Kingdom of Shadows

by Barbara Erskine

  As Baines rang off she turned towards the stairs with a smile. ‘All right to go up?’

  ‘He’s not in his office, Mrs Royland.’ Baines came out from behind the desk. ‘He’s in the new building. If you’d like to follow me, I’ll show you where to go.’

  He opened a door in the far wall beyond the stairs and ushered her through. There, a glass walkway lined with exotic plants led directly into the new tower building where the bank and the stockbrokers, Westlake Pierce, her brother’s firm, now formed the nucleus of a new and powerful financial services group.

  Clare followed him into the fluorescently lit building until he stopped outside a row of lift doors. ‘This one will take you straight to him, Mrs Royland. The penthouse conference room. Non-stop. You get a breathtaking view from up there. You haven’t been in the new building before, have you?’

  He paused, his finger on the button as the lift door slid back. ‘Mrs Royland? Are you all right?’

  Clare had closed her eyes, her fists clenched tightly as she felt her stomach turn over in panic. The lift – a steel box with deep grey carpeting on floor and walls – was waiting for her, the door open, the little red eye above the call button alight and watching.

  Desperately, she swallowed. ‘Are there any stairs?’

  ‘Stairs?’ He looked shocked. ‘There are thirty-two storeys, Mrs Royland! Don’t you like lifts? I don’t like them much myself, truth to tell, but they’re fast, these ones. You’ll be all right.’ He gave her a reassuring smile.

  She bit her lip. ‘Would you come up with me?’

  ‘I can’t.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not supposed to leave the desk. By rights, I shouldn’t even have come through here …’

  There was nothing for it. Giving him a shaky smile, Clare stepped into the lift, clutching her leather purse tightly to her, and watched as the door slid shut.

  Paul couldn’t have done it deliberately. He wouldn’t. Yet how could he have forgotten her claustrophobia, her terror, above all of lifts? Why couldn’t he have waited downstairs and come up with her, rather than making her travel up alone? Was this some weird punishment for being half an hour late? Breathe deeply. Relax. Use what you’ve been taught. And count. Slowly count. The lift is a fast one. Any moment it will stop and the doors will slide open.

  It was slowing. She braced herself ready for the slight jolt as it stopped. Relieved, she waited for the door to open. There was total silence around her. Nothing happened. Even the slight hum of the mechanism had stopped. Then the lights went out.

  ‘Oh God!’ Clare dropped her purse in the darkness, the adrenalin of panic knifing through her stomach. Desperately she reached out in front of her, until her hands encountered the heavy steel doors, groping frantically for the crack between them. She could hear her breathing, hear her own sobbing as she clawed desperately around her. It was like the nightmare all over again, the nightmare of the cage – but this cage was real and solid, and it wasn’t a dream. Was there an escape hatch? A telephone? She couldn’t remember. Frantically she tried to keep a hold on the threads of reason as she hammered on the heavy, fabric-deadened walls. But there was nothing. Just a square, empty box.

  ‘Oh Christ! Oh God, please don’t let this be happening! Please!’ Already it was growing hot and airless. The darkness was absolute; tangible, like black oil swirling round her –

  Falling to her knees she put her hands over her face, trying to cut out the darkness, rocking backwards and forwards on the soft executive carpet, and at last, uncontrollably, she began to scream.

  3

  ‘Clare? Clare darling, you’re all right. It’s all over. You’re safe.’

  Paul was squatting beside her in the lift, his arms tightly round her. Behind him, the broad penthouse reception area was bright with light. ‘Come on, Clare. Can you stand up? Nothing happened. There was some sort of power failure. It was only a few seconds, darling.’

  Shaking like a leaf, with her husband’s arm around her, Clare managed to rise to her feet and Paul helped her out of the lift. ‘Come on, darling. There are chairs in the conference room. Penny, could you get some brandy? Quickly.’ Paul’s secretary had been hovering white-faced in the doorway.

