Walking in Darkness (31 page)

The heavy doorknocker thudded sharply outside in the hall. Sophie shrank back among the cushions of the couch.

‘Tell them to go away, don’t let them in,’ Cathy said, her chin up.

‘No! Don’t open the front door!’ Sophie pleaded, but the housekeeper was already obeying her mistress.

They heard her voice from across the hall. ‘Mrs Brougham wants you to leave imm . . . Stop! How dare you, come back here!’

The heavy front door crashed shut, there was a clatter of footsteps across the wood floor and two men loomed in the doorway. Cathy recognized their look rather than their faces; she had seen it all her life, those rapidly moving, all-seeing, emotionless eyes, the faces smooth-shaven, angular, the hair very short, close to the skull, the bodies fit and yet bulky, hard with muscle, and no doubt packing guns under their expensive tailoring, the dark suits, the heavy overcoats.

‘They pushed their way in, madam,’ said the housekeeper.

‘How dare you force your way into my house? I told you to wait until my husband arrived. He’s on his way here now, he’ll be here any minute.’ Cathy got between Sophie and the intruders, her manner immediately becoming arrogant, high-handed. It was what they understood from people like her and her father. She knew men like this, too; it was only power they respected, a power greater than their own, and she was certain she possessed it.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Brougham, but Senator Gowrie sent us to get this young woman without delay. I’m sure you understand our position.’

The older man of the two spoke in a civil voice, smiling insincerely, his thin mouth stretched like rubber which snapped back into its usual tight line as soon as he stopped smiling. Cathy glared, disliking him and his companion intensely, admitting for the first time how much she had always disliked having men like this around her and her home. They were always in the background, watching, waiting. She still had men like this around her now that she had married Paul, because although he was not a politician he was a very wealthy man with a lot of power in the media, and he needed protection too, he was always a potential target for crazy people with grievances, criminals and terrorists. OK, she knew that, she wasn’t stupid, she realized she had to put up with them, but she didn’t have to like these guys.

Her voice icy, she said, ‘I don’t believe my father told you to push your way into my home and throw your weight around!’

Softly he said, ‘Your father wants Miss Narodni taken back to London. He told us to come here and get her, at all costs, so that is what we are going to do. We don’t want to upset you, Mrs Brougham, but don’t waste your sympathy on her. I’m sure she talks a good story, that’s what she gets paid for, she’s a con artist, but the truth is she was sent over to Britain to cause trouble for your father. She’s part of a dirty-tricks brigade who’ve been following him around the States for quite a time, trying to discredit him with lies, anonymous phone calls and letters, the usual game. I’m sure you’re familiar with the techniques. You’ve been around politics all your life, you know the way it gets done. Anything she has told you is a lie.’

This was what Cathy had been telling herself, that Sophie was lying, that this was just a con game, a dirty trick, to wreck her father’s chances of nomination – but somehow when this man said it aloud she didn’t believe it.

The other man had wandered behind the couch while Cathy was talking to his colleague. Before Cathy had time to realize what he was up to he was beside Sophie, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her up from the couch.

‘Come along, Miss Narodni!’ he said, forcing her arm up behind her back.

‘Leave her alone!’ Cathy said, her stomach twisting in a strange pain as she saw Sophie being hurt. At that instant she felt as if she shared Sophie’s pain and fear, as if they inhabited one body, their minds linked, too.

Instinctively she ran towards them and the older man caught at her shoulder with a hand that pulled her back and made her wince and gasp in shock. She had never been manhandled that way before; she couldn’t believe it was happening to her.

‘If you want your father to run in the presidential race, Mrs Brougham, you’ll stop making this fuss and let us take her away,’ he intoned in that same cold, tight voice. ‘Your father will explain what she’s been up to when you see him tomorrow.’

Cathy clenched her hand into a fist and punched him angrily. ‘Get your grubby fingers off me, you big ape!’

The next second she found herself falling backwards on to the couch, was stunned to realize the man had hit her, and then heard with terror Sophie screaming as she was pulled out of the room.

‘Anya, Anya . . . help me . . .’

