A Place of Safety

by Natasha Cooper

  He looked up. A smirk slid across his face like a stain on a tablecloth.

  ‘Well, well, well. This is a real mountain and Mohammed moment, Trish. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Give me more on your old university friend.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Toby Fullwell.’

  ‘I told you. He was no friend of mine. What has he got that you could possibly want?’ The smirk turned into something considerably nastier. ‘It’s not sex rearing its ugly head again, is it? I say, Trish, are you being unfaithful to that rich solicitor of yours? Not a good move, I’d have thought.’

  It’s a routine bit of baiting, she told herself as she tried not to rise. Usually she could laugh at anything Robert produced. But for some reason this particular idiocy grated. She took a moment to gather her wits, then said:

  ‘I was intrigued by the story in last Sunday’s papers about how Fullwell found fantastically valuable pictures in a junk shop while he was at Cambridge. I wondered if it was a bit of handy spin. Someone said the hack who interviewed him occasionally embellishes her profiles with the odd fantasy like that.’ Trish hoped that the journalist wasn’t a friend of Robert’s. It would be a nuisance if she got to hear of the slander.

  ‘Not this time. I’d forgotten the story myself until I read that piece. It brought it all back though, and I remembered exactly how angry Toby was when he didn’t get a fair share of the profit from the resale.’

  ‘Oh? Who did get it?’

  ‘His best friend.’ Robert’s lips thinned and his eyes looked mean. ‘It was about the only time I ever felt sorry for Toby. Peter Chanting was rich already, which was why he was buying pictures in the first place, and without Toby’s sharp eye, he’d never have made such a killing.’

  Trish had not heard Robert sound so sympathetic about anyone else in years. ‘Isn’t that the man you said took Toby on an expensive holiday one year? Maybe that was the kickback.’

  ‘I think it probably was. But handing out lavish presents isn’t the same as paying a legitimately earned finder’s fee. And poor old Toby was always strapped for cash.’ Robert added, not looking at Trish, ‘Like most of us.’

  ‘Not you, though,’ she said, thinking of her own early years of scraping by with part-time jobs and a diet of black pudding and rotten bananas, which was all she’d been able to afford at one time. ‘You had it easy with your parents funding you until you were earning enough for a mortgage.’

  Robert had always given the impression of having plenty of money, and he’d certainly never had to take on freelance work to pay his way through pupillage as she had. Each December she had marked exams into the small hours, as well as offering year-round coaching and anything else that would earn enough to cover her basic bills.

  ‘Still got that chip on your shoulder, Trish?’ He laughed, with a typically Robert-like hooting of derisive merriment. ‘Isn’t it time you grew out of it?’

  ‘Sod off,’ she said, wondering whether she had imagined the hint of sensitivity, and went back to the clerks’ room. She needed to find out more about the Clouet drawings before she talked to Henry Buxford again, and Peter Chanting would be the obvious source of information. Toby clearly wasn’t going to tell her anything.

  ‘Yes?’ Steve said coldly, looking at her over the top of his glasses. He had never minded her teasing in the past. This could only be yet another sign that Antony was withdrawing his protection. ‘What can we do for you now?’

  ‘I only wanted to borrow Debrett’s People of Today.’

  Steve reached behind him and handed it to her. ‘I hope this means you’re preparing tomorrow’s case. I know it’s small and dull, but you can’t expect to change your whole practice without taking several backward steps.’

  ‘I know. Thanks, Steve. I’ll bring this back.’

  Trish turned to the Cs as she walked along the dark corridor. There was no Peter Chanting listed, only a Martin Chanting, whose date of birth would have made him seventy-four. He could have been the father of one of Toby’s university contemporaries, but there was no mention of any children. His late wife was named in the paragraph and the date of her death given as last year. He was a retired actuary, presumably included in the directory because he’d written a series of textbooks. He had given his address in Godalming. There was a phone number, too.

  Back in her own room, she keyed in the number. As she listened to the phone ring, she practised her opening remarks.

