The Superintendent agreed. He’d never seen porn as foul as this lot. In any case, he didn’t like Bob Battleby one little bit. The man had a rotten reputation and a vile temper. And the clear indication of arson was very interesting indeed. Rumour had it that Battleby had lost a small fortune gambling on the stock market and had been living off cash the General’s wife had left him. He’d have to look into Battleby’s financial position. There was talk that he was seen too often in the company of the local MP’s wife, Ruth Rottecombe, and the Superintendent didn’t like her one little bit either. On the other hand, the Battlebys had influence–and Members of Parliament, particularly Shadow Ministers and their wives, had to be handled with kid gloves. He looked at the gag and the handcuffs and shook his head. There were some real weirdos and swine in the world.
On the road in front of the house Bob Battleby stared in disbelief at the smouldering shell that had been the family home for over two hundred years. The news that the Manor was on fire had reached him at the Country Club and, being even drunker than usual, he had greeted it with disbelief. The Club Secretary had to be joking.
‘Pull the other one. It can’t be. There’s no one there.’
‘You had better speak to the Fire Brigade yourself,’ the Secretary told him. He disliked Battleby when he was sober. The man was an arrogant snob and invariably rude. When he was drunk and had lost money in a game of poker he was infinitely worse.
‘You had better be right, bloody right,’ Battleby told him threateningly. ‘If this is a false alarm, I’ll see you get the fucking sack and…’
But whatever he’d meant to say was left unsaid. He slumped into a chair and dropped his glass. Mrs Rottecombe took the call in the Secretary’s office and heard the news of the fire apparently without emotion. She was a hard woman and her association with Bob Battleby was based solely on self-interest.
In spite of his drinking and his general arrogance he was socially useful. He was a Battleby and the family name counted a great deal when it came to votes. Influence and power mattered to Ruth Rottecombe. She had married Harold Rottecombe shortly after he was first elected to Parliament and she had sensed he was an ambitious man who only needed a strong woman behind him to succeed. Ruth saw herself as just such a woman. She did what had to be done and had no scruples. Self-preservation came first in her mind and sex didn’t come into her marriage. She’d had enough sex in her younger days. Power was all that mattered now. Besides, Harold was away in Westminster all week and she was sure he had his own peculiar sexual inclinations. What was important was that he kept his safe seat in Parliament and remained a Shadow Minister and, if that meant keeping in with Bob Battleby and satisfying his sado-masochistic fantasies by tying him up and whipping him on Thursday nights, she was perfectly prepared to do it. In fact, she got considerable satisfaction from the act. It was better than staying at home and being bored to death by all the inane activities like hunting and shooting and attending bridge parties and coffee mornings and talking about gardening that country life seemed to involve. So she took her two bull terriers for walks and was careful not to dress too smartly. And by acting as Bob’s driver and minder she supposed his family must be grateful to her. Not that she had any illusions about what they really thought of her. As she put it to herself, they owed her, and one day when she was safely installed in London and the Government had a really solid majority she would see to it that they paid her back with due deference.
But now as she put the phone down she had the feeling that a crisis was looming. If Bob, through some act of drunken carelessness like leaving a pan on the stove, had set the Manor on fire, there would be hell to pay. She left the office thoughtfully and went back to
