Charles stares into the gloom trying to make out the features of the man showing such tenderness to his partner. It’s difficult to be sure but he thinks he does recognise him, a clerk from the landing opposite Charles’s former chambers; in his thirties, Charles remembers, and rather well-spoken for a clerk, he recalls. He cannot at that instant remember the chap’s name.
Charles has come to a halt, undecided. The two people sitting on the bench haven’t seen him yet. With a peculiar tightness in his chest and a sudden inexplicable shortness of breath, Charles turns to his left and walks quickly down the steps past Queen Elizabeth Buildings towards the river.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Thursday, 16 July
Charles washes up his breakfast things quickly, takes a shower and dresses for court. As he descends the staircase his eyes land again on the packed suitcase, waiting in the hall like an accusation. It’s been there for two days, silently demanding that he make a decision. Charles wanders round the big house. He was never sure about it. Even when Sally was there he was lonely, out in the rich leafy suburbs where he knew no one and everything was unfamiliar. Now he recognises that it was, at least in part, that ambivalence which provided fertile compost for the bindweed that throttles his relationship with her.
He’s still unsure. Will Sally see his abandonment of the Hampstead house as evidence of his giving up, a further failure to commit? Will it merely accelerate the inevitable? A return to his dusty bachelor flat at Fetter Lane feels like a failure, a full-stop. But it’s just common sense; to be once more within fifty yards of the Temple and a ten-minute walk to the Old Bailey where he can focus on his career until matters are resolved; where he can save himself nearly two hours’ commuting every day to and from an empty house in North London which is no one’s home. At least back in the Smoke he’d have his old haunts, a few friends and David, his brother.
He picks up from the kitchen table the prosecution depositions on which he was working the previous evening and loads them into his briefcase. He scribbles a note on a scrap of paper and checks all the doors and windows on the ground floor, making sure everything is closed and locked as if he were going on holiday. He collects his work bags and returns to the suitcase behind the front door.
After a moment’s final consideration he opens the front door, taking the suitcase with him. In the porch he rolls the scrap of paper into a tube and leaves it protruding from an empty milk bottle. It advises the milkman to leave no milk until further request.
Charles double-locks the front door without a backward glance and walks down the path.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Friday, 17 July
Charles is again the last to leave Chambers. He locks up behind him and begins to walk towards Fleet Street and the flat on Fetter Lane, wondering if he can be bothered to go shopping and cook for himself on the tiny stove, or if it would be worse eating alone in a restaurant. Cleaning the flat for the first time in months took little time, but the cupboards are still bare and the fridge holds little more than a pint of milk.
His attention is caught by colourful movement on the periphery of his vision, and he turns. Patrizia, wearing a lime green blouse and white slacks, slips out of the gardens and runs across the deserted cobbles outside Crown Office Row towards him. Charles waits for her.
‘Stalking me again?’ he calls as she approaches.
‘Not exactly. We tried Hyde Park —’ Charles looks up to see the two bodyguards standing a respectful distance back, probably just out of earshot — ‘but I was constantly besieged by people wanting autographs. So I remembered this place and guessed it’d be empty. I wanted to come back here in any case; it’s so peaceful! I did wonder if you were beavering away in your office, but I hadn’t intended to disturb you.’ She leans forward and kisses Charles on the cheek. ‘But here you are.’
‘Here I am.’
She hears the sadness in Charles’s tone. ‘Are you OK, my British friend?’ she asks gently.
Charles opens his mouth to make some flippant comment, changes his mind and searches for a way to be honest without revealing too much, and then changes it again.
‘Decisive as ever, I see,’ she teases, but there is gentleness in her delivery. Charles smiles apologetically. ‘Look, I’m on my way back to the hotel to change and have a late meal. Angelo is on the continent somewhere —’
‘Angelo?’
‘Sorry: Mr Bruno. My manager. Anyway, I’m on my own and I have no one to play with. Would you care to join me for dinner? Just dinner, I promise.’
