Dark Mirror (32 page)

•

It was mid-afternoon before Suzanne answered his call. He was at home, trying to concentrate on finishing Sophie Warrender’s biography of Edward Lear.

‘Sorry, David,’ she said. ‘We’ve been so busy in the shop. The fine weather has brought everyone out. How are you?’

‘Fine, fine. I thought I might pop down this afternoon. I booked a table at the Old Pheasant for us for tonight.’

‘Oh. That would have been lovely.’

‘You’ve got something on?’

‘Well, an old friend of mine, in Hampshire, has invited me to go over there this evening. I said I’d stay the night.’

‘Ah. That’s nice for you.’

‘We haven’t seen each other for years. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned it, but it only just came up. This is your first free weekend for ages, isn’t it? Are you at a loose end?’

Her words were hurried, he thought, her voice unnaturally bright. ‘No, no. Plenty to catch up on.’

‘Maybe next weekend, eh?’

‘Yes.’

They had a brief conversation, rather rushed at her end and desultory at his, before they hung up. Brock threw Edward Lear aside, thinking of the time he’d almost lost her once before.

K
athy eventually found him in Weatherspoon’s Bar in Terminal Four at Heathrow. It had taken a phone call to Scotland Yard to get her through security to the passenger-only departure concourse on the first floor. The place was crowded with travellers, anxious, excited or bored. His head was buried in a paperback, and he didn’t look up when she sat at his table. After a moment he reached out a hand to feel for his glass of beer, but she got there first and slid it away. He looked up, puzzled to see that it had moved, then blinked and focused on Kathy.

His mouth opened.

‘Kathy!’

‘Guy.’

She watched his expression go through several shifts as he took in the sombre look on her face. Then he sighed, and said, ‘Oh God. You know.’

Her first thought, seeing him sitting there, had been to whack him one and pour the beer over his head, but now she felt only very sad.

‘I want to know why.’

He sighed again. ‘Oh, a friend of mine got into a bit of trouble over a big loan he took out to buy a flat.’

‘A friend of yours.’

‘Yeah, his name’s Helmut. We work in the same office. Anyway, one day he got a phone call from this bloke who said he could sort out the problem, if he was willing to do a little job for him in return. He wanted Helmut to go to Prague for the weekend, all expenses paid, and make friends with an attractive woman. It sounded like a breeze. Only Helmut couldn’t go. He’s married, and his wife’s really sick. That’s what made it so important. I said I’d do it for him.’

Kathy took a deep breath. Spare me, she thought. But how the hell had he known about Prague? ‘When was this?’

‘Just the evening before we went. It all happened so quickly I didn’t have time to think of the consequences. I’m really sorry, Kathy. It just seemed, you know, something to do for a friend, and a bit of a laugh. I didn’t count on . . . on really liking you. I hoped you’d never know. How did you find out?’

‘I’m a cop,’ she said bitterly. ‘Sometimes we get to know more than we’d like.’

‘Yeah, he didn’t tell me that, or I’d have been more cautious. But by the time you told me what you did, we’d got to know each other and were having a good time, and I didn’t want to stop. When I got back from Prague I asked Helmut what it was all about. He said he’d been told you were working on the murder of a close friend of this other guy, and he wanted to keep an eye on how things developed. He said he wanted to know the truth of what had happened, because he didn’t trust the police and the
lawyers not to stuff it up. Helmut got the impression he might be prepared to take matters into his own hands if that happened. The way he told it, I felt some sympathy for him.’

‘So when was the last time you saw War render?’

‘Is that his name? I only met him the once, first thing this morning, after I left you. When I finally got the word to go to the Gulf he wanted to meet me in person, to get a personal briefing. I didn’t want to go, but Helmut was insistent.’ He shrugged hopelessly.

‘And you told him about the flowers on my wall.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. He was very interested in that.’

His eyes went up to a monitor and he said quietly, ‘My flight’s boarding, Kathy. Are you going to arrest me?’

She gave a snort. ‘What for, screwing a police officer under false pretences? I don’t think that’s in the book.’

‘I’m sorry. I really am. I feel like a total shit. But it wasn’t all false pretences. I meant what I said about—’

‘Don’t.’ She got to her feet and walked away, pushing through the crowds without seeing them.

