The Once and Future Con (Nick Madrid) Read online

  "That presupposes I have some money to invest," I said. As a matter of fact, I was skint. It's exhilarating being a freelance but not when the rent is due and you don't have any money coming in. I'd been freelancing for ten years and things had never been so bad.

  I watched the college's guest speaker leave the room with Jonathan Askwith. I looked round but I couldn't see Faye anywhere.

  "So you know Faye and her husband?" I said, for want of anything better.

  "Rather. Faye's brother, Rafe, was a good friend of mine. Lord Williamson's too for that matter."

  Rafe, I knew, was actually a Ralph with pretensions. I remembered him, he'd been as irritating as the way he insisted on pronouncing his name.

  "How long have they been ..."

  He looked at me shrewdly and smiled.

  "Better ask Faye that kind of question."

  "What kind of project are you engaged in?" I hurried on.

  "You were here, right?" I nodded. "Did you ever do Frome's course on the Arthurian legends or was he-er-"

  "He died when I was halfway through the course," I said. "It was my favorite course." I'd really got into the Arthurian stuff. Then Frome, a legendary drinker and promiscuous partygoer, fell down the stairs outside his rooms in college and broke his neck. I remembered it clearly because it was the day before Faye and I had split up.

  "Mine too but given added interest because I happen to live in the West Country, right in the middle of Arthur's realm. There have been stories in the family for generations that an old motte and bailey castle on the estate is actually the site of Arthur's Camelot. As you know he was a sixth century British leader not a medieval king, so his castle would not have been the great one of the movies."

  "Really," I said, unable to keep the scepticism out of my voice. I mean Tintagel had been wittering on about being Arthur's birthplace and possibly Camelot for years without an iota of proof for either contention. There were half a dozen other places competing for the tourist Euro by declaring they were the true site of Camelot.

  More recently, King Arthur had even come back to lead the Welsh. The most famous legend about King Arthur was that as rex quondam, rex futures-the Once and Future King-he was simply sleeping and when he was needed he would return and lead his people once more.

  Devolved power in Wales plus millennium fever had encouraged some guy from Caerleon-on-Usk to declare himself Arthur Returned, come to rule his old kingdom. He was insisting that monarchy-his monarchy-be reinstalled in Wales. He reached the nationals, the tabloids anyway, when he accused the Prince of Wales of usurping his throne and challenged him to single combat. He even suggested that he might go for the Prince's Cornish Duchy, too. He'd been photographed riding a white horse.

  Arthur was regarded as a bit of a local crackpot until he got financial support from other crackpots-i. e., Tory Eurosceptics. The newspapers had made much play of the fact that here was a wannabe Welsh king supported by Little Englanders. By now he had a few thousand followers among the millions of deranged people adrift in the modern world. Plus, he had a great website.

  Rex smiled.

  "I can see you're doubtful, but never mind. The point is that Britain is crying out for an Arthurian theme park and that's what we're going to turn Wynn House into."

  I groaned. I was finding it very depressing that Britain was fast turning into Heritage plc. As far as I was concerned, the last thing Britain needed was yet another rendition of its past, with rides.

  "I've set up a company, Avalon Offshore Trust. We're here primarily to look for backers."

  "Faye is involved?"

  "Oh yes, everybody gets their hands dirty on this one," Rex said with relish. "Faye is our PR manager. She'll be handling the press when we're ready to launch." He indicated Gennie, who was trying to out-screech Bridget as they recalled God knows what school-day scandal.

  "Genevra is our conscience. She's the one who's going to make sure we don't make the whole thing too disgusting."

  "And you think a theme park is what's needed?"

  "Needed?" He laughed. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say that, old stick. But sure it will be a boost to the local economy. There's stiff opposition from the other sites worried about their tourist figures, but the local council's on our side. As are English Heritage, within limits."

  "Lottery funding?"

  "A couple of mill for certain aspects of the scheme."

  "Well done. I think I'd be defeated by the forms you have to fill in."

