The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) (19 page)

‘Nuff said.’ Derek cut him short. ‘Tell me the reason you need an invitation.’

‘I thought it might be interesting. Maybe I could establish some business contacts.’

‘Pull the other one. This lot close some of the biggest art deals in the country. They don’t have time for market traders. No, I want to know what it is if I’m to get you entry.’

Jason hesitated. Perhaps he should abandon the idea altogether and let Helen go to this dinner on her own. He was about to tell his father to forget it and hang up when he thought of her in a home-made dress and Doc Martens boots in a room full of people who’d be decked out like Christmas trees. He was familiar with this, but she wasn’t and would be completely out of place, a lamb thrown to the wolves, or something like that. He couldn’t let her go without back-up.

‘A friend of mine is going,’ he said, ‘and is bound to, er … stick out a little. I thought I’d come along and offer moral support.’

‘A female friend?’

Crunch time. No matter what he said, his father would find out anyway, through his network of spies. Why delay the inevitable?

Recalling that Derek never went to any function without having a copy of the complete guest list beforehand, he said, ‘Her name is Helen Stephens.’

Derek went quiet for a while, and Jason heard the rustling of paper. ‘Yes, there’s a Helen Stephens on my list. No company name though,’ he added as if this counted against her.

‘That’ll be her.’

‘I see, and how do you know this girl?’

His father had abandoned his usual hectoring tone, which puzzled Jason until he realised that Derek must be thinking that if his son was ‘in’ with a girl who was invited to dine with a prominent collector, there was a chance he was finally moving in the right circles. He nearly laughed, knowing that he’d have to disappoint him.

‘She’s renting a room in my house.’

‘Another charity case?’

Jason said nothing.

‘And how, exactly, does one of your strays get herself invited to a black-tie dinner?’ Derek asked, no longer jovial.

‘It’s to do with her job.’

‘What does she do?’

The change in his father’s mood warned him to backtrack, but with Derek a bargain was a bargain. Besides, now that his curiosity was vetted, he’d dig and dig until he knew everything there was to know about Helen. And he wouldn’t be wearing kid gloves either.

‘She works for an auction house,’ he explained. ‘As some sort of assistant.’

‘Which auction house?’

‘Is that important?’

‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? Which auction house?’ Derek pressed.

‘Ransome & Daughters. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’

There was a long pause, and all he could hear was the sound of his father’s breathing and the purring of the chauffeur-driven saloon.

‘Yes, I have,’ his father said at length. He gave a muffled order to his driver, then said to Jason, ‘I’ll send the car back for you. Give my name when you arrive. An invitation will be waiting for you.’

Hanging up, Jason became aware that his palms were sweating, and he wiped them on his jeans. What was the matter with him? He and his father didn’t see eye to eye, but Derek had never had that effect on him before. Ice prickled between his shoulder blades, and his mouth was dry.

Was this how it felt when you made a deal with the Devil?

Chapter Thirteen

On the bus Helen attracted a few typical London stares: look up, assess, look away, pretend not to see nor care. Because it was Saturday night the bus was full of young people going out on the town as well as a few downcast individuals, mainly immigrants, who looked like they’d just finished a long shift in the sort of job no one else wanted.

Her uncle’s house was a four-storey London town house of yellow brick with tall windows and black-painted railings. Steps flanked by columns led up to the ground floor where two topiary bay trees stood guard on either side of the front door.

A maid with a thick Eastern European accent let her in. She cast a suspicious glance at Helen’s outfit, then her invitation, as if she couldn’t quite believe the two went together, and eventually showed Helen into a drawing room already brimming with other guests. Through the crowd Helen could just about make out the leather furniture, Oriental rugs, and glittering chandeliers. At the end of the room facing a window stood a baby grand piano with a vase of orange lilies on top. The din of people socialising while sipping champagne and eating canapés was almost deafening.

The women sparkled in their sequinned dresses on toned bodies, with jewels as big as robins’ eggs around slender necks and waxed legs ending in silver-heeled stilettos. The men wore dinner jackets and exuded power, and the air in the room was redolent with expensive perfume, fake tan, and the subtler scent of dirty money.