This time he doesn’t hesitate. ‘Yes. I’d like that.’
Charles has dined at the Ritz once or twice before, but he would not personally have chosen the venue. It’s not that he feels uncomfortable away from Tubby Isaac’s jellied eel stall, Blooms in Aldgate or the Bagel Bakery in Brick Lane, the familiar and comfortable eateries of his childhood. Success at the Bar has increasingly allowed him the small luxury of eating at one of the handful of decent restaurants in London.
The hotel’s food is perfectly adequate; it’s the ostentation of the dining room that irritates him. Charles is not at ease in surroundings more suited to the court of Louis XIV than twentieth century London: alabaster columns, bays full of statuary, gold leaf, heavy chandeliers, twenty-foot curtains and thick carpet which muffle the clink of cutlery and the oleaginous approach of the over-attentive waiters; it all makes him want to scream, or do something completely inappropriate, like gargle with the champagne Patrizia ordered. He also resents the fact that he finds himself performing in his best Cambridge and Inns of Court accent just to allow the haughty waiters no additional grounds for condescension beyond the fact that he is improperly dressed for the occasion.
Charles pays little attention to the food and focuses his cross-examination on Patrizia and her career, rather than her childhood in Philadelphia. She seems relaxed and at her ease. One of the advantages of the Ritz, he realises, is that it is so full of celebrities and very wealthy people that few give an up-and-coming starlet a second glance.
Charles waited in the bar while Patrizia changed for dinner, and she now wears a formal peach-coloured dress; high in the neck, with bare arms and shoulders, tight to the waist and flared at the knee. Charles guesses it’s another couturier-designed outfit, but he knows insufficient about fashion to identify the house. She has done something to her hair, and the luxuriant wildness of it has somehow been tamed with a long mother of pearl clip at the back of her neck.
Patrizia orders hors d’oeuvre, entrée and dessert, but eats only a few mouthfuls of each. Eventually, with a sigh, she pushes her discarded dessert to one side and lights a cigarette.
‘Lost your appetite?’ he asks.
‘You kidding? I’m still famished! But like my mother I have a tendency to gain weight. The studio’s very strict, so I live on a permanent diet.’
‘But at the Waldorf…’
‘Yeah, you took me by surprise and I succumbed to temptation, but I can’t let it happen again. I was told that English food was dreadful, so I thought it’d be easy to stick to my regime. It turns out it ain’t that bad.’
‘I don’t think the kitchen at the Ritz is entirely representative,’ says Charles drily.
‘Whatever. Bottom line, literally I guess: I’ve put on a few pounds since I’ve been here. They want me to look like Lauren Bacall —’
‘Whereas you look like Rita Hayworth.’
She pauses and smiles, her almond-shaped eyes wide open. ‘You really think so? Sorry — don’t answer that; outrageous fishing on my part.’
‘Actually, I do. You remind me a lot of her.’
‘Well,’ replies Patrizia modestly, ‘her mother was Spanish, mine’s Italian, so I guess there’s a shared Mediterranean influence. But if I get any fatter I will be in trouble.’
‘Now you really are fishing, girl. There’s not an inch of unnecessary fat anywhere on you, as well you know.’
‘Really? What about —’ she slaps her hip
s to indicate where the alleged extra pounds reside — ‘or —’ and, scanning the room swiftly to make sure she’s not being observed, she cups her breasts — ‘here?’
Her last gesture takes Charles so much by surprise that he blushes.
‘Oh, Charles!’ she exclaims, laughing. ‘Did I embarrass you?’
‘No. It’s just…’ he tails off, for once lost for a smart reply.
She places her cigarette in the ashtray, picks up his hand, lowers her head to bring his fingers to her mouth and kisses them once, twice. The sensation of her soft lips caressing his knuckles is so unexpected and so intense that Charles blushes again.
