The Tied Man

‘This had better be important, Henry.’

‘Lilith was terribly agitated, Lady Albermarle,’ came Henry’s response.

‘Yes, well Lilith seems intent on creating her own melodrama.  And if they’re not here, I’m going back to bed.’  Blaine strode into the room and her face immediately blanched as she took in the bloodbath.

‘Tell Coyle he needs to review his screening procedures,’ I said.

Finn

I was cold.  Sleeping-on-the-streets, Dublin winter cold.  It was a strange feeling, lying there in a pool of my own blood, with the dawn’s summer warmth seeping into the stones beneath me, and still shaking with a ferocity that made my teeth ache.  Even when Lilith laid a blanket from the bed over me, it made scant difference.

‘Henry, go and call Doctor Parnell,’ Blaine ordered, but there was a tremor in her voice that suggested that despite her outward calm, for once she was well and truly rattled.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.  He needs a hospital, Blaine,’ Lilith snapped, before Henry had the chance to take a single step.

‘Out of the question.’

There was no way Blaine was going to let me off the island.  If Doctor Parnell couldn’t fix me with a couple of sticking plasters and an aspirin, I was just going have to lie stark bollock-naked on the floor of a dungeon and quietly bleed to death.  I wanted to tell Lilith to save her breath, but then the way she went at it with Blaine, I’d have been pushed to get a word in.  Instead, I shut my eyes and listened as Lilith Bresson went to war on my behalf.

Lilith’s voice bounced off the stone walls.  ‘He’s been stabbed in the stomach, Blaine, and he’s been left hanging for the best part of an hour.  And do you want me to teach you about the arteries in the back of his knee?  Right now you’re facing the very real possibility of a man bleeding to death in your cellar, so unless the sainted Doctor Parnell has got the facilities to deal with anything from a lacerated liver to a blood transfusion, I would say you’re really going to have to think out of the box on this one.’

Then she came up with the clincher.  ‘And I’ll tell you something else, shall I? If my Big Reason For Staying does end up weighed down with rocks in the lake, I’d probably consider that a bit of a deal-breaker.  Wouldn’t you?’

As she spoke, Lilith surreptitiously took my hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze.  I was glad of the reassurance, especially as she was discussing my potential demise with all the concern of a forensic scientist.

‘All right, all right,’ Blaine snapped, and raised a hand in the air to halt the tirade.  ‘Just let me think this through for a moment.’  She massaged her temples as she tried to make this mess vanish.  ‘Henry.  You can take him.’

Henry actually took a step back.  ‘Oh God, I couldn’t. I’ m so sorry, but it’s all that blood.  You know what I’m like with that.’

‘Well Coyle can’t take him.  Not with his driving ban.  He’s not allowed off the estate.’

‘I’ll take him,’ Lilith said.

Blaine gave a hard laugh of derision.  ‘I don’t think so, do you?  I couldn’t begin to imagine the feeding frenzy if the press find Lilith Bresson driving around Northumberland with a half-dead naked man in her passenger seat.’

Even in the very depths of a crisis, no one could accuse Blaine of forgetting the priorities.

‘People don’t recognise me, that’s just it,’ Lilith rejoindered.  ‘They know ‘Brand Lilith’, not some scruffy cow in tracksuit bottoms and mud-brown contacts – how many times has someone spotted me in the village, huh?  Not once.  They’re looking for the ballgown and the attitude.  It took the best part of three hours yesterday to transform into the woman most people expect to see.’

There followed a pause that lasted for days in my head, and I felt the numbness in my stomach begin to morph into something involving devils and hot pokers.

Finally, Blaine spoke, her voice controlled once more.  ‘Right.  You can take him to Castlerigg Hospital.  It’s a private clinic – I’ll get Henry to bring you directions – where he’s to be seen by a Doctor James Maxwell.  Nobody else.  He’s an old friend of mine.  I’ll make the call to inform him that you’re on the way.’

‘Thank you,’ Lilith said, gracious in victory.

‘No matter what you think of me, I’m hardly the kind of person who would let someone die on the floor.  I simply needed a little time to work out a plan that worked well for everyone concerned.’  Blaine had relaxed again now, happy that she had things under control.   ‘I needn’t have to add that his curfew stands. Ten o’clock, back at the Hall, or I begin to make some very awkward phone calls for both gentlemen here.  You talk to no-one else, and draw as little attention to yourself as is humanly possible.  Are we perfectly clear?’