Kissing Toads (47 page)

I was thinking: we have to fight.

I'd never been in a physical fight in my life.

‘Nah,' Attila said. ‘I'd rather let them watch. If they're good, we'll give them a treat.' He came right up to me. ‘This one looks good. Bit small in the tit department –' he flipped my breast with a finger – ‘but really quite tasty. I love posh pussy.'

Greaseball made a noise which might have passed for a snigger.

Beside me, I sensed Ash's tautness, though we didn't touch.

Thump . . . thump . . . went the cosh.

Seeing Attila from so close, I was nearly sure there was no gun bulge.

I was thinking: any moment now, Delphi's going to walk in.

Shit . . .

Greaseball said, ‘Someone brought the dog in.' He shoved Elton's body with his foot. ‘Where're the minders?'

‘Outside,' Attila said easily. ‘Looking for us in the fog. Great stuff, fog. Keeps everyone out – and everyone in. Anyone else here we should know about?'

Cedric in the kitchen . . . Dorian upstairs . . . Delphi.

Harry said: ‘No.'

‘I hope you're not lying to me,' Attila said. ‘I don't like liars. And your record isn't very good, is it? Pretending to be one of us, one of the team, fighting for the cause – all the time a traitor. A lying, cheating sneak working for the establishment press, betraying your own people for a load of blacks and Pakis and Jews. What d'you think you deserve, selling out your own kind?' He was unbuttoning his jacket as he spoke, pulling something out of an inside pocket. A glove. A glove which clinked. He tugged it on, flexed his fingers. Metal studs gleamed on the knuckles. ‘I'll give you a clue. I didn't come here to hand you a fucking award.'

Skinhead had stopped thumping the cosh. Greaseball seemed to be wetting himself in his eagerness.

No more time for thinking.

Attila's fist moved so fast that for all the build-up Harry was caught off guard. The blow took him in the stomach, doubling him up. Then Attila grabbed him by the hair and the metal glove smacked him full in the face. Blood spurted from a dozen cuts. Ash leaped for Attila, but Greaseball knocked him sideways – I tried to get hold of his arm to pull him away from Ash but he shook me off. A knife flashed in his hand.

HG yelled: ‘Stop it! The police are coming!'

Then Delphi came back.

Delphi, with the claymore gripped in both hands, the blade dripping red. Delphi, with blood daubed on her face and arms, with scarlet spatter on her clothes. Delphi, wild-eyed and mop-haired, giving off rage like an electric storm. Move over Xena, Warrior Princess. Here comes Delphinium Dacres . . .

‘LEAVE HIM ALONE!' she screamed, meaning Harry.

Skinhead charged. She swung the claymore – he tried to dodge but too late. The blade ploughed along his belly, bunching his T-shirt, leaving a red stain in its wake. The end of the swing caught Greaseball in the arm, making him drop the knife. Ash and I both pounced on him and we all collapsed in a squirming heap. Meanwhile, Harry used the diversion to lunge for Attila, getting in too close for blows. HG tried to help and failed. Morag, with amazing enterprise, picked up a table lamp and smashed it down on Skinhead's skull – he subsided like a limp blancmange.

Ash said: ‘Back off, Ruth, I can handle it,' while Greaseball tried to gouge out his eye.

Attila broke free of Harry's grip, flicked HG aside like a gnat. He pressed something on the glove, and tiny blades unsheathed like claws at the tip of each finger.

God knows what films he'd been watching. Probably
Enter the Dragon
.

Then Cedric arrived, hefting a spit and yelling a war cry which sounded like
Aiieeoolii
! Attila's glove was evil, but it didn't have the reach of spit or claymore. Outnumbered and outgunned, he sprinted for the door. Greaseball wriggled free and followed him. Footsteps pounded across the hall. We heard the front door open, then the fog swallowed them.

Delphi dropped the claymore and ran to Harry.

‘What've you done to yourself?' he said.

‘Stage blood – I'm fine – your
face
–!'

He was breathing hard and obviously in pain. Both HG and Ash had facial damage that would soon darken to bruises. Nobody cared.

