by Sepulchre
Yet the overall image was not unpleasing and much of that had to do with the rich colouring of its brickwork, for the walls fairly glowed in the sunlight, the aged stone mottled a warm red, that same redness even within the roof tiles; the gables were half-timbered and the many turrets fringed grey, serving to complement the ruddiness of the main walls.
Although the building as a whole was compact, Neath was nevertheless hugely impressive, its position alone, between the small hills and lake, supplying its own special grandeur. Halloran began to re-assess Kline's worth in terms of personal wealth.
They were moving on level ground again, the expanse of water on their right, the entrance porch to the house looming up on their left; across the lake Halloran could see the muted hills of Surrey. He drew the car to a halt outside the stone entrance, and just behind a white Rover, the porch itself jutting from the building, wide and dented pavings inside leading up to the main door. Both sections of that door were already opening; two robed figures appeared together, dashing forward with heads bowed. They ran to the Mercedes' rear door, one of them eagerly pulling it open for Kline.
The two Arabs bowed even more deeply when Kline stepped ,gut. 'Marhaba, Mouallem,' they welcomed.
Halloran heard one of them mutter something further as he, himself, climbed from the Mercedes, and he saw Kline smile, the glitter of his dark eyes containing some kind of satisfaction, but no warmth.
'Youssef meeneeh,' Kline said quietly.
Halloran opened the other rear door for Cora, while Monk walked around to the back of the car. The bodyguard caught the keys tossed by Halloran against his chest and opened the boot, reaching for the luggage inside. Cora seemed unsteady and Halloran gripped her arm.
'You okay?' he asked. He thought there was apprehension in her expression when she looked towards the house, but it may only have been nervousness, a delayed reaction perhaps to their experience earlier.
'What? Oh yes. Yes. I'm fine.' She stiffened, finding her strength, and he let go of her arm. 'Thank you for what you did back there. You acted quickly.'
'We'll discuss it inside. You look as though you could do with a stiff drink.' Kline was watching them across the roof of the car. 'Corn needs no excuse for that, Halloran. I bet even you could use one after that nasty little business.' He was smiling gleefully, his earlier panic obviously forgotten.
'Let's move inside as quickly as possible,' said Halloran, scanning the road they had just travelled as well as the surrounding area.
'No need to worry,' Kline assured him. 'Not here, not inside the estate.'
'I wouldn't be too sure of that,' Halloran replied.
'Oh, but I am. Completely. Nothing can touch me here.'
'Then humour me. Let's go in.' The Arabs and Monk followed behind with the luggage, although Halloran retrieved a black bag himself. They crossed the uneven paving inside the porch and entered the house. Halloran found himself inside a large hall, a coolness rapidly descending upon him as if it had pounced; directly opposite the main door was a screen of linenfoid panelling, above that a minstrels'
gallery, stout oak beams set in the walls and rising to the high bowed ceiling. A broad stairway led to the floor above from where diamond-paned windows provided inadequate light.
'Refreshments in the drawing room, Asil,' Kline snapped, stone floor and walls creating a hollowness to his words. 'Not for me, though. I've got things to do. Cora, you'll take care of our guest show him around the place.'
'We need to talk,' Halloran said quickly to Kline.
'Later. We'll talk all you want later.' He skipped up the stairway to their right, soft shoes almost silent against the wood. He turned back to them at the stairway's bend and leaned over the balustrade.
'Can you feel Neath's welcome, Halloran''' he said. 'The house senses you. can you feel that? And it's confused. It doesn't know if you're friend or foe. But you don't really know that yourself yet, do you?' He sniggered. 'Time will tell, Halloran. You'll be found out soon enough.' Kline continued his ascent leaving Halloran to stare after him.
