After a lengthy recovery period, hindered rather than helped by several cups of strong coffee which did nothing for his blood pressure, he had asked Morag if there’d been anything in the morning mail that required his attention before he began his extended festive break.
She replied, ‘Not really. A few Christmas cards.’
She scattered them on his desk. He made a dismissive movement and she began to gather them together again. Then he reached forward, eased one of them out of the pack with his forefinger, and impatiently waved the rest of them away.
She observed him curiously as he studied the card at length.
In her eyes, it wasn’t at all Christmassy. It showed a tall figure wearing a floppy hat and some form of overall. His right hand rested on the haft of a long lumberjack’s axe, and he was standing on a ridge looking out over a mountainous landscape. The sky was filled with dark lowering clouds. It was a composition in blues and browns. The only touch of brightness lay in an edging of red along the blade of the axe.
Now Estover picked up the card and opened it. There was an inscription printed in a bold red font.
May your Christmas be merry
and New Year bring you all that you deserve.
There was no signature.
He said, ‘Where’s the envelope?’
‘Shredded,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. See if you can get Mr Nutbrown on the phone . . . no, on second thoughts, forget that. Some things are better face to face.’
‘Aye, I know what you mean,’ she said huskily.
He looked at her blankly. Please yourself, thought Morag. Her employer didn’t do sexy small-talk. She knew this, but she was basically a sweet girl and kept on trying.
He stood up and headed for the door, slipping the card into his inside pocket.
There was something there already and he pulled it out. He paused, turned, said, ‘Nearly forgot. Merry Christmas, Morag. See you next year.’
After he’d left, Morag checked the plain buff office envelope he’d handed to her. No writing on it. She opened it. Bank notes, used, not in sequence. Generous, but no accompanying message. It would have been ironic if this year Estover had made some more personal gesture, but now into her third year in his employ, like the absence of intimate chit-chat, this was what she’d come to expect. This was the measure of his trust.
She picked up her phone and dialled.
‘Hi, Mr Murray,’ she said. ‘It’s Morag. He saw the card and he’s away out. I think he’s going to see Mr Nutbrown.’
‘Guid girl,’ said a man’s voice.
Their shared nationality had certainly made it easier to accept this man’s proposal, though she assured herself she would never have betrayed her boss if there’d been the slightest hint of any emotional connection in their sex. But not once in the two and a half years she’d worked for Estover had he given her anything but money, which made her . . . well, she didn’t care to think what it made her, but it didn’t make her loyal, that was for sure.
She slipped the envelope into her bag and put Toby Estover out of her mind. Christmas and Oxford Street were just around the corner. What with her bonus and her new Scottish friend’s contribution, she could do full justice to both.
13
Toby Estover was not much given to flights of fancy, and he had long since forgotten all of his classical education save some scraps about Roman Law, but as he eased his Lexus out of the gloomy underground car park up into the bright winter sunshine it occurred to him that this must have been how it felt to emerge from Hades.
Except of course that London’s traffic as the modern Saturnalia raged to its climax was just another form of hell. As he progressed slowly northwards, he was tempted to abandon his plan and use the car phone to contact Johnny. But he’d tried that several times recently, he reminded himself. He had an uneasy feeling that, despite all his urgings that whatever they did, they must do it in unison, Pippa Nutbrown was plotting some independent action. He needed to see for himself.
Finally with huge relief he joined the M11, still very busy but at least he was able to spend more time with his foot on the accelerator than the brake for forty miles till he turned off towards Saffron Walden.
His destination, Poynters, Johnny Nutbrown’s country retreat, wasn’t easy to find even for a frequent visitor, and now Estover drove slowly by choice to make sure he didn’t miss the unclassified road that eventually led him to the old stone gateway marking the entrance to the grounds.
‘Well, well, well,’ he murmured, bringing the car to a halt.
There was a For Sale sign by the gate.
He sat and studied it. The agent was Skinners of Mayfair. He knew them. They specialized in top-of-the-market country estates. Claimed to get the highest prices. Which was just as well, as they charged the highest commission.
