From the wheelchair there came a sound that might have been laughter. ‘Bullshit,’ said
Skullion, ‘bullshit. Where’ve you been the past weeks? Visiting someone sick in Wales? My
eye and Betty Martin. Been going round asking the OPs, the important ones, who’s to be
the new Master. And don’t tell me you haven’t because I know.’
‘How do you…’ the Dean stopped himself but it was too late. The hair on the back of his
neck was tingling. Skullion’s knowledge was terrifying and somehow the Dean knew there
was worse to come.
‘How I know is my business,’ Skullion went on. He didn’t sound in the least drunk now. He
was frighteningly sober. And what I know is my business and what you’d better know is you
aren’t sending me to Porterhouse Park not never.’ He paused and let the statement sink in.
‘Know why?’
The Dean didn’t and he didn’t want to know. But there was no stopping Skullion now. He was
the Master of Porterhouse and for the first time the Dean knew it. He was the lesser man.
‘Because I’ve got you by the short and curlies,’ Skullion said. ‘Know what that means?’
The Dean thought he did but he said nothing.
‘By the balls,’ said Skullion. ‘By the bloody balls and you want to know how and why?’
‘Skullion, you’ve said enough…’ the Dean began but Skullion’s voice merely rose.
‘Don’t you Skullion me,’ he said. ‘It’s Master from now on.’
The Dean gasped. Something had happened to Skullion but he had no idea what it was.
‘You ask yourself this question,’ Skullion said. ‘You ask yourself this question. Who
put up six million quid to send the new Fellow here, the one they call Oswald or something?
Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow. Who did that?’
The Dean seized what he supposed briefly was his opportunity. ‘That is exactly what I
was coming to talk to you about, Master.’
‘Well, you came too late, you did,’ Skullion continued. ‘That bloody Lady Mary sent him.
And why? I’ll tell you why. Because she still wants to know who murdered her husband and
this fellow’s here to nose about.’
He paused. The Dean was stunned. Skullion seemed to know everything. Didn’t seem to. Did
know. It was a long pause full of horror.
‘And I can tell him,’ said Skullion. ‘And if you try to sweep me under the carpet to
Porterhouse Park I will tell him. Want to know why?’
‘No, Skullion, no,’ the Dean pleaded.
But Skullion was ready with the coup de grâce. ‘Because I did. I murdered the bastard.
So put that in your fucking pipe and smoke it.’
And before the Dean could say another word the Master had pressed the button on his
wheelchair and was moving implacably towards the Master’s Lodge, leaving a trail of
empty beer bottles behind him on the lawn.
In the maze Purefoy Osbert had forgotten how cold he was. What he had just heard had
stunned him almost as much as it had stunned the Dean, who still stood rooted to the spot.
Through the thicket of the yew Purefoy could see part of him outlined against the lights of
the Lodge and he still didn’t move. In a long lifetime of College intrigue and bitter
contest the Dean had never before been outmanoeuvred so completely. Outmanoeuvred
was the wrong term. Skullion hadn’t been manoeuvring: he had been fighting a battle tooth
and claw. And brain. And the Dean had been crushed. Against the power of Skullion’s verbal
onslaught he had been destroyed, and made to eat humble pie in a way that had never
happened to him before. And all this by a man in a wheelchair who was largely paralysed and
who had drunk numerous bottles of strong ale and was a mere college servant. The Dean had
always thought of him as that. He knew better now. Skullion had spoken no more than the
truth. He was indeed the Master of Porterhouse. It was five minutes before the Dean could
recover sufficiently to stumble away across the lawn. As he went, he stepped into a damp
spot where Skullion had been but he didn’t notice. What thoughts he had left, and they were
bitter ones, were concentrated on other things.
To Purefoy Osbert the Dean’s going came as something of a relief. Only something,
because he was freezing cold and so stiff that he had trouble getting to his feet and, when
he tried to walk, he staggered. The maze was no place for staggering. It was pitch dark and,
while Purefoy could vaguely see the night sky and the lights of Cambridge reflected in the
clouds that had gathered, he could see nothing else. He had had enough difficulty getting
through the maze to the corner where Skullion sat. Finding his way out proved impossible.
