Masters And Lovers 1-4 novel Chapter 36

Michael

We make our way through undergrowth. The rampant rhododendrons have killed off any brambles and nettles, but completely unkempt and uncared for, they find ways to stab the unwary passer-by with the blunt ends of broken boughs, or to snag low-hanging branches, whippy and limp, around ankles. One jabs into Klempner’s calf and he curses, tearing his trousers as he pulls free. Another lashes back across my face with a sting that makes my eyes water.

As we emerge to the edge and thin sunshine, the house hoves into view. It’s a vast place, or was, a memory from the days when wealth meant a country estate, thousands of acres of land and a tribe of servants. Now, neglected and dismal, it’s home for not much more than a colony of starlings which rises and wheels and shrieks into the morning.

The roof we saw from afar is a sham, mainly collapsed inwards, purlins and struts either broken and splintered or gone altogether. The main walls, such as are still standing, are falling inwards, taking whole storeys with them. Trees sprout out through gaping windows and ivy crawls over crumbled mortar.

It would seem an unlikely hideaway, except that by what was once a vast double door to the front, is Ben’s car. But the only sign of life is Scruffy, sitting in the passenger seat.

“That dog likely to start yapping when it sees us?” mutters Baxter.

“I’ll go first,” I say. “He knows me. He’ll be quiet for me.”

“You sure of that?” murmurs Klempner.

“Pretty sure. But if he does make a noise and Ben comes out, he’ll only see me.”

“Is your brother likely to be armed? Does he carry a knife or some such?”

“No, he’s not that kind of man.”

Klempner opens his mouth to speak, but James cuts in. "He’s a big man, built like Michael. In his hands, a lot of things could be a weapon. A branch. A tyre iron…."

Klempner gives me a long look, then jerks his head towards the car. “Off you go then.”

Moving quickly, I leave the shelter of the rhododendrons, quickly crossing the ground to the car. Scruffy sits up as he sees me, ears perking, but doesn’t bark. "Hi there Scruffy. Shhh… Good Boy." His stubby tail beats a frenzied tattoo as I open the door and scratch his ears, but the only sound he makes is his whining as he licks my face.

I can’t see the others, but I gesture towards the shrubbery, waving them into the door. Within seconds, the three emerge, and as they cross to the door, I hold Scruffy’s attention with a search of the glove compartment. It produces a bag of dog chocs and a hide chew. I tip the lot into the footwell. “There you go, Scruffy. You enjoy those.”

The ragtag bombs down to floor level and I leave him happily knocking back enough treats for a Rottweiler. Closing the door quietly behind me, I join the others, waiting just inside the doorway.

*****

We find ourselves in what ought to be the interior of a house but with the general collapse, has become a kind of open courtyard, strewn with rubble, broken tiles and rotted timbers. The space is so large, perhaps it was once a ballroom. I cast my mind back for some memory, but it’s a long time since I was here, and the house was occupied then. Old McAlister didn’t let apple-scrumping boys inside.

“Doesn’t look very promising,” comments Klempner. “When were you last here?”

“Thirty years ago.”

“It seems a lot of damage for thirty years.”

“Probably had the lead stripped from the roof. Once that’s gone, the rest…”

James interrupts. “The cellars. A place like this would have had all the staff activity below ground and as often as not, the basement can be in good condition even when the house itself it in ruins.”

Klempner pulls a face. “You think?”

“Once the roof has gone, outer walls become unstable.” He gestures around to the collapsed grandeur about us. “They fall. Underground vaulted ceilings don’t. The arches remain stable.”

Klempner absorbs this, nodding. “Where would you say the entrance would be to these cellars?”

“Usually at the back, away from the family and the ‘front door’ guests.”

Klempner clucks. ”Sounds reasonable. Want to lead the way, Mr Architect?”

James scans ahead. “Over there, I’d say.” He points towards a heap of fallen masonry where, just beyond, a flight of stone steps rises six feet into the air, then ends in nothing.

His instinct is good. As we make our way across, a patch of mud shows boot prints and…

James halts, his colour rising. “I’m going to have that bastard…” He moves forward again, stepping over what are unmistakably, droplets of blood.

“That’s the spirit,” mutters Klempner.

The stairs rise into nothing but drop into the darkness. The floor gapes, but the steps downward are in good condition.

“I’ll lead,” says Klempner. “Baxter, stay by the door here. Keep your eyes peeled but come down if you hear us with trouble.”

“Sir.”

Weapon at the ready, Klempner descends, at first cautiously, a step at a time, ducking to see into the gloom below. Quickly, James and I follow.

At the bottom, we find ourselves at the end of a long corridor, running the length of the house, doors off to left and right. Dim sunshine slants through some of the doors.

