by M. B. Shaw
‘Do I?’ Iris played for time. Her mind was replaying her discussion with Ian at the police station, about Dom’s outstanding gambling debts to some angry and potentially violent people. ‘Are you a poker player yourself, Mr Gretski?’
The big man grinned, revealing a set of surprisingly ugly crooked teeth. Vasile Gretski might have many vices, but clearly vanity was not among them.
‘Sometimes. I play many games, Ms Grey.’
I bet you do, thought Iris.
‘Did Dom owe you money?’
‘Me?’ Gretski let out a deep, booming laugh that made his broad chest shake. ‘No! He wouldn’t dare. But friends of mine, certainly.’
‘You played him, though?’
The Russian nodded. ‘Twice. In Oxford. We had some mutual acquaintances there.’
Oxford. Russians. Gambling debts.
Iris’s mind raced. Half-remembered pieces of conversations – with the piano teacher, Harry Masters, and with Dom himself – drifted back to her, like parts of a puzzle.
‘Wetherby was a wanted man in Oxford. At least for a while,’ Vasile Gretski added. ‘What was he like to paint?’
Iris didn’t answer immediately. She was still trying to think about the Oxford connection. Hadn’t there been a developer there, a Russian who wanted to build houses on Hazelford Meadows?
‘Did he enjoy sitting for you? He was a very vain man, I believe. Samovlyublennyy chelovek, we say in Russian. “Narcissist.”’
‘He could be vain…’ Iris replied, still dredging the recesses of her mind for the developer’s name. Something beginning with ‘G’. But not Gretski. She was just on the point of remembering when something in her peripheral vision distracted her.
Right next to the double doors leading out to the main lobby, Chris Wheeler had leaned forward and was whispering something in Rachel Truebridge’s ear. Iris watched as Rachel recoiled, stung, burst into tears and then ran out of the room.
‘Excuse me.’ Iris disengaged from the Russian collector. She knew bullying when she saw it, and she wasn’t going to stand for it, not at her unveiling night. ‘It was lovely to meet you, but I must go and talk to someone.’
Making a beeline for Dom’s rotund agent, she challenged him angrily. ‘What did you just say to Rachel?’
Chris Wheeler smiled broadly, as if all were right with the world. ‘Hello, Iris.’
‘Don’t “Hello, Iris” me!’ Iris shot back. ‘Answer me. What did you just say to upset her like that? I was watching you.’
‘Nothing she didn’t already know,’ Chris said smoothly. ‘Poor Dom couldn’t shake the woman when he was alive,’ he added, taking a cigarillo out of his inside jacket pocket and lighting it in defiance of the no-smoking signs. ‘It seems a bit rich to keep stalking the bastard once he’s dead. Don’t you think?’
There was real cruelty in Wheeler’s eyes. An expression of pure spite, like a cat toying with a mouse before the kill. Iris wondered how she’d failed to see it before, when she met the agent at the Mill. Had Dom known this side to him? Presumably he must have.
With a look of disgust, Iris left him and went outside in search of Rachel Truebridge.
There was no one at the coat check, and the lobby was deserted. Bracing herself against the cold, Iris pulled open the heavy front door of the gallery and stepped outside. The photographers and reporters had all gone home now, but Trafalgar Square was still busy with tourists and evening revellers, and it was difficult to make out anyone distinctly on the dark, crowded streets. Iris certainly couldn’t see Rachel.
After a few more looks to left and right, she was just about to give up and go back inside when suddenly she spotted her, coatless and visibly distressed, on the opposite side of St Martin’s Place. Her arm was raised, trying to hail a cab, but there were no orange ‘for hire’ lights to be seen.
‘Rachel!’ Iris shouted, but the din of the traffic drowned her out. She fought her way across the road, almost getting knocked flat by a bus. Infuriatingly, just as Iris made it to within shouting distance, a black cab pulled up and Rachel disappeared inside it, slipping off into the night.
Damn it!
Cold and frustrated, Iris stood on the kerbside as Rachel’s taxi pulled away. Seconds later she saw two men in dark suits jump into an illegally parked Mercedes and speed after it. The same two men who’d been hovering protectively around Vasile Gretski just a few minutes ago.
