Walking in Darkness (21 page)

‘Dream on, buster,’ Jeff drawled, and got a big laugh from some of the team.

Jack Beverley, head of Gowrie’s security people, suddenly snarled, ‘Will you two, for Christ’s sake, shut up? This isn’t vaudeville and you aren’t paid to write patter. We’re supposed to be working.’

Silence fell again. Beverley tilted his bullet head downwards and ran a finger down the typed sheets in front of him. ‘OK. We were talking about the speech for this dinner at the Guildhall – that’s in London, right? You just say the City here, I guess you mean London?’ He glared at them. ‘Why the hell don’t you say so?’

‘Well, it is, and it isn’t,’ Greg said.

‘What does that mean?’ Beverley growled, his rocklike jaw thrust forward in aggression.

‘Well,’ drawled Greg, ‘See, it’s complicated. The City is the oldest part of London, built on the original Roman city; in the beginning it had a wall running right round it. The rest of London grew up outside the wall. That’s gone now, of course, but the original city is still separate from the rest of London. It has its own by-laws and police force and Lord Mayor and Aldermen. It’s the financial centre of the UK, it has the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, Lloyd’s, all the major financial institutions. The Guildhall was where the trade guilds used to meet in medieval times.’ He paused, seeing the blank faces. ‘That’s kind of trade unions. The old building was bombed in the war, but was rebuilt exactly as it was before, and it’s still where all the big events take place in the City of London. State banquets, that kind of affair.’

‘I didn’t ask for a history lesson!’ Beverley yelled, and Greg flinched. He hated loud aggressive men with parade-ground voices. They reminded him of his soldier father and all the reasons why he had not gone into the army himself; they made his head ache, too.

‘The banquet the senator will be attending is the annual dinner of the Anglo-American Friendship Society; it will make a terrific platform for him and be widely reported back home as well as in the UK,’ Jim Allgood quickly said.

‘Which is why this speech you’ve written had better be good,’ Don Gowrie told them, smiling, in an effort to improve the atmosphere. A team under stress was a team in trouble. He needed good humour and calm around him in Europe. He was already under enough stress from other quarters. ‘Oh, and guys, will you keep your voices down? My wife’s sleeping.’

Elly and her nurse were seated right at the front of the first-class section. Elly had eaten and taken a sleeping pill; he could see her head slumped to one side and even from this distance he could hear her soft, smothered snoring.

Everyone looked round at her. Few of them actually knew her. She no longer got involved in his political life. Luckily Elly was having one of her good days; or rather, she had been heavily sedated before they left for the airport. They could not risk a scene in public. She could be unpredictable, especially when she was with him. If she saw a beautiful woman speak to him, for instance, and got it into her head that there was something going on between him and the other woman, she could turn very nasty. He closed his eyes briefly, shuddering at memories of just how nasty she could be.

‘OK?’ Jim Allgood murmured, watching him uneasily.

Gowrie pulled himself together. ‘Yes, sure, I’m fine. Let’s hear the Guildhall speech. I want to hear reactions, then the boys can rework it before we get to London.’

Sophie slept part of the way to London, dreaming fitfully, as she had ever since her mother told her Anya was alive, not dead. The dream was always the same. She walked in darkness, looking back over her shoulder, sometimes beginning to run, her heart beating until she felt it might burst out through her chest, and heard behind her breathing, running footsteps, yet whenever she looked round there was nobody there, just the night shadows of the lane behind her home, the lane leading to the church.

That lay just ahead of her, no light in the stained glass windows, the pale onion dome glowing and mysterious, like a strange moon fallen from the sky, and the yews in the graveyard showing her where Anya waited for her.

When she got there she knelt by the grave and looked at the stone above it. Papa’s name, Anya’s name written underneath.

‘Where are you, Anya?’ she whispered, and that was when it always happened – the arm coming up from the grave, the small, pale hand grabbing her, her terror, struggling to break free, screaming.

She woke up with a stifled cry and found Steve Colbourne leaning over her, concern in his eyes.

‘Did you have a nightmare? You were screaming – are you OK?’

She swallowed, fighting to shut the memory out. ‘Did I . . . make a noise?’ Her eyes moved, taking in the darkened cabin, the sleeping bodies on all sides, crumpled blankets roughly draped over them, heads slumped back or to one side, some of them snoring, one or two people still awake, in shirt-sleeves, a blanket draped over them, reading by an overhead light. Nobody looked back at her.

