Clubbed to Death (13 page)

What riled Amiss more than the rottenness of the food were the cries of appreciation from Alf and Bert at the fact that strawberry jam had been provided. They believed its flavour to be much superior to the raspberry which they were given frequently, although as Bert remarked sapiently, it would be wrong to grumble. The duo were clearly foodies – either could be a poor man’s Mauleverer. They moved from analysing breakfast to an anticipatory conversation about lunch. Alf opined that it would probably be a choice between fish cakes and cheese pie. Bert had a feeling in his bones that beefburgers might feature. Would it be peas or beans? Alf hoped for beans, Bert, for once dissenting, favoured peas.

‘Now that was a nice cup of tea,’ confided Alf. ‘I like a nice cup of tea. What about you, Robert?’

‘Yes,’ said Amiss bleakly.

‘You haven’t drunk yours.’ Squint or no squint he had excellent eyesight, thought Amiss resentfully. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

Amiss thought of mentioning that it had tasted like condensed milk with a tea bag waved at it, but felt that might be a slur on Alf’s taste-buds.

‘I wasn’t thirsty, ’ he said. It sounded lame, but it seemed to do for Alf, who took the conversation in a new direction. He pointed across the room. ‘That’s my friend Bert over there,’ he confided. ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow I call him.’

Amiss wondered how long he could last without murdering this old fool: the ffeatherstonehaugh crew were sparkling wits by comparison. He pushed his mobile tray away from him, mumbled non-committally, lay down and turned on his right side, determined not to be trapped again. The man on the right had been reading while the scintillating cut and thrust of Alf and Bert had dominated the ward: Amiss thought that a good sign. As he looked to be of West Indian extraction, Amiss thought they might have a sensible chat about cricket.

‘What did you think of the Test series, then?’ he asked jovially. ‘Exciting, wasn’t it?’

The man looked at him solemnly. ‘I have put such childish things behind me,’ he intoned, ‘since I discovered the word of the Lord. For the way is the light and we can all be saved if we trust in Jesus.’

‘How interesting,’ said Amiss. He got out of bed and looked in his cabinet for his clothes: it was empty. He marched purposefully down the central aisle of the ward until he found the sister.

‘Excuse me, Sister. Where are my clothes?’

‘Well, if they’re not in your cabinet, they’ve had to be thrown away,’ she said. ‘Anyway, what are you doing up? You’ve got to stay in bed till Doctor comes.’

‘I need to make an urgent telephone call.’

‘You shouldn’t be bothering with that sort of thing now,’ she said. ‘You should be having a rest.’

Amiss kept his temper. ‘I quite understand, but I won’t be able to rest peacefully until I’ve made the call.’

‘Well, there’s a public phone in the recreation room down there on the right – if you must.’

‘I don’t seem to have any money. D’you think I could use the hospital phone? It’s just a local call.’

‘Afraid not. It’s against regulations. Where would we be if every patient did that? You’ll have to reverse charges.’

Thank you,’ he said through gritted teeth as he set off down the corridor.

The recreation room was reminiscent of the dole office. The walls had once been beige; the chairs were like the nasty one beside his bed; the tables were formica. Half a dozen silent men and women sat around smoking: old tins served as ashtrays. Their wickedness was emphasised by several large posters detailing the dangers of both active and passive smoking. Amiss had an almost overwhelming desire to cadge a cigarette in order to demonstrate solidarity, but he repressed it. First he rang directory enquiries and then the operator. A few minutes later he was talking to Pooley.

‘I’ve told you before that you can’t leave without seeing Doctor, ’ said the Sister, arms akimbo as she stood in the middle of the ward.

‘Watch me,’ said Amiss, as at high speed he put on the clothes Pooley had just brought him.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she said to Pooley, ‘aiding and abetting him like this. Completely irresponsible.’ She glared at Amiss. ‘Stop this nonsense, Robert. I’m not going to let you go.’

‘Listen, sunshine,’ said Amiss, ‘I am thirty years old and a citizen of a free country. I am leaving. Thank you for your care and concern. I will take it easy and I will have myself checked by a doctor. Thank you and good day.’ And nodding politely to Alf, Bert and the religious maniac, he stormed out, followed by his embarrassed friend.

‘Thank you for springing me, Ellis.’

