The Red Horse Read online

  I heard a flurry of voices from outside. It sounded like Robinson and the others were at the door, about to enter the foyer. I darted into a hallway, not wanting to draw attention to myself or answer any questions. My bootheels were loud on the tiled floor, and I scurried as quietly as I could to a small alcove in the center of the hallway. On a stairway, the walnut banisters gleamed brightly, polished by countless hands over the decades. Next to the stairs was a door, an engraved sign proclaiming it to be the entrance to the clock tower. no admittance.

  The door was wide open.

  It was as good as an invitation.

  I shut it behind me and walked up the narrow staircase. The stone steps were worn, and my footsteps echoed as I made my way, wondering what was going through Holland’s mind as he took his final steps. How had he gotten in? I knew the door was kept locked or was supposed to be.

  Perhaps someone had been working on the clock, or doing some other repair job, and left the door open. I stopped to catch my breath, took a gulp of air, and kept going. I could picture a workman panicking as he saw Holland at the top of the tower. Maybe he tried to bring him back down and Holland fought back. Maybe it was an accident. If so, the workman might have hightailed it, trying to avoid any blame.

  Or, was Holland murdered? Was that what Jenkins meant when he said I might find myself here permanent-like?

  I came to the top of the stairs. I opened the access door and stepped out. The Union Jack snapped loudly in the breeze above my head, startling me. The space was smaller than I’d imagined, taken up by beams that held the flagpole in place and the thick stonework of the battlements. I walked around, looking for a trace of evidence as the wind whipped at my face. Up here, the breeze would carry away any loose bit of fabric or paper.

  Had Holland left a note? Probably in his pocket. That’s where jumpers stashed them sometimes. I leaned over the edge, looking down at the spot where he’d landed. A small darkening stain and scuffed stones were the only vestige of Holland’s final act upon this earth. Who was he anyway? What demons delivered him here? And down there?

  From this vantage point, I could see the attraction. Vault over the wall and in seconds you’d have not a care in the world.

  I could also sense the fear. The trembling fear of being pursued, unable to speak, his voice tamped down into the darkest corner of his mind, cornered and pushed against the hard, cold stone.

  Hands grabbing him and hoisting him over.

  The scream silent inside his head.

  “Boyle.”

  I jumped. Not like Holland, but I jumped, my heart thumping at the surprise.

  “Step away from the wall, Boyle,” Robinson said. “Let’s go to my office and have a chat.”

  “Sure,” I said, walking around the flagpole, keeping my distance. I’d learned one thing, anyway. Dr. Robinson was light on his feet.

  Chapter Three

  “Have a seat, Boyle,” Robinson said. There was a couch in his office, but that seemed too melodramatic, so I took my usual spot in a worn leather armchair. Robinson had changed out of his lab coat and wore a nicely tailored Ike jacket. It fit his trim body well, which I guess was one of the benefits of having been a track star. As for the tailoring, that told me he had good taste and cared that people noticed. It occurred to me that I might already know more about him than he knew of me.

  Robinson picked up a pen and pad from his desk, sat himself in a straight-back chair, crossed his legs, adjusted his glasses, then looked at me. The man took his time getting settled, but maybe it was part of a psychiatrist’s routine. It gave him time to observe me, even while he fiddled with his pen.

  “Why are we here?” I asked. “Couldn’t it wait until two o’clock?” That’s when we had a session scheduled.

  “The army calls that 1400 hours, Boyle. You’re an officer. A captain with Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force.”

  “Yeah. I work at SHAEF. So?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, flipping through his notes. “I guess I find it odd that after more than two years in the army, you haven’t picked up on the standard issue lingo. Now, I do see guys who count on their fingers to figure out the twenty-four-hour clock, but they do it. You, on the other hand, are one smart guy. It must take more mental effort to not say 1400 hours than to simply give in to it.”

  “It takes five syllables to say it the army way. Three to say it the normal way.”

