by Douglas Hurd
‘You could refuse.’ Julia felt a familiar grey cloud descend on her life. For years as a girl she had been used to protection, to the kindly intrusion of privacy carried out by large, friendly men. You could not possibly complain, even though from time to time you were driven mad by their proximity and the knowledge they had of you and yours. But that had all been to do with Ireland, and Ireland was now quiet. Were the Scots bringing the same cloud back to hang over them for ever?
‘No, I couldn’t. The Home Office was very clear. They rate the threat to me as substantial.’
Julia knew that David was not a physical coward. She saw that the thought of protection tickled his vanity, poor fool. He had never lived that life before. He saw only that he was entering a club of really important people.
‘Are they sending a team to Craigarran?’
‘I asked them that,’ said David surprisingly. ‘They’ve already got a sergeant up there looking after your step-father. Of course he’ll keep an eye on Simon as well. But they say there’s no threat so far as they can see to wives or children. Just to the principals.’
‘Principals?’
‘That’s what the police call the VIPs they’re protecting.’
In this self-important mood, David was quite pleased with the necklace, and hardly quibbled about the price. ‘It’s quite expensive. But I don’t grudge it. It will be something to remember this conference by. It’s really gone quite well. Von Blissach was particularly complimentary about my speech.’
‘And Simon.’
‘Simon?’
‘Something to remind us of the summer he was born.’
David looked surprised, then said something which in turn surprised her. ‘We shall remember Simon by bringing him up as a happy, successful child in a good family.’ Pompous, of course, but she did not mind because he meant it.
They lay together, fully clothed and peaceful for half an hour on the wide double bed looking out through the skilfully placed windows on to the dancing sea. They watched the quality of the light change and sharpen as the sun began to set. The waves sounded faintly in rare intervals between the noise of cars along the promenade or the roar of a motorbike. From their pillows they could watch the evening breeze begin to agitate the top of the palm tree outside the hotel entrance.
Julia dozed. The telephone rang on her side of the bed. It was her mother, first composed, then, extraordinarily, in tears. Julia said, ‘God, no,’ then little else. Having put down the receiver, she shook David awake.
‘It’s Simon. He’s disappeared. Kidnapped, they think. Mummy was shopping and—’
David sat bolt upright in bed. They gazed at each other as at strangers. Whatever happened from now on would be new for them both.
Having searched her own studio and the other rooms of the cottage by the garden wall, Louise walked up the path to the shed with the marble slab. Here, newly caught salmon spent the first hours of death before being cooked in the house or loaded into a car by grateful departing guests. Just one salmon lay there. Eleven or twelve pounds, she guessed, wearing much the same satisfied smile as Sergeant Fraser, who had caught it, had worn when he and Peter returned an hour ago. The police officer’s smile had vanished at the news. Indeed it seemed possible that Sergeant Fraser would never smile again. Not that he could seriously be blamed. He had been sent to Craigarran to protect Peter Makewell, former prime minister and Anglo-Scot, thought to be particularly vulnerable to the new kidnapping campaign by the SLA. Fraser had been given no instruction as regards Lady Makewell or her grandson. He was concerned only with the principal. He had been clearly right to accompany Peter down the burn. It would have been quite wrong to stay in the house. It was less clear that he should have allowed himself to accept the loan of Peter’s rod for half an hour. A glorious half-hour, one salmon hooked and lost in the swirl of the water under the falls, then within minutes the second salmon hooked and caught. He knew that Peter would do his best to protect him from any accusation on that score, which indeed seemed trivial compared to the disaster that had befallen while they were away.
The police had agreed to split into two teams, each team in turn searching every possible nook and hiding place in the home and garden, so that each possibility was examined twice.
Peter, the superintendent newly arrived from Perth and anxious Sergeant Fraser were now searching the main house. Louise and the two constables had already combed the garden and cottage. It was surprising how many small unnoticed spaces there were on the premises in which a baby might conceivably be hidden.
