by Susan Lewis
Astonished, and not a little pleased, she said, ‘But darling, I had no idea you could be so jealous.’
‘If that’s what you want to tell yourself, then be my guest,’ he snarled, ‘but I want that promise, now!’
‘Then you shall have it, but he is the director, and with post-synching and effects and everything, I’m not sure I can avoid …’
His head snapped up as a flash of light exploded around them. Spotting the photographer, lurking just past the taxi rank, he quickly turned and started towards the end of the street.
Going after him, she said, ‘I need to get my shawl, my bag …’
He kept on walking, heading into the Victorian labyrinth of Covent Garden where he’d left the car. When they reached it he opened the door for her to get in, then drove them home in silence.
By the time they got inside he’d hardly cooled off at all, for everything, just everything, was getting out of hand, and now their goddamned picture was going to be emblazoned all over some tabloid in the morning. Just what he needed. And he still needed to find out more about Laurie, because as far as he was aware no one was supposed to have been at that flat, so what the hell had gone wrong?
Slamming the door behind him, he tore off his jacket and threw it down on a chair.
‘Mmm,’ Stacey murmured, sauntering in after him, ‘you know how I love it …’
‘This isn’t a game, Stacey,’ he snapped, putting out a hand to stop her.
She froze, and watched him walk to the bar. There was no pretence in this, she could see that. He was truly angry and the tone of his voice had sent a shudder of fear right through her heart. She stayed where she was, not knowing what to do, or say. She thought about removing her dress, since it had always worked in the past, yet this time she sensed it would be wrong.
‘Do you want something?’ he said, filling a glass for himself.
‘Yes, the truth,’ she answered, feeling her mind starting to buzz.
He turned to face her. His eyes were colder than she’d ever seen them. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.
She didn’t want to go on, but her finger was on destruct now. ‘Rachel Hendon,’ she said.
He was about to drink, but his hand stopped in mid-air. ‘What have you heard?’ he asked.
Her face turned white, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. Not, what are you talking about? Or, who? But, what have you heard? ‘That you’ve been seeing a lot of her,’ she said shakily. ‘And that she was in the Caribbean at the same time as you.’
He took a large mouthful of whisky.
‘Aren’t you going to deny it?’ she cried.
He shook his head.
‘So it’s true?’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
The words tore through her, but rage suddenly burst past the pain. ‘How can you just stand there and admit it?’ she shouted. ‘Don’t you care what it’s doing to me? You’re my husband, for God’s sake. I love you …’
‘Did you care what you were doing to Anna Maxton?’
‘That’s got nothing to do with this. I’m not having an affair with Robert.’
‘And I’m not having one with Rachel.’
‘Then why are you rushing off to Cornwall tomorrow, when you haven’t even been back a day? You can’t wait to see her, can you? You took her to the Caribbean and now you’re going to move her into my house …’
‘Actually, it’s mine,’ he corrected, brutally, ‘but as you’re wrong about me moving her in …’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ she shouted. ‘You’re lying,’ and picking up a vase she hurled it across the room.
It hit the bar, a few feet from where he was standing, but an ashtray came flying after it that only just missed.
‘Stacey, stop this!’ he ordered.
‘No. You stop!’ she yelled, throwing a cushion, then a photograph, then a handful of books. ‘You’re not going down there, do you hear me! I’m not going to let you.’
Managing to grab her before she threw an expensive bronze, he held her in a powerful grip and spoke harshly into her face, ‘Listen to me,’ he said, furiously, ‘there’s nothing between me and Rachel Hendon. I love you. You’re my wife.’
‘Then what was the Caribbean all about?’ she spat. ‘What was she doing there, when you didn’t even offer to take me?’
‘I didn’t take her either. She was going, so I went with her –’
‘Bastard!’ she screamed, trying to break free. ‘You’re a bastard and a liar and if you ever see her again I swear I’ll kill you both.’