Steve and Vladimir had been lucky not to get stopped for speeding as they did a hundred miles an hour along the motorway, putting London far behind them in the race to get to Sophie, they hoped, before any of Gowrie’s people caught up with her. It was a chilly night and there wasn’t much other traffic around, or they might have had far less luck. The moon had risen, showing them the shadowy countryside they were driving through. The stars were white-hot points of fire high above them; frost began to make the tyres slip, and it sparkled white on the grass along the motorway verges, and into the distance the rolling English fields, backed by dark shadows of hills.

‘A small country,’ Vladimir said, staring. ‘Very tame and domesticated, no wonder the English are so prim and two-faced. They grow up with this neat, cute countryside, like growing up in Disneyland.’

‘But with far more prickles. They can be bloody-minded, too,’ said Steve. ‘Don’t mix them up with us Yanks. We’re far more conventional than they are. We find eccentricity a little worrying; the English love it.’

Vlad laughed. They drove in silence then he said, ‘So, you really think Gowrie will still go to this dinner in the City of London?’

‘Does the tiger turn his back on fresh meat when he’s starving? Gowrie can’t afford to miss it; this dinner is a biggie, a major platform for an American politician fighting for presidential nomination. With a good speech he’ll make the TV news headlines back home, and all the breakfast shows, too.’

‘Television has become too important; it distorts politics,’ Vladimir said with heavy Slav gloom.

‘It’s here to stay, though. No turning our back on it, and what’s coming may be worse. The technical revolution gets faster and faster. We could all be born robots in a hundred years and there may be no more humans then.’

‘I wonder how many there are now? It is happening in my country now; we had the grey boredom of government lies for so long, and secretly made fun of them all, we stayed sane in a mad world that way – but now we have the gaudy colours of the rich corporations advertising every night, and nobody laughs any more! We began with such hopes for democracy, and already we follow America down the wrong roads.’

‘Hell, Vlad, we all get what we say we want, that’s our tragedy. No such thing as a free gift. There’s always a price. In the States we’ve talked endlessly of wanting democracy, praised the age of the common man. Now we’ve got it, we’ve got mindless game shows and chat shows, porn films, vacuous soaps; we’ve got the TV the common man wants, and the common woman, and it’s no good saying you don’t like it, it isn’t what you meant. Democracy is the lowest common denominator and the fastest method of communication, which means TV as we know it and love it.’

‘And it’s what you live by,’ Vlad said softly, taunting him, amused and yet cynical.

Steve grinned wickedly, angrily. ‘I know, and I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me, but, hell, owing everything I’ve got to it doesn’t mean I can’t see where we’re all going, and I don’t have to like it.’

‘You should be in politics, yourself; you’ve got the gift,’ Vlad said, grinning.

Grimacing, Steve told him, ‘Once upon a time I might have gone into politics, but that was before I realized how low you have to sink to get anywhere in that game.’ Steve stared ahead, his jaw taut. ‘My father was involved in politics all his life; he had a thousand friends in the party, all good old buddies, every last man. Now he’s just waiting to die and his good old guys have vanished like snow in June.’

Vlad looked at the grim face behind the wheel and then at the road and the other vehicles they flashed dizzyingly past. ‘For Jesus’s sake, Steve, slow down. I’m too old to die and go to hell.’

‘Sorry, but I want to get to Sophie as fast as possible,’ Steve said in a hard, angry voice. ‘And when I get to her I’m going to bawl the shit out of her.’

Vladimir shot him another look and smiled with sudden, surprising sweetness. ‘You’re crazy about her, aren’t you?’

Steve flushed and did not answer.

The angry scene inside the house, Cathy’s protests, Sophie’s screams, had managed to drown a sound outside the house: a helicopter landing in the dark parkland, blades whirring, the engine slowing as the great metal insect lowered itself to rest on a well-concealed landing pad among the grass. Only when the lights surrounding it were switched on could you see the pad; unless you walked right up to it, it was hidden from view by grass and shrubs discreetly planted as cover.

The occupants of the helicopter took half a minute to spring down and run, crouching, towards the house, straightening only when they were out of reach of the lethal, rotating blades.

The security men pulling Sophie out of the house walked straight into Paul Brougham and his own security men.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Paul rapped out, confronting the men, staring in bewilderment at Sophie. ‘Who are you people, and who is this?’

