The Woodcutter (57 page)

‘Good morning, darling.’

Her mother had come into the room.

‘Good morning, Mummy. You’re bright and early.’

It was barely light outside.

‘I sleep badly these days. You too?’

‘No. The days are short and I thought I might go for a walk.’

‘Yes, I see you are dressed
au paysan
,’ said Kira, her gaze taking in with distaste her daughter’s woollen socks, cord breeks and checked shirt. ‘Anything in the paper?’

‘Not a word. I think it’s probably safe for you to go out now.’

When Imogen had arrived the previous evening she discovered her mother hadn’t been out of doors for nearly a fortnight.

The upsurge in media interest in the Ulphingstones that had occurred as a consequence of what was referred to as the Wapping Warehouse Shoot-out had put the castle under siege for a couple of days. Locking the main gates gave little protection as the estate perimeter was defined by little more than sheep-proof fences and decaying dry-stone walls. Lady Kira’s initial response was to stroll around with a shotgun under her arm, ready to take a pot-shot at any stranger she came across. It had taken a formal warning from the Chief Constable after a couple of near misses to persuade her that she was not entitled to kill, maim or even seriously frighten trespassers.

‘Then let them roam at will. They shall not see me!’ she’d declared.

Now she helped herself to a generous plateful of bacon, sausage and eggs and sat down opposite her daughter.

‘How do you stay so healthy?’ she asked, looking disapprovingly at the muesli.

‘I wonder the same about you,’ said Imogen.

It was true. In her early sixties, Kira Ulphingstone weighed little more than when she’d arrived at the castle as a young bride more than four decades earlier. Nor had she controlled her weight in any way that had visibly affected her looks. The high cheeks might be more accentuated than they appeared in her wedding photographs, but her brow was still smooth, her skin tone was good, her eyes were still bright, and her figure, clothed at least, was still as seductively curvaceous.

What did seem to have changed from those old pictures was the difference in age between herself and her husband. Sir Leon was over twenty years her senior. On his wedding day it seemed less. Now when they appeared together, the difference looked to be nearer half a century.

‘Will Daddy be breakfasting?’ asked Imogen.

Lady Kira shrugged.

‘Who knows? These days, I do not disturb him.’ It was many years since she and her husband had shared a bedroom. In fact, Imogen could not recall a time when they had. When she’d grown old enough to notice such things, she’d been aware that from time to time her father would walk down the corridor from his room to his wife’s, then return a little later. Such excursions became rarer as she got older and had long since, to the best of her knowledge, ceased altogether.

This separation was not down to any frigidity on her mother’s part, Imogen was sure. In fact, probably the contrary. She believed she’d inherited her own strong sexuality from Kira, and she guessed that, even as a young bride, she had never been satisfied by her middle-aged husband. At least, thought Imogen, with Wolf present, she had never had that problem, but his increasingly long absences had left a gap that needed to be filled . . .

She sometimes wondered how her mother had dealt with her needs, but their similarities had somehow never added up to a closeness that permitted her to ask. Or perhaps it was affection for her father that prevented her from wanting to know. It seemed to her that Leon had had a bad enough deal in life already. A wife he could not satisfy, a wife who did not care much for his friends and whose own friends he did not altogether approve, a wife who had set herself to change the traditional, easy-going squirearchical relationship between the castle and the locality to something the far side of feudal, a wife who had given him no male heir, only a daughter as wilful as her mother who, in the old phrase, had married to disoblige her family.

He did not deserve that this daughter should be privy to his cuckolding.

Her mother had no such inhibitions, it seemed.

After devouring a large forkful of sausage, Kira said, ‘I am not sorry that Pasha has been found out. I always suspected that there must be something a little soiled about his money. And besides, he was a great disappointment in bed.’

Imogen felt a surprise that came close to shock.

She hoped she concealed it efficiently as she replied, ‘And why do you imagine that this is of the slightest interest to me?’

‘Do not be so disingenuous, dear. You know very well I had hopes that perhaps one day you and he might get together.’

‘I hope you’re not going to tell me that these hopes included encouraging him to try and murder Toby?’

