Secrets

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘I’m not playing at anything. What can I do for you?’

  ‘The documents we needed, they weren’t in the car or the storage locker.’

  ‘Did you really expect them to be? It was always a long shot. I saw on the news about the men in the van. Why did the security guard have to be hurt, Clay? He didn’t do anything.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have been there,’ Clay said petulantly. ‘It was a waste of time anyway. There was nothing in the storage locker.’

  ‘So, maybe there’s just nothing to find, have you considered that?’

  ‘Considered it and found it flawed. Molly must still have it. Molly or Adam.’

  Annie sighed. So he was after Adam now, was he? ‘So go and talk to him. Let me go and talk to him.’

  ‘I don’t talk to traitors, Annie.’

  Oh, for fuck’s sake, she thought. ‘Time was you were all on the same side.’

  ‘Things change. Sides change. For some people, morality becomes blurred.’

  ‘But not for you, I suppose. What does Nathan say?’

  She knew it was the wrong question as soon as she asked it. Clay did not respond. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s maybe just time to let things go. Past is past, Clay. Sometimes you just have to let it go.’

  Silence built on the other end of the conversation.

  ‘Your husband, what do you think he would say if he knew about the real you, Annie?’

  ‘Blackmail, is it, Clay? Look. Bob knows all about me. He knows everything he needs to know. You leave him out of this.’

  ‘I hope I can, Annie, I really do, but events may well overtake all of us. Sometimes nothing can be done about it.’

  He hung up on her and left her cursing softly. ‘So help me, Clay, I’ll bloody kill you one of these days,’ Annie promised the now silent phone and realized with slight shock that she meant it.

  Alec returned to the hotel just after five, kissed Naomi in a rather distracted manner and dumped a folder down on the bed. She could hear from the sound it made that he was not a happy man.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Case-notes.’

  ‘You’re retired or resigned or whatever it was you did. Remember?’

  ‘I remember doing it. Doesn’t look as though anyone took any notice.’

  ‘We could just sneak away tonight,’ she suggested. ‘Let them all get on with it.’

  ‘We could,’ he agreed. ‘But you could just bet they’d come and fetch us back.’

  ‘We could go abroad.’

  Alec laughed. ‘Don’t tempt me.’ He flopped down on the edge of the bed. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Oh, interesting and not just because of Liz’s dead ancestors. Guess who turned up at the cemetery?’

  ‘Don’t want to guess. I’m not sure I want to know.’

  ‘Gregory,’ she told him. ‘We all had lunch together.’

  There was a moment of silence as Alec absorbed that. ‘Right,’ he said finally. ‘Where abroad? I quite fancy Mongolia. I hear property is cheap there or we could buy a yurt, join the nomads.’ He groaned and lay back. ‘Don’t tell me, he’s a friend of Molly’s.’

  ‘No, apparently he just knows her by reputation, but he was a friend of the man killed in Stamford. Arthur Fields. And he wants to meet up and talk.’

  Alec groaned. ‘Just what I need,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose he knows who did it?’

  Naomi found herself laughing. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I got the feeling he’d like to know, though.’

  Alec groaned. ‘That’s all we need,’ he said. ‘A hired killer on the case as well.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s been hired this time,’ Naomi reminded him. ‘This time, it seems like it’s personal. Alec, maybe we should just stand back, out of the way and let him get on with it.’

  ‘Seriously?’ She felt his weight shift as he turned to look at her. ‘You know I can’t do that, even if I wanted to.’

  ‘Actually, you can and I think you do want to. If it wasn’t for Molly …’

  ‘If it wasn’t for Molly,’ Alec agreed. ‘But it is for Molly, isn’t it? I can’t just—’

  ‘Walk away? No, I know that. Tempting though, isn’t it?’

  Alec sighed and sat up. ‘You can’t imagine how tempting,’ he said. ‘No, love, I don’t think even you can.’

