Leo stared and stared, then veered away from the hallucinatory power of the call. Her senses were playing tricks on her. She had no evidence. She forced herself to turn left, to keep her eyes away from the sea’s turbulence, to follow the twisting contours of the precipice, but the sensation of certainty wouldn’t leave her.
In the distance, a lone figure appeared, marching in her direction. She tucked the strap of the computer beneath her shirt. But the man disappeared from view before she had taken ten steps. There must be another path leading downhill. Good. She kept her eyes firmly to the ground, trying to blot out the clamour of wind and sea and mind.
And then Isabel was suddenly beside her, a whimsical smile on her face, her hair blowing tendrils into the wind. Next to her stood a small arrow nailed to a post and pointing downwards. ‘Sanctuary - Resident’s only’.
As she took the path, Leo had the odd sensation that her friend’s arm was round her shoulder. It was the only sanctuary she wanted.
20
A white-clad group were performing Tai C’hi under the spread of a beech. Water-lilies floated on the surface of a small pond. Leo paused to get her bearings, then fixed her eyes determinedly to the middle distance and prayed that she would meet neither Hilton, nor Heather, nor William before she reached the refuge of her room.
A young woman was sitting behind the counter in the entrance hall.
Leo nodded briefly in response to her quizzical look, then keeping her pace even, made her way up the stairs.
At last she was at her door. She closed it quickly behind her and for good measure wedged the single chair firmly under the knob.
Perspiration had gathered in her armpits. She could sniff her own sharp smell of fear. Unsteadily she placed the computer on the small windowside table and unzipped the bag. Had it been whipped from Isabel because it contained the material for her exposé? Whipped away with her life? Or had she left it behind, impelled to flee the Sanctuary in some turmoil of emotion?
Had Frederick Hilton, the intruder in the loft, taken her own computer thinking it was a second one of Isabel’s? He would have found out differently once he had switched it on. He would also undoubtedly have learned her name — Leo, signed at the end of letters — though not the name Gould, under which she had registered. Had he recognised her from the loft? Was that why he had questioned her about being burgled and assaulted, wanting to know, too, whether she recognised him. Hence, the hypnosis.
Leo forced away cascading thoughts which left only dread in their wake and plugged the computer into the lamp socket. The screen showed the basic icons, but when she tried to access documents and files, one after another, they were empty.
Wiped. Everything had been wiped. She slammed her fist on the table and stared at the screen in bleak incomprehension. All this and now nothing.
But files could be retrieved. How? She swore in frustration, wished Norfolk to her side. Or Becca, who had painstakingly tried to explain the ins and outs of programs to her. Becca. She needed to ring Becca. She hadn’t spoken or written in too many days. But there was no phone on her desk here.
Desolately, Leo clicked on each of the icons in turn. Tools, came up and with them a list. Norton Utilities. That rang a bell. Norton almost as good as Norfolk, Leo chivvied herself, remembering how Becca had told her something complicated about a retrieval system for lost and binned files. She clicked on it. Not wiped. Painstakingly, she read instructions.
The knock on the door burst in on her more fiercely than a gale.
‘Yes,’ she said breathlessly.
‘You are there, Leo. Good.’
Leo rushed to grasp the doorknob, just as it began to turn. ‘I’m just changing, William.’
‘I need to take you down to the kitchen.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t Heather explain. Everyone does…’
Leo cut him off. She couldn’t afford an argument, now. ‘Give me five minutes, William. I’ll meet you by the stairs.’
She listened carefully to make sure she heard the slight squeak of his step, then swiftly wrapped the computer in a shirt and placed it in her case. She was already in the corridor when she remembered the contents of her pockets. She turned back to empty them and paused for a second to look at the sheet of stationery she had nicked. Ritter Pharmaceuticals. The name meant nothing to her. She tossed the sheet into her bag, together with the small bottle. Her pulse was racing again. She would have to find some excuse to spend time in her room later.
‘Where have you been, Leonora? I came to find you for your Tai C’hi hour and couldn’t.’ ‘The Director kept me.’ Leo gave him what she hoped was a bright smile.