  “See what I mean, Boyle?” Robinson said, tapping his pen on his pad. “You’re a sharp fellow. Intelligent enough to try to distract me with a wisecrack and not answer the question.”

  “Listen, Doc, if I’m calling in an artillery barrage, I’ll say 1400 hours to be sure they don’t deliver twelve hours too late. But around here, two o’clock will do just fine, see?” I felt myself on the edge of my seat and eased back into it. “So, make your point or let’s call this quits.”

  “Take it easy, Boyle. Only making conversation,” Robinson said, sounding like me when I talked to Sergeant Jenkins. We were both fishing for something useful. “It must have been a shock to see a person leap to their death.”

  I shrugged.

  “You must have seen worse in combat,” Robinson continued.

  “It was different,” I said. True enough. People wearing the same uniform usually refrained from killing each other. Not all the time, though, which was one reason I was in my line of work. I crossed my legs, matching Robinson sitting across from me. I tapped my fingers on my thigh, as he was doing with his pen and paper. It was a trick my dad taught me to use in interrogations. Match your posture and movement with the suspect, and he might open up more easily under questioning.

  “Why do you think Holland jumped?” I said, scratching my jaw as he rubbed his.

  “No idea,” he said. “What I’m more interested in is why you’re mirroring me.”

  “Is that what you call it?” I said, laughing despite myself. “All I know is that it’s an old detective’s trick. My old man swore by it, but I never knew if it really worked.”

  “It can create the impression you and the person you are conversing with have things in common. And it’s a two-way street, since by adopting the other’s pose, you may begin to feel empathy for them. I can see it would be useful in getting a suspect to cooperate. But does that mean you feel I’m a suspect?”

  “You’re keeping me locked up,” I said, trying hard not to avoid his eyes. That would be a dead giveaway that I was lying. It could have been him up there. Not in the white doctor’s coat, of course, but he could have discarded it.

  “You have the run of the place,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “That’s hardly locked up.”

  “What if I wanted to go into town? Those Brit Commandos would drill me dead, no questions asked, if I ever made it over that barbed-wire fence. I can’t leave, and that’s locked up in my book.”

  “Commandos? Drill you? You’re overreacting, Boyle.”

  “Hey, there must be a town around here somewhere. Want to go for a beer, Doc?”

  “No. I don’t,” he said, scribbling in his notebook. “Tell me, why did you say you were a policeman? Outside, when you approached the body.”

  “Holland,” I said. “That was his name, right?”

  “Yes. Thomas Holland. Now, why did you announce yourself as a policeman?”

  “Force of habit,” I said. Robinson waited, so I took a breath and gave him the basics. How my dad and uncle were homicide detectives with the Boston Police Department. How I’d followed in their footsteps. I left out the part about getting my promotion to detective mainly because a copy of the exam had found its way to me the night before I took it. And how Uncle Dan was on the Promotions Board. People who weren’t part of how things worked for the Irish in Boston had a hard time understanding that sort of thing. It was our department, our city. Back when an Irishman couldn’t get an hones
t day’s work, being on the cops meant a steady job for you and your own. It meant something, something this blond track-and-field star from somewhere in the Midwest would never understand. Maybe his granddaddy from the old country might, but not this corn-fed all-American.

  Uncle Ike? I didn’t go anywhere near that story. Then they’d really think I was bonkers.

  “You came upon a sudden death and your police training took over, is that it?” Robinson asked. I think he’d been talking for some time before that, but I’d been lost somewhere else. Back home.

  “Yeah, yeah. Are we done yet?”

  “One more thing. Why did you go up in the tower?”

  “Scene of the crime,” I said. “I was still thinking like a cop.”

  “Crime?” Robinson said.

  “A head doctor ought to know suicide’s illegal,” I said. “Or were you thinking of something else?”

  “I had a shock when I saw you at the edge,” Robinson said, ignoring my question.

  “Is that why you followed me up there?” I asked. “You were worried about my state of mind?”

  “That’s my job,” he said. “But I didn’t know it was you. I saw the door was open and wanted to be sure no one else had wandered up there. It’s kept locked for a reason. It’s a hazard in a place like this.”

