Sanctuary

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Leo stared at him. His features wouldn’t coalesce into a face. She made an effort to remember. ‘Double lock?’ she repeated stupidly. ‘No, I don’t know… I don’t think so. You see, Isabel… The front door, downstairs, is very solid.’

  ‘Of course. We were just wondering if it might be an inside job.’

  ‘Inside job.’

  ‘You know. Someone who had the keys. There are no signs of breaking and entry on the outside door and…’

  ‘Someone who had the keys.’ She was turning into a parrot. An image of Christopher Norfolk passed before her eyes. But why would he bother? He had his own computer. In any case, he was meant to be staying here. Yet he wasn’t staying here. Her mind refused clarity.

  ‘A neighbour, perhaps?’

  ‘A neighbour?’ The policeman’s face suddenly swam into focus. He was black. It was a kind face. Not young. With generous eyes. ‘Yes. Yes. The upstairs neighbour has the keys. Mike Newson. But… I saw a man on the street. Afterwards… I’m not sure.’

  ‘We’ll go and have a word with your neighbour in any case.’

  ‘I’ll come too.’

  ‘If you’re really up to it.’

  Leo nodded and carefully placed her cup on the coffee table. She was grateful for the hand he put out to her as she lifted herself from the sofa. She had a sudden vision of what it would be like to be old and find your legs trembling beneath your own weight.

  They walked slowly up the stairs.

  ‘It’s a little late, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just gone midnight. Still, best to find out what we can straightaway.’

  After three insistent rings, punctuated by pauses, Rosie opened the door the width of the latch. ‘What is it?’ Her voice was disgruntled.

  ‘It’s me, Leo,’ Leo said from behind the policeman’s girth. There’s been trouble downstairs.’

  Rosie unlatched the door. She was wrapped in a white dressing gown, a towel round her head.

  ‘I was in the shower.’ Her eyes sought out Leo’s. ‘What’s happened?’

  The policeman pre-empted Leo’s response. ‘Sorry to trouble you so late, Ma’am. There’s been a breakin. We need to know whether you saw or heard anything.

  Rosie shook her head slowly. ‘You poor thing,’ she said to Leo. ‘Come on in. Sit down.’ She looked up at the officer. ‘I haven’t heard a thing. I got in about eight, turned the music on, pottered about in the kitchen, watched some telly… Did they take much?’

  Leo shook her head. ‘But he made a terrible mess. And my laptop’s…’

  The policeman cut her off. ‘You have the keys to the downstairs’ flat?

  ‘Mike, my partner, keeps them. I don’t know quite where. He’s away. On a shoot. Filming,’ she corrected herself. ‘He’s due back on Wednesday. Thursday, if there’s any delay. He’ll probably ring in at some point.’

  ‘Will you check with him? About the keys. He may have misplaced them. Or…’

  ‘Sure.’ Rosie wasn’t paying attention to him. She was staring at Leo. ‘You’re not looking too good,’ she murmured. ‘What about I pull on some clothes and help you clean up.’

  ‘Not tonight, ma’am. Better to leave things as they are. We’ll want the CID here in the morning. But if you can keep an eye on Mrs. Holland, while I pop down to the other neighbours…’

  ‘She can spend the night.’ Rosie gave Leo an encouraging smile. ‘We can keep each other company.’

  ‘That would be best.’ A look of complicity passed between them.

  How about it, Leo?’

  Leo was too tired to protest. She was also grateful. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to sleep in her bedroom where the suitcases had been turned out and left lying where they fell. No. Nor did she want to set foot in any of the shadowy spaces through which the intruder had passed leaving havoc in his wake.

  An hour later, Leo was stretched out on a bed decked in pristine white cotton. The blind in front of her had a New York scape printed onto it, so that she might have been at home in Manhattan looking out at a familiar view. But the bedside lamp, a towering needle-pointed triangle, cast an altogether more sophisticated glow and, on the wall beside her, Mike Newson’s eerie mannequins displayed their surreal limbs amidst refracted buildings. She switched off the light to block them out and thought of Isabel who always slept with the light on. Isabel with her bright spirit and incisive wit. Isabel who was afraid of nothing except the dark. For very good reason, Leo thought, given that her life was prey to the horror of pillaging intruders.

