe of honed surgical steel blade through all major blood vessels in manner characteristic of kosher/halal slaughterhouses. Also, probable massive intravenous injection of anti-coagulants immediately before death. All so-called eye-witness accounts blatantly contradictory. Most likely perpetrator; a highly influential, semi-crazed, physically powerful man with hostile views on religion. Why didn't the police interview the Marquess of Queensbury???"

Tim immediately struck up a chorus of "Justice for the Sandbourne One" while Nicky – acting, one presumes, on private sources in the Ribchester family archives – entertained us all with an extended digression into the sexual histories of various nineteenth-century members of the Douglas family, which (inter alia) comprehensively answered the question "the Earl of Rosebery and Lord Drumlanrig; did he give him one or not?" Which was not, I suspect, the kind of Victorian energy our blogger had had in mind.

"Tim seems to have considerable acting talent, given the level of strain he must have been under all evening," Mycroft observed contemplatively. "And – except in relation to his one blind spot – an admirably cool nerve."

"You sound as if you'll be sad to lose him," I said. No point in going on to describe the rest of the evening; the attack on the blogger had evidently been made known to him by his other sources.

He smiled. "No-one leaves my team except by mutual agreement. And I've yet to consent. Though he may need to be reassigned to a rather different branch of the Service. One in which ruthlessness, acting ability, charisma, steely nerves and a past that will prove to anyone who cares to enquire that he has been demonstrably compromised will be positive assets."

From somewhere behind his head I heard the sound of a knock on the door. I extended my nose to cut off the connection but his upraised hand forestalled me.

"No. It's only one of my assistants coming to report the results of the most recent twists in the game. You're entitled to listen in. But, ah, do bear in mind - "

"Cattham house rules?" I suggested.

His expression looked pained, but he nodded. He turned his head. "Come in!"

"Sorry, sir," the young man who entered said. "I hadn't realised you were on the – oh! Is that a video of your cat?"

On cue, I raised a paw and batted at the screen, while delivering myself of my most winsome miaow, before rolling over onto my back and wriggling.

"As you'll find, Gareth, if you have anything to do with the creatures, no-one should be presumptive enough to apply a possessive to a cat. Toby's currently in my brother's care. Though I'm far from sure he's grasped the essentials of keeping him properly fed – there are some urgent instructions I'll need you to relay to our Manchester operatives as soon as they've finished the wrap up at the Victoria Baths – I do hope nothing got damaged, there? There's been a lot of lottery money sunk into the restoration and I'd hate to be responsible for setting the work back."

Gareth smiled. "Our operatives tell us they've had more structural damage there from filming a single episode of Life on Mars. No; once they got the text from our inside man saying he'd secured the USB stick and setting up the rendezvous they walked neatly into the arms of our people with barely a shot fired. Though, sir, you may find yourself having a bit of an arm-wrestle for their custody. The Vauxhall boys are very interested in having a quiet word with them."

"So are our friends in Langley. Claimed they needed to have them rendered as a matter of urgency to a suitable third country for 'in-depth discussion and analysis'. After a short phone call, however, I persuaded them to compromise on Stevenage."

"Stevenage." Gareth's goldfish expression reminded me of my currently unbreakfasted state. I uttered a minatory yowl. Mycroft shook his head at me, very slightly, out of his assistant's line of sight.

"MI6 were, as ever, a tougher nut to crack. They held out for Hitchen for quite some time. Still, all agreed as between friends and allies. And the others. Ah, about our inside man -?"

"Nothing heard. I hope he got away clean. It must have taken a hell of a nerve to play a game like that and not risk blowing his cover. I'd like to shake his hand."

"A pleasure I'm afraid will have to be postponed. The Hansforth empire is nothing if not well-connected. For Tim's own safety, the story that they turned him rogue and he's been playing his own hand will have to stand, at least until we have a crack at the sharks above these – minnows. And now, some further instructions –"

His hand on Gareth's shoulder, his voice at the low, confidential level suitable for exchanging Government secrets, they moved out of range of the microphone pickup.

---

As a child she had always adored this moment. The plane, poised at the end of the runway, for one intense moment resting, perfectly still after its long taxiing from the stand; the great engines thundering; the almost unbearable anticipation of the imminent acceleration into the unknown.