‘No,’ Steve said slowly, still watching her. ‘No, you were just moving about, breathing in a weird way, as if you were running, and your face was . . .’ He stopped and she bit her lip.

‘My face was what?’

‘Terrified,’ he said. ‘You are, aren’t you, Sophie? I wish to God you’d tell me what this is all about.’

She wished she could. But she couldn’t. Turning away, she closed her eyes again.

‘Don’t keep asking me. Go back to sleep.’ That was the last thing she wanted to do herself, though. She was afraid of sleeping now; afraid of the dream coming back. The night dragged on.

It was a bitter relief when the stewardess put on the lights and everyone sat up, grey-faced, yawned and stretched, went out to the lavatories, coming back washed and shaved, hair combed and brushed. The female passengers put on their make-up; men had changed their shirts and ties. Blankets were folded and put away.

The stewards made the rounds with a trolley loaded with newspapers, and gave out cups of tea or coffee. A smell of synthetic breakfast filled the aeroplane, making Sophie feel sick.

‘Sleep much?’ asked Steve, inhaling the fragrance of his coffee with closed eyes.

‘Not much.’ Sophie smiled at the stewardess, accepted orange juice and cornflakes, took a roll and some marmalade but rejected a cooked breakfast with a rueful shake of the head.

Flying back into London so soon after she had left gave her a sense of déjà vu. The last time she saw Heathrow it hadn’t entered her head that she might be back within such a short time; she had imagined it would be years before she returned. She had not known about Anya then. It was only when she flew home for a brief visit before going to the States that her mother told her the truth, a truth which still reverberated through Sophie’s life, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

Beside her she heard Steve take a sudden, sharp breath, felt his body stiffening, and looked round at him, but he was not looking at her. Face hard and wary, he was watching a woman who had walked down the aisle and was now standing beside them.

Startled, Sophie looked up, not recognizing the smoothly made-up face, dominated by heavy horn-rimmed spectacles which balanced the formidable jawline. Older than herself, around the late thirties or early forties, thought Sophie; dressed to impress businessmen rather than attract them, in a pin-striped masculine suit and white shirt with a dove-grey silk tie, and yet worn with very high black patent heels, like some secret sign of femininity in direct contradiction of the rest of her clothes.

‘Miss Narodni?’ From behind the hornrims cold eyes inspected Sophie and were clearly contemptuous of what they saw. Without waiting for her to reply, the woman held out an envelope. Sophie stared at it and saw long, graceful fingers whose nails were pearly, showing the pink skin beneath their highly buffed surfaces, without a touch of varnish.

Taking the envelope gingerly, as if it might explode, Sophie huskily asked, ‘What’s this?’ but the other woman had already turned on her heels and walked away.

‘Who was that?’ Sophie asked Steve, but had already guessed the answer before he gave it to her.

‘Gowrie’s secretary. The bionic woman. Scary, isn’t she?’ But he was looking at the envelope Sophie held. ‘Aren’t you going to open that?’

She felt it crackle between her fingers. A card? She tore it open while Steve watched and took out a stiffly embossed invitation card, stared at the gold lettering on it, not quite taking it in at first. Her own name had been written on to it, in black, confident handwriting.

Steve whistled. ‘Well, well – he’s sent you an invitation to the Guildhall dinner tomorrow night. Now I wonder why he’s done that?’

He watched Sophie’s face and saw that she wondered too. He was beginning to recognize certain expressions of hers, to know when she was scared or worried, and he was sure she was both at this moment.

They both suddenly became aware that someone else had halted beside their seats and was staring fixedly at the card Sophie held.

Steve gave the newcomer a dry smile. ‘Well, hello, Bross. How are you? Coming to Europe to keep an eye on Gowrie? They must be scared he might get his nose in front, right?’

‘I’m not working, I’m taking a break to London, visiting old buddies, seeing the sights, that’s all,’ the other man said, but he was looking at Sophie not Steve and his eyes were very sharp. She felt as if she was being X-rayed, his stare piercing her to the very backbone. ‘Introduce me,’ he said, still not even looking at Steve, and held out his large hand, the back of it rough with thick black hair.

She couldn’t refuse to take it, although it made her shudder to feel the hairs brushing against her skin.