‘Now you’re being silly. One way or another, it was clear to me that you and Toby are pretty well played out. When did you last have sex with him?’

‘I shouldn’t have thought that you rated marital sex as an essential element in a lasting marriage, Mother,’ said Imogen.

‘My case is different. A title and a castle are worth clinging on to. A fat lawyer who is notorious for fornicating with his secretaries is quite another matter. Anyway, that is beside the point now. What condition he will be in, if he recovers, I dread to think. But with Pasha out of the picture, we must look to your future. No real problem. You are still a desirable woman in many ways. There will be plenty of suitable candidates.’

Imogen said, ‘And do you intend to vet them all as thoroughly as you did Pasha?’

Lady Kira shrugged.

‘Pasha was here, feeling as always very frustrated by the way you played with him. The poor boy needed an outlet. I needed – how shall I put it? – an inlet. Do not pretend to be shocked, my dear. You are my daughter, you know how these needs of ours work.’

‘There is such a thing as discrimination,’ said Imogen. ‘As a matter of interest, how long have you been offering this in-depth maternal service? And who to? Good God, don’t tell me, not you and Toby . . .?’

Kira waved her fork dismissively.

‘A long time ago,’ she said. ‘He was better than I anticipated. After you and your peasant split up, I thought he might do quite nicely for you. Money, standing, a good school, an old family – there is a title, you know, but unfortunately he is at least three disgustingly healthy cousins away from it.’

Despite herself, Imogen could not restrain a small smile.

‘Mother, I thought you had long ago lost the capacity to surprise me, but I see I was wrong. Well, at least I can be confident that my first choice was tested by no one but myself. No way would you demean yourself by making out with a peasant!’

‘Come now, my dear. I am sure back in the old days our ancestors felt no shame in taking their pleasure with a well set-up
kulak.
And working as a woodcutter certainly seems to set a man up very well . . .’

She smiled as she said it with a kind of significant coyness that put her daughter on the alert.

She said, ‘Mother, if you’re trying to imply that you and Wolf . . . I don’t believe you!’

‘And if I had, how would that make you feel?’ asked Kira. ‘In fact, how
do
you feel about Hadda? It bothers me. You don’t seem to hate him as you should. And what’s worse, you don’t seem to fear him as you should! For God’s sake, you’re not still lusting after him, are you?’

‘What I feel about Wolf is nothing to do with you,’ said Imogen.

Lady Kira looked at her daughter with the kind of icily reductive stare that in olden days had probably set serfs thinking nostalgically of happier times working out in the fields in sub-zero temperatures till their frostbitten fingers fell off.

Then she relaxed and smiled a smile that was worse than the stare.

‘Well, that’s not precisely true, my love,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you a story . . .’

Fifteen minutes later, Kira stood by the window and watched her daughter’s Mercedes go screaming down the drive.

Had that gone well or badly? she wondered. She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t going to let it spoil her breakfast.

She took the congealing remnant of her first selection to the sideboard, set it down, and began to load another plate. She was not so arrogant that she did not count her blessings. High on the list alongside her ability not to get emotional about things she could not change was possession of the kind of body that could take in almost anything by way of food, or drink, or men, extract maximum enjoyment, and then move on with very little residual damage to show for it.

She lifted another domed lid and now she did give her emotions free rein.

No black pudding!

She was really going to have to have a serious talk with those incompetents in the kitchen!

3

Wolf Hadda stood under the icy waterfall and rubbed himself vigorously with a bar of kitchen soap.

He remained there long enough for the hissing water to sluice off the suds then moved out into the shallow pool.

There was someone on the bank. Sneck was standing by, watchful, but on the whole assessing the watcher as harmless.

Hadda said, ‘I didn’t have you down as a Peeping Tom.’

Alva Ozigbo said, ‘I wanted to see whether you really did take a shower here at the crack of dawn every day, or if you were just trying to impress me.’

‘Call this the crack of dawn, city girl? It must be nearly nine o’clock! I’m coming out now.’

‘So what am I supposed to do? Blush and turn my back?’