  Nathan called her late in the early evening. Bob was out walking the dogs again while she cooked; creature of habit that Bob was, Nathan would have guessed it was a good time to call.

  ‘Can you talk?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Clay called earlier. What is it with that blasted man? Nathan, I swear—’

  ‘I know,’ Nathan soothed.

  ‘No, you don’t. He threatened Bob. I’m not having that, Nathan. No one threatens my husband and gets away with it.’

  There was a beat of silence as Nathan absorbed that; she could almost hear the shift in his thinking as he measured this new position. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘No one should be able to do that.’

  ‘So, what do we do now?’

  ‘You’ve seen the news?’

  ‘The robbery at the storage warehouse, yes. Any news on the security guy?’

  ‘Nothing good. Hopefully he’ll make it, but … you know who the two in the van were?’

  ‘No, there’ve been no names released, so far as I know.’

  ‘Gilligan and Hayes,’ Nathan told her and Annie laughed, unable to help herself. ‘Well, Clay still has a sense of style; you’ve got to give him that. What’s he trying to do, start a war?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time. No, I think it was just personal revenge this time. He was happy to make use of them when he was on the winning side, but with all the post colonial complaints coming into the courts now, I think he felt they knew too much about Clay and what he might have been up to. He’s not said much. I’m guessing.

  ‘I get the feeling the police weren’t supposed to get the van doors open. Clay wanted them to wake up long enough to make noise, but not long enough for anyone to let them out.’

  ‘What did he use?’

  ‘Xenon to knock them out, apparently. Simple CO2 to finish them off, on a very slow seep. Too slow as it turned out.’

  ‘Will they make it?’ Annie asked, curious rather than concerned. Neither Gilligan or Hayes registered very high on her scale of ‘people to be worried about’.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Nathan told her. ‘Annie, any chance you could take Bob away for a bit? Have a holiday somewhere?’

  ‘Can’t be done,’ she said. ‘He’s got a new exhibition coming up, I’ve got a new job to start. Whatever has to be done will have to just work around that. I can’t just try and drag him away.’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Nathan said and she could hear the cogs turning. ‘OK, well, just watch your back, I’ll keep in touch.’

  Annie put down the phone and turned back to the range. Nathan was worried, she thought, she could hear it in his voice, even though she knew no one else would have noticed. Closer than brother and sister, they had grown up together since Annie had been thirteen, and Nathan however old he had been back then. Annie sighed and wondered if anything ever truly came to a proper end.

  NINETEEN

  Naomi hadn’t really expected to hear from Gregory so soon, so was surprised by the phone call half an hour or so after Alec’s return. He asked if they could meet him later, in the hotel bar.

  ‘Dinner is still on,’ he said. ‘But I think Alec may be too tired to want that tonight. I thought a drink might be better.’

  Naomi did not respond immediately; she took in the inference that Gregory knew about Alec’s day and then agreed to meet up with him around nine.

  ‘Do you think he’s working for someone?’ she asked Alec.

  ‘Could be I suppose. From what little I found out about him, his old associates are mostly retired or dead. It could be he’s freelancing or it could be just as he told you, he’s curious about the death of an old friend. I don’t
imagine you acquire a great many friends in Gregory’s line of work. I suppose you come to value those you do hold onto.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘He’s right about Arthur Fields’ house, though. The one out at Stamford. Lovely place, not too big but the garden is just gorgeous and it’s made of that golden limestone that looks like it should be sandstone, if you know what I mean. The sun was on it and the whole house positively glowed.’

  ‘Think they’ll put it on the market?’ she asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t know. But you know a man was killed there, don’t you? How does it make it different from our place?’

  ‘Because. … it would have happened before we lived there, if we bought it, I mean. And because it wasn’t someone out to get to us.’

  ‘There’s no logic to that.’

  ‘Did I say there was?’

