Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street (14 page)

The footman stopped at a door halfway along the corridor.

‘This is it,' he said, in a voice he might have used when showing the rat-catcher where to catch the rats. ‘Anything else you want?'

‘A little subservience – however insincere – might be nice,' Blackstone said, mainly for his own amusement.

‘A little
what
?' the footman asked.

‘Subservience,' Blackstone repeated. ‘If you're interested, you can borrow a dictionary and look it up.'

He opened the door and said, ‘Goodnight,' over his shoulder. The footman, making no reply, turned and retreated down the corridor.

The room which Blackstone entered contained a single bed, a wardrobe which had seen better days, and a side table on which had been placed a bowl and a jug of water.

It had probably been specifically selected by George to make him aware of his place in the pecking order, he decided – but only someone as stupid as George would even have thought such a demonstration necessary. Besides, as far as Blackstone was concerned, the room was more than acceptable – in fact, as basic as it was, it was a great improvement on both his lodgings in London and his crummy hotel room in New York City.

As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that though there was a keyhole, there was no key. It didn't matter. He had never had anything that was worth stealing, anyway.

He walked over to the open window and lit a cigarette. From outside came the sound of the ocean crashing against the shoreline – a peaceful sound, despite the power and violence which was producing it.

In terms of his investigation, the dinner had been something of a disappointment, he thought.

With the donning of their evening wear, the Holt family also seemed to have slipped into an altogether more civilized way of behaving. George had been polite to his guests – even gracious, as far as he was able. Harold had told some amusing anecdotes about his time at Harvard University. Virginia – apart from her final comments – had refrained from saying anything outlandish. And even Elizabeth had managed to seem a little more relaxed. Altogether, it could have been called a thoroughly convivial gathering – if you liked that sort of thing.

It was only when Blackstone brought up the subject of Big Bill that the atmosphere had suddenly become as chill as the lemon sorbet they were all eating at the time.

‘
There's one way, at least, in which your father is better off than most kidnap victims,' he'd said.

‘
Oh yes?' George had replied, in a tone which indicated that he had no particular desire to find out what that one way might be.

‘
Indeed,' Blackstone said, ignoring the lack of interest. ‘Most victims, you see, are not used to being locked up in confined spaces – and of all the frightening things they have to deal with, that's what often terrifies them the most. But your father won't have that problem, will he? After all, he has lived in a very confined space for seven years.
'

‘
Yes, he has,' George agreed – and said no more.

None of them really cared about Big Bill, Blackstone thought, taking a drag on his cigarette. They certainly wanted the head of the family back safely with them – and were prepared to pay a substantial ransom to
get
him back – but that was more to do with the price of stocks and shares than with any bonds of affection.

But then, who was to say that William Holt
deserved
his family's love and concern?

The picture that had emerged of him so far was of a man prepared to trample any business rival – or even any business
partner
– into the ground, if it brought him a profit. And perhaps he had adopted a similar cavalier attitude with his own kith and kin.

Blackstone stubbed out his cigarette, undressed, and climbed into bed.

It had been a long day, he thought – and given that he had less than seventy-two hours to prove that he was as good as Alex Meade
thought
he was, more long days were about to follow.

It was around two in the morning when the bedroom door clicked softly open, and Blackstone's survival instincts – developed during his time in India – dragged him from exhausted sleep to complete alertness in less than a second.

The door clicked closed again, and the intruder was now inside the room.

If he'd been back in New York City, he would have had his gun under his pillow. But this wasn't New York – and even in a house where there had already been two murders, he had seen no need to take his weapon to bed with him.

Fool!

Blackstone lay perfectly still, and began to breathe like a man who was still asleep.

The intruder took first one cautious step closer to the bed, and then a second one, and from the sound his feet made on the floor, it was obvious that he was barefoot.

Blackstone's eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, and now he could see a vague shape which was halfway across the room and still moving cautiously.

Whatever was about to happen, it would all be over in the next ten seconds, he told himself.

How would his assailant choose to attack him? Not with a gun. In a sleeping house, guns were far too noisy.

Nine!

The intruder would expect his victim to be asleep, and only able to put up token resistance, so maybe he might try to strangle or smother him.

Eight!

Or perhaps his weapon of choice was a hammer – in which case, the head on the pillow would be what he was aiming for.

Seven!

It
might
be a hammer, but a knife was more likely. He would lift his arm back, then swing the knife in a wide forceful arc towards the supine body.

Six!

The only advantage he himself had in this fight was the element of surprise, Blackstone told himself – and if he moved now, even that would be gone.

Five!

He needed to time it perfectly, to wait until the knife was coming down, and then twist out of the way.

Four!

However hard the assassin tried, he wouldn't be able to stop himself mid-swing. The knife would cut through the empty air where the body should have been, and bury its blade in the mattress.

Three!

The assassin would pull back his arm for a second attack, but by then – if things went right – the counter-attack would be underway, and he would have his own pain to deal with.

Two!

That's what will happen if you get it
right
, Blackstone's brain told him. If you get it
wrong
, you'll never see another sunrise.

One.

The dark shape had almost reached the bed now, and had still not raised its arm.

Blackstone could hear it breathing, and had the smell of it in his nostrils.

There would
be
no attack, he realized – or, at least, no attack meant to do him harm.

‘Mrs Holt?' he asked.

