Faraday took them from her with a marked alacrity. ‘You leave the imagining to me, Ms Holland.’
Leo grimaced at him. ‘I hope your nights are better than mine, Inspector.’
‘If these plants are what I think they may be, then my nights will be full, Ms Holland. Whoever sent Isabel that list of sites may also be paying her. Paying her to procure just this. A little hi-tech thieving.’
‘Yet she left her ill-gotten gains behind, Inspector. So they can’t have been all that important. At least not to her.’
Leo was at a loose end after he left. Stroking Beast, who had taken up a position on her lap as soon as Faraday was out the door, was no help. Inaction turned the rumble of anxiety into a thunderclap. Needing to move, she went into the study and took down a series of boxfiles. There might be something from Isabel’s Aunt that she had overlooked. Martha had implied that Isabel and she had argued over something. It might help if she knew what.
Near the top of the file, she came across the invitation she had vaguely remembered and then mislaid in the chaotic rearrangement of papers after the breakin. Paola Webster. She had never followed-up the Paola lead. The invitation was for the launch of a book called Scar Tissue. Tomorrow evening. Leo fingered the card and pressed the messages button on the ansaphone. She hoped the message from Paola hadn’t been wiped. It must be the same woman. Yes, the message was still there. She took down the phone number and gazed at it for a moment.
She had nothing to lose and nothing else to do. She prepared a little speech, but there was no answer to her ring. Odd in these days of answering machines. Maybe the woman had forgotten to switch it on.
Irritated, she sifted through the box files some more, then remembered that when she had finally spoken to her mother last night, she had promised to ring Aron Field, a mutual friend who was in London.
She had phoned her mother immediately after having spoken to Martha. The woman’s fretful longing to make contact with Isabel had stirred a generational guilt in her. Her mother, too, would be worrying. Leo hadn’t rung her in days; nor had she given her Isabel’s number. Remembering the debt that Daniel had underlined she owed her willy-nilly, she had for once managed to keep her voice even. And despite an initial bout of plaintive recrimination, her mother had indeed been both relieved and grateful. She had finished by saying in a soft, oddly vulnerable voice, that they all missed her and looked forward to seeing her back in Manhattan.
Her mother’s tone had surprised her. It had also made her think of Becca. The generational equation would be complete if she now rang Becca only to find her barking abruptly at her the way she normally did at her own mother. She didn’t ring. The time was wrong. Becca would be in classes. In any case, Becca didn’t bark. Not yet. Not quite. But she had made a mental note that the situation could provide a strip.
With a sudden lightening of mood, Leo pulled out a sheet of blank paper and started to draw. When she had finished, like the good daughter she rarely was, she rang Aron Field.
The address bore no relationship to anything Leo had expected. Behind a well-trimmed privet and small garden stood a respectable, family house of red-brick, largely indistinguishable from its neighbours on the quiet, sloping street. A lofty central bay was flanked by two solid wings. A series of attic windows protruded from the tiled roof. Only the round blue plaque discreetly positioned between sash windows indicated a difference. It read: Sigmund Freud, Founder of Psychoanalysis lived and died here. This was the house Freud had inhabited for the last year of his life. It was also the museum the invitation to Isabel from Paola Webster had led her to.
Leo took a deep breath and pressed the bell beside the freshly-painted door. It opened instantly to reveal a suited man of Mediterranean aspect seated behind a small desk. She flashed the card at him and he waved her in.
She was standing in an airy hall through which light poured from the high windows above. The stairwell was graceful, the banister highly polished. A small table beside her held a beckoning guest book. She was about to sign, when she thought better of it. In front of her, beside a door from which a babble of voices emerged, hung an engraving. She examined it, not quite ready to confront a room full of strangers. A robed, wild-bearded man, holding aloft two stone tablets etched with Hebraic script looked out at her. Moses. Leo wondered which of the commandments were etched here. Thou shalt not kill, she thought, with a sudden nervous tremor.
She shunned the room in front of her and turned instead into one at the side. In the sudden gloom, she had the feeling that she had entered a time capsule. Heavy leather-bound tomes lined the walls, interspersed here and there with photographs and prints. Crowded everywhere on shelves, tables and behind glass and in an assortment which defied order were antique figurines and funerary objects. Too many to let the eye rest at first, though she thought she recognised winged Eros’s and a handsome Athena, as well as a host of mythological deities, Greek and Egyptian.
