Holly Lester (28 page)

‘I wanted to talk to you. I had lunch with Alan – or maybe I should say dessert.'

‘Oh. What did he want?'

‘To talk about you, mainly. It's no surprise he's not happy about me. I suppose he wanted to establish if there were any chance of me going away.'

Holly looked wistful. ‘And is there?'

‘Not unless you want me to.'

She shook her head vigorously. ‘No. Some days I don't know what I'd do without you. You have no idea how stressful some of this can be…' She waved her hands around her in a gesture he immediately understood. It was not regal – as in
all this belongs to me
– but still managed to take in not only the accompanying presences of Terry the Runt and Mrs Diamond, but much more besides: the opening of Parliament, the Chancellor's budget speech, the reception for the visiting head of Lesotho, lunch for the wives of the G7 summit. ‘You're my antidote. It's as simple as that.'

‘Alan was worried about my friend McBain. You know, Daisy Carrera.'

She nodded. ‘I know he hates London One Thousand. But I don't often see the
Standard
.'

‘Alan thinks he's been digging around – into you. Your past in particular, he says, though he warned me I shouldn't raise it with you.'

‘My past?' Holly looked genuinely surprised.

‘I don't know what he meant exactly. I guess I thought...'

‘Thought what?' she demanded.

‘I don't know,' he said, feeling embarrassed. ‘I guess I thought perhaps it had something to do with your brother.'

‘Kevin? What would it have to do with him?'

Billings put both hands out, Italian style, as if to say ‘beats me' in New York fashion. He found himself speaking without thinking: ‘I mean, that scar,' he said, pointing to the faint line that ran down her cheek which he usually noticed only after they had made love. ‘How
did
you get that?'

She looked at him with fury, then laughed out loud very bitterly. ‘What in God's name did you think? That Kevin did this to me, sometime way back when in a nefarious past? Perhaps he had pressed me into prostitution, out of desperation when his money for drugs ran short. And when I balked, he cut me up and sent me back onto the streets. Is that the sort of thing you imagined?'

Almost precisely, thought Billings, but put so baldly he recognized its absurdity, and he shook his head. ‘I'm sorry, Holly. I didn't know what to think.'

She was shaking her head. ‘The hilarious thing is that it
was
Kevin who did this to me. He was six years old and decided to trip up his older sister. He hadn't counted on my shattering the glass pane in the door when he did.'

‘I'm so sorry, Holly. It's none of my business in any event. But the point is, I talked to McBain. He has been snooping around, that's true. But not about you.'

‘And you believe him?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's a relief,' she said with a smile.

‘That's why I wanted you to know. I'm sorry, but I can't keep up with Trachtenberg and his intrigues. I don't know what he's making up, what he's “spinning”, and what is true. So I had no way of knowing whether you were worried about this, too. All I could do was ask.'

‘I promise you, it's completely new to me.'

‘Then I shouldn't have said anything.'

‘You had no way of knowing. Not with Alan as your only source. You were right to tell me.' She reached over and grabbed his arm and squeezed it. He determinedly didn't look to see whether Mrs Diamond or Terry were watching. She let go of his coat. ‘You said McBain
was
snooping around. What about?'

Her tone was so light and friendly that he told her the truth. ‘He thinks some of the Tories have struck a secret deal with Labour. The Thatcherites, according to McBain, were so fed up with the last government that they wanted it out at any cost – even if Labour got in. He thinks they've been helping Trachtenberg sabotage the campaign, doing in George Scarlatti and God knows what else.'

‘That will do for starters. But what evidence does he have?' she asked sharply.

‘None. That's the problem. I don't think he's very confident he's going to find any, either.'

‘There probably isn't any to find. The whole thing may be pure fantasy.'

‘No, he's right about it. There was a deal. Between Trachtenberg and someone named Trevenix.'

‘How do you know?' she asked aggressively.

‘I heard them,' thinking it was time he levelled with somebody. And who other than Holly? He explained the circumstances of his eavesdropping.

‘You never told me this.'

