The wind had come up. Stray papers scudded along pavement and street. A page of a tabloid wrapped itself round his trouser leg and refused to be shaken off. He bent to remove it, then walked briskly through the drizzling night. Testing his state of mind, he wondered that he wasn’t angrier at Paola, even though he was so deeply critical of her work. It was probably because he couldn’t help but feel a certain admiration for her person. Yet he sensed that it was the sheer force of her that made her especially dangerous to some of her patients.
They had first met years ago at a conference. She had spoken about her work with victims of torture in Argentina. She too had been tortured and that gave her words an undeniable heft. The problem was, as he learnt in subsequent years, that she had never been able to shed the burden of that experience. It translated itself into her practice, into the very categories within which she worked. As he had underlined tonight, she found victims and torturers everywhere. Whereas he?
Youngest son of a London obstetrician and a doting mother, Daniel had experienced only what in a self-critical mood he called the banal violence of everyday life - death, disease, the ravages of mental illness, the everyday damage we do to ourselves and each other, the savagery the unconscious brings up. In Paola’s book, that hardly counted. She had made that amply clear over the years when they bumped into each other here and there in the small warring world which was the therapeutic community.
Then last year, when his wife was already very ill, by some aberration Paola had thrown herself at him during a conference. She had come to his room, had told him in no uncertain terms that a man with an ailing wife needs a break. She had taken his astonished refusal well enough. The embarrassment had been all his. But now it occurred to him that the unseemly encounter must have taken place not long before Paola had taken on Isabel. A small act of malicious revenge.
Or had it been a small act? Daniel pulled the car sharply out of its parking place. He had to think now, think himself once more into Isabel’s skin. What impact would Paola’s intervention, her dismantling of Isabel’s tested means of coping with the world, that forced journey to the manipulable child within, have had on Isabel’s inner state? He drove fast. He narrowly missed braking at a red light and he reached Highgate in record time. Maybe, like Isabel, he felt he needed to escape.
When he got home, he searched out the number the police had left him. He asked the man he was put on to whether the Australian police had been asked to put out a missing person’s alert on Isabel Morgan.
8
As she stepped out into the milky morning light and turned automatically left, Leo had a flickering sense that she was building up habits that by rights weren’t hers. She had felt it in the way she raced down the slightly uneven stairs of the apartment without checking her tread. She felt it again as she flung her hair back though it was too short to fling, before crossing the street. The familiarity with which the tiny, wrinkled man in the dingy newsagent’s greeted her added to the impression. His ‘how are you, today?’, the manner in which he brought out a pint of milk, a brown loaf and an Independent, even before she could ask for them, all spoke of a settled life which wasn’t hers.
The notion came to her that Isabel’s existence was taking over her own, just as it had once taken over her husband. It was all those papers and possessions through which she had sifted and which now pervaded her mind, as much as did the geography of the flat and the streets. Or was it the other way around? Had she usurped an absent Isabel’s life because there was so little of her own left? She nudged the thought away and to make the difference bought a packet of chocolate biscuits before walking, more slowly, back to the house.
Where the gap in the fencing gave way to the old, discoloured fire escape, she paused. There was a man she didn’t recognise standing at the door of the house. He was suited and wore a soft felt hat tilted at a rakish angle. He seemed to be hesitating. A large and full key ring dangled from his hand, yet he was looking at the bells. Finally, he fitted a key into the lock and pushed the door open.
Leo came in right behind him. He turned round with a nervous lurch, scrutinised her, then moved quickly up the stairs. He had, Leo noted, extraordinary eyes, as large and vague in his face as a china doll’s and more thickly lashed. Beneath them, an unsettling scar etched its way down his cheek. She kept her distance. He didn’t stop on the first floor as she had expected. She could hear his foot fall ahead of her as she paused on the landing and then the click of a key turning. Her heart pounding, she raced up to the apartment. The intruder had returned.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted so loudly that he jumped back, dropping the keys as he did so.
