Almost Love

by Christina James

  My God, she thought, had Edmund made a pass at her? It would certainly explain the fear with which she was facing the day ahead. It must have been that; otherwise, why had he disappeared so quickly? And what an idiot she had been; she could understand why even Edmund, the least sexually interesting of men and, as far as she knew, one of the least interested in sex, would mistake the signals sent out by a half-drunk woman who had invited him back to her room. That the sitting-room and bedroom were quite separate was hardly a convincing defence.

  She hauled herself out of bed. She knew she would have to try every trick in her repertoire to combat her mental and physical wretchedness. She lay on the floor and tried to relax her limbs in preparation for some gentle yoga. She managed the ‘tense yourself, relax’ technique all right, but, as soon as she closed her eyes, waves of nausea swept over her again. She got up slowly, sat on the edge of the bed for a while and then turned on the television.

  A bomb had gone off in Oslo, wrecking the railway station. At least one hundred people had died and the casualty figures were climbing rapidly. She stared at the screen for a while, gazing in horror at images of wrecked cars piled on top of each other and huge twisted chunks of masonry, followed by some jumbled footage of people lying in the streets, blood-speckled and injured or running hysterically with stretchers bearing the dead and wounded. She pointed the remote again. She knew she was being cowardly, but she was not yet in a fit state to take in an international catastrophe.

  She walked over to the glass balcony doors and flung open the curtains. The hotel had originally been an eighteenth-century country house and her room overlooked a flagged courtyard. Holding back the gauzy net and peering down, she saw what was unmistakably a column of cigarette smoke curling up towards her. Someone must be standing in front of the French window on the ground floor. She could not see who it was. She tried moving to the far right hand side of the glass in an attempt to catch a glimpse of a head or arm, but still could make out nothing except the regular curlicues of smoke. She did not doubt that it was a man. If she opened the door and went to stand on the balcony, she would be able to see him, but he would almost certainly hear the doors opening and look up at her. Her curiosity was not keen enough to make her want to expose herself to view, dressed as she was only in a short nightshirt, the depredations of the night before unconcealed by make-up and her hair all over the place. She dropped the net curtain and propelled herself towards the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, having showered and washed her hair and dressed in the smart navy suit that she had bought especially, with make-up applied and her outfit discreetly complemented by gold stud earrings and a slender gold chain, she felt a little more able to face the world. She drew back the net covering the balcony doors and unlocked and opened them. She stepped out onto a narrow stone platform bound by tall piano-leg-shaped columns and a sturdy rail of Portland stone and into sunlight that was already quite strong, despite the earliness of the hour. Below, she saw a white delivery van arrive. Painted in black on its side, in letters that were made to resemble elaborate handwriting, was the legend Gourmet Seafoods Ltd. Proprietor: E. Gregory and a telephone number and website address. A man got out and opened the back doors of the van. He loaded himself up with three large cardboard boxes and disappeared into the hotel with them. Otherwise, the courtyard was deserted. The secret smoker had vanished.

  Alex went back into her room and looked at her watch. It was just after 7 a.m. She decided that she couldn’t face meeting anyone for breakfast – especially not Edmund or Oliver. Although she wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, a light snack might help her to get through the morning better. She called room service and ordered croissants and coffee. Smoothing her skirt carefully, she perched on the end of her bed and pointed the remote at the television again. A politician and a well-known historian sat hunched on sofas intended to make them look casual. They talked about the situation in Norway. The politician was very red in the face and kept saying, ‘If you’ll let me finish . . .’ whenever the anchorwoman or the historian tried, however courteously, to interrupt him. The result was a stultifyingly tedious, one-sided harangue about how such a situation could never arise at home while the present government was in power, because. . . .

  She was about to consign him to oblivion when, quite suddenly, the interview was concluded and the anchorwoman announced that the news would now continue with regional items ‘where you are’. Welland Manor was, of course, some thirty miles from ‘where Alex was’ usually and fell within a different local television region from the one at home. Nevertheless, as she always enjoyed local news more than the national news because it was more about people, less about big business and political set-pieces, she decided to watch it.

  The first item was about hunting and the second about the wedding of a local woman who had married her soldier fiancé despite his having been terribly disfigured during the invasion of Iraq. After a third clip on local authority cuts and the consequent reduction in bus services and provision for pre-school children, the newscaster – a dapper, bald little man with a strong local accent – was in the process of returning viewers to the main newsroom when he interrupted himself with a ‘breaking news’ announcement.

