Wicked Beauty

by Susan Lewis

  ‘A little, but he’ll make it up to them.’

  There was a short silence, then Anna realized that Stacey would be wondering why she’d called.

  ‘Everything’s all right, is it?’ Stacey said. ‘Only we’ve got a few friends here, and we’re just on our way out for dinner.’

  ‘Oh, yes, everything’s fine. Sorry, I shouldn’t keep you,’ Anna said hastily. Then quickly added, ‘How long is Chris staying? Is he home for a while?’

  ‘Only until tomorrow,’ Stacey answered with an exasperated sigh. ‘So I want to make the most of him.’ She paused then said, ‘Dare I ask if Robert’s happy with the scene we shot today? I know that’s very actressy, but …’

  ‘I’m sorry, that was why I was calling,’ Anna jumped in. ‘To say how thrilled we both are with the way it went today. It was very chilling, and moving. I can’t wait to see the rushes.’

  There was a smile in Stacey’s voice as she said, ‘I’m glad it worked. I don’t mind admitting I was anxious about doing it, especially as I’ve never done a rape scene before. Frankly, I’m glad it’s over.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Anna responded. ‘But you were very convincing.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  For several seconds after she rang off Anna remained where she was, the phone still in her hand. Then pressing it back on the hook she looked down at Robert. He was watching her, like a child waiting to be told what to do. Her heart ached with pity and love, as stooping over him she kissed the top of his head.

  ‘I’m sorry I doubted you,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, you were right to,’ he answered.

  Realizing that some part of him had needed the reassurance too, she tightened her embrace and tried hard not to cry. He was really only slightly delusional, not a raving lunatic, or a dangerous psychopath. She could keep him safe from his confusions.

  Attempting a smile, he said, ‘“I shall die trying to pluck the moon out of a pond.”’

  She smiled too, for it wasn’t the first time he’d likened himself to André Malraux’s Baron de Clapique, though she might have preferred a less esoteric character. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Let’s go and get you out of those clothes. Then we’ll tuck the girls in and have something to eat. Are you hungry?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, a little.’

  They walked up the stairs arms around each other, her head resting on his shoulder. ‘If I asked you to, would you agree to talk to someone – someone who might be able to help you straighten things out a little?’ she said.

  At the top of the stairs he turned her to face him and gazed tenderly into her eyes. ‘I never want to hurt anyone, yet you, whom I love above all others, I keep hurting you.’

  ‘That’s a line from the script,’ she admonished gently.

  ‘But it was written by me, and it’s the truth.’

  She merely carried on looking into his face, her heart heavy with the very real weight of her love.

  ‘Yes, I’ll talk to someone,’ he said quietly, ‘but only if you’ll come with me.’

  She smiled and touched her lips gently to his. ‘Of course,’ she told him. ‘I’ll always be there for you. Always. You know that.’

  He pulled her into an embrace and held her tight. If there were any fairness in the world, then if only for Anna’s sake, his mind would now be wiped free of Stacey, never to be troubled again by the obsessive madness of wanting her. But there was no fairness, because the libidinous demons were already taunting him again, daring him to make love to his wife now, while reliving everything he’d done earlier with Stacey.

  Rachel was just about to start locking up the villa when the telephone in the kitchen rang. Leaving the keys in the door, she dashed back across the room and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Hendon?’

  Her heart gave a jolt. But it was probably just the taxi company calling to say the driver was late. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘I am glad to catch you before you leave,’ the familiar accented voice told her.

  Oh dear God. This was the first time she’d heard from him since she’d given back the money, and for him to call now, at this villa, after she’d been left alone for two days with the very worst kind of suspicions building in her mind … Her eyes darted frantically around the room. It was ludicrous to think he was hiding in the shadows, but it almost felt as though he were. ‘What do you want?’ she snapped, fear tightening her voice.

  ‘Just for you please to listen to what I say,’ he answered politely. ‘Your search for Katherine Sumner will not serve the purpose you are hoping for. You believe she will tell you what happened to your husband, why he was murdered, but she will not. She will only put you in the gravest danger if you approach her, and as an expectant mother I do not believe that is a position you wish to be in.’