‘Sophie Narodni,’ Steve reluctantly introduced. ‘One of our researchers. Sophie, this is Bross. How do you describe yourself now, Bross? Private eye? Detective?’

‘Investigator, I’m an investigator,’ Bross said shortly, his face resenting something in Steve’s tone. He turned his gaze back to Sophie. ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Narodni. What’s that . . . a Polish name? Russian?’

‘Czech.’ Sophie did not like him; there was something reptilian about him, for all his burly size and neat grey suit. His skin had a scaly texture to it, grey and large-pored, unhealthy; his eyes had a cold bloodless stare, and his bony jaw looked as if it could flap right back to allow him to swallow his prey whole.

‘Czech, huh?’ he said. ‘Do you know the senator?’

She kept a blank expression pinned on her face.

‘No, huh? Never met him?’ Bross did not seem too certain he believed her. ‘Been in the States long?’

‘Hey, hey,’ Steve interrupted, scowling. ‘You don’t work for the Bureau now, Bross. Lay off her.’

‘Just making polite conversation.’ Bross kept his snake eyes on her, smiling in a way that made the skin on her neck prickle. ‘I did hear that you worked for some Czech press agency, Miss Narodni. When did you switch to working for this guy’s outfit?’

Sophie was taken aback – so he already knew who she was before Steve introduced her? Again she felt that quiver of vertigo which was becoming so familiar to her – she was walking in the darkness on a taut, high wire, and every time she looked down she felt her head swim.

Smoothly Steve told him, ‘She just did, OK? We needed a researcher and she’s worked in Europe for a few years, she could help us out.’ He stopped to listen to an announcement on the Tannoy above them, then gave the other man a cold smile. ‘You heard the captain – you should be sitting down with your seatbelt fastened, Bross. We’ll be landing soon.’

Bross gave them both a nod. ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Narodni. I’ll be seeing you.’

She shivered watching him walk away. ‘I didn’t like the way he said that.’

‘You weren’t meant to. He was just letting us know that he was on our case, hoping to surprise us into telling him something he didn’t already know.’ Steve seemed unbothered, though. He smiled at her. ‘Don’t let him get to you. Bross is harmless. It’s Gowrie and his people you have to watch out for, isn’t it?’

She didn’t answer, turning her head to look down on grey, wintry London’s familiar outlines.

‘Look, there’s the Thames,’ she said, staring at the silvery gleam bending like a snake among the fields and houses below them.

Two hours later Cathy Brougham stood on the grand staircase at Arbory House, watching a chandelier being lowered with the utmost care into a soft nest of piled sheets. The prisms chimed and glittered in wintry sunlight as they moved. The chandelier had already been cleaned once, but that morning Paul Brougham, normally so calm and controlled, was almost jumpy with nerves over this visit, and, constantly going around the house checking that it shone with perfection, had noticed a spider’s web among the long, crystal drops, and, he swore, a film of dust there too. Over breakfast he had said, ‘Get it done properly this morning. We’re having some very important people here over the next few days. I don’t want them thinking they’ve come to stay with Miss Havisham.’

She had laughed. ‘Well, I do still have some of our wedding-cake left – the bottom layer, darling. You’re supposed to keep it for the christening of your first baby – but it isn’t covered in cobwebs, it’s safely wrapped in foil and put away. Of course, I could wear Grandmama’s wedding dress – except that I gave it to Grandee after the wedding, and it’s back at Easton now.’

‘I see you’re in a playful mood,’ Paul said, watching her with sensual amusement, making her pulses beat fast. ‘I hope you feel the same tonight.’

She put a finger to her lips, kissed it, brushed it along his mouth in a lingering caress, her eyes smouldering. ‘I will,’ she promised.

The sexual excitement between them showed no signs of fading or dying down. Paul put his hand under the table and slid it over her silk-clad thigh, his fingers exploring the warmth between her legs. She closed her eyes, quivering.

Paul sighed. ‘No time, got to go, darling. Hold that mood.’ He stood up and kissed the top of her head before striding out.

Coming out of her sensual trance, Cathy had sighed before going upstairs to get dressed. She knew she had no time for her usual morning ride. Mr Tiffany would be petulant next time she went out to the stables, but she would take him an extra apple and maybe even a piece of the forbidden sugar he loved so much. Before she got dressed, however, she rang the housekeeper and gave the order to have the chandelier let down and cleaned.