‘You know, Charles, you’re very sweet.’
She replaces his hand on the table between them but retains hold of it.
‘No,’ he says, a little bitterly. ‘Sweet is not what I am. Apparently.’
She doesn’t reply for a moment but continues to stroke the back of Charles’s hand. ‘What’s troubling you?’ she asks softly. ‘I saw it the minute you came down those stairs from your office.’
‘What, from one hundred yards away?’
‘I’m an actress. Posture, body language, it’s part of what I do. There’s usually an electricity about you, Charles, a vibrancy. It’s very powerful, very attractive. You usually look as if you can move mountains — and what’s more, would give it a try if asked. But you stood outside your office for a moment and your shoulders were slumped, your chin down, and when I spoke to you, your tone of voice — they call it your affect, you know? — was flat. What’s happened since I last saw you?’
He hesitates. ‘Yes. Well spotted. Sorry if I’ve not been good company.’
‘You have been good company. OK,’ she says with finality, releasing Charles’s hand and stubbing out her unfinished cigarette. ‘Tell me to walk if you like, but I’d like to get out of this dress, and into something less constricting.’
‘You wanna put on something more comfortable?’ he asks in his American accent, grinning.
‘Sorry, Charles, multi-talented you may be, but I’d draw the line at Jean Harlow impressions.’ She throws the white linen napkin from her lap onto the table and rises. ‘Well I, at least, have made a decision.’
‘Shall I wait here? Order some coffee?’ he asks.
She shakes her head, locking her eyes intensely onto his.
‘Brandy perhaps?’
She shakes her head again. ‘I’m not coming back down.’ She holds out her hand. ‘Are you coming up?’
Charles has suspected that, despite her promise, this was coming. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks.
She smiles. ‘I’ve been sure since the minute I laid eyes on you. The question is, are you? You know, Charles, no one’s ever turned me down before. Please don’t make a habit of it; you could rock a girl’s confidence.’
Charles smiles gently, and his eyes travel from hers down her voluptuous body and back up again. He sighs, shaking his head slightly, but he is not declining; it’s disbelief. She understands the sigh for what it is.
‘Come on, then,’ she says. ‘Let’s see if we can cheer you up.’
Charles stands. Patrizia takes his hand and leads him from the dining room. Hand-in-hand they walk to the lift and travel up to Patrizia’s room. Neither speaks.
Part of Charles wonders how he has reached this point. Only a few short weeks ago he was embarking on a new life with Sally and was surrounded by all the prosaic tokens of domesticity; bins to empty, bills to be paid, shopping to be done and beds to make. Now he is about to walk into the hotel bedroom of a beautiful American actress, and he has no idea quite how that happened or what consequences will follow. He used to think he could discern the staging posts of his life with Sally; it stretched out before him, as if on a straight railroad track across the flat Midwest. Heat haze made all but the foreground indistinct, but he could nonetheless make out the distant halts represented by marriage, holidays and, yes, probably even children. Suddenly, the predictable journey of his life is taking an unforeseen turn off the main track, and he finds himself climbing an unremarked hill, navigating bends around which he cannot see, the flat plain receding below, apparently inaccessible.
They walk in silence, the thick carpet muffling their footsteps, and arrive outside a door. Patrizia looks at Charles as she inserts the key. She pulls him inside after her and through a small panelled lobby.
They are in an enormous suite furnished with two separate chaise longues, a drinks cabinet, an occasional table with two red upholstered armchairs and, facing them, a large bed. My entire flat would fit in here, he thinks. Housekeeping have already turned down the crisp linen sheets on both sides of the bed in perfect triangles, and the brass lamps on the bedside tables have been left illuminated. A door leads to what appears to be a dressing room and another to a large tiled bathroom, through the half-open door of which Charles can see a massive bath standing in the centre of the room on four claw feet.
Patrizia is acutely aware of Charles’s uncertainty and immediately takes charge.
