Your Royal Hostage (19 page)

Only a short while after the Princess's body had been taken from the Opera House, Monkey ar
rived back at his flat in South
Eaton Place. There Carmencita, his Spanish housekeeper, had laid out a cold supper for two: she, like Monkey, entertained secret sentimental hopes of the sweet little Miss Quentin even if she was
a
bit young for her stately employer (and needed fattening up -but then Carmencita would do that). Composedly, Monkey sat down to eat both portions of the cold supper. There was only
a
slight tremble in his hands and that he cured by draining a small glass of brandy more or less at a gulp before he began to eat.

Chicken, dressed once more in her inconspicuous clothes (Monkey would now dispose of the jacket and tiara as Pussy had disposed of the saris en route), walked to Victoria and hailed
a
taxi home. She left Monkey to work his way through gazpacho and cold Spanish pancakes: unlike Lamb, he needed no fattening up but Carmencita was such an excellent cook, particularly now she had been trained to vegetarianism, that it seemed a pity to waste the food. He was magisterially confident that he, the master planner, knew where all the members of the cell were. It had gone right and in the morning Innoright would deliver their demands. At least, it had gone
almost
right: but already under the influence of the brandy and some excellent burgundy, Monkey was beginning to forget about the injuries to the detective. Sooner or later, he would fit that into the scheme of things, as he had fitted in the death of Tom: part of the means which the noble end justified.

Momentarily however the trembling had returned: Monkey drank some more burgundy - from the other glass, forgetting in his temporary agitation that Lamb never touched alcohol. Now he was restored. He put down his glass and raised one eyebrow: for a moment he looked purely simian, a very clever ape indeed.

But Monkey did not know where all the members of the cell were. He did not for example know where Lamb herself was. He imagined that when the hue and cry at the Opera House itself was over, the immediate horror of the abduction understood if not accepted, she would be taken together with that unnervingly correct sister (now she would be an obstacle to his romantic dreams) back to their Chelsea flat.

That was not the case.

'What the hell are you doing here?' asked Beagle, coldly furious. 'You could have got yourself shot coming to the door like that. He's a bloody maniac, our Foxy.' Beagle hesitated; in spite of his anger his voice remained low. He pointed to the ceiling. Lamb imagined masked Fox and masked Pussy, the former still armed, holding the Princess captive under the sad gaze of the wide-eyed seals in the blown-up photographs.

'Look at you,' he went on, taking her thin bare arm in his fingers. 'Wearing a fucking crown through the streets of London' - with his other hand he touched the tiara - 'No coat. This is the English summer, oka
y? Not your favourite Port-oh-fe
eno.' (Lamb had once unwisely revealed her predilection for the Italian resort.) 'Dress which reveals your boobs, if you
had
any boobs.'

Lamb's eyes were enormous in her pale face. 'I wanted to be with you,' she began, and then altered it to: 'I wanted to be of help.'

'Obey orders, my dear Miss Lamb, obey orders. That's the way to be of help.' Beagle mimicked Monkey. Nevertheless the anger was fading and he relaxed his grip on her arm. 'You're shivering. Better put on something else. I'll get you some jeans and a jersey from upstairs. Even though you'll swim in them. It's bad enough having our little Madam looking like something out of a bodice-ripping movie without you too.'

'How is - she?' Lamb found her lips were too dry to pronounce Princess Amy's name and her heart was pittering very rapidly as she watched Beagle's reaction.

'The patient is as well as can be expected. Phew! Am I glad to leave my mask off?' He made towards Lamb as if to pull the stocking down over her head. 'Do you want to go up and have a look? I'll prepare you for the operating theatre.'

Lamb shrank back. 'No, no, I don't want to - besides it's far too dangerous.'

'Dangerous!' Beagle gave a short low laugh. 'That's rich. Do you realize what Foxy has gone and done? He's shot a fucking policeman. That little wimp, didn't know he had it in him, did I? In short, darling, that's torn it. We're for it. They'll never let
us get away with that. Oh yes, darling, kidnapping a Princess to call attention to a good cause is one thing, particularly if we treat her nice; shooting a policeman is quite another. He hasn't even chucked his gun away: mine went down a fucking drain right away.'

He whistled. 'Oh, we're for it all right, the lot of us. Including that pompous bastard, Monkey - he's got his eye on you. by the way, hasn't he? The only question is. how we go - and who we take with us. And what we do before we go. I've a few plans meself.'

Pussy appeared silently at the door of the barred and shuttered ground-floor room, which had the outward appearance of a small grocer's shop in disrepair. In fact, it was not in disrepair but very well prepared. Behind the dusty tins lay fresh new ones, the deep 
freeze was working and stocked with supplies
Lamb had a
moment to think how specially gross Pussy looked in her mask (unconsciously echoing the earlier thoughts of Princess Amy) before Pussy took it off.

'Lamb!' she exclaimed, crossly.

'Leave her be. Puss.' Lamb was relieved to find that Beagle now sounded protective. 'She can't go upstairs but she can stand guard down here. When she's got some proper clothes on and got rid of all this tat.' He touched the tiara again. 'What happens to this, then?'

'I'm going to se
ll it and give the proceeds to Innori
ght,' said Lamb, with a defiant look at Pussy.

'There's a good girl. Now Pussy, that lets you and Fox get on with the delivery of the demands: two heads being better than one. You've got to ring Monkey at the agreed lime and the telephone here has been disconnected as you know. Why don't you take Fox to your flat? You've never been connected as a pair."

'He wants to be alone with her.' The thought flashed unbidden: Princess Amy with her bodice ripped.
...

