A Place of Safety

by Natasha Cooper

‘It’s too cold to stand out here. And I need lunch. My body clock is all over the place after being in the States for three days: too long to avoid jet lag and too short to get properly acclimatized. Will you come and eat with me? We can talk much more easily in the warm.’

  Trish followed him reluctantly into a restaurant without noticing which it was or anything about it. She asked for an omelette because it was the lightest thing on the menu. As Buxford gave the order to their waiter, Trish rehearsed what she had to say to him.

  ‘You look very serious,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That you’re right: Toby is involved in something that terrifies him. I’ve never seen it before because each time I’ve been to the gallery he’s been in control. Now that I have seen it, I’m seriously worried about him.’

  ‘I wish to God he’d had the guts to come to me for help in the first place,’ Buxford said. ‘I could have had it all sorted by now. Still, he’s coming to dinner with me in the Garrick tonight. That may do the trick.’

  Trish remembered the last time she’d been a guest in the club and felt the weight of centuries of wealth and status bearing down on her. It wouldn’t have made her want to tell anyone anything, least of all a man as rich and powerful as Henry Buxford. But then she was a natural rebel.

  Unlike Toby, she thought, as Robert’s mocking voice echoed in her memory.

  ‘I have been told that while he was at Cambridge,’ she said aloud, ‘he used to run around doing favours for richer undergraduates to make them like him. You might try to tap into that part of his character.’

  ‘He’ll have grown out of all that by now.’ Buxford sounded impatient. ‘People change, you know, Trish.’

  ‘I don’t think they do, not in fundamental ways.’ She thought of an old photograph of herself as a fat 3-year-old standing under a garden sprinkler and gazing up at her father. At some level she would always be that child, who would have done anything to make Paddy love her because that was the only thing that would make the world safe for ever. ‘It could have been that habit which got Toby into this mess in the first place.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Here’s your omelette,’ Buxford said. ‘Tuck in.’

  ‘All art collectors are rich,’ she started, thinking it through as she spoke, ‘and Toby will know most of them. After all, they’ve been coming to him for years whenever they’ve wanted expert advice on paintings to buy or sell, haven’t they?’

  Buxford nodded, but he didn’t look impressed.

  ‘What if one of them, maybe a stranger in London, once asked him to get hold of some drugs?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have had a clue what to do,’ Buxford said snappily, picking up his knife and fork. ‘Your omelette’s getting cold.’

  ‘It’s not hard to find out who the best dealers are,’ Trish went on. She thought of the video producers she had met in Jeremy Carfield’s flat. ‘I hate and detest that whole world, but I’d know exactly who to go to if I needed to buy some drugs. And if I do, anyone would. Even Toby.’

  ‘I wish you’d eat.’

  She realized that he was waiting to start on his steak until she had had some of her omelette and obediently forked up a crisp corner.

  ‘Any dealer would make enquiries before supplying a new customer,’ she went on as soon as she’d swallowed her small mouthful. ‘And if Toby’s supplier discovered that he has this astonishing amount of power over the Gregory Bequest, he’d probably have done anything he could to get his hands on it.’

  ‘You’re back to money-laundering again,’ Buxford said, even more irritably. ‘I wish you weren’t so obsessed. There’s no evidence that Toby has ever had anything whatsoever to do with anyone who sells drugs.’

  ‘But it’s the only thing that fits the few facts we have. Think, Henry. There’s no other reason for Toby to have taken in five million pounds a couple of months ago and then tried to pay it out again this morning.’

  ‘He wasn’t ever going to pay it out,’ Buxford said, cutting deeply into the centre of his steak and watching it ooze thin red blood. Then he looked up with something like the old, charming smile. ‘Didn’t you notice how he dropped out of the bidding long before he could have been landed with the painting?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But then I couldn’t see much from where I was sitting.’