  “We have just heard that Dame Claudia McRae, the archaeologist, has disappeared from her home in suspicious circumstances. Police were called to her house early this morning after Guy Maichment, her nephew, failed to reach her by telephone. Because she is elderly and quite frail, Mr Maichment decided to check on her. When he reached her house, which is situated in Teapot Lane, about five miles from the village of Welland, near Helpston, he found the front door wide open. Dame Claudia was not there, but there were no signs of a struggle. Dame Claudia, if you are safe and well and watching this programme, City of Peterborough Police would like to appeal to you to contact them immediately. The police would also like to talk to anyone who has had contact with Dame Claudia over the past forty-eight hours. Dame Claudia pioneered the use of archaeological dating techniques based on the semantic development of ancient languages and is particularly well-known for her work in the Middle East, especially in the region known to bible scholars as Mesopotamia, and for deciphering the text of what has become known as the McRae Stone.” Pictures of the house were shown. It looked like a story-book thatched cottage, its walls washed pale pink. It was surrounded by trees and apparently stood in a very isolated location.

  Claudia McRae. Alex did not know her, but she had met her once. She had heard her speak at a lecture when she was a student and had been introduced to her briefly afterwards. Miss McRae must have been about seventy at the time; a bulky, arrogant woman, as far as Alex could remember. She had announced her retirement shortly afterwards. Some of the conference delegates would undoubtedly have been past colleagues and acquaintances and had probably looked up to her when younger. Alex herself had found her theories about semantic dating fascinating and had read several books and papers by Claudia McRae before she had attended that lecture. In some ways, she had regretted going to it; the woman had seemed so much less distinguished than the corpus of work that she had produced. Perhaps that was being unfair: it is bound to be difficult to live up to the expectations of your admirers when your work has become a legend.

  There was a tap at the door. Alex thrust her feet into her black court shoes and opened it. A white-jacketed waiter stood before her, bearing a tray.

  “Where would you like me to leave this, Madam?”

  Alex indicated the desk, walking ahead of him to move the cardboard folder containing the day’s schedule of events. He put it down carefully and asked her to sign a chit.

  “This is also for you, Madam,” he said. “It was left with the night porter early this morning.”

  He handed Alex a thick vellum envelope embossed with the Welland Manor’s coat of arms.

  “Thank you.”

  He inclined his head and left the room slowly. When he finally rea
ched the door, he closed it quite smartly behind him. Too late, Alex realised that he had been expecting a tip.

  She glanced at the television screen again. The national anchorwoman was back. She had just finished summarising the news headlines and was handing over to the weather forecaster. Alex snapped the remote again, relishing the instant peace that this brought. She sat down at the desk and poured herself coffee. Sipping it carefully, she thought that perhaps her headache was easing. She looked at her watch: seven-thirty. There was still half an hour before she had to meet Oliver in the conference suite. If she could eat at least one of the two croissants that the waiter had brought, and drink the orange juice as well as the coffee, she might make a passable recovery.

  She was topping up her coffee when her eye fell again on the envelope that the waiter had handed her. She had barely registered what it was when she had taken it from him, distracted as she had been by Claudia McRae, her own hangover and the slight feeling of unease that she always experienced when being served by over-attentive hotel staff. She sighed. It was probably connected with the contretemps over the wine yesterday evening. She hoped that it would be nothing more controversial than, perhaps, a routine – and probably insincere – apology from the sommelier. The flap of the envelope had been sealed down, not just folded. She ripped it open, creating an untidy ragged gash in the expensive, cream-laid paper. Inside, there was a single sheet of the hotel’s notepaper. Like the envelope, it was of expensive, cream-laid vellum and had been neatly folded into three so that it fitted the envelope exactly. She opened it out and smoothed it down flat on the desk. The hotel’s address and crest, printed in the same discreet grey-blue in which they appeared on the envelope, but magnified to about twice the size, were centred at the top of the sheet of paper. Otherwise, it bore only two words: Be Careful. These had been inscribed in black ink right in the middle of the page, in a handwriting which attempted to copy Victorian copperplate. There was no date, and no signature: just this single curt message.

  Alex sighed again. The missive aroused in her more irritation than alarm. It had almost certainly come from one of the curmudgeonly old men who had made such a nuisance of themselves yesterday evening. If so, how cowardly of the author not to identify himself! It flitted swiftly across her mind that, alternatively, it might have been written by someone who had seen her leave the bar with Edmund. But she didn’t think that anyone besides Oliver had really been aware that they had been sitting together and he had headed for bed long before her own departure. She was all but certain that no-one had seen her enter the suite with Edmund: one of the clear memories that stood out from the blur of the events of the small hours was of Edmund glancing nervously up and down the corridor as they stood outside her room and she fumbled with the key-card. He would certainly have alerted her – and probably bolted – if anyone had been watching. In any case, she thought defensively, if they had been seen, what could anyone do about it? Tell Tom? Tell Christine? Neither featured at all in the lives of this group of archaeologists; and besides, exactly what was there to tell?

  She looked at her watch again. It was 7.45 a.m. now: time to tackle the croissant. Taking small bites, she masticated the papery mass as thoroughly as she could and managed to swallow about half of it, her gorge rising slightly each time a morsel was dispatched. She spent five heroic minutes at this task, then swigged the last of the orange juice, downed some more coffee and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and apply lipstick. She snatched up her handbag and the folder, inwardly declaring that she was as ready as she would ever be for what the day had in store. It was next to impossible to escape through the mock hallway that led out of her suite without consulting her reflection in its floor-to-ceiling mirror. She threw a sidelong appraising glance at her image and decided that it passed muster. With exaggerated bravado, she strode out of the room to keep her appointment with Oliver.

