by Marjorie Orr
By the time Herk had looped off the M3 and was driving in open countryside towards Sandhurst she had started to relax. He seemed to know the route off by heart and had the GPS switched off. Once through several small villages, he turned left into a small road signposted Owlstone. High hawthorn and briar bushes either side blocked the view of fields beyond. Finally, he stopped at imposing, grilled, metal gates at the end of a curving, gravelled drive up to a house whose chimneys were just visible. ‘The Manor’ was etched in white ironwork on the wall beside a video entryphone.
‘Right,’ he said shortly, ‘I’ll drop you here and wait to see you get in. Give me a ring on the mobile when you’re finished. I’m only ten minutes away.’
Surprised, she said: ‘You’re not coming in?’
‘No need. He’d just have to let me out again. And you’ll be safe enough there.’
The video entryphone lit up several minutes after she pressed the button. A distorted voice crackling with static said ‘Yes?’ She answered: ‘Tiresa Thane’ then wondered, as the gates swung open and she started to walk up the long drive, why she had used her full name.
Once the house came into view she raised an eyebrow at the elegant and imposing two-storey villa. Five chimney stacks stood proud on the red-tiled roof above a long row of windows. Must be six or eight bedrooms, she thought. Heavens, maybe he has a family. She hadn’t known what to expect, but nothing this ostentatious. The front garden was meticulously manicured with clipped bushes either side of the entrance and apple trees growing out of well-trimmed grass.
An elderly, white-haired man in a tweed suit and waistcoat, which hung off his frame, was standing at the front door. He nodded courteously although distantly at her. There was an awkward moment when she wondered whether to shake his hand, then noticed he was holding the door with one hand and had a walking stick in the other.
‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to go into the dining room, third door on the left,’ he said, with a tremulous though authoritative voice. She walked ahead of him across the marble tiled hall with a vase of fresh flowers on an antique table. She paused at the door of a large room with extensive windows looking out on the back garden. The soft beige walls matched the fitted carpet and in the centre was a highly polished, oak rectory table. A grandfather clock stood in one corner with an elaborate Edwardian walnut desk on the far wall, with two highly polished astrolabes on top. The effect should have been calm and tasteful, yet it seemed cold and impersonal.
She hesitated before sitting down, but, since he was taking his time, she chose a chair facing towards the windows. On the table was a jug of water and two glasses. After he had manoeuvred himself with difficulty into the carver chair at the head of the table, hooking his stick over one of the arms, he cleared his throat.
‘Now, how can I assist you?’ he asked, in a curiously aloof manner. She was about to snap at him and then remembered her resolve to treat it like any other interview. He wanted to play hard ball, she could do it better.
She smiled, softened her tone and replied: ‘Well…’ looking down at her hands, ‘I just wondered…’ raising her head to look directly at him, ‘since you were my guardian why I’ve never met you before? Indeed never heard of you.’
They stared at each other. His expression was surprised, then thoughtful, as if he was working out what to say. Hers was unflinching. He coughed several times, his body shaking with the effort. He waved at her to pour a glass of water.
Right, she thought, distraction manoeuvre. You’re not getting away with this. She watched intently as he put both hands round the glass and raised it shakily to his mouth. He set it down and took a coloured handkerchief out of his pocket with a trembling hand to wipe his mouth.
Eventually he said: ‘I realise it must seem strange, but I was put in place in a professional capacity as guardian and executor because there was no one else. There was never any suggestion that I take a…’ he hesitated, ‘…a participatory role. I was there to oversee the monies and ensure everything was properly executed.’
‘So you’re not related to my mother, then? And where did the money come from? There was a fair amount and as far as I knew my father was a mechanic,’ Tire pressed on, not about to let him off the hook.
He considered her questions before replying, giving nothing away. Typical bloody civil servant, she thought.
He nodded. ‘It is true I was distantly related to your mother. A third cousin, I believe. But I never knew her.’ He ran a hand across his mouth, the gnarled knuckles making it a clumsy movement.