  Rex raised an eyebrow.

  "Forms. Yes, well, I'm sure there were forms to fill out, but I can't honestly recall the details. I was at school with most of the people who matter. We thrashed it out over a damn good lunch in town and then I left them to sort out the details and mail the check."

  He must have seen my look of disapproval.

  "It was my turn at the trough, old stick. And after all it's not as if I was asking for as much as the Opera House or even for the country to buy something that already belongs to it."

  He excused himself to go and talk to some prospective investors. Bridget was busy with Genevra, both of them sucking on cigars and giggling. I dawdled in the hall, looking up at the old pictures on the walls, then slipped out onto the shadowy landing that separated the dining room from the library.

  It was chilly and gloomy, lit only by an electric light set into an old, narrow-stemmed gaslight. The arched ceiling many feet above my head was lost in shadow. Diners passed behind me, their feet clattering on the steps as they moved from the dining hall to the bar in the cellars below.

  As I reached the door of the library, Lord Williamson emerged, looking flushed. We almost collided. He muttered an apology and hurried past me down the broad flight of stairs.

  I entered the library, closed the door softly, and sank back against it. After a moment I made a cautious way down the center aisle between the cubicles, looking to right and left, conscious of the squeak of my shoes at every step.

  When I was sure I was alone, I sat down in the history section. Slowly I let my glance fall across the spines of the books on the shelves, savoring the smell of musty bindings and waxed wood. I looked at the ceiling for some minutes, summoning memories, then heard footsteps.

  A moment later, Faye's husband, Jonathan, shambled into view, stoop shouldered, heading for the door. He had almost passed when he shot a glance at me. He paused, straightened, looked at me impassively.

  "Too late to have regrets," he said, slurring the words. "We've done what we've done."

  He came closer, a bottle of port dangling loosely in his left hand. He swung it to his mouth for a quick swallow then offered it to me. I declined. What did Faye see in this man? He peered at me, swaying a little, then let his body fall back against a pillar a few inches behind him. Leaning there he smiled crookedly. "Graduand are you? Old boy. What year?"

  The bastard didn't even remember me. Well, two could play at that game.

  "I am. Were you?" I said. "I'm afraid I don't remember you."

  "No need for fear," the man replied. "Askwith, Jonathan. I was in the fast set from Winchester. You would have only seen our taillights. A little shit like you."

  Askwith took another swig from his bottle. I contemplated taking it from him and inserting it somewhere from where it would need to be surgically removed. Then I told myself the man was drunk and was in any case of no importance. Aside from the fact he was married to the woman who had broken my heart.

  He leaned forward to scrutinize me with bleary eyes. Then he pulled himself away from the pillar and up to his full height.

  "Oh it's you," he slurred. "The oik from Ramsbottom. Never knew what Faye saw in you. I mean what the fuck did you know? About anything? You were of such little consequence. And you haven't changed, I can see. You don't know what day it is. Now fuck off." He paused. "Better still, I'll fuck off."

  Askwith turned and shambled away. When he'd gone-I heard the door open and noisily close-I sat quietly for a second or two, my face burnin
g, before I followed him from the room.

  There was no sign of Faye or her bastard husband in the bar. Genevra, Bridget, Rex, and another bloke were ensconced at a table in a narrow alcove. I wasn't in the mood to join them so I went out into the quadrangle and walked round to the back gate of the college.

  It was a crisp night and my breath plumed before me as I walked to the car to get our things. Re-entering the quadrangle, loaded down with luggage-Bridget is one of the great travel divas who won't leave home without her vanity case and a trailer-full of clothes-I saw Askwith heading my way.

  I shrank back into the shadows-I had no wish to encounter him again-and he stumbled past me, heading in the direction of the chapel.

  I looked around me. The college was a product of the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century and at night in its Gothic grandeur was a sinister sight. Yellow light from narrow windows spilled onto the tangled ivy and the gravel paths below.

