Secrets (16 page)

‘You want to talk about it, or eat, or both?'

Alec shook his head. ‘No, I think I want to eat now and prepare for whatever Gregory has to say. You do realize we've agreed to have drinks with a wanted criminal?'

‘Wanted for what?'

‘Oh, I'm sure there's a list a mile long.'

‘Yeah,' Naomi agreed. ‘But it's not likely to have his actual name on it, is it?'

Alec chuckled. ‘No, I don't suppose it will. OK, I'll walk the dog. Then we go down and eat and then we see what our man of mystery has to say. And I suppose I should check in with Molly.'

‘Shall I do that, while you're out with Napoleon? She can be rude to me just as easily as she can be rude to you.'

‘Do you mind?' He was already off the bed and fumbling for his shoes.

You agreed to that a bit quick, Naomi thought as, reluctantly, she reached for her phone.

N
aomi had the feeling that something was really worrying Molly and that it was something new; not directly about the young man that had died in her house.

‘I'm just making sure you're all right,' Naomi had said.

‘And you could do what about it if I wasn't?'

‘Probably not a lot,' was Naomi rejoinder. ‘But if there's anything we
can
do—'

‘Then I would be the one calling you.'

Naomi paused. This was rude, even by Molly standards. It was clear the older woman must have thought so too because she said, ‘I'm sorry, Naomi. I know you mean well. I expect I'm just tired.'

‘Just tired. Molly—'

‘I'm fine, my dear. Some days I just feel my age. I resent that, I suppose. Ageing is such an unjust process.'

The call had ended shortly after, but Naomi was left with a sense of words that had been absent from it. As though Molly had been on the verge of admitting to something and then resisted that urge. It was nothing she could put her finger on … or could she? Yes, she decided, there's been something slightly anxious about the way Molly had answered the phone. A sense that she had been relieved to hear Naomi's voice, not because it was Naomi but because it was not someone else.

For a moment, Naomi thought about calling back and asking Molly directly, but she knew she wouldn't get a straight answer; there'd be more evasion, maybe even more outright deception and she really wasn't in the mood for that right now.

The urge to run away and forget about it all was almost overwhelming and Naomi had the sudden thought that if she had still been sighted then Alec would come back to the hotel to find their bags packed, the bill settled and Naomi waiting for him in the lobby, car keys in hand.

It was a stupid, random thought that stopped her; the notion that she wouldn't know for sure if she'd managed to pack everything and that Alec would only have to come up to their room to check. A random and such a slight excuse, Naomi told herself, but it was enough to stop the idea dead in its tracks. If you were going to run away, then you didn't do it without your shoes – metaphorically speaking. You did it spontaneously and you didn't go back to check the bathroom or the bottom of the wardrobe. You just went.

Alec returned a few minutes later, Napoleon lay his head in her lap and beat his tail rhythmically against the side of the bed. She stroked the silky ears, enjoying the familiar feel of the dog's bulk pressed against her side.

‘You know that ultimatum. That week I gave us,' Naomi said.

‘Yes. You revising it, are you?'

‘I'd like to, yes, but I will give this a week to go wherever it goes and then we walk away. We can't spend
our
lives living other people's for them.'

‘OK,' Alec said slowly. ‘So what did Molly say to you?'

‘No, it wasn't Molly. Or at least, not just Molly. Alec, all our lives we've done what other people needed. Or we've responded to other people's demands. Our working lives were spent sorting out the muddles the rest of the world threw our way and … and I want us to sort our own out now. I think, what I'm saying is—' But she couldn't finish. Naomi rarely cried; generally she didn't see the point and even when she felt the urge she tried to restrain it. But she cried now, wept bitterly and loudly for all the lost people and broken lives that had littered their past and that, she was afraid, might still be there, walking the road ahead.

Molly had just been relieved that it wasn't Clay. There'd been a time when she'd faced him down, told him what he could do with his demands.