They’re following her! Iris felt deeply uneasy. Why would the Russian billionaire’s goons be following Rachel Truebridge? What did she know that was making so many people so afraid?
It wasn’t till she was back inside the warm fug of the gallery that it came back to her. Mill House. The Christmas Eve party. She didn’t remember Vasile Gretski being there, but the two suited men definitely were! She only remembered because Graham told her he’d overheard them gossiping about Dom’s unpaid debts or something like that, and she’d been amazed and impressed that Graham spoke Russian.
‘There you are!’ Graham wrapped his arm around her as soon as she walked back into the room. ‘I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. I thought you’d left without me.’
‘Sorry,’ said Iris. She explained about Rachel, and the bullying she’d witnessed from Chris Wheeler. Then she told Graham about Vasile Gretski’s two Russian goons tailing her in their car. ‘They’re the same two men from the Christmas Eve party at the Mill. The ones you overheard bitching in Russian about Dom buying that expensive car. Do you remember?’
‘Vaguely.’ Graham frowned. ‘Are you sure it’s the same guys?’
‘Positive,’ said Iris. ‘I’m worried,’ she added, leaning into him more closely. ‘I actually think Rachel might be in some sort of danger. I’m certain they were following her, and they looked like thugs. Ariadne mentioned you were talking to Rachel earlier. Did she say anything to you? About being threatened or intimidated?’
Graham shook his head. ‘No. Nothing like that. We talked about Dom. She was a bit upset and she left.’
‘She came back, though,’ said Iris. ‘Why would she leave the party and then come back?’
Graham cupped Iris’s face in his hands. ‘I don’t know, my love. But I do know Rachel Truebridge will be fine. She’s a tough cookie. I also highly doubt the men you saw were following her.’
‘They were! I saw them with my own eyes,’ Iris insisted.
‘You saw them get into a car and drive away,’ Graham corrected her. ‘That’s all. You don’t know where they were going. For what it’s worth, I overheard Gretski talking earlier about going on to a private strip club in Mayfair after this. My guess is that he sent his guys ahead to check out the venue and make sure he’ll be safe there.’
‘Why wouldn’t he be safe?’ asked Iris.
Graham shrugged. ‘He’s an oligarch. When you’re that rich, there are always people waiting in the shadows ready to slip polonium-210 into your green tea. Who were you talking to earlier, by the way? That grey-haired chap?’
It took Iris a moment to realise he was talking about Lars Berens, her sister’s husband. For some reason, that bizarre encounter already felt as if it had happened ages ago, in the distant past. Too much had happened tonight. Too many connections were forming, or trying to form, in Iris’s brain.
‘Oh, he was just a journalist,’ she lied. She was too emotionally exhausted to explain to Graham about Thea tonight, or about being randomly ambushed by her husband. Oddly, the one person she did want to tell was Ian. Especially the part about Thea having children. The unfairness of that, the hideous, ironic, unbearable wrongness of Thea getting to become a mother when Iris could not was a pain that only Ian would fully understand.
A wave of sadness overcame her suddenly.
‘Are you all right, Iris?’ Graham’s kind eyes looked deeply into hers. ‘You don’t seem yourself, my darling.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Iris, pulling herself together. ‘I need to go to Oxford.’
‘Oxford?’ Graham’s frowned dee
pened. ‘Why?’
‘Because there’s something going on with these Russians,’ said Iris. ‘And it’s something to do with Dom’s gambling debts, and the housing development he blocked in Hazelford, and Rachel Truebridge is connected somehow, and the whole thing started in Oxford.’
Graham kissed her softly on the forehead. ‘You’re not making much sense – you do know that?’
‘It might be why Dom died,’ Iris said simply. ‘It might be the key to proving Ian’s innocence.’
Graham stiffened.
‘I know you don’t like Ian,’ said Iris, ‘but this isn’t about likes or dislikes. It’s so much bigger than that, Graham. And I’ll admit I don’t see how any of the pieces fit together. Not yet. But if I’m going to stand a chance of working it out, I need to go to Oxford. I need to.’