‘What’s it to you?’ He gave her a look of sullen appraisal.
Leo made a lunge for the keys. He did so, too. They wrestled for them and the keys fell back to the ground with a clatter.
‘Having a problem, Holland?’ Norfolk was suddenly at the door. ‘This bloke here bothering you?’
‘He’s trying to break in.’
With one swift movement, Norfolk pinned the man to the wall. ‘Ring the police, Holland.’
‘Hold on here, hold on a minute.’ The man’s demeanour changed dramatically at the word ‘police’. ‘I rang the bell. No one answered. And now you jump me,’ he whined. ‘I’ll lodge a complaint. Assault. Get Isabel. She’ll tell you who I am.’
‘No Isabel. And I heard nothing.’ Norfolk kept his grip.
‘Well get her. Tell her Hamish Macgregor is here.’ The man abruptly lifted his arms and shook himself free. He rearranged his hat, brushed his jacket into place. There was a scowl on his face. The scar looked livid and fresh. ‘Isabel gave me those keys. Ask her if she didn’t.’ He bent for them quickly and dropped them into his pocket.
Leo stepped forward.
Before she could speak, Norfolk intervened ‘What do you want here?’
‘I.. I came to get some things I left behind.’
‘What things?’
He seemed lost for a moment, then his face brightened. ‘My tools. I did some work for her.’ He drew himself up to a height that didn’t quite match Norfolk’s. ‘They’re in the closet, just over there.’ He pointed to the right of the door and stepped across the threshold. Norfolk stopped him. ‘I’ll take those keys back first.’
‘And who the hell are you?’
‘I’m asking the questions. Make that phone call to the police, Holland.’
‘I’ve seen the police. So you’re the bastard who put them on to me. Disturbing my old mum ‘n all.’
Leo saw the curl of fists. ‘When did you last see Isabel?’ she confronted him.
‘That’s my business, isn’t it? Hey, got it, you’re the bird I talked to on the phone.’ He looped two keys off the ring and threw them, like a gauntlet, to the floor. ‘There. All yours. I’ll get my things.’
‘I’d pick those up and give them to the lady politely if I were you, mate.’
Macgregor met Norfolk’s eyes for a moment. With a mock swagger, he bent to the keys and handed them to Leo.
‘Thank-you,’ she murmured by rote. She followed the men through the door.
Macgregor dug out an aluminium box from the midst of brooms and mops and a vacuum. He brushed his suit off. There was a flustered air about him, as if he had inadvertently cornered himself. ‘I… I’ve just remembered something else.’
‘And what may that be, Mr Macgregor?’ Norfolk’s arms were folded across his chest. Leo noticed for the first time that it was bare and as tanned as his face which now wore his customary wry smile. ‘Just what may that be?’
‘In the bedroom…’
‘Oh yes. Of course. Holland, why don’t you go into my room and take that cream-coloured suit out from the far end of the wardrobe. I think that’s what our friend here is looking for.’
‘I’ll get it myself.’
Norfolk put a staying hand on his shoulder. The grip was in stark contrast to the smile on his face. Macgregor d
idn’t move.
‘ I was wondering who the suit belonged to. Is there anything else, Mr Macgregor. A shirt, perhaps?’
The two men sized each other up.
‘The suit will do. For now.’
After a second’s hesitation, Leo left them. When she returned, they were talking in low voices on the landing. They stopped as soon as she approached.
‘Thank you.’ Hamish Macgregor mumbled at her. He had grown a veneer of politeness in her absence. ‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ he nodded at her and loped down the stairs.
‘What were you two talking about, Norfolk?’ Leo asked as soon as the door was shut.
‘This and that. Just checking him out.’ Norfolk grinned. ‘Not the most salubrious character. Not your type, I imagine, Holland.’ He considered her astutely.
Leo stiffened. ‘Not Isabel’s either, unless she was hating herself.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Isabel likes taking a risk here and there. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and finish my rudely interrupted toilette. You weren’t by any chance thinking of brewing some coffee?’