The arches James anticipated stand as thick columns to either side of the corridor, maybe twenty feet apart, rising to meet at a curved apex and blending in to the vaulted stonework of the ceiling. We stand tucked behind the thickness of one column, away from the betraying silhouette of the stairs.

“Spot on so far,” says Klempner. “How are these places usually laid out inside?”

“Typically,” says James, “you would have kitchens at this end near the stairs for service, connected to stores, butchery, buttery and the butler’s pantry at the far end. There’s probably a laundry too. And depending on when anyone last spent any money on it, there could be a boiler room.”

“Connected? So, the rooms are likely to have more than one door?”

“Probably.”

Klempner sniffs. “Michael, stay by me. James, watch our back.” He glances at the gun in James’ hand. “You okay with that?”

He purses his lips. “No, I can’t say I’m comfortable with it.”

“Learn to live with it.” Klempner glances left and right, then almost slides against the wall to the first door.

It’s standing ajar; admitting a little light which flickers and sways across the walls. Standing away from the entrance, he pushes it back, peers around then steps through.

I stand by the door as James follows him in, walking through drifts of leaves and a thin skin of mud, under a slit of a window at ceiling level. Any glass is long gone, but sunshine and fresh air filter through.

A series of vast troughs run down the centre of the space, the broken remains of what might have once been wash-boards scattered inside. A fetid mattress occupies one corner, its cover split and the contents spilling over the flag floor, next to ancient beer cans and waxed cartons, decayed and chewed.

A door on one wall is closed, the bolt drawn. Klempner gives it a cursory glance. “Rusted closed by the look of it.”

“And not a footprint in sight but ours,” says James.

“Come on. Next one.” Again, Klempner leads, sliding along the wall, eyes in all directions before he reaches the next door. This one’s closed, but there is no resistance as he turns the handle. Once more, we follow him through.

“I think we have your boiler room.”

A vast rusted confusion of pipes, chambers, dials, levers and tanks rambles the space, looking like something from one of the cheaper 1950s ‘mad scientist’ movies. The same thin sludge of mud gathers in slight hollows over the flags.

“No footprints again,” comments James.

Doors lead from both ends of the room; one apparently the backside of the chamber we just left, the other standing open on the wall opposite.

As one, we head through.

The vault-light in here is covered over by something, fallen masonry perhaps, and it’s all but dark. But the bare skeletons of drying rails dangle from the ceiling, their cords rotted and fraying.

“There’s nothing in here…” begins James…

A scream…

And a crashing sound…

… and a series of yells…

Charlotte!

But the scream was a male voice.

Sprinting back out, Klempner halts at the door to the corridor, two hands clamped around the grip of his weapon, arms outstretched, swinging one way, then the other, up and down the passage.

He halts, muttering, “Stupid bastard.” Another look along the corridor and he heads back the way we came.

Baxter lies at the bottom of the stairs, face-down, motionless. I press two fingers to his neck.

“Is he alive?” Klempner’s squats down by the prone figure, frisking the body, patting down legs and around the torso.

“Yup, he’s alive. Pulse is strong… You don’t seem very sympathetic.”

Still searching the body, Klempner replies in curt tones, “He’s supposed to be a professional. He’s let himself be taken out by a complete amateur. He doesn’t deserve sympathy.”

He feels at the back of the body, pulls out a knife from its sheath then shoves it under a trouser leg and into the top of a boot. He checks the pockets of the jacket and extracts a hip flask. Unscrewing it, he takes a gulp then offers up it to me, brows raised.

“No, thanks.”

James speaks. “He was armed when we came down…”

Klempner stands, pocketing the flask. “He was, yes. But he’s not now, so I think we can assume brother Ben is.” He turns to me. “Does he know how to use a gun?”

“Not that I know of.”

He nods, scanning into the gloom. “Come on. Let’s find the women.”

There’s no sign of Ben. Our own footsteps echo and reverberate against hard stone walls and the curve of the vaulting. We start with the first door on the opposite side of the corridor.

As James predicted, it’s the old kitchens, from the days when servants were ‘below stairs’. Now dim and gloomy, in their day, food for a host could have come from here.

At the far end there is, not a door but an opening, wide enough to allow the passage of huge trays or trolleys, but James drops his eyes to the flags, pointing. A trail of droplets, black in the poor light, leads across the flags to the opening and beyond. There’s a sound, a cough perhaps, but not quite; more of a cough muffled.

“Careful!” hisses Klempner, but James is striding forward and I’m with him.

We charge in to the room beyond. There’s nothing here but slabs and shelves and ceiling hooks. But frantic Mmmming is coming from the door beyond.

And there we find them; Mitch and Charlotte. They’re sitting on the floor; naked stone that radiates chill through flesh and bone. Their bodies pressing close together, both are bound, their hands behind them, taped tight, digging into flesh. Their ankles, the same, and their mouths too; great wreaths of tape wrapping around face and head over skin and hair.