  Bridget and I were sharing rooms, a bedroom each with a study room in between. I put her luggage in her room and opened the bottle of cheap fizz I'd bought in case friends came back here. Sprawled on one of the cheap plastic chairs by the window, my feet on the windowsill, I took deep swallows of the wine and indulged myself with memories.

  As I watched, gowned and men straggled across the quadrangle. Those who were alone invariably paused to look around at the college, wanting by their concentration to make concrete old feelings and memories. I saw Genevra drift across the lawn, gazing up at the stars. Shortly after, Lord Williamson crossed the quad and disappeared into a stairwell.

  I fell into a doze, which Bridget disturbed when she came in.

  "You made a sneaky exit. We thought you were puking up in the lav. You okay?"

  "Fine," I said. "Thought you'd be with Rex."

  "Sharing rooms with Gennie. Didn't seem right."

  "Did you and he ever ..."

  "We had a fumble at a party once. You sound jealous."

  "Me? Not at all," I said. Though, bizarrely, I was.

  "So who was the Nicole Kidman lookalike? Your first shag?"

  "Who?"

  "The broad who slipped away when I came back with Gennie."

  "You noticed."

  "I miss nothing, pal, you should know that by now."

  "We never did actually."

  Bridget poured herself a glass of wine and plonked down in the sagging armchair. She yawned. "Tell me all about her then."

  So I did. The whole sad story. For some reason I remembered every detail. Looking out the window at the quad as I used to do during my time of greatest upset, I told Bridget things I thought I'd forgotten, holding nothing back.

  She didn't interrupt once, the sign of a good listener. She did, however, snore rather loudly, within moments of my starting, which is not such a good sign. I told her anyway-it is good to talk-and when I'd finished I got a blanket from her bed and tucked her in.

  I hauled myself into bed, leaving my dinner suit, shoes, and starched shirt in a tangle on the floor. Our scout-the college name for the servant who looks after the rooms-woke us at nine the following morning with the news that Jonathan Askwith had been found in the chapel in front of the picture of Holman Hunt's Light of the World. Dead in his own vomit.

  "It was murder of course," Bridget said as we drove back to London. I glanced across at her. We'd both been pretty subdued for the past hour. I was thinking about Faye; Bridget had a hangover the size of the traffic jam we encountered once we reached the M40/M25 intersection.

  "The guy choked on his own vomit," I said patiently. "You think someone induced it by sticking their fingers down his throat maybe? I can think of easier ways to off somebody."

  "If he'd passed out it would be easy enough," she said.

  "The guy was a boozer-you should have seen the way he was putting away the port. Happens all the time to big drinkers and druggies."

  "That's what you're supposed to think."

  "Bridget, I know together we've seen more than our share of deaths by violence, but why are you so insistent this was murder?"

  "Something was going on with him. You saw him when we arrived lurking in that doorway talking to someone."

  "I saw him, I didn't think you had."

  "Men in dinner jackets, remember?"

  Bridget had a thing about men in dinner jackets-found them irresistible. The effect had been muted the previous night because everyone was wearing gowns over their jackets, but Askwith, when we saw him outside, had not yet put his gown on.

  "The fact he was talking to someone doesn't mean he was murdered. He was talking to me in the library later but I didn't kill him."

  "What about?"

  "Nothing substantive-he was pissed."

  "Nothing substantive-that place really got to you didn't it?"

  Bridget hadn't been to university. She was brighter than most people I knew and better at arguinb or maybe I mean more argumentative-but it rankled with her, I knew. However many qualifications you do later, it never makes up for missing out straight from school. Add the fact this was Oxford we were talking about and it made her really edgy.

  "I just like to use the right words."

  Bridget snorted and looked out of her window.

  "I wonder if they have a time of death?" she murmured. She saw my questioning look.

  "I thought I saw someone coming out of the rectangle-"

  "Quadrangle."

  "Whatever-next to the chapel when I was coming back to our room."

  "Did you tell the police?" I said.

  "What and be kept waiting for three hours? I've got a hot date tonight. Anyway, I didn't see his face."

