The Lazarus Hotel (7 page)

She paired them off on some principle she didn't explain: Sheelagh and Tariq, Tessa and Richard, Larry and Joe. Will she took as her own partner. ‘The name of the game is Empathy. Tell your partner the thing you like least about yourself, then act as defence counsel for one another.

‘So if Will confesses, for instance, a tendency to shout abuse when magistrates trash his cases, I look for a positive side and tell him – yes, I know – that an arrogant magistrate is a threat to justice so it's a public service to remind them of their fallibility. So now we've both learned something. I've learned a little of how Will feels, and Will's learned that what he always considered a fault doesn't necessarily appear that way to other people. All right? Give it a try.'

‘What I really dislike about myself,' Will said when pressed, ‘is that I don't shout abuse often enough.'

Miriam frowned. ‘Like, at football matches?'

Will chuckled. ‘Do I look like a football hooligan? I'm the original seven-stone weakling. I kick sand in my own face to save bigger guys the trouble. No, I mean when it's time to stand up for something that matters and I back down. I don't
call
it that. I call it seeing the other point of view, or deferring to the will of the majority. But the bottom line is, I bottle out. I'm a pacifist not from conviction but because it's easiest. I worry how much I'd give up rather than fight for it.'

‘Any fight in particular?'

Will lifted a narrow shoulder in half a shrug. ‘Perhaps one more than others. Over a girl.' Memory softened his eyes. Miriam had to prompt him to continue. ‘She was— Well, I'm a solicitor, yes? I do divorces and conveyancing, defend the lower grade of criminal on legal aid. And here was this beautiful, talented girl. And she found me
interesting!'

‘So what was the problem?'

‘Most people thought it was me. This was a special girl, a girl with a real future – a profitable future. I still believe that's what the problem was. There were too many people with a vested interest in her success.'

‘Did you tell her that?'

‘I told her. She laughed. She said they were the experts and they had her best interests at heart. She said it was sweet of me to worry but there was no need, she knew what she was doing.'

‘Only it turned out she didn't?'

‘Only it turned out she hadn't realized the sharks she was swimming with. They used her, used her up and threw her away. By the time they'd finished with her there was nothing left.' He was a gentle man but there was a momentary edge of violence on his voice.

‘Couldn't you help?'

‘Me? I was history. They persuaded her I was holding her back and she persuaded me. That's what I mean. I knew she was wrong, that she was putting her trust in men who'd betray it and sooner or later she was going to need me. I should have fought for her. But she said she'd made a mistake, it wouldn't work out for us, we were too different. She said it was better to make a clean break before we got emotionally involved.'

At that Will gave a little despairing snort and let his head rock back.
‘Before
we got involved? I thought she was going to marry me! But what do you do? Somebody tells you to get out of their life so you go. However you feel about it, you have to accept that people have the right to choose their own lovers. She thought she could do better – how could I argue with that? I was hurt: my pride, yes, but deeper than that. I loved her.

‘Then I thought, What if it's true and I am holding her back? I'd no right to do that. I thought, Maybe I'm wrong about the sharks. Maybe they'll look after her. I never met them, I was only going off things she'd said. Maybe I'd got it all wrong. And she wasn't alone. She had family to turn to. And she was an intelligent woman, well capable of knowing what she wanted. So I walked away.'

‘Had you in fact any choice?'

Will waved a dismissive hand. ‘There's always a choice. Anyone with any guts would have fought tooth and nail before leaving her to a bunch of professional advisers who had only her best interests at heart.'

‘What happened to her in the end?'

‘She – went away.'

‘Go on,' glowered Sheelagh, ‘give me a challenge. Tell me your grimy little secrets and I'll grit my teeth and say how you're a great up-front guy anyway.'

If he wasn't careful, thought Tariq, he could make a fool of himself over this little viper with her eyes like sapphires and her tongue like broken glass. Deadpan he said, ‘I'm worried that I'm drawn to women who despise me.'