Not for the first time Graham wondered what on earth went on in Iris Grey’s chaotic but brilliant mind. He didn’t want her to go to Oxford on some wild goose chase for her undeserving ex. He wanted her to stay here, in London, where the New Faces exhibition was about to start, with Iris’s portrait as its centrepiece. He wanted her to stay with him. Always with him. But he knew that trying to stop her would be a mistake, not to mention futile. Let her go. Let her reach a dead end on her own and come back to you.
‘All right, my love,’ he said resignedly. ‘Whatever you need.’
* * *
Ariadne Wetherby watched from an upstairs window as Graham Feeney put his arm around Iris’s shoulders and walked her across the road to the taxi rank. Beside her, on a wide leather bench, Lorcan slept, using his mother’s rolled-up scarf as a pillow. His breathing, deep and rhythmic, helped regulate Ariadne’s own.
Tonight had been a risk. Calculated, but none the less terrifying for that.
Now, thank God, it was over.
It was over and everything was all right.
Rachel Truebridge had been frightened off. Good riddance.
Iris and Graham would walk off into the sunset together. They would fall in love and leave the Mill and never come back.
Never.
Turning away from the window, Ariadne placed a hand on Lorcan’s chest, feeling it softly rise and fall. Dom had always said that a wise man should keep his friends close and his enemies closer. Well, tonight Ariadne had done just that.
‘Are you proud of me, my darling?’ she whispered aloud. ‘I do hope so. I miss you, Dom.’
As she said the words, she realised they were true.
Covering Lorcan gently with her coat, she crept back down to the party.
Chapter Twenty-two
Built on the banks of the Cherwell at the eastern end of the High Street, just over Magdalen Bridge, St Hilda’s was certainly not the most beautiful of Oxford’s colleges.
‘Sturdy’ and, at a pinch, ‘handsome’ were the kindest adjectives the various city guidebooks used to describe the solid late-Victorian brick buildings of the famous women’s college, named after the patron saint of learning and culture.
Only of course it wasn’t a women’s college anymore, Iris remembered, doing a double-take at all the young men darting in and out of the porter’s lodge to collect their college post, while she picked up her room keys. As a member of the college, she was entitled to stay in one of the ‘guest rooms’ for a nominal rent if she chose to. St Hilda’s accommodation was far from luxurious, but Iris preferred the nostalgia of being back in her old stomping ground to the comfort of a hotel suite. She rarely came to Oxford, and she wanted to make the most of it, even if she was here under strange and difficult circumstances.
It all felt so different, though! According to the latest shiny St Hilda’s prospectus, which Iris had been sent in the post, almost half the undergraduates matriculating last year had been boys. In Iris’s day, it had still been all girls, although even then the prospect of allowing men to apply had been a hotly debated topic. Iris herself had been passionately opposed at the time, although she couldn’t totally remember why now. Possibly to impress Ian McBride with her left-wing feminist credentials.
Almost everything Iris did in those days came back to Ian, one way or another.
A cheerful elderly porter handed Iris her keys. ‘Welcome back, madam,’ he said. ‘You’ll be staying in the Wolfson Building. Two nights, is it?’
‘Probably,’ said Iris. ‘I might need three.’
‘Whatever you need, madam. We’re delighted to have you.’ The old man was so sincere Iris could have hugged him. ‘Do you remember where you’re going, or would you like a map?’
Iris said she remembered. Taking her keys and a sheaf of papers, most of them thinly veiled requests for money disguised as ‘newsletters’, she made her way across the quad towards her staircase.
A light snow had been falling for the past few hours, dusting the city in a bright white coating of icing sugar. It was three o’clock now and still light, with a pale sun hanging in a brilliant crisp-blue sky. It was the sort of day that demanded hope and optimism. Iris felt both, although they were mingled with other, more complex feelings of nostalgia and loss. Every doorway, every tree, every distantly pealing church bell reminded her of her youth, her student self. And that, in turn, brought back memories of her and Ian. Of how happy they’d been, how besotted, how utterly, helplessly, gloriously in love.
What had happened to those two people? Ian had changed beyond all recognition. But then, if Iris were honest, so had she.