  “The door was open when I came to it,” I said. “But I shut it behind me. So, how’d you know anyone was up there? Or were you following me?”

  “By open, I meant unlocked,” Robinson said. “Do you think people are following you, watching your every move?”

  “You said one more thing. That’s two. See you later,” I said, as I rose and made for the door.

  “What happened in Paris?” Robinson said, his words like a dagger at my back. I froze, my hand on the doorknob. I couldn’t turn it. My body went rigid as sweat trickled down the small of my back, the wood grain of the door swirling before my eyes.

  I felt Robinson place his hand on mine, and together we turned the knob. With his other hand on my shoulder, he gently pushed me along into the corridor.

  “I’ll see you at two o’clock,” he said, and shut the door behind me.

  “Fourteen hundred hours,” I whispered. I laughed, even though I couldn’t figure why it was funny.

  I headed for the south wing. Time to see Kaz, like it or not.

  I crossed the foyer and spotted the English gent I’d seen earlier, the older fellow who’d been shooed away along with me and the other Yank. He was cracking open the door carefully, as if afraid of what he might find.

  “Hello,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “What? Oh, you gave me a fright, young man,” he said, turning his face toward mine. His unkempt hair was black and flecked with gray, his shoulders slumped, his eyes downcast over a pair of spectacles perched on the tip of his nose. He looked more like a professor than a soldier, and I wondered how he’d ended up in this joint.

  “Is the coast clear?” I said, giving him a conspiratorial wink.

  “You mean our minders, do you? Yes, they’ve cleared off,” he said. “Along with poor Holland.”

  I pushed the door open, holding it for him as a stiff breeze blew over us. “I’m Boyle,” I said, keeping to the local custom of last names only.

  “Sinclair,” he said, taking the steps carefully, like a man twice his age.

  “Did you know Holland?” I asked, as we stopped by the spot where he’d fallen.

  “Know him?” Sinclair said, as if the question startled him. “Of course not. No one knows anyone here. Secrets, that’s all there is here. And when there’s nothing but secrets, no one knows a damned thing!”

  Without another word, Sinclair turned away from the small pool of drying blood and walked to the pathway, taking small, careful steps. He sounded nuts, until I thought about it. Whatever this place was, he’d figured it out. It was a house of secrets, and odds were, with Holland in the morgue, at least one secret was safe.

  For now.

  Chapter Four

  I stood in the hallway outside Kaz’s room for a while. Not because I couldn’t move, but because I didn’t know what to say when I went in. Kaz was my best friend, and I’d let him down. We looked out for each other, but right now there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for me, and the kind of help he needed was beyond my ability to give.

  He needed a heart that wasn’t ready to give out.

  And not just to stay alive. Kaz had lost his entire family to the Nazis. When the Germans invaded Poland, he was studying at Oxford. He was a student of languages, about half a dozen of them. Kaz’s father had been readying the family for a move to England, where they’d join Kaz and start up the family business again. Everything was set, the family fortune transferred to Swiss banks, property sold off, and then the Germans had invaded. Kaz’s father had been smart enough to see what was coming, but he couldn’t see how soon it would arrive.

  His family had been wiped out when the Krauts eliminated the Polish intelligentsia, along with anyone else who might oppose them.

  Until a few months ago, Kaz thought everyone in his family was dead. Which explained a lot of the risks he’d enjoyed taking to get his revenge on as many Fritzes as possible. But then he’d received word about his kid sister, Angelika. She was alive. Somehow she’d survived and was part of the Polish Home Army, the underground organization of the Polish government-in-exile.

  Which was among the most dangerous things to be doing in occupied Europe right now, especially after the heroic but failed Warsaw Uprising. Kaz was desperate to hear news of Angelika and to help get her out if possible.

  He’d made me promise to see to it that he stayed on active service, in uniform and part of the fight, so he could act whenever the opportunity presented itself. But the only uniform he was wearing now was hospital pajamas, and I didn’t see any way I could change that.