Time and time again he thought he was about to succeed because he could see the lights of
windows through the peripheral yews, only to find he was back in the corner he had set
out from an hour before. Somewhere nearby the clock on the Bull Tower struck midnight.
Purefoy tried for the umpteenth time to remember the route he had followed to get in. It
had entailed going almost to the very centre of the maze and then turning to the left and
then the right and then after some yards going left again or was it right? Not that it
mattered. He had no idea where to start or in which direction to go. Thought failed him
entirely. With hands outstretched he crept along banging into the yew thicket up dead
ends and having to turn round and try to find some other turning. The clock struck one, and
then two, and Purefoy had to sit down and shiver for a while until the cold night air and
fear of pneumonia forced him to his feet and another hour of stumbling in the darkness.
It was well after three when he finally found his way to the very heart of the maze. At
least that was where he thought he was. There was no way of telling. He was up another
cul-de-sac of yew. Many times he had thought of trying to fight his way through the hedge
itself to get out, but the yew was old and had been planted in staggered rows of three
around the edge so that it was impossible to squeeze between the thick thrunks.
He even tried climbing, but he had never been anything of an athlete and the cold had
sapped what strength he had in his arms. In any case there were no proper branches to grasp.
He was in a thicket of yew. He was also in a thicket of fear. He had sat within a few yards
of a murderer and heard his confession, if that was what Skullion’s revelation had been.
It hadn’t sounded like a confession to Purefoy Osbert. It had been far too threatening
to be called that. And the man had shown no remorse. ‘Because I did,’ he had said almost
with pride and certainly with terrible menace. ‘I murdered the bastard. So put that in
your pipe and smoke it.’ To Purefoy Osbert, whose whole career had been spent finding
reasons for crime, and in particular for murder, that shifted the onus of guilt from the
criminal onto the police and the judiciary and the law and the prison system, those
words had come as a frightening refutation of everything he believed in. The sheer
brutality and cold-blooded nature of the words had chilled him almost as much as the
night air. They had done more. They had gone to the very centre of his being and unlike the
cold of the night their cold would never leave him. He was trapped in a maze of knowing that
was at the same time unknowing. His theory about Sir Godber’s death had been almost
entirely logically right he had been wrong about the Dean’s complicity, but that was all.
And he knew, as certainly as he knew he would never get out of the yew maze until dawn
brought some light, that he would never be able to prove it. The murderer in the wheelchair
was harder than anyone he had ever encountered. He was adamantine. Nothing and no one
had it in their power to break his will. Purefoy Osbert had heard that hardness in
Skullion’s voice and he hadn’t required his intellect to tell him the strength of will that
was in the mind of the man in the bowler hat. His understanding of it was more primitive
than rational thought. It was like hearing death speak.
Now cold and hungry and lost, he was filled with terror too. Everything he had ever
heard about Porterhouse had been an underestimation of its awfulness. As dawn began to
break and the yew sides of the maze slowly changed from black walls to reveal their dark
green leaves, Purefoy Osbert fought down his panic and made his last attempt to find the
way out. He listened to the clock on the Bull Tower and tried to position it in his mind.
The entrance had been on that side of the maze and he set out towards it. Even so the clock
had struck five before he stumbled utterly exhausted onto the lawn and made his way to
his rooms and collapsed on the bed. He was no longer capable of thinking. Pure instinct
told him he had to get out of Porterhouse before the place destroyed him. Even, perhaps, in
the way it had destroyed Sir Godber Evans.
Had Edgar Hartang had his dearest wish fulfilled he would have had Kudzuvine murdered.
He might have included Schnabel, Feuchtwangler and Bolsover in the massacre for
allowing Ross Skundler to get out of the building. Then again, he didn’t find their advice
to his liking. But he depended on them. They knew top much and Schnabel was laying it on
the line.
‘It seems they’ve got a sworn statement out of Karl Kudzuvine that doesn’t leave much room
for manoeuvre,’ Schnabel told him.
‘Like what? And who’s to believe the bastard?’
‘Like everything. And as to who’s to believe him, I’d say just about everyone.’