  Clinging to him, Clare followed Paul into the huge conference room with its floor-to-ceiling windows. Some were screened with blinds, but no blinds were drawn on the western side, and the whole side of the room was a blaze of fiery red from the setting sun. Helping Clare to a chair, Paul took the proffered glass from his secretary and held it to his wife’s lips. ‘Drink this. My God, woman, you frightened me. Why on earth did you scream like that?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Paul, but I couldn’t help it –’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t.’ Penny put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She was a plump pretty woman of about thirty, smartly dressed in a dark suit with a frilly jabot at the collar of her blouse. Next to the green swirl of silk under Clare’s mink coat it looked odd, even indecently sober. ‘I hate that lift myself. I’m always terrified it might get stuck.’

  ‘It didn’t get stuck.’ Paul sounded irritated. ‘It stopped for a couple of seconds when the electricity went off. That’s all.’

  ‘It was several minutes, and it probably seemed like several hours to poor Mrs Royland,’ Penny retorted stoutly. She glared at her employer.

  Shakily Clare took another sip of brandy. ‘I’m all right now, really.’ She managed a smile.

  Behind Paul the sunset was fading fast. Greyness was settling over the city. No one had switched on any lights in the conference room itself, and it began to seem very dark.

  Paul was watching his wife closely, as if undecided what to do. The wave of tenderness which had swept over him as he helped her from the lift had passed, leaving him strangely detached once more. When at last he spoke, his eyes were cold. Whatever regret and sadness that still touched him when he thought of their longing to have a child had been firmly suppressed. He had far more immediate worries on his mind.

  ‘You look very pale, Clare. I don’t think you should come to the reception after all.’

  ‘Nonsense, Paul. I’m fine.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Paul was firm. ‘Penny, would you go back with Clare? Get a taxi and see her to the house. I have to go on to this wretched do, but I’ll come on home straight away afterwards. You should go to bed, darling. You look completely overwrought.’

  ‘I’m not, Paul.’ Clare was suddenly angry. ‘I’m perfectly all right. If you’d been waiting in your office none of this would have happened.’

  ‘I thought you’d like to see the view.’

  ‘But you know how much I hate lifts. Couldn’t you at least have waited downstairs and come up with me?’ She knew she sounded petulant, and the realisation made her even more angry.

  He was looking at her thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I should have. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh Paul.’ She bit her lip suddenly, desperately wanting him to put his arms around her, but it was Penny who kept ineffectually patting her shoulder.

  Paul had reached into his pocket for his wallet. He extricated a ten-pound note. ‘Here, Penny. Would you take her home now, please, then go on yourself. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Paul –’

  ‘No, darling. I insist. I’m afraid you will have to go down in the lift again, there’s no other way, but I’m sure you’ll be all right with Penny with you.’

  Clare swallowed her anger and disappointment with difficulty. Paul was treating her like a spoiled child who needed punishing. She wanted to shout at him, to defy him, to go to the party in spite of him, but then again, for his sake she did not want to argue in front of the other woman; and she had to admit, her legs did still feel shaky. She glanced up at him, suppressing with difficulty the new wave of fear which swept over her at the thought of getting into the lift again. ‘But what about you? Why can’t you come down with us?’

  ‘I’ll follow in five minutes or so. I have a few papers to sort out.’ He glan
ced at the long conference table. At the far end his case lay open, a neat pile of documents beside it on the polished surface. His gold fountain pen lay meticulously aligned on top of the papers. ‘You will be all right, Clare. Penny will look after you.’

  Unceremoniously he ushered them both to the door. He didn’t wait to see them call the lift.

  Penny pressed the button, her arm firmly linked through Clare’s. As the doors slid open she glanced up at the small glass-fronted cupboard set into the wall high up near the lift buttons. Inside it were all the emergency power switches for the top floor. Sitting in the conference room, bathed in the light of the setting sun, she had got up to close the door on to the landing after Paul went out to the cloakroom. She was sure she had seen him standing there near the switches. Then all the lights had gone out and, dazzled by the sunlight behind her, she could see nothing on the dark landing at all.