  ‘Then take it from me. I watched him the whole way through. He clearly wasn’t there to spend any money, let alone five million pounds. All he was doing was ramping up the price for the auctioneers, presumably in return for one of those kickbacks you warned me about.’

  ‘Taking kickbacks isn’t nearly serious enough to make anyone look as frightened as Toby did,’ Trish said. ‘At one moment I thought he was going to pass out. Or have a heart attack.’

  ‘Aren’t you exaggerating?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I do. Now I come to think of it, he looked exactly like a secretary my wife once employed. She hadn’t even taken bribes, just been a victim of the great carbon-paper scam. But she was terrified of being found out.’

  Trish cut off another corner of the omelette and ate it. If Henry were not prepared to accept what looked increasingly obvious to her, there didn’t seem any point saying any more.

  ‘You’re probably too young to have seen anything of it,’ he went on, as though she’d asked a question. ‘I suppose it started about thirty years ago. It was ultimately fairly trivial, and the effect on the victims quite disproportionate to what they were actually made to do. A bunch of wide boys used to bully secretaries in small businesses into believing they’d ordered millions of sheets of carbon paper without meaning to. When they protested, they’d be led to believe they would be sued if they didn’t go ahead with the deal. Most of them were so frightened they let it go on.’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Possibly. But it was effective. Went on for years. I should have thought of Sad Sue and her mountains of carbon paper when I first realized how scared Toby was. I wonder what Goode & Floore’s have been holding over him to make him look so like her.’

  ‘If he really had taken bribes from them,’ Trish said reluctantly, still certain that Buxford was underestimating the problem, ‘mightn’t that be enough in itself?’

  ‘Could be. Yes. I don’t suppose it occurred to him that there was anything wrong with taking a commission for giving them the de Hooch to sell. I wonder when he realized what a dim view the trustees would take of that.’

  Trish could see how much more comfortable Henry would feel with this than if he had to face the fact that his godson had been forced into laundering drug money through the trust of which he himself was chairman. But she wasn’t going to encourage it.

  ‘So,’ he said, untroubled by her silence, ‘all we’ve got to do now is show that Toby’s got much less to fear from telling me than letting it go on. You could help there, Trish.’

  ‘I? How?’

  ‘By going back to the gallery this afternoon and softening him up for my encounter with him this evening. I’d like you to ask him about art-market manipulation and mention the penalties involved in rigging auctions. Make him think you know exactly what he’s up to and could be on the point of reporting him to the authorities. I can then be kind and comforting, like a poultice, and bring out all the poison.’

  Trish had always known Buxford was ruthless, but this shocked her. She put down her fork.

  ‘I think that’s a high-risk strategy,’ she said at last, ‘considering the state he was in this morning. It could tip him right over the edge.’

  ‘There’s no need to look at me as though I was Attila the Hun. It’s for his own good. What on earth do you imagine he might do?’

  ‘Almost anything, if he were frightened enough. You do know he can be violent, don’t you?’

  ‘Toby? Rubbish.’

  ‘He’s already been hitting his wife.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You have to. He gave her a black
eye.’ Trish almost felt sorry for him. ‘She told me about it herself, and she has no reason to lie. That’s why she’s taken the boys away to stay with friends in Chelsea. Putting extra pressure on him now would be madness.’

  ‘I can’t get him out of this mess until he talks to me. I’d hoped you’d be able to persuade him to confide in you by friendlier methods, but you haven’t. This is the only way, Trish.’

  That was probably true, but it didn’t make her any happier. She thought of Antony and his determination to make her jump whenever Buxford so much as breathed on her. What on earth would life be like in chambers if she lost the last vestiges of his favour? Steve’s crucial approval wouldn’t survive without Antony’s backing.

  She saw that she hadn’t changed much from the fat child she’d been under the sprinkler, longing for approval from the most powerful man around.

  ‘Oh, come on, Trish. I thought you were more sensible than this,’ Buxford said. ‘And why should you care so much? It’s not as though you owe Toby anything, after all.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, despising herself. ‘I’ll try. But if the first attempt doesn’t work, I won’t do it again.’