‘No,' he said, looking down at the ground. ‘I suppose I should have. But you see, I wasn't meant to be there. I felt like I'd heard something I wasn't meant to hear. Even if I didn't fully understand it, I knew it wasn't intended for me. I'm not
that
naive, you know.'

But Holly wasn't paying him full attention. ‘So you told McBain all this?' Her voice was penetrating, and as he looked at her he found her full gaze on him.

‘No. I didn't say a word.' When she looked quizzically at him he explained. ‘What would be the point? It would only cause trouble. I can't say I particularly care if something happened to Alan, but I have nothing against the government.'

‘I should hope not. You're part of it.'

‘Well,' he said, ‘in a way.'

She sighed and said in a thoughtful, distant tone of voice, ‘I suppose even if you had told McBain it wouldn't matter that much. After all, Alan and Trevenix would just deny the story – it would be their word against McBain's, or yours.'

There was something menacing about this which made Billings bristle. ‘Actually, I could prove it if I wanted to.' He explained that the incriminating Trachtenberg memo was in his possession.

He expected her to be angry, but instead she seemed simply surprised. ‘So you
did
take that paper. Alan thought you might have, way back when, but I believed you.' She looked at him with a mixture of astonishment and strange respect.

‘I know I shouldn't have done it, but don't worry. As I've said, the story would hurt Labour and that means the story would hurt you. I'd never leak it to anybody.'

Holly must have stopped walking, for he found himself two paces ahead of her. He turned back to find her looking worried. ‘I believe you,' she said, after a pause, then added, ‘even if others wouldn't.' She looked at her watch.

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Look,' she said, speaking in a fast clip. ‘I have to go. Carrie wants me to read to Sebastian and he's probably out of the bath now.'

‘Shall I come, too?' He often read to Sebastian before bed.

Holly shook her head. ‘Not tonight,' she said. ‘Harry's coming home early.'

He nodded, stifling his disappointment. ‘See you Tuesday, then.'

She nodded again, this time vaguely. ‘Yes, yes,' she said. ‘Until Tuesday.'

The catharsis of telling Holly about that evening in the Wigmore Street flat and his taking of the Trachtenberg memo was considerable. He felt almost light-headed in his relief, and the next morning Tara asked him what he was so happy about. ‘Are you getting appointed to something else?'

‘Don't be sour. The greater my responsibilities elsewhere, the more you can do what you like here. As you well know.'

She blushed slightly, so he added more gently, ‘You've done terrifically well, you know. When London One Thousand's over, I'll still want you to keep organising some of the exhibits. There's no going back now.' She looked pleased.

Even the appearance of Nicky, Trachtenberg's youthful assistant, in the calm end of the lunch hour, failed to agitate him, though as the young man came in he asked him aggressively, ‘Did Alan send you?'

Nicky shook his head and looked at Tara. He was wearing a grey Nehru jacket with a brown polo neck folded over his Adam's apple. He had a small gold hoop in his right ear – the spikes had been removed from the left one – and a smaller silver one threaded through his nose. ‘No, no, not at all,' he said. ‘I'm only doing a favour for Arnio. The
Professore
, I think you call him.' He put a small package down on the Cedar of Lebanon.

‘What's that?' asked Billings.

Nicky looked at Billings as though he were an idiot. ‘A picture,' he said slowly.

Billings picked it up and held it for a bit. ‘Aren't you going to open it?' Tara asked.

‘That depends what I'm supposed to do with it,' he said, looking at Nicky.

‘Nothing,' said Nicky. ‘Arnio asked if you could keep it for him while he's out of the country. He said you have a vault here, and he didn't want to leave it in his flat. He's in the middle of moving, you see, and all sorts of people are in and out of the place. He thought it would be safer here. But only if you don't mind.'

‘What is it?' asked Tara.

‘I'm not sure myself,' said Nicky.

‘I suppose I'd better see.' Billings undid the tape on the bubble wrap and carefully held up a small oil painting, a sketch really, framed in old light grey wood. It was immediately recognizable as a Giacometti. ‘How lovely!' exclaimed Tara.

How expensive, thought Billings in Ratner mode, feeling slightly nervous. ‘How long am I supposed to hold on to this?'