After that, when one pushed up the blind, once above the cloud-layer, one would be in paradise.

Or Wonderland. The last eight hours, since receiving Tim's text, had certainly had more than a touch of the rabbit-hole about them.

Tim's text. Not a joke, despite the inevitable spike of suspicion on receiving it. Tim, after all, was said to be the master of the elaborate prank, the multi-layered stunt. So his school and university friends had always told her ("Naked to Edinburgh, in the luggage rack – that would have been boring. No; when the groom woke up he was in the Kyles of Lochalsh. With a penguin on a diamante lead attached to his ankle. And getting rather peckish. Literally.") He'd never tried any on her, not even brought her in on them.

Further evidence (If I needed any) that he regarded her as too young, too fragile, too delicate, too broken to be treated as a person, as a friend, as an equal.

ALL IS KNOWN. FLEE AT ONCE.

Not quite the words he'd used and no chance of checking; that SIM card was in the sanitary bin of a cubicle in the ladies' loos of Lester B. Pearson International Airport and she pitied the spook who tried to retrieve it.

Near enough, though. Close enough for Government work. She suppressed a giggle which had more than a hint of hysteria about it and found she was clutching the arm of the seat. The stewardess, passing through the cabin to check seat-belts, shot her a practised, reassuring smile.

She thinks I'm a nervous flyer. If she only knew. It's grounds that scare me, not heights.

CAR BUSINESS MUCH MORE SERIOUS THAN ORIGINALLY THOUGHT.

Tim would never have used that for a joke, not that horrible moment when she'd realised they couldn't stop, William wouldn't stop; the resounding thud – so much louder than she could possibly have imagined – the sheer nastiness of the broken body in the road.

HANSFORTH FAMILY ABOUT TO THROW YOU TO WOLVES. LEAVE NOW. TELL NO-ONE. TORONTO AIRPORT, BUY NEW SIM FROM MACHINE. CALL NUMBER I'LL TEXT YOU. SHERLOCK HOLMES. MY BOSS'S BROTHER. TRUST HIM.

And that had to be a first, too. She couldn't remember Tim ever considering any man not a blood relative (and not many of those) trustworthy before. Not where she was concerned.

An odd way to introduce him too. (Had Tim expected her not to Google? www.scienceofdeduction.com. Interesting. Unexpected.)

Enough, anyway, to convince her to follow the directions Tim had given her (half-terrified, half-thrilled), crossing the border via Thousand Islands Bridge in a gale of wind, the sleepy border guard amused and indulgent ("Hope he's worth the drive, whoever he is.") when she'd extended her passport in trembling hands, wondering if word had, despite her precautions, run ahead of her.

The plane shuddered, flung itself forward. Her heart twisted within her, joy mingling with terror, the old, old delightful, impossible tightrope walk ("Danger or terminal boredom, which would you choose?" The man with the unexpected, velvet-warm voice had had her at his opening line. Even before he'd added, casually, "I know you weren't driving that night. So why say you were? Not for money, not for sex – you must have known you could have better any night of the week. You usually did. Wanted to be the one in charge, the protective one, for a change? Yes; I can see that. I have an older brother too.")

The headlong pelt down the runway, the twist into the air, the pressure, the relief of pressure, the seat-belt sign beeping off, the conventional servility of the cabin crew (“Give me your passport number and I'll book the e-ticket," he had promised. And delivered. Business-class. Not a joke, emphatically, then.)

"I'd love a cava, thanks." (Bubbles prickling the nostrils; not as daring, not as keen as other pleasures, other desires. Did the man with the black velvet voice understand that, too? She rather thought he might.)

Sleep, briefly. Over the Greenland ice-cap, the broad Atlantic wastes. The young sun of Spain drifted into her, turned her bones to liquid gold in the dawn-light.

Freedom.

If only they had not been alerted to her flight.

Whoever they were.

A cold, harsh day dawned over Europe.

No thugs or marshals with handcuffs met her at the airport in Barcelona. Instead, a text from Sherlock directed her to a boutique hotel near the Gaudi cathedral. Pre-paid, she discovered at the desk.

She tumbled into the Philippe Starck bed, feeling unexpectedly grateful for the kindness of strangers.