But Sheelagh had his measure. ‘You lying rat, that doesn't worry you at all! If it's true, and it may be, it amuses the hell out of you. Come on, have the guts to tell me something that really bothers you.'

Impressed and needled in equal proportions he gave her an honest answer. ‘All right. It's my reluctance to make commitments. Oh, I like people, I get on with them. I'm good at my job because mostly that's what it consists of – making yourself agreeable to people who wouldn't recognize you in the street. That suits me fine, it's the sort of relationship I'm good at. There's no harm in it, I don't hurt anyone, I don't pretend I'm looking for a life partner. I don't break hearts, and I don't mind being a thinking-woman's crumpet.

‘Until I think maybe that's all I'll ever be, that I've made a career of being a bit on the side. It's one thing when you're twenty, another when you get to my age. I should be putting down roots, only that means commitment and I shy away from it. I don't know why. I've loads of friends, I go to all the best parties, but I'm thirty years old and still the only family I have are my mum and dad in Matlock Bath.

‘And I can't see that changing. I see people with nothing to offer falling into relationships at the drop of a hat. Some of them work better than others but at least they tried. I never have. I boast about never hurting anyone, but I've never been hurt either. I've never wanted someone enough to be. That isn't right.'

Against her inclinations Sheelagh was becoming interested: to some extent in the exercise but more, so in the man. The paradox intrigued her, the idea of superficiality as a disguise for something deeper. Most men she knew used a veneer of complexity to disguise how shallow they were underneath. ‘There are a lot of unhappy, destructive relationships about. Maybe you're smarter than most, take care not to start something you won't want to finish. I don't wish to shock you but that could be a pretty responsible attitude.'

Tariq laughed out loud, a deep boom that drew curious glances. ‘That's nice. I bare my soul, and all you can do is insult me!'

Sheelagh grinned but she was still thinking about what he'd said. ‘Or maybe you expend all your commitment on professional relationships and don't have enough left for personal ones.'

That seemed to strike a chord. His large expressive face went still, as if she'd tapped into something he didn't want to talk about. His eyes were distant, shadowed. Sheelagh did nothing to prompt him, watched and waited.

Finally he said, ‘That's not the reason. It's the same at work. I don't mean I short-change clients – I don't, I earn my cut. But it's always a business to me, and maybe an agent and a client should be more like a marriage: for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Not just while the money lasts.'

Sheelagh shrugged. ‘If you're on commission you have to know the difference between clients who'll pay their way and those who'll never be worth your time and effort.'

Tariq's gaze strayed to the window. His eyes were a velvety un-English brown. ‘Sure. Ten per cent of nothing is nothing. Even twenty per cent of nothing is nothing. You have to discriminate. It's tough telling someone they aren't good enough, but I can't afford to be coy and they can't afford anything less than the truth. They have lives to get on with. They shouldn't waste them waiting for the big break that's never going to come.

‘But how do you deal with someone who used to have talent, someone you once had a profitable relationship with, who becomes a liability? Do you tell them it was good while it lasted but it no longer pays you to represent them? Or do you carry them, spend time and money you should be using to promote new talent on shoring up a career that's reached its natural end? I don't know. But turning your back on someone who's been a friend and partner feels like – like having a brood mare who's given you winner after winner, and when she comes up barren you send her to the glue factory.'

But it wasn't a joke and Sheelagh knew better than to laugh. She said softly, ‘This isn't hypothetical, is it?'

He didn't answer. He was toying with the letter bearing his photograph – a rather younger, even flashier Tariq Straker beaming at the camera, one arm draped round the shoulders of a female companion. The way the shot had been cropped it could have been anyone. Sheelagh wasn't surprised he kept looking at his picture like that; only that he took no pleasure in it.

Still looking at the thing he murmured, ‘Common sense says one thing, common decency another. Do you listen to your heart or your head? And if you listen to your heart who feeds your family, and your employees'families, when you go down the tubes?'