Helen gulped.

This was the world she was supposed to belong to, and a part of her had to admit she was ready to, ready to belong somewhere, while another part knew she never would.

She accepted a canapé from a passing waitress and a glass of champagne she wouldn’t be drinking due to her epilepsy. She took it mainly because it seemed like the required accessory, then sidled along the wall until she found a large Yucca plant to hide behind. When she was sure no one was looking, she emptied the glass into the flowerpot.

She wasn’t allowed to hide for long, though.

‘There you are.’ Her uncle emerged from the crowd to greet her with kisses on both cheeks, which again left her numb. Noticing her empty glass, he muttered something in Russian, snapped his fingers and a waiter magically appeared to refill it. ‘And how are you today?’

‘I’m very well, thank you.’ The requisite answer.

‘Good. I’m so happy. And you look – how do you say? – a pretty picture.’ Arseni assessed her, glancing briefly at her boots, then smiled. It was a pleasant enough smile, all white teeth in a distinguished face, yet too well-practised to be genuine.

He turned away to greet another guest who had come in just after her, and it gave her a moment to reflect. It struck her that her uncle’s overly effusive Eastern European mannerisms, which could easily be seen as both comical and dim-witted, were the perfect disguise for a sophisticated ability to manipulate others. She suspected he was using Letitia’s infatuation with him to further his business interests, and it made her wonder what he could possibly want with her. She had to be on her guard against his charm, and not fall for his ploy about the long-lost niece.

Across the room she spotted Letitia, talking to a man. There was something frosty about him, and he appeared to be speaking in a low voice because Letitia had cocked her head to one side, apparently straining to hear what he was saying. A frown creased her forehead as if she didn’t like what she was hearing, and she pulled back abruptly.

Helen watched her walk off and wondered whether she ought to go and speak to her, but her aunt’s testy expression warned her not to right now.

She pretended to sip her champagne and met the gaze of the cold-looking man over the rim of her glass. Cocking an eyebrow, he lifted his own glass in a mock salute, giving her the impression that he knew exactly who she was. Something curdled inside her, and she put her glass down on the tray of a passing waiter.

Perhaps Letitia had a good reason to be pissed off.

A hand on her shoulder made her swing around. It was her uncle again.

‘I want to talk with you a little,’ he said, making the
L
at the beginning of the last word sound as if it had a
J
attached to it. Helen almost laughed; his accent was phonier than ever.

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘In private.’ He indicated a door at the back, and she followed him with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. When the door closed behind them, the hubbub of voices was reduced to a faint echo, and they crossed the marbled hall, the rubber soles of Helen’s boots squeaking loudly.

Just as well I’m not drunk, she thought. Whatever he wanted to talk to her about, something told her she needed to have her wits about her.

‘I want to apologise,’ her uncle Arseni said when they were ensconced in what must be his home office.

‘Oh?’

Helen sat down on a squashy brown leather armchair in front of his large desk while her uncle went to the bar cabinet and reached for a decanter. Like the drawing room, his office was richly furnished but also spoke of a person who liked his comforts.

‘Whisky?’

‘Have you got a Coke or something?’

‘Of course.’

He opened a small fridge disguised as a wood-panelled cabinet, found a can and poured the contents into a crystal tumbler.

‘Thanks.’

Facing her, uncle Arseni leaned against his desk and regarded her with what looked like regret, but she couldn’t be sure. ‘I have been a bad uncle. I should have taken you under my wing when your mother was killed.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Did he realise this was like waving a red rag at a bull?

‘I was back in Moscow, although I stay in touch with family in London. Taking an English child out of England would mean red tape. Your mother made Mrs Ransome guardian of you in her will. I could do nothing.’ He sighed. ‘Then you disappear.’

Helen nearly choked on her Coke. ‘I
disappeared
? I don’t remember disappearing.’

‘Your grandmother would not tell me where you were. No one else knew. She said you were being looked after by good people.’ He looked at her with a thoughtful expression. ‘Were they good people?’