‘I see.’ William accepted it. ‘Heather probably explained to you about how we like everyone to participate in the running of the place. It helps to forge bonds. You’ve been assigned to the kitchen.’
‘Oh.’ Leo was vague. ‘I think I left my schedule sheet in the Director’s office.’
William sighed, as if he expected no differently from her. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
The kitchen was a large, long room adjacent to the dining hall. A low and welcome buzz of conversation played amidst its occupants, punctuated by the clatter of pots and the whirr of blenders. Near her, some ten people stood on opposite sides of two long steel-topped counters, which reminded Leo uncannily of the lab she had seen. The people were chopping vegetables and arranging them in bowls and platters.
Another glistening counter heaved with plates and cutlery. On the far side of the room there was more activity. Trays were being loaded onto trolleys. Near the windows, a team in chef’s hats bent over cookers. A lingering smell of boiling cauliflower and cabbage pervaded the air.
Introduced by William, Leo took her place at the first counter beside a willowy woman with a sophisticated sweep of auburn hair and pale, unseeing eyes. She was peeling carrots with a sleepwalker’s automatic motion. A second pile lay in front of Leo.
‘My least favourite activity,’ Leo grumbled, picking up the peeler.
The woman turned to her. A grin animated her face. ‘Can’t say I like it much either in everyday life. But my platter arrangements didn’t make the grade, so I got moved over here.’
‘Oh?’
‘Kathy just doesn’t have an eye for symmetry,’ the woman opposite them said. She was plump, with vivid pink cheeks, her hair tucked behind a girlish Alice band, though she must have been in her mid-thirties. ‘Beauty is important.’
‘Sarah thinks that if her dishes are beautifully enough presented, darling Alister, he of the muscled cranium, will pop into her room at night to display more naked beauty.’
‘Kathy! Stop it!’ Sarah dropped the radish she had been shaping into a flower.
‘True, isn’t it? So when did he last visit?’
Sarah stalked away only to come back a moment later with a boxful of cucumbers which she dumped in front of Kathy. ‘Jealousy is a poison,’ she intoned. ‘Toxic. A compulsive habit to be shed.’
‘How long have you both been here?’ Leo asked.
‘Two weeks for me, three for her,’ Kathy responded. ‘But it’s my third visit. Don’t know why I keep coming back. Not really. But I do. Guess it beats Prozac. And Frederick Hilton is magic.’
Leo peeled, nodded. ‘My friend Iris told me it was quite a place. Did you bump into her?’
‘Iris? The Australian woman?’ Sarah looked up at her.
Leo nodded.
‘She caused a real stir. The Tai chi master had a pash for her. But Iris, it turned out, preferred women.’
‘You don’t know that, Sarah.’
‘Don’t I?’ Sarah’s cheeks turned even pinker. ‘Well that short-term woman, the one who treated the place like a health-farm and kept trying to sun-bathe during meditation, spent a whole night in her room and constantly turned up there. I know. I was next door.That’s why they sent them both away.’
‘What was the woman’s name?’ Leo jabbed her thumb with the peeler as she re
membered Paola Webster’s insinuations.
‘Iris wasn’t a particular friend of yours, was she?’ Kathy asked, emphasising the word particular. ‘I only ask cause they’re quite liberal here, but homosexuality’s a definite no-no.’ She eyed Leo with visible concern.
Leo shook her head.
‘How are we doing here, ladies?’ One of the men in a chef’s hat, admonished them. ‘A little more concentration, please.’
They worked silently for a few minutes. A tray-laden trolley creaked past them.
‘Where do the trays go?’ Leo asked.
‘The other side. They get special food. It smells ghastly,’ Kathy wrinkled her tiny nose. ‘But they get to arrive by helicopter sometimes. Very grand. Everything has its advantages.’
Leo looked at her aghast. Daniel Lukas leapt into her mind. She wished she could speak to him, query him, too, about Hilton. But there was something else to be gleaned here. After a few moments, she began again, ‘Can you remember the name of Iris’s friend?’