  Rachel’s blood turned cold at the mention of the baby, but before she could speak a word of response he was speaking again.

  ‘I should also warn you,’ he continued, ‘that there is a chance she will initiate some kind of contact with you. In this unlikely, though possible event, I urge you, Mrs Hendon, do not be taken in. No matter what she says she only means you harm, so please, resist any invitations she might make for you to meet, and deny her all access to your home.’

  Despite the turmoil in her mind, Rachel’s anger was audible as she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re basing any of these assumptions on, but if you know where Katherine Sumner is … Or if you know why my husband was murdered …’ She spun round at the sound of a car pulling into the drive. Please God let it be the taxi.

  ‘My advice to you, Mrs Hendon,’ he said, ‘is to forget what happened, put it behind you and go on with your life. It will be safer, for you and your child.’

  ‘No! Don’t hang up,’ she cried as the line went dead. ‘Don’t hang up!’ But it was too late, he’d gone, leaving her anguish echoing around the doleful silence of the room. She almost screamed as a voice behind her said,

  ‘Miss?’

  She swung round to find a man looming darkly in the bright sunlight of the doorway.

  ‘Taxi?’ he said. ‘Go to ferry at Government Dock?’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ she gasped, pushing a hand through her hair. ‘Sorry, I’ll be right there.’

  ‘I take bag down,’ he said, and squealed round on his rubber soles to pick up her camera case and holdall.

  For several moments she stood staring at the phone, still so thrown by the call that she was unsure what to do, or even to think. Then snatching it up she quickly dialled Laurie’s number.

  ‘Hi. I thought you’d have left by now,’ Laurie said.

  ‘I’m just about to. But you need to hear this.’ Quickly she related what the caller had said. ‘What really threw me,’ she added, ‘was that he seemed to think Katherine might get in touch.’

  ‘I’m more curious to know why she’d mean you any harm,’ Laurie responded, ‘unless he’s just saying that to frighten us off.’

  ‘Whichever, he obviously knew where to find me, so does that mean the people who were here looking for Katherine before us did belong to him?’

  ‘It certainly adds more weight, but without knowing for certain who the phone call came from …’

  ‘Did you ask Elliot if he’d mentioned the passport and driving licence to anyone?’ Rachel interrupted.

  ‘No. Not yet. He’s been held up in Paris, but Max didn’t know about it, and if he didn’t tell Max, I can’t imagine who else he’d tell.’

  Rachel’s eyes darted back to the door. ‘Then there is only one other person,’ she murmured.

  It was a moment or two before Laurie said, ‘Have you heard from him since he left?’

  ‘No,’ Rachel answered. ‘I’m not sure whether I expected to.’ She laughed drily and didn’t go any further.

  ‘After your call,’ Laurie said, ‘I got Gino to do a bit of digging around. Apparently, about three years ago a London art dealer
by the name of Chris Gallagher sold a Modigliani nude to the chairman of the Phraxos Group, Franz Koehler.’

  Rachel’s heart felt as though it were being torn in two. Images from the past two months began flashing through her mind, a bewildering circus of kindness, laughter, music, a kiss, but those sudden disappearances, all the phone calls, the questions … ‘And since then?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing else, so far.’

  ‘So it could just be a coincidence?’

  Laurie was silent.

  ‘No, of course it isn’t,’ Rachel said flatly. Then after pressing a hand hard to her head, as though to still the chaos, ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘Well, first you’d better get yourself back to England … When’s your flight?’

  Rachel looked at her watch. ‘At four. It’s eleven now, and I have to get the ferry, so I should go.’

  ‘OK. We’ll talk more when you’re home. Will you be going straight to Cornwall, or staying in London?’

  ‘London, I think. At least at first. I’m concerned about Anna, and I don’t much fancy the idea of running into Chris in Cornwall.’

  ‘Have you told Anna anything about this?’