Leo picked up the shopping bag she had left on the floor. For a fraction of a second, she had the impression he was going to pat her on the bottom. She stood up briskly. ‘I was.’
‘That’s grand. Could you squeeze out a little extra for your security guard. I could use it. All I seem to do around here is get into fisticuffs. It takes it out of a man who earns his keep at a keyboard.’
Leo busied herself with breakfast. She ground beans, brought out a box of cereal and she thought of Hamish Macgregor. Hamish Macgregor and Isabel. There was a loucheness about the man, a ready violence that made her shudder, even though he wasn’t altogether the brute she had imagined from his drunken telephone call. Obviously the police interrogation had made him hasten here surreptitiously to collect his things. She could bet her bottom dollar that Macgregor had adamantly denied being Isabel’s lover. Was he hiding any more than that?
Leo’s hand slipped. The milk poured over the edge of the jug.
Jeff hadn’t denied it. She had rung him very late last night when Christopher Norfolk was already asleep. She had reached him in his university office. She hadn’t bothered to exchange platitudes. All she had said was, ‘Did you? With Isabel?’
There had been a long pause in which she could hear him breathing. At last he said, ‘So she told you. After all these years. Well, it hardly matters now, does it?’ Then had come that small artificial laugh of his which signalled grim discomfort. Leo had made no response. Inevitably, he had filled up the ensuing silence with self-justification. ‘Well, she’s hard to resist. And she was so willing. And you’d gone bone cold on me.’ She had hung up then, had gone to bed and lain there tasting the texture of betrayal, like rotten fruit exploding in her mouth.
Oddly it tasted worse than the episode which had led to their separation. Maybe, by then, she was already subliminally removed from him. Inured. But the affair with Isabel – she had worked it out remembering his trips to Cannes – must have dated from their year in London or the next. It brought her back into the midst of what she had thought of as her happiness. Her Garden of Eden. And the serpent lurking there had been Jeff himself.
She didn’t blame her friend. She wasn’t one of those women who thought it was always the other woman’s fault. She and Isabel had only just begun their friendship then and she didn’t owe her any particular loyalty.
A long-forgotten scene suddenly came into focus. She was with Isabel in the bar of the National Theatre during the interval of she couldn’t remember which play. Isabel had given her one of her teasing looks and said, ‘If you really knew me, I don’t think you’d like me much. I’m not very moral about most things, you know.’ She had laughed that irresistible laugh that came from the pit of her stomach and Leo had joined her.
Maybe Isabel had been warning her then, testing her. She hadn’t picked up the cue.
No, Jeff, apart, it was she, herself, who was at fault. For being so stupid, so trusting, so intent on happiness that she carried it with her like a blinding, rose-tinted fog.
And now the fog was lifting and she could see all the scurrying creatures beneath. Could see herself, too, placid in their midst. A small contained woman smiling at the notion that she was creating a good family for her child, a tranquil unit, more caring and continuous than the one from which she had emerged.
Leo slashed at the bread with the large kitchen knife. As she did so, she had an image of herself standing at the bottom of a long, curving staircase. She was waiting for Jeff who was at its top. He bent unnaturally. Fell. And then he was tumbling towards her in slow motion, his body twisting, bumping, until he arrived at her side, his face white, stony, dead. It came to her that she had been haunted by images of his dying throughout the first part of their marriage. Sudden hallucinatory images. He would plummet out of a tree. Or be thrown headlong by a speeding car. Or be propelled by a gust from the penthouse roof. At the time she had put it all down to her love for him and the attendant anxiety that she would lose him. But had the images been created as much out of wish as fear?
Leo lopped off another slice of bread. The voice behind her made her veer round, as if she had been caught out. The knife was still in her hand.
‘Calm down, Holland.’ Norfolk’s tone was soothing. ‘It’s only me. Remember? Don’t want any Fatal Attraction scenes here. Might ruin the sparkle of the counters.’
The knife clattered to the floor. He gave her an odd look. ‘I think you need some of this coffee more than I do. Here let me do this.’
