A Place of Safety

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Trish, I am so sorry about what happened yesterday. Will you telephone me when you’ve got time? With my best wishes, Henry.’

  She appreciated the gesture and longed to know what he’d heard and how much he knew, but that would have to wait until Antony was finished with her.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said as she walked into his room.

  ‘After what Henry told me this morning, I’m impressed you’re here at all. Is your brother all right?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Both Henry and I feel seriously responsible for what happened yesterday. I wish I’d never passed on his original request, and he, of course, is wishing that he’d hauled his godson straight off to a psychiatrist as soon as he knew something was wrong. He’s clearly suffering from some form of neurotic paranoia.’

  Trish felt as though he’d dug his pen into her stomach. ‘I must say I hate the fact that he lives so close to my flat. I’ll always dread running into him now, whenever I leave here or the flat. You know, I used to think London was vast and impersonal. Now it feels like a goldfish bowl.’

  ‘More like a pond full of piranhas, I’d say.’ Sympathy had softened Antony’s voice. Trish felt the muscles over her nose contracting again and tried to stop the frown before it tied up her face completely. ‘Considering the latest news.’

  ‘Oh, God! What’s happened now?’

  ‘Haven’t you read the papers yet?’

  Trish shook her head.

  ‘A man was killed yesterday, in the tunnel by Blackfriars. It sounds like another murder.’

  ‘Oh, shit! It used to feel so safe here. Now it’s like a war zone. Was this one shot, too?’

  ‘They haven’t said, but—’ The phone on Antony’s desk rang. He picked it up, listened, then waved Trish out of the room. As she left, she heard him say:

  ‘Terrific work, Robert. I think we’ll be able to swing it now. Well done.’

  Back at her own desk, Trish phoned Nicky’s mobile to ask how David had seemed when she dropped him at school, and whether either of them had heard anything about the murdered man found at Blackfriars.

  ‘I’m still at the Paddington left-luggage office,’ Nicky said, her voice high with strain. ‘I was going to phone you anyway because they can’t find your package. I keep making them go back to look again, but they say without the ticket there’s nothing they can do.’

  ‘Nicky, what’s going on? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your package at Paddington.’ She could have been talking to an idiot.

  ‘I haven’t got a package at Paddington. Is David all right? He must be very worried about being so late for school.’

  ‘Didn’t you take him?’

  ‘No.’ Trish was holding the edge of her desk and forcing herself to speak calmly. ‘Nicky, you know you were supposed to take him this morning.’

  ‘Yes. But he phoned me while you were in the shower this morning and said you’d asked him to call me because you hadn’t got time to do it yourself. You were taking him to school early and you wanted me to go to Paddington to collect this package that’s been left for you there with your name on it.’

  Trish’s heart was beating at twice the normal speed, and her mouth was completely dry, but her mind was absolutely clear. She let go of the edge of the desk and felt the blood rushing painfully back into her whitened knuckles.

  ‘He made up the whole thing. He’s up to something. We have to find him. Now. Nicky, get straight home in case he goes back there. I’ll get on to Caro Lyalt.’

  ‘Let me come with you. Please.’

  ‘No. Someone’s got to be at home in case he goes there. I’ll let you know the minute something happens, but go straight on home now. As fast as you can, Nicky.’

  Trish’s fingers hit the buttons on her phone like hailstones on a metal roof. In a few seconds she was talking to Hester More.

  ‘Well, I was surprised that you hadn’t phoned,’ the Head said with lunatic calmness, ‘but I assumed you’d decided you couldn’t leave David for a moment. I was waiting to hear from you.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t seen him at all today?’ Trish had to be certain of his disappearance before she set the police on to David, even in the person of his beloved godmother.

  ‘He has not been in any part of the school’s property at all today,’ she said with her usual pedantic clarity.

  ‘I’m about to call in the police, so if he does show up, call me at once.’ Trish cut the connection, then pressed in the code for Caro’s direct line.

  The first good thing of the day was that she answered it herself after the second ring and listened to the whole of Trish’s explanation without asking any questions.

