A Place of Safety (12 page)

‘That’s not fair.’ He was brushing back his hair again. ‘If I’d had any evidence of crime, I would have gone to them. But,
as you’ve pointed out, there isn’t any evidence. I hoped you’d find some.’

‘Then I’m sorry I haven’t done a better job.’

There was a clattering sound from the kitchen. Buxford stood up.

‘Your lunch is clearly ready, and I must go anyway. Your idea about kickbacks is clever. Convincing, too. I wish I’d thought of it myself. I’ll look into it. And you will call me if you come up with anything else, won’t you?’

‘Of course. But you know, I’ve been thinking: the idea of bribery only brings us right back full circle to where you started, albeit on a more personal scale. Why would Toby want the money?’

‘We don’t pay him much,’ Buxford said, without any of the embarrassment Trish thought he ought to feel.

‘Exactly. So you’d notice if he were spending above his income, wouldn’t you?’ She paused.

‘True.’

‘So why would he be tempted by a bribe he couldn’t spend? Unless, of course, he wanted it for something illegal and untraceable.’

‘Like drugs, you mean.’

She could hear George’s voice in her mind: Oh, come on, Trish. You’re obsessed. You see drugs everywhere.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s possible but unlikely. I’ve seen no signs of addiction in Toby. There are no needle tracks, and I’ve never seen him display any of the aggression or idiocy cocaine produces.’ Buxford checked the time on his watch. ‘I really must go now. Phone me again whenever you need me. My wife will always take a message at home if you can’t get me on the mobile or at the bank.’

Trish showed him out, then took her place at the lunch table, where David soon showed signs of having as healthy an appetite
as George himself. That was one worry out of the way. They must have got on well over yesterday’s rugby expedition.

‘Pretty good to have a man like Henry Buxford on dropping-in terms, Trish,’ George said, refilling her wineglass. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ she said, laughing at his obvious envy.

‘How did it happen?’

‘Antony asked me to look into something for him. But I haven’t done very well. I just hope that’s not going to piss them both off.’

George refilled her wineglass. He was too accustomed to guarding his own professional secrets to ask her for details. ‘So what if it does? Antony Shelley is not your boss. You’re a self-employed member of the Bar, for heaven’s sake. I know you think he’s only one rung short of God, but you ought to have grown out of that kind of hero worship by now.’

Several answers suggested themselves to Trish, some of them almost as sharp as his voice had just been. She saw that David had put his knife and fork together, even though there was still at least a third of the food on his plate, so she took the easy way out and grinned at George, ignoring his tone.

‘I worship all my heroes, as you very well know, O Most Heroic of the Lot.’

He laughed, looking a little ashamed of himself, and blew her a kiss. David started to eat again.

Helen’s back felt as though it was about to snap in two. She put her hands behind her, massaging the muscles either side of her spine. All the orderlies seemed to have disappeared, so she was having to cart buckets full of stinking dressings to the incinerator. She could hardly bear to bend down again. The smell made her gag, and the weight dragging at the pain in her back was almost unbearable.

‘Nothing’s as bad as the men suffer,’ she muttered aloud. She couldn’t work out why everything was so much more difficult than usual. Maybe now that Jean-Pierre was back and she knew what being happy was, the usual semi-miserable life she’d always had in the past was that much harder to bear.

‘Hélène?’

His voice made her smile, even though she’d just caught the full whiff of the dressings. Gangrene, she thought. There was no mistaking that smell. She let the buckets clank down on the muddy ground again and straightened up.

‘Let me help you with those buckets.’

‘They’re foul.’

‘All the more reason. Walk with me. Show me the way.’

He did it all for her, using his beautiful hands to manipulate the heavy tongs much more effectively than she’d ever been able to do. The revolting dressings spluttered and began to burn. The smell was even worse. She gagged and turned away.

When he had finished he came to find her again.

‘You are exhausted,’ he said. ‘You should be lying down. And you should be off duty now, unless they’ve changed the shifts suddenly.’

She rubbed the back of her hand against her sweaty forehead. ‘No. But we’re even more short-staffed than usual. I can’t go off duty yet. We’re still on the morning dressings, and it’s already six o’clock. We can’t leave the night shift to do them all.’

‘All the more reason for you to rest. I will tell the sister you must lie down.’