‘He who must be obeyed,' she had called him, joking with Edward and skitting on Rider Haggard. Edward had never liked that, he'd always been a little overawed by Clay. It had never caused rows between them because Molly hated anything that caused conflict between herself and Edward. She'd made a point of not rising to the bait when Clay, aware of their difference of opinion, tried to drive the wedge. Her marriage, her love, was far too precious to allow anyone and especially ‘
that man'
to widen even the smallest chink in their collective armour.

She had made some allowance for Clay, knowing that sometimes they needed his help and expertise and his resources, always far greater than their own.

‘Some good did come out of it,' she told herself. ‘Some good out of all that evil.' Hadn't it?

She thought of the children, now grown and prospering, like Nathan and Annie and young Adis – though he'd changed his name and Molly no longer knew where he was. He still contrived to send her a birthday card, but there was never any hint of a return address. For a moment her heart seemed full; a warmth and relief growing there.

There'd been others too … others they had helped.

And then she thought again of Nathan and of Annie and the rest and how they still seemed in thrall to Clay and her heart emptied. Had they really made life better?

Molly went and sat down again in Edward's chair. She fancied she could still catch the faint essence of cigar smoke and the even fainter hint of the lemon trees that had once grown in their garden, or of the spice market, a few streets away, when they had been stationed in … oh where was that?

She closed her eyes, trying to fix that one place among so many places, the smell of spice and citrus and incense. But the scent that filled her nostrils, came unbidden, choking and hated, was the smell of fire and dust and blood and war.

‘Edward, Edward, why did you have to leave me alone? I can't bear it without you. I'm not strong enough without you.'

Tears pricked, but she blinked them away and wiped her eyes on the cuff of her blouse.

‘No, you're right,' she said to the shades of her lost love and all the rest that crowded around her, filling the little room and pressing close to Edward's chair. ‘This is war. My last war. And I'll not lose without a fight. I promise you all that.'

A
nnie and Bob stood in his studio, talking about his latest work. These canvases were larger than usual and there were also several boards, large and traditionally gessoed with chalk and rabbit skin glue, painted in a mix of his usual oils but with the addition of egg tempera.

‘It's a technique that goes back to the fifteenth century,' he said. ‘I saw a couple of examples in an exhibition and thought it looked interesting. You get this real luminosity, such a play of light.'

Annie stepped back, the better to take in the picture. It depicted a wood; she recognized it as the stand of birches and oaks not far from the house. Bob regularly walked the dogs there. It was autumn and golden leaves floated down and settled heavily on the forest floor. The light was strange, as it was in a great many of Bob's pictures. Not quite day and a bright crescent of moon hung in a vibrant blue sky. The shadows seems to be cast by two sources of light, sometimes separately and sometimes overlapping and it was only when you looked and then went on looking that you realized there was a setting sun, half hidden by trees and then this almost too bright sliver of moon, Annie thought. It worked, but she wasn't sure why and it was also oddly unsettling, as though the day had been unwilling to relinquish control and the night not quite strong enough to snatch it away.

It was liminal. Ghostly.

Between the trees ran figures, some in such deep shadow she couldn't quite make them out, but they reminded her of wolves and men and men-shaped wolves; wolf-shaped men. The figures in the middle ground were clear and sharp. Men and women, hinds and stags, running through the forest. Reaching out for one another but not quite touching. Some smiling out at the viewer, others with their faces deliberately turned away. They were dressed in costume that was at once medieval and modern as though, Annie thought, they had been permitted to raid some elaborate and costly dressing up box.

‘It's beautiful,' she said. And meant it. ‘You stole my dream?'

Bob laughed. ‘I didn't think you'd mind. I don't know, it kind of helped me forget you were so far away. I started it the day after you left.'

She took his hand. He'd depicted her dream so eloquently, she knew that she would never again be able to recapture the original look and feel of it. The memory would be subsumed by this picture; by his vision of it. It was a dream she'd been having most of her life. Since her parents died and Clay and Edward had …

‘Do you ever wonder about me?'

‘Often.'