***
Later, after she had checked in with Inspector Faraday who had asked her, in an unexpectedly curt voice, how many more people he might expect to find with keys to Isabel’s flat, she went for a stroll. She forced herself to walk at an even pace through the cemetery, even stopping to look at the historic graves with their disappearing inscriptions. She hated cemeteries, never visited them, even in Paris where they had pride of place as tourist attractions. The Highgate Cemetery was the only exception. Becca and Jeff had made that safe. Kept the ghosts at bay. Jeff. She forced him out of her mind and hastened her steps.
In the market street, she bought several large bunches of tulips for Rosie and daffodils for herself, so yellow that they seemed to have swallowed the sun which had now vanished from the sky. She bought some oranges, too, hungry for their colour, enough of it to counter the sombreness lodged inside her.
Back in the house, she noticed the post had arrived. A sift-through produced three envelopes for Isabel. She tucked them into her bag, ran up the stairs to place the flowers and a thank-you note by Rosie’s front door, and let herself back into the flat.
The door to Isabel’s office was closed. From within it she could hear the light clacking of a keyboard. Norfolk was at work. He really did use the thing. She arranged the flowers and fruit quickly, then ripped open the post. There was none of her earlier hesitation in her movements, she noted. It was as if Isabel’s letters had become her own.
The first envelope produced a sheaf of material from Greenpeace.The second was an invitation to an opening at the Hayward Gallery. As she read it, she suddenly remembered where she had seen the name Paola. Another invitation. On her first or second day here. Had it been amidst the torrent of papers left by the burglar which she had filed away as best she could?
Leo tore open the last envelope. It was brown and padded and bore a neatly typed label addressed to I. Morgenstern. Inside, there was a diskette. Leo stared at it. What to do with her laptop gone?
After a moment’s consideration, she rushed to Isabel’s office. ‘Norfolk,’ she called as she knocked and then didn’t wait for a response. ‘Look what’s arrived.’
‘Hold on.’ He clacked away for the length of a sentence before turning to her.
She was waving the diskette in the air. ‘It’s just come in the post. Can we read it on your machine?’
He groaned. ‘Can’t you tell w
hen a man’s trying to earn his keep, Holland? Don’t they teach you manners in America?’
Leo stepped back. ‘It’s not mine,’ she said tersely. ‘It was addressed to Isabel.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so!’ He gave her a broad wink and took the diskette from her hand.
She stood over his shoulder to gaze at the screen. Superstitiously, she crossed her fingers behind her back. Maybe this was what they had been waiting for. Just maybe everything would come clear now.
What materialised on the screen bore no relationship to what she had hoped. In its lay-out, it looked like a family tree, an intricate genealogical table, with progenitors at the top, followed by branching lines of husbands and wives and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Could Isabel have asked for a family tree to have been drawn up? She hadn’t as far as Leo recalled ever known much about her grandparents. Particularly on her father’s side, the family was a mystery. Yet there were no names here, just initials where the names should have been.
Norfolk scrolled down. The next screen brought up equally incomprehensible matter. Each line was a set of figures separated by spaces - like some kind of code.
They both studied the screen.
‘I suspect Isabel has sent herself a little aide-memoire. For safe-keeping.’ He pressed a key and Leo heard the printer move into action. ‘Which means, she’s safe.’
‘You mean these are coded notes she sent to herself? Under the name of Morgenstern?’
‘Oh. Perhaps not Isabel, in that case.’ He looked back at the screen, then picked up the papers as they came out of the printer and considered them. Leo had visions of endless enigma games.
‘Maybe, just maybe…’ He picked up the padded envelope and scrutinised the post mark. ‘Dorset. Can’t make out the town.’ He passed her the envelope. ‘Let me finish this piece here, Holland. And then I’m off. I’ve got an idea. I’ve got to work on it.’
‘What idea?’
‘It’s too early to say.’ His look was breezy.
Sanctuary Page 15
