Kingdom of Shadows

by Barbara Erskine

  Clare sat down and picked up the glass. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was flat. ‘Do you want me to find somewhere else to stay?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘I’d like to stay here.’ She was terrified suddenly of being alone.

  ‘Stay here then, but don’t expect bloody kid gloves.’

  She gave a watery smile. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You still want me to put out a statement to the press?’

  She nodded. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘No?’ He looked at her closely. Then he stood up. ‘No, perhaps you’re right. Nothing has changed.’ He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Right. I’ll take your car over to Patrick right now. You might as well stay here and tidy up. Make up the bed for yourself.’ The slightest inflection on the word yourself told her exactly where she stood and she coloured slightly. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he went on. ‘Then we can go up the road for a tandoori.’

  He was holding out his hand for the keys as Clare fumbled in the pocket of her coat when the front door of the flat opened. Kathleen stood staring at them for a full twenty seconds before she stepped inside and slammed it behind her.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘Bloody Neil Forbes! I tell you I’m going to be away a couple of nights and you can’t wait, can you, you lousy shit!’ The cards had warned her: the tower. Twice – and then again the priestess – the woman with the psychic eyes.

  Kathleen stood staring at them, her hands in the pockets of her heavy camel coat.

  ‘Kath –’ Neil’s tone was warning.

  ‘Kath –’ she echoed, mocking. ‘Oh Kath, you’re not going to make a fuss, Kath! You would never have known, Kath! Don’t be a spoilsport, Kath …!’ She walked over to the bedroom door and stared in. The bed was still rumpled where they had lain; their shoes lay discarded at the foot of it, the clean, blue bed sheets had fallen, still folded to the floor.

  Neil put on his jacket. ‘If you don’t like it, you know what you can do.’ He pulled open the front door. ‘I’ll see you later.’ His tone was as bored and curt as when he had addressed Clare.

  ‘Neil –’ Clare suddenly realised that he was going to leave her alone with Kathleen – but already the door had banged behind him and they could hear his footsteps running down the long flights of worn stone steps to the windswept Canongate below.

  Kathleen gave a cold smile. ‘Typical man! Running out on the mess,’ she said. ‘Are you planning on moving in, because if you are, don’t bother. I’ll get him back.’

  Clare sat down at the table. She snatched up her glass. ‘I’m only staying a couple of days, until I find somewhere else.’ Her hands were shaking again.

  Kathleen looked down at her coldly. ‘You’d better make that someone else, as well.’

  ‘There’s nothing between us.’ Clare couldn’t look at her.

  ‘No?’ Kathleen gave a sneering laugh. ‘Do you think I don’t know when two people have been screwing? It’s written all over your faces.’

  Clare blushed. ‘It … it didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘No!’ Kathleen’s face was hard. ‘I don’t suppose it did! Well, keep it that way. Quite a triumph for Neil, to lay someone like you, considering how much he loathes you.’ She walked over to the desk and pulling open a drawer took out an envelope. In it was her train ticket, the reason she had to come back to the flat before walking down to Waverley. She pushed it into the pocket of her skirt. ‘I’ll be back on Monday,’ she said. ‘Enjoy him while you’ve got him.’

  Clare stared at the door for a long time after Kathleen had left, then slowly she walked back into the bedroom. She felt sick and degraded. She stood staring down at the bed. She had never slept with anyone but Paul before. What had possessed her to do such a thing? Neil had made no secret of the fact that he despised her; he had promised her nothing apart from a short-term bolthole from Paul. He was probably at this moment crowing over his victory with his friends in a pub somewhere … And yet he had given her something. His hands on her body had released something she had never known she possessed. She had felt passion and hunger for a man for the first time in her life. Her lovemaking with Paul had been a shadow of this. She sat down on the bed and put her hand on the rumpled sheets where Neil had lain, slowly becoming aware of the fact that her body was still glowing and satisfied, awakened for the first time in her life. This was how it had been for Isobel. This was the feeling that she had been willing to throw away everything for – that and love. She frowned. Neil had asked her if she had ever loved Paul. She had never loved anyone at all. Not as Isobel had loved Robert …

  When Neil returned she was still there, lying on the bed, her eyes closed, her arm across her face.

  He stood looking down at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded silently.

  ‘Your car is on its way to Glasgow, and the keys will be mailed back to your mother from there.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She felt the bed sag as he sat down next to her. He pulled her arm away from her face. ‘I take it you sent Kath on her way?’

  Clare turned away from him. ‘She left, but not without having the last word.’

  ‘That sounds like Kathleen.’ He laughed quietly. ‘So, did you manage to stand up for yourself?’

  Slowly she sat up. ‘You make it sound like some sort of test.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He folded his arms, looking at her hard. ‘Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been running away from something. Even that first time at Duncairn. I don’t know what from, but you were running then, and then that time in Suffolk, I could see it in your eyes, and again at the hotel the other day. And it’s not just Paul Royland you’re running away from, is it?’

  She swung her legs to the floor and sat there, hugging her arms around herself miserably. ‘I don’t know who else it would be.’