When HG said, ‘Everyone all right?' everyone said, ‘Yes.' We all hugged each other a lot, even Morag. I think I wept a bit; I know Delphi did. Everyone said everyone else was wonderful. And meant it.

Then Morag started cleaning up Harry's face and HG called a doctor from two villages away and Delphi explained again about the stage blood and how she'd summoned Cedric on the in-house phone before making her entrance – and could someone please let Fenny out? Ash and Cedric tied up Skinhead in case he came round, using handcuffs on his wrists. (‘Good thing I've got these,' Cedric said. ‘Don't get to use them much up here, worst luck.') Dorian wandered into the middle of things and, once he had grasped what had happened, accused his father of deliberately excluding him, as if he'd been left out of a particularly good party. HG said his being left out was the one good thing about the whole business. I grabbed a chance to tell Dorian how brave and supercool his dad had been, concluding, ‘See if Joshua Thingummy-Wotsit can match that.' We all had several restorative drinks.

Jules and Sandy came back with Sting, mortified to have missed the fight and saying they couldn't find the enemy in the fog. Weather conditions also slowed down the arrival of the police and the doctor, who finally showed up about two hours later. Harry had several stitches in his face and was escorted off by the police to make formal statements in protective custody.

‘You going to write about all this?' HG said, by way of farewell.

Harry's grin was uncomfortable; his face had swollen up. ‘Eventually. But don't worry: it's a wrench, but I'll leave you out. If that's what you want. I owe you that much.'

‘That's what I want.'

Hesitantly, they shook hands.

‘You were a good butler,' HG said. ‘We'll miss you.'

Ash and I both said, ‘Good luck.' There were more hugs.

Delphi said, ‘Harry . . .'

Harry said, ‘Delphi . . .'

And: ‘You're a star. You really are.'

Then the police dragged him off to be protected and there wasn't time for any more.

The superintendent left considerably later, having collected statements from all and sundry and arrested Skinhead, who had come round and was deeply pissed off. The humiliation of being taken out by two women, one of whom was over sixty, so demoralised him that he decided his tough-guy cred was gone for good and finally pleaded guilty to everything. Our friend Taggart treated us with the mixture of suspicion and respect any cop would feel for a household which can produce an antique skeleton and a clutch of fascist thugs in the same week. He left people to assist Jules and Sandy in watching the castle in case Attila & co. came back, but there was no sign of them. We all talked things over several times and then sat down to a rather casual dinner – Cedric's equilibrium had been seriously ruffled – before heading early to bed.

‘I've got Fenny,' Delphi said, ‘and I'm going to lock my door. You never know: they
might
get past the police guard. In films, psychopaths always do.'

‘This is real life,' I pointed out. ‘Though sometimes I wonder.'

‘You can stay with me,' Delphi offered, ‘if you're nervous.'

‘I'll be fine.'

‘I'll take care of Ruth,' Ash said.

We were in the purple gallery at the time. Delphi, on her way out, turned on her heel, gave him a glare, said, ‘Excuse me,' and dragged me to one side.

‘
What are you doing?
'

‘I don't see why you should have all the fun,' I said.

‘ME? I mean . . .' she lowered her voice. ‘
Me
? You're the one who has HG trying to get off with you, and practically every guy in the place pouring out his heart to you, on account of you being such a good listener, while all I do is shag the butler – who isn't actually a butler anyway. Ash isn't remotely your type—'

‘You always object to my type.'

‘—
and
he's gay.'

‘Then you've got nothing to worry about,' I said.

‘Maybe he . . . he shops on both sides of the street. That's a situation you
don't
want to get into. Some irate ex-boyfriend could come crawling out of the woodwork and turn
really
nasty—'

‘Go to bed,' I said. ‘It's been a long day.'

Reluctantly, she went. ‘In the morning,' she admonished, ‘you tell me
everything
. Right?'

‘I promise.'

Ash walked me to my door. ‘She looks out for you,' he said.

‘And I for her.'

‘Mm. I like that.'

There was something in his tone which made me say, ‘Didn't anyone ever look out for you?'