  ‘This is Martin Chanting speaking,’ said a voice with enough of a tremor to sound right for his age.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ Trish said, before giving her name and adding that she was a barrister, which she had usually found helped to persuade people she was a safe confidante. ‘I’m trying to track down an old university friend, Peter Chanting, and it’s such a rare surname that I thought he must be a relation of yours. I wondered whether you could give me a phone number for him.’

  ‘I thought everyone knew that I have not seen my son for seventeen years. Goodbye.’ He cut the connection without another word.

  So there is something odd about Peter Chanting, Trish thought, quickly dialling Directory Enquiries. They, too, had no record of anyone of that name. She walked reluctantly back into Robert’s room to ask whether he knew what had happened to his old university acquaintance.

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘What is all this about, Trish?’

  ‘I told you,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m fascinated by the goings on of the gilded youth at ancient universities. Come on, Robert, don’t you remember anything about what this Peter bloke did after you all left university?’

  ‘Not a thing. Sorry.’

  She didn’t know whether to believe him.

  ‘And I really haven’t time to chat,’ he added, smirking again. ‘I’ve got a report to finish for Antony. I’m dining with him and his wife tonight and I don’t want to show up without having finished it.’

  Trish hadn’t had an invitation to the Shelleys’ Holland Park palace for months, and she clearly would not get another one until she found out what Henry Buxford wanted to know. Robert’s voice stopped her by his door.

  ‘He doesn’t give anyone a second chance, you know.’

  Trish turned back to look at him. ‘What exactly does that mean, Robert?’

  ‘It’s a friendly warning.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I’m not that stupid. What did you mean?’

  ‘It is, in fact, a friendly warning.’ Something unusual in his smile made her wonder if he could be telling the truth. If so, it was the first good thing that had happened today. ‘I overheard him talking about you the other day, and it didn’t sound good.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Trish hadn’t felt this grim for a long time. ‘And who was he talking to?’

  ‘They were on the phone, so I don’t know.’ Now Robert’s smile made her feel as though someone was pouring thrice-used cooking oil all over her. ‘All I know is what Antony said: “Trish? No, I don’t believe I’ve oversold her. But I admit it is unlike her to be so slow. I hope she’s not being distracted by this child she’s taken on.”’

  Robert’s attempt at Antony’s light academic drawl was a failure, but that didn’t help much.

  ‘There was a bit of a pause, presumably while he listened to whoever was at the other end, then he laughed in that nasty way he has and said: “I know. They spend half their time clamouring for equal treatment, then they go and land themselves with responsibilities no bloke would dream of taking on, and still wonder why we prefer dealing with other men.”’

  ‘I do not believe you, Robert. Antony is far too wised-up to lay himself open to a sex-discrimination claim by saying anything so stupid.’

  ‘That was the sense of it, even if I haven’t got the words in the right order. ’Bye, Trish. Have a good evening. I’ll think of you sharing fish fingers and alphabet spaghetti with your infant as I shovel in the foie gras.’

  ‘Give me fish fingers any time,’ she sai
d blowing him a hate-filled kiss. ‘I loathe foie gras.’

  The other party in that phone conversation had to be Henry Buxford, she thought, which made it hard to ring him now. But she had to talk to him again before he had his dinner with Toby. And she had to show him that she was not the slacker he and Antony seemed to think her.

  ‘This is what you get for doing favours for people,’ she muttered, reaching for the phone. Next time she would resist any blandishment Antony might use. If there ever were a next time.

  For once Henry was in his office and answered his direct line himself. It seemed ironic that this was the one time when she would have preferred to leave a message with his secretary.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Did you tip him over this edge you’re so afraid of?’

  ‘Not quite,’ she said, drawling a little in the effort to contain her dislike of what his so-called little research job might be doing to her career. ‘But he did say something that surprised me. Has he ever talked to you about those Clouet drawings he identified for his friend Peter Chanting when they were at Cambridge?’