  ‘Yourself, perhaps. Can I give you a piece of advice? Trite, perhaps, but I think good advice, nevertheless. If you stop running from yourself, you’d find you didn’t have to run away from other people any more. I don’t think the real you is a passive victim of circumstance. I think she’s a fighter. And I think she took the first step in that fight right here on this bed.’ His face was very serious, then suddenly he grinned. ‘End of lecture. Are you hungry?’

  She nodded with a faint smile. ‘Neil.’ It was only the second time she had called him by his first name. ‘Will you answer one question?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you loathe and despise me?’

  ‘That’s two questions.’

  ‘No. Be serious. I want to know.’

  ‘No and no. Satisfied?’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Then why ask? Come on, let’s go and get something to eat. We have a manifesto to draw up, remember? The Clare Royland Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Don’t worry about what other people are thinking about you, Clare. The important thing is to know what you think about yourself.’

  Zak walked slowly up the Grassmarket, staring around him. He had never been to Edinburgh before and the sheer rugged beauty of the place had taken his breath away. So few cities lived up to their postcard images, but this one did. The presence of that great brooding castle on its rock, hanging over the city; the sense of history echoing from every wall of every street. He glanced down at the piece of paper in his hand. Earthwatch. It sounded good.

  He found the office in the end, right beneath the soaring walls of the castle. It was closed. He tried the door twice, then with a shrug he walked away. He’d have to find himself somewhere to stay, then try again in the morning.

  He began to climb the steps up Castle Wynd towards the esplanade. The place was getting under his skin. Edinburgh. Scotland. Suddenly he was beginning to understand Clare better. The echoes were everywhere; for a sensitive person they would be overwhelming. And he had unlocked that sensitivity for her. Before he had come along she had had her dreams and her nightmares, and her phobias, but now, now the thin skin
that separated past from present had somehow been breached and she was standing right in the way of the flood of memories which was pouring through the hole. That was why he had to come. Not because he could help her, but because he felt somehow to blame.

  He had read about these things so often, talked about them with his friends back home in California, endlessly, in the blaze of the sun and the certainty of daylight, but here, in the mysterious twilight of a Scottish winter evening with the shadows of the past around him … He shivered.

  Even in Cambridge it was different. There one talked. One talked forever until one squared the circle to one’s satisfaction, and then one talked again. But that was all theory, and his theories were clear. He had feelings; he had guides; he knew what should be. But this was more than that combination of theory, received lore, instinct and wishful thinking which formed the basis of his creed. This was reality. And he wasn’t sure how to cope with it.

  He reached the top at last, his heart pounding after the steepness of the long double flight of steps, and turned to look back towards the south. He caught his breath. The smoky rooftops of Edinburgh were a deep pearl in the evening light. Beyond them in the distance rose a range of hills, soft and folded: secret, sinister, the slanting orange evening light from the cloud-covered westering sun throwing black shafts of shadow up the hidden glens. He stared for a long time, then he turned and walked across the esplanade to look north across the main body of the city. It was spangled with lights now, but there was still enough luminosity in the sky to see the great black slate sweep of the Forth, with beyond it more hills. In the far distance he could see what he took to be real mountains. They, in the last of the evening light, already carried streaks of snow. He sighed. Was Clare still there, somewhere lost in the deep heart of Scotland, or was she already here in Edinburgh, frightened and alone with her visions?

  Neil had changed the sheets on the bed whilst Clare was brushing her teeth.

  ‘There you are. Pristine and unsullied.’ He had turned down one corner neatly.

  Clare had put on the nightdress she had thrown into her bag with a few cosmetics and a change of underwear. She had combed out her hair and brushed her teeth. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’

  ‘That depends.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I suspect it’s going to be next door.’

  Her cheeks coloured slightly. ‘I’m very tired.’

  ‘Fair enough. Perhaps we’ve had enough lessons for one day anyway.’ He smiled at her. ‘See you in the morning.’

  She waited for the door to close behind him, then she went over to the window, and drew back the curtains, standing staring out into the night. Silently she pulled up the bottom half of the window and leaned on the sill with her elbows, feeling the icy wind touch her hot skin. She could smell the bitter salt of the Forth and beyond it, carried on the wind, the chill of ice from the distant hills. Shuddering she closed the window and crawled into the bed. She was very very tired and she forgot to be afraid.

  This time the nightmare was slightly different. There was a rime of frost on the bars, and the faces behind the eyes were muffled against the cold. She could feel the ache of it through her bones, dulling the terror, cocooning the despair as she huddled back into the shadows, seeing the snowflakes drift towards her through the bars.

  Neil heard her sobbing as he sat writing late at the kitchen table. For a while he sat there frowning, then at last he stood up and cautiously opened the bedroom door. He turned on a lamp and stood looking down at her. She was asleep, the tears running down her face and into the pillow as she turned restlessly from side to side, her face contorted with fear. He sat down on the edge of the bed and was reaching out to take her hand when she began to scream.

  27

  ‘But he has managed to pay every penny of the debt!’ Henry leant forward in his chair in his anxiety. It was settlement day: 21 November.