His breath was rasping more heavily as he continued: ‘The monies were partly an inheritance from your maternal grandmother your mother received before she died. Plus your father’s savings. He was rather more than a mechanic.’
‘What was he then?’ she asked, her interest sparked.
St Clair shook his head, clearly tiring. ‘I’m sorry, I really have no idea. I only met him once. I was a court appointee for his estate. His profession was not relevant.’
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. That was a whopping lie.
Another paroxysm of coughing had him holding his red handkerchief to his mouth. There might have been blood on it, but she couldn’t tell. She should have been sympathetic, but instead her anger was bubbling up. To stop herself telling him what she thought of him she said: ‘Would a brandy help?’
He leant back in the chair and nodded towards the cabinet behind him. She poured him a sizeable tot from a cognac bottle into a wine glass and put it in front of him.
He sipped at it several times and eventually smiled ruefully and said: ‘I’m not really allowed. But at this stage it hardly matters. One day my housekeeper will find me on the floor and that will be that.’
In spite of herself, she smiled back. ‘You’ve no family, then?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I never married. This was my parents’ home. Far too big for me, of course, but I could never bear to let it go.’
Outside the window a wisteria-covered pergola provided a shaded seating area facing down an expansive, trimmed lawn flanked by flower beds.
‘It is beautiful,’ she said, wondering how to get the conversation back on track.
He sighed. ‘The brandy really does help, thank you my dear. Now I can’t talk much more. So why don’t you tell me what you’re doing at the moment? I’ve read all your books and many of your magazine articles and very much enjoyed them.’
To her surprise, she found herself telling him about Erica and her suspicions about Rupert Wrighton and Paul Stone. Then after a while she stopped since he seemed not to be listening, his eyes cast down onto his thin, bent fingers curled round the wine glass.
The doorbell rang in the distance and he came to and croaked hoarsely: ‘That will be my lunch guest. I wonder if you could answer it for me?’
She waited at the front door after pressing the entry button and watched as an Audi swept up the drive. A well-dressed man in his thirties in a blazer, white shirt and flannels emerged with a briefcase. His smile was pleasant, although formal, and he clearly was not surprised to see her.
‘Is he alright?’ he asked as he came up the steps. Tire shook her head and shrugged. ‘Not really. He’s coughing a lot and tired, I think.’
His brown eyes looked concerned and he added: ‘He really can’t do meetings any more, I’m afraid.’ Then he offered his hand. ‘I’m Jake Harrister and you’re T.A. Thane, I know. He told me you were coming.’
He was handsome enough and fit, she thought, but there was no zing from him. Possibly gay, she reckoned.
‘You’re his lawyer?’ she said pleasantly as she shut the door behind him.
‘No, indeed. A colleague, well ex-colleague, much junior obviously,’ he replied smoothly over his shoulder, clearly keen to see Jackson St Clair for himself. Inside the dining room his manner towards the older man, sitting slumped in his chair, was respectful and solicitous.
Tire picked up her scarf and bag, say
ing: ‘I’d best be off. Thank you for seeing me.’ She nodded uncertainly at St Clair, unsure what she had to be grateful for since she was sure he hadn’t told her all he knew.
He wheezed and said with a struggle: ‘There is one thing I should say.’
She tensed in anticipation.
He looked at her, his watery eyes glistening. ‘I would be careful what you write about Paul Stone. He is well connected. Has many powerful friends. And has made it clear in the past that his son is untouchable. Remember the old saying, my dear. If you’re going to attack a giant, kill him.’ He sank back, his breath rasping.
‘And Wrighton?’
He shook his head, holding his handkerchief against his mouth. ‘Unsavoury, an ass. Vengeful. But not in Stone’s league.’
Harrister pulled lightly on her arm and escorted her out of the room. At the front door he said quietly: ‘I’m sorry if he was not as helpful as you wanted. He is pretty far gone nowadays.’
‘What did he mean about Stone?’ she asked.