Mitch has a swelling eye which merges with the bruising to a cheekbone. Charlotte dribbles blood from one nostril. It trickles the length of her body, congealed and black on her clothing, welling fresh at the top as she snuffles and coughs.

Two pairs of green eyes blink and run with joy and relief as James and I enter. But then as Klempner appears behind us, Charlotte’s eyes widen.

Mitch’s widen more. A muffled gurgle comes from behind the tape.

I raise a finger to my mouth, keeping my voice low, but the sound whispers around the chamber. “He’s with us. Was it Ben?”

Both women nod vigorously.

James kneels by Charlotte, working at the tape biting into her wrists. I start on Mitch, trying to free her mouth so she can speak, the layered tape gripping tightly to itself and tangled into her long locks.

Klempner watches. “Hello, Mitch.” Despite the raised weapon, his fighting stance, his eyes are soft. Then to me. “Hands first, then she can free herself if she needs to.”

He remains at the door we entered by, gun in hand, semi-raised, looking back but also watching the two other entrances. Mitch’s eyes are like searchlights, following his every movement.

“I can’t get the fucking stuff off,” I mutter. “It’s so tightly wound and it’s knotted.”

“Here, let me,” says Klempner. He slots the gun back into a holster under his jacket and instead, produces a knife from somewhere at the back of his belt.

It’s not the small knife he appropriated from Baxter. This blade must be eight inches long; jagged-toothed, wicked-looking, coming to a fine point at the end. Mitch whimpers as he approaches, trying to press back against the wall.

He looks almost puzzled at her reaction, but as I eye-point the knife his eyes widen then soften again. He lowers his hand.

Hunkering down by us, he says, “It’s good to see you again, Mitch.” She’s trembling violently and I’m watching both the blade in his hand and Klempner himself; his movements, his tone, his body-language. But there’s no threat there, no sense of ill-intent.

He crouches close by her, offers the blade to the tape binding her hands, then hesitates. “I’m doing this now,” he says, “because I know you won’t let me after you’re freed.”

Leaning over, he kisses her forehead, cups a swollen cheek with his free hand. He holds the position for a second, then squats back, raises the blade again and saws through the layers of tape, first her wrists, then her ankles.

He reaches for the tape over her face, but she recoils as his hand comes close. He blinks then backs off. “You do it,” he says, passing me the knife, handle first. He rises, takes out the gun again and returns to watching the doors.

It takes only seconds to ungag Mitch and, one eye on Klempner, she shakes blood into her fingers and rubs at her feet, twitching.

I help her stand. “You okay?”

“Pins and needles. It’ll go.”

I turn to where James is still working on Charlotte. Offering the knife, “Here, use this.” But as he reaches to take it, there’s a movement off-side.

Klempner whirls, gun outstretched, but before he completes the movement, there’s a shot. The sound reverberates around the chamber and there’s a Crack!, the spit of dust and a small shower of splinters by the stone wall near Charlotte.

Mitch screams. “Quick, behind there.” I push her back behind a wall column, supporting its arch, but now the ideal shield against bullets…

If we know where they’re coming from…

James is doing the same for the still-bound and sitting Charlotte, shoving her under a sort of stone slab table-cum-cupboard, shielding her with his body…

… as he did once before…

And almost paid the ultimate price…

The room is too open, with entrances to three sides. And with Charlotte still bound we can’t run.

From the darkness beyond the door we came in by, a movement; the scrape of leather on stone. Mitch scrabbles to the far side of the column. Klempner spins, gun aimed but once more there’s a shot and…

From somewhere comes a yell. And with a shock, I realise it’s my own voice.

Fuck!

“Michael.” It’s Charlotte, screaming. “Oh, God! Michael!”

Pain blooms through my arm and reflexively I grab at the wound, blood oozing through my fingers and down my arm.

Klempner is firing back, one shot after another, giving chase to the sound of retreating footsteps and then a slamming door.

He marches back. “He got you?”

“Yes.”

Nausea swirls in my gut. And it’s not just from the pain.

Ben…

My own brother…

James is madly working to free Charlotte from the tape. Mitch emerges from her shelter. “Let me look.”

“No, let me,” says Klempner. “I’ve seen more of this than any of you.” He doesn’t holster the gun but shoves it in his belt. “Take your shirt off.”

My spine bristles. “I’m not sure I need your help.”

He tilts his head, giving me an old look. “I’m guessing I’ve handled more bullet wounds than you.”

“Don’t be a idiot,” says James from floor level, as he slashes at tape tangled into Charlotte’s hair. “He was a mercenary in God-knows-where. He knows what he’s talking about.”

“You’re still telling me he’s supposed to be on our side?”