‘No,’ she said in sudden panic. If anyone guessed what there was between them, she would be shipped straight back to England, and she really would never see him again. ‘I’m almost finished. You go on ahead. I’ll follow.’

‘As soon as you can,
ma mie.’

She smiled. If they had been alone, she would have kissed him, and she could tell from his eyes that he knew that.

It was nearly two hours before she reached the small inn where they always met now. The landlord had known him for years, Jean-Pierre had explained, and he was well paid to keep his mouth shut. It was the safest place to meet for miles around.

‘Ah, Helene,’ he said, laying his lips against her skin, just above the miniature. ‘You are still wearing it.’

‘It is all I have to remind me that you’re not part of a dream when you are away. Oh, Jean-Pierre, I love you so much.’

‘And I, you,
ma mie,’
he said, peeling away her dress before starting to take down her hair. He loved pulling out the pins and watching the blonde mass cascade down over her naked shoulders. Her whole body ached for him and as his lips travelled over her skin they lit a fuse of tingling delight.

Much later, he lay back, breathing heavily. She curled herself against his side, laying her hot face on his shoulder. He patted her head with his other hand, then fell into the kind of sleep
that made her feel lonelier than ever. She still had to school herself to wait until he woke.

There was no reason to feel alone, she told herself as she had so often before. From this absence at least, she knew he would return.

It was only ten minutes this time, much less than usual, and so her muscles had not even begun to stiffen. He took her head between both his hands and kissed her.

‘I am sorry that I could not get back here any sooner this time,’ he said when they were lying side by side, her hand tucked into his. ‘I hope you have not been working too hard without me to remind you to rest. I could not believe they have been making you burn the dressings now.’

‘We have been very busy, but I have had a little time off. Last Saturday Myrtle and I walked to the next village.’ She wasn’t going to tell him that she had been trying to learn as much as she could about art and architecture. That might only underline the ignorance of which she was so ashamed. ‘One of the men had told me there was a beautiful church there, but when we found it we saw that it has been wrecked.’

‘Blown up?’ Jean-Pierre said.

‘No. Much worse than that. It was deliberate. The crucifix has been bent forwards so that it lies dangling just above the altar, some of the glass has been smashed, and all the paintings are riddled with bullet holes. It made me understand why you are so worried about yours.’

Jean-Pierre shivered in spite of the heat, and his hand tightened on hers.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said at once. ‘I didn’t mean to remind you, or make you worry even more.’

‘It’s not the paintings that make me afraid now,’ he said. ‘It is you,
ma mie.
Walking so close to the Line with only Myrtle to protect you? It is mad. Far, far too dangerous. You could be—’ He pulled himself up, coughed, then started again more
calmly: ‘Anything could happen to you, Helene. Promise you won’t take risks like that again. You matter far more to me than any painting. You must promise.’

Helen rolled over on to her side, so that she could see his face properly. He looked terrified. She brushed his face with her hand, as though she could remove the fear. But his expression did not change.

‘I’m afraid for you all the time now,
ma mie.
You must promise.’

‘All right, Jean-Pierre. But you must promise, too. It is harder for me to bear the fear when you go away and I don’t know where you are or when I will see you again. You at least know exactly where I am and what I am doing.’

‘Hélène,’ he said as he leaned forwards to kiss her, pushing his knee so gently between her legs that she barely noticed what was happening. A moment later, he was hanging over her, his lips brushing her eyebrows, her lids, the end of her nose, her lips. He had never wanted her again so soon. Nothing mattered now but him.

 

Toby stood in the middle of the basement, staring at Jean-Pierre’s treasure store. His privileged access to it had once seemed like a certificate of his worth. Now it was the opposite, a continual reminder of every way in which he had fallen short of what he should have been.

Once, long ago in Cambridge, he had thought of art forgery as mischief rather than crime and forgers as gentle, scholarly types. Now he knew those were only the amateurs. Professionals were like Ben, in it for big business, prepared to stop at nothing and as brutal as any other criminal.

Someone was knocking on the door again. Couldn’t they read? The sign clearly stated that the Gregory Bequest collection was closed on Sundays.

There was a spyhole in the front door, but he wasn’t going
to risk leaving the basement while there was someone outside. The hall floorboards creaked and would betray him to anyone with working ears.

