Suddenly Leo felt annoyed with the progress of her own thoughts. That shrink was making her reason strangely, inducing her to search out internal explanations rather than external ones. Isabel could simply have taken on this cause for political motives, out of a sense of justice. There was no need to look any further or deeper. Everyone was secretive. If Isabel were here would Leo have told her about Norfolk and herself?
But then, Leo corrected herself, if Isabel were here, nothing would have happened. There would be nothing to tell.
‘Having foul thoughts about me, aren’t you Holland?’ Norfolk broke into her reverie. ‘Gonna run off with the car at the next stop and abandon me. I can feel it.’
‘No. I was just reflecting that perhaps I don’t know Isabel as well as I imagined.’
‘One never knows other people as well as one imagines.
‘Maybe not even oneself.’
‘You’re not to get philosophical on me in the middle of this bleating countryside, Holland. The only essential to know about Isabel is that she always wants more than she wants.’ He let out an abrupt laugh. ‘She was always like that. Even way back when. Back then she had the hunger of those who move from the periphery to the centre. She wanted everything - sex, drugs, rock n roll. And knowledge. She wanted to experience the whole world and more. She hasn’t changed all that much. It’s as if inside her there’s this big hole that can never be filled up.’
‘You love her, don’t you.’
He gave her a swift glance. ‘Guess I do. In a way. And I’m getting just a little fond of you too, Holland, given our brief acquaintance and your foul temper.’ He grazed her cheek playfully with his knuckles. ‘And I’m distressed about that girl.’
‘I think we’ve had enough of these fields for one day.’
Norfolk nodded. ‘I’m with you. I can get some more samples tomorrow, if there’s anymore to get. What I’d like to do now is go and have a look at the place where Jill Reid’s car went off the road.’
Leo tensed.
‘We’re not very far now. I got that cop at the hospital to tell me where it was. Right near the coast.’
‘But the hotel…’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll get there.’ Suddenly he slammed his hands on the steering wheel. The car swerved, barely missing a hedgerow. ‘Holland. It’s just come to me. That sheet we thought was a coded geneological tree. Where is it?’
He rifled through his pockets as if he had struck gold after a lifetime’s mining. ‘Here.’ He passed it to her. ‘Read me the letters in the first entry on the left.’
‘BWIS’
‘That’s it. Bioworld International, Seattle.’ He whistled beneath his breath. ‘What’s next?’
‘PLIL.’
‘Plant Life International Limited. Find another one with a P.’
‘PTGD. Five down on the left.’
‘That’s it. Plantagen, Dorset.. Holland, what we’ve got here is a list of holdings and acquisitions. Who owns whom in the sector. Isabel’s got herself a high-ranking snoop.’ He threw her a euphoric grin.
‘What we haven’t got is Isabel.’
‘Soon. I’m starting to feel lucky.’
He didn’t look as if he felt particularly lucky when they began to climb a fog-bound road as narrow as a roller coaster gauge and with more hidden twists and turns. Craggy branches scraped the roof and sides of the car. To the right an occasional break in the trees showed a sharp drop. Beyond, though mist and angle made it invisible, the sea roared and pounded against rock.
To Leo, the sudden savage drama of the coastline, as wild as any Pacific, was totally unexpected. ‘According to the map, we should almost be there,’ she said to reassure herself as much as Norfolk.
‘We are.’ He gestured towards a tiny dip in the road where police tape fluttered. There was nowhere to pull up, so he switched on his high beam to alert any oncoming traffic.
Cold wetness embraced them as they scraped past the stationery car and looked down the wooded verge. Jill Reid, they concluded, must have gone over just where the road curved and there was a break in the short gnarled oaks and scrubby trees. The car had been towed away now and the ground beneath them was muddy with tread marks. Its plunge had been broken by stout tree trunks, a few yards down. Two of them showed indentations. The bark was freshly chipped, gouged into stark pallor. Stray branches littered the ground. The car’s hurtling force had perhaps severed them from the trees. A little way on, the precipice gave way into nothing but air. From the distance came the massed call of gulls, as mournful as an elegy.