Klempner rolls up his sleeves. “Remind me who it was just shot you. Your brother wasn’t it?”

My brother…

My hands are clumsy, shaky. Mitch unbuttons my shirt. Klempner peers at the wound, upper arm, just below my shoulder. “You were lucky. Just a flesh wound. It’s not hit anything important. The bullet's lodged under the skin.” He peers at it then snaps fingers at the bloodstained shirt. “Give me that. Close those doors and keep an eye on them.”

Wordlessly, Mitch passes the bloody garment to him. Klempner holds it up, inspecting the entry point against what light there is. He pokes a finger through a small circular hole in the linen, then wipes his fingers on a clean bit. “Thought so. Unless a shot kills you outright, most injuries that kill you do so from infection. It’s not the bullet that does it. That’s red-hot as it goes it. But it carries whatever the victim was wearing in with it, and that festers.”

He meets my eye. “It’s got to come out. Find something to bite on. This is going to hurt. Who’s got the knife?”

James hands it over then unbuckles his belt. Folding it double, he offers it to my mouth. Klempner retrieves the hip flask from his pocket, splashing what smells like whiskey over the blade.

With a kind of horrified fascination, I watch as he brings the knife close. His eyes rise to mine. “You might find this easier if you looked away.”

I’m letting a mass murderer at me with a knife that would take out an elephant…

But I don’t look away.

After a moment he clicks his tongue. “Have it your own way.” And he offers the point to the wound again.

Despite myself, I flinch.

“Try to relax. I’m not going for your jugular. Now bite.”

I clamp down on the leather, a gasp escaping as Klempner digs in. Air hisses over my teeth as he probes. “Hurts doesn’t it?” he remarks, almost conversationally.

Another hiss is my only reply as he digs deeper.

“I didn’t mean the injury itself,” he says. “I meant being attacked by someone who should be family, a protector. Someone you can rely on.”

Pausing in his movements, his eyes rise to meet mine. “I know what that feels like. And what it feels like too when those you love are stripped away from you.” Mitch shifts, listening, moving a little closer.

“Wfff fcckkkyyy tkkknng btssss??” Teeth gritted over the belt, I can’t get the words out, but James saves me the trouble.

“What are you talking about, Klempner?”

His gaze flicks to Charlotte, then back to where he is working. “You asked me once who was the first man I killed. I told you it was my father and that it wasn’t murder. It was self-defence.”

Charlotte regards him warily. Mitch moves closer still, intent.

“What I didn’t tell you…” he continues… “because then, I didn’t remember it myself, was what happened to my mother.”

Mitch says, “You thought she’d abandoned you. Your father told you that.”

Klempner’s eyes linger on her, then return to where he is easing the knife point into the entry-hole. Pain lances through me and I gulp it down.

“So he did, but… Michael… turn that way, towards the light…” I shift a little, spots dancing behind my eyes.

Klempner continues. “Yes, he told me she’d gone. Left me behind. Didn’t want me. But that day at the prison, the day I realised Jenny was mine, the memory returned that night.”

James inhales. “You dreamed it?”

Klempner’s eyes flick to him, then back again. His wrist twists and lifts, taking the knife with it. “Nightmare would be more accurate. My mother didn’t abandon me. She died defending me, from him. He was beating me. Punching me. Kicking me. I was… maybe four or five. She stopped him. He beat her bloody, then left. She took me to bed with her and in the night…”

He takes a breath, swallows. “He didn’t return for several days. I’m not sure how long. But it was hot.” He swallows again. “I don’t remember too much. But I do remember the flies… And the maggots... I ate from the kitchen trash. But I couldn’t reach up to the basin, so I used the lavatory for water… Ah… got it.”

With a surprisingly delicate manoeuvre, on the tip of the blade, he eases out a small blood-soaked something. Passing the knife back to James, he fiddles with the thing, unfolds it to a cent-sized circle, then holds it against the shirt.

“Got it all. You’re pretty healthy. The wound wouldn’t have done you lasting damage. But that might have.”

“What about the bullet?”

“Doc can take it out when you get to a hospital.” He splashes a little of the whiskey over the wound…

Fuck!

Jeez… that stings…

… fishes in a pocket, pulls out a handkerchief. “We’ve hung on here too long.”

Folding the handkerchief, he casts around. “Mitch…” He snaps fingers at the discarded tape lying on the floor. She nods understanding, peeling off a strip.

Klempner presses the linen pad against the wound. “Hold that for a second.” Then he winds a couple of loops of tape around it while I hold it in position. “Not perfect, but it'll do til you get to a medic,” he mutters. “Should stop you bleeding over everything, anyway. Leaving a trail for your beloved brother. Get your shirt back on.”

“Klempner.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now let’s get out of here.” As he takes his weapon from its holster once more, Mitch’s eyes follow him.

*****