  She was now more certain than ever that the breakin was no random act. This man had been no ordinary thief in search of valuables. He had wanted something Isabel had. But what? And who was he?

  Taking her cue from the police, Leo had said none of this to Rosie, though the woman had been sweetness itself. She had given her fruitcake and whisky and tea, and chatted all the while about her mother who made the best cake going and who had been burgled last year and the insurance had come up trumps, so that she had finally gotten a modern sound system and a huge television. She told her, too, about her job in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s costume department and how she was sorry but she had to clock in early tomorrow, though if Leo wanted to sleep late, there was no problem.

  Leo closed her eyes. Sleep came swiftly, as if she had waited too long for it. And with it came dreams. A chaos of dreams as unruly as her day.

  She was lying in a narrow four-poster bed, a girl’s bed, all white and ruffled, in the centre of a room so large she couldn’t make out its limits. Her eyes were closed but she could clearly see two servants in Elizabethan dress carrying a casket into the room and setting it down near her. When they left, the lid of the casket opened with a slight creak. Inside it lay Isabel sleeping peacefully, her hair strewn with wild flowers. Like Ophelia. No, no, not Ophelia, dead Ophelia. Not Isabel either, for a figure suddenly emerged from the box. A man. She couldn’t identify him. He prowled round the room, stared at her supine form, bent close to her. She didn’t move. Didn’t let on that she knew he was there, not even when he touched her breast.

  When he turned away and started to rifle through the chest of drawers in the middle distance, he suddenly grew familiar. She recognised the way his shoulders moved as he scattered the contents of the drawers on the floor. He bent to retrieve a small pile of letters. They were tied with a pink bow. Love letters. Letters he had written. He. Daniel Lukas. He was very tall and brutally broad-shouldered. An arrogant smile appeared on his face as he stuffed the letters into his jacket pocket.

  He wasn’t finished yet. He tiptoed towards her, watched to see if she would open her eyes and when she didn’t he was off to the other side of the large room. Another chest. He whisked it open, voided its contents which flew here and there. Becca’s teddy bear and her white seal fell close to her. She almost got up then. She wanted to shout at him. But her mouth was too dry and he was holding up something to the light. A grey slant of morning light which came through the window. She could make the object out now. A small square. A diskette. That’s what it was. He couldn’t take that. She needed to know what was on it. Her mouth moved, but it made no sound.

  He was coming towards her again. But now it wasn’t him. This man had a narrow face and slicked-back hair. Like her neighbour. His mouth curled in a scowl. A light flashed. He was taking her photograph. She didn’t want it to be taken. She would be transformed into a mannequin with glossy unmoving limbs. Yes, it had happened. She couldn’t move her legs. She screamed. His hand fell over her mouth turning scream into squeal.

  ‘Hush,’ he ordered her, ‘Hush now, Iris.’

  ‘I’m not Iris,’ she wanted to protest, but there was no speaking through that choking hand.

  ‘That’s a good girl. Now you just do everything I say. Everything.’

  The voice had nothing of Mike Newson’s South London drawl. It had a threatening timbre. It was the toad from Origen. Or was it? The sardonic laugh that came from him belonged to someon
e else. Norfolk, Christopher. He dragged her out of the bed and forced her into the casket. The lid shut with a definitive click on top of her. The air was thick. It was difficult to breathe. In the distance, she could hear the sound coming closer - the sullen chopping of a helicopter’s blades. Terror enveloped her as surely as darkness.

  She woke abruptly, the sour taste of fear on her tongue, the images of the dream still cascading through her. It took her a few moments to put herself together again, to realize that she wasn’t in a box but merely in a strange bed in a strange room. Clumsily she reached for the lamp switch, poured water from the jug Rosie had left for her. She was as parched as if she had just survived a trek through the desert. She drank and meditated on the dream’s vivid logic, the casket she had imported from Cymbeline along with the evening’s more dangerous intruder. And then, she was asleep again, awake only with the morning’s sunlight.

  Rosie had written a note to her, clipped to a refrigerator magnet. ‘Help yourself to anything you like. There’s a ton of cereal in the cupboard. Coffee next to it. And lots of bread in the bin. Don’t let cops and mess get you down. See you later.’