  ‘The club is almost empty this evening.’ Peter Cassidy greeted James Gordon in the changing room at Cannon’s as the latter, having fitted his card into the electronic door, came in carrying his sports bag. ‘We needn’t have bothered to book a court.’ He stooped to retie the lace on one white tennis shoe. ‘How is your sister, James? Em seems to think she’s going through a rough patch.’

  ‘Is she?’ Putting his card back in his wallet, James ripped off his tie and pulled the Asser and Turnbull shirt up over his head without undoing more than two buttons. ‘I haven’t talked to Clare for ages. I think she was a bit miffed about me inheriting Aunt Margaret’s money. I mean, the old girl had a very good reason for doing it, but Paul and Clare didn’t see it that way. Paul wanted to contest the will and have her declared senile.’

  ‘Which she wasn’t, I gather.’ Peter sat down on the bench in the middle of the room to wait for him.

  ‘No way. She was right on the ball up to the last five minutes, Ma said. Clare knew that of course. I don’t think she cares, actually. It’s Paul. You’d think with all his money he’d leave it alone, wouldn’t you? But perhaps it’s a habit with him.’ He paused reflectively. On the whole he was a great admirer of Paul’s. ‘Anyway, I thought Clare might be too embarrassed by the whole stupid thing to want to talk to me for a bit.’ He grinned, flicking his dark hair back from his face. ‘Besides, she hasn’t been much fun lately. She leads such a boring life, stuck in that house stuck in the middle of nowhere.’ He stepped out of his trousers and reached for his shorts.

  ‘It doesn’t sound boring from what I’ve been hearing.’ Peter laughed. ‘She’s having personal private lessons in bodybuilding from a continental lothario.’

  James had been rummaging in his sports bag for a shirt. Abruptly he straightened. ‘Oh, come on. That’s one of Emma’s stories!’

  ‘No, you ask Clare.’

  ‘I will.’ James laughed. ‘Good old sis. Perhaps she’s finally kicked over the traces. I always knew she would in the end. I wonder what Paul thinks?’

  ‘He’s horrified. He was the one that rang Em. He wants her to talk Clare out of it all. Apparently he thinks it’s all some sort of compensation for not getting pregnant.’

  ‘What a load of crap.’ James had finished putting on the white socks and shoes. Stowing the last of his things into his locker he picked up his squash racquet. ‘It’s Paul who is neurotic about having a son. I don’t think Clare gives a screw. Come on. I’m going to thrash you tonight, then last man to finish twelve lengths of the pool pays for dinner.’

  James looked distastefully round at the disordered living room of his flat in the Barbican when he got home that evening and sighed. The cleaning woman had failed to come for the second time running, and it was thick with dust. Dirty plates and glasses littered every free surface and there were clothes scattered on the floor. The air smelt stale. Throwing open the windows he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was empty of food. Tonics, cans of lager, two bottles of Bollinger, that was all. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t hungry. Peter had gone home to Emma for supper in the end. James had been invited, but he hadn’t wanted to go – there was always tension in the Cassidy house. He helped himself to a can of Pils and, going back into the living room, threw himself down on an easy chair, picked up the phone, and extending the aerial, began to punch out a number.

  It was several minutes before she replied, and when she did she sounded depressed.

  ‘Hi, Clare, how are you?’

  ‘James?’ From the slight sniff he wondered suddenly if she had been crying and he frowned. Deep down, beneath all the aggression, he was very fond of his sister.

  After Penny had dropped her off at the house an hour earlier, Clare had gone straight upstairs to lie down, not even bothering to remove her dress. Still indignant at Paul for sending her home like a child who has been forbidden a party because it has misbehaved, she was even more cross with herself for allowing him to do it. She had been lying gazing up at the ceiling, still feeling very shaky, when James rang. Now slowly she sat up, and, the receiver to her ear, swung her feet to the carpet, pushing her hair back from her face.