Louise could see that this was all nonsense. Simon was far too young to have crawled into any of them. He was a baby in a cot. It seemed certain that he had been taken away with Mrs Mackintosh or by Mrs Mackintosh, in her small Renault car. ‘With’ or ‘by’, that was the question. She fervently hoped that Mrs Mackintosh was a fellow victim with Simon of a kidnap organised by others. Over the years she had come to like and trust her housekeeper.
Dwarfing every other feeling was Louise’s sense of shame and guilt. She could not prevent her clear mind from analysing this. A tiny grandson had moved into the centre of her life. She loved the little sprat for himself, but also because he was the future for Julia, whom she loved the more because of the years they had spent griping and squabbling with each other.
It had been perfectly reasonable to go shopping in Pitlochry, leaving Simon in the care of a trusted housekeeper. But it had turned out a disaster, for which somebody must be responsible, and that somebody could only be herself.
In the garden tool-shed, forks, hoes and spades of different sizes hung as they had always hung, each neatly in an appointed place, cleared of mud, witnesses of an order that human beings could impose on everything except their own lives. Louise thought about her telephone conversation with Julia. David had evidently been in the room. How would the disaster affect that shaky marriage? Not at all, if Simon were found quickly. But if not, if it dragged on …? Louise knew that David was cold and selfish. She was not sure whether under the surface he would be genuinely moved by Simon’s disappearance. She hoped so, for Julia’s sake. But whether he was moved or not, he would certainly regard it as a public-relations event, to be handled like other such events, professionally and with care. How Julia would react to this her mother could not guess.
The two constables, she could see, would go on searching the sheds and cottages over and over again, even though this was useless. Men, particularly men in uniform, fell back on routine when baffled, which put their minds into neutral gear. It was up to her to call a halt. ‘There’s nothing here,’ she said. ‘Back into the house.’
Both teams conferred in the ancient, somewhat grimy kitchen. There was nothing useful to be said. If Mrs Mackintosh had been there she would have made tea, with a clatter of friendly comment. Louise boiled a kettle on the Aga without speaking. Peter Makewell sat silent in a comer, exhausted.
The superintendent spoke to Sergeant Fraser and the constables. He at least had been thinking ahead. ‘Next I’ll get Forensics from Perth. They’ll crawl inch by inch over the forecourt and the drive up from the road. There are places where the tarmac has broken up. After last night’s rain the earth will have taken tyre marks. They’ll want impressions from the vehicles we know have used the drive – the Range Rover Lady Makewell used for shopping, your car, Sergeant Fraser, the police car we came in, and—’
‘Mrs Makewell’s Renault,’ said Louise.
‘Yes. It’s disappeared, but they’ll know roughly what it would be like. Do you happen to know if the tyres were new?’
‘She had two new tyres last year,’ said Peter, from his corner. ‘Can’t remember whether they went on the front or back. The car was six or seven years old.’ Mrs Mackintosh had not asked for a rise to meet the expense of the new tyres but, prompted by Louise, he had offered one.
‘That’s very helpful, sir. The real question is whether there is evidence of a fifth car using the drive since last night’s rain.’
>
At least the superintendent was thinking. The mood in the kitchen lightened slightly. Louise had another idea. A broom cupboard off the kitchen had been appropriated many years ago for Mrs Mackintosh’s personal use. There she kept an umbrella, an old raincoat, two aprons and a pair of smart shoes. Mrs Mackintosh arrived in these shoes each day. As the first act in her morning ritual she changed into flat slippers suitable for housework. Louise opened the cupboard door. Its normal contents were as familiar to her as anything in her own bedroom. It was bare except for two wire coat hangers. She summoned Peter. She did not need to say anything as they stared into the void. Mrs Mackintosh had not been kidnapped. Mrs Mackintosh had left in good order. Mrs Mackintosh was a traitor to them – and a servant to whom? For the first time in her life Louise felt a stranger in Scotland. She hurried out of the kitchen to master a second wave of tears.