‘Stacey, for God’s sake, her husband’s hardly cold in his grave,’ he shouted. ‘Do you seriously think she –’
‘I don’t care about her! It’s you. You’d rather have her than me, even though she’s pregnant with another man’s child. What’s the matter with you? Why won’t you have a child with me? I’m your …’
‘It’s not about a child,’ he shouted back.
‘Then what? What can she give you that I can’t?’
His eyes were gleaming with rage, his mouth tight with frustration. He was hating every minute of this, but just couldn’t make himself back down. Then abruptly he let her go and turned to the bar.
Shaken by his failure to respond, she stood watching him. Then as realization dawned she said, ‘Oh my God, you really do care for her, don’t you? This is serious for you.’ Her hands went to her head. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ she groaned. ‘This can’t be happening. I won’t let it. Chris, tell me this isn’t happening …’
‘It’s not what you think,’ he responded.
Her eyes were desperate, her heart churning like crazy. ‘Because she doesn’t want it,’ she said, more understanding dawning. ‘She’s still not over her husband, but you’re prepared to … what? Wait?’
‘I told you, it’s not what you think.’
‘Then what is it? Tell me, Chris, or so help me God …’
‘Don’t threaten me, or her!’ he growled. ‘She’s in enough danger …’
She blinked in astonishment. ‘What?’ she hissed. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
His eyes were like glass, hard and dangerously edged.
She stared back, challenging him to go further, but in the end he backed off. ‘Just forget it,’ he said, turning away. ‘Forget it.’
Picking up a lamp, she landed it on his back. ‘No I won’t just forget it!’ she yelled. ‘I want to know what’s happening between you and that woman.’
Reeling round, he grabbed her again, ‘Have you forgotten who her husband was?’ he shouted. ‘Have you forgotten what happened to him?’
‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’
‘Everything! Goddamnit, Stacey, don’t you listen to anything I tell you? Don’t you ever read anything but trash papers? Franz Koehler is involved in her husband’s murder! That in itself implicates me, and if Katherine Sumner …’ He stopped.
‘No! Don’t you dare walk away now,’ she snapped, grabbing him. ‘You owe me the truth, and damn you, you’re –’
‘If Rachel Hendon and Katherine Sumner ever meet,’ he snarled, twisting his hand from her grip, ‘then God help Rachel Hendon. In fact, God help us all.’ His eyes were boring into her like lasers, his lips were completely white, then moving her aside, he went back to get his drink.
She looked after him, rubbing her wrist where he’d crushed it, and panting for breath. She had no idea where the truth was in any of this, or how dangerous it might be, to his very lucrative association with Franz Koehler, his well-being, or even his freedom, but what she did know, with every female instinct in her body, was that he’d fallen for Rachel Hendon. So it was best for Rachel Hendon to know now that she had a fight on her hands that she was never going to win.
It was ironic, Laurie was thinking, or perhaps the word was galling, to find that Elliot had been knocked off one of the front pages by a domestic spat between, of all people, Chris Gallagher and his spoiled brat wife. But at least
it proved Chris Gallagher was in the country now, even if he still wasn’t returning her calls – and she’d been trying ever since she’d got the papers that morning. She just hoped the police were having more luck, because she hadn’t hesitated in giving them his name, even though she still didn’t know if his connection to Franz Koehler went beyond a three-year-old sale of a Modigliani. But she didn’t care; she was prepared to grasp at anything that might help them to find Elliot.
It was now early on Saturday afternoon, and despite how much it still hurt to move, and even speak her lips were so swollen, she’d come into the office to see if work might help her escape the horrors of her mind. However, operating the computer was frustrating to the extreme, with two fingers of her right hand splinted together, and it was almost impossible to think about anything but the lengthy and detailed session she’d been through at Scotland Yard that morning. Not for the first time, they’d made her go over and over everything that had happened, what she knew about Elliot’s ‘self-appointed assignment’ as they were calling it, and everything she was working on herself. It was amazing, she thought bitterly, just how expert they were at extracting information without giving anything away. But she wasn’t stupid, she knew the men questioning her were from Special Ops, even though there had been no sign of Haynes – some of them were probably even attached to the more clandestine agencies, for the simple reason that the nature of Elliot’s story demanded it.
