The Price of Failure (15 page)

‘How d'you know that already – it's not your territory?'

‘When I asked about MacClearey, I said a snout had heard the name mentioned and I'd wondered if there were anything to it. After finding Morrell, the Shropshire police have been back on to me to see if my snout has picked up anything more.'

‘And?'

‘I said he'd heard nothing more than the name at the time and hasn't seen sight or sound of the two men since.'

‘Have the coppers up north any leads?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You'd better hope not.' He cut the connection.

A couple of minutes later, Malicious Calls reported that the call had been made from Euston Station.

He returned to the kitchen, put the egg on the table, ate. He was, he thought bleakly, beginning to learn how a man could admit to a horror and yet not react to it because he isolated the knowledge in his mind. Presumably, that was how the guards in the concentration camps had been able to remain good family men.

*   *   *

George Lumley believed in conspicuous consumption and because he was a jovial John Bull, generous with his time and money, critical of all foreigners and especially of the Frogs, the great British public loved him. When he'd married Lady Sarah, elder daughter of an earl and a not too distant cousin of the Queen, hundreds had gathered outside the church to watch, wave, and wish the couple joy.

He'd made umpteen millions, or a billion, depending on what paper one read, when he'd successfully forecast a coming bear market and sold sackloads of shares he didn't possess; then as much again when he'd successfully forecast a coming bull market and bought sackloads of shares he didn't want. Awash with money, he'd purchased Ullington Castle and turned it from a romantic ruin into a fairy tale, set within a moat and complete with working drawbridge and portcullis.

The party he gave for his daughter on her eighteenth birthday, graced by younger Royals, was so extravagantly magnificent that even the
Guardian
forbore to estimate its cost and equate that with the feeding of starving hundreds in the Third World. The castle and grounds were open to the public on forty days of the year, all admission fees going to charity, and such had been the publicity surrounding the birthday party that on the cold Thursday at the end of January, when normally only relatively few visitors would have been expected, there were almost as many as in June, when the gardens were at their most beautiful.

Trent, dressed casually but expensively, wandered through the public rooms, apparently studying the magnificent furniture, furnishings, and paintings; in fact, noting the security arrangements. He completed his visit by a stroll round the grass border between the castle walls and the moat. He returned to his car, started the engine and drove out of the car park. Difficult, he thought, as he turned on to an A road; bloody difficult. But that, ironically, could be an advantage because the guards – and there could be no doubt that there would be guards on duty throughout the night – would tend to assume that security was too good for anyone to attempt to break in and would, therefore, have become slack.

A hot hatchback raced up to nuzzle the Porsche's exhaust pipe, then nipped past; it was easy to visualize the sneering smile of the young driver. A fool, he thought, was someone who didn't bother to read the odds. He dropped a gear, accelerated, and was doing just short of the ton when he cut across the bows of the hatchback, forcing the other driver to brake fiercely. The manoeuvre put him in a contented mood. So contented that he decided to raise the jackpot to fifteen million. After all, there'd been at least that much hanging on the walls of the castle.

*   *   *

It was impossible to ascertain without making pointed inquiries or risking a visit whether the drawbridge was raised at night. Since to do so would not only have been a good security move, but also the kind of gesture to be expected from a man as flamboyant in nature as Lumley, Trent decided that all planning would be based on the assumption that it would be up. The moat had to be crossed? A small inflatable could be used. Infrared and heat sensors? Heat could be concealed, movement could be slowed until the sensor failed to record it … Once inside the castle, they had little to fear because they would use as much force as was necessary. And even if they failed to stifle all alarms, by then it would not matter. The county police force had been so deprived of funds that on a normal night there were only a few cars on the roads and the odds were that they'd arrive far too late; even if, by some chance, the nearest patrol car had been in the vicinity and it reached the scene within minutes, it had to approach along the only road and a short burst from an Uzi would take care of it and its occupants.