The desk, too, swarmed with shapes, ghostly in their frozen movement. But here, as if its occupant had only momentarily left the chair which echoed a human shape, there were also items of everyday use. A pair of rimless spectacles lay on a sheaf of paper. Inkstand and pen, cigar box and ashtrays awaited their owner’s return. Opposite the desk stood the couch, covered with Persian rugs as rich and worn as a flying carpet. For a moment, Leo found herself wondering what it might have been like to lie amidst those opulent reds and blues, speaking the dreams the room invoked to the old man with the gaunt face who was Freud in his last years.
‘There’s a definite magic about it,’ a voice beside her said softly. ‘Almost as if you could feel a geography of the mind being mapped through all those stories of pain and desire,’
Leo turned to see a a tiny, dapper man with a moon-shaped face and the round, melancholy eyes of a circus clown. The face beamed at her. Beneath it sat a polka-dotted bow-tie, brashly at odds with the sober three-piece suit.
‘Leonora H. I expected you at the Savoy later, but hardly here. What a pleasant surprise.’
‘Dr. Field! How lovely.’ Leo embraced him, happy at the coincidence. Aron Field was one of the few of her stepfather’s friends she genuinely liked.
‘I didn’t know you mingled with the London confraternity.’
‘I don’t normally. But a friend passed on her invitation and I thought I’d take the opportunity…’
‘To see the museum, I know. I try to come here once on every visit to London. So you don’t know Paola Webster?’
Leo shook her head.
‘I’ll introduce you, if you like.’ He hesitated. ‘She’s quite a woman.’
Leo couldn’t altogether read the slightly comical expression that went with the statement.
‘I would like,’ she said emphatically.
‘Shall we go and mingle with the fray then?’
After the meditative hush of the study with its pale, antique gods, it was the room in which the party unfurled which felt unreal. It took Leo a moment to adjust to the animated figures. Mouths and faces looked too large, hands were unnecessary protuberances, clothes were too bright. She blinked, took a proffered glass from a tray and followed Aron Field past a painted rustic wardrobe into the midst of the spacious room.
At its far end beyond the gathered crowd, she noticed glazed doors opening onto an illuminated garden which she hoped was their destination. But progress was slow. Aron knew a number of the guests and he stopped to chat, to catch up on gossip as well as to introduce Leo in effusive terms.
‘If you’re looking for Paola, she’s over there.’ A tall, thin woman with an austere face beneath an abundance of grey-streaked hair pointed them diagonally across the room. ‘Near the books table.’
‘Signing, I imagine?’
‘That, too.’ The woman gave Aron a wry smile. ‘Scar Tissue is poised to do very well.’
‘Steamy, is it?’
‘Hard-hitting and graphic. If I were you, I’d watch my…’
The din in the room wiped o
ut her last words, but Leo thought she had heard ‘coyones’.
They wove their way towards the edge of the room where a large woman in a flowing plum-coloured trouser suit stood amidst a circle of evident admirers. Her mouth was generous, her eyes as luminous as her black hair. A heavy African necklace hung from her neck, giving her the air of a hieratic priestess. She stopped in mid-sentence as she spied Aron.
‘Dr Field. How exceedingly good of you to come all the way from New York. I am honoured.’
Leo saw a droll smile form on Aron’s lips. ‘Not quite all the way from New York, but bringing congratulations nevertheless. Let me introduce you to Leo Holland. Another New Yorker.’
‘Hi,’ Leo made the leap into a garrulous persona. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘Oh yes?’ The woman radiated pleasure, hugged her against her capacious bosom without a moment’s reticence.
‘Yes, yes. From my stepfather. He’s an analyst, too. Dr Samuel Gould.’
Paola Webster’s smile widened.
‘Funny you should choose to have your party here. A young woman, on Paola’s other side, intervened. Like an eighties pop star, her hair was close cropped enough to reveal scalp. Tiny studs bedecked her ears. ‘I didn’t think you were on speaking terms with Freud.’