‘What he’s got is say-so. Circumstantial,’ said Hartang.
Schnabel shrugged. ‘He’s got corroboration from Skundler. From what we’ve seen from the
Porterhouse lawyers, Kudzuvine had the schedule of various consignments and Skundler
confirms them with payments.’
Behind the blue glasses Hartang’s eyes had narrowed. ‘You took a statement from
Skundler? You did that?’
‘No, no need. He’s seen this coming and bought himself some insurance. Like copies of
financial movements and transactions locked in a bank deposit. All we’ve seen are the
copies.’
Hartang wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Comes of helping people,’ he said. ‘The
bastards. The bastards. So what do we do?’
‘Depends,’ said Schnabel. ‘They aren’t pressing criminal charges and they could. That’s
a hopeful sign. I mean you don’t want to be standing trial at the Old Bailey or having the
DEA investigating Stateside. At least I don’t think you do.’
Hartang didn’t.
‘So they’re dealing off the top of the deck,’ Schnabel went on. ‘They’re not interested
in your business dealings, they’re only after compensation for the damage done.’
‘How much?’
‘Forty million.’
‘Forty million?’ squawked Hartang. ‘Forty million is only? Where’d they get that figure
from? Last time I heard, it was twenty.’
‘Could be Kudzuvine,’ said Schnabel. ‘What he’s given them. Could be he wants his cut. I
don’t know. I’m just reporting what their lawyers are saying.’
‘Fucking blackmail,’ shouted Hartang and knew he had been screwed. To make matters
worse, Dos Passos was in London and still out for his blood over the loss of the
consignment of Bogota Best. Now Schnabel was telling him he had better settle the
Porterhouse claim out of court or face the unpleasant alternative of standing in the
dock in the Old Bailey or even of being deported to the United States and standing trial
under RICO.
‘And I don’t mean Puerto Rico,’ Schnabel said. ‘I heard a rumour that the FBI are
interested. And the source is good.’
‘How good?’
‘Like Lord Tankerell,’ Schnabel said. ‘You’ve heard of him, Mr Hartang. Just happens to
have been the Attorney General some years back.’
‘Him? You call an ex-Attorney fucking General over here a good source? Those shysters
can’t barely spell their names they’re so dumb.’
‘Sure Don’t have to spell what Karl K. and Ross Skundler signed their sworn names to,’ said
Schnabel. ‘Just read it out and you’ll go down twelve to twenty. Stateside more like
ninety-nine and some. They’ve got a containment unit for RICOs, place called Marian.
Real safe down there. No one gets you till the morticians are sent for.’
There was a long silence while Edgar Hartang digested this information and felt sick.
‘What’s with this Rico?’ he asked.
‘Racketeering and Incitement to Corruption Act. But you know that, Mr Hartang. Like
tiny mesh for big fishes and you don’t ever come out.’
Hartang said nothing. He was thinking of a way out.
‘Another thing I have to advise. I wouldn’t be thinking of taking a powder.’
‘Powder? What the fuck you talking about, powder?’
‘Like trying to leave the country. There’s too much known about another sort of powder.
Like the talcum you flew in from Venezuela June fifteenth 1987. Or the load shipped out of
Ecuador to Miami November eleven ‘89. Like it’s all here and no loopholes. So if you are
thinking of Learing it some place, don’t. Ross Skundler saw that situation coming and he
bought himself some more life insurance. Like a miniature video in your bathroom so he
knows who he’s working for. Bald guy without glasses, uncircumcised, got a mole on his
right shoulder, appendix scar, gives himself a hand job with pictures of little boys. You
know anyone like that, Mr Hartang? Because if you do, you’d better pay your forty million
and be thankful.’
‘Forty million? Jesus.’ He paused and looked venomously at the lawyer. ‘Schnabel, just
who are you working for? Me or fucking them?’
Schnabel sighed. It was always like this with mobsters. Consequences had to be spelt
out for them when they were in deep shit. ‘Mr Hartang,’ he said patiently, ‘I am working
for myself and you have hired me to lay it on the line so you can make a rational choice. If
you want me to feed you a weather report says it’s going to be sunshine all day and every
day for ever and ever and only rain nights, that’s fine with me only I lose a valuable
client whose doing all the time he’s got left and I don’t earn my regular fees when he’s in
trouble again. That is how it is. I just want you to make a rational decision is all. I’ve
given you the information. You make a choice. I cannot do it for you.’
