'Shut up and make yourself useful,' he snapped. 'We're going to tie this bastard up so tightly he won't know where the hell he's been.'
'My dear Arnold, you don't really think I'm going to assist you in this horrible scheme.'
The Chief Constable stopped trying to get Timothy's legs into a bin liner and straightened up. 'Listen to me,' he said with a terrible intensity. 'I don't want to hear any more of your "dear Arnold" toffee-nosed crap. And you'd better get this straight. If I go down the social sewer because of this, don't think you're going to stay clean, because you aren't. This time you're going to dirty your hands.'
Lady Vy tried to draw herself up. 'Well, really. Anyone would think I had something to do with his being here.'
'Seems a reasonable assumption. And I'll fill it out for you. You and your Auntie Bea are into S and M. Pick him up some place he looks as if he might come from Harrogate and you fill him with intravenous crack or Sweetie B gives him a spinal tap of Columbian ice with that hypodermic of hers and you drag him here and have some fun. Get the picture?'
Lady Vy was beginning to. 'You'd never dare. You'd never dare do anything...I mean Daddy '
'Try me,' said Sir Arnold. 'Just try me. And your bloody Daddy is going to like his picture in the fucking Sun with a headline EARL'S DAUGHTER IN LESBIAN LOVE TRAP and all about you and the butch-dyke with her heroin habit and
'But Bea's an aromatherapist and stress counsellor. She's '
'Just made for the Sun and the News of the World, she is. And the aroma she's going to be giving off unless you start helping is going to make this dogshit smell like Chanel No. 5. Now then, hold this bloody bag open while I get his legs in.'
But it was obvious that Timothy Bright was too large and intractable for the garbage bag. In the end they dragged the sheets off the bed and rolled him up in them. Sir Arnold picked up the parcel tape and set to work with such thoroughness that the thing they dragged with immense difficulty down to the cellar looked like a mummified body with holes for its nose. Finally they dropped Timothy into the very darkest corner of the cellar beyond the old stone wine racks.
'That ought to keep the bastard quiet for a bit,' said Sir Arnold only to have his hopes dashed as Timothy Bright shifted on the floor and groaned. For a moment the Chief Constable hesitated. Then he handed Lady Vy the torch and turned to the steps.
'Just see he doesn't move,' he said and hurried up to the kitchen. He returned with a plastic basting syringe, a measuring glass, and a bottle of whisky.
'Oh my God, what are you going to do now?'
'Shut up,' said the Chief Constable. 'And hold that torch steady. I don't want to get the measures wrong.'
'What's that syringe thing for?' asked Lady Vy.
'Well, it's not for basting chickens,' said Sir Arnold. 'It's for giving the bastard something to keep him quiet. Like two ounces of Scotch every two hours with a couple of your Valiums and some of those pink pills you take at night. That way the bugger won't know where he is or has been or what time of day it is.'
Lady Vy looked at the bundle on the cellar floor and doubted if the whisky was necessary. The other sedatives certainly weren't. 'Give him those pills and he won't know anything ever again,' she said, 'and I don't think you ought to pump Scotch into him with that thing. He'll almost certainly choke to death.'
'I'm not going to pump it in. Dribble it, more likely. OK?'
But Lady Vy was staring at him. 'You're mad. Absolutely raving. You propose to dribble two ounces of whisky mixed with Valium...Dear God.'
'No,' said the Chief Constable firmly. 'And at this moment in time I don't want to be told. Now then, hold this thing.' He held the plastic syringe up.
'I am not holding anything,' said Lady Vy just as firmly. 'You can do what you like but I am not going to be an accessory to murder.'
'Oh yes you are,' said the Chief Constable with a terrible look on his face. Lady Vy held the syringe.
Five minutes later Timothy Bright had successfully taken his first dose of Valium and whisky. Lady Vy's pink anti-depressants hadn't been added to this lethal brew after all.
"That should guarantee he doesn't wake up for a bit,' said Sir Arnold as they climbed the cellar steps. 'Keep him unconscious until I've had a chance to come up with something.'
He locked the cellar door.
For the rest of the night he tried to sleep on the couch in his study. As he tossed between brief sleep and appalled wakefulness, he searched his memory for a particularly vindictive villain who could have set this trap up. There were just too many criminals with a grudge against him. And how come the press gang hadn't turned up on the doorstep? Presumably because he'd called the Quick Response Squad off. The squad's arrival would have been the excuse for a massive publicity invasion. But they needed the QRS boys to lead them to the Old Boathouse. Sir Arnold was glad it was so isolated. All the same, something was fucking weird. He'd phone around in the morning to see if anyone had been tipped off for a spectacular happening. No, he wouldn't. Silence, absolute, complete and total silence was always the best response. Silence, and with God's help he would find a way out of this nightmare. Just so long as the bastard didn't die.
Between clean sheets in the big bedroom upstairs Lady Vy cursed herself for a fool. The water from the punctured hot-water tank had crept under the door of the bathroom and was soaking through the carpet into the floor. She should have listened to Daddy all those years ago. He had always said you had to be a sadistic cretin to be a successful policeman, and he'd been spot on.
Chapter 8
At Pud End Henry Gould woke with the horrid sensation that he had done something terrible. It took him a moment or two to remember what it was, and when he did he was genuinely worried. 'Oh Lord,' he muttered as he got up hurriedly, 'what an asinine trick to pull' When he went downstairs it was to find his uncle sitting over his breakfast coffee in the old farm kitchen with the radio beside him. He was looking particularly cheerful for a man who had almost certainly just lost a nephew. Henry had no doubt about that. In the sober light of the morning he felt sure his cousin must have been killed. No one stoked to the synapses with bufo sonoro could possible ride an enormously powerful motorbike for any distance and live. Toad was the most powerful mind-bender.
'No need to look so gloomy,' Victor told him. 'I've been listening to the local radio since six but they've made no mention of any accident involving a motorcycle, and they always do to encourage the others. Timothy is probably sleeping it off in some hedgerow. That sort always have the devil on their side.'
'I certainly hope so. Goodness only knows what that Toad stuff is. From the way it worked I'm surprised he could get on the bike, let alone ride the thing.'
But it was later in the morning when Victor Gould went up to air the spare room that he realized Timothy Bright had left a brown paper package and a large briefcase. He carried them through to the cupboard under the stairs and deposited them there with the thought that Timothy would certainly be returning to claim them. It was a fairly dreadful thought but at least he was temporarily absent.
Timothy Bright would have shared Henry's consternation had he been in any condition to. As it was he slept on happily unconscious of his situation and with the remains of the Toad doing new things to his neurons now that it had been freshened up with Valium and whisky. He was fortunately unaware that he was strapped up inside two bloodstained sheets and a pillow case wedged into a distant corner of the Old Boathouse cellar, and that he himself looked very much like one of the sacks of coal that had once occupied a space there.