The Midden (7 page)

'I'll get Filder to take me up the boathouse. Those bastards come up there, I'll set the dog
on them.'

It was nearly three when the Chief Constable finally climbed out of the van, slumped exhausted
into the police Rover, and set out for Scabside Reservoir.

It had begun to rain and the moon was gone by the time Sir Arnold Gonders stumbled out of the
police car at the Old Boathouse. He was worn out, drunk and in a filthy temper.

'Will you be all right, sir?' the Sergeant asked as the Chief Constable stood outside the iron
gates and finally found his keys.

'I would be if those fucking reporters hadn't wrecked the bloody evening,' he snarled and
opened the gate.

'Yes sir, the media's a bloody menace,' said the Sergeant and drove off across the dam to the
main road at Six Lanes End. Behind him the Chief Constable, having locked the gates again, was
wondering why Genscher, the Rottweiler, who appeared to be limping, was wheezing so
asthmatically.

'Mustn't wake her Ladyship, must we, old chap?' he said hoarsely and went across to the front
door. After fumbling with the key he was infuriated to find he didn't need it. That bloody Vy
again. She was always leaving the place unlocked. And he'd warned her time and again about
burglars. 'I love that, coming from you, dear,' she'd retorted. 'The great Protector himself
who's always going on about making the world safe for the ordinary citizen. And with Genscher in
the yard only a madman would dream of coming in. Be your age.' Which was typical of the way the
woman was always treating him.

Anyway he wasn't going to take chances of waking her now. Not that it would be easy with all
those pills she took, and the booze. Standing in the hall Sir Arnold felt for the light switch
and found fresh plaster. Vy had evidently had the switch moved. She was always getting builders
or plumbers in and changing everything round. Not that he wanted the light. Mustn't wake Vy. Just
to make sure, he took his shoes off and stumbled as quietly as he could up the stairs.

It was then that he heard the snores. He'd complained about her snoring before, but this was
something totally different. Sounded like she was farting in a mud bath. One thing was certain.
He wasn't sleeping in the same bed with that fucking noise. He'd use the spare room. He went into
the bathroom to have a pee and couldn't find the light cord. Bloody builders hadn't put it where
it ought to be. Sir Arnold undressed in the dark and then went out onto the landing and was about
to go into the spare room when he remembered that Aunt Bea was probably in there. He wasn't going
to risk getting into bed with that foul old bag. No way. He fumbled back along the passage, all
the time cursing his wife. It was typical of her that the light switches had been moved. Always
wanting everything to be different. Outside the bedroom door he hesitated again. Dear God, that
was a fearful sound. Then it crossed his mind that something might be really wrong. Perhaps Vy
had taken an overdose of those damned pills the doctor had prescribed for her depression. She
could be hyperventilating. She was certainly doing something extraordinary. And wasn't snoring
dangerous? He'd read that recently. For a moment a dark hope rose in the Chief Constable's mind.
He was tempted to let her snore on. In the meantime he'd better take a Vitamin C and his half of
Disprin.

Sir Arnold groped his way back to the bathroom and found the Redoxon. Or thought he did. A few
moments later he knew he hadn't. The fucking things were Auntie Bloody Bea's denture cleaners. In
the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders spat desperately into the basin and thought dementedly about his
wife and her rotten relatives. And she had the gall to blame him for her nerves. They were the
result, she claimed, of being married to a man with such a close relationship with all those
dreadful criminals he worked with. She'd been ambiguous about which criminals she'd meant, but he
had always been conscious that she and her family believed she had married beneath her and really
couldn't have done anything else short of marrying one of the classier Royals. The Gilmott-Gwyres
were appalling snobs. On the other hand she also felt very badly about his relationship with God,
and if God Almighty wasn't socially upmarket, Sir Arnold Gonders would like to know who was.