Pussy frowned. Latterly her original dislike of Beagle had faded in favour of an irrational dislike of Lamb: it was irrational, for Lamb, unlike Beagle, had humbly sought to placate the sombre older woman. Lamb was not to know that Pussy's unstable loves and hates, all springing from her daughter's death, had now veered
round and focused on young upper-class women who played with the cause, leaving Caro-Otter to die for it. (For that was how Pussy had now come to view Otter's death in the car crash.) Young upper-class women such as Lamb.

Another thing that Lamb did not know about Pussy was that, with the intuition of another obsessive character, she had easily caught a whiff of Lamb's jealous fears concerning Beagle.

'Just as you say, dear,' replied Pussy to Beagle with something like a smile. (Pussy's smile, thought Lamb, always had something unpleasant about it, even at the best of times.) 'You take over upstairs, throw down the clothes for our little Lamb here, or send them down with that naughty Mr Fox. After what happened, he probably shouldn't be here anyway, I'm sure I don't know what Monkey will say about
him.
That'll leave the lovebirds together,' she added.

What lovebirds? asked the now awakened monster in Lamb's breast. What lovebirds does she mean? Pussy's smile was by now positively malevolent. 'No more violence, mind. Protect the innocent. Don't forget.'

When Fox came down bearing a pair of Beagle's jeans and a khaki jersey, it came quite naturally to Lamb to say to him: 'Look, Fox, give me your gun. You shouldn't be found carrying that thing. I'll look after it.'

'Careful how you handle it, it's still loaded. I'm not sure how many I've fired.' Fox still sounded almost blithe on the subject.

'I'll get ri
d of it, I mean,' said Lamb. 'It's nice to think that for once I can do something really helpful.'

Once she was alone, Lamb sat with the pistol listening for the sounds which might come from the room upstairs, the room where Beagle and Princess Amy were now also alone - alone with each other.

'What are you going to do with me?' Then: 'This won't work, you know. You won't get away with it.' Finally: 'I think you had just better let me go.'

To her surprise. Princess Amy managed quite a creditably imperious tone: which was what she intended. The tears which the loss of the sapphire earring had temporarily evoked were gone. She had no intention of giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing her crying again - if she could help it. Was it acting pure and simple, or an imitation of her revered if notoriously tet
chy father? Not acting: I
was never any good at acting at school.' she thought, 'and as for imitating Daddy, well, I can't even begin to imagine Daddy in this situation. He'd have
exploded
long ago.' Even in her present dire situation, the idea of the late Duke of Cumberland captured by terrorists after an Opera Gala had a certain grim humour about it.

‘I
suppose I'm behaving like
their
idea of a Pr
incess,' thought Princess Amy. ‘I
only hope I can keep it up. Goodness knows, I'm not being treated like one.'

‘I
'm going to let you sleep.' Beagle spoke in a voice which was both reasonable and distinct, so that unlike Pussy he did not sound, as well as look, menacing.

'Sleep! Where?'

Beagle pointed to the large low bed in the corner of the room.

‘I
assure you I have no intention of sleeping. Not with you in the room. As a matter of fact' - and as Princess Amy spoke she decided it was true - 'as a matter of fact, I'm hungry.'

'You can have food. We have food. You can even have a drink if you like. Wine, and I believe there's some whisky. The vintage may not be what you're used to -'

‘I
never drink,' interrupted Amy coldly. 'My mouth hurts. I would like a drink of water.'

Beagle went to the basin and poured out some water into a china mug with the Innoright logo on it. Princess Amy made a grimace.

'I assure you it's quite clean,' he said.

'How do you expect me to drink it like this? Please undo my hands. I shan't try to escape. I'll give you - my parole, I think it's called.'

Beagle considered. Amy's ankles were bound as were her hands: she was also bound to the white chair in which she sat, the single chair in the room. Shouting would get her nowhere above the deserted shop. It seemed safe enough to comply (despite Monkey's explicit instructions to the contrary); besides which, he had his own reasons for wishing to do so. He undid the ropes round Princess Amy's wrists and handed her the cup of water which she gulped down.

'Will you try to sleep if I get you some food? It's better for you. You've got to wait till morning anyway.'

'Wait for what? What do you want anyway? You're the same people who took those horrible photographs. You must be. Who are you?'
Amy's glance wandered to the blown-up pictures of the sea
ls on the walls. 'Did you take t
hese?' Beagle nodded.

'So it was probably you who photographed
them
-' she thought. No, she mustn't let herself dwell on that, not think about Ferdel. Oddly enough it was the thought of Ferdel - where was he? what was happening to him? would he try to rescue her? or was that only in fairy stories? - which had produced her sudden rush of tears earlier. 'Who are you?' she repeated instead.

'Innoright.' He turned the logo on the mug towards her. 'And we are the same people who took the photographs. Innoright: protection of the innocent. That's what it's all about. Now how do you feel about that, Your Royal Highness?' The title sounded vaguely sarcastic on Beagle's lips.

'You know how I feel about it,' replied Amy with spirit; she found that talking - rather than thinking - was reviving her. She just wished that this unknown young man (she assumed he was quite young from the style of his clothes) would take his mask off. All the masks, including his, were so creepy. 'I said all those things on television. I
love
animals. Everyone knows I love animals. Besides, it's nothing to do with me. Talk about protecting the innocent! I
am
innocent,' concluded Princess Amy firmly.

'You're a Royal, aren't you? Where the innocent are concerned you're a royal symbol of oppression.'

'Are you sort of Communists?' ventured Princess Amy, her tone beginning to waver: this kind of language was both more familiar and more worrying. 'I mean, as well as being terribly keen on animal rights,' she added hurriedly.

'Personally, I'm a keen monarchist,' replied Beagle. 'And I'm specially keen on princesses. And out of princesses, I'm specially keen on you, Your Royal Highness. Or should I say My Royal