Sheelagh shook her head decisively. ‘You don't go down the tubes – that's the first priority. Who are these people you represent – performers, personalities, sportsmen?' He nodded. ‘People for whom a career is a few good years if you're lucky. They know that from the start. Your job is to maximize their earnings in those years, not to prop them up when they no longer have anything to sell.'

‘Makes sense.' His voice was even but Sheelagh sensed an old ache that wouldn't be salved by platitudes.

She said quietly, ‘I hope it is one person in particular. You can't afford to bleed over every professional relationship that comes to an end.'

He forced a little laugh, folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. ‘Take no notice. For an international whiz-kid of a businessman I'm a sentimental sod at heart. What about you? What's your heart made of?'

The unexpected sensitivity he had touched in her vanished like smoke. ‘Stainless steel,' she said briskly.

Tariq didn't believe her. ‘But under that?'

‘Titanium?'

He smiled slowly. ‘And under that?'

‘What is this?' she demanded indignantly ‘GCSE physics?'

‘I know what bothers you,' he suggested, holding her gaze. ‘The possibility that, under the steel and the titanium and the triple-cantilever multiple cycling locks, there's a human being who's not only very bright and very determined but also rather warm and funny and perceptive and kind. Is that why you're so spiky with people? Because if you got to like them, if you let them like you, you'd have to open the vault and take a look at what was in there?'

So intent were they on one another that the sudden mighty clangour backstage, that made everyone look up, sent the large dark-skinned man and the small dark-haired woman rocketing from their chairs. But they barely had time to trade a wry grin before a shrill scream had everyone piling into the corridor.

They found Mrs Venables in the makeshift kitchen surrounded by debris.

‘Whoops.' Miriam knelt to shovel cutlery and broken china back on to the big tin tray. But the housekeeper kept staring wildly at the door. Miriam sat back on her heels, her brow furrowed. ‘Esme? Are you all right?'

‘I didn't drop it.' The older woman's voice was as tight as the top string on a violin; tight enough for a perceptible involuntary vibrato. Her face was powder-pale.

Joe stepped out of the press in the doorway, took her arm and guided her to a chair. ‘Sit down, Mrs Venables. Get your breath back. There's no harm done. Nothing that can't be replaced at the nearest Woolworths.'

Her capable hands were fisted tight. ‘You don't understand. I didn't drop it, it was knocked over. By—'

The man's heavy brows knitted. ‘Who?'

She made an effort to get a grip on herself, sitting straight on the straight-backed chair. ‘I'm not sure. I thought, an animal.'

Miriam gave up trying to salvage the tea, looked round as if it might still be there. ‘An animal? What – a cat?' She tried to imagine how the heavy tray had been balanced that a cat could send it flying.

‘Of course not a cat!' From the sharpness of her tone Mrs Venables considered that absurd too. ‘A big animal reared up against the table when I came out of the pantry.' She indicated the open door behind her. Planned as a storeroom, its shelves made a good repository for foodstuffs that didn't require the fridge.

Joe was more confused than ever. ‘A dog?' They were six hundred feet above the street and the only way up was the lift. He'd have put the chances of a stray dog finding its way up here right around zero.

But Mrs Venables nodded slowly. ‘It could have been a big dog. I barely saw it, you understand. I put the tray on the table, went into the pantry for the scones, and when I came back it was – right there. It must have heard me, though, because it was already heading for the door. It knocked the tray down as it went.'

Richard had found a broom and took over where Miriam had left off. ‘Why don't you take Mrs Venables next door while I put on a fresh pot of tea?'

A tweedy arm around her shoulders steered the housekeeper to a quiet corner of the conference room. As they sat down Miriam murmured, ‘I don't understand why you screamed.'

Mrs Venables flustered like a disturbed hen. ‘I was surprised, I didn't know what it was. Then it knocked my tray flying.'

‘And then you screamed. After it was gone.'

‘I suppose I froze. You don't expect to see something like that.'

‘Like what?' She waited but there was no reply. ‘Was it a dog, Esme? You screamed because a dog upset your tray? It doesn't seem like you. You might have yelled and thrown something at it but I wouldn't have thought you'd have screamed.'