His mobile rang. He looked at it lying on the workbench, a small harmless black-plastic rectangle with a crack in it, and he hated the thought of what he might hear through it. Was it Ben? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t feel the same iciness digging into his spine today. So maybe it was Margaret, offering news of the boys’ safety. He grabbed the phone.

‘Ah, Toby, good! It’s Henry Buxford here. Everything all right?’

Shaking with a mixture of relief and dread, he licked his cracking lips and winced at the small pain. ‘Fine, fine. Why? Where are you?’

‘Outside your house, dear boy, hoping to come in and have a chat. Where are you?’

‘Halfway to Cambridge, I’m afraid,’ he said, turning his back to the outside wall of the basement. Thank God for mobiles! He was pretty sure that sound couldn’t leak out up to street level from here, but if it did, maybe Henry would take it as an echo from his own phone.

‘Oh. Margaret and the boys with you?’

‘No. They’re away, I’m afraid.’

‘She never told me she was going anywhere when she phoned to cancel lunch today. Is she all right?’

Oh, God! Toby thought. What has he heard? Aloud he said: ‘She’s fine. She just had an invitation to take the boys to stay with friends and couldn’t resist it.’

‘In the middle of term? That doesn’t sound like Margaret. She’s always been so keen on their education.’

‘Not this time,’ Toby snapped. He couldn’t help it. Didn’t he have enough to cope with? Even if the management of the gallery was Henry’s business, the boys’ education was not.

‘What’s going on, Toby? I know something’s the matter.
You sound all over the place. I wish you’d tell me and let me help.’

‘I’m fine. I don’t need any help. It must be the reception that’s making me sound odd. Can I phone you when I’m back in London?’

‘Yes, do. We need to talk. I’ve got to fly to New York tomorrow and I won’t be back until Wednesday night, so it’ll have to be Thursday. Could you come in to the bank at, say, eleven o’clock on Thursday? I’ll make time to talk to you then.’

Anything to get you off the phone, Toby thought. ‘Yes, sure, whatever you like, Henry. What do you want to talk about?’

‘We’ll discuss it on Thursday.’

Suddenly he remembered why he couldn’t go anywhere on Thursday morning. The cheese sandwich he’d had for lunch seemed to have got stuck halfway to his churning stomach and felt as though it was burning a hole in his gut.

‘Damn!’ he said, trying to sound lightly irritated instead of on the point of being sick again. ‘No, I can’t come on Thursday morning. There’s a sale at Goode & Floore’s I have to go to.’

‘You’re not selling something else, are you?’ Henry’s voice quickened with suspicion. What did he know? ‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘No, I’m not selling anything. But there’s a fantastic buying opportunity,’ Toby said, grabbing the scalpel he’d been using to cut some mounting board. He tried to make himself feel normal so that nothing in his voice would alert Henry. ‘There’s a Hieronymus Bosch in the sale, which I think we could get for a pretty reasonable price. And we haven’t got anything by him. It would really help raise the profile of the collection if we could buy it.’

There was silence on the phone. Toby wondered whether they’d been cut off. ‘Henry? Are you there?’

‘Yes, I am. What time is the sale?’

‘Eleven o’clock. The Bosch is lot 50, so they’re not likely to get to it for three-quarters of an hour or more. I suppose I could come to your office afterwards, if it’s really that important.’

‘No, don’t worry about it. It would be much more sensible for us to meet at the sale. It’s time I learned more about the art market in any case. I’ll join you at Goode & Floore’s.’

Oh, God forbid! Toby thought as he said: ‘But, Henry—’

‘No, don’t say a word. It’s not fair to drag you over to the City, and I know I haven’t been giving you enough support at the gallery. This can be the beginning of a new regime. I’ll come to the sale and we can talk afterwards. Goodbye, Toby.’

Toby dropped the phone on his cutting board. There was a piece of cloudy glass at the back of the workbench. It showed him the loathsome meekness in his eyes and the miserable droop of his lips. He could hear his mother’s voice now: ‘Why
must
you always be so wet, Toby?’

She had never touched him, or locked him in his room, or even punished him, but then she’d never had to. Her voice had been her weapon. She could make it crack like a whip, and it hurt like a whip. Every time. Even now. And if he flinched, she would lose her temper. In the old days, it had nearly always ended in the same way. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop crying, you loathsome child.’

He jammed the scalpel so deep into the cutting board that the blade snapped.