So, just how much they already knew, or how thorough the search for Elliot actually was, were details known only to them, but one thing she had managed to pick up was their suspicion that it was already too late. Max had got the same feeling, during his own interrogations, and though he wasn’t coming right out and saying so, she knew that he was close to agreeing. But she just wasn’t prepared to accept that, even though she knew they had people on the inside of Franz Koehler’s network, who were presumably feeding back more information than was being passed on to her. But surely to God if they knew he was already dead they wouldn’t keep it to themselves, so that at least provided some room for hope. She still hadn’t yet been able to discover the outcome of Franz Koehler’s own interview with the police. However, she did know that the French authorities were claiming he was no longer in their country, and so far no one had offered even a suggestion as to where else he might be.
Lifting her head and reaching for a tissue to dry her badly bruised eyes, she turned back to the picture of Chris Gallagher in the paper. Had Rachel seen it yet, she wondered? If she had, what was she making of the claim that the Gallagher/Greene marriage was on the rocks? It would surely have had an effect, though the fact that her own sister and brother-in-law’s marriage was so threatened by it would presumably far outweigh her personal feelings.
Reaching for the phone, she dialled Rachel’s number in Killian, ever hopeful that she might have heard from the errant husband.
‘You didn’t get my message?’ Rachel replied. ‘I called a couple of hours ago to let you know he was on his way to Cornwall. He rang to ask if we could meet when he gets here.’
Adrenalin stirred in Laurie’s heart. ‘Did he say anything else?’ she asked.
‘Just that he was in the car, on his way out of London. He sounded, well, let’s say, not his usual self. More aloof. Strained. But he could have taken a lead from me, because I wasn’t exactly friendly. I didn’t invite him to come here, it just doesn’t feel right for him to be in Tim’s house, considering the kind of question marks we’ve got hanging over him.’
‘Did you mention any of it?’
‘He didn’t give me the chance. He just asked if we could meet, so we set a time and place, then he rang off. I’ve tried calling him since, but his mobile’s turned off.’
Laurie looked down at his picture in the paper again. ‘I don’t suppose he has the first idea that we know about his connection to Franz Koehler,’ she said. ‘I imagine he thinks he’s coming to explain why he never told you he was married … Have you seen today’s paper, by the way?’
‘Yes, I have,’ Rachel answered grimly. ‘Anna’s taking it quite badly. She’s terrified there might be some truth to the marriage being in trouble, even though she’s adamant there isn’t actually an affair between Stacey and Robert.’
Though it had certainly looked like one to her, when she’d seen them together, Laurie merely said, ‘Let’s hope she’s right. What actually happened last night, did she say?’
‘Apparently Stacey turned on Robert, started screaming at him in the middle of the party, then Chris dragged her out. It was pretty unpleasant by the sound of it, Robert was really shaken up. They’ve got a horde of reporters camped out on their doorstep now, trying to get comments or shots of them at the window. They’re virtual prisoners, she said. And it seems I’m lucky my name hasn’t been mentioned, because Stacey yelled something about keeping both me and Robert locked up, which I imagine answers whether or not she knows Chris and I were in the Caribbean together.’
Laurie shivered. ‘The woman’s got bad news written all over her,’ she remarked. ‘I felt it the first time we met. You have to wonder why Chris can’t see it, unless it’s written all over him too, and we’re only just noticing.’
Rachel sighed. ‘I wish to God I knew what to think about him,’ she said. ‘I still feel angry about the lies – or omissions, I suppose is what they are. He never mentioned he was married, never told us about the painting he sold to Franz Koehler, so what else hasn’t he told us? That he’s following in his father’s footsteps, and using his art dealership as a means of getting close to Koehler? But if that is the case, why only the one sale? You’d think there would be more, wouldn’t you?’