God, it was cold! Having finally reached the Wolfson Building, she trudged up C staircase and blew on her fingers until they were warm enough to enable her to retrieve the key from her pocket and open the door to her room. Inside, a huge ancient radiator blasted out heat, transforming the spartan space into a mini furnace. Turning it down, Iris surveyed the room. There was a single bed, a battered chest of drawers and a desk with a bunch of plastic flowers on it. On the far wall, one door opened onto a minuscule bathroom consisting of a loo, a handbasin and a shower so cramped it was hard to imagine how a grown man could have used it. A second door led into a ‘kitchenette’, which was basically a countertop and a small sink. Iris saw a kettle and a toaster, as well as a microwave that looked dangerously old and decrepit, and would probably irradiate anyone foolish enough to try to use it.
It was all exactly what she’d expected. What she’d wanted. But now that she was actually here, she felt inexplicably depressed. Claustrophobic, and trapped, and just … sad.
She’d remembered the name of the Russian developer Harry Masters had mentioned to her, all those weeks ago. Gardievski. Igor Gardievski.
Tomorrow she would track him down. She would find out all she could about the aborted housing development, and about Dom’s unpaid poker debts. She would ask about Vasile Gretski, and the two men she’d first seen at Dom Wetherby’s party who’d turned up to her portrait unveiling and taken off after Rachel Truebridge. She would make the puzzle pieces fit, somehow.
But not tonight.
Tonight she would go out and grab some takeaway, and eat it in this little room, and think about her life, and Ian, and what had gone wrong. She wanted things to work out with Graham Feeney. She really did. But for that to happen, she had to lay the ghost of her marriage to rest for good.
Was that part of why you needed to come to Oxford? Iris asked herself. Part of what was pulling you back here? Was that the part you couldn’t tell Graham?
With a sinking heart, she realised that it was.
Iris had come to Oxford for closure, not just for Dom Wetherby but for herself.
Would she find it?
Lying back onto the single bed, she closed her eyes.
One step at a time, Iris. One step at a time.
* * *
Iris woke at five, feeling tired and hung-over. The bottle of Rioja had seemed like a great idea last night, especially after two chicken kebabs from the van on Iffley Road, but with hindsight it probably hadn’t been her smartest move of all time.
After taking an Alka-Seltzer and goin
g back to bed, she woke again at seven feeling slightly better. A shower, two strong coffees and a fried breakfast later, Iris felt strong enough to put on her coat, scarf and bobble hat, and walk to the Bodleian Library. The walk took longer than usual. Snow had continued falling through the night and yesterday’s light dusting was now a thick, soft, clogging blanket of white that had slowed the entire city, blocking roads and making even cycling impossible in many places. Making her way past giggling, snowball-throwing undergraduates, Iris snagged herself a space at one of the Bodleian computers and got to work.
Finding Igor Gardievski’s company address and phone number online took a matter of minutes. Spire Properties International were based on one of the large industrial estates on the Oxford ring road, although they also had premises in London, Moscow and Hong Kong. If Gardievski really was the kind of man who had people murdered over unpaid gambling debts or cancelled development contracts, then he’d done a good job of masking it beneath a legitimate, professional façade. Iris spent another hour and a half at the library, searching for articles, tweets, anything that might link Gardievski or his company to illegal activity: gambling, coercion, blackmail, violence. But there was nothing to find. Vasile Gretski had enough rumours flying around about him to launch a slew of libel actions, if he wanted to. But according to the Internet, his friend Igor Gardievski was clean as a whistle.
A small local article did mention the denial of Spire’s planning application to develop at Hazelford last year. Gardievski was quoted as being ‘disappointed’, but that was it. Dom was quoted in the same piece, rambling on about the importance of ‘grassroots activism’ in preserving the nation’s ‘glorious green spaces’. There was a picture of him with Ariadne, arm in arm before the church, with a crowd of villagers apparently cheering in the background. Lorcan was standing in front of his parents, smiling at the camera as he always did. Iris looked at the picture for a long time, struck by something about it that she couldn’t quite name. In the end she gave up. Whatever it was would probably come to her later, when she was less hung-over.