  ‘No. But then it’s not surprising. I barely knew him before he came to London to work. I was the usual hopeless British godparent and did nothing but produce a silver spoon at the christening and cheques for birthdays and Christmases after that.’

  ‘Pity,’ Trish said. ‘I think you ought to ask him about them tonight. There’s definitely something fishy about them, and about this Chanting bloke. Even his father won’t talk about him. I think it’s possible the Clouet drawings were fakes, which could open whole new lines of enquiry.’

  ‘I thought you were convinced Toby was involved with a gang of millionaire drug dealers, Trish,’ Buxford said, sounding more mocking than she had ever heard him. ‘It’s a bit rich to start trying to interest me in fakes and forgeries at this late stage, isn’t it?’

  No it sodding-well isn’t, she thought, determined to make him grovel for that sneer one day.

  The tender pheasant turned to unswallowable pap as Henry waited for an answer. Saliva poured into Toby’s mouth, hot and frightening. He grabbed his big wineglass and gulped some claret. That helped him force the food down his throat.

  Margaret hadn’t texted him again yet, and she was still refusing to pick up her phone. He’d had no more news of Mer since that first cruelly brief message. He didn’t even know which hospital his son was in. He’d tried phoning all the obvious ones, but he hadn’t been able to find any trace of Mer. He’d even contemplated phoning Ben for help until he realized how much extra power that would have given him. And now Henry was asking questions about all the most dangerous subjects. If it hadn’t been for Mer, Toby might have given in, if only to stop the questions. But how could he, with his son in such danger?

  All around them in the dark, glossily polished room, were rich-sounding, happy-looking members of the most glamorous of the old London clubs, which somehow made it worse. Henry had put Toby up for the Garrick years ago and he’d once dreaded the moment when he reached the top of the waiting list. In the old days he would have given almost anything to be a member, and he’d burned with humiliation at the thought of admitting he couldn’t afford the subscription. Now, it didn’t matter at all, not in a world in which a grown man could break a 9-year-old’s arm to force his father to commit a crime.

  ‘Peter Chanting was my best friend at Cambridge,’ he said, hoping he would be able to keep the food down and stop Henry harassing him. He gritted his teeth and tried to remember the old days, when he’d still been able to trust Peter. ‘He saved my life.’

  ‘Good lord! How?’

  ‘We went to Nepal together in our second summer at Cambridge, and I got dysentery. There was no help or shelter anywhere. You know, not even a tree to shit behind. If it hadn’t been for Peter, I’d have lain down and died. He kept me walking, gave me virtually all the water we had, and got me to sanctuary in a run-down kind of ashram, where he eventually nursed me back to health.’

  ‘That must have been a frightening experience, and a very dramatic one. Why did you never tell me about it?’

  Toby gulped down more wine. He wasn’t even going to try to eat the rest of the food on his plate.

  ‘I suppose because it had such a depressing sequel,’ he said, glad to be able to rely on the truth for once. At least some of the truth. ‘Peter found something in the ashram he’d never had before. He talked about peace and gentleness and a kind of mystical fulfilment. I could understand the first because he’d had the sort of life with his father that I’d had with my mother, but not the last. I felt—’

  Peace and gentleness, Toby thought, looking down at the mess of pheasant and gravy and red cabbage in front of him. What an irony!

  He felt sicker than ever. His plate looked as though it was covered in blood and guts.

  ‘Left out?’ Henry had stopped sounding like a judge. ‘Betrayed even?’

  Toby looked up and thought he could see sympathy in the usually critical face. He almost let go. Then a nightmare landscape of terror and recrimination and disgrace opened up in front of him, like the mountains of doom in the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Cézanne. He could just see Henry as the huge, stalwart hero figure and himself the drooping pallid villain being dragged to hell.

  ‘So, what happened to your friend?’

  ‘He tried life in England again, and stuck it out until we graduated. But when his father started forcing him towards some kind of City job, he couldn’t bear it. So he went back to the ashram. At the beginning he used to write, but a few years ago the letters stopped.’