‘There might be, and we just haven’t dug them out yet,’ Laurie answered. ‘I don’t imagine they’d all be as high profile as a Modigliani. Elliot’s team have been working on it, but they have to make their own boss the priority at the moment. They’re spread out all over the place, from Paris, to Liberia, to Cape Town, one of them’s even on the Greek island of Spetses, which, as you know, was renamed Phraxos in The Magus.’
‘But as we also know, a Greek island isn’t big enough for Herr Koehler,’ Rachel remarked. ‘However, if anyone can get through this, Elliot can. So don’t give up hope. And there’s a chance, if Chris is involved in some way, that we might have some more news by this evening.’
‘God, I hope so,’ Laurie responded. ‘Do your best – and good luck.’
Chapter 26
TWO HOURS LATER Rachel was sitting on a lush, grassy bank that sloped down to the sheer cliff edge, where a vertical drop plunged two hundred feet to the rocks below, creating the chasm known locally as the Devil’s Frying Pan. The open fissure had once been a cave, but the roof had long since collapsed, leaving only the ragged arch of the entrance bridging the hollow, and a huge, domed boulder at the heart that, on stormy days, when the sea crashed and boiled around it, looked like an egg frying in a pan. Even on mild days it was a dramatic and noisy display, for the waves were always big around this side of the headland, and the jagged, slime-covered rocks never appeared anything but treacherous, or deadly should anyone be unlucky enough to fall.
Since Chris’s call, early that morning, she’d run up and down the entire gamut of emotions, as she tried to work out how she was going to handle this. She hadn’t confessed to Laurie what a difficult time she was having with perspective, though Laurie had probably guessed it anyway, for one minute she was thinking of him as the man she’d become so very fond of, who couldn’t possibly mean her any kind of harm, and the next she felt so hostile and angry, she almost didn’t care if he was just being his father’s son. The fact was he’d never told her things that were vital to her perceptions of him, and she just didn’t see how they could get past that, until she remembered that he might not have had any choice, he simply wouldn’t have been able to tell her anything that might expose his covert role, if such a role existed.
Round and round, back and forth, and still she was
no closer to knowing how she felt about anything, apart from how glad she was that she’d chosen to meet here, for the day was so glorious, and the meadow all around so full of butterflies and flowers, that it was hard to feel oppressed by the weight of her anxieties, or even too apprehensive about how much more muddied the waters were by her personal feelings.
As her heart stirred with nervousness, she leaned back on her hands to feel the breeze on her face. The gulls were screeching and flocking round the cliffs as she gazed far out to sea, where the tiny specks of fishing boats were only just visible, and a larger vessel was passing slowly across the horizon. It occurred to her that a marijuana drop had just been made, though she knew it was unlikely, for the fishermen would hardly be out there at the same time as the suppliers, that would be far too much of a risk. Nevertheless, sitting here, high up on this remote part of the coastline, with the wind carrying the scent of mustard grass and hot ‘n’ tot through the air, it wasn’t hard to imagine just how simple an operation it was for the locals to bring in their cargo. Stacey really had known what she was doing, for they were such regulars out there on the seas that even in these different, more security conscious times, the customs cutters rarely ever bothered the fishermen they knew, and it wouldn’t even surprise her to learn that the contraband was brought right into Killian Cove, rather than to a more secluded, and uninhabited part of the coast.
Sighing, and trying once again to marshal her thoughts, she was just wondering whose boat was being followed by the cluster of birds when she heard a dog barking and turned to see Romie barrelling eagerly towards her. Laughing, and catching her in an embrace as she flung her fat body into her lap, she looked up again, expecting to see Beanie clambering over the stile. Her heart gave a lurch when she saw it was Chris.
Just as she’d feared, as she watched him walking towards her, she was aware of how deeply affected she was by him. It was threatening to make it almost impossible to be objective, or even altogether rational, for watching him now she was only able to see him as the man who sang and teased and told wonderful stories – and who’d made her feel almost glad to be alive at a time when she’d actually wanted to die. How could all that be just an act?