13 CONVERSATION WITH CORA
From this level Neath resembled a small monastery, thought Halloran. Except that there was nothing godly about the place. The day had become overcast, clouds hanging low and dark over the Surrey hills, so that now the redness of Neath's stonework had become subdued, the floridity deepening to a tone that was like . . . the notion disturbed him . . . like dull, dried blood. The house looked silent, as though it could never contain voices, footsteps, life itself. It might resemble a monastery, but it was hard to imagine invocations inside those walls.
He and Cora were on one of the slopes overlooking Kline's home, Halloran's brief reconnoitre of the estate confirming his doubts about its security. The two thousand acres were enclosed well enough to keep stray ramblers out, but there was no way any interloper of serious intent could be deterred. Kline's confidence in his own safety within the bounds of the estate was surprising, to say the least.
Immediately below them was what once must have been a splendid topiary garden. Now its bushes and hedges had become disarrayed, their sculptured shapes no longer maintained; where once there had been carved animals, cones and spheres, there were protrusions and distortions, the vegetation neither natural nor engineered, but tortured and bizarre. At present these green deformities served only to provide random screening for anyone approaching the house.
'Can we sit for a while?' Halloran turned to Cora again, the fragile anxiety behind her gaze puzzled him.
She had changed iota jacket and jeans for their tour of the grounds, the transformation from city lady into country girl both easy and pleasing. Even so, that slight darkness beneath her eyes seemed more pronounced, tainting some of her freshness.
'We've covered quite a distance in a short space of time,' he said. 'I'm a little breathless myself.'
'It's not that. It's . . . just peaceful up here.' He caught the hesitation and wondered at it. He also caught her glance towards the house as she'd spoken. She sank to her knees and he followed suit, lounging back on one elbow while his search roved the grounds below. The lake had become leaden and grey, no breeze stirring its surface, no sunlight dappling its currents.
'Tell me about him, Cora.' She looked startled. 'About Felix?' He nodded. 'Is he as mysterious as he pretends? Is he as crass as he pretends? I'll accept that he can do these wonderful things for Magma—why else would they insure his life for so much? but what is his power exactly, where does it come from?' Her laugh was brittle. 'Perhaps even he doesn't know the answer to that last question.'
'Why are you afraid of him?' Her look was sharp, angry. Nevertheless she replied. 'Felix commands respect.'
'Fear and respect aren't the same thing. You don't have to tell me, but is he much more than an employer to you?'
'As you say, I don't have to tell you.' There was something moving from the trees on a slope at the far side of the house. Halloran watched without alerting the girl.
She mistook his silence for something else. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I understand you're only doing your job.
I suppose it's important that you know as much as possible about Felix.' The shape had slunk back into the trees. Too small, too low to the ground to be a deer. Too big and dark to be a fox. Why hadn't it been mentioned that there was a dog on the estate? Maybe it was a stray.
'It isn't quite that important, Cora,' he said. 'I think the reason I ask is that I want to know more about you, not Kline.' A subtle flaring of her pupils, the movement noticed by Halloran. His words had roused emotions in her. Those dark spots within the blue quickly retreated. 'I suppose that's part of your job too.
You obviously think I could endanger Felix in some way.'
'It's possible, but it isn't why I'm interested.' She gave a small shake of her head, her expression confused. 'Then why . . . ?' He shrugged. 'It's bothering me too. Let's say I don't feel we're strangers.'
Cora stared at him. He wasn't smiling, but there was humour in h
is eyes. At first she thought he was mocking her, but then he did smile and its warmth was enveloping. That warmth spread through her, seeping into her body as if to purge the coldness there. Yet paradoxically she sensed a chilling danger in this man and she was afraid of how much he would discover about her, about Kline—about Neath itself—before this affair was through. She had sensed Kline's fascination with his newfound protector at their first meeting and it frightened her, for there might be unguarded moments they would all regret.
There was a perceptiveness about Halloran, a knowingness, that was intimidating as it was reassuring.
There was the dichotomy of the man and perhaps that was part of his allure.