  ‘Fair enough. Now, pudding?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  By the time Trish reached the gallery, Toby had changed out of the dark suit he had worn to the auction, and he was calmly showing five people around the collection. The miasma of acrid sweat that had emanated from him at Goode & Floore’s had been replaced by something infinitely sweeter, which suggested he might have raided his wife’s dressing table.

  Trish tagged on to the back of the group he was escorting around the gallery and listened to him talking easily about the paintings and about Jean-Pierre’s romantic story. Toby seemed almost normal, once again the charming well-informed man she had encountered the first time she’d been here. She was beginning to let herself believe that she had exaggerated his fear when they came face to face as he swung round to lead the group into the next room.

  Once again the blood drained from his head and he put his hand against the wall as though he was afraid he might fall. Trish produced her best client-calming smile and saw that it had no effect whatsoever.

  ‘I didn’t realize you were here,’ he said in a voice hoarse with tension. ‘Who let you in?’

  ‘Your assistant.’ Trish went on smiling, even though she saw affronted astonishment on the faces of his visitors. She took her ticket out of her pocket. ‘I’ve paid again, I promise. I just couldn’t resist coming back to have another look at some of the pictures you showed me last time I was here. Don’t you remember our talk then?’

  His eyes looked dead, and his roughened voice dragged as he said: ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. But I can’t waste time discussing it now. Ladies and gentlemen, here we have most of the French work. This is a Watteau. Please notice the gleam of the silk, here and again here in the dress, and the freshness of the colours.’

  Trish waited for him to take a breath, then broke in: ‘I’m so fascinated by this collection and how Jean-Pierre Gregoire managed to buy all these wonderful paintings in the teeth of all the other dealers who must have been competing with him before the First World War. I’ve been reading about the ways in which some of them manipulated the market, and I was really shocked. Does that kind of thing still go on?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Toby said. His voice vibrated somewhere in his throat, making it high and much more uncertain than usual.

  ‘Oh, things like bribing experts to belittle paintings belonging to other people so they could pick them up for next to nothing. Smuggling them through jurisdiction after jurisdiction. Even altering pictures of ugly women to turn them into the kind of beauties rich collectors want on their walls. Most people would call that forgery, but they all seemed to be at it. Does it still go on?’

  Toby’s face looked grey. ‘If it does, I know nothing about it.’

  ‘You were at this morning’s sale, though, weren’t you?’ she went on, pretending she hadn’t noticed either his reaction or the impatience of the other sightseers. ‘Do you suppose any of the lots in that had been tampered with?’

  ‘I have no idea. But I think it’s most unlikely.’ He looked round, as though searching for something more to say, and added with a kind of desperation: ‘Goode & Floore’s has an excellent reputation. They’ve always been my favourite saleroom.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Trish went on, obediently trying to spook him with a pretence of knowing far more than she did. ‘After that fantastic price they achieved for those Clouet drawings you sold when you were still an undergraduate. I was reading about them in the paper last weekend. It was Goode & Floore’s who sold them for you, wasn’t it?’

  Toby’s head snapped up. Now it was hostility, not fear, that was pumping out of him. At last she could see him as someone capable of blacking Margaret’s eye.

  All around them were irritated rustlings from the other visitors. Trish shot a general smile around the group before concentrating on Toby again.

  ‘It must be such a help for someone in your position to be on good terms with successful auctioneers like them. I imagine they must often need to pay experts like you for all sorts of little tasks.’

  She watched his jaw soften and his shoulders loosen. He looked as though he’d just been let off something he dreaded.

  ‘We can’t discuss it now. There’s a lot to see this afternoon,’ he said, turning away. ‘I don’t want anyone to miss anything.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry I interrupted.’ Trish smiled apologetically around the group. ‘I’ll keep out of your way now and look round on my own.’