Unfortunately Lady Vy's nerves had recently been made very much worse by some clown in the
Communications Repair Section who had twice programmed her car phone so that it had put her
through to some very shady establishments down by the docks. The next time Vy had used the phone
she had been answered by the sod who ran The Holy Temple of Divine Being or on occasion, the
second occasion in her case, The Pearly Gates of Paradise. Lady Vy, trying to get through to her
sister who was supposed to be still alive, had been horrified to find a clear indication that her
husband actually did phone God and that the blighter was manifestly an Oriental bent on offering
her 'any sexual application, herb or vibrating what-not that will bring you Heavenly
satisfaction. Money-back guarantee. Massage and manual assistance also available.' Her reaction
to this first call had been to write off her Jaguar and two other cars by going down the up
slipway onto the M85. On the second occasion, three weeks later, she told God, or whoever was in
charge of The Pearly Gates of Paradise and it could be the Angel Gabriel himself for all she
cared, to fuck off, you shit. As a result she had had a terrible crisis of conscience before
she'd even got home at the thought that she might indeed have been speaking to God. 'You're
always having talks with the bloody man,' she had screamed hysterically at Sir Arnold, 'and for
all I know...But why me? Why pick on me of all miserable sinners?'

It had all been most harrowing and Sir Arnold had counted himself lucky that he knew exactly
who she had been talking to Glenda used some of the bastard's gadgets and had told the swine he'd
put him out of business and circulation for a long time if he ever played God again. This hadn't
helped Lady Vy. She had never been the same woman since and had threatened him with divorce if he
ever said God was love again in her hearing. Sir Arnold had blamed that bloody Indian, and his
wife had blamed herself for ever marrying a policeman. In the end her doctor had persuaded her to
consult a psychiatrist who had advised her that she was suffering from a very natural condition
in women of her age and from lack of sexual satisfaction. The Chief Constable, who had had his
men bug the psychiatrist's office in the hope that she'd admit to committing adultery, had
temporarily agreed with this diagnosis. The woman was obviously depressed and lacked sexual
satisfaction and he'd sometimes wondered what the result would have been if she had been
subjected to the sort of test female shot-putters in the Olympics were given. The psychiatrist's
next suggestion, that she must insist on her conjugal rights at least twice a week together with
Vy's raucous laughter and protest that he couldn't get an erection once a year let alone twice a
week, was far less to his liking. The confounded woman's appeal for him had always sprung from
her social connections rather than anything approaching sexual fancy. In fact even before the
Lord had shown him the error of his ways he had been far more attracted by lithe and girlish
figures like Glenda's and not by Vy's muscular and ill-proportioned torso. All the same, spurred
on by her diabolical laughter and by massive doses of Vitamin E, he had done his damnedest to
satisfy her marital needs. Fortunately the anti-depressants combined with her nightly intake of
gin to render her too doped to want sex or even to know when she hadn't had it. Still, Sir Arnold
didn't want to lose her entirely she had influence through her father, Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre,
and she gave him a social acceptability he would otherwise lack. But now, to judge by the hideous
snores, she was in serious trouble.

He pushed himself away from the bathroom wall and staggered down the passage again and had
opened the bedroom door before another alarming thought hit him. He'd never heard her make a
noise like this. And naturally she had thought he'd be staying in Tween as he usually did after a
heavy night. Perhaps that horrible butch Aunt Bea was sleeping in his bed. If she was, the old
slut was in for a nasty surprise. He might not like his wife, but he was damned if he was going
to have a lesbian take his place in his own bedroom. The Chief Constable moved towards the bed
very cautiously with his hand out and as he groped about towards those snores, his fingers
touched some hair. In the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders froze in his shambling tracks. That wasn't
Vy's hair he'd know her curls anywhere and it wasn't Bea's either, hers was short and straight.
The stuff he'd just felt was long and greasy. It was a man's hair and, come to that, those were a
man's snores. There was no mistaking the fact. There was no mistaking something else either. The
smell.