  But maybe I could be a better friend. So, I knocked on the door and pushed it open.

  “Kaz?”

  “Yes. Billy?” he said, from a chair by the side of his bed. He was wearing his hospital pajamas, but under a silk and velvet dressing gown. His family’s Swiss bank accounts were all in Kaz’s hands now. He had more money than he knew what to do with, but he didn’t let it go to his head. Well, maybe a little bit when it came to his tailor.

  “How are you?” I said, standing in the doorway, uncertain of his reaction.

  “Reading the newspaper,” he said, folding a copy of the Times and tossing it on the side table, as if he’d answered my question. allies enter holland it declared at the top. That much closer to Poland. “Have a seat. What have you been up to?”

  “Walking,” I said, pulling up a metal chair that scraped on the linoleum. “Sorry I haven’t dropped by.”

  “I know, I’ve watched you. I was glad to see you up and about. Fresh air is just the thing to clear one’s mind.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m still a little foggy, but better. Definitely better.” Which wasn’t a lie, given the shape I’d been in when I’d first arrived, strapped down on a cot in that ambulance. “Anything new from the doctors?”

  “No. Continued monitoring and bed rest for now. Which means they have nothing to offer. I’ve asked for a consultation with my specialist, but they won’t allow an outsider entrance. So, I shall have to wait to be released to visit Harley Street. Although I have little hope of any assistance there. Every doctor here says there is no remedy.”

  “Do they all agree with what that French doctor said? Mitral something-or-other?” A doctor in Paris had seen Kaz when he had his heart attack. It was under trying conditions, with street fighting raging all around, and I’d hoped the doc had been off the mark.

  “Mitral valve stenosis, yes. One of my four heart valves cannot do its job and pump blood properly. Physical stress makes it worse, resulting in rather severe fatigue and i
rregular heart rhythms. Dr. Hughes confirmed it often results from having rheumatic fever in childhood, from which I did suffer.”

  “Who’s this Hughes guy? Does he know what’s up?”

  “Major Cuthbert Hughes, Surgeon and Medical Superintendent of Saint Albans. He does seem knowledgeable.”

  “Nose like a hawk? Dark bags under his eyes?”

  “Yes. Has he talked with you?”

  “No, not exactly. Did he say when they’d spring you?”

  “He was evasive on that point,” Kaz said. “But I do have hope. I know of three patients who have been released in the last two days. What about you?”

  “I have another session with Robinson today. I’ll ask him,” I said.

  “No, Billy. I mean, how are you? Are you still having difficulties?”

  “With what?” I asked, glad that for the moment my hand wasn’t trembling.

  “With understanding why you’re here. I’m here because of my heart. Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Listen, Kaz, I took some pep pills. Too many, I know. But I was looking for you most of that time. I need to work it out of my system, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry, Billy. I worry because you promised you’d help me stay in uniform. I doubt I can ever work on an active case again, but I need to stay in the service. I can’t get information about Angelika as a civilian. All doors would be closed to me. But as an officer serving with General Eisenhower, I have a chance, even if I am at a desk. You must speak to the general. I don’t think I have ever asked you for a favor, Billy. But I do need one now. Speak to your uncle.”

  Kaz was right. The general could guarantee him a spot on his staff, an office job that would keep him at the heart of things at SHAEF. And I was the guy who had General Eisenhower’s ear. When we were alone, I called him Uncle Ike, although he was really a distant cousin. We were related through my mother’s family and his wife’s people, one of those situations tailor-made for special favors. Dad and Uncle Dan called in a few markers at the start of the war and got me assigned to Uncle Ike, who was an unknown colonel in Washington DC at the time. The idea was I’d spend the war years there, safe from another war to save the British Empire, which was how the Boyle family viewed this whole affair. Dad and his brother had gone off to the last world war with their older brother, Frank, and came back without him. Being good Irish patriots, they balked at the idea of losing me this time around, especially since the English still had their bootheel on a good part of Ireland.