‘Of course not. A man should hide nothing from his psychiatrist. But if I stand here too long being admired, I’ll start to form icicles. Let’s get back to the house. Do you want to walk in front or behind?’

‘In front, I think. Walking behind, I wouldn’t know where to look.’

‘Not a problem for me,’ he said, falling into step behind her. ‘Young Hollins was here yesterday. He told me you might be coming. When did you get here?’

‘Last night. I stayed at the vicarage.’

‘Draughty old place, as I recall. You’d have been better off here. What did his wife think about having a good-looking dolly bird from the big city landed on her?’

Why am I feeling such a glow of pleasure at being told I could have stayed at Birkstane and being referred to as a dolly bird? Alva asked herself.

She said, ‘I don’t think she likes me much.’

‘Something else you and I have in common, I suspect.’

Something else . . .

She didn’t spoil it by asking what, but led the way into the kitchen where she was glad to see flames licking out of a tall wigwam of logs in the old grate.

Hadda said, ‘Excuse me a minute. Make yourself useful. You know where the coffee is.’

When he returned fully dressed, she said casually, ‘Talking of Luke, I told him I was certain you’d been framed.’

‘That must have been relief for him. Can’t have been much fun, having to stand up for a pervert. He took your word for it, did he? No demand for incontrovertible evidence?’

‘He just nodded as if I was confirming something he’d known all along.’

‘Yeah, sure he did. That’s why he got his canonicals in such a twist when he found the money. You going to pour that coffee or are you waiting for the maid?’

The brusque jollity confirmed what she’d felt from the moment their eyes had met at the pool. He was glad to see her! That was . . . she wasn’t certain what it was, but it was certainly something.

But it was time to get serious.

She said, ‘I nearly forgot. John Childs asked me to give you a message.’

‘Jesus!’

That really did surprise him. Good! He needed to be surprised from time to time.

He sat down heavily and looked at her from under lowering brows.

‘How the hell have you got involved with Childs?’ he asked.

She told him, succinctly but not omitting any significant detail.

He listened intently and when she’d finished he said accusingly, ‘Well, well. Pity you hadn’t thought to mention his name a lot earlier.’

‘Why should I?’ she demanded.

He considered this, then relaxed and said, ‘No reason. So what was this message?’

‘Something about Nikitin knowing, and the man with the broken jaw being on the loose.’

‘And that’s it?’ he said indifferently.

‘That’s it.’

‘Very mysterious. Dear old JC always did like to speak in tongues. Knows what, I wonder?’

Alva said, ‘I would guess, knows it was you who set up Estover so the Russian would do your dirty work for you.’

This was the second time she’d surprised him in a minute. A third success and she might get to keep him!

He said, ‘Psychiatrists shouldn’t make guesses. So all this time you’ve been a buddy of JC’s. Got to give the old boy credit. Having your own personal prison with wall-to-wall wire, that’s a real Chapel trick! Now if I’d known that, I might have done things differently.’

‘You mean you might not have played your game with me?’ she said, regarding him steadily over the brim of her coffee mug.

‘My game?’

She said, ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy playing me.’

He said, ‘Of course I did. To start with, anyway. Who doesn’t enjoy outwitting an expert? But then, I did have the best expert advice on how to go about it . . .’

He regarded her quizzically.

‘My book, you mean? And I was foolish enough to feel slightly flattered when I saw it in your bedroom.’

‘Sorry about that. I hadn’t meant to be so careless.’

‘Come to think of it, I didn’t see it in your cell at Parkleigh. That was really a book-free zone. Except for
The Count of Monte-Cristo
.’

He grinned and said, ‘I couldn’t resist leaving that for you to find.’

‘You knew I would be having a look?’

‘It seemed likely if, as suggested by
Curing Souls,
you had a truly enquiring mind,’ he said. ‘So I rented storage space for the books I didn’t want you to find from a guy in the next cell.’

‘Books?’

‘Yes. Sorry. Couldn’t just rely on
Curing Souls
, could I? It was, after all – what was the word the reviewers used? – rather
precocious.
So I got hold of some more mainstream stuff.’