  Chapter Three

  Despite the fact that it was an unspoiled morning and he was driving along some of his favourite country lanes in brilliant winter sunshine, Inspector Tim Yates was not happy. He thought that he had probably been sent on a fool’s errand, for one thing; to a place near Helpston, as well, which was not, strictly speaking, in his territory. For another, he had had one of his rare disagreements with Katrin – OK, he conceded, as he rewound the events of the previous evening in his mind, it was a row . Katrin had been behaving strangely of late – she was not her usual sunny, rational, forgiving self. There had been a heated exchange, during which she had said that it was he who had been behaving thoughtlessly. She would say that, of course. Nevertheless, her comments had prompted him to embark on some unaccustomed moments of introspection. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps they both needed a holiday. Perhaps he would be in a better mood if Superintendent Thornton hadn’t landed him with this bloody ‘incident’, or rather, non-incident. It would turn out to be a wild goose chase, he would put money on it. In the meantime, Detective Constables Juliet Armstrong and Andy Carstairs were investigating what appeared to be a contract killing that had taken place in Spalding the night before – a man had been found dead in Ayscoughfee Gardens, the cause of death apparently a single bullet through the forehead. Drugs, thought Tim. Drugs would be at the bottom of it; though it was odd that the man seemed to be a vagrant. He had been trying to persuade his superiors for months that there was evidence of an organised drugs gang at work in South Lincolnshire. Perhaps now they would believe him. Discovering the identity of the victim in the park could lead to the uncovering of a drugs network. If so, it would probably be the most important case that South Lincolnshire police had worked on for many years. And here he was, traipsing around the countryside looking for a vain old woman who had contrived to go missing.

  His assessment of Claudia McRae’s character was not entirely based on prejudice. As a history undergraduate, he had developed a passing interest in archaeology and, of course, he had heard of her. Dame Claudia McRae, as she was now. Most people had heard of her, even if they barely knew what archaeology was about. Her fame had been attributed to her having pushed back the boundaries of what the women of her generation were allowed to achieve; she had succeeded in gaining eminence in a science (art?) that had previously been a fiercely-guarded male preserve. Tim had read one of her books, however, and he suspected that vanity and a decided talent for self-promotion had also been major factors in her rise to stardom – not to mention her many friends in politics and other influential spheres. He did not deny the inventive virtuosity of the theories that she propounded; indeed, he found them fascinating, because they lent to archaeology the very quality which for him it had traditionally lacked: the power to recreate the voices of the past. But her prose style was thumping and arrogant and she allowed no room for doubt that she was right. Some of her hypotheses were based on extremely tenuous interpretations of tiny examples of barely-decipherable scraps of ancient writings whose languages could not be fully reconstructed. It was therefore difficult to say that she was wrong (particularly as she was the pre-eminent ‘expert’ in her field), but for a trained mind it was equally difficult to swallow that all of her theories were irrefutable. Remarkably, no-one of either her own generation or the one succeeding it had publicly challenged her writings, though conversely she had never received much acclaim from her peers. He wondered if a new young crop of would-be famous archaeologists was now busily casting a sceptical eye on the corpus of her work and coming up with alternative explanations for her ‘findings’. If so, he hoped that they would be diligent in researching the many accounts of recent discoveries that could no doubt be cited to provide a legitimate pretext for undertaking such a project and, also, that they would apply absolute integrity to whatever counter-arguments they might come up with. Otherwise it would just be the usual academic tit-for-tat refined slanging match, of no practical use to anyone. Thank God he had turned his back on all of that and chosen to become a policeman.

  The thought cheered him. His mood was
lightened further when his mobile phone chirruped its ‘text message waiting’ ditty and, pulling over into a lay-by, he saw that the message was from Katrin. It read simply: ‘Sorry. XXX.’ He texted her back. ‘My fault. XXX’. The day was already beginning to look a great deal brighter.

  The last leg of his journey took him deep into the country lanes beyond Helpston. He made a few wrong turns, cursing equally the inadequate map which he had printed from the Internet and the local council’s failure to signpost the maze of tiny lanes in which he found himself. Claudia McRae’s cottage, when eventually he reached it, stood at the end of a narrow unmetalled farm track which gradually petered out altogether, so that for the last two hundred yards or so he was just driving on hard mud.

  The house itself was a confection, almost too picture-book pretty with its thatched roof and rose-coloured walls. Its walls were bowed with age and seemed to grow up out of the grass – there was evidently no proper garden, nor even a boundary fence – and it bore more than a fleeting resemblance to the picture of the cottage into which Hansel and Gretel had been lured in the edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales from which his grandmother had read to him as a child. Taking the analogy further would turn Claudia McRae into a witch. If the cap fits, thought Tim.