Sarah gave her a searing look and returned to the arrangement of her platters. ‘Something ordinary,’ she said abruptly. ‘Something like Ann or Mary or Jill. That was it. Jill’
Leo gouged the soft part of her thumb again. She watched the blood rise and trickle. It trickled onto her sleeve, bright red against a landscape of white.
Behind her she heard a sob. She turned. There was no-one. Maybe it had been the sound of her own grief.
***
Leo swallowed a few forkfuls of food, then stole to the door of the dining hall as inconspicuously as possible.
At the threshold, William’s lanky form blocked her passage.
‘I’ll show you to the group therapy room, Leo, if you’ve finished.’
‘I’m too tired for therapy,’ she groaned. ‘I need to rest. I didn’t sleep well last night.’
He waved a sheet of lined paper in front of her. ‘I fetched this for you from the Director’s office. He made a point of it. He said I was definitely to bring you there.’
Leo froze. She was in no state to face Frederick Hilton. Had he already noticed that Isabel’s computer was gone? No, she mustn’t panic. She had covered her tracks, had left the blanket more or less as she had found it.
‘And you’re scheduled for a massage later. That will relax you.’
‘I desperately need a breath of air.’
‘I’ll come with you. We have the time. After today, you know,’ he said as if he had read her mind, ‘when you are familiar with things, I won’t be looking after you any more.’
‘Thank-you, William. You’ve been assiduous in your duty.’
He bowed slightly, immune to her irony.
The group met on the other side of the large dining hall in what might once have been a breakfast room, but was now denuded of all features. The linen blinds were drawn. There were no pictures on the whitewashed wall. The three people who had already gathered when Leo arrived sat in silence. Five more soon trooped in to find a place round the circle, each of them eschewing the large armchair which patently awaited Frederick Hilton’s bulk. He didn’t smile when he came in. The group was serious business.
His voice fell into the expectant hush like a stone into a pond, sending off palpable ripples of disquiet.
‘I want you each to introduce yourselves and tell us the secret or the thought that has most preoccupied you over the last months.’ He paused.
Leo caught his glance for a moment, then quickly averted her eyes.
‘Leonora. We’ll begin with you.’
Leo stifled a gulp and sat mutely. She gazed at the floor. It was covered with a hairy straw matting.
‘We’re waiting, Leonora.’
‘I’m American. I come from New York.’ She hestitated. Then with a sense that Isabel was willing her on, she threw down the gauntlet. ‘My best friend just died. Her body turned up not all that far from here, a bloated, mottled corpse.’
There was a collective gasp in the room. Leo was staring at Frederick Hilton. Consternation ruffled the sanguine features. It was rapidly mastered. Only his hands betrayed any fugitive emotion. They were tight on the arms of the oak chair, the short fingers white against the wood. Was he surprised at the fact of the death, Leo wondered, or at the fact that Isabel’s body had now been discovered? She watched him closely.
‘Poor Leonora,’ Kathy, the willowy women she had met in the kitchen, murmured. She leaned forward as if she wanted to put her arm round her.
‘A friend of mine died last year,’ a man opposite offered, raising elbows from knees and the head he had until now kept determinedly bowed. ‘I felt like hell. My turn next, I thought. Still think.’
‘And you are?’ Hilton prompted.
‘James. From London. I’m here cause I’m stressed out.’
‘Leonora’s real secret is that she’s bent.’ Sarah, the plump woman with the Alice band, interjected before he could go on.
‘And your secret, Sarah?’ Kathy came back. Her eyes flashed. Her posture was rigid. ‘Don’t tell me. Your secret is that you’re a first-class bitch who wants to fuck everything in sight. Or maybe that’s not a secret.’
Silence fell on the room. From somewhere a breeze ruffled a blind. A fly set up a buzz.
Frederick Hilton cleared his throat. ‘Sarah, I want you to consider for a moment why you feel the need to attack Leo. Is it because she’s uncomfortably new to the group? Is it because she’s attractive?’ He threw Leo a sudden complicit smile. ‘Or is it because her words held all of our attention? Don’t answer me now. I want to return to Leo for a moment.’