Humiliation. Disgust. Isolation. That’s all she consciously remembered of her childhood, even though she knew some of the foster families had been kind and welcoming. She shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

He smiled suddenly, and his seriousness, which she wasn’t sure had been earnest or not, was replaced by the teasing expression she’d come to associate with him.

‘How would you have liked living in Russia? You might have liked it,
nyet
?’

‘I don’t know. Isn’t it supposed to be very cold in the winter? I don’t like being cold.’

‘Pah! Not if you are properly dressed. You would have been my daughter. I would have dressed you like a princess.’ He paused and glanced at her Doc Martens again. ‘I can still help you.’

‘Yes, well, I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to be my daddy, but it’s a bit late now to tell me what I can and can’t wear, don’t you think?’

He gave a Slavic shrug which was almost comical. ‘I didn’t mean your clothes. I was referring to the woman who killed your mother.’

Helen felt it as if a bucket of ice had been emptied into her dress. ‘What about her?’

‘She is out of prison, I think?’

‘What if she is?’

‘I could – what you say? – arrange an accident? Make her an offer she can’t refuse?’ This was the second film joke he’d cracked in her presence.

‘No.’ Helen rose abruptly, sloshing Coke onto his Persian rug. ‘And could you cut the KGB crap, please. It’s like being in a bad movie, and it’s getting on my nerves.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he said holding up his hands. ‘Bad uncle. But I have contacts.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to. Besides, two wrongs don’t make a right.’ It wasn’t so long ago she’d thought the same herself, but he didn’t know that.

‘But it makes us feel better.’

Helen was just about to protest again when Arseni’s mobile phone rang. Mouthing an apology, he answered it.

‘
Da
.’

He launched into a lengthy conversation in Russian, too fast for her to follow, although she did catch the odd word. Her Russian was rusty and limited to the language of the fairy tales and nursery rhymes which she’d picked up in the Russian-speaking nursery she went to before her mother died.

While he spoke she decided to explore his office. Apart from the rich furnishings, he’d collected an interesting and rather odd assortment of antiques and trinkets displayed in locked glass cabinets.

In one of the display cases lay old sailing implements: nautical prints, compasses, a brass barometer as well as a sextant. The same cabinet also held an old leather-bound volume covered with writing in a spidery hand and black ink. Looking more closely, Helen read the words ‘Captain’s log, November 1868, Straits of Magellan’. A seaman’s journal and probably quite valuable in historical terms.

‘Let me speak to Johnson,’ she heard her uncle say in Russian.

Johnson must have come to the phone because Arseni switched to English. ‘Listen, I picked up an Art Deco lampshade for three thousand the other day. Tell Vitali he can have it for five grand.’ Pause. ‘I’m sure he will, but he’s a millionaire. Press him, okay.’

Grinning because now her uncle sounded more like East London than Moscow, she moved to the other display cabinet, which contained a collection of curiously shaped Lalique vases, and next to those a smaller hoard of gold and silver snuff boxes.

‘Don’t forget whatever costs him five, he sells for nine,’ Arseni continued. ‘If it costs ten, he will flog it for twenty.’

Turning her attention on the display, Helen’s eyes fell on a pair of paper knives on a red velvet cushion, and her uncle’s wheeling and dealing faded into the background. Completely identical, the knives were about twenty centimetres long with lapis lazuli stone handles and gold mounts. Just like what she’d described to Detective Wilcox as a child.

Realisation slammed into her, and she quelled the profanity on her lips with her hand. She’d poured over the folder with the clippings Sweetman had given her, in the crazy hope that the articles could offer a new insight into what happened that day, but the list of possessions from her mother’s house had represented everything she lost, and she’d been unable to do more than just glance at it. If Wilcox was right though, her mother’s knife wouldn’t be on that list.

Two missing knives, one murder weapon …

Where
had her uncle got them from?

‘They are beautiful, aren’t they?’ Her uncle had finished his phone call and was standing beside her as she bent over the display cabinet.

‘Yes.’ Her heart raced, and her scalp prickled with unease at how close he stood.