‘There’s a jug on the marble table just inside the bathroom. Could you fill it with a little water, please, and bring it back out?’ She points to the bathroom door, and walks immediately to the drinks cabinet to pour from a crystal decanter. Charles does as he is bid. ‘There’s no brandy unfortunately,’ she calls after him. ‘Is Scotch OK?’.
‘Yes, thanks.’
Charles returns from the bathroom to find Patrizia waiting for him in the centre of the room, a dimpled glass of liquid in each hand. She has taken her hair out of the clip, and it now falls in a glossy cascade of waves to her shoulders, partly over one eye. She looks like a publicity photograph for a film: the Hollywood screen goddess.
‘I assume you’d like some water in yours?’ he asks.
‘That’s how I was taught to drink single malt,’ she says, her voice low.
‘Quite right,’ he says, pouring a splash of water into each glass, and taking the one Patrizia offers him.
She knocks back half her whisky and places the glass behind her on the bedside table. Charles is now in the centre of the room, both hands engaged.
‘Perfect,’ she says.
Patrizia approaches him and places her arms on his shoulders, encircling his neck. Charles’s senses reel as her scent engulfs him; part perfume, yet the greater part a warm, earthy, animal scent that is all hers. He feels her breasts against his chest and her thighs meeting his as she presses herself against him. Her face closes on his, her wild hair now obscuring everything else in the room, and his eyes lock onto her beautiful features, now radiant and flushed with desire. Her lips meet his and she kisses him deeply, breathing through her nose, her hot exhalations tickling Charles’s eyelashes. For a moment Charles wonders how to respond when his full hands prevent him from holding her, but then he submits to her and focuses everything on their joined mouths. The kiss goes on a long time, sometimes soft pressure of lips alone, sometimes nibbling and biting gently, sometimes tongues flirting. It is intensely arousing.
She disengages from him and tips her head back, shaking her hair out of the way to look into his face. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘I knew. I just knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed quite like that before. Like making love in miniature.’
‘Excellent. Pleased not to disappoint.’ He stands back. ‘Well, thank you for a lovely evening, Patrizia.’
Doubt clouds her face. ‘Are you kidding? You’re leaving?’
He knocks back his whisky in a single gulp and places the empty glass and the water jug on a table just inside the door. He pauses for a moment, implying that he is indeed about to depart, but then laughs out loud and closes the distance between them again, taking her tightly in his arms and burying his face in her neck. His tongue travels up the soft skin from the junction of her neck and shoulder to her ear, and she shudders.
‘Yes,’ he murmurs, his voice thick, ‘I’m kidding. Right now, it’d tak
e a team of wild horses to drag me back out that door.’
‘Thank God for that. I’ve got goosebumps from my neck to my toes.’ She unfastens something at her neck and turns slightly in his grasp, lifting an arm up. ‘Can you get the zipper?’
He finds the zip under her arm, descending to her waist. The dress is tight in the bodice and he has to pull down carefully not to tear the fabric. Her upper body free, she shrugs the dress off her shoulders and allows it to fall, landing in a peach-coloured pool on the floor. But for her shoes, she is naked. She steps out of the dress and flicks it with a pointed toe, hooking it neatly into the air so that it falls in a parabola onto one of the chaise longues. Charles can’t his eyes off her body. She is a series of breath-taking honey-coloured curves. The outline of her heavy breasts falls just outside the line of her chest, and her pear-shaped hips flow into long, slim legs.
She watches Charles closely as his gaze travels all over her, lingering on her secret places, a half-smile on his lips. He tears his eyes away to meet hers.
‘You like?’ she asks, her face coy but posing flagrantly to display herself.
‘Zoftig,’ he breathes.
‘Say again?’
‘It’s Yiddish. From the German. Literally curvy or well-rounded. But also juicy.’
Corrupted: Murder and cover-up at the heart of government (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 4) Page 21