Paola gave her a look freighted with machine guns as well as daggers. ‘I wanted to make the point that we are all one great family. In all families there are battles, but also great dollops of love. Isn’t that right, Dr. Field?’
Aron nodded sagely.
‘Yet it’s quite clear that your position…’ the young woman continued.
Sensing that Paola was about to be deflected into a long argument, Leo rushed in.
‘My friend, Isabel Morgan, also spoke very highly of you.’
Conflicting emotions played over the woman’s vivid face and settled into a bright, smiling mask. ‘Dear Isabel, a glorious woman. Such a fine journalist.’
‘I was hoping you could tell me how she was,’ Leo heard herself saying. She had just understood something. ‘I know she was seeing you. And now, well, she’s disappeared.’
The mask cracked. For a fierce, fleeting moment, the face breathed venom. ‘That is not my responsibility.’ The words were a low growl. And then the smile returned, not directed at Leo, now, who had been banished into invisibility, but at a mountain of a man who looked as if he had parachuted in from a cyber-convention. Black, unstructured suit, wide brow merging into a white-gold tail, gold chain, inordinately large teeth, bared now in a beam at Paola.
‘Wonderful book!’
‘You’ve read it. You’re a true friend.’ Paola stepped into his bear hug.
Realising that she was about to lose her chance, Leo turned to Aron Field. ‘You have to help me, Aron,’ she whispered. ‘Fix it so that I can see her privately. The sooner the better.’
‘Are you sure?’ Distaste flickered over his face.
‘Please,’ Leo gripped his arm. ‘It’s just for once. I’ll explain later.’
He adjusted his bow-tie and tapped Paola on the shoulder.
The woman veered round, her smile fixing itself into a rictus as she met Leo’s eyes. The large man at her side glanced at them for a moment, then moved away.
‘I have a favour to ask of you, Paola.’ Aron began smoothly. ‘You can’t refuse a colleague who has come from so far. My young friend here, who is such an admirer of yours, wants an interview with you. She’s only here briefly and then she’s back to Manhattan, where I should tell you she goes under the name of Leonora H. A household name in New York. Her cartoon strip is our best.’
‘It is only that I am so busy at the moment, Dr. Field.’
‘Half an hour. Breakfast tomorrow. Why not? You remember that conference in L.A. you were talking to me about…’
The woman gave him a beady look. ‘All right, Dr. Field. You win. For you, I do it.’ She turned to Leo. ‘Half-past eight. I will have exactly thirty minutes. Dr. Field will give you the address.’ She wound her arm through Aron’s. ‘Look Dr Field. There is Daniel Lukas. You know him, yes. It is good to see him here. Perhaps it means he has at last shed, how do you say, his widower’s weeds. Too much mourning is as unhealthy as too little.’
‘Mourning?’ Leo asked.
The woman charged past her, dragging Aron Field along. ‘Let us go and make him feel welcome. I shall introduce him to Hilton. The man has been wanting to meet Daniel properly. In order to make contact with the Institute and its grandees.’ She winked at Aron.
‘Mourning,’ Leo repeated, not quite realising she had spoken out loud until she heard the comment from her side.
‘Yes. Lukas’s wife died last year. Very sad. She was a fine painter. I knew her rather better than I know him.’
Leo turned to take in a man with a broad, friendly face.
‘You don’t remember?’ He smiled with a hint of self deprecation. ‘The plane from New York. We sat next to each other. I’m Tim Hoffman. And don’t tell me. I do remember. I’m cursed with memory. You’re Leo Holland. Small world, as they say.’
‘Tim Hoffman, of course. Hello. Very small.’
‘Shall we go and join your friends?’
Leo hung back. ‘No, no. Not right now.’
She needed a moment to feed this latest information into her portrait of Daniel Lukas. It skewed it severely. She converted the taste of guilt in her mouth to anger, as if he had presented himself to her under false pretences.
She saw him emerge now from the room’s sea of faces. He looked thinly handsome and rather forbidding, the soot beneath his dark eyes lending a pale gravity to his face. There was a pocket of air around him, as if people were unwilling to approach. Leo watched as Paola Webster filled it.