'I . . . I think we should return to the house,' was all she could think of to say.
He caught her wrist as she began to rise and the touching startled her. 'I'm here to see that no harm comes to you,' he said.
'To Felix you mean,' she replied, staying there on the ground when he took his hand away.
'You're part of it. Your safety is just as important.'
'Not as far as Magma is concerned.' She managed to smile.
'You're part of it,' he repeated, and Cora was unsure of his meaning. 'You still haven't answered any of my questions,' he persisted.
'I'm not sure that I can. I'm not sure that I know.' He watched her confusion and realised he had delved too soon. Cora could never accept him so quickly: an instinct told him she held secrets that bound her to Kline in some way.
'All right,' he said. 'For now.' He stood, then reached down to pull her to her feet.
At first Cora thought he was angry, so forceful was his grip; but he held her to his chest for a moment longer than necessary, looking down into her face, a quiet intensity to his gaze.
'Liam . . .' she said, but he had already released her and turned away. She watched him for a few moments before following, an unsteadiness to her movement that threatened to make her slip. She caught up with him and Halloran noticed her awkwardness; this time he reached for her arm and held it gently, lending just enough support to help her walk more steadily. Cora's breathing was shallow, nervous, and she felt something had drained from her; not her strength, and not her resolution—Felix Kline had subjugated those a long time ago-but perhaps her fear of Halloran himself.
'Who are you?' she could only whisper. 'Nothing more than you can see,' he replied. But she felt that was not quite true.
14 ROOMS AND CORRIDORS
There were dark places in Neath, corners, niches, which sunlight could never touch, rooms Bloomed in permanent dusk., corridors where dust motes seemed to clog the air, halls where footsteps echoed in emptiness. Yet there were also areas of dazzling light, the sun bursting through leaded windows with a force intensified by thick glass; these were cleansing places, where Neath's dank chill could be scoured from the body, although only briefly as other rooms, other corridors, were entered, brightness left behind like some sealed core.
Halloran explored and found many locked doors.
Tapestries adorned hallways. Fine portraits hung in main rooms and on stairways, meaningless to anyone other than direct descendants of the subjects themselves. Curved giltwood furniture displayed itself in arrangements that precluded comfortable use. Ornaments and sculptures were set around the house like museum pieces, there for admiration but perhaps not out of love—or so it seemed to Halloran. The house was a showcase only, full of history, but oddly devoid of spirit, Kline's attempt (presumably) at presenting an aesthetic side to his nature revealing nothing more than an indifference to such things (or at the most, pretensions towards them). The giveaway was the separateness of each item, the lack of relationship to those nearby, every piece of furniture, every sculpture or painting, an isolated entity in itself, set-pieces among other set-pieces. Fine for a museum, but not for a home.
Yet spread among them, as if at random. were curios from a vastly different and more ancient culture: an encased necklace with thinly beaten gold pendants shaped like beech or willow leaves; stone statuettes of a bearded man and a woman, their hands clasped over their chests as though in prayer, their eyes peculiarly enlarged so that they appeared to be staring in adoration; aboard game of some kind, its squares decorated with shell and what appeared to be bone, two sets of stone counters of different colour laid alongside; a silver cup with a robed figure in relief. Perhaps these, thought Halloran, along with other similar items, were a clue to where Kline's real interests in art lay, for they provided a consistent thread, a continuity that was missing in the other, later, antique pieces. It would seem that his client had a penchant for the older civilisations.
The room allocated to Halloran was at the front of the house, overlooking the lawns and lake.
Furnishings were functional rather than pleasing to the eye: wardrobe, chest of drawers, bedside cabinet—utility fare with no heritage to boast of. The wide bed, with its multi-coloured, lumpy quilt, looked comfortable enough; bedposts at each corner rose inches above the head- and foot-boards, the wood itself of dark oak.
He had unpacked his suitcase before exploring the rest of the building, and placed the black case he'd also brought with him on a shelf inside the wardrobe.