‘Well, I’m sure I shouldn’t have, but I was feeling so guilty about you that I would have agreed to do anything you asked.’ Pooley negotiated his car into the line of traffic outside the hospital gates. ‘Have you any firm ideas on what you want to do next, Robert?’

‘Not really. Go back to work. Go home for a few hours. I was just concentrating on getting out.’

‘Right. My proposal is as follows. I drop you off at my flat where you do what you like. Sleep, have a bath. There’s coffee and food. I’ll have my doctor call on you and you can ring Rachel. I spoke to her last night as soon as I knew you were OK, but she’ll need to hear from you. And what about your parents?’

‘They don’t know anything about ffeatherstonehaugh’s. Oh, Christ! My name isn’t going to be in the newspapers is it?’

‘Well, yes and no. I’ve got a complete set of them here for you. But I think you’re probably safe. Jim deliberately gave out your name to the press as John Amiss when I reminded him that that was your second name. They’re not interested in waiters really, especially waiters who haven’t been badly hurt. All guns are trained on the Admiral and the club, so with a bit of luck, you’ll be able to preserve your anonymity.’

‘Hope to God I can. My parents will go crazy if they find I’m tied up in yet another messy murder. They already wonder where they went wrong.’

‘So do mine,’ said Pooley cheerfully. ‘It’s worse for them because they blame themselves for having provided me with the financial means to take a plebeian job.’

For several minutes a companionable silence reigned. Pooley pulled up in front of his apartment building and handed Amiss the keys and the newspapers. ‘I’ll ring you later on. With a bit of luck the three of us should be able to get together tonight.’

‘I would appreciate that.’

‘Oh, by the way, Robert.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m glad you’re alive.’

‘Just make sure I stay that way,’ said Amiss.

14

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Amiss was as insulted as he was relieved at how little space was given in the newspapers to the injury sustained by J. Amiss, waiter: only two of the papers mentioned his name at all and one of them misspelt it. Vice-Admiral Sir Conrad Meredith-Lee, DSO, DSC, KCMG got an enormous spread as a defender of his country, a great patriot and a fine sailor.

Amiss detected a note of crossness in the press that it was impossible to pin this murder definitely on the IRA. What the tabloids were seeking was the opportunity to juxtapose a patriot with a traitor. Instead, they were faced with a statement from a Scotland Yard spokesman that there was no indication that this was terrorist activity, while the IRA had denied all involvement. The hacks had therefore turned their attention to ffeatherstonehaugh’s and the resultant crop of colour articles gave Amiss a great deal of amusement. None of the papers was well informed, unable, it would seem, to find among their staff any ffeatherstonehaugh members. The quality papers had therefore commissioned rather feline pieces from frequenters of the more gossipy clubs. Much emphasis was placed on the raffish past, with roll-calls of distinguished libertines. One source gave a graphic description of an 1850s party in the club where an attempt was made to emulate some of the wickeder deeds of the Hell-Fire Club, black masses and all. These pieces all ended with phrases like ‘a shadow of its former self,’ ‘the sad decline of a great eccentric institution’, ‘no role in the new permissive Britain’ or other euphemisms for ‘let go to pot’.

For the tabloids though, ffeatherstonehaugh’s was a gift, allowing them to devote dozens of column inches to the sexual misdeeds of aristocrats. There were close-up photographs of the Hindu erotic frieze, graphic accounts of the doings of the founder, and even a number of verses from a Rochester poem with the four-letter words blanked out. An unusually educational day for the common reader, reflected Amiss. The most disreputable of all the tabloids had got itself a scoop. ‘LADY JANE BARES ALL IN TOP NOBS’ SEX CLUB’ was the headline of the article that followed the murder report. There were several photographs of a woman in a state of total or semi-undress (obscured where necessary, as this rag liked to refer to itself as a ‘family newspaper’) disporting herself around the club premises. In one she lay spreadeagled on the tiled floor on which Trueman had met his death, with the playful nymphs and shepherds entwining themselves around her. Another showed her on top of a mantelpiece with Lord Byron’s bust tucked cosily between her legs. And rather alarmingly in a third, she lay flat on the balustrade of the gallery with one leg pointing towards a portrait of the Duke of Wellington who, with Lord Palmerston, was one of the few statesmen whose private life had been sufficiently scandalous to qualify him to be a ffeatherstonehaugh hero. She ogled the portrait of Beau Brummell, and intimately massaged the full-length marble statue of George IV. The lady, the readers were informed, was Lady Jane, an upper-class stripper, and these photographs had been printed in a soft porn magazine several years earlier. To Amiss, it was clear from studying the small print that Lady Jane was no earl’s daughter, merely an enterprising working girl. He laid a small bet with himself that Fishbane had been responsible for giving her this photo-opportunity.