  Leo perched on a stool at the free-standing plinth of a kitchen counter and spooned crunchy nut flakes into her mouth as avidly as if she were Becca on a school morning. In the midst of last night’s tumult, she had forgotten to eat again. But she felt fine now, able to cope. And she knew exactly what she was going to tell the police when they arrived with their crime detection kit.

  The apartment, when she let herself in, felt a good deal less spooky than it had the previous evening. Clear spring sunshine poured through the many windows. The crimson sofa was aflame with its own colour. She averted her eyes from any of the side rooms where the signs of greatest upheaval reigned. She only went into her own room to change swiftly into a fresh pullover and trousers, then brewed some coffee. She had just finished pouring a cup, when the doorbell rang. The videophone showed a police ID card. A gruff voice announced Detective Inspector John Faraday.

  He was up the stairs almost as soon as she had opened the door, a pale, thin gangly man in a nondescript windbreaker and corduroy trousers as ordinary as his face. In a crowd he would have been indistinguishable. He flashed his card again as he pronounced her name with careful seriousness.

  ‘Leonora Holland?’

  ‘That’s right. Come in.’ She had the inane thought that he kept flashing his card because otherwise he would feel invisible.

  ‘Like Leonora Carrington.’

  She looked at him in surprise. Carrington was hardly a widely-known artist. ‘How did you guess? My mother was in love with her work, so she named me after her. That’s probably why I started painting. The injunction of the name.’ She stopped herself. What on earth was she doing giving her life history to this stranger.

  ‘Which should have marked me out as a great scientist.’ He gave her a shy smile. It dimpled his cheek. ‘Is this one of yours then?’ he gestured at the wall where Isabel’s bright abstract hung.

  ‘No. I do strips these days. Cartoon strips.’

  He nodded sagely. ‘Well, this isn’t Leonora C. either. No sprites. No big-haired women. I’m told you had a spot of bother last night,’ he finished with no transition.

  ‘Rather more than a spot, Inspector.’ She led him into Isabel’s office.

  He whistled between his teeth. ‘Any more?’

  She led him through to the bedroom, then her own room and the bathroom. ‘And this is no ordinary burglary, Inspector. The man was searching for something.’

  ‘Any idea what it was? Or who he was? His eyes had moved round each room with a kind of mechanical precision, as if he were making mental snapshots. Now, he bent for a moment to rub some of the earth that had fallen from the fractured pots between his fingers. He sniffed them like a terrier, then carefully examined the sliding mirror of the medicine cabinet. ‘Was this open when you left home yesterday?’

  Leo shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I don’t usually come in here. I use the shower room.’

  He nodded again. ‘I suspect your villain wore gloves. Can’t see any prints. But we’ll have a dust later. So tell me what’s missing?’

  ‘Apart from my laptop, I don’t really know. I was told not to touch anything last night. Not that I’d necessarily know in any case. You see, this isn’t my place. It belongs to…’

  ‘Isabel Morgan aka Iris Morgenstern. I know I’ve been through the files. And you think last night’s burglary is tied up with her disappearance?’

  Leo nodded miserably, then shrugged. ‘You see, the other day I was followed by this man, Kripps, from Origen - I’ll show you their brochure. I’m afraid I was pretending to be my friend. He was very threatening.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing detective work on your own, Ms Holland. It can be dangerous.’

  He said it with a kind air, but Leo couldn’t quite restrain herself. ‘Your… your colleagues wouldn’t take me seriously.’

  ‘Missing person cases are tricky. This on the other hand is another kettle. I have a particular interest in what you might call the Green beat.’

  She looked at him with a moment’s suspicion. ‘You work alone?’

  He laughed. ‘Only sometimes. I wanted to check this out.’ He waved his arm rather regally in the direction of the rooms. ‘So you think this Mr. Kripps might have been yesterday’s intruder?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him. I didn’t know anyone was here until I was pushed.’ Panic clutched at her stomach as she remembered.

  ‘Don’t think about it now. But let me try a description on you.’ He pulled spectacles and a notebook from his pocket and leafed through it. ‘Your ground floor neighbour, a Mr Simon Porter, told us that when he got in yesterday evening, around 7.30, a motorcycle messenger came in just behind him. He told him he had a package for the fourth floor and rushed up the stairs. Mr Porter thought nothing of it. As far as he could estimate, given that the man was entirely clad in black leather, apart from his helmet which was in his hands, he was in his mid to late twenties, had sandy hair clipped short and was about medium height, smaller than Mr Porter in any case. Does that sound anything like your Mr. Kripps?’

