Hidden Power

by Judith Cutler

  ‘What’s all this about cousins? Perhaps I shall think better after a coffee.’ He rubbed his hands over his face, and grimaced. ‘Perhaps I should have shaved.’

  She rubbed the back of a finger over his cheek. ‘You’ll certainly have to if you want to indulge in any more uncousinly behaviour. The thing is, Rod, some members of this organisation have already seen Colin and me as Mr and Mrs Perfect.’

  ‘Kate, you sound paranoid to me.’

  ‘I am. But if they care enough to install cameras—’

  ‘If they care enough to install cameras.’

  ‘Then they might well check up on whether the people at the Oxford presentation match the people coming here. That’s all.’

  ‘And what would happen if they did and they found us wanting?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s something nasty in the small print. And Sue wanted this here as Joe and Josephine Public to sniff around surreptitiously, not draw attention to our presence by being exposed as frauds ourselves.’

  ‘Is she expecting to find fraud here?’

  ‘She expected us to find something. That’s why I’ve got Monday morning free. She wasn’t precise. Perhaps even she didn’t know what I was to look for. No, I’m sure she did. Just not telling.’

  Rod took her hand. ‘Have you found anything of interest yet?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But not the sort of thing I’d want to report to Sue.’

  ‘How about we put it about that we’ve met some friends—relatives, maybe—and are going to stay the night with them. Prize or no prize, we deserve something…less Spartan.’

  She had an idea from the warmth of his voice that he’d been intending to say something else. But she answered lightly, ‘Why not? So long as we’re back for the ten o’clock presentation. The only thing is—’

  ‘We must case the joint first,’ he said, dropping into a creaky American accent. ‘Though how we see if it really is a camera I don’t know,’ he continued in his usual voice. ‘Wave at it see if it waves back maybe. Now, breakfast…’

  ‘If anywhere’s open yet: I’ve only just realised it’s not yet eight.’

  ‘Eight! So why—’

  ‘Because I couldn’t quite trust either of us to behave in a cousinly way, not after last night, not if we stayed in bed I certainly couldn’t trust me.’

  He swooped on her, emerging from a decidedly incestuous kiss to say, ‘I’d say you were a very good judge of character, Sergeant Power. Come on: there must be some greasy spoon somewhere that does early breakfasts for workmen. God,’ he added, surveying the lowering skies and windswept marshes, ‘there must be some other reason you chose Hythe.’

  Replete, and armed with the Guardian and The Times, as if ready to make a day of it in their apartment, they parked and, finding Reception showing signs of life, popped in to announce their presence. They were greeted by a bored sixteen-year-old with a pierced navel.

  ‘Tennis? No. No, I don’t think so And there’s certainly no swimming pool. I mean, you wouldn’t want to swim in this weather, would you?’

  ‘Indoors?’

  ‘Closed for refurbishment. There’s a gym, but there’s a surcharge for that. Is that your car over there?’ she asked, alert for the first time ‘You’re supposed to park in your designated space.’

  ‘What other facilities are on offer here?’ Rod asked quietly.

  The girl’s expression returned to its previous blank. ‘Facilities? Well, there’s the shop—that’s eleven till three—and the club.’

  Rod gripped Kate’s wrist: she could feel the suppressed laughter. ‘And when does that open?’

  ‘Twelve till two. Six till ten-thirty.’

  ‘But what do people do while they’re staying here?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘There’s sailing. And they go to France. Or there’s a big shopping centre in Ashford, ever so good.’ Her eyes sparkled ‘The Outlet—Junction Ten of the motorway. It’s a big egg-shaped place and you park in the middle.’

  Kate could tell from the way his fingers were exploring her wrist that Rod wasn’t enthralled by the prospect of a day’s shopping. She moved hers to caress his palm.

  ‘What now?’ she asked when they’d eased themselves out—with remarkably little effort.

  ‘I think the mist’s lifting. I’m not sure about the delights of Folkestone or Dover, but I’ve always wanted to go to Rye Henry James once lived there. And E.H. Benson. And Radclyffe Hall.’

  She dug in her memory. ‘The lesbian writer?’

