Twelve

“Who are you?” Rex stumbled to his feet only to be pushed back down on the window seat by the man in the blue pullover.

Before he could react, his hands were brusquely bound behind his back, and when he struggled, his assailant pulled out a jagged knife from the front pocket of his jeans and snarled at him to be still. With his free hand he looped one end of the rope around Rex’s neck and tightened the noose. Rex’s head jerked back and he could no longer utter a word.

The man crouched on the carpet and proceeded to tie Rex’s ankles together. At that moment, the buzzer sounded in the hall and he spun around towards the door and cocked an ear.

He glanced over his handiwork and, apparently satisfied, crept into the hall. Rex watched as best he could, but the rope kept him in a stranglehold.

“Who is it?” his kidnapper asked, out of his sight.

Rex could not hear the answer. The man asked if the visitor was alone. The buzzer went again. Did the man have an accomplice? Rex began to panic in earnest. Were they going to take him away and dump his body somewhere? The rope bit mercilessly into his neck, and he could not move his wrists or ankles. Even if he managed to get to his feet, he wouldn’t be able to walk, let alone run. He heard the front door open and a familiar voice demand, “Where is he?”

“In there,” the man answered as the door closed. “Why don’t you join us?”

Rex heard a surprised cry, halfway between a groan and a shout, and then the sound of two men engaged in a fist fight. He remembered the knife in the man’s possession and feared for his friend’s life. He attempted to warn him, but no sound he managed to produce proved loud enough.

A series of punches ensued and one of the men slammed into a wall with a grunt. Rex awaited the outcome in silent anguish and agony as he forcibly struggled against the coarse rope, chaffing his neck and wrists. He heard the wrenching open of the front door, followed by the thud of footsteps retreating down the stone stairway. Alistair burst into the room and stopped short when he saw Rex.

“What happened to you, old fruit?”

Rex made an impatient sound in his throat and squirmed within the confines of the rigging.

“Hold still while I loosen this.” Alistair inspected the rope. “You look like a trussed up Christmas turkey. How on earth did you get into this bind?”

Rex all but gagged when his neck was freed. He touched tentative fingers to his scorched neck.

“I should go after him,” Alistair said before Rex could get a word out of his mouth. His colleague tore out of the room as Rex attempted to gather his dulled wits.

Alistair returned ten minutes later, gasping for breath, one hand supporting himself against the wall of primitive exhibits, dislodging a tomahawk. “No sign of Pruitt in any direction. He’ll no doubt be back at some point. Why in God’s name did he attack you?”

“It’s not Pruitt. Can you help untie my feet? My fingers are still tingling,” Rex all but wheezed, wiggling his numb extremities. “I have poor circulation.”

Alistair knelt on the floor. “In that case, he probably wouldn’t have risked parking too close, if he drove here,” he said, bending his head to the task of freeing Rex’s feet. “Anyway, I alerted the police. That rope left a nasty mark on your neck. He almost choked you!”

Rex sat doubled over, massaging his ankles. “How did you get here so fast?” he asked through a dry mouth. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, of course.” He would have hugged his friend, if only he could have stood up on his own.

“The fencing match was cancelled. My opponent has the flu. I was in the car when you rang. I tried phoning you back, but … ” He trailed off, seeing Rex’s smashed mobile on the floor. “Luckily I found the bit of paper you wrote the address on discarded in the courtyard. Tsk-tsk, Rex. Littering!” Alistair stood over him, grinning like a fool.

“It must have fallen from my pocket,” Rex protested feebly.

“You don’t look well, old chum. And you sound drunk.”

“He put something in my whisky. I feel disorientated. It’s not the alcohol, I assure you. Only the rope cutting into my flesh helped prevent me from falling asleep.”

Alistair pulled Rex up from the window seat and prodded his unsteady friend into the bathroom.

“The wallpaper’s moving,” Rex said in wonder. “I’ve never seen wallpaper do that before.”

“It’s not a novelty,” Alistair told him. “He must have slipped you a hallucinogenic. My guess would be some sort of prescription sleep aid.”

He forced Rex to throw up in the WC, after which Rex splashed his face with cold water from the basin. He looked at Alistair in the brightly lit mirror. “You don’t look much better yourself. I heard you fighting in the hall.”

Alistair regarded his handsome face, where a large red mark was blossoming over the left cheekbone.

“You should put some ice on that,” Rex advised. “You can’t go into court looking like you’ve been in a brawl. My collar and falls will cover my rope burn.”

“The bruise is nothing.” Alistair opened the panels of his coat. “That bastard lunged at me with a knife. Fortunately I was wearing my fencing jacket underneath, and the knife barely penetrated. At most I’ll have a scratch.”

“You’re a lucky devil, Alistair Frazer.”

“So are you. What would have happened if I hadn’t been driving by Ramsay Garden?”

“I dread to think. I hope the police hurry up so we can leave.”

His friend propelled him into the kitchen and plied him with glass upon glass of water from the tap. Rex drank thirstily, much as it hurt when he swallowed.

“He took care to rinse his glass.” Alistair indicated the whisky tumbler on the draining board. “What about yours, I wonder?”

