by A B Morgan
The screen lit up at Kat’s touch. Pierre’s accented voice gave instructions. ‘Once you enter the Mayor’s Office you have an hour to complete your task. Find the plans and you will be released. Here is your first clue to get you started. “The Mayor likes a drink …” Good luck.’
‘A whole hour,’ Zoe announced, checking the time on her watch. Kat wasn’t listening; she barged past Zoe and into the office beyond, rushing towards the mayor’s enormous baroque desk at the far end of the room.
‘The mayor likes a drink, the mayor likes a drink,’ she muttered, pulling at the desk drawers and slamming them shut again when she didn’t find what she was looking for. ‘Shit, this one’s padlocked. The drink must be in here.’ Kat was rattling the brass handle, jerking at it.
Once the door closed, Zoe remained inside the entrance and rapidly scanned her surroundings. It was an imposing room with a high vaulted ceiling and a polished oval table standing centre stage on a Persian rug. On the table was a scale model of a town, official papers scattered next to it, left behind as if the occupiers of the room departed in a frantic hurry.
Laying on the mayoral desk was an onyx penholder, a brass letter rack, rolls of parchment and a blotting pad. If he had been in residence, the mayor would’ve settled into his high-backed ormolu seat. From a portrait hung on the wall above, his kindly face watched Kat’s disrespectful antics.
To the right, Nazi flags adorned the walls either side of a photograph of Adolf Hitler, reminding players that they were in German occupied France.
A soundtrack was playing from beyond tall shuttered windows. Troops marching. Armoured vehicles rattling down the street, and muffled orders in German.
‘Why don’t we start with the Tantalus over there,’ Zoe suggested, inclining her head to a vast carved wooden sideboard where she spied a mahogany drinks holder containing four cut-glass decanters, each with a silver metal label on a chain around their neck. Kat scrabbled from behind the desk and catapulted herself at the bottles before Zoe had chance to move.
‘Right. Let me see. Port, Brandy, Sherry and Gin. PBSG.’ Kat paused, rubbing her forehead with an index finger. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Anagrams? Nig or trop …’
Reaching for the port, Zoe picked it up. ‘Roman numerals. See? Underneath each word. Port has a V.’ She gave the Tantalus a closer inspection. ‘This drawer has its key missing. Locked. Maybe we find the key using the four numbers on these labels … somehow.’
Kat’s eye’s widened. ‘Four numbers. The padlock on that drawer over there was one of those tumbler combination ones. It needs four numbers.’ She raced back to the desk. ‘V is five. What are the others?’
In an effort to maintain some semblance of harmony between the pair after their locker room showdown, Zoe resigned herself to being treated like a lackey, expected to take Kat’s orders as she resolved to take charge. It had been coming all morning. The car journey had been peppered with barbed comments from Kat about Logan’s shortcomings and Zoe tried valiantly to ignore them. However, when Kat made the jibe about Gianni being a womaniser, Zoe had snapped. Out came the truth.
‘Why are you still with Pep if he’s such a bloody disappointment to you? In fact, why did you chase after him in the first place? He was perfectly happy before you came along.’
She’d already made up her mind that never again would she agree to spend time alone in Kat’s company. Until now she tolerated her in small doses and in social situations, pretending to find Kat’s comments witty when in the main they were cutting, belittling and sarcastic. If it were not for the simple fact that Pep was Gianni’s best friend, Zoe would never bother with a shallow woman like Kat.
Logan Peplow was a fool, she decided. He didn’t deserve to be saddled with Kat, but it was his own doing. His genitals had overridden his morals and principles, as well as his promise to love, honour and obey. Idiot.
By the time they arrived at Espionage Escapades an uneasy truce was agreed, but once in the locker room their differences had resurfaced. ‘You wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t needed someone to come along with me,’ Kat had fired at her. ‘So stop moaning about how Abi ignores you. It’s my opinion she’s interested in.’
‘You insufferable patronising cow,’ Zoe had fired back. At that moment Abi interrupted and both of them realised they were being watched. Every move.