  ‘No. She’d probably find a way of blaming herself, and she’s got enough on her plate.’

  ‘Do you think she knows him?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve never mentioned him to her, I didn’t want her jumping to the wrong conclusions.’ Her laugh was brittle and derisory. ‘This’ll teach me to stop my sister from worrying about me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind hearing what Beanie has to say about it,’ Laurie commented. ‘Why did she never mention it, I wonder? I take it you had no idea Stacey Greene was a neighbour?’

  ‘No. I’ve never seen her in the village, nor heard anyone talk about her. I wouldn’t even know who she was if it weren’t for Robert and Anna.’

  ‘Yet everyone’s so friendly to Chris,’ Laurie said curiously. ‘Which is about the only good thing he’s got going for him at the moment, but as Elliot’s too fond of reminding me, very few people are all good, or all bad, and we know for certain that Chris Gallagher’s got several more dimensions to him than first appearances might suggest.’

  Rachel said, ‘I have to go. I just want to get out of here now. Why don’t you try calling Chris to see what he has to say?’

  ‘OK. I will. Have a good journey. I’ll call you in the middle of the day, tomorrow.’

  After putting the phone down Rachel locked the kitchen door then tucked the keys under a dustbin, as she’d been told to, and ran down the steps to the taxi. In her hand was a half-read copy of The Magus, which she intended to finish on the plane, but for the moment her mind was so full of Chris, and the appalling fact that he’d never once mentioned selling a painting to Franz Koehler, that she just couldn’t think about anything else. Obviously it was no coincidence, any more than his failure to tell her was a momentary lapse of memory. Which could only mean that everything, from the day he’d turned up at the cottage to offer his condolences, to the night here, on Virgin Gorda, when they’d come so close to making love, had been based on a deceit far, far worse than she’d even begun to imagine.

  Her eyes were turned to the window, but seeing nothing of the pristine blue spread of the sea as she wondered where he was now. She hadn’t called him since he left, and he hadn’t called her either. It was galling and disheartening to know how much she’d wanted him to, even though she’d known, even before speaking to Laurie, that she could never trust him again, never confide in him the way she had, or even laugh with him any more. Nothing could be the same again now, so it was just foolish to think it could. She couldn’t even be sure how much truth he’d told her about Katherine, for if he knew Franz Koehler, there was a strong possibility that he knew Katherine too. He could even be fully informed of the nature of Tim’s connection to the Phraxos Group, so the reason he’d befriended her was to make sure that she never was. It made her head throb to think he’d been holding such crucial details back from her, but since he’d failed to mention Stacey Greene, or the Modigliani painting, she’d have to be some kind of idiot if she was prepared to believe that was all he was hiding.

  So what should she do from here?

  Looking down at the book in her hand she felt daunted and afraid of the fictional character whose supernatural and scientific experiments with the minds of his chosen players were starting to appear as some kind of model for a much more diabolical exploitation of wealth and power, an even greater abuse of human suffering and greed. And now almost as bad as fearing that Tim had been a part of that, was knowing that Chris was.

  Chapter 22

  CHRIS’S FACE SHOWED signs of his tiredness as he and Rudy were admitted into the private study of Franz Koehler’s palatial lakeside home. The man himself was seated at his large, mahogany desk and didn’t immediately look up when the butler announced his visitors by name. The early evening sunlight, streaming across Lake Zurich, and in through the wall of windows that overlooked the spectacular view, pooled on the Persian rugs and redwood floor. The air was stuffy and smelt of beeswax and the hundreds of leather-bound volumes that crowded the other three walls, except where the prized Bonnards hung in specially designed and appropriately lit niches.

  ‘Thank you for being prompt, gentlemen,’ he said finally, putting down his pen and getting to his feet as the butler discreetly left the room.

  He came round the desk to greet them. He shook Rudy’s hand first, then turned to Chris, regarding him carefully.

  Chris met the scrutiny unflinchingly.