‘It must have happened at night,’ Leo’s voice felt as raw as the wind which lifted and carried her words. ‘Though no one seems to come along here anyhow. You notice we haven’t met a single car.’
‘Someone pushed her,’ Norfolk’s face was distorted, his mouth twisted into a hard line. ‘She had no ID on her, no shoes, unless they were stolen afterwards. How often do you go out without shoes in this weather, Holland?’
It was true, Leo thought. There was no particular need for the woman’s car to go down just here except that the gap in the trees provided a convenient point for a descent.
Her eyes hovered over the gouged trees. Had the assailant known that the trees would break the car’s fall. She couldn’t have been driving very fast. In a way it was surprising that if she hadn’t gone right over the precipice, the crash had killed her at all.
‘What do you bet all those broken branches on the ground were used to hide the car, just in case anyone drove by?’
Leo shuddered. ‘Poor woman. Do you know how long before she was found?’
Norfolk shook his head, then put his arms around her. He held her close for a moment, as if the heat of their bodies might dissolve the chill proximity of death.
‘Let’s go,’ he whispered at last. ‘Nothing more we can do here.’
12
Fog obliterated the landscape. It obliterated time, too, marked out now only by the repetitive rhythm of creaking windscreen wipers. The road twisted and turned and climbed, only to descend sharply and climb again. And again. In the murky greyness, the map was as unreadable as the eerie caw of invisible gulls.
Leo had a feeling that however much they moved, they were getting nowhere. Activity was an excuse to banish a sense of helplessness and its attendant guilt. Isabel was receding into an impenetrable distance.
When they finally reached a crossroads and turned away from the sea, she took a deep, ragged breath and tried to conjure up hope from the slightly wider road, the slight increase in the car’s speed. Suddenly the faint lights of what could only be a bulk of a car loomed above them on the horizon. They approached at a terrifying speed. Norfolk hooted, swore, pulled over as far as he could onto a towering bank of hedgerows. The vehicle charged towards them, heedless, and with a loud scrape carried away their wing mirror.
Leo had a fleeting impression of a bull of a man at the wheel, a huge head on a powerful neck Behind him, a woman, a tangle of golden hair fanned-out against the window. She blinked and the vision was gone. Shaking, she followed Norfolk out of the car. He was shouting obscenities, waving his fist, running. But the large, black vehicle had already disappeared, swallowed up by a bend and mist.
‘Bastard! I didn’t even get a glimpse of his license plate.’ Norfolk smashed his fist on the roof of the car.
Leo gazed into the distance. Above the rise of the hill, a light appeared. The blurred contours of a large stately house materialized between wind-lashed trees. She rubbed her eyes. ‘Maybe that’s a hotel, Norfolk. Maybe he was heading for it. We could follow him. Get a drink, too. We need one.’
He gave her a bleak look, shrugged. ‘Not much point, Holland. It’s too late for fisticuffs. Even if he’s there, the bastard will deny it. And there’s nowhere to turn round here.’
She was about to insist, when both the light and the house she was certain she had seen disappeared leaving behind only a residue, a spectral outline in her memory instead of solid ston
e. Her eyes were playing tricks on her. ‘Did you notice a woman in the back seat of the car?’ she asked in a quivering voice.
He understood her immediately and as he shook his head, he stretched a reassuring arm across her shoulder. ‘We’ve had a long day, Holland. This fog doesn’t help. Let’s carry on.’
As if it were under the sway of engineers, the fog lifted with the appearance of a double-lane road. Leo found a classical music station without the crackle of interference and tried to put order into the frazzle of her mind. Now that the minutely metered world of the Ordnance Survey map was behind them, they made good time, travelling south-east. Some thirty minutes brought them to a signpost announcing the Sturridge Hotel two kilometres on from the next right. The building, itself, first emerged as a glow amidst darkness. They dipped down into a steep valley and then up again, almost missing the tree-lined drive which eventually led to an old Jacobean manor, forbidding in its severe symmetry of hewn stone.