❖
‘No. It’s not working. You got it wrong,’ Kat shouted as she fiddled impatiently with the mechanism on the combination lock.
‘Try a different order,’ Zoe suggested, lips tight. It was at this pause in proceedings that she noticed the photographs in frames placed next to the Tantalus. They were tampered with in the exact same way as the posters in the toilets had been. The pictures were staged sepia reproductions of a woman in wartime fur coat and felt hat, smiling adoringly at the man she linked arms with – the man dressed in ceremonial garb, mayoral chain around his neck – the man with no face.
‘Yes! Got it. I was right.’ Kat yanked open the drawer and sang with excitement. ‘The key… like I said.’
Zoe didn’t bother correcting her. It would’ve achieved nothing. Kat pranced across the carpet and, without engaging Zoe in the game she placed the key in the lock, holding her breath as it turned. Click. She pulled the small drawer towards her and took out the folded paper she found there. Her face fell.
‘What?’ Zoe asked.
‘How’s your chemistry?’
Zoe looked at the words on the paper still firmly gripped between Kat’s finger and thumb. ‘We need a periodic table.’
‘And where, Miss Clever-Knickers, do you suggest we get one of those from?’
‘Bookshelf? I think it’s the same in any language, so we just need a science book of some sort …’ Her voice faded away as she began to hunt across the shelves above where the Tantalus stood. ‘“L’encyclopedie”. What is the French for periodic table?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ Kat protested, standing with her arms angled, hands on hips. ‘Try the word scientific.’
‘You may be on to something. Here we are - des sciences.’ Zoe took hold of an enormous brown leather-bound tome and extricated it inch by inch from the middle shelf. As it toppled towards her, the weight of it took her by surprise and she wobbled unsteadily on her feet until she took a wider stance. Landing it safely onto the sideboard she flicked through the fine paper pages.
‘Come on,’ Kat mithered, trying to push Zoe to one side, but she was concentrating and steadfastly tolerating the elbow digging in her left arm.
‘Is this it? Charles Janet. Yes, here we go. Now then, where is that paper?’
Kat, battling to stay in charge, valiantly held on to the paper and read the contents out loud. ‘Hydrogen. Then it says Sodium minus Lithium plus Hydrogen. Then it says—’
‘Atomic numbers. Hydrogen is one.’
‘Where does it say that?’
‘H is hydrogen then next to the letter is a number.’ Zoe pointed to the box in the table of elements. ‘What did you say next? Sodium. Sodium is Na.’
‘Where does it say that?’
‘It doesn’t. But if my schoolgirl memory serves me correctly, salt is sodium chloride and the chemical formula is NaCl. Then Sodium is Na. There we go. It’s the same in French as it is in English.’
Kat snarled under her breath. ‘Ah well, if you don’t have the looks, then it must be nice to have the brains to make up for it.’
It took a gargantuan effort on Zoe’s part not to head for the door and demand to be let out. Instead, she tensed and stared at the print in the encyclopaedia, not absorbing the meaning of the words, not trusting herself to speak.
‘What? That was a compliment,’ Kat said in a false, pained way. ‘The number for Sodium is?’
‘Eleven.’ Zoe’s teeth remained clenched.
‘Minus Lithium, which is …’ Kat scanned the table of letters and numbers.
‘Three.’
‘Plus Hydrogen, which i
s one. Makes?’
‘Nine, Kat. The answer to that simple arithmetical problem is nine.’ Zoe couldn’t hide her annoyance but did manage to restrain herself from speaking the rest of her thoughts aloud. It must be terrible to be so thick and be deluded enough to think that other people find you attractive. You are ugly on the inside and a thoughtless bitch. Please God let this be over with.
‘Next it says Flourine minus Carbon.’
‘Three. Next…’
‘You’ll never get this one. Lead minus Aluminium minus Zinc minus Ytrium plus Flourine.’ Kat pronounced the last but one word as “whytrium” and, not being familiar with this element, Zoe reached for the paper. Kat pulled back. ‘Thought so. Not as smart as you pretend to be.’