The silence fell again as all eyes focussed on Leo.
‘Where do you feel the loss of your friend, Leo?’
‘Where?’ Leo baulked. She looked round the room as if she might spy Isabel appearing from the corner of a blind. Her friend had been in here, of that she was certain.
‘Yes, where?’
‘Her shoulders. They’re all hunched up.’ A spectacled man to Leo’s side, who hadn’t spoken before, answered for her. He had the thin, intent face of a chess-player. He took off his glasses and wiped them with an obsessive motion, concentrating on his fingers as he went on, as if by rote. ‘She’s carrying a heavy burden. The dead are weighing on her. She needs to shield her body from their weight, their blows. We can help her to exorcise them.’
‘Thank-you Simon. Thank-you for your flow of expertise.’ Frederick Hilton’s face bore no gratitude. He rose from his chair with the alacrity of a far lighter man and positioned himself behind Leo.
She cringed as his hands touched her shoulders and pushed down on them.
‘She doesn’t want you to touch her. Can’t you see that?’ Sarah blurted out.
He paid no attention. His fingers dug into Leo’s shoulders with the force of a blunt instrument. ‘What blows do you fear most, Leonora?’ he asked in his low, chanting voice, ‘Blows from your parents, your partner? Or yourself? Self-punishing blows? The blows of guilt. For not having been good enough to your friend, understanding enough. Before she died. Before she became a bloated, mottled corpse.’
Leo felt a wave of nausea attack her stomach. She scraped back her chair and without a backward glance fled from the room.
She didn’t stop to return Heather’s greeting on the stairs. She didn’t stop until the chair was barricaded against her door. She threw herself on the bed and tried to contain her panic.
She couldn’t leave now, she told herself, although her legs ached for motion. If she were stopped at the gates with Isabel’s computer, all would be lost. She would have discovered nothing. And she would have doubly betrayed her friend.
No. Before she could leave, she had to read those missing files or somehow at least find out why they had been erased.
After several false starts, Leo at last managed to get Norton to perform its work of retrieval. She scrolled down the long list of files and noted that the last large bulk of deletions had all taken place on a single date: May 3. That must
have been a Sunday, Leo calculated. The day before the loft had been broken into. The day before her first session with Daniel. The day on which Heather had insisted Isabel had left the sanctuary.
Leo entered the first file and scrolled down, stopping erratically to read snippets here and there, as they leapt before her eyes. She didn’t know quite what she was looking for. All she knew was that there was an urgency to the task. At any moment, someone could break in on her.
It was a large file and seemed to contain a portion of Isabel’s notes on GM foods and related experimentation into pesticides and fertilizers, as well as covert action plans. On a hunch, Leo ran a search on Jill Reid, but the name didn’t come up, though Plantagen did on numerous occasions as did Bioworld International. Norfolk would want to see this. He could go through it more carefully.
Leo leapt back into Norton and quickly retrieved the first of two files labelled MS, which she rightly assumed referred to Morgenstern. The writing here was sketchy and contained what seemed to be quotations from newspapers and records of conversations. They detailed a legal case, quashed on grounds of insufficient evidence, against the addiction centre in Seattle, brought by a certain Tom Rushton on behalf of his son and alleging that the centre was carrying out illicit drug trials without the informed consent of patients. A death had occurred.
Leo sped on until she found a brief paragraph in bold. ‘F.F. Hilton, Frank, Frederick Hilton aka Alexander Morgenstern. Name change registered in Washington State, October 1975. Married Ida MacInnes, 1982 (bigamy?), sister to multi-millionaire, J.P. MacInnes .’
The knot in her stomach tightened. She moved quickly into the second MS file.
‘Gotcha!’ it began. ‘Carla has come through. The Morgenstern Foundation was set up in 1974 in Chicago with a bequest stipulated in the will of Dr. Adam Morgenstern. The sum of $3.5 million was left to one Alexander Morgenstern for the purposes of establishing it. He set it up, was listed as a trustee, then moved and changed his name. Why?’
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