  ‘It’s a long time since you bothered to ring. What do you want?’ she asked, forcing herself to sound cheerful.

  That was more like it. He grinned to himself as he lay back in his chair, resting his ankle across his knee. ‘I don’t want anything. I can afford my own, now, remember?’ he said maliciously. ‘No, seriously, sis. I’ve been hearing weird stories about you and your body-building. What gives?’

  There was puzzled silence, then Clare laughed. ‘Bodybuilding? Who told you that?’

  ‘A reliable source. Come on. Tell me about it.’

  ‘It, James, is yoga, that’s all.’

  ‘What, no dumb-bells? No rippling muscles and black satin G-strings?’

  ‘No.’ It was her old infectious laugh.

  ‘And no continental lothario?’

  There was a pause. ‘No, Californian actually.’

  James whistled. ‘What does Paul say?’

  ‘He’s not interested, and if he was I wouldn’t care.’ She sounded rebellious. She didn’t want to think about Paul. She changed the subject abruptly. ‘James, you haven’t had any letters about selling any of the estate, have you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  She hesitated. ‘I had one from a solicitor in Edinburgh – Mitchison and Archer – saying they had a client who wanted to buy Duncairn.’

  James gave a soundless whistle. ‘I wonder why. Did they name a price?’

  ‘No. They said it would be negotiable.’

  ‘Are you going to sell?’

  ‘Of course not. That’s my inheritance. All there is of it,’ she couldn’t resist adding.

  James ignored that. ‘I can’t think why anyone would want Duncairn,’ he went on relentlessly, ‘unless –’ He stopped suddenly. ‘You know, there were some rumours in the City last month about the oil companies sniffing round the north-east coast again. Maybe they’re looking for somewhere to put a new terminal.’ He was intrigued. ‘That would be a turn up, Clare, if old Duncairn turned out to be worth a fortune. Whatever they want it for, if it is an oil company, they would offer serious money.’

  ‘Even if they do, I’m not selling.’ Clare was appalled at the thought. ‘Listen James. Don’t mention this to anyone. I haven’t told Paul about the letter and I don’t intend to. There’s no point.’

  ‘There would be if they offered you enough money, sis. I’ll ask around and see what I can find out for you.’

  Clare walked across to the window after James had rung off and drew back the curtains. The night was cold now, after the hot day. She could smell smoke. Someone had been burning dead leaves in one of the squares and the scent flavoured the night with autumn.

  With a sigh she closed the window and walked slowly downstairs still wearing her green dress. The skirt dragged on the steep uncarpeted staircase behind her with an exotic rustle. She went down the second flight to the basement kitchen, wondering if she should find herself something to eat –
she hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast that morning, but she wasn’t really hungry.

  Damn James. She hadn’t wanted to think about that letter any more. And damn Paul. She had been looking forward to the reception. And damn the lift! She shivered. Baines had been amazed when Penny asked him about the power cut. None of the building seemed to have been affected except the top floor. Of course none of the other lifts had been in use at the time, but he would call the engineers at once, and have them checked. He had been indignant, asking why they hadn’t called him on the internal phone, and scolded them for using the lift again. Clare had clenched her fists tightly as they waited for the taxi, her eyes firmly on the locked glass doors. Only when she was out on the pavement once more did she begin to relax at last.

  She went back upstairs into the living room. The original two rooms had been knocked through into one, so there were windows at both ends. She walked across and drew the front curtains briskly, then went to stand looking out into the darkness of the back garden beyond her own reflection. It was probably damp and misty in the country by now, but here the night was clear and luminous even where it lay beyond the reach of the light from the window. She could see the pale, blighted rose buds clearly, clinging to the trellis behind the oak garden seat. She missed Casta desperately.

  She brought the candle downstairs and set it in the middle of the Persian rug in the front half of the room and lit it, then, kicking off her shoes, she turned off all the lights. As an afterthought she unplugged the phone, then, quietly shutting the door into the hall, she turned back to the candle, and closing her eyes raised her arms above her head.