  ‘That’s right. Then there’s Hastings and Battle—we could go all 1066 and walk the site. If the weather improves. And soon, Sergeant Power, we’ll find a nice hotel and check in for tonight. As for night things, I fancy we shan’t need much, and what we do need—damn it, we can smuggle out in your tennis bag.’

  Chapter 4

  Sunshare deemed it necessary for two representatives to talk to Kate. They met in a room above the social club, which, though newly painted, was far from ideal—it had little space for more than the four of them, the flip chart, the slide projector and a screen. Kate and Rod had decided to come clean (-ish) about their official relationship. ‘Rod’s my cousin,’ Kate said blithely. ‘I’m afraid Colin’s been brewing flu all week, and it came on in all its glory on Thursday night. So rather than cancel, I asked Rod—he’s got friends down here.’ Which might explain their absence last night—had anyone noticed it, of course.

  Sebastian (tall and dark and very slim) and Veronica (short and blonde and very tanned) had not been pleased, that was evident, but Kate doubted whether anything would have pleased Sebastian, who, from the disapproving angle of his nose and mouth, might have been the snobbish butler to a particularly aristocratic house. He showed them to their seats, managing at last to smile—though condescendingly—as he passed them folders. ‘For your perusal,’ he explained. ‘You’ll find a complete set of our company’s sites, together with information about travel—nearest airports and so on.’ For a man in his twenties, he managed pomposity very well.

  Veronica, although much the same age, was a keeny-beany, teeth agleam with her passion for selling. She did the presentation, a close copy of the one Kate had already endured but to which Rod came mercifully fresh. He asked a variety of intelligent questions with far more enthusiasm than Kate and Colin had mustered between them on the first encounter. But he wasn’t asking just any questions he was asking questions which demonstrated conclusively to both the sales people and Kate that time-share simply didn’t make sense for someone with her life. When she went abroad, she wanted (he told them, Kate included) cities to provide her with the galleries and concert halls without which her holiday could not be complete. Because she liked to drink, but was totally abstemious when driving, she wanted to find a cluster of top-flight restaurants within walking distance. Sunshare’s complexes might be beautifully designed and equipped—though he dryly admitted that he for one found their present apartment wanting—but they were all off the beaten track, and though their sporting facilities might be beyond compare, they were not offering the Prado or the Louvre, were they?

  There was no answer to that, of course, so Veronica came in with a diversionary tactic—an escorted tour round the refurbished apartments. Kate, always a sucker for looking at other people’s lives—perhaps in a previous existence she’d been a fly on a wall—swiftly accepted. Rod made a decent show of reluctance, but eventually conceded that he might as well come too, since there wasn’t anything else to do. This was the first time this morning that he’d sounded anything other than reasonable and the first time Kate had ever heard him sound like a sulky teenager.

  ‘Kate told me there’d be swimming and tennis and goodness knows what. All we’ve got is an underheated apartment with a hole in the bedroom ceiling.’

  What the hell—? But Kate knew better than to shoot a look at him.

  ‘A hole?’ Sebastian was shocked out of his oleaginous pride in the organisation.

  ‘Hmm. A hole. Not very big, I gran
t you, but distinctly a hole. Anyway, if we’ve got to look at someone else’s pads, so be it. Let’s get moving.’

  Sebastian smiled, but not with amusement. ‘I must remind you that one of the conditions of this holiday is that you spend two hours in our company.’

  ‘Is it? Is it in the small print where they tell us to bring our own towels and food? Oh, and toilet rolls?’

  As if trying to calm a tantrum, Kate said, ‘We can get some on the site shop.’

  ‘Complex, Mrs Power. And I’m afraid you’ll find it’s only open from ten till eleven on Sundays.’

  Rod pulled a face. ‘Why don’t you just hang on here while I nip out? I’ll only be five minutes.’

  Kate found she dared not contemplate the idea of the fastidious Rod carrying out this tour clutching a packet of loo rolls. But he didn’t have to, in the event: it was already eleven ten.