  Behind the huge partners’ desk Sir Duncan Beattie shook his head sadly. ‘I know, old chap, I know, but it’s out of my hands. I did what I could, but Paul has been a fool.’ He tightened his lips. ‘He should have known better. He dealt on insider information and everyone in the City seems to know about it, and now the DTI inspectors have asked for my cooperation over an enquiry.’ He stood up and paced up and down the floor a couple of times. ‘We have to think of BCWP. If we try to protect him, we implicate ourselves. Caroway at MCP is already involved.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m not allowing Paul to come back, Henry. I’m going to ask for his resignation.’

  ‘No!’ Henry was white. ‘You can’t do that. It will crucify him!’

  ‘I can and I will.’ Sir Duncan sat down again slowly. He felt suddenly very old. Paul’s father and he had known each other for over thirty years and he had always been very fond of the three Royland boys. They had done so well for themselves, David and Geoffrey – Geoffrey a slow starter, but now firmly in line for preferment according to a friend of his at the club who was a colleague of Geoffrey’s bishop. And now this! He sighed. ‘I know you’re fond of Clare and Paul, Henry, and I know this is going to be hard for you, but I want you to avoid them for a bit. The less contact there is between members of the board and Paul as long as the investigation is going on the better.’

  ‘Have the police been called in?’ Henry could barely put the question into words.

  Sir Duncan nodded. ‘I gather a preliminary report has been sent to the fraud squad.’

  ‘Hell!’ Henry banged the palms of his hands together in anguish. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sir Duncan said firmly. ‘I do not want BCWP involved. The firm’s entire reputation is at stake, and I am not going to take the chance. Not for one man.’

  ‘What about plea bargaining? It’s been done before.’

  Sir Duncan smiled wearily. ‘You have to have something to bargain with, Henry. You find something, and I’ll see the information gets to the right quarter, but I can’t think of anything Paul has done which would be usable, can you?’

  Henry thought too. If Paul had ever given large sums to charity he had certainly never broadcast the fact, and being Paul he would have seen to it that everyone would have known if he had done anything like that. No, privately he thought it unlikely that Paul had done anything that would tell in his favour. Clare did a lot for charity, but enough to help Paul now? You needed to have given millions for it to carry any weight.

  He was still thoughtful when he walked back down to his office. He could ring Clare and ask her, of course. It would be a legitimate reason for contacting her behind Paul’s back and making sure she was all right. And he did have the Airdlie number. Perhaps he could even go up there and see her …

  ‘I don’t know where she is. I’m sorry.’ Antonia’s voice was firm. ‘She’s not staying here any more.’

  ‘Not staying there?’ Henry frowned. ‘But I have to find her. If you could tell me where –’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Antonia put the phone down and looked at Sarah. ‘That was one of Paul’s colleagues. Paul doesn’t believe me that she’s gone! He has asked someone else to ring and check!’

  Sarah raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps he thought we were so cowed by his threats we would find her and drag her back!’ she said tartly. Now that she had found an ally in Clare’s mother she felt far braver about Paul. She had confided in Antonia in the end about her role in Clare’s escape, and both women had been vastly relieved to find they had someone they could talk to; someone who understood about their doubts. They had spent a long time huddled together trying to decide what to tell Archie when he finally came home.

  In spite of all their mutual confidences, however, there was one thing Antonia had not told Sarah, even now. She had said nothing to anyone about the crucifix she had found wrapped in one of Archie’s silk scarves, pushed to the back of the sideboard in the dining room.

  When Archie and James reappeared that evening James had cheered at the news that Clare had gone. ‘Good old sis! I thought she was being a bit
feeble, just sitting here.’

  ‘You realise she has probably gone straight to this man de Sallis! How did she escape?’ Archie looked from one woman to the other furiously. ‘How?’

  Antonia shrugged. Her migraine was miraculously better and she felt more alert than she had for years. ‘It was one of those things, dear. This isn’t a prison. We couldn’t have kept her here for ever,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Especially as there is sod all wrong with her,’ James put in, sotto voce.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Archie turned on his stepson, his face puce.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with her,’ James repeated stubbornly. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Except that now she has shown herself to be a common thief as well as everything else,’ Archie said acidly. ‘It seems to have slipped your attention that we are all trapped here without a car now.’ He was so angry that he began to splutter.

  James glanced at his mother. He had been the angriest when he discovered that Paul had taken the keys of the green Jaguar back to London with him, but now the situation struck him as rather humorous. Antonia was staring down at the carpet, and for a second James thought he detected a quiver at the corner of her mouth. She looked up and caught his eye. ‘I told you it was a pity you didn’t bring your Porsche, James,’ she said slowly and to his amazement she winked.

  He cornered her on her own in the kitchen later. ‘Why do you put up with him, mother?’

  ‘He’s my husband, James.’

  James looked heavenward. ‘More fool you. He doesn’t really believe all this about Clare?’

  ‘A lot of it is true, dear.’ She sat down and put her elbows on the kitchen table. ‘The nightmares, the day dreams – she’s always had them. Margaret warned me so often that this might happen one day. She fought it herself, right up to the end, you know –’ Her voice trailed away.