Approached up the drive, the house sold itself. Warm red brick below, black timbers against dazzling white mortar above, not one of your great rambling Tudor mansions, relatively small but perfectly formed, all bathed in the brightness of winter sunshine that either reveals flaws pitilessly or, as in this case, emphasizes every perfect detail of line and contour. It looked like most Englishmen’s unachievable dream of a place in the country.
Johnny had achieved it, and Estover knew how much he loved it. Which made it all the more worrying that he was trying to sell it.
He parked the car and tugged at the old bell-pull at the side of the almost square front door.
After a few moments it opened and a woman looked out at him with little sign of enthusiasm.
‘Pippa,’ said Estover, smiling. ‘The house looks so well that, if I had bucolic longings, I might be tempted to buy it myself.’
Pippa Nutbrown in her youth had always had a faint look of dissatisfaction even at moments of great pleasure, as though the peach she was eating could be juicier, or the music she was hearing could be better played, or the sex she was enjoying could be more ecstatic. But youthful beauty, good skin tone and a lively manner had obscured the expression, or else merely inspired the men in her life to attempt to do better next time.
Now, however, time, which had made this house look more beautiful, had in her case merely eroded everything else and left her looking permanently and unmistakably dissatisfied.
‘Toby,’ she said coldly. ‘I hope you’re not expecting lunch.’
‘Why should a man need lunch who has your beauty to feast upon?’ he asked.
‘If I want a combination of meaningless noise and crap, I’ll take a walk through the rookery,’ she said.
She turned away and he followed her into the house.
Her arse, he remarked with the eye of a connoisseur, was the only feature that age had improved. Once a tad angular for his taste, it had broadened into a saddle fit for a champion jump jockey. Perhaps this was the best angle of approach. He had sampled Pippa face on in their shared youth, but had not been tempted to repeat the experiment. He liked to see his own rapture mirrored in the eyes of the women he screwed, not a pair of scoring discs reading five point two.
But she had other attractions, one of them being an almost complete lack of any moral sense, and another an almost complete control over her husband. She would have needed that to persuade him to put Poynters on the market.
She pushed open the door of a small sitting room and said, ‘Johnny, here’s Toby.’
Johnny Nutbrown was relaxing on a huge Chesterfield that must have cost half a herd of cattle their skin. He was eating a piece of pie, presumably the end of the lunch Estover had been told not to expect.
‘Toby!’ he said. ‘Marvellous. Just the man. Good to see you.’
His enthusiasm did not impress. Estover had known him long enough to suspect that if Adolf Hitler himself had goose-stepped into the room, Nutbrown’s greeting would probably have been unchanged.
‘And you,’ he said. ‘You’re a hard man to get hold of these days. In fact, you both seem pretty inaccessible.’
The Nutbrowns exchanged glances, his interrogative, hers monitory.
‘Busy busy,’ said Johnny. ‘Sit down, try this claret. Pippa, bring the man a glass. And one for yourself.’
Pippa obeyed. Her husband took the wine bottle from the table by his elbow and poured.
‘Here’s health,’ he said.
They drank, Nutbrown deep, Estover a sip, Pippa a moistening of her lips.
‘I didn’t realize you were thinking of moving,’ said Estover.
Pippa didn’t reply but turned a gaze like a remote control on her husband.
‘You know how it is,’ said Johnny. ‘Old bones, English winters, as easy to move on lock stock and barrel as pack up all the gear needed for a couple of months in the sun.’
He spoke the words like a schoolboy repeating a rote-learned formula.
‘You’re going abroad then?’
Pippa said, ‘California. We like it there.’
‘Very nice.’ He set down his glass. ‘And the Americans are so fussy about who they let in, aren’t they? One strike and you’re shut out.’
‘That’s right,’ said Pippa. ‘You got a problem with that, Toby?’
‘No, indeed. Oh, by the by, I received an interesting Christmas card at the office. Wondered whether you got one too?’
He produced the card.