“He served it to me on a tray. My glass won’t have his prints on it if he used a tea towel when filling it.”

“If that wasn’t Pruitt, I wonder who he is and where Pruitt is.”

“Search me,” Rex said, woozy still and reaching for a chair to hold on to for balance.

“The butcher’s block here is intact. He may have brought the knife with him. Sit tight while I take a look around.”

Rex did just that, his head flopping into his hands. He heard Alistair call out to him a few minutes later. Rex struggled to his feet and staggered towards his friend’s voice, which had come from a room down the hall. “What is it?”

“I found Pruitt.” Alistair was leaning into the fitted closet of a spare bedroom where none of the walls were the same size and the ceiling sloped steeply towards the window. Rex could not be sure whether this was by architectural design or if he was still reeling from the effects of his spiked drink, but at least the flowered Laura Ashley wallpaper was not moving.

“His hands are bound behind his back,” he heard Alistair say. “His throat’s been punctured. You’d better not look in your state. I think his attacker must have forced him in here before killing him. I didn’t find blood anywhere else in the flat.”

Rex’s knees buckled beneath him and he keeled onto the double bed, whose floral duvet matched the walls.

Some time later, he felt someone shaking him. “Wake up, Rex. Wake up! He’s alive. I need your help. Can you get up?”

Rex groaned and nodded groggily. “I was in a nightmare where I was being suffocated by giant flowers.”

Alistair pulled him to his feet and together they lifted the injured man out of the closet, where he had lain with his chin on his chest, and moved him onto the bed.

“I called for an ambulance,” Alistair murmured while examining the man’s injured neck above the blood-drenched bow tie, which he removed. “Can you fetch some clean towels from the bathroom?”

On unsteady feet, Rex did as instructed. Alistair administered what emergency aid he could and assigned Rex the task of summoning the police again. Rex fumbled with Alistair’s phone, pressing triple nine into it with exaggerated precision, and tried to deliver a coherent message.

The man lay motionless on the bed, his face ashen and his eyes closed, his breathing low and laboured. Alistair had wrapped a towel around his neck. He was asking for information about the assailant, but his patient remained unresponsive.

“His pulse is very weak,” Alistair said. “John would know what to do, but he’s not answering. He must be out on a call.” He gazed over the prostrate man. “He is Richard Pruitt. I found his driving licence. I wish he could speak.”

Rex was not surprised to have his identity confirmed. He more resembled the man he remembered from the news coverage ten years ago than the nondescript intruder who had served him the whisky. “He may be in shock, or else his throat might be damaged,” he told Alistair. “I’m not sure there’s much more you can do.”

“How about you? You seem a little more lucid.”

“It’s an effort to keep my eyes open, but the fog’s beginning to lift.”

The police and ambulance arrived soon after at the same time. Rex and Alistair gave their statements and waited in the hall while the paramedics strapped Pruitt to a gurney in preparation for the descent down the steps to the car park.

Alistair pointed to the walls. “There are spaces where photos of the real Pruitt presumably were, which the pretend Pruitt didn’t want you to see. Didn’t that alert you to something being wrong?”

“Why would it? I didn’t know they might be photos of Pruitt. I thought he was redecorating. You’re always moving stuff around in your house. You’re a right Martha Stewart.”

“Touché.”

When the detective, a harried and abrupt chief inspector by the name of Pete Lauper, was finished with his questions, the two men left the flat and Alistair drove Rex home. He assured him he and John, his live-in partner, would pick up the Mini Cooper later.

So as not to alarm his mother, who sometimes waited up for him past her bedtime, Rex had draped his scarf around his bruised neck. He found her reading in the parlour, wrapped in a wool dressing gown. Bending to kiss her good night, he said he had been to dinner with his friend and would retire to his room directly, since it had been a long day.

Once upstairs, he made his nightly call to Helen, telling her the stamp dealer he had gone to see that evening was, for whatever reason, a marked man and was now being treated in hospital for a stab wound to the neck, dangerously close to the carotid artery.

“I just happened to wander into the aftermath,” he explained. “The intruder bolted when Alistair arrived,” which was not the whole story, but would have to suffice for now.

He had to tell her about the sedative in his drink, since he still sounded drunk, but postponed mentioning his being tied up and threatened with a knife. It would take too long and he would have to reassure her, and he didn’t feel he could last much longer.

He sat on his bed and undid his shoe laces with one hand, his other occupied by the phone. Lacking proper coordination, the manoeuver proved all the more difficult.

“But you’re okay?” Helen asked with concern.

“Grand. I just feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“You should go to the hospital and get yourself checked out, maybe have your stomach pumped,” she was saying. “Who knows what he put in your drink. And what if he’s caught and you want to press charges?”

“I don’t feel ill. I think it was only a strong sleeping pill crushed up in my whisky. Anyway, I can’t think of that now, lass.” He yawned and Helen reluctantly said she would let him go, but she made him promise to call her as soon as he woke up the next morning.

He got as far as removing his suit jacket before collapsing on the bed. Just as sleep came to claim him a memory surfaced, which he felt might be important. He must remember to ask Alistair, he thought frantically before finally succumbing to utter oblivion.