‘A week. Perhaps ten days. He said to give you this,' he added, handing Billings an envelope.

Opening it, he found a piece of letterhead saying
The Albany
and a handwritten message,
per favore, Arnio
. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘I'll put it in the vault.'

Nicky smiled broadly, first at him, then at Tara. ‘Many thanks.'

Billings went downstairs and deposited the picture. When he came back up again Nicky had gone and Tara was glowering. ‘What's wrong?'

‘He's a trusting bugger, isn't he?' she said sarcastically.

‘Who? Nicky?'

‘No. His boss. He told Nicky to get a receipt from us, just to prove he delivered the painting.'

‘Really? How strange. Do you mean Trachtenberg?'

She grimaced. ‘None other.'

‘I thought Nicky just said it had nothing to do with him?' But Tara wasn't listening any more, and when a Kuwaiti spender walked in, Billings too put his mind to other, more profitable pursuits.

He intended to ask Trachtenberg about the Giacometti when he saw him next. But on the following Tuesday in Whitehall neither Trachtenberg nor Sally Kimmo were at the London One Thousand meeting. This seemed especially unfortunate since they were due to finalize their plans for the main building on the site. In it they had devised a small whirlwind exhibit of paintings of the Thames over the centuries. The loans had been confirmed by various institutions: Canaletto, Monet, Sickert, and many others had been promised.

In the other buildings installation was supposed to have begun, and Sally was going to report back on the status of work after visiting the site at the weekend. ‘We'll just have to take it on faith,' Canon Flowing declared. ‘I'm sure it's all right or we'd have heard.'

Billings wasn't so sure, and when Richard Bruce adjourned the larger meeting he determined to ask Holly if she knew where he could contact Sally. But as he came down the stairs, he found himself accompanied by the Marlborough man. ‘There's a message for you from Number Ten,' he said, handing him a stapled folded slip. Inside Billings read:
Small crisis at work
–
sorry to have to cancel. See you soon. X H.

South London was a mystery to Billings. This was not the result of a Hampstead childhood, or any predilection for Chalk Farm Chinese food over the delights of fried plantains in the Brixton Road. It was simply that south of the River was not a part of London he knew. He viewed life there as consisting of a working class culture of small-time villains, who congregated in the kind of Victorian pubs that still had their dusty original mirrors and worked in garages where stolen cars had their engine registration numbers filed down; and a middle class life of green suburban avenues lined by plane trees (Wimbledon or Dulwich). He knew there were many black people living south of the River, but other than a clichéd perception of Brixton, he didn't know where. He knew there were many young and wealthy people as well, living in Clapham, Wandsworth, or Balham, but he simply assumed they were mad.

He was therefore ill-prepared for his journey to the London One Thousand site. He took the Underground to Victoria and changed lines to Brixton. Ascending there, he looked fruitlessly for a black cab and after twenty minutes jumped into a Peugeot minicab which had stopped, unbidden, for him. Fifteen minutes later, after a labyrinthine journey through dense South London streets, they approached the site, which was ringed by high wire fences topped with strands of barbed wire. At the gate he was met by a security guard who proved implacable. ‘I have no authorization to let you in.'

‘But I'm on the government committee. Ring Whitehall. Ask Alan Trachtenberg.'

‘
You
ask Alan Trachtenberg.
You
ring Whitehall. I've got my orders, and until they change I can't let you in.'

Billings turned away and began to walk around the vast perimeter. In the distance he could see the advanced state of the development: the cranes were gone, and there was little sign of heavy construction. Almost all the building facades were finished, though there were men working on the roofs of several of them.

It was an impressive if not altogether attractive sight, this mishmash of historical architectural styles. An enormous Queen Anne house of faded orange brick stood out, as well as a William and Mary manor house of Cotswold stone. But dominating the site was the main pavilion, built on Sterling-like lines of glass and suspended cables, with a sloping transparent roof. It was here that the core exhibits would be situated; here that the work assembled by Billings and Sally Kimmo and Canon Flowing would be shown in the great open hall.
To delight and instruct
, Billings thought, then felt very pompous. But he was pleased to feel that the artistic history of London would be so prominently displayed.