They were booked on the first available flight from Nice, dislodging two other passengers. Air France was flexible in such matters. The French police would drive them to the airport from Cannes. Julia had packed quickly and wanted to leave at once. Cannes was already repulsive: she would prefer the isolation of a VIP lounge. But the police, so David told her, insisted they should stay in the hotel till the last possible minute. They were afraid that stringer journalists hanging around the airport would notice the now quite well-known British couple leaving prematurely and ask questions to which as yet there were no answers. They had an hour to wait.
‘There’s time to go back to the beach. Will you come?’
‘Good heavens, no,’ he said. It was as if they both realised that in this, the first disaster of their marriage, they had nothing to say to each other. ‘I can’t unpack my beach things again.’
But she gathered her bag, sunglasses and novel and left the room. She had learned, perhaps from her father, to put on a calm exterior over her jangling nerves. ‘I’ll be back in good time.’
Downstairs in the lobby the hotel bellmaster, greeting her, turned the circular swing door that led out on to the pavement, main road and beach. But Julia turned aside. She had to be active: the hours that morning when she had relaxed happily on the beach seemed infinitely distant. Moreover, two French police officers stood, dignified and silent, outside the main door, one of whom would almost certainly insist on coming with her to the beach. She had already noticed that past the hotel news-stand and leather shop a door led out on to a side-street.
Soon she was in the flower market, but its voluble brightness offended her almost as much as the beach would have done. She took out her mobile phone to ring her mother again. ‘No network coverage,’ its tiny screen read. Naturally. The networks of the world had seized up. It was that sort of day. In the small church abutting on the market there would certainly be darkness and quiet. The church was indeed deserted; it offered nothing to tourists except the grace of God. In a side-chapel candles flickered round a blue and white Madonna with a crude gash of scarlet across her lips. Julia knelt but could not find anything to invest in prayer. She sat back and tried to think. At least it seemed certain that Mrs Mackintosh had gone with Simon, either willingly or by force. She had learned quickly how to feed him, run his routine, settle him when he cried, updating her own ancient experience. Julia did not care a damn about Mrs Mackintosh’s political allegiance so long as she could change nappies and ply the bottle.
Julia’s mind switched direction as an old man hobbled up the aisle and fumbled with money for a candle to light in front of the Virgin. It was impossible to guess how David would carry himself during this crisis. She felt as if she were assessing a stranger. At that moment she found no attraction to or affection for him. So far he had, like herself, seemed stunned. What would happen when the immediate shock wore off? Like her mother in Scotland at roughly the same moment, Julia realised that David would already be thinking of Simon’s disappearance as a political event. He would be weighing up the timing and content of announcements and broadcasts. This did not necessarily mean that he had no inner feelings. But he would want, as far as possible, to be in charge of the world’s searchlight as it fastened its clumsy beam on his own and Julia’s drama.
Julia was not sure she could bear this side of the immediate future. She left the dark church abruptly, stood for a moment, dazzled in the contrasting glare, then walked back to the promenade. She turned east towards La Croisette, her back to the evening sun. She moved quickly, compensating with physical briskness for the emptiness of her mind. The boulevard led away from the fashionable part of Cannes. The shore to her right was no longer bright with umbrellas. The sand was unkempt, increasingly littered with cigarette packets and empty bottles. The craft in a small marina bobbed in a sea that seemed dirty: they lacked paint. Just short of the headland of La Croisette itself, a few square metres of trodden yellow grass surrounded the white bust of a writer, his nose chipped, his name obscured by graffiti in Arabic and what looked like a plea for help: ‘liberate tutame ex feris’ – an echo of some incomprehensible feud, presumably in the Balkans. Children, gipsy or Balkan, ignored the faded instruction to keep off the grass. Julia kept moving. Her mind, too, had covered some distance from the comforts of the Hotel Carlton and the highly organised political conclave at the other end of the bay. What would happen if she just kept walking? She had cash and credit cards in her bag. She could disappear into some cheap hotel along the coast, forget the puzzles of Simon and of David and sit out the next day or two by herself. By then Simon would have been found, alive or dead, and a new set of emotions would be required. Her present set had worn out. She was numb, not knowing how she felt.