Pippa scarcely glanced at it before saying, ‘Yes, we did.’
Johnny said, ‘Did we? Don’t recall. Nice picture, though. I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere before.’
Estover looked at Pippa and raised his eyebrows.
The doorbell rang.
She didn’t move. Her husband didn’t even look as if he’d heard it.
There was another ring, more protracted this time.
Now without a word she rose and left the room.
As the door closed behind her, Estover said, ‘So tell me, Johnny, has Wolf tried to contact you?’
‘No. Why should he?’
‘Because you are, you were, his very dear friend.’
‘You too, Toby.’
‘I married his ex-wife, remember?’ said Estover grimly. ‘That puts me a little further beyond the pale, I think. And you might say that chopping down our rowan tree was a form of contact.’
‘Yes. You ever do anything about that?’
‘No. I wanted to get the police, Imo said no. No way to prove it was Hadda, but some cop would certainly make a bob or two by tipping off the press and we’d have those bastards crawling all over us.’
‘Probably right. Imo usually is,’ said Nutbrown. ‘Wish you hadn’t mentioned it to Pippa though. Last straw for her, I think. She’d been fussed ever since we heard Wolf was getting out early. Funny how you got that wrong, Toby. What was your forecast? Good for the whole stretch, you said! You really must tell me what you fancy for the George on Boxing Day.’
He smiled as he spoke but Estover was reminded that, though Pippa might pull the strings, Johnny Nutbrown’s limbs could still kick independently.
‘Give it a rest, will you?’ he said wearily. ‘I assume this move’s mainly down to Pippa, right? How about you, Johnny? Not worried Wolf might come calling?’
‘Not likely, is it? I mean, we’ve really lost touch. OK, I know there was a good reason for that, but it happens even if you don’t go to jail. Look at you and me, sometimes months go by without us meeting up.’
‘It’s certainly been hard to contact you recently,’ said Estover. ‘I’ve tried several times. I’m particularly surprised I didn’t hear from you professionally when you decided to put your house on the market. Unless you’re doing your own conveyancing?’
‘Pippa’s handling all that,’ said Nutbrown. ‘Not your sort of thing, conveyancing, is it, Toby? You’re far too important for that. No, it made sense to go local.’
‘So you were just going to pack up and leave all this behind you without so much as a word?’
Nutbrown’s gaze went slowly round the room as if for the first time the reality of leaving all this behind him had struck.
Estover pressed on.
‘Johnny, isn’t this a bit of an over-reaction? OK, we need to take stock, but as long as we stick together, what do we have to worry about?’
‘That’s what I said to Pippa,’ said Nutbrown. ‘Wolf’s out, so what? In fact, I was jolly glad to hear the news. Being banged up all that time, it makes me shudder just to think about it. Which is why I try not to. Incidentally, any idea how he managed to get out so early?’
‘I put out some feelers. Discreetly, of course. Seems he put his hand up for everything, took the cure,’ said Estover.
‘Good lord, why would he do that?’
‘To get out, of course,’ said Estover irritably. ‘Was a time when a prison sentence meant what it said. Now they employ people to help the bastards work the system! They’ve got some black bitch trick cyclist at Parkleigh, evidently. Pity she didn’t stay in the woodpile.’
Nutbrown grimaced and said, ‘Pippa says he’s gone back up to Cumbria. Is that right?’
‘Pippa’s always right. Yes, he’s up there, and I’m keeping a close check on him, believe me.’
‘Let me guess: the ineluctable Lady Kira?’
‘Yes. And from what I hear, he’s leading a hermitic existence, he’s a physical wreck, he exists on his social security hand-outs and, as for his state of mind, well, perhaps religion really has reared its ugly head as the only person he talks to is the local vicar.’
‘There you are then,’ said Johnny. ‘What’s to worry about? How’s Imo? You two heading off to Frog-land for Christmas?’
The Estovers had a farmhouse in Gascony.
‘No. Imo’s been rather off France since Ginny died. She doesn’t show it, but she took it really hard. So we’re going up to the castle. Imo’s there already. I’m joining her tomorrow.’