But at least it was there, Leo thought, not an illusion born of fog and dread. Real pebbles crunched beneath their feet, loud in the night-time hush. The air was moist and chill and smelled slightly of rank vegetation. From above came the swoop and call of a predatory bird.
The heavy door opened with a slight creak to Norfolk’s push and revealed a small, dimly lit reception area, adorned with faded furnishings and gilt-framed oils. There was no one behind the counter at the far side, but a bowl of lavish spring blooms signalled some kind of welcome. Norfolk pressed the old fashioned bell beneath it and after a few moments, a tall, spruce grey-haired woman came to greet them.
‘So sorry. We’re busy in the dining room tonight. But there’s still time.’ She gave them a tight little smile as she glanced at her watch and looked them over.
‘We’d like a table and a room, please Ma’am.’
Leo noticed that Norfolk had put on his broadest Australian. It seemed to relax the woman. Her smile widened. ‘I’ve got a lovely room on the first floor with exceptional views.’
‘That’s just what we’ve come for.’ Norfolk worked his charm and by the time the register was signed and the key handed over, the woman seemed to have shed twenty years and was telling Norfolk about her single visit to Australia and urging them to hurry to dinner or the best of the day would be gone.
Leo cleared her throat. ‘A friend of ours from Australia stayed here a few weeks back. On the fifteenth of last month. Isabel Morgan. I was wondering if you’d talked to her. We’re a little worried about her. A tall woman. Blonde.’
‘The fifteenth. Let’s think.’ The woman traced a well-manicured finger along a calendar. ‘Oh no. That was a Wednesday. I only do Thursday and Friday evenings. Mrs. Donald will be here in the morning. Why not talk to her.’ She suddenly stiffened. ‘Is that the woman the police were enquiring after?’
‘Maybe,’ Leo murmured.
The woman gave her a disapproving look as if she had suddenly discovered a nest of dirt swept under a good carpet. ‘I don’t think…’
Norfolk cut her off. ‘Now you go and tell them to keep a table for us. We’ll put these bags upstairs and be down in a jiffy. I could eat a whole sheep, all by myself.’
The room was large and floral and comfortably shabby with a plump duvet on the soft bed. It creaked a little to Norfolk’s tentative bounce. The recessed window was wide and gave out on shadowy trees. Leo watched them bend and flutter and had an uncanny sense that Isabel had stood in this very place and listened to the low moan of the wind.
‘No gloomy thoughts for the next two hours, Holland.’ Norfolk’s arms curled round her, as if he could read her thoughts. She snuggled into him.
‘I took a peek at the register, while you were grilling the old dear. No I.M.’s in any permutation in the last two pages, which take us back to January. So they’re a little erratic with their formalities.’
Leo looked at him open-mouthed.
He gave her a slow wink. ‘I’m in the business, remember. Kind of. What I did notice, way back in late January was that Jill Reid stayed here. She must have told Isabel about the place. No.’ He put a finger over her lips. ‘We’ll talk over dinner. Now hurry along, as the lady ordered, or I’ll beat you to the shower.’
The restaurant had a dusty formality about it, but the rolls were hot and the claret Norfolk had chosen was mellow on the tongue and wiped out a little of the bleakness of the day. The guests were largely an assortment of elderly couples: tweed jacketed men with pocket watches and comfortable stomachs, accompanied by rouged, silver-haired women, who looked as if their single care in the world might be the tending of their roses. They spoke, if they spoke at all, in hushed voices.
It wasn’t Isabel’s kind of place, Leo determined, unless she no longer had any idea what kind of place Isabel liked. She shook away a momentary vertigo and tried to concentrate on their order and then on Norfolk’s words.
He was speculating about Isabel’s links with Jill Reid and what it was they had been involved in together. He conjured up visions of the two women engaged on an intrepid investigation into a science which to Leo had all the signs of a future fiction. The technical terms tripped off his tongue with a practised biochemist’s speed, as did the names of companies he had now identified from the list of holdings. Leo couldn’t altogether follow, but as she pushed the mint-fragrant lamb round her plate, she had the sense that she was being tangled in a web of conspiracy so vast that it covered the world. From the midst of its sticky paths and convoluted loops, its drugs and plants and genetic manipulations, it came to her that Norfolk was evoking an Isabel of his own creation. Just as she did, she imagined. Which one of them was right? Or was Isabel large enough to contain them both?