His inspection had taken him to every section of the house save where the locked doors had hindered him—even out onto the various turrets from where he had surveyed the surrounding slopes with considerable unease. The frontage, with its lawns and placid lake, provided the only point of clear view; the rear and side aspects were defence uncertainties. And worse: there was no alarm system installed at Neath. It was difficult to understand why a man who was evidently in fear for his own safety hadn't had his home wired against intrusion, particularly when his penthouse in the Magma building was a place of high, albeit flawed, security. Well at least conditions here could soon be rectified. Halloran had wandered on through the house, examining window and door locks, eventually becoming satisfied that entry would prove difficult for the uninvited.
Another surprise was that Neath had been built around a central courtyard with a disused fountain, its stone lichen-coated and decaying, the focal point.
Halloran walked along the first-floor corridor overlooking the courtyard and made his way downstairs, quickly finding a door that led outside. The house was quiet and he realised he hadn't seen Cora nor any of the others for over an hour. He stepped out into the courtyard; the flagstones, protected on all sides from any cooling breeze, shimmered with stored warmth. Brown water stains streaked the lifeless fountain, fungus crusting much of the deteriorated stonework; the structure appeared fossilised, as if it were the aged and decomposed remains of something that had once breathed, something that had once moved in slow and tortuous fashion, had perhaps grown from the soil beneath the flagstones. He walked out into the middle of the courtyard, circling the centre-piece, but his interest no longer on it. Instead he peered around at the upper windows.
He had felt eyes watching him an instinctive sensing he had come to rely on as much as seeing or hearing.
From which window? No way of telling, for now they were all empty, as if the watcher had stepped back from view.
Halloran lowered his gaze. There were one or two doors at ground level other than the one he had just used. No risk these, though, for there was no direct entry into the courtyard from outside the house.
He crossed to the other side of the enclosure and tried a door there. It opened into a kitchen area, a large, tiled room he had come upon earlier. Closing the door again, he moved on to the next, looking into windows as he passed. The house might well have been empty for all the activity he saw in there. The second door opened into another corridor-Neatly he'd discovered, was a labyrinth of such—which was closed at one end by yet another door.
This was a passageway he hadn't discovered on his exploration of the interior and, curious, he stepped inside. To his left was a staircase leading upwards, yet he could not recall finding it when he had circuited the first floor. Probably a staircase to one
of the rooms he'd been unable to enter. He decided to investigate that possibility after he'd tried the door at the other end.
He walked down the passage, noting that the door looked somewhat more formidable than any others inside the house. The lock was of sturdy black iron and there was no key inserted. He reached for the handle.
And turned quickly, when he heard a creak on the stairway behind.
One of Kline's Arabs was smiling at him. But just before the smile, Halloran had glimpsed something else in the robed man's expression.
There had been anger there. And apprehension.
15 A STROLLING MAN
He walked along the pavement blank-faced, his eyes meeting no others, a plainly dressed man, suit as inconspicuous as his features. His hair was thin on top, several long loose strands tapering behind indicating the slipstream of his passage. One hand was tucked into his trouser pocket, while the other held a rolled newspaper.
Occasionally he would glance into a doorway as he went by, no more than a fleeting look as though having care not to bump into anyone on their way out. Not once did he have to slow his already leisurely pace though, his journey along the street unimpeded. On he strolled, perhaps a clerk returning home after the day's work and, judging by his appearance, someone who lived in one of the older houses that hadn't yet succumbed to developers' mania for wharfside properties.
After he had passed one particular doorway he casually tucked the newspaper under his left arm, his pace even, still unhurried.
He walked on and some way behind him two men in a parked car looked briefly at each other, one of them giving a sharp nod. The driver started the engine and gently steered the vehicle away from the kerbside. It came to rest again after only a hundred yards or so further down the street.
The two men settled back to watch and wait.