He stood with his hand on the open door. ‘Exactly what he said. If you’re going to attack an influential figure you have to know you can bring them down. Otherwise they’ll do you damage.’ A bout of coughing sounded behind them and he leant closer. ‘There was a journalist some years ago sniffing around Paul Stone who ended up in an unfortunate car crash.’
‘Another one? His life is littered with them.’
He put up his hands in a non-committal gesture and replied: ‘I know nothing. It may just have been a coincidence. Go carefully.’
Then he put his hand out firmly to close the conversation. Instead of shaking it she held it in both her hands, aware that he disliked her touch. ‘What paper?’
This earned her a look of heavy disapproval. ‘I believe it was one of the Scottish popular papers. Now I must go to him. Your driver will find you, I’m sure, at the gate. Goodbye.’ The door shut with a soft clunk.
CHAPTER 30
There was little conversation on the long drive to Barcelona. Tire mulled over her meeting with St Clair and stared moodily out of the car window, daydreaming about Jin and about sea birds crying, shrieking and squawking on wind-blown cliffs. Herk seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. A compilation of classical music, copied from her iPod, played for hour after hour. He had snoozed on the Channel crossing and stopped every three hours for a twenty-minute nap, refusing her offers to take over the wheel.
He swung round the busy Paris Périphérique and on down through multiple junctions till they were safely onto the A75 motorway heading south. At his insistence, she had brought cash to feed the péage tolls. ‘Don’t want to leave a credit card trail,’ he had explained tersely. For a moment she had wondered just how paranoid he was and whether she should be worried about being stuck with someone she barely knew, then smiled at herself for being neurotic.
A French radio newsflash cut through the music to announce two hundred dead in a mental hospital fire in eastern Russia.
‘Ugh,’ she said, ‘probably chained to their beds, poor sods.’
He retuned the player to BBC news as the presenter ran through stock prices and cricket scores. On the hour, the headlines droned through a gloomy IMF economic report on global debt, multiple bombings in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, devastating floods in Timor with hundreds killed and a junior Tory minister’s resignation over an affair with a transgender hooker. At the end, breaking news came of a water skiing accident that had left international footballer Martin Diegolu in a coma. The radio cut back to music as he stubbed a finger on the screen with the volume turned down.
‘Tell me how much of that is due to these cranky influences you were talking about yesterday.’
The chuckle came out before she could stop it. ‘You’re getting to be like Erica. She always asked questions like that.’
She eased her back and stretched out one leg to prop it against the footrest.
‘There’s always murder, mayhem and catastrophe somewhere in the world, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. But they are worse around hard influences. Usually there are two or three headline-grabbers which seem to soak up the energy. Like Diegolu and back last year Michael Schumacher’s accident, plus road rage and major traffic disasters. Then there are the longer-scale ones. Are you really interested in this?’
‘I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.’ He took a hand off the wheel to gesture her to continue.
‘Uranus Pluto over five years provoked the underdogs to rise up, which is why the Arab Spring happened and freedom fighters, or anarchists, clashed with the forces of suppression and the status quo. And then it was joined by Neptune in Pisces, which stokes up the religious loony-tunes brigade – fanatics and the like.’
Another péage broke her flow as they slowed behind a queue of three cars. She leant out of the window to slot a twenty-euro note into the machine and retrieve the change.
‘Don’t suppose you’re interested in the economic stuff?’ she said, as he accelerated away into the fast lane.
‘I earn money, don’t I? Keep spilling.’
‘Pluto moved into Capricorn in 2008, bang on cue for the financial meltdown. It only comes round every 250 years or so and you could write a history of economic theory on the times it’s been around. The effect is to deconstruct outworn financial and government systems and rebuild sounder ones. It always starts by reducing to ashes.’
‘When do we get to the better bit?’
‘The million-dollar question. Once lessons have been learned. There’s another eight years to run and the Uranus square has been creating an unwanted distraction. That’s nearly out of the way, though there’s a Saturn-Pluto coming up in 2019. That might just drive it home – painfully.’
