Nick hesitated a moment, struck by nervousness and an odd beating excitement that, in an ancient reflex, had him momentarily longing for a drink. Leaving the car keys with Campbell, he went up to the house and rang the bell. The door opened instantly as if someone had been waiting behind it, and a soberly suited man in horn-rimmed glasses stepped forward. The man had clearly been expecting someone else because an expression of surprise darted across his face. Deciding that Nick was harmless, exercising a politician’s versatility, he recovered quickly with a brisk enquiring look.
‘Good morning,’ he said, angling his head as if to catch some airborne clue as to Nick’s identity.
‘I’ve come to see Susan.’
‘Of course, of course.’ The professional smile, broad but bleak, flashed across his face. He looked like his photographs but smaller and plumper, and, despite his vigorous manner, less intimidating.
‘One of her interior people, are you?’ Driscoll said. He allowed himself a moment to enjoy his turn of phrase before deciding that his time was too valuable to be spent hanging around on the doorstep. Retreating into the hall he shouted Susan’s name up the stairs while shrugging on his coat. Picking up a battered ministerial dispatch box, he advanced on the door again.
‘With you in a moment.’ He ground to a halt on the threshold, faced by the impropriety of leaving Nick in front of an open door, and yelled over his shoulder: ‘Susan, your guest’s waiting. Mr – ?’ He turned questioningly.
‘Mackenzie.’
Driscoll repeated it up the stairs without visible recognition, then, assuming the benevolent but preoccupied look of someone with good works to do but not enough time to do them in, he scuttled across the pavement to his waiting car.
When Nick looked into the house again it was to see Susan standing on the stairs. She was wearing a Japanese wrap, long and flowing, in a blue which intensified the colour of her eyes. Her skin was pale and luminous and apparently bare of makeup, her hair a shining gold. Her loveliness shocked him, it seemed so inappropriate; and for a moment he was bowled back in time and remembering all kinds of things he would rather forget, like the warmth and suppleness of her body, and the long afternoons in Kensington, memories now inextricably mixed with anger and remorse.
She gave an abrupt laugh. ‘Well, talk of the devil!’
‘Were you?’ he asked.
‘What?’ She took his hand and drew him inside the house and closed the door.
‘Talking of me.’
‘Not exactly,’ she said, kissing him chastely on the cheek. ‘But I was thinking of you, which was a hundred times better.’ Still holding his hand, she stood back and examined him carefully, like a fond and long-lost friend. He looked for signs of embarrassment or shame in her face, but apart from the peculiar concentration of her gaze there was nothing to give her away, and she wore her confidence brilliantly, like a piece of jewellery. She thought she was safe, he realized. She thought she had got away with it.
‘Now why would you be thinking of me?’
She caught the edge of sarcasm in his voice and for the first time a glint of doubt darkened her eyes. But it didn’t trouble her for long; with a small chuckle, she started across the hall, gesturing for him to follow. When he didn’t move, she looked back and asked in mock reproach: ‘What, no coffee?’
‘I won’t stay,’ he said tautly, knowing he mustn’t antagonize her, yet unable to prevent the disapproval from showing in his voice.
She caught the message all right because her eyes lost some of their sparkle and she said a small ‘Oh.’ Then some sort of realization came to her and, clapping a hand theatrically to her forehead, she came back and gripped his arm. ‘Of course, forgive me … The papers, that beastly story. I was so glad to see you that I almost – ’ She made a face of suitable mortification, her eyes already inviting forgiveness. ‘Listen, I tried to call you several times. I left messages, but they told me you were in Scotland.’ She gave a soft groan and pressed a hand against his cheek. ‘Poor, poor Nick – the last thing you needed. But they can’t charge you with anything, surely – can they? I mean, drugs. It just isn’t you, anyone could have told them that.’
The anger rose suddenly, without warning, and then he couldn’t stop himself. ‘They knew what they were looking for.’
She looked surprised then puzzled. He had to admire her: it was really a very good act. ‘Knew?’ she asked.
‘Someone tipped them off.’
‘Oh?’ Her forehead crinkled gently into a frown.