She had a sudden rush of vertigo. All these people coming together and she couldn’t make out the pattern.
‘Yes, Lukas took it hard.’ Tim Hoffman interrupted her thoughts. ‘He cut down his practice. And Paola’s right. He hasn’t been coming out much. By the way, I couldn’t help but overhear you mention the friend you asked me about on the plane. Isabel Morgan. Troubling that.’
‘I used to work with Isabel,’ the young woman who had challenged Paola Webster suddenly addressed Leo.
‘Did you?’ Leo looked at her with new interest.
‘Ya. Some years back.’ The woman grinned. It gave her face an elfish aspect. ‘Shall we go outside? I could use some air.’
A waiter refilled their glasses as they walked. Past a small bookshop, doors opened out onto a gracefully proportioned garden where more guests stood talking.
‘That’s better. I’m Lyn McAffrey by the way.’
Tim Hoffman offered cigarettes. When they had lit up, Leo asked them both, ‘What do you think of Paola Webster?’
‘Well, she makes good copy.’ Lyn grinned again. She’s never afraid to be controversial. I’m a journalist, so that’s always a plus. I’m curious to see whether Isabel includes her in her book.’
‘Her book?’ Tim asked.
‘When we last bumped into each other she told me she was busy writing a book about therapies. She had her Isabel-mischievous air on.’ Lyn giggled. ‘Did Paola get her to give it up?’ She addressed Leo. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Isabel was seeing her.’
‘I don’t know. No-one’s seen or heard from Isabel for almost a month.’
‘Which means she’s holed up somewhere and tapping away. Isabel was ever like that,’ she enunciated it with a touch of self-mocking drama. ‘She’d seem to be doing nothing and then she’d vanish and the work would appear at great speed. We’ll have a book in no-time.’
Leo weighed this statement against her fears and wished she could believe it. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘Well now that you mention it … probably not since Christmas. Time goes at such a pace.’
‘Maybe that’s the solution,’ Tim Hoffman said reflectively. ‘Your friend has hidden herself away to write. I often long to do that.’
‘Hey, there’s going to be a speech.’ Lyn pointed to a man who was waving people back into the main room. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’
‘What surprises me,’ Tim said as they crossed the threshold, ‘is that Daniel Lukas is here. I woldn’t have thought he had much time for Paola Webster. They have such fundamental disagreements.’
Pretending she knew what he was talking about, Leo nodded sagely, then lagged behind. She didn’t want to bump into Daniel. Not now. There was too much new material to digest. She recalled that Isabel’s upstairs neighbour, Mike Newson, had originally alerted her to the fact that Isabel’s therapist was a woman. Yet, driven by Isabel’s e-mails, Leo had pursued her own blinkered course. It came to her now in a confusing rush that it was Paola who had probably said to Isabel that her friend only knew people by sleeping with them, which was what had occasioned that uncomfortable yet somehow loaded moment between them.
Leo put it out of her mind to concentrate on the speakers. From her position at the far end of the room, she could hardly see, but she heard a man announce that the publishers took great pleasure in the appearance of Scar Tissue.
Paola Webster’s voice was clearer. For some reason its booming tenor reminded her of her Wife of Wrath. But she couldn’t concentrate on the list of fulsome thank-you’s, nor on the broad and ringing mission Paola outlined for psychotherapy. Nor, as she stood on tiptoe to get a better view, could she imagine what would have drawn Isabel to seek out this overbearing woman, unless it was indeed a question of research. Once more Leo had the sinking feeling that with each step she took to bring her closer to Isabel, her friend became more alien and mysterious.
In the midst of the clapping which broke out when Paola Webster had finished, Leo felt a tap on her shoulder. ‘Let me take you away, Leonora.’ Aron Field was at her side. ‘I’ve got a chariot waiting and now there shall be two of us in it.’
Leo agreed without a second’s hesitation. As they made their way through the room, she spied Daniel Lukas talking to the bull of the man with big teeth. They made such an odd pair that she stared for a moment. Now that she saw him in profile, there was something uncannily familiar about the man’s face. But as Daniel’s eyes strayed in their direction, she averted her own and hastily followed Aron through the door.
Sanctuary Page 26