  Sitting in his office when everyone but the thin woman had left, Toby thought blood might burst out of his head. All the arteries around his skull were pulsating and his skin and hair felt very thin. He touched one throbbing blood vessel in his right temple and winced.

  The woman had refused to leave with the others. He hadn’t dared order her out. She was ostensibly looking again at all the paintings that had most interested her, but Toby knew better.

  What was she going to do next? Toby switched on the closed-circuit television screens until he found her, apparently still staring reverently at the Watteau. Then he saw her gaze flick towards the camera lens and she smiled a secret, nasty little smile to show him she knew he was watching her.

  Toby felt his right hand aching and looked down. He was gripping the stapler together as though it was a pinless grenade that would explode as soon as he let the two parts spring apart. He put it down and wiped his hands on his trousers again. Oh, God! He’d have to take the mossy pair to the cleaners. Margaret usually did that kind of thing, so his mind just wasn’t geared up for it. But he didn’t have enough pairs of trousers to leave them dirty.

  He heard the main door bang and made himself move to the front window to look out. The thin woman had gone at last. His mobile rang. He knew it would be Ben, watching from somewhere close by until his employee had done her stuff.

  ‘OK, Toby.’ The sound of Ben’s voice made him thrust one knuckle between his teeth, so that he could stop himself crying out. ‘You’ve been lucky. Your punishment is to be no more than a taster this time. But if you screw up again, you’ll get the full works. There’ll be another of our paintings in the sale the week after next. We’ll give you the details later, but you are to bid for that one and get it, whatever it costs. If it goes over the five mill., we’ll get you the funds before you have to settle with Goode & Floore’s, so there’ll be no excuse for a repetition of today’s fuck-up. OK?’

  Toby knew he mustn’t mention the tax that the trust would have to pay on the proceeds of the de Hooch sale, even though that was now waking him in the night, too.

  ‘And when I’ve done that, will you leave me alone?’ He might have saved himself the trouble of speaking. Ben had gone.

  The phone beeped with the short burst of sound that meant a text message was coming through.
Toby looked at the small screen. As the letters formed, all his joints seized up with a single agonizing jolt.

  Mer’s arm brkn 2 plcs. Wnt sy hw. Mre nws 18er. Mgrt

  Toby laid his face against the leather top of his desk and howled. All the tears he’d been fighting for weeks poured out in a hot disgusting flood as he thought of Mer being hurt to give him Ben’s ‘taster’ of punishment.

  Chapter 15

  Trish collected the mail from her pigeonhole, trying to ignore the thought of what Toby might be doing now that she had obediently put the frighteners on him. It was dawning on her that he’d reacted far more strongly to her comment about the Clouet drawings than all her insinuations that Goode & Floore’s might be paying him to rig the market for them.

  Had there been something wrong with the Clouets? Could they, rather than drugs or the fear of losing his job, be the source of the pressure that was making him so afraid? Had he had evidence that they weren’t genuine when he’d originally taken them to Goode & Floore’s? Evidence that someone else had now uncovered and was being used to blackmail him?

  Steve was muttering behind Trish about how no one could guarantee success at the Bar, but only deserve it. Usually his Churchillian exhortations made her laugh, but today she had too much to worry about to be amused by anything. On her way out of the clerks’ room, she paused to say:

  ‘Did you know that your hero once told Siegfried Sassoon that man’s natural activity is war?’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking more favourably on her. ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘In Siegfried’s Journey. You know, by Sassoon himself. But do you know what Churchill added after that first bit? “War and gardening”.’

  Steve rattled his cheeks at her. She left him to his outrage and went to the door of Robert Anstey’s room. It had been a point of honour throughout their battles of the past few years that she never, ever, went to ask him for anything. That had made each of his invasions of her room in search of help or evidence of her weaknesses a victory in itself. Now she was going to have to yield to Robert. She hoped it would be worth it.