  ‘No, you didn’t say there was.’ He flopped back on the bed. ‘I met the girlfriend today, Herbert Norris’s. You know, when I went to his flat, it struck me. No pictures out on show of the two of them together. Not a one. There were plenty in an album that she’d put together, but it was as if, at some point, she’d become his girlfriend and he hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘You want to talk about it, or eat, or both?’

  Alec shook his head. ‘No, I think I want to eat now and prepare for whatever Gregory has to say. You do realize we’ve agreed to have drinks with a wanted criminal?’

  ‘Wanted for what?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s a list a mile long.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Naomi agreed. ‘But it’s not likely to have his actual name on it, is it?’

  Alec chuckled. ‘No, I don’t suppose it will. OK, I’ll walk the dog. Then we go down and eat and then we see what our man of mystery has to say. And I suppose I should check in with Molly.’

  ‘Shall I do that, while you’re out with Napoleon? She can be rude to me just as easily as she can be rude to you.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ He was already off the bed and fumbling for his shoes.

  You agreed to that a bit quick, Naomi thought as, reluctantly, she reached for her phone.

  TWENTY

  Naomi had the feeling that something was really worrying Molly and that it was something new; not directly about the young man that had died in her house.

  ‘I’m just making sure you’re all right,’ Naomi had said.

  ‘And you could do what about it if I wasn’t?’

  ‘Probably not a lot,’ was Naomi rejoinder. ‘But if there’s anything we can do—’

  ‘Then I would be the one calling you.’

  Naomi paused. This was rude, even by Molly standards. It was clear the older woman must have thought so too because she said, ‘I’m sorry, Naomi. I know you mean well. I expect I’m just tired.’

  ‘Just tired. Molly—’

  ‘I’m fine, my dear. Some days I just feel my age. I resent that, I suppose. Ageing is such an unjust process.’

  The call had ended shortly after, but Naomi was left with a sense of words that had been absent from it. As though Molly had been on the verge of admitting to something and then resisted that urge. It was nothing she could put her finger on … or could she? Yes, she decided, there’s been something slightly anxious about the way Molly had answered the phone. A sense that she had been relieved to hear Naomi’s voice, not because it was Naomi but because it was not someone else.

  For a moment, Naomi thought about calling back and asking Molly directly, but she knew she wouldn’t get a straight answer; there’d be more evasion, maybe even more outright deception and she really wasn’t in the mood for that right now.

  The urge to run away and forget about it all was almost overwhelming and Naomi had the sudden thought that if she had still been sighted then Alec would come back to the hotel to find their bags packed, the bill settled and Naomi waiting for him in the lobby, car keys in hand.

  It was a stupid, random thought that stopped her; the notion that she wouldn’t know for sure if she’d managed to pack everything and that Alec would only have to come up to their room to check. A random and such a slight excuse, Naomi told herself, but it was enough to stop the idea dead in its tracks. If you were going to run away, then you didn’t do it without your shoes – metaphorically speaking. You did it spontaneously and you didn’t go back to check the bathroom or the bottom of the wardrobe. You just went.

  Alec returned a few minutes later, Napoleon lay his head in her lap and beat his tail rhythmically against the side of the bed. She stroked the silky ears, enjoying the familiar feel of the dog’s bulk pressed against her side.

  ‘You know that ultimatum. That week I gave us,’ Naomi said.

  ‘Yes. You revising it, are you?’

  ‘I’d like to, yes, but I will give this a week to go wherever it goes and then we walk away. We can’t spend our lives living other people’s for them.’

  ‘OK,’ Alec said slowly. ‘So what did Molly say to you?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Molly. Or at least, not just Molly. Alec, all our lives we’ve done what other people needed. Or we’ve responded to other people’s demands. Our working lives were spent sorting out the muddles the rest of the world threw our way and … and I want us to sort our own out now. I think, what I’m saying is—’ But she couldn’t finish. Naomi rarely cried; generally she didn’t see the point and even when she felt the urge she tried to restrain it. But she cried now, wept bitterly and loudly for all the lost people and broken lives that had littered their past and that, she was afraid, might still be there, walking the road ahead.