‘My elder brother.' I'd opened the door. He hesitated to follow me, till I smiled.

‘Where is he now?'

‘He died when I was sixteen. Car accident.'

‘Was that why . . . ?'

‘Why I got interested in the afterlife? No. I always was.' He put his arms around me. It felt
right
, as if I'd been waiting for this for a very long time. ‘Let's leave my life story for the moment. I know it all anyway, so it's dull to go through it again. You blamed me for not kissing you.'

‘Not
blamed
, exactly . . .'

‘I was hoping to make up for that.'

In due course, inevitably, it was morning. But it was Sunday morning, which is in a different league from other mornings. I didn't have to get up, Ash didn't have to get up. On Sundays, he assured me, well-behaved Scottish ghosts take the morning off and go to church, on account of being good Presbyterians. If Delphi knocks on my door, I thought, I
definitely
won't answer. I need to catch up on sleep.

Some of the time, we slept.

‘What will HG say?' Ash asked at one point.

‘HG must've dished out a hell of a lot of kisses over the years,' I said. ‘He's not going to miss that one. Or want it back.'

‘He's not getting it back . . .'

Eventually, we went downstairs just before lunch. Nigel had returned, very pleased with himself for having tracked down the Courtney DNA (though it would take a few days for the testing to be completed) and duly shocked by the tale of our adventures. The fog had lifted long before, and the police were still searching for Attila and Greaseball; they hadn't gone back to their rooms in the village or been seen by anyone since rushing out of the castle after the fight.

‘I'm not going on a search party for
them
,' Delphi announced.

In the afternoon, she and I retired to her room, where she talked about Harry and I talked about Ash. The trade-off that's part of being female. It's like holiday snaps: you bore me with yours, I'll bore you with mine. Only if you're real best friends you don't get bored, whether it's holiday pix or men.

‘Is Ash serious about you?' Delphi wanted to know. ‘You're serious, I can tell. You always are.'

‘Bit early to say.' I mustn't spoil the moment by worrying about the future.

Anyway, he'd already talked about things we would do back in London . . .

‘What about you and Harry?'

‘Oh no. No, of course not. It was just a quickie. Ships that collide in the night – and sink. That sort of thing.'

She added, belatedly, ‘I don't even have his number.'

‘You could call the
Indy
.'

‘I'm not going chasing after him! He's not even good-looking. He's got sandy hair, and he's a bloody journalist. Can you imagine us having a high-profile celebrity wedding?'

‘Aha,' I said. ‘So you're thinking about marriage.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

Later that evening, the police called to tell us they'd arrested Greaseball. He was trying to hitch a lift on the road out of Lochnabu, covered in mud and apparently very scared, though it wasn't clear what of.

We buried Elton in the garden, with Sandy reading from the ballad of Beth Gelert, though it wasn't entirely appropriate, and Dougal McDougall playing the bagpipes. (It didn't sound anything like the ones I'd heard in the wee small hours.) Delphi wept into Fenny's fur and Sting looked lost without his brother, glancing round every few minutes as if expecting him to be there. I suppose it's the same with animals as with people, only we're supposed to
understand
, though of course we didn't. HG planted a Peace rose on top of the grave.

They found Attila a couple of days later, floating in the Cauldron with his head stove in against the rocks.

‘Do you believe in hell?' I asked Ash.

‘No,' he said. ‘But sometimes, there's justice.'

  

What did I tell you? You can never trust a gay guy – there's always testosterone in there somewhere. There was Ash acting gay (i.e. not making passes at attractive women), hanging out with a gay (Cedric), and looking so pretty he had to be gay, and suddenly he pops out of the closet and decides he's straight after all. I was concerned about Roo – I thought he might regress – and then she tells me this long saga about his ex-girlfriend running off and taking his young daughter, and how he was completely devastated by this, and that's why he'd been uninterested in women for so long. I thought it might be true, but you have to trust your instincts – Ash said so himself – so I decided to check him out. Cedric and I had bonded after I did my Amazon warrior thing, and he backed me up with the spit, so I went into the kitchen to discuss it with him.