She was speculating about this when a squat, broad-shouldered man approached their table. His girth blocked out the rest of the dining room. He examined them with pebble hard eyes. Above his fleshy cheeks, his forehead was puckered into a permanent frown. He prodded the knot of his bright tie, as if he wanted to yank it off his neck.
‘You the people who’ve been asking about Isabel Morgan?’ he addressed them in a coarse whisper.
‘We were.’ Norfolk was smooth.
‘I’ve told the police everything I know. I don’t want them back here.’
‘Do we look like police?’ Norfolk laughed.
‘What are you after?’
‘Isabel is a friend.’ Leo’s voice soothed.
‘Well, I don’t know her from Adam. She stayed here two nights. And she left. That’s the whole of it. This is a hotel. People come. People go. Don’t even remember what she looked like.’
He gave them a menacing look and turned on his heel
‘Me thinks he doth protest too much,’ Norfolk muttered, looking after him.
‘So he’s hiding something.’
‘You’ll have to find out what tomorrow, Holland. And about Jill Reid.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘I’ve been thinking. Looked at those maps again. I want to set off at the crack of dawn. Why don’t you have a lie-in and then talk to this Mrs. Donald when she arrives. Try and get her on her own, without big boy there. I’ll come and fetch you around eleven, say. I haven’t much time left and I want to make use of it. I’ve got a plane to catch first thing Saturday.’
‘You’re going back to Sydney?’ Leo’s voice caught.
‘No, not that. Not yet.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m due in Amsterdam.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve got a date with my daughter. Unbreakable.’
‘You never mentioned a daughter.’
‘Didn’t I? Well that’s the way it goes.’ He grinned. ‘You understand that.’
She didn’t know quite which ‘that’ he was referring to, but she nodded. ‘How old is she?’
‘Fourteen. And she’s a stunner. Though I haven’t seen her for some eight months.’
She watched the fondness play over his face, the blue glint of his eyes grow soft, and she suddenly felt like kissing him.
‘And yours? Bec
ca, isn’t it?’
‘As tall as our waitress.’ Leo smiled covertly as the trim young woman took their plates, watched the swing of a glossy pony-tail and felt what she could only describe as a jab of pain round the area of her heart. She found herself swallowing hard and telling Norfolk that Becca had now fled the coop. She missed her. Then, forcing her tone into lightness, she rushed on to ask him how he got on with his former wife, or wives.
‘Just fine, now that we don’t live together,’ he chuckled. ‘We’re friends. They’ve both remarried, had more children. I’ve even been named godfather to one. Dogfather more like.’
Leo met his laugh and mused about the vagaries of modern life: the way in which one carried on having relations with former spouses, out of need, because of the children. Or maybe, too, because there must have been something in all those years which kept you close, kept you together. Something to which it was necessary to pay respect, beyond the inevitable acrimony of parting. She was trying, but she knew as she thought of Jeff’s new child that she hadn’t yet altogether succeeded.
Later in bed, her hunger for this man she hardly knew, surprised her. Maybe it was the shadow of that dead young woman hovering over them, urging them to seize the day. To live, while there was still time. She had a fantasy, too, of Isabel whispering into her ear, saying with her wry laugh, that she was glad Leo was enjoying Norfolk, a gift from her, a gift to make up for their spoilt plans, or perhaps to make up for Jeff.
Still later, as they smoked a companionable cigarette and, like young ones, shared wine from a single glass, she wondered whether she would have been as open to Norfolk in New York. Or was this one of those holiday phenomena, a different self to match the difference of setting? Daniel Lukas sprang into her mind. Despite her hostility, she had to acknowledge that he had something to do with her newly found openness. That first breaching of the barricades of intimacy had been his. It had left her more susceptible than she would otherwise have been.
Sanctuary Page 22