‘You have,’ said Hartang bitterly. ‘Like forty fucking million and you call that a
rational choice?’
‘Matter of fact, no. I call it a necessity. Like of life.’
‘Shit,’ said Hartang, with his usual economy.
‘And just one more thing, Mr Hartang,’ said Schnabel. ‘A minor matter but it’s down in
black and white. You ever been in Damascus, Syria? Khartoum, Sudan? That neck of the
woods?’
A grunt from Hartang signified that he could have been.
‘Ever had drinks with a guy called Carlos?’
‘Of course I’ve had drinks with hundreds of guys called Carlos. I do business with South
America. You think I can avoid having drinks with Carloses?’
‘Just enquiring, Mr Hartang. Abu Nidal mean anything to you? Like you bank-rolled one
or two of their operations for insurance in the Arab world? You got friends in mighty
strange places but I don’t think they’ll help you in this situation.’
‘So what exactly are you trying to tell me, Schnabel? Tell it like it is.’
‘Like it is is this,’ said Schnabel. ‘You pay the forty million plus all costs, you buy
yourself immunity in London. Money comes in and no one asks why. Bank of England is
happy you’re such a big investor in Britain. Chancellor of the Exchequer is in love with
you because you pay some taxes and everyone loves you because you’re respectable and have
helped a Cambridge college out. Even Bolsover loves you, and that’s difficult with what
you’ve called him. You pay our fees and we all love you. Right?’ He paused for a moment and
then went on. ‘But you take the talcum route and nobody is going to love you. British
Government, the United States Attorney General and the FBI and of course the DEA, the
Drug Enforcement Agency, but you knew that, didn’t you, Mr Hartang? You’ve made enemies,
and with friends like Carlos and Abu Nidal you could be in worse places than Marian,
Illinois. There’s some story going the rounds the Israelis have the idea you’ve been
buying insurance with some bad guys, and a bomb explodes in Tel Aviv. With the video Ross
Skundler took you can have all the plastic surgery in the world, and that includes a
sex-change operation, and they’re still going to get you. Mossad, Mr Hartang, Mossad.’
The sweat was pouring down Hartang’s face now. He took another pill and Schnabel went
on. ‘Just a rumour of course and maybe there’s no truth in it but if there is, I’d say you’re
in deeper shit than you know. I don’t say it is but rumour has it that way. And if you don’t
believe me, you take a look out the window at the two cars out there, because one thing is
as certain as death itself, those guys aren’t Transworld groupies, you better believe
me.’
By the time he left the building Schnabel felt good. ‘He’s paying,’ he told
Feuchtwangler and Bolsover when he got back to the office. ‘Through the nose. Those two cars
and the private heavies in them were a good idea of yours, Bolsover. I have to hand it to
you. Put them down to the bastard’s expenses.’
‘What’s all this about Skundler’s video?’ asked Feuchtwangler. ‘First I heard of it.’
But Schnabel only smiled enigmatically and was thoughtful. ‘Let’s go some place for
coffee,’ he said. ‘I think our own position needs considering.’
Feuchtwangler and Bolsover nodded. The same thought had crossed their minds. They went
out into the street and took a taxi.
‘The point we’ve got to bear in mind is that we are dealing with a man who’s lost all sense
of reality,’ said Schnabel.
‘Genius tends to,’ said Feuchtwangler. ‘And financially, that’s what he is. He’s got
more money than sense and he’s lost what little sense he ever possessed. He has become a
no-hoper and a loner.’
‘Precisely my point. And the investigation of his affairs isn’t going to stop with
him. He’s involving us. All right, we merely represent him legally but the shit about to
hit the fan is likely to cover us too. I think we are going to have to start our own
negotiations with certain influential authorities ourselves.’
‘He’ll kill us if he finds out,’ said Bolsover.
Schnabel shook his head. ‘He isn’t going to find out, and he’s going to be too scared to
think at all clearly.’
