The almost overwhelming urge to tell him got as far as my tongue and was over-ridden only by clamped-shut teeth. One could understand why people confessed. The itch to unburden outweighed the certainty of retribution.
‘Answer,’ yelled Yorkshire. He picked up the wrench again. ‘Answer, you little cuss.’
I did manage an answer of sorts.
I spoke to Verney Tilepit directly in a weak, mock-respectful tone. ‘I came to see you… sir.’
‘My lord,’ Yorkshire told me. ‘Call him my lord.’
‘My lord,’ I said.
Tilepit said, ‘What for?’ and ‘What made you think I would be here?’
‘Someone told me you were a director of Topline Foods, my lord, so I came here to ask you to stop and I don’t know why I’ve been dragged up here and tied up like this.’ The last twenty words just dribbled out. Be careful, I thought. Shut up.
‘To stop what?’ Tilepit demanded.
‘To stop your paper telling lies about me.’ Better.
Tilepit didn’t know how to answer such naivety. Yorkshire properly considered it barely credible. He spoke to Mrs Dove, who was dressed for Saturday morning, not in office black and white, but in bright red with gold buttons.
‘Go down and make sure he hasn’t been in your office.’
‘I locked it when I left last night, Owen.’
Mrs Dove’s manner towards her boss was interestingly like Willy Parrott’s. All-equals-together; up to a point.
‘Go and look,’ he said. ‘And check that cupboard.’
‘No one’s opened that cupboard since you moved offices up here this week. And you have the only key.’
‘Go and check anyway,’ he said.
She had no difficulty with obeying him. I remembered Marsha Rowse’s ingenuous statement — ‘Mrs Dove says never to make Mr Yorkshire angry.’
Mrs Dove, self-contained, confident, was taking her own advice. She was not, I saw, in love with the man, nor was she truly afraid of him. His temper, I would have thought, was to her more of a nuisance than life — or even job — threatening.
As things stood, or rather as I sat, I saw the wisdom of following Mrs Dove’s example for as long as I could.
She was gone a fair time, during which I worried more and more anxiously that I’d left something slightly out of place in that office, that she would know by some sixth sense that someone had been in there, that I’d left some odor in the air despite never using aftershave, that I’d closed the filing cabinets incorrectly, that I’d left visible fingerprints on a shiny surface, that I’d done anything that she knew she hadn’t.
I breathed slowly, trying not to sweat.
When she finally came back she said, ‘The TV crews are leaving. Everything’s ready for Monday. The florists are bringing the Lady Mayoress’s bouquet at ten o’clock. The red-carpet people are downstairs now measuring the lobby. And, oh, the man from Intramind Imaging says they want a check.’
‘What about the office?’
‘The office? Oh, the office is all right.’ She was unconcerned. ‘It was all locked. Just as I left it.’
‘And the cupboard?’ Yorkshire insisted.
‘Locked.’ She thought he was over-reacting. I was concerned only to show no relief.
‘What are you going to do with him?’ she asked, indicating me. ‘You can’t keep him here, can you? The TV crew downstairs were talking about him being here. They want to interview him. What shall I say?’
Yorkshire with black humor said, ‘Tell them he’s all tied up.’
She wasn’t amused. She said, ‘I’ll say he went out the back way. And I’ll be off, too. I’ll be here by eight, Monday morning.’ She looked at me calmly and spoke to Yorkshire. ‘Let him go,’ she said unemotionally. ‘What harm can he do? He’s pathetic.’
Yorkshire, undecided, said, ‘Pathetic? Why pathetic?’
She paused composedly half-way through the door, and dropped a pearl beyond price.
‘It says so in The Pump.’
Neither of these two men, I thought, listening to them, was a full-blown criminal. Not yet. Yorkshire was too near the brink.
He still held the heavy adjustable wrench, slapping its head occasionally against his palm, as if it helped his thoughts.
‘Please untie me,’ I said. At least I found the fatal loquaciousness had abated. I no longer wanted to gabble, but just to talk my way out.
Tilepit himself might have done it. He clearly was unused to — and disturbed by — even this level of violence. His power base was his grandfather’s name. His muscle was his hire-and-fire clout. There were only so many top editorships in the British press, and George Godbar, editor of The Pump, wasn’t going to lose his hide to save mine. Matters of principle were all too often an unaffordable luxury, and I didn’t believe that in George Godbar’s place, or even in Kevin Mills’ or India’s, I would have done differently.
Yorkshire said, ‘We wait.’
He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out what looked bizarrely like a jar of pickles. Dumping the wrench temporarily, he unscrewed the lid, put the jar on the desk, pulled out a green finger and bit it, crunching it with large white teeth.
‘Pickle?’ he offered Tilepit.
The third baron averted his nose.
Yorkshire, shrugging, chewed uninhibitedly and went back to slapping his palm with the wrench.
‘I’ll be missed,’ I said mildly, ‘if you keep me much longer.’
‘Let him go,’ Tilepit said with a touch of impatience. ‘He’s right, we can’t keep him here indefinitely.’
‘We wait,’ Yorkshire said heavily, fishing out another pickle, and to the accompaniment of noisy munching, we waited.
I could smell the vinegar.
The door opened finally behind me and both Yorkshire and Tilepit looked welcoming and relieved.
I didn’t. The newcomer, who came around in front of me blankly, was Ellis Quint.
Ellis, in open-necked white shirt; Ellis, handsome, macho, vibrating with showmanship; Ellis, the nation’s darling, farcically accused. I hadn’t seen him since the Ascot races, and none of his radiance had waned.
‘What’s Halley doing here?’ he demanded, sounding alarmed. ‘What has he learned?’
‘He was wandering about,’ Yorkshire said, pointing a pickle at me. ‘I had him brought up here. He can’t have learned a thing.’
Tilepit announced, ‘Halley says he came to ask me to stop The Pump’s campaign against him.’
Ellis said positively, ‘He wouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not?’ Yorkshire asked. ‘Look at him. He’s a wimp.’
‘A wimp!’
Despite my precarious position I smiled involuntarily at the depth of incredulity in his voice. I even grinned at him sideways from below half-lowered eyelids, and saw the same private smile on his face: the acknowledgment of brotherhood, of secrecy, of shared esoteric experience, of cold winter afternoons, perils embraced, disappointments and injuries taken lightly, of indescribable triumphs. We had hugged each other standing in our stirrups, ecstatic after winning posts. We had trusted, bonded and twinned.
Whatever we were now, we had once been more than brothers. The past — our past — remained. The intense and mutual memories could not be erased.
The smiles died. Ellis said, ‘This wimp comes up on your inside and beats you in the last stride. This wimp could ruin us all if we neglect our inside rail. This wimp was champion jockey for five or six years and might have been still, and we’d be fools to forget it.’ He put his face close to mine. ‘Still the same old Sid, aren’t you? Cunning. Nerveless. Win at all costs.’