‘No, I mean—'

‘Annie, I know you have a past, we all do and I think there are probably things in your past that are … out of my range of experience.'

‘I mean,' he laughed, ‘look at your friends.'

He paused. ‘Your family,' he corrected himself. An ex-mercenary and a … well, I'm not sure I have the vocabulary for what Nathan is.'

Bob smiled. ‘Annie, I know I probably don't know all there is to know and I really don't care about that. If there's something you want to tell me …'

She could almost see him holding his breath, anticipating some revelation he wouldn't know how to handle. Annie kissed him, silently cursing Clay and all the secrets and the lies. She kissed him more hungrily, leaning into her husband's body, pressing close, wanting to be even closer.

‘You've captured my dream,' she said. ‘Pinned it to the canvas.' And she didn't know if she felt elated or bereaved by that.

‘H
e's here,' Alec told Naomi. She'd already figured that out from the slow beat of Napoleon's tail against her leg. Dog liked Gregory, for some reason and, against all reason or logic, Naomi was inclined to agree with him. At least, she thought, you sort of knew what you were getting with Gregory.

They paused while Alec ordered drinks at the bar plus another of whatever Gregory was drinking.

‘I'll bring them over to you,' the barman said.

Alec led her over to their favourite corner table and she heard the scrape of chair legs on wood as Gregory stood up to greet them. He shook hands with Alec and then took Naomi's. ‘Sorry for being so dramatic, today,' he said.

‘Are you?'

‘Well, maybe not.'

They sat down and Naomi asked, ‘How did you find me today?'

Gregory laughed, softly. ‘No great mystery,' he said. ‘I called Patrick and asked him where you were staying. I'm surprised he didn't warn you?'

‘Patrick probably didn't think it was a bad thing,' Alec said wryly. ‘I suspect that to Patrick it would just be like an old friend wanting to get in touch.' He didn't sound as though he agreed.

‘So, I arrived this morning, just in time to see you and Liz drive away.'

‘So you followed.'

‘So I followed. Had you not been here, I'd have found somewhere quiet to sit and wait or left a message at reception.'

‘Just like that? Like a regular thing.' Alec sounded both amused and irritated.

‘Sure, why not? I can be that regular guy just as much as you can.'

‘So, not at all really,' Naomi said.

There was a beat of silence while the waiter brought their drinks over from the bar. Naomi raised her glass. ‘Do you toast the lost ones too?' she asked.

‘No,' Gregory told her. ‘Seeing as I'm probably responsible for their being lost, I think that might be a little crass, don't you? Good health and long life.'

They echoed his wish and then Naomi set her glass down. ‘So,' she said. ‘What do you want, Gregory?'

‘I'd like to know why Arthur died,' he said. ‘He lived a long life, a dangerous life, perhaps, but I think he assumed he'd be safe enough, retired and living in a place like Stamford. I think he believed that all those who might still bear a grudge were either dead already, or too old to care any more or at the very least retired. It seems he was wrong.'

‘It seems he was not an importer of Chinese porcelain, then?' Alec observed wryly.

‘Oh, he was that too. He specialized in Oriental materials, but he was also something of an authority on early Islamic. He had some truly lovely pieces in his private collection.'

‘And what else was he? Some kind of spy?'

There was a smile in Gregory's voice as he said, ‘Something like that. He gathered intelligence, he made friends in high places, he told those who needed to know where the right kind of pressure could be applied. Unlike me, he was strictly white collar, I suppose.'

‘And he knew Molly?' Naomi guessed.

‘Molly, Edward, Clay … others too. They all moved in the same circles. Sometimes worked for the same employer. All had fingers in the same pie and all had the same sidelines, I think.'

‘Sidelines?'

Gregory was silent for a moment, then he asked. ‘Do you know what an economic hit man is?'

‘Can't say I do, no,' Alec said.

‘Well, in essence, he is someone a government, or a big corporation will send in to another government or corporation to coerce them into accepting loans, favour or some other inducement.'