Fifteen million pounds. Like winning the lottery. Ten for him, five for the rest of them. Ten million introduced one to the in-places of the world and the in-parties; ten million meant constantly renewing oneself in the fountain of feminine youth.

He began to sing
Celeste Aida.
Though no Domingo, he had a warm, pleasing voice. When still in shorts, a friend of his parents had tried to persuade him to join the church choir, which showed how bloody silly people could be.

*   *   *

Carr parked in front of the nursing home, walked up the slight slope and round to the main entrance. As he went in, a nurse, in conventional uniform, looked over the bannisters, halfway up the curving staircase. ‘Evening, Mr Carr.'

Something about her tone alerted him. ‘Has it happened?'

‘You're the father of a seven pound ten ounces boy. Congratulations!'

He raced up the stairs, shouting his thanks as he passed her, along the corridor, and into the room. Gloria, propped up by pillows, looked tired, but as if she had been touched by grace. He kissed her and as she held him, they said things which if written down would have been nonsense, but which for them had complete meaning.

Eventually, he drew up a chair and sat. ‘Where is he?'

‘In the nursery.'

‘Was it bad?'

‘I think I shouted a bit, but I can't really remember.'

‘Has he all the right bits and pieces?'

‘All present and correct.'

‘And you?'

‘I don't feel like walking a marathon, but otherwise I'm fine … Oh, Mike, it's like a miracle. It makes everything that's happened worthwhile.'

*   *   *

They stole two four-wheel-drive vehicles from different parts of London and drove south at speeds which brought them together a quarter of a mile short of the private road to Ullington Castle.

They parked and two of them left to take care of the couple who lived in the gatehouse. That done – with casual brutality – they turned into the private road and carried on down until they turned off, crossed a field, and parked in the cover of trees and rhododendron bushes. They checked their weapons and equipment, pulled ski masks over their faces, adjusted their tight-knit gloves, left one man to guard their flank with an Uzi, cocked and ready, and carried on down to the moat.

Seen from the ground, the sensors on the outside of the castle walls had looked like standard units, which meant a limited range, but Trent never left anything to chance. When two hundred yards short of the water, he gave the order to drop to the ground and crawl. Each man suffered a familiar urge – to hurry things up so that the job was the sooner completed; each knew that to do so could spell disaster – and forced himself to move slowly. When they reached the water's edge, they used a small bottle of compressed air to inflate their craft.

The wind was light, but even so they dared paddle only so slowly that twice it drove them back before they finally made the far bank. It took them a full twenty minutes to reach the castle wall, hampered by the warmth-retaining capes with which they'd covered themselves.

In the pursuit of visual authenticity, the restoration of the walls had been carried out so that their surface was rough and this gave Nick an easy climb up to the small window, that like all the others nearby was in darkness, but the climb had to be made so slowly that by the time he reached the window, it seemed that every muscle in his body was jumping. He secured himself with a suction safety belt, waited for some of the physical strain to ease, peeled off masking paper from an adhesive pad and pressed the pad against the glass; he used a glass cutter of his own design to draw a rough shape around the pad, then used the padded butt of the cutter to tap the glass until the rectangle broke free. He withdrew the pad, with glass attached, and dropped it into the pouch at his waist.

He took off the right-hand glove, oiled his finger tips so that any print would be hopelessly smeared, reached inside and felt the interior frame of the window. The surface of the wood was smooth and free of any external device; then the alarm trigger was sunk into the plasterwork. Triggers had to be connected to an electrical supply. He checked the surrounding plasterwork and felt a slight irregularity of surface that had length and constant direction. He used a small stone chisel to work unseeing, with the restrained skill of a diamond cutter, to expose the wires. When done, he eased them away from the wall and used a sound-emitting compass – since he could still not see what he was doing – to determine that two of the wires were alive. With the help of cutters, he cross-contacted the live two, cut the remaining two. Both open-circuit and closed-contact alarm systems were now neutralized.