  Even Rod managed to admire the refurbished units, which turned out to be almost identical to those in the Oxfordshire complex. Perhaps it was his unfeigned pleasure that led Veronica to retrieve from a cupboard concealing a cistern a soft pink loo roll, which she surreptitiously slipped him as they left the second apartment. Kate was convinced that Veronica would have called it quits at that point—it was eleven forty but Sebastian herded them back once more to the little room over the social club, and embarked on what could only be described as the harangue of one who, his own Sunday morning spoiled, was determined to ruin everyone else’s too. He touched on the convenience of the sites, the excellence of the communications, the fine sporting facilities, and contrived to insinuate that they were fools not to have accepted at the first time of asking. Neither responded to his provocation.

  Veronica gathered up her files, waiting in vain for Sebastian to collapse the screen and unplug the projector. At last, she put down the files and did the other jobs herself, refraining from indicating by so much as a twitch of a muscle that she thought her colleague a pain.

  ‘This hole,’ Sebastian asked suddenly. ‘Where is it?’

  Rod responded with a smile epitomising polite calm. ‘In the bedroom ceiling. The master bedroom.’

  Master bedroom! Kate snorted silently. As opposed to the bunk bedroom, no doubt.

  ‘And which apartment are you in?’

  Rod smiled again. ‘The one in the far corner where the lamp doesn’t work. Tell me, Sebastian: Kate raved about the Oxford complex. She was within a whisker Of signing up. Why do you put a potential purchaser in such a dump?’

  ‘A dump,’ Sebastian repeated in apparent disbelief.

  ‘Compared to the ones we’ve just seen, yes, our place is definitely a dump. And not much cop per se.’

  Kate kept her face straight, something she did not find easy during Rod’s occasional forays into Latin.

  ‘Was it something I said?’ Kate asked ‘Or the size of my car?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Sebastian demanded, hauteur a-twitch.

  ‘I just wondered if you used external factors like a car to assess someone’s spending power. And if it seemed a tad on the low side, you’d assume they were just going for a freebie, and not treat them seriously.’

  ‘I assure you that all our clients are assured of the same warm welcome and serious consideration.’ Sebastian realised too late the clumsiness he’d been harried into. And entirely missed the irony.

  ‘The problem is,’ Veronica said quickly, ‘that if we put guests such as yourselves into the newly upgraded apartments, we wouldn’t be able to show other clients round. Would we?’

  ‘But if we hadn’t been so put off by the poor quality of what was offered us,’ Kate objected, ‘we might have been more receptive to your sales patter.’

  Sebastian snorted. ‘It seems to me that your mind was made up from the start. At least your cousin’s was.’

  Veronica coughed. Sebastian flushed, recalled to the seemly. ‘Well,’ he said, stretching a beam almost but not quite as far as his eyes, ‘I’m sorry we weren’t able to suit you. But please enjoy the rest of your weekend.’ He gave a half-bow, and was gone.

  However embarrassed she might have been, Veronica smiled peaceably. ‘We know we score with about one in seven. You’re obviously just number six.’

  ‘You’re not just on commission, then?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Basic plus commission. And we get to go and check out overseas apartments, when they’re vacant. That’s a real bonus. Sebastian’s new to the team,’ she added, as if that excused everything.

  ‘So I gathered,’ Kate said dryly. ‘The Oxford team were professionalism itself. As you have been. How did you get your job, by the way? It seems a nice idea, combining sales with travel.’

  ‘Through the trade press,’ Veronica said ‘You need the appropriate background,’ she added, not encouragingly.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Oh, the travel industry. Were you thinking of applying? What do you do?’ She was distinctly more animated.

  Kate smiled. ‘Just a civil servant.?

  ‘And your cousin?’ Now Veronica’s smile might have been an attempt to mimic her colleague’s. But surely there was more steel behind it.

  ‘Oh, even more boring. Local government. Desk bound. That was why it was such a treat to be able to get away.’ Rod had evidently decided to charm. ‘Though we were disappointed when we learned there was no tennis it was listed on the letter you sent confirming the details.’

  Veronica grimaced ‘Our receptionist should have phoned through to Hythe for you—we have an arrangement with the local club. And you wouldn’t get much in the way of swimming, would you? I’m so sorry the weekend’s not the success we all hoped for. But I’ll sort out that hole, and hope the remainder of your stay is enjoyable.’