•

When Suzanne looked up Angela’s address in Winchester she found that it was near the centre of the city, and she imagined the two of them, old friends, soaking up the historic atmosphere of the ancient college and cathedral precincts, visiting Jane Austen’s tomb and perhaps her house at Chawton nearby, places she hadn’t been to since she was a child. But Angela had other ideas.

She had been divorced for four months, and was still working through some of the
issues
. From what Suzanne could gather, the separation had been relatively straightforward—Angela had got the house in Winchester and her husband the flat in London, and
neither money nor the adult children had been a problem. But the matter of his thirty-year-old girlfriend, which she’d begun by dismissing as grotesque and pathetic, had affected her in ways she still hardly knew how to acknowledge. For a start, the relationship hadn’t collapsed within a few months as she’d predicted, but was looking increasingly solid. But it was the inescapable contrasts, between the other woman’s youth and her own age, between beauty in its full flush on the one hand and laboured facsimile on the other, that had gradually got to her in deep and harrowing ways. She had started out shrugging these things off as spurious, but they had come to mean everything. Her life was her own, but it was over. What did she have?

Well, booze for a start, and from the moment that Suzanne walked through the front door and the first glass of bubbly was thrust into her hand, she found herself caught up in a race towards oblivion, quite liberating and amusing at first, then increasingly rather alarming. It was clear that Angela had already had a few, but she carried them pretty well, greeting Suzanne with tremendous warmth.

‘Oh God, when you contacted me I just couldn’t believe it! Seeing you again—you haven’t changed a bit!—takes me back to those wonderful days, when everything seemed possible and just so, so wonderful!’

But she didn’t really want to talk about those wonderful days, about which she had only the haziest memories. What she really wanted to talk about was being deserted for a very much younger woman.

‘No, look, I have to say she really is a
very
charming person. The kids tell me she is, and they would know, having seen so much more of her than I have. And very pretty. Well, good luck to them both. I feel . . . like I have a whole new life in front of me. It’s a fabulous feeling. God, I’ve even started smoking again, after
thirty years! That’s how old she is, incidentally. Did I mention that? Come on, drink up. A toast—to real friends.’

There was no sign of food in the kitchen, and when Suzanne said she’d like to take Angela out for dinner, there was talk about a really marvellous little restaurant not far away, but when Suzanne suggested she phone up to book, it being a Saturday night, Angela got distracted in the middle of searching for their number when she found a photo of herself and her family in happier days, which provoked a sudden tearful collapse.

They eventually crawled into their beds without dinner and without having talked about Dougie Warrender and Notting Hill.

The next morning, very hungover, Suzanne made her way downstairs towards the smell of coffee. Angela seemed to be in slightly better shape than her, and apologised profusely for being such a bad host.

‘God, we didn’t have a thing to eat, did we? But I’m going to make it up to you, with breakfast for a start. Bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms . . .’

Suzanne shook her head vigorously, the motion making her feel even more nauseous. ‘No, really, Angela. A bit of toast and coffee will be just fine for me.’

But Angela had made up her mind, and Suzanne sat at the kitchen table, trying not to retch, as her friend attacked the sizzling frying pan.

‘So you met Dougie Warrender again! What’s he like? As charming as ever?’

‘Yes, just the same.’ She was about to say ‘much older, of course’, but wisely decided to avoid that tack. ‘Very rich. He’s a merchant banker or something. And the houses, yours and theirs, are immaculate. Have you been back there recently?’

‘No, not since we moved, ages ago. And you say that dragon
of a mother of his is still there too? You had a real thing for Dougie, didn’t you? Did you have sex?’

‘No, of course not! I was only thirteen.’

‘I did, with his cousin Jack. But maybe that was the next year. Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No, I don’t think so. You were sent off to boarding school.’

‘Yes. In fact that’s
why
I was sent off to boarding school.’ She giggled. ‘He was ever so gentle, and afterwards he told me all the family secrets. I wonder what he’s doing now. I might get in touch.’

‘I’m afraid he’s dead, Angela. Dougie told me. Heart attack, ten years ago.’

‘Oh God.’

Suzanne saw Angela’s shoulders slump, and rapidly tried to head off a change of mood. ‘What family secrets?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember. We should have champagne and orange juice for our celebratory breakfast.’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t, Angela.’