‘Told them about’ – he couldn’t say Alusha’s name – ‘the morphine in the house.’
She searched his face, and read there the meaning he had intended her to see. Her mouth twitched, her eyes narrowed and then came understanding, disbelief and hurt.
‘You think …’ She gave a soft gasp. ‘You think I …’
She looked so appalled, so genuinely hurt, that his certainties uprooted themselves and swam around, dissolving the moment his mind touched on them. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Well!’ She was sawing away at her mouth, biting back tears. ‘Well!’ Her eyes brimmed suddenly, and she drew away.
‘I think you’d better go,’ she choked, hiding the contortions of her face with a splayed hand.
There was nothing he would have liked better than to go, to be free of the swooping and churning of his emotions, but there was still the business of Daisy. He said: ‘That wasn’t why I came.’
‘It wasn’t? I see!’ she retorted in a sudden fury. ‘That was just a little aside then, was it? My God, you’re making me wonder what’s coming next!’
He plunged in, desperate to get the whole thing over and done with. ‘Daisy Field’s gone missing,’ he said quickly. ‘We think your friend Schenker might be able to find her.’
She stared at him for a moment. ‘What?’ She made an exaggerated gesture of disbelief, stabbing the fingertips of both hands against her chest. ‘You want me to – ?’ She rolled her eyes expressively. ‘You came to ask me that?’
‘We think she might be in danger.’
‘But’ – through the tears came an incredulous laugh – ‘God, you’ve got a nerve! Schenker’s nothing to do with me. Why should you think he’s anything to do with me! If you need to ask him, why don’t you go and do it yourself!’
‘I thought the request would come better from you.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘I can’t help you. And now I think you really must go.’ Her voice rose suddenly.
‘He’d listen to you.’
‘Oh yes! And what would I tell him!’
‘That we have evidence to show Morton-Kreiger have been involved in dirty tricks, that we know who was responsible. That we know about Workham Overseas Holdings.’
Waving this aside, she stood up suddenly. ‘You’ll have to find another messenger boy.’
‘You don’t understand – ’
‘Oh, it’s not that I don’t understand,’ she cut in sharply. ‘That’s not the problem. The problem is that you’ve just accused me of the most incredible breach of trust, and now you expect me to do you some sort of favour. My God.’ She laughed outright, a bark of disbelief.
She’s acting again, he thought suddenly, and in the tilt of her head and the twist of her mouth he caught the profile illuminated by the sunlit South Kensington window all those years ago, saw again the fierce expression, the white rage, the mouth distorted with the stream of bitterness; and seeing them, his intuition and anger took fresh shape.
He said abruptly: ‘You could give him the name Angela Kershaw as well!’
There was a moment of startled silence. Susan was absolutely motionless, her eyes round and enlarged as she stared up at him.
‘Schenker’s been paying some of her bills.’
Her mouth opened slightly and she was so still that she seemed to have stopped breathing. Then her eyes narrowed, she blinked rapidly. ‘I’m sorry …?’
He might have hesitated then if it
hadn’t been for her tightly fisted hands and the chalkiness of her skin, which betrayed her shock.
He said: ‘There’s a file on her.’
‘A file?’
‘We’ve seen it.’
But he didn’t have to elaborate. This was quite enough for Susan. Her mouth set into a grimace of despair. She sank back onto a chair. ‘Oh God, oh God.’ She looked as though she’d been punched in the stomach. In that moment he realized – if there had ever been any doubt – where her loyalties really lay, where they had always lain.
She recovered a little. ‘How did you come to see it?’ she asked. Then, in horror, as if it had only just occurred to her: ‘Who else has seen it?’
‘All sorts of facts about Schenker are going to come out,’ he said, ‘facts that Schenker won’t want the world to hear.’
‘Facts? You mean, evidence, documents?’
‘Yes.’
‘And there’s evidence’ – she braced herself to say it – ‘about Angela Kershaw …’
‘Yes.’
She gripped her forehead as if to contain her agony. ‘But this evidence – it’s not out yet?’
‘No.’