The woman jumped slightly, but when she said, ‘Call me Virginia,' her voice was steady enough.

‘What are you doing here?' he asked.

She laughed. ‘You're not much of a detective, are you, Sam? Didn't you notice, when you first came into this room, that there was no key in the door?'

‘Yes, I noticed,' he admitted.

‘And didn't you realize
why
there was no key?'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Then you can't have been watching the way I looked at you over dinner. I would have thought that, after that, any man with even
half
a brain would have been expecting me.'

‘What makes me so privileged?' Blackstone wondered. ‘Why didn't you choose Alex Meade instead?'

Virginia laughed again. ‘Alex is a boy,' she said. ‘A very beautiful one – but still a boy.'

‘And I'm a middle-aged man,' Blackstone pointed out.

‘Yes, you are,' Virginia agreed. ‘A middle-aged man who's taken a battering from life. But that's your appeal, you see – because however much you're battered, you'll still fight back. And I like that.'

‘I think you should go,' Blackstone told her.

‘Do you?' she asked.

He had only a single sheet covering him, and her hand was under it in a second, grasping him between the legs.

‘Well, there's at least
one
part of you that doesn't want me to go,' she said huskily.

He said nothing.

He
did
nothing – even when she began to move her hand up and down his shaft.

‘What's the matter with you, Sam?' she demanded. ‘Are you dead or something?'

‘Perhaps,' he replied. ‘If I am, that would certainly explain the stiffness, wouldn't it?'

He could not see her face in the darkness, but he sensed that a battle between amusement and anger was being fought out on it.

‘I'm not used to getting this sort of reception,' she told him.

‘And I'm not used to people taking what they want from me without asking me first,' he said.

She released her grip on him and pulled her hand clear of the bed.

‘Is that it?' she asked, and now it was clear that anger had won. ‘Other men can't believe their own luck when I go to them, but
you
want me to
beg
you to screw me?'

‘No, I don't want you to beg at all,' Blackstone said. ‘What I want you to do is leave.'

‘Bastard!' Virginia hissed.

She turned, and headed towards the door. She would have liked to have flounced out of the room – slamming the door behind her – but she was obviously afraid that if she did that, she would wake up the whole house.

He groped in the dark for his cigarettes, lit one up, and wondered why he had turned Virginia Holt's offer down.

It was certainly not because he found her unattractive. There wasn't a man on the planet who would have found her that.

Perhaps, then, it was because she was a married woman – though he had slept with married women before.

So maybe it was because she was involved in the case he was investigating.

‘No, it's not that, either,' he groaned aloud. ‘It's because of Ellie.'

Yes, it was because of Ellie.

Even though he hadn't seen her for months!

Even though, when they
were
seeing each other, they had never actually been lovers!

‘Do you really think that
she's
being celibate herself?' he asked himself. ‘Do you think that
she's
paying abstemious homage to an affair that was never really an affair at all?'

He was a fool, he decided – a
bloody
fool!

But there was nothing he could do about that, and, stubbing out his cigarette, he fell into an uneasy sleep.

TWELVE

T
he slowly rising sun coloured the ocean with a gentle red tint rather like a slight flush on pale skin – or perhaps like blood diluted by water.

Blackstone, his back to the house, looked out over that ocean and wished he was on the other side of it, among people who he knew – people he understood.

‘Well, it is a surprise to find you out here,' said a voice from somewhere to his left. ‘On this island of late nights, I thought I was the only one who rose early enough to watch the sun come up.'

Blackstone turned to face Harold.

‘I couldn't sleep,' he said – and found himself wondering, the moment the words were out of his mouth, what interpretation the other man would choose to put on them.

Did Harold know that his wife had left him in the middle of the night, in search of another man's arms?

And if he did know, was he pretending not to?

Had he learned, over time, that the best way to deal with his wife's infidelities was to ignore them?

‘You're planning to question the servants this morning, aren't you, Inspector?' asked Harold, as if in an attempt to move away from a subject that had never really even been raised.

‘Yes, I am planning to question them,' Blackstone agreed.

‘And where were you intending to do that?'

‘We've been given one of the upstairs rooms as our office. I thought we could use that.'

Harold frowned. ‘Do you know, I'm not sure that that's such a good idea,' he said.

‘No?'

‘It doesn't bother me
where
you talk to them, but George won't like it. He's very much a man for believing that everyone should know their place – and stay in it. He wouldn't be happy at the thought of some of the servants tramping through parts of the house in which they're not usually allowed.'

‘I see,' Blackstone said, non-committally.

‘Would it bother you awfully if you had to use one of the rooms in the servants' area, instead?' Harold asked.

‘No, I don't think so,' Blackstone replied. ‘Not as long as we have some privacy.'

‘That should be easy enough to arrange,' Harold said, sounding relieved. ‘In fact, I'll go and see to it now.' He turned to go, then checked himself. ‘I sometimes sleep rather badly myself,' he added.

‘Do you?'

‘Oh yes. In fact, sometimes it's so bad that, in order not to disturb my wife during the night, I sleep in my dressing room.'

It was pathetic, Blackstone thought.

He wanted to say, ‘Nothing
happened
! She may have put the horns on you with half the men on Coney Island, but nothing happened
with me
!'

But all he
actually
said was, ‘That's very considerate of you, and I'm sure Mrs Holt appreciates it.'