‘You’ll feel much better if you do. Hair of the dog.’

‘No, really.’

‘Oh well. Here we go.’

She placed a plate of heaped fried stuff under Suzanne’s nose, then sat down with her own and began to tuck in.

‘In India,’ she said suddenly. ‘What Dougie got up to in India, that’s what Jack’s secrets were all about.’

‘Really? What did he get up to? He didn’t tell me much, as far as I can remember. In fact I can hardly remember him saying anything at all. He just stood around or hit a ball in the gardens, looking sultry and gorgeous. Any time he actually spoke to me I was reduced to a jelly.’

‘It was about a girl . . . What do they call them in India, is it amah or ayah? A nanny or housekeeper?’

‘Dougie had a love affair with his nanny?’

‘No.’ Angela giggled. ‘With his ayah’s daughter, I think. I can’t remember much, except that it ended tragically somehow. Come on, eat up.’

‘How tragically?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, doomed teenage romance, I suppose, class and race, that sort of thing. Are you sure about the champagne? I think I will.’

Suzanne managed to escape before lunch, when the first gin and tonic appeared, pleading a crisis at the shop.

‘You have a shop!’ Angela beamed. ‘How marvellous! I’ve often thought of starting up a little business, you know—a little hobby, really. Perhaps we could go into partnership together. Maybe something organic, beauty products or something. What does your shop sell?’

‘Antiques.’

‘Oh.’ Angela’s face dropped, and Suzanne made for the car.

•

Brock too had woken with a hangover that morning—mild, but enough to make him feel grumpy as he shuffled about the kitchen, making coffee and toast. It wasn’t just the hangover; he had woken with the clear conviction that Suzanne had been lying to him. It was such an ugly and improbable thought that he’d tried to dismiss it, but it wouldn’t go away. Yesterday he had been merely exasperated by her contacting the Warrenders during his murder investigation, but now her secretiveness and evasive explanations seemed to cast that intrusion in a murkier light. Why hadn’t she told him she was coming up to London last Wednesday? And who was the nameless, genderless friend from the past that she’d had to spend the night with?

He stewed on this for a while, then swore and tried to immerse himself in the paperwork he’d brought home. After a couple of hours of that he put on an overcoat and set off down the lane that ran along the railway embankment to the house of a neighbour, whose dog he sometimes took to the park. When they reached it, he recalled that the last time he’d done this was with Suzanne’s grandchildren, Stewart and Miranda. It occurred to him how much he would miss them all, if things fell apart with Suzanne again.

•

The shop was busy when Suzanne returned to Battle, the spring weather bringing people out for a drive down to the coast. Her assistant Ginny was barely coping with the press of customers in the crowded rooms, and Suzanne immediately hung up her coat and got to work. It remained like that all day.

She’d had no time for a lunch break, and was feeling weary on her feet when the Dutch couple, who had been in earlier, returned for another look at the Georgian silver. She was showing them a tray of spoons when she became aware of a figure standing behind them and to one side. She glanced at him, then blinked. ‘Oh! Hello.’

‘Hello,’ Brock said. ‘I wonder if you could tell me if this is Pre-Raphaelite?’ He pointed to a silver locket in the cabinet beside them.

Suzanne smiled, feeling rattled by his sudden presence, but answered deadpan. ‘Oh no, a bit later. Art Nouveau, probably around 1900.’

She took it out of the cabinet and placed it on the counter, and the Dutch couple turned to peer at it.

‘I like it,’ said the Dutch woman. ‘Are you going to buy it?’

‘I think I may. For a colleague at work. She’s getting engaged.’ Brock turned back to Suzanne. ‘I’ve caught you at a busy time.’

‘Yes.’ She looked at the grandfather clocks ticking against the far wall. ‘I’ll be closing in half an hour.’

‘Why don’t I go across to the King’s Head and wait for you there?’

The Dutch couple exchanged a glance, eyebrows raised.

‘Good idea. I’ll wrap your locket and bring it over.’

In the event it was an hour before she appeared.

‘Sorry. Couldn’t get away.’ She thought how serious he looked, stooped over his pint, and felt anxious suddenly, aware of a cold space between them. ‘Are you all right?’