  They stopped long enough to drop the Sunshare folders in the apartment before bunking off for lunch in a pub on the coast road Rod turned to her. ‘So…’

  ‘So at least the surveillance camera will see someone else’s ugly mug peering into it. I suppose they’ll dot it with filler.’

  ‘Do you propose to hang around to find out if they do?’ He ran a finger along the inside of her wrist.

  She made her head reply, ‘You know, I think I will. Not for long. But I’m sorry—’

  ‘So am I.’ He kissed her fingers delicately. ‘But I understand. The job’s addictive, isn’t it?’

  ‘You should know. Oh, thank goodness we’ve got that hotel reservation for tonight. There’s no way I’d swap that for incarceration in the nuns’ dormitory.’

  The finger stroked again. ‘I’m glad.’ His voice changed ‘I can’t see what we have to lose by going back to have another sniff around. We haven’t exactly insinuated ourselves into conversation with any of the other guests yet, have we? And I think we should. If we can find any. They’ll all be out in pubs like this.’

  ‘Not necessarily. After all, they own their apartments, for part of the year at least. They’ll know about taking food and towels and loo rolls. I bet we’ll find several couples to talk to.’

  ‘On what excuse? You can’t just barge into their post-prandial bliss, shoving your warrant card under their noses and demanding information.’

  ‘I can if I’ve run out of toilet paper—watch me!’

  Rod’s features expressed extreme distaste but his eyes twinkled.

  ‘Woman’s work, this. I’m not asking you to do it! And it can be milk or sugar we’re out of, if you find that’s less aesthetically distressing. Anyway, you can get stuck into those posh sales files and I’ll chat up the happy campers.’

  ‘And what time do you fancy abandoning ship and heading off for that nice king-size bed?’

  In two minutes. ‘As soon as I’m ready to file my report, Superintendent.’

  It took three attempts to find anyone at home, though Kate suspected that other front doors concealed couples unwilling, for whatever reason, to respond to her knock. At last, though, clutching an empty jug—Rod’s sensibilities had prevailed—she found a friendly smi
le on the face of a middle-aged woman who took in the problem at a glance and invited her in. She shut the door swiftly against an increasingly vicious wind.

  ‘You moving in down here?’ she asked over her shoulder, as she padded through to the kitchenette. She’d managed to cook what smelt like roast beef in the tiny oven.

  ‘No. Just down here for the weekend,’ Kate said. ‘I was tempted though—very nice, aren’t they?’

  ‘You must be in one of them tarted-up ones, then. I mean, look up there.’ She pointed to a damp patch green and grey with mould just over the kitchen window.

  ‘Ooh, that looks nasty,’ Kate agreed. OK, if the woman had a Cockney accent, she’d better slip into the London twang she’d acquired during her time with the Met. ‘Have you complained?’

  ‘Have I complained! I’ve complained till I’m blue in the face. Where does it get me? Nowhere, that’s where. You know what I think?’ the woman said, filling the kettle and switching it on. ‘Cup of tea? I always have one this time of the afternoon.’

  ‘Love one,’ Kate grinned, consigning Rod to his chilly fate a little longer. But she mustn’t forget the milk she’d come for. ‘Mrs—er?’

  ‘Ooh, I’m Madge. Everyone calls me Madge. Called me Madge even before everyone called everyone else by their Christian names. Only you’re not supposed to call them Christian names any more, are you? First names. Family names. That’s what my daughter says.’

  Time to interrupt. ‘Well, I’m Kate: first name or Christian name—choose your pick.’

  ‘That’s a nice old-fashioned name. Go on, sit yourself down. Biscuit? No? From round here, are you?’

  ‘Croydon. But I work in Birmingham, now.’ She tweaked the conversation abruptly. ‘Have you had this place long?’

  ‘Ooh, ages. I won this premium bond, see—must be twenty years ago—and thought a time-share would be a nice investment. And my old man—that’s him you can hear snoring—he says, “Madge, the south coast’s the nearest I want to be to the Continent, thank you very much,” so we come down here.