‘I don’t pretend to be anything. Spell it for me.’ After a short pause Zoe slid her index finger back and forth across the open page of the ancient book and mouthed various numbers as she went. ‘Eighty-two minus thirteen is sixty-nine, less thirty is thirty-nine, less thirty-nine … that can’t be right. That equals nothing. Zero.’
‘Plus Flourine.’
‘Nine. One nine three nine.’ Zoe straightened. She turned, resting her back against the cool of the polished wood from where she examined the walls of the room. ‘Nineteen thirty-nine.’ She noted the rather plain functional clock that hung over the doorway. ‘It’s not a time. That clock is wrong anyway. Are there any more padlocks?’
Kat was ahead of her and was running her hands over doors and drawers in the vast sideboards and shelving covering two sides of the mayor’s office. She stopped. ‘What is the date on the portrait?’ she asked, staring at the wall behind the hefty writing bureau.
‘Henri Lefeuvre 1937 to 1941. Maybe I added up wrong.’ Zoe approached, reached up, and pulled at the bottom of the frame but it was firmly fixed to the wall. ‘Nothing.’
Their gazes converged on the oval table in the middle of the room and the three-dimensional model resting there. Kat reached it first. ‘Here.’ She gestured towards a brass plaque. ‘Le Mans 1939. Bingo. Now what?’
‘Does it say anything else?’ Zoe trotted across the rug, tucking a stray curl of hair behind her left ear.
‘Race the cars to the white house,’ Kat said, reading in a wooden fashion from words engraved in italics under the date on the brass plate. ‘I can’t see a white house. It’s all greys and browns.’
Her hawk eyes and spikey nose traced the streets as Kat searched for the elusive white house. Zoe, on the other hand, focussed on the perfect replica of the famous Le Mans racing circuit and the six miniature racing cars lined up at angles to the pits and grandstand. The whole model of the city was raised on a plinth several inches in height and on the side where Zoe stood were six metal turning handles.
‘Ha! It’s a car race. Clever. And there is your white house. Maison Blanche. Come on.’ Zoe started turning the handle nearest to her and sure enough one of the miniature racing cars, a green jaguar the size of a matchbox, started to spurt forward. Kat joined in, winding her chosen handle with such ferocity that the table shook through to the floor. Both cars reached Maison Blanche neck and neck – and nothing happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Abigail’s agenda
Abigail sniggered. She was enjoying the highly entertaining sight of Kat and Zoe competing and sparring with each other, completely unaware of the real urgency.
She put down her coffee and opened Kat’s handbag. ‘The real deal, a Mulberry. How rash to spend your money on such an expensive thing. Lemonade income for a champagne lifestyle, either that or marketing assistants are paid too much.’ Pulling out Kat’s phone she weighed it in the palm of her hand before attempting the code to unlock it. ‘Date of birth, as usual.’
A rush of adrenalin hit as she found Logan Peplow’s new mobile phone number. She could barely breathe.
A buzzer sounded.
She looked up at the bank of monitors to see Kat standing at the touch pad inside the door of the mayor’s office, impatiently expecting a clue. Abigail typed, a glower displaying her annoyance at the interruption. She keyed in the clue and immediately returned to dealing with Kat’s phone.
It was time to share her good news with Logan and she needed to focus. To feel him.
Guy had almost guessed how close she was to making her fantasy a reality, but he didn’t understand. In the biblical sense she had only ever known Guy and at one time that was how it was to be. Without question.
Propping up the great name of Nithercott and its empire, Abigail always knew that she and Guy would be forever imprisoned by their guilt. Guy hid her from prying eyes, lavished her with gifts and still purported to love her. She loved him too, but as in all marriages, a small part of her hankered for a life outside their claustrophobic existence. She needed freedom. Freedom to go where she pleased, to eat out in a restaurant, to drive a car wherever she chose and to book into a hotel room with a lover.
When she saw Logan for the first time, she knew he was the passport to such freedom.