‘Wow,’ said Nutbrown, impressed. ‘Bearding Wolf in his lair, eh? Sounds more Imo’s style than yours, Toby.’
‘It is not, I assure you, my intent to do any bearding,’ said Estover. ‘You know Kira. She so loves an old-fashioned English house-party.’
‘Sounds grisly. Anyone I know?’
‘Nikitin’s going to be there, I believe.’
‘Pasha? He can be fun.’
‘Depends how you define fun.’
‘Still sniffing around Imo, is he?’ said Nutbrown sympathetically. ‘Still, the fees he pays you, I daresay he feels he has a big share in what’s yours. Only joking, old boy. And he is family, after all.’
‘He’s a cousin so often removed that Kira wouldn’t have paid the slightest heed to him if he hadn’t turned up in England trailing a few billion roubles,’ said Toby sourly. ‘Now I catch her watching me all the time, and I can almost hear her thinking: If only I’d trodden water a little longer, rather than encouraging Imo to marry this nobody, I could have had the fabulously rich Pavel Nikitin for my son-in-law. I’m sometimes tempted to tell her how he makes his money!’
‘You think it would make a difference?’ said Johnny. ‘At least she helped you get him as a client, so not all bad. Anyway, my love to all. And if you do bump into old Wolf, give him my best.’
Estover shook his head in bafflement. Talking to Johnny was like swimming in a goldfish bowl: you never ended up very far from where you’d begun. Except when you moved from words to figures. Ask Nutbrown how much they were worth and where it all was, and suddenly you were out in the open sea, only too glad to have this instinctive navigator leading you to Treasure Island. But on most other matters, to change the metaphor, it was like going down the rabbit hole.
As he rose to leave he said, ‘So how’s the sale going? Any interest?’
‘Nothing close to the asking price,’ declared Johnny, not bothering to hide his pleasure. ‘And you know Pippa, she likes her pound of flesh.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Estover, smiling reminiscently.
‘I daresay you do,’ said Nutbrown, returning the smile. ‘Though, from what
I hear, in your case a pound might be stretching things a bit.’
Yes, when Johnny’s limbs moved independently, he could manage a fair old kick, thought Estover as he left the room.
In the hall he heard voices and tracked them to the kitchen where he found Pippa drinking coffee with a long thin man with a slightly lugubrious face. She was smiling and looked very like her young self till she became aware he’d entered the room.
‘Toby, you off then?’ she said brusquely.
‘Yes. If I could have a quick word . . .’
He glanced at the man, who stood up and offered his hand.
‘Donald Murray,’ he said in a Scots accent. ‘Not here to look at the house, I hope?’
‘No, just a friend.’
‘Good! This is my second viewing and it’s looking even better than on the first! No appointment this time, but Mrs Nutbrown’s such a welcoming kind of body, I thought as I was in the area . . .’
‘No problem, Mr Murray,’ said Pippa, smiling again. ‘Look, why don’t you wander around by yourself while I talk to my . . . friend. I won’t be long.’
The Scot nodded at Estover and left the room.
‘High hopes there, then?’ murmured the solicitor.
‘Hopes,’ said Pippa. ‘So what can I do for you, Toby?’
‘Nothing, it seems. I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.’
‘What? No wise words? No little lecture?’
‘No. You’ve clearly made a decision.’
‘Yes, I have. If I had any doubts, that card removed them.’
‘You think it’s from Wolf?’
She laughed and said, ‘You know it is. It’s that bloody picture he was so fond of he had a copy in his office at work and another in his study at home. The Woodcutter, it’s called. But you know that, don’t you, Toby?’
‘Perhaps. But so what? Perhaps these are some cards that survived from the old days. Perhaps the poor chap can’t afford to buy new Christmas cards.’
She shook her head and said, ‘Do people really pay you thousands to talk such bollocks, Toby? What’s the problem? You can’t drop everything and leave the country and you’d rather we didn’t either? Safety in numbers, that what you think?’
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