‘I’d best concentrate on driving carefully, then,’ he said equably.
‘And avoid locked rooms and risky sports.’
They settled back into companionable silence and St Clair’s words echoed back at her. ‘Kill the giant.’ Was that hyperbole or a considered warning? Maybe caution was advisable. Once they’d passed the turn-off for Toulouse he slowed from 130 kilometres an hour down to a steady 100, saying: ‘We’re early since I don’t pick up the four-wheel in Barcelona till later. We’ll stop for lunch and take the mountain road across. It’ll get us off these bleeding motorways.’
And away from prying eyes and cameras at the main border crossing into Spain, Tire thought but didn’t say. She checked her phone, scrolled through a long message from Russell and swore softly.
‘What?’ His question was repeated several times with increasing irritation.
‘I’m thinking. Don’t bully me.’ She rolled down the window to light a cigarette as they exited at Perpignan Sud, took the Argelès-sur-Mer sign and headed for the coast. ‘Wrighton and Harman Stone were involved in two business ventures together, both of which went toes up. A chain of travel agencies collapsed with major debt in the 1990s. And an online pharmacy in 2001 was shut down after suspicions it was selling counterfeit drugs from India, but no charges were brought. I don’t remember reading anything about those. How did they manage to keep their involvement quiet?’
‘Well, how?’
‘St Clair told me that Stone senior protects his son. Maybe he had it shut down.’ She turned to shoot him an exasperated look. ‘But what it does mean is that Harman and Wrighton know each other. Christ, it’s so incestuous that world. Burgoyne and Crumley trail after Paul Stone like grovelling courtiers, and now these two jackasses are in each other’s pocket. Which means they’ll all cover for each other.’
‘Bit of a spider’s web, then. Doesn’t make it easier for us with Erica being connected to both.’
‘Erica was as straight as a die.’ She felt like punching him on the arm.
‘Keep your hair on. I wasn’t suggesting she was anything other than unlucky.’ He blew out a long sigh and rotated his shoulders. ‘It’ll make more sense after we’ve had lunch.’
The dual carriageway, dotted with coloured
bridges over underpasses and rivers, was flanked on the right by a small mountain range and on the left by cherry orchards with the sea beyond. The signs welcomed them to the Côte Vermeille.
‘You know this area?’ she asked, making an effort to sound interested.
‘Aye, the French marine commandos train down here for diving. We were stationed with them for a while, back a few years.’
That’s why he can read French, thought Tire.
‘You dive, then?’
‘Not now. Too old,’ he answered with a shrug. ‘Your heart and head won’t take the pressure for ever. Well, no the kind of things we were doing. It wasn’t scuba diving for pleasure.’
The modern red-tiled bungalows with ochre walls of Argelès sped past. Even the outlying commercial centre with aluminium warehouses looked clean and tidy. Signs for beaches and the marina made clear its function as a seaside resort. Round a wide curve the village of Collioure came into view below them, tucked into a bowl in the bay, the blue sea lapping up to an ancient fort standing proud of the surrounding houses.
‘Too touristy,’ Herk said shortly, when she looked questioningly at him. ‘We’ll go into Port-Vendres, next one along.’
Within five minutes he had driven down a narrow winding road, past houses with palms and aloes in their front gardens and blue plumbago and purple bougainvillea spilling over their fences, into the village and parked the car against the harbour wall. Small fishing boats were moored, their orange nets piled on deck. Glistening white pleasure yachts lined one side of the inlet, overlooked by a row of cafes and restaurants. An incongruously large, five-tiered cruise ship sat on the other side.
‘It’s a very deep sea port,’ Herk remarked, marching ahead of her past the yachts clunking gently against their moorings. ‘All the military transport for the Algerian War left from here. They bring fruit, veg and fish in now from all over the world for transport north.’
Looking around with a smile, she breathed in the faint whiff of tar, ozone and exhaust fumes. ‘Reminds me of Scottish fishing villages when I was a child, except they only had trawlers and no sunshine.’