It was Guy’s idea for her to entrap Logan, to declare herself a secret admirer, to make him aware of her without revealing her true identity. She did as she was asked, and the mission turned out to be an addictive thrill ride. So, when Guy demanded that she withdraw these attentions she was devastated, until she realised she was dealing with his jealousy.
Once Guy ordered her to stop contacting Logan he became unusually attentive to her, too attentive. He kept her close, watching her every move, spying on her and testing her willingness to indulge in the most carnal of intimacies, something she would not normally decline. She enjoyed sex.
To Abigail this was a bonus and she found Guy’s jealousy, if anything, to be an aphrodisiac, much more so than money and it drew her to Logan. The wealth she had access to through her life with Guy, was nothing in comparison to what she experienced in her heart and in her groin when her eyes met his. Logan. Love at first sight. Their love was to be a dangerous love, an exciting love. It was all consuming, like it had been with Guy for so many years.
She desperately wanted more of that intoxicating feeling of forbidden and excruciatingly desirable love, because nothing held more power and she craved it like a drug.
She checked the phone for photographs, for evidence of Logan’s promise to love only her and wasn’t disappointed. Kat Chandler had dozens of photographs, mostly ones of herself, posing, pouting. There were very few of Kat with Logan and yet in them Abigail could see by his eyes that he was sad. She touched the screen, stroking his face.
The most recent of Kat’s photographs seemed to be dedicated to her job: Kat with a team of designers for the company’s latest project. Kat with colleagues in suits bearing the company logo. There were even a few pictures taken outside the hall before the recent charity auction, held in the orangery and the walled gardens of the Nithercotts’ mansion several weeks previously. There were none of the actual event. Photography was banned, so were phones.
That evening, Guy had been the centre of attention as always. His wiry athletic frame, hypnotic voice and curious personality dominated proceedings. The fawners fawned, the grovelers grovelled, and the sycophants made Abigail sick. The money was the real magnet of course.
She stayed out the way for most of the evening at the charity event, making a fleeting appearance at Guy’s side as they greeted their guests. Only for a minute or two did she let her guard down, allowing her real self to be seen, just briefly stealing a smile from Logan as he passed by in his dinner suit. He was the only person who saw into her heart. The pain of being so close to him was too much and after that short-lived encounter she hid herself away until the guests all departed. Guy didn’t bother looking for her that night and she didn’t want him to.
She made a special request of the one official photographer. He emailed her a selection of photographs from the evening. She sent one to Logan, to let him know that she reciprocated his desire to be with her.
In the weeks since then her world centred
round Logan. Guy was rapidly becoming less relevant and Katrina Chandler nothing but a hindrance.
Logan sent her the only message she was interested in.
Logan loved her.
She knew.
The night of the charity ball she chose the midnight blue wool and decided to finish the most important garment ever created.
Now it was almost complete. There was one last seam left to sew and the job would be done. No more knitting required. Abigail smiled, a genuine warm smile as she sent a text to Logan’s new phone number and added three kisses. She wedged Kat’s phone into the deep pocket of her cardigan and made her way through to the back of the office, down a spiral of stone steps into the shadows. A faint groaning could be heard from below as the door closed behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Faithless
Anything back from Guy?’ Gianni asked, trotting to keep pace with Logan, who was keen to check out the seats on the grandstand. It was hot and dusty, and much to his friend’s relief, Logan slowed to check his phone. They crossed over the Dunlop Bridge and now stood near the central stage where bands and DJs entertained the evening crowds and would be playing through the night of the big race. People surged left and right, weaving their way to their chosen spot for the excitement of the start. Nearby, chest-jarring bangs rang out from the shooting gallery as testosterone-fuelled young men tried their hand at clay-pigeon shooting, decimating moving targets for a measly prize.
‘Nothing from him, but I’ve got another one from Kat.’ Logan’s brow wrinkled. ‘What the—?’
Gianni, his attention momentarily diverted by an attractive young lady in a strappy top, heard the bewilderment in his friend’s voice and tried to peer over Logan’s arm to see the text. ‘What’s up? Cat fight? Or should I say Kat fight.’