  Molly had just been relieved that it wasn’t Clay. There’d been a time when she’d faced him down, told him what he could do with his demands.

  ‘He who must be obeyed,’ she had called him, joking with Edward and skitting on Rider Haggard. Edward had never liked that, he’d always been a little overawed by Clay. It had never caused rows between them because Molly hated anything that caused conflict between herself and Edward. She’d made a point of not rising to the bait when Clay, aware of their difference of opinion, tried to drive the wedge. Her marriage, her love, was far too precious to allow anyone and especially ‘that man’ to widen even the smallest chink in their collective armour.

  She had made some allowance for Clay, knowing that sometimes they needed his help and expertise and his resources, always far greater than their own.

  ‘Some good did come out of it,’ she told herself. ‘Some good out of all that evil.’ Hadn’t it?

  She thought of the children, now grown and prospering, like Nathan and Annie and young Adis – though he’d changed his name and Molly no longer knew where he was. He still contrived to send her a birthday card, but there was never any hint of a return address. For a moment her heart seemed full; a warmth and relief growing there.

  There’d been others too … others they had helped.

  And then she thought again of Nathan and of Annie and the rest and how they still seemed in thrall to Clay and her heart emptied. Had they really made life better?

  Molly went and sat down again in Edward’s chair. She fancied she could still catch the faint essence of cigar smoke and the even fainter hint of the lemon trees that had once grown in their garden, or of the spice market, a few streets away, when they had been stationed in … oh where was that?

  She closed her eyes, trying to fix that one place among so many places, the smell of spice and citrus and incense. But the scent that filled her nostrils, came unbidden, choking and hated, was the smell of fire and dust and blood and war.

  ‘Edward, Edward, why did you have to leave me alone? I can’t bear it without you. I’m not strong enough without you.’

  Tears pricked, but she blinked them away and wiped her eyes on the cuff of her blouse.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ she said to the shades of her lost love and all the rest that crowded around her, filling the little room and pressing close to Edward’s chair. ‘This is war. My last war. And I’ll not lose without a figh
t. I promise you all that.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Annie and Bob stood in his studio, talking about his latest work. These canvases were larger than usual and there were also several boards, large and traditionally gessoed with chalk and rabbit skin glue, painted in a mix of his usual oils but with the addition of egg tempera.

  ‘It’s a technique that goes back to the fifteenth century,’ he said. ‘I saw a couple of examples in an exhibition and thought it looked interesting. You get this real luminosity, such a play of light.’

  Annie stepped back, the better to take in the picture. It depicted a wood; she recognized it as the stand of birches and oaks not far from the house. Bob regularly walked the dogs there. It was autumn and golden leaves floated down and settled heavily on the forest floor. The light was strange, as it was in a great many of Bob’s pictures. Not quite day and a bright crescent of moon hung in a vibrant blue sky. The shadows seems to be cast by two sources of light, sometimes separately and sometimes overlapping and it was only when you looked and then went on looking that you realized there was a setting sun, half hidden by trees and then this almost too bright sliver of moon, Annie thought. It worked, but she wasn’t sure why and it was also oddly unsettling, as though the day had been unwilling to relinquish control and the night not quite strong enough to snatch it away.

  It was liminal. Ghostly.

  Between the trees ran figures, some in such deep shadow she couldn’t quite make them out, but they reminded her of wolves and men and men-shaped wolves; wolf-shaped men. The figures in the middle ground were clear and sharp. Men and women, hinds and stags, running through the forest. Reaching out for one another but not quite touching. Some smiling out at the viewer, others with their faces deliberately turned away. They were dressed in costume that was at once medieval and modern as though, Annie thought, they had been permitted to raid some elaborate and costly dressing up box.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. And meant it. ‘You stole my dream?’

  Bob laughed. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind. I don’t know, it kind of helped me forget you were so far away. I started it the day after you left.’