by Francis - TO THE HILT

I looked round the garden for possible exits and could see precious few. There was a lawn ringed with bushes, lit on the garden side, shadowy beyond. There was a flower bed with straggling chrysanthemums. There was an ornamental goldfish pond with an artificial stream running down into it over a pile of rocks.

There was a big house to the left, mostly dark, but with a brightly lit conservatory facing the garden.

There was Oliver Grantchester.

Oliver Grantchester.

The one crucial piece of information I hadn't learned was that he had a place in the country half a mile along the road from Patsy's house. The only address and telephone number for Oliver Grantchester in Ivan's address book had been in London.

Audrey Newton had firmly pointed to Oliver Grantchester's sketched head as the person who had collected her brother on the day he left Wantage to go on holiday.

I'd known who would be looking for me, but not where .

There weren't swear words bad enough to describe my stupidity.

Patsy would never change. Why had I ever thought that she would?

I'd wanted to believe that she had. I'd wanted an end to the long pointless feud.

Serve me right.

Grantchester stood six feet away from me and said, 'Where is the Kinloch hilt?'

I looked at him in bewilderment. I could think of no reason why he would want to know. He made some sort of signal to the wearer of the boxing gloves, who hit me low down, in the abdomen, which hurt.

My neck jerked forwards against the rope. Dire.

Grantchester said, 'Where is the King Alfred Gold Cup?'

Golf bag. Locker. Club house. Scotland. Out of his grasp.

A bash in the ribs. Reverberations. Altogether too much, and quite likely only the beginning. Shit.

'Ivan sent you the Cup. Where is it?'

Ask Himself.

Another fast, hard, pin-pointed bash. Shudder country.

Where the hell, I wondered, was my bodyguard?

Surtees strode to Grantchester's side.

'Where's the horse?' he yelled. 'Make him tell you where he's put the horse.'

The thug with the gloves was the one who had been demanding 'Where is it?' at the bothy.

'Where's the horse?' Grantchester said.

I didn't tell him. Painful decision.

Surtees positively jumped up and down.

'Make him tell you. Hit him harder.'

I thought detachedly that I would quite likely prefer to die than give in to Surtees.

Oliver Grantchester hadn't the same priorities as Patsy's husband.

He said to me, 'Where's your mother?'

In Devon, I thought: thank God.

Bash .

He had to be mad, if he thought I would tell him.

'Where's Emily Cox?'

Safe. Same thing.

Bash.

'Where is Norman Quorn's sister?'

I was by then fairly breathless. It would have been difficult to tell him even if I'd wanted to.

He stepped forward to within three feet of me, and with quiet intensity said, 'Where's the list?'

The list.

The point of all the battering, I supposed, was to make it more likely that I would answer the one question that really mattered.

'Where's the list?'

He had never liked me, he had seen me always as a threat to his domination of Ivan. He had encouraged Patsy's obsessive suspicions of me. I remembered his dismay and fury when Ivan had given his powers of attorney to me, not to Patsy or himself. He hadn't wanted me looking into the brewery's affairs. He had been right to fear it.

His big body, his heavy personality faced me now with thunderous malevolence. He didn't care how much he hurt me. He was enjoying it. He might not be hitting me himself, but he was swaying in a sort of ecstasy as each blow landed. He wanted my surrender, but wanted it difficult; intended that I should crumble, but not too soon.

I saw the pleasure in his eyes. The full lips smiled. I hated him. Shook with hate.

'Tell me,' he said.

I saw it was my defeat he wanted almost as much as the list itself: and I saw also that he was wholly confident of achieving both. If I could deny him… then I would.

'Where's the list?'

The boxing gloves thudded here and there. Face, ribs, belly. Head. I lost count.

'Where's the list?'

Such a pretty garden, I groggily thought.

The punch-bag practice stopped. Grantchester went away. The four thugs stood around me watchfully, as if I could slide out of their ropes and knots, which I couldn't, but not for lack of trying.

Patsy's face swam into my close vision.

'What list?' she said.

It made no sense. Surely she knew what list.

I would have said she looked worried. Horrified even. But she'd lured me there. My own fault.

'Why,' she said, 'why did Oliver ask where your mother and Emily are?'

I dredged up an answer, 'How does he know they are not at home?' My face felt stiff. The rest just felt.

'Alexander,' Patsy said in distress, not working it out, 'whatever Oliver wants, for God's sake give it to him. This… this…' she gestured to my trussed state, and to the thugs,'… this is awful .'

I agreed with her. I also couldn't believe she didn't know what her friendly neighbourhood lawyer wanted. I'd done believing Patsy. Finished for life. Finished for what was left of life.

Oliver Grantchester was playing for millions, and boxing gloves were getting him nowhere. He returned from the direction of his house, pulling behind him a barbecue cooker on wheels.

Oh God, I thought. Oh no.

I can't do this. I'll tell him. I know I will. They're not my millions.

Grantchester took the grill grid off the barbecue and propped it against one of the wheeled legs. Then he went back into his bright conservatory and returned carrying a bag of charcoal briquettes and a bottle of lighter fuel. He poured briquettes from the bag into the fire-box of the barbecue and then poured the whole bottleful of lighter fuel over the briquettes.

He struck a match and tossed it onto the fuel.

Flame rushed upward in a roaring plume, scarlet and gold and eternally untamed. The flame was reflected in Grantchester's eyes, so that for a moment it looked as if the fire were inside his head, looking out.

Then, satisfied, he picked up the grill with a pair of long tongs and settled it in place, to get hot.

I could see the thugs' faces. They showed no surprise. One showed sickened revulsion, but still no surprise.

I thought: they've seen this before .

They'd seen Norman Quorn.

Norman Quorn… burned in a garden, with grass cuttings in his clothes…

Patsy looked merely puzzled. So did Surtees.

The briquettes flamed, heating up quickly.

I would tell him, I thought. Enough was enough. My entire body already hurt abominably. There was a point beyond which it wasn't sensible to go. There were out-of-date abstractions like the persistence of the human spirit, and they might be all right for paintings but didn't apply in pretty country gardens in the evening of the second Saturday in October.

Norman Quorn had burned down to his ribs, and died, and he hadn't told.

I wasn't Norman Quorn. I hadn't millions to lose. They were Patsy's millions. God damn her soul.

Grantchester waited with lip-licking anticipation for frightful ages while the heat built up, and when the briquettes glowed a bright searing red, he lifted the barred grill off the fire with his pair of long tongs and dropped it flat on the lawn, where it sizzled and singed the grass.

'You'll lie on that if you don't tell me,' he said. He was enjoying himself. 'Where's the list?'

Cussed, rebellious, stubborn… I might be all those by nature: but I knew I would tell him.

Defeat lay there at my feet, blackening the grass. Money was of no importance. The decision was a matter of will. Of pride, even. And such pride came too expensive.