Amiss wondered what the average reader would make of the club. Nothing much, he suspected. The tabloids presented two views of the aristocracy. Either they were decadent, champagne-swilling, cocaine-sniffing sex maniacs, or they were stuck-up, toffee-nosed, pompous and out of touch with ordinary people. Quite often individuals were represented as being both, therefore presumably the tabloid reader would regard ffeatherstonehaugh’s as an absolutely typical haunt of nobs – being simultaneously decadent, exclusive and run-down.

He looked at the watch that Pooley had provided. It was an hour since he had left a message for Rachel: surely her meeting was over by now. He was getting desperate to hear her voice. At that moment the front door bell rang and the voice on the intercom declared itself to be Doctor Hawkes. A brisk antipodean, she moved with speed and efficiency, despite being weighed down by the most magnificent chest Amiss could remember ever seeing in real life. He tried to keep his eyes on her face as she examined him thoroughly, declared him fit, warned him to take it easy for a day or two and to drink sparingly because of the risk of delayed shock. It was a relief when she dashed off to her next call. As the door closed behind her the telephone rang and Amiss and Rachel spent several minutes in near-inarticulate exchanges of endearments and expressions of relief.

‘I suppose you’ll go back,’ she said.

‘I can’t leave it half-way. You know that.’

‘You wouldn’t come out here if I sent you the money for the air ticket, would you?’

‘When this is over I might. But don’t worry. Nobody wants to kill me. It was a pure accident.’

‘If they succeed as well as they did when they’re not trying to kill you, what mightn’t they achieve if they decide they do want to? I shall be worried sick until you’re out of that madhouse.’

‘Be reasonable, Rachel. I may be in a murderous place, but I am in a sensible country. It’s the opposite of you really. How d’you think I feel about you spending your days in a country full of sectarian murders, riots, corruption and all the rest of it?’

‘I feel very safe here,’ said Rachel. ‘Everybody tries to rip one off, but not in any violent way. Keeps your brains ticking over. But it’s very safe if you’re an outsider. I love it. I just miss you. D’you think it’s very perverse of us to want to be together and yet keep finding ourselves apart?’

‘You mean, on the theory that there are no accidents?’

‘Yes. Maybe we both have a deep-seated objection to marriage which makes us embrace all obstacles placed in our way. It’s a good Hindu position – passive acceptance of one’s lot.’

‘Perhaps we’ll convert when this is all over. However, we’ll have a caste problem. If I remember Sunil correctly, administrators rank at number two. What are they called?’

‘Kshatriyas
.’

‘I reckon I’m an untouchable.’

‘No, you’re artisan, so
Vaisyan
. That’s not too bad. Only one down from me.’

‘But surely I’m denied simply by being in ffeatherstonehaugh’s.’

‘Mmmm. You have a point. I’d better rethink our relationship.’

‘Now to look on the bright side of ffeatherstonehaugh’s, I’ve a few more lines of Rochester for you:

Poets and women have an equal right

To hate the dull, who dead to all delight

Feel pain alone, and have no joy but spite.’

‘I don’t see the relevance of that to your employers. No one could accuse them of being dead to all delight. Even your friend Fagg enjoys his grub, doesn’t he?’

‘I was thinking more of some of your colleagues.’

‘Ah, now you’re talking. Let me tell you about the fax we got from London yesterday…’

He had great difficulty in getting through to the club. The lines seemed permanently engaged. And when at last he got a ringing tone, it was several minutes before it was answered.

‘What d’you want?’ said Ramsbum’s voice, his normal veneer of deference a thing of the past.

‘Good morning, Mr Ramsbum. This is Robert Amiss. May I speak to the Commander, please?’

‘Well, fuck me, Robert. I thought you was dead. ’Oo’s a lucky lad then? Not like ’is nibs.’