He switched on a torch whose bowl had been masked with tape until it gave little more than a pinprick of light and shone it into the room. Trent had been right. Behind the small window lay the smallest room. He ran the light along the tops of the walls and across the ceiling and saw no alarm point. That made sense – one wouldn't want the alarm's sounding every time someone needed to relieve himself during the night. He opened the window, which swung inwards, and slithered through the small opening into the lavatory. He unwound from about his waist the coil of thin rope, with figure-of-eight knots at regular intervals, secured one end about the base of the lavatory pan, dropped the other through the window, signalled with the torch. That done, he sat on the lavatory and waited, cockily certain that even with the aid of the rope it would take the other two some time to join him; few possessed his monkey-like climbing skills.

They went out of the lavatory into the corridor, knowing that there must be parts of the interior of the castle where the alarms would be active at night, but not bothering to try to identify which ones because it wasn't necessary. If an interior alarm went off when no exterior one had, it was human nature to believe that there could not be an intruder and the system must be at fault, so any response would be delayed and half-hearted. A sleepy, bored, unarmed guard could pose no real threat.

They checked two bedrooms, containing beautiful furniture but no occupant, and were back in the corridor when there were sounds from below. They ranged themselves along the wall, Trent nearest to the huge landing, on which two suits of full armour stood guard. A Dobermann turned into the corridor, head held high as it scented. It opened its mouth to bark. Trent used an aerosol to spray its face. It collapsed to the ground, whimpering, scrabbling desperately at its eyes with its front paws. The guard hurried forward, too concerned for his dog to pause to work out what had happened. A lead-filled cosh on the back of his head knocked him unconscious and fractured his skull.

They resumed their search for occupied bedrooms. All in that corridor proved to be empty, so they retraced their steps and crossed the landing to a second one.

Lumley and Lady Sarah slept in a four poster that was large enough to leave them looking rather lost. Being the kind of man he was, Lumley tried to scramble out of bed to defend his wife; a blow to the face broke his nose, a knee to his crutch doubled him up, and a kick that was aimed at his jaw but landed on the side of his neck left him helpless. Lady Sarah had time to utter one scream before she was gagged and bound. Turner had a quick fondle of her generous breasts before he followed the others out.

Angelique's room, though considerably smaller than her parents', was huge by any normal standards. Unlike the other bedrooms, it was not filled with beautiful antiques, but with fun pieces and posters, many of which were in doubtful taste; possessions littered the floor. She lay curled up under a single duvet, all that was necessary because of the central heating, and the head of a dachshund was on the pillow next to hers. The dachshund, dim even by the standards of the breed, took time to become alarmed. Before it could bark, it was slammed against the wall so hard that it died instantly. Angelique was a sound sleeper and only woke up completely when the duvet and sheet were ripped back. She was a modern girl and liked short nightdresses, less matching pants; hers had ridden up during sleep, leaving her without any modesty. Instinctively, instead of trying to run, she went to pull down the nightdress.

They taped her mouth and tied her hands and feet and then Turner was left to carry her over his shoulders while the others went on ahead, took out any other guards, and lowered the drawbridge. It was a job Turner greatly enjoyed.

22

As was usual, the police had wanted to contain the news of the kidnapping to enable them to set up aggressive defences, but that proved to be a hopeless ambition; even before they had spoken to Lumley in hospital, one of the Filipino servants, who'd lived long enough in England to sense the degree of loyalty held to be due to an employer, had contacted a national newspaper and been promised a four-figure sum if the truth of what he claimed was verified.

The detective chief superintendent gave his first press conference at three in the afternoon. He was never at ease with the media and he pointed out in aggressive terms that there was as yet no evidence to link this kidnapping with that of Victoria Arkwright and therefore the media must, for the sake of the victim, not try to draw any such conclusion. Moreover, the story must be treated with the greatest possible restraint.