  "Do you want to come back to my crib first?" I said.

  "Your crib?" Bridget said. "Aren't you a bit old for a cot?"

  I blushed.

  "I'm trying to get hip," I said.

  "I think that went out with The Sweeney, dear," she said. "Can't. I've got to get to the gym."

  "Sex is the only exercise you need," Bridget used to say, and indeed exercise other than that involved in her regular shaggathons had always been anathema to her. She took the piss out of me no end for the exercise I do-sadly sex is not the only exercise I need, not the way I do it anyway. So I do a vigorous kind of yoga called astanga vinyasa that attracted tabloid attention some time ago when Madonna took it up.

  Admittedly, because of my height, I usually look like a giant spider suffering convulsions while doing it, but I've never found anything better for keeping in shape.

  But here was the new and staggering thing about Bridget-she had begun to exercise. We'd been in South America the previous year and she'd been toying with the idea of plastic surgery, partly because she'd been going out with men younger than herself and she was feeling self-conscious. I couldn't see why. She's only in her thirties and in good if slightly overweight shape.

  Then she had started using the gym almost as soon as we'd got back from Colombia. I couldn't figure out if it was some peculiar method of shutting out the fact that she'd killed a man at Machu Picchu in a rather gruesome way. She had never talked about it, seeming more concerned that on that same trip she'd slept with a murderous madman believing him to be someone else. She'd silenced me with a glance when I'd observed it wouldn't be the first madman she'd slept with.

  I hadn't seen much change in her except firmed-up arms. Since she had already been able to fell most men with a single blow-the benefits of that early convent education-I dreaded to think what havoc she could wreak now.

  I dropped her at Shepherds Bush tube so she could go over to her gym in the Barbican. It took me half an hour to find somewhere to park that was in the same borough as my flat. My car is a soft-top Karmann Ghia. It had belonged to my dad and I used it maybe six times a year; the rest of the time it was under tarpaulin.

  It would have been easier for me to take the train to Oxford from Paddington, but since it had been raining non-stop now since Christmas-almost six weeks-I was worried that the car would sim
ply rot under the tarpaulin if I didn't take it for a drive.

  In my apartment ... okay, joke, studio flat ... okay, room I dug out an old photo album from my university days and looked at Faye and me. There were a few of us on punting picnics. I was smiling but with a wary look in my eye.

  I'd gone to university only a few months after my dad had died of a heart attack, although basically he'd really died because his body was clapped out after years of drink and drug abuse. Oxford was a culture shock. I was a working-class punk from a single-parent, dysfunctional family and the only middle-class person I knew was the family doctor.

  I met Faye in the first week of my second year. We were both taking history, though in different colleges and years. She was in her first year at Lady Margaret. I don't know what it was that drew me to her, well aside from the fact she was a knockout. She was a quasi-hippy-a deeply unfashionable thing to be then-and I remember I had my dad's record collection, which was basically an A to Z of pop music from 1963 onward.

  I lent her old albums by the Incredible String Band, Love, Alan Stivell, and Fairport Convention, and she plaited her long Pre-Raphaelite hair and mooned around looking pale and winsome. Her skin seemed almost translucent-you could see thin blue veins pulsing beneath it.

  Her brother, Ralph/Rafe, was up at the same time, he was two years older but he was staying on to do a doctorate. He was gay and heavily into the whole Brideshead thing. The TV adaptation of the Waugh novel had a profound effect on young men and women at the time. Oxford was thronged with languid Sebastian clones clutching teddy bears experimenting with being gay. The young men, that is, not the teddy bears.

  These posers were quite happy to hang out in big woollies and college scarves wherever there were cocktails. If they had lighted sparklers sticking out of them, so much the better. You could get cocktails like that, too.

  Faye had a boyfriend on the Welsh Borders-she was always nipping off at weekends to Hergest Ridge up near Offa's Dyke-so I could only pine from afar, especially as it was difficult to cross over that friendship/lover divide. It wasn't until the final term of the second year that we really got together.