A glimmer of hope dashed across her face. ‘So we’ve got time!’
We? The assumption was so brazen he let it pass. ‘Possibly.’
‘So? So?’ She was taut with impatience.
So? What came next? He thought of the thin sheaf of papers in the car, of what they would represent to Susan if she knew about them, and what she would give for them; and the next move loomed up in front of him, obvious and horribly enticing. Yet he balked at the thought. However one viewed it, however many excuses one larded over it, it would be blackmail, ugly and repugnant. Even looking at her now, even knowing without a doubt that, finding herself in his position, she wouldn’t hesitate to use whatever weapons were to hand, just as she hadn’t hesitated to bargain away his most precious and painful secret, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t like the idea of sinking to her level. He had enough of a bad taste in his mouth already.
‘Can’t we do something?’ Susan pressed, beginning to recover her fighting power. ‘Get hold of this file?’
He hesitated, playing for time. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Can you get hold of it? Can you? I’d do anything,’ she said, ‘anything.’ Then, realizing this might have revealed too much, she pulled back a little, adding: ‘It’s not fair, you see. Whatever Tony is, whatever he’s done, he doesn’t deserve this.’ She consolidated her selfless image with an appealing, pathetic smile. ‘This thing’s been hanging over his head for ages, it’s been making him ill. That dreadful woman … It was nothing, nothing. But she’s made his life an absolute misery ever since. No one deserves that sort of thing.’
He was silent.
‘If there’s any way of getting the evidence back, any way …’ She was going more carefully now, concealing her determination. She must love Driscoll a lot, Nick decided; or she must love being his wife, which probably added up to the same thing.
He heard himself say: ‘There might be a way,’ and realized that she had presented him with an easy way out, and that he was about to take it.
‘There might?’ She brightened visibly. ‘So what do we have to do? Is it a question of money?’ She had no trouble using the word.
‘Not money.’
‘Something else then?’ She was bargaining eagerly, and he saw that the doing of deals, the trading of favours, were the only currencies she really understood, that for her everything had a price, that everything – and that included people – only had value in so far as they contributed to her own wellbeing. Where had he come in her grand reckoning, he wondered? Well, it didn’t matter. He had little doubt where he stood now.
She was waiting.
‘Daisy has the file.’
‘Ah!’ She let out a long breath of comprehension. ‘So if we find Daisy, we find …’ She smiled collusively, and he shrank from the new and ugly intimacy in her eyes.
‘That’s about it,’ he said.
‘So you want me to approach Schenker?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see, I see.’ Her mind was working overtime, the effort visible in her face. ‘He’ll know how to find her? Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Doesn’t it …? Why shouldn’t …?’ Thinking better of whatever she was going to ask, she gave him a searching almost suspicious look. ‘You have been busy,’ she commented, and it wasn’t entirely a compliment. ‘So how much should I say?’
‘Say that we believe that his associates know where Daisy is and that we want her back. And that they’d better make sure she turns up quick. Mention those company names.’ He went through them with her.
‘I see, I see.’ She was painfully anxious to get it right. ‘But what about Schenker, aren’t we going to promise him something too?’
He didn’t understand immediately.
She explained with slight impatience, as if it should have been obvious: ‘The facts you were talking about, the ones he’s not going to like – can’t we get hold of those files as well?’
The machinations of her mind were quite amazing, they quite took his breath away. ‘No,’ he said vehemently. ‘That’s different, totally different. Schenker’s not going to get off the hook. There are things that have got to come out, things that Daisy’s worked on for months. Things that’ – he didn’t know how to express it to her – ‘matter.’
‘Right,’ she said at last, having come to some sort of decision. ‘I see.’ She got to her feet and pulled the lapels of her robe together and drew herself up, as if she was about to step out on a stage and play a great role. ‘I’ll phone now.’
‘Don’t say anything about getting any files back,’ he reminded her. ‘They might think we’re willing to do a deal and we’re not.’
‘Right.’ Preoccupied, already rehearsing what she was going to say, she turned away and went down the hall and disappeared into a back room, closing the door behind her.