A young man approached her. Julia realised that her hair was a mess.
‘Cigarette?’ he said, as if in English. He might be the elder brother of those children on the grass. He had learned a confident smile to go with his looks. Physically he was the exact opposite of David – a tall, well-shaped boy, about eighteen, long black eyelashes, his purple shirt wide open above tight grey shorts, which needed a wash. ‘You have the time?’ was his second gambit, pointing at his empty wrist. Julia kept moving. ‘You like ice-cream?’
It was enough. If she went on east, that was the world she would enter. She must already look lost and dishevelled, available for a teenage grope. Julia turned back along the boulevard, walking even faster.
A black Mercedes was parked outside the main entrance of the Carlton. Just inside the swing doors a senior French police officer wearing white gloves was talking to the hotel manager. The two officers whom she had seen before stood behind them. Julia swept past; no one made a move to stop her.
Upstairs in the suite David, now dressed in a suit, sat on the bed, inclined over his mobile phone. Typically, she thought, his phone had coverage, where hers had failed. When he saw her, he took the phone from his ear as if to turn it off, then thought better of it. ‘I must go now,’ he said to the phone. ‘At once. To sum up, then, I can look after the operation here. Just let the usual people know I’m available. Do that now. As soon as we finish. Then get hold of McGovern on the lines we discussed. At once. That’s right. Goodbye. I’ll ring again from Nice airport.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Only Clive Wilson.’
‘Do you always give orders to the Chairman of the Party like that?’
‘Yes.’ But she could not hope to hold the initiative. David got up, and jammed the phone in his pocket. ‘Where have you been? You look a mess. The police car’s been waiting ten minutes at least. Your case is downstairs already.’
As they hurried through the lobby, the African chieftain came smiling towards Julia. ‘Madame?’
She had forgotten him. The necklace was in her suitcase. She was confused. Their encounter on the beach that afternoon seemed months away.
David intervened. ‘My wife liked the necklace. It seems expensive for what it is, but we will have it.’ As was now quite usual David had formed the habit of carrying plenty of cash ever since the confusion over the future of MasterCard four
years before. He began to count euro notes in large denominations.
‘I don’t want it,’ said Julia, taut and unhappy at this diversion. ‘It’s rubbish, really. I can’t think why …’ She did not know what she wanted.
‘We don’t have time to argue. The necklace is yours.’ He handed six 500-euro notes to the African.
‘Merci, Excellence. J’espère que Madame—’
‘We must go.’
They hurried through the suburbs of Cannes up into the hills, the police enjoying the need to move faster than the law allowed. Julia expected, from her earlier life as a protected person, that they would soon turn on the siren, and police happiness would then be complete.
Then David surprised her again. ‘I spoke to you too roughly upstairs. You know why.’ He took her hand and held it, for about half a minute. She noticed that, most unusually, one of his shirt buttons was undone, the third from the top.
In the intervals between thinking about Simon, she realised that, whatever else happened, her dealings with David would remain complicated. She wondered whether to fasten the button, but held back.
A few minutes later he brought their relationship back to the humdrum. ‘I’m going to say a few words to the press at the airport. There’ll just be time.’
‘Words? About Simon?’
‘Not about Simon. At least, not directly.’ He paused.
Julia realised how difficult it was for her husband to speak directly about anything. Sometimes this made for slow speech. There were layers of calculation beneath most of his utterances. This could mean strenuous work for brain and tongue as they combined to make sentences. She interrupted his thought, impatient to push him on. ‘Has anything come out yet about Simon disappearing? Who is McGovern?’