  Toby saw the ghosts of sympathy in Henry’s eyes turn into mocking demons just like the ones at the edge of the Cézanne. Hoping to banish them again, he added: ‘I’ve missed him ever since.’

  The demons did retreat, and a smile of extraordinary gentleness curled Henry’s lips. ‘That’s tough. In my experience one doesn’t get that kind of friendship more than once in a lifetime.’

  Toby had to blink for real now, to clear his own eyes of a sudden embarrassing wetness. It was one thing to cry in front of Jo, even if it did make her sneer and tell him he needed to see a shrink. It would be quite another to pour out tears here in this bastion of hideously confident old-style masculinity. He tried to distract himself by wondering who Henry’s friend had been and whether he still had him. Probably. Henry was lucky in everything else, so why not this too?

  ‘And it was this Peter, was it, who bought those drawings you identified as being by François Clouet?’ Henry went on, apparently quite unmoved by his own memories or emotions.

  Coming without a warning like that, the accusation made Toby’s hand shake so much that he had to put down his claret glass. How was he going to get through the rest of this evening if he could neither eat nor drink without betraying himself?

  ‘Yes. But why do you want to know?’ He could hear his voice shaking, too.

  Any minute now Henry was going to smash right into the truth and then everything would be over.

  ‘Someone was asking me about the Clouet drawings the other day,’ Henry went on cheerfully, ‘and I was ashamed to have to admit that I knew nothing more about your great coup than I’d read in the Sunday papers. I wish you’d tell me all about it now. It sounds brilliant.’

  This couldn’t be coincidence. Was it Ben who’d been asking Henry about the Clouets? Or the dark woman? She’d brushed past the pair of them while they were talking after the sale. Had she snaked back after Ben had taken him away, to drip her poison into Henry’s ears?

  He was saying something else now. Toby tried to forget the woman and listen properly. Henry was asking him whether there was anything he wanted to say, in the tones of a man asking his wife if she wanted to confess adultery. How much had he guessed? Or did he already know the whole story? Was this going to be another long-drawn-out torture?

  Unable to speak safely, Toby shook his head, staring at the mess on his plate.

  ‘You do know,’ Henry went on
, drilling like a dentist, ‘that you can always come to me if you’re worried about anything, don’t you? If you’re in some kind of trouble, Toby, I can almost certainly help. I do have a lot of resources.’

  Toby risked looking up, hoping for another gentle smile, but all he could see was hard speculation and contempt. Whatever Henry said, he knew he was on his own, just as he always had been. Everyone he’d ever thought might love him had turned away. First Peter had betrayed him, and now Margaret had gone, too. If she ever found out it was his fault Mer had been hurt, she’d never come back. He had no one.

  Helen lay in Jean-Pierre’s arms. For once he had not gone straight to sleep after they’d made love. He was nuzzling her hair and murmuring the most wonderful words to her. Her own French had got so much better now that she could understand nearly all of them and was mentally translating as he spoke.

  ‘I’ll always love you. You are the most perfect woman. I’ll never leave you. You have restored my faith in love. The world is worth saving because you are in it. I would do anything for you. I love you. I love you. I love you.’

  She laid her face against his chest and told him she had thought she would never be loved like this, that she would do anything for him, too. Anything. Whatever it cost her.

  Chapter 16

  Trish thought that if anyone touched her she might snap like an icicle. She couldn’t believe she would ever be warm again. The thirty little boys in front of her were rushing about in the mud of Clapham Common like worker ants, while the two hearty solicitors who coached them were running alongside, bellowing instructions and encouragement. Whistles bounced against their ample chests as they ran.

  Trying to warm herself with the remains of her fury over Henry Buxford’s last sneering comment, Trish considered various ways of finding out enough to make him admit she’d been right all along.

  One miserable, blue-kneed child tripped and fell face down in the icy sludge, reminding her that here, at least, she ought to forget Buxford and Toby Fullwell. Two other children flung themselves on top of the first. A woman in the small parental crowd moved forwards but was restrained by her husband. Trish overheard him mutter something about not making a wimp of the boy.