  Leo shook her head. ‘Not at all. ‘Mr. Kripps is big and fat and middle aged and looks like a toad.’ It gave her pleasure to say it.

  Faraday chortled. ‘You didn’t take to him.’

  ‘Not at all. But Inspector, this is the third floor, not the fourth.’

  ‘We don’t really expect villains to tell the truth. I’ll be checking it out with the people upstairs.’

  ‘I guess Kripps could easily have sent a hired hand.’

  ‘The question is, Ms Holland, what exactly for? Your Isabel or Iris hadn’t been working for them. There was nothing she could have taken. Unless you… Is there something you’re not telling me Ms. Holland?’

  Leo flushed. ‘I don’t think so. All I have are hunches. I suspect. No more than that, I know that Isabel was investigating something. Something to do with biotechnology and genetically modified foods, I think, the people who experiment with them. That’s why the false name.’

  ‘What other companies did she go to?’

  ‘She wrote to a number. I saw the letters. There was…. I’ll check it out. If the correspondence is still here.’ She suddenly remembered Christopher Norfolk. She was about to say something when Faraday went on reflectively. ‘You see, it seems to me that your intruder wasn’t expecting anybody. He was taking his time. He didn’t think anyone would be here.’

  Leo saw some of her worst fears realized. Her voice rose an octave. ‘So they’re holding Isabel and felt free to ransack the place. He may even have had the keys. Still has them…’

  ‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions, Ms. Holland. Tell you what, why don’t you start going through the papers. You can put them away as you go. If there’s anything interesting, or anything that seems to be missing, let me know. I’ll start in the office. You take the bedroom. OK?
’

  ‘OK. But there’s something else, I should tell you Inspector. Isabel was in analysis. Psychotherapy. You know how people talk in that situation. Well, I just have this hunch that her analyst knows something that might help us. But I don’t know what.’ Her dream came into her mind and she was about to tell Faraday that Daniel Lukas could equally well be their thief, but in the bright light of day, the notion didn’t sound plausible anymore. And the man would stop trusting her, would label her a hysterical American. She was used to the perpetual British ambivalence about the States. A fondness for American enthusiasm and openness and energy could flick in a split second into an arrogant disdain for their over-the-topness, their innocence, their lack of irony, their stupidity.

  ‘According to the file, he was rung. He had nothing to tell us about your friend’s whereabouts. And we can’t call him or his files in unless there’s a crime.’

  ‘And this isn’t a crime?’

  ‘Not the right crime.’ He said it with a droll movement of the lips.

  Detective Inspector John Faraday was distinctly an interesting man, Leo thought. ‘Can I make you some coffee, Inspector? Or tea if you’d prefer.’

  ‘Coffee would be grand. Black. One sugar.’

  After she had handed him his cup, she took her own into Isabel’s bedroom and set to work. As she pulled the wire-mesh stand upright and folded her friend’s clothes back into the drawers, she tried not to let the hovering black mood settle over her. She had to be matter-of-fact, meticulous. She had to think. Isabel would think. She wouldn’t let a breakin with a little added violence overwhelm her. If the tables were turned and it was Leo who was missing, Isabel would be doggedly methodical in her efforts to find her. She wouldn’t succumb to despair.

  Leo folded clothes and kept back tears. There were certainly underwear missing from Isabel’s drawer. There were too few here for any woman to get by on. She rearranged a lacy black frill and tucked it under a more demure white. Isabel’s underclothing wasn’t consistent. It moved from plain, practical Jane to femme fatale. Like her, Leo thought. But the paucity of undergarments meant that Isabel had definitely packed for a trip. As she arranged the shoes that had been flung from the bottom wracks of the wardrobe in a mad hunt for something, it came to her that the boots Isabel had bought last Christmas when they were together weren’t here either. They were thick black leather ankle boots with a low heel, intended for solid walking. Would she have packed them for their planned journey South? Maybe. But the summer sandals all seemed to be here, which might have made sense on a trip to warmer climes.