The older man, who had recognized him immediately with dismay, believing him to be in London at the Guildhall dinner, in spite of Cathy telling him otherwise – but then women always lied, a wise man never believed a word they said – began a smooth, careful answer, ‘Well, Mr Brougham, sir, we were sent down here by Senator Gowrie. We’ve been having trouble with a dirty tricks gang sent over here by one of the senator’s competitors and –’

‘Paul!’ Cathy ran out of the house and straight at him, and Paul’s arms closed round her, held her close to his heart, her head nestling against his chest so that she heard the beating of his heart right under her ear, a strong, fast beat that was the sound she went to sleep with every night, but nearer, then, because neither of them ever wore anything in bed, their bodies entwined naked under the sheets, legs tangled, arms across each other, the closer the better, one flesh, warm and relaxed after love.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked with fierce anxiety.

Relief was making her feel sick. She felt safe now he was here; she always did.

‘Tell them to let go of Sophie,’ she told him, lifting her head to glare at her father’s men. ‘And to get off our land!’

The older man quickly said, ‘Mr Brougham, we’re security men sent down here by Senator Gowrie. He wanted us to bring this girl back with us.’

‘This guy manhandled me,’ Cathy said, touching her upper arms and wincing. ‘I’ve got the bruises to show for it!’

‘He did what?’ Paul said through his teeth, and suddenly there was danger in the air. Paul Brougham was a hard man, aggressive, if he needed to be – in fact you felt he could be violent.

‘Mrs Brougham’s upset, sir,’ the older security man hurriedly said, ‘She’s exaggerating –’

‘I’m not,’ Cathy interrupted. ‘He’s a liar, don’t listen to a word he says. He grabbed me and held me, and tried to railroad me into letting him take Sophie, and when I wouldn’t have it he pushed me down on the couch.’

Paul made a snarling noise in his throat, like a lion, his teeth bared. ‘You did, did you, you bastard?’ His hand flashed out and got the older man by the throat, shook him like a dog with a rag doll between its teeth. ‘You hit my wife, did you? Like hitting women, do you? They’re an easy target, aren’t they? Not like men.’

‘No, sir, really . . . I didn’t mean . . . I just . . .’ The security man couldn’t think fast enough and floundered helplessly. His face was drawn and afraid.

Cathy saw Sophie sagging at the knees and rushed to put an arm round her. ‘Sophie? Paul, help me get her back indoors. She’s as white as a ghost, and she’s in shock already, she was almost killed by another of their people out there.’ She pointed towards the village at the far end of the drive, beyond the high ironwork gates.

Paul let go of the man he was shaking, turned to stare down the drive. ‘What do you mean, almost killed?’

Cathy gabbled, her voice shaking. ‘A car tried to run her down outside, then I drove out of the gates, and the other car went into a skid and hit a tree and exploded and the driver was killed, she must have been killed outright, I hope to God she was, anyway . . . The car burned for ages, it was terrifying, I should think you could see it for miles, half the village was out there and –’

‘Who is this woman?’ Paul broke in to stop her high-pitched, shaking voice, frowning at her anxiously. ‘What the hell has been going on here?’

She was still supporting Sophie with one arm round her. ‘Help me get her indoors first.’

Paul nodded to his own security staff. ‘Take this lady into the house, will you? And be careful with her.’ He turned on the other men. ‘As for you – get off my land, go back to London and tell the senator that he can talk to us himself when he comes down here tomorrow. And tell him I don’t take very kindly to his men manhandling my wife or busting into my home, pushing my staff around and laying down the law. Now get out of here before I really lose my temper.’

They scuttled away in a mixture of sullen resentment and relief at getting away from him. Paul watched them get back into their big American car; the engine flared, the lights came on, they reversed and drove off, their tyres screeching on the gravel and sending up a flurry of little stones.

Once they had driven out of the gates, which closed silently behind them, Paul went inside and found his wife with Sophie in the firelit room they had left earlier. Sophie was shuddering, sobbing silently, her body shaking with dry little sobs you saw but could not hear.

‘Go through the house, check that there’s nobody else in here, and check for bugs, too, in case they’ve managed to plant some,’ Paul told his men. ‘Check in here, first, Jock.’