‘In short we are going to trade. I take it that is your proposition,’ said
Feuchtwangler.
‘We are going to cover ourselves and, if my conversations with Lord Tankerell are
anything to go by, and I think they are, the situation can be contained without too much
trouble. Which is what I told Hartang just now.’
‘You old fox, you’ve started negotiations already,’ Bolsover said.
But Schnabel only smiled enigmatically again.
There was hardly a flicker of a smile on the Praelector’s face when Mr Retter and Mr
Wyve brought him the news. ‘Forty million pounds? Are you absolutely sure? It’s quite
extraordinary. Transworld Television must be coining it.’
‘I think you could almost literally put it like that,’ said Mr Wyve, ‘and Edgar Hartang
is, without any qualifications, filthy rich.’
‘And to think that it all comes from television programmes about whales and dolphins,’
said the Praelector. ‘I saw the most interesting programme the other day about bears in
Alaska. They wade out into rivers and catch leaping salmon. One would not think a bear had
so much quickness of eye and hand. Or should I say paw? Most remarkable. But then so many
wonders of nature depend on something approaching brilliance in the most unexpected
places. I once read Darwin, and while I found it hard going, I think I learnt what he meant
by the survival of the species.’
‘That,’ said Mr Retter as they walked solemnly but with joy in their hearts across the
Fellows’ Garden, ‘that is a quite remarkable old gentleman. I use the word in its best
sense. Did you notice how tactfully he had forgotten everything that madman Kudzuvine
had said onto the tape recorder. And he read both affidavits most carefully too and yet he
has put all the filth out of his mind. It has been a privilege to have worked with him.’
Mr Wyve agreed most heartily. He had been impressed by the story about the bears
catching salmon in the swiftest-flowing rivers. The unspoken comparison had been a nice
one. ‘I don’t think the Praelector and his ilk could possibly come into the category of
a species that needs protecting,’ he said. ‘As you so rightly say, it has been a privilege
to watch an old educated mind at work.’
‘Until these last few days I would have questioned your use of the word “educated”. Now
I don’t,’ Mr Retter agreed.
The Praelector was worried. It was of course nice to know that the College had been
rescued from bankruptcy but there were still problems ahead. The Bursar was in Fulbourn
Mental Hospital, and the Praelector felt strangely sorry for him. After all the Bursar
had inadvertently been responsible for the forty million pounds and, while the
Praelector couldn’t be said to like the man, the Bursar had done his best to keep
Porterhouse solvent and would keep it so now that it had adequate funds.
In the afternoon the Praelector sent for a taxi and had himself driven out to the
hospital to see the Bursar.
‘He has recovered from the effects of whatever drug he had taken but all the same I
have my doubts about discharging him quite so soon,’ the psychiatric doctor in charge of
detoxification told him. ‘He is still extremely anxious and suffers quite severe
episodes of depression. He seems to have an obsession about the oddest menagerie of
animals.’
‘Let me guess what they are,’ the Praelector said. ‘Pigs, turtles, baby octopuses,
sharks, and possibly piranhas. Am I by any chance right?’
The doctor looked at him in astonishment. ‘How on earth did you know?’ he asked.
But the Praelector’s discretion prevented him from telling. As Bursar I am afraid he
has been under the most fearful strain about our finances. Porterhouse, as you must surely
know, is not a rich college and the poor chap felt responsible for our problems. But all
that is past and thanks to his magnificent efforts we are quite solvent again.’
‘But why are his obsessions centred on pigs and turtles and’
‘Simple,’ said the Praelector. At our annual Founder’s Feast we do tend to do
ourselves very well and sometimes a little too exotically. I don’t know if you realize
the cost of genuine turtles these days. And sharks are by no means cheap and of course we
always have a wild boar. It was all too much for the Bursar.’
‘I’m not in the least surprised,’ said the doctor. ‘I cannot think of a more
breathtakingly indigestible menu. And you really have piranhas too?’
‘Only as a savoury at the end of the meal. Served on toast with a slice of lemon they make
a very fine digestive. If you’d feel like accepting an invitation one of these
days…’