Nick went to the front door and looked out. He could just make out Campbell in the front of the car, his head slumped to one side, asleep.
Susan was gone about five minutes. He spent the time circling the hall, thinking of Daisy, imagining where she was now, remembering all the work she had put into the Silveron case and what an uphill struggle it had been for her. Looking back, he felt a sort of dazed admiration for her. Her perseverance seemed to run like a constant thread through the upheaval and horrors of the last year or so, a point of light in an otherwise murky sky.
He had treated her badly, and he minded about that.
A click of a door and Susan reappeared, coming swiftly up the hall. Her expression was withdrawn, unreadable. ‘I gave them the message,’ she said.
‘Them?’
‘Schenker’s man – his assistant.’
‘And?’
‘I imagine they’ll look into it.’
‘Imagine?’
‘Oh, he bleated about not knowing anything about your friend,’ she explained quickly, ‘but he understood all right.’ She came closer, and her face was hard with new questions. ‘Tell me’ – and she paused to fix her eyes firmly on his – ‘how is it that you know all about the Kershaw woman when your Daisy friend still has the file?’
He started for the door. ‘Listen – it doesn’t matter.’
‘What do you mean it doesn’t matter?’ She caught his sleeve and jerked him round again, her lips tight with suppressed fury. ‘You’d better be telling the bloody truth!’ she hissed. She looked older now, older and not at all lovely.
‘Don’t worry, Susan, you’ll get what you want.’
Her fist twitched as if she would punch him with anger.
‘I’d better,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’d better or …’
Something overturned inside him. ‘Or? Or what, Susan?’ he said brutally. ‘Or you’ll tell your friends even more things about me? Well, I’ve news for you.
There’s nothing more to tell. My real secrets I keep for my friends.’
Her mouth opened to speak but nothing came out. Instead she shut the fury neatly away and reached out a hand towards him, as if to take back what she had said. Perhaps she thought he might change his mind and she wouldn’t get the Kershaw papers back after all.
But she needn’t have worried. She could have them. He didn’t care any more. He was already opening the door, making for the fresh air. He didn’t look back.
Hillyard turned up the volume and angled the cassette player to carry the sound further into the room. The music blared out. It was a Forties-style big band number with plenty of brass and a noisy vocalist, one of three tapes he’d given Beryl for Christmas because they took her back to her youth.
Moving softly back to the door he picked up the broom that he had brought from the kitchen and went to the window. With the arrival of the music, the beating had started again on the wardrobe door, an irritating thud-thud, rising after a moment to more aggressive thumps as she took some hard object to the wood – a shoe, he imagined. She’d better not be using one of his new shoes or he’d thwack it right back at her. Or better still, give her a taste of what Beji had suffered, a twist to the throat and some hair out of her scalp.
Thankfully the music spared him the sound of her voice, or maybe she’d simply run out of volume. Throughout the evening no sooner had she shut up than she’d started again, disturbing his work and his rest, bash bash, yell yell. Finally, partly to teach her a lesson, partly to give Beji some satisfaction, he’d opened the flat door and let the dog race upstairs to bark herself silly at the vibrating door.
Now, in the early morning, he slipped the catch on the window and raised the lower sash. Feeding the broom out, brush-end first, he found he could just reach the bag. Hooking the broom under one of the straps was more difficult. The bag was much heavier than he’d thought and kept sliding off. Clicking his tongue at this tiresome development, he went in search of the small stepladder from the office and manoeuvred it out of the window and onto the roof. The roof was pitched, making the firm positioning of the base tricky, and he had to run a rope from an upper rung over the sill and across the bed to the door handle. This extra work did not please him at all, not after the many aggravations of the long evening, during which he had had to patch up the street door, barricade it from the inside, and then feed endless files into the shredder. What with one thing and another, he hadn’t got to his makeshift bed on the back-office sofa until two, and then it was to have his fitful sleep interrupted shortly after six by someone who had first rung, then hung, on the bell, and finally tried to break the door down. From the vibrations that had resounded through the building he had no doubt it was the girl’s muscle man again.
Requiem Page 73