  ‘I am glad to see you,’ Koehler told him, in his softly spoken, accented English. ‘I had intended this meeting to happen immediately on your return from the Caribbean, but I’m afraid other events rather overtook me, and it turned out not to be possible. However, as it allowed you some time with your lovely wife I don’t imagine you’re too angry with me.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Chris responded.

  ‘You’ll both take Scotch, gentlemen?’ he said, walking to the bar and removing the stopper from a Baccarat decanter.

  As Rudy accepted for them, Chris slid his hands into his pockets and walked over to the fireplace, staring up at the straining, taut figure of an extremely expensive nude whose sexually expressive pose and anguished features quite effectively revealed the artist’s lifelong love-hate relationship with women. It was the Modigliani that had first brought him into contact with Franz Koehler, an event whose every detail was imprinted indelibly on his mind, from the initial approach of the seller, to the official unveiling right here in this room. By then his life had already begun its unexpected journey, but even so, he could never have imagined just how deeply involved he would become, or how dramatically his own role would alter. So dramatically in fact, that in many ways he’d almost lost touch with the man he’d once been, which, were he to admit as much to Koehler, would please the older man a great deal, since it was his purpose, his own personal challenge in life, to discover the strengths and weaknesses of a man’s morals, by offering him riches and adventures beyond his wildest dreams, in exchange for what sometimes felt like yet another part of the soul.

  ‘I hear your wife is posing for Ernesto Gomez,’ Koehler remarked, bringing him a Scotch and gazing up at the Modigliani too.

  Chris took the glass. ‘She is,’ he confirmed. ‘It’s a series to accompany a set of poems by Robert Maxton.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Koehler commented. ‘Can I request a first look, when they’re finished?’

  ‘I’m sure it can be arranged,’ Chris responded.

  Koehler smiled, then took a sip of his drink. ‘So, how was Mrs Hendon when you left her?’ he asked, going to sit on one of the bulky leather sofas that flanked the hearth. ‘Incidentally, you did the right thing going over there. Lucky she called before she left, mm?’

  Chris nodded, and raised his glass to take a sip.

  ‘So, we now know that her efforts yielded more than ours,’ Koehler continued
, ‘only insofar as Katherine flew from the Caribbean to Madrid. But of course, we already knew she’d been in Madrid. And from there she went to a small village in the south-west of France. After that she disappeared for a while, but I’m happy to report that she recently resurfaced in Venice, attempting to blend with the tourists. It’s rather unfortunate that we didn’t manage to apprehend her then, but a chase through the streets of the city, which was what almost ensued, would have created a lot of unnecessary attention. However, it is now only a matter of time.’

  Though Koehler appeared as unruffled as he sounded, as the head of one of the world’s most powerful organizations, Chris knew he wouldn’t be enjoying the experience of being outwitted by a mere woman, particularly one who should, by all calculations, be unable to make a single move without him either knowing about it, or even sanctioning it. Indeed, it was probably only the fact that the police had failed to find her too, that made this outrageous anomaly in his otherwise immaculately controlled existence slightly easier to take.

  ‘Mm, by the way,’ Koehler continued, after swallowing a mouthful of Scotch, ‘I should tell you, if Mrs Hendon hasn’t already, that I’ve had a small chat with her.’

  Chris’s eyes widened slightly.

  ‘I wanted to make her aware of how dangerous it would be for her to continue her search for Katherine,’ Koehler informed him. ‘So far you have been very successful in learning all that she knows, and indeed in persuading her to return the money without alerting the police to its existence, but there’s no knowing what she, and this journalist, might turn up, and in the event of you not being there, we can’t rely on her to tell you.’ He looked hard at Chris, then abruptly said, ‘Speaking of journalists, I believe Rudy has informed you that the individual who was introduced to us as Mark Hastings has turned out to be a British reporter by the name of Elliot Russell. Fortunately, our friend, Dr Bombola, has taken care of things, and we are now conducting an investigation into how he managed to infiltrate so far before his true identity was brought to our attention. You will be interviewed following this meeting.’