He knew now why Genscher was limping and wheezing. He also knew that he was dealing with an
exceptionally dangerous intruder. All his life he'd known something like this was going to happen
if Vy left the bloody door open in his drunken and exhausted state he wasn't thinking at all
clearly. The possibility of the house being taken over by the IRA flashed through the Chief
Constable's disordered mind. He had to get to his gun in the bedside drawer, the gun and the
panic button. With the utmost caution he felt for the bedside table and began to ease the drawer
open. The damned thing was stuck. He pulled harder and the thing came a short way out with a loud
squeak. The next moment there was a movement on the bed. Sir Arnold hesitated no longer. If he
couldn't get to his gun...his hand groped around inside the drawer but there was no gun and no
panic button. Grasping the wooden bedside lamp by its top he swung the base down onto the snores.
A horrid thud, the bulb in the lamp shattered, the plug came out of the wall socket and the
snores stopped. In the darkness Sir Arnold stepped back to the main light switch by the door,
trod on a piece of broken bulb, cut his foot and swore.

By the time he'd managed to turn the light on it was fairly clear that things were more
dreadful than even he had anticipated. For one thing Lady Vy was awake she had been kicked into a
semblance of life by the reflex convulsion of Timothy Bright's legs and without her contact
lenses was having difficulty telling who was who. Beside her in the bed what she imagined was Sir
Arnold lay bleeding horribly from a scalp wound while a naked man with some sort of club in his
hand was swearing horribly over by the door. To Lady Vy's boozy anti-depressed mind it seemed
obvious she was about to be raped and murdered. Acting with remarkable speed for a woman in her
condition, she scrabbled for the Chief Constable's revolver which she'd kept handy in her own
bedside drawer. It was her ultimate line of defence and she meant to use it. Her first shot hit
the mirror in the Victorian wardrobe to the murderer's right. Lady Vy tried to aim more carefully
for the second and as she did so she was vaguely conscious that her attacker was yelling at her
in a faintly familiar voice. 'For fuck's sake put that fucking gun down '

The second shot missed him on the other side and, having gone in one side of the hot-water
boiler and out the other, ricocheted round the en-suite bathroom. There was no need for a third
shot. Sir Arnold had scampered through the door and slammed it behind him. Lady Vy reached for
the panic button which had been installed to alert every police station within a radius of fifty
miles that the Chief Constable's weekend residence had been entered by intruders.

To Sir Arnold Gonders the next half hour was a foretaste of hell. As the siren on the roof
began to wail and the entire building was brilliantly floodlit by halogen lamps in the garden
while simultaneously a dozen police stations were alerted to a Top Priority Emergency, he knew
that his career was on the brink of an abyss. He hurled himself down the darkened staircase and
was halfway to the telephone in his study when the hall lights came on and he was confronted by
the elderly Scots housekeeper in her dressing-gown.

'Och Sir Arnold, do you ken wha's ganging on?' she asked.

The Chief Constable brushed her aside with the bloodied bedside lamp. The stupid old cow, of
course he didn't know what was going on. Once in his study he dropped the lamp on a valuable
Persian rug and grabbed the phone. The number, the coded number to cancel the alert? What the
hell was it? Finally, in desperation, he dialled 999 and was asked which of the Emergency
Services he required. It was a rather more relevant question than he realized at the time, though
the house had yet to catch fire.

'Police,' he barked and was put through to a recorded message asking him to be patient as
Police Services were stretched to the limit. Sir Arnold knew that. He had dictated the message to
his secretary himself.

'While you are waiting to be attended to,' the soothing female voice went on, 'we at Twixt and
Tween Police Services would like you to know about the ancillary assistance we are able to offer
the public. Officers are always on hand to conduct Road Safety Classes at schools of all levels,
Primary, Secondary, Further and Independent. We also hold regular classes in Self-Defence for
Senior Citizens and Persons of the Female Gender. These are available at '

'Fuck off, you bitch,' shouted the Chief Constable and slammed the phone down. A new and even
more awful possibility had just entered his mind. Vy and a young man in bed...A toyboy! He had to
think of some way of stopping scores of policemen converging on the house in which he had almost
certainly murdered his wife's lover. But first he had to find a way of turning that infernal
siren off. Livid with a fresh terror he dashed back across the hall to the kitchen in search of
the fuses and was blundering about in the pantry where they had been. The fucking things had been
moved. That Vy and her electricians. And what was the point of having Emergency Services if you
couldn't get through to the sods. The other inhabitants of the house weren't helping. As he
turned back towards the study with the intention of blasting that bleeding siren on the roof into
silence with his shotgun he came face to face with Auntie Bea.