  ‘In normal circumstances, I’d have said it was too early to do anything,’ Caro told her. ‘But given the child’s history and this definite campaign to deceive you and Nicky, it’s clear he has a plan. Could he have been so scared by what happened at the school yesterday that he’s run away?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Trish was glad Jess had told Caro everything that had happened after the Christmas play. It saved a lot of explanations. ‘Although he kept assuring me he was all right, but then he would, wouldn’t he, if he was working out how to get away?’

  ‘Have you any idea where he could have gone?’

  ‘He has got some friends at school, but that’s where they’ll be, so he can’t be with them.’

  ‘What about old friends, from his past life?’

  ‘There’s Joe, who was at the junior school with him. We used to get him to tea quite often, then it sort of fizzled out. I suppose David could have gone back there, trying to get away from all this to the only other place he knows. I’d better drive up there right away.’

  ‘Trish, slow down a minute. There’s no need to go rushing anywhere yet. Do you know Joe’s mother’s phone number? And the school’s?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Trish grabbed her diary, silently blessing Caro’s common sense. ‘I’m going mad. I’ll ring them now and let you know.’

  ‘Good. But we should also have a fall-back. Where else might he have gone?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Unless—Oh, God! You don’t think he could have gone after Toby, do you?’

  ‘Toby? Trish, you’re going to have to give me more.’ Caro’s voice was very calm, and very sure. ‘Who is Toby?’

  ‘The man from yesterday,’ Trish said, adding everything else she knew, including David’s pathetic pleas last night, and her belated understanding of quite how responsible he felt for his mother’s death.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ Caro said, still sounding calm. ‘I’ll deal with Toby, while you look into Joe and his mother.’

  ‘No, let me go to the gallery. I’ve been before, and—’

  ‘If everything you’ve said is true, the further you stay away from him, the better. I have the resources to deal with this. You don’t, so get phoning.’ Caro cut the connection before Trish could say anything else.

  She had to hang on for ages before anyone answered the phone at the North London junior school, and then for several minutes while the secretary checked and found that David’s old friend Joe was in school that day, and just now in the middle of a class. His mother had her answering machine on at home, but it gave a mobile number. Trish phoned that, but reached only the voice mail. She left a message, then sat, staring at the phone, willing it to ring.

  ‘What’s up, Trish?’ The sound of Robert’s voice made her look away from the door. She didn’t want to deal with him now. ‘You seem a bit distracted.’

  ‘Problems at home.’

  ‘Oh, right. I assumed you’d been listening to stories of this body they found in Upper Thames Street. It would spook me if I walked home through the dark the way you do.’

  Trish still didn’t look round. He was right, though. Even a confrontation with Toby might be less dangerous for David than walking alone through these streets after dark, if a murderer were on the loose. She thought of his
old fears of a serial killer.

  Her fingers were aching as they wound in and out of each other, and her jaw was tight. She had to believe that Caro would find him soon.

  ‘Have they identified the corpse yet?’ Robert’s voice buzzed in her ear, like a mosquito in the night. ‘The bulletin I heard just said a man with no ID. Sounds amazingly like Peter Chanting’s. Did you have a hand in this death, too?’

  Trish looked up at the window and saw Robert’s face reflected there. Even the rippled shadows showed her his gloating grin.

  ‘Don’t,’ she burst out before she could stop herself. ‘I know you’re not serious, but I can’t take it this morning. I’m too raw. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Trish?’ His voice was quite different from usual. With the tears of temper in her eyes, she knew she couldn’t turn round. She felt his arm on her shoulder. ‘Trish, it was only meant to be a joke.’

  She stared out at the gloomy light well and swallowed. But she had to sniff, too.

  ‘Oh, God, Trish, don’t go and cry on me.’

  ‘Just leave me alone for a bit, will you?’

  ‘All right,’ Robert said. She could hear him backing away from her. ‘But you must tell me if I can help.’

  That made it harder to hold on, so she nodded.

  ‘OK. Right. Fine. Well, ’bye,’ he said, shutting the door behind him with the tiniest clicking sound.

  Trish leaned forwards against the cold glass. All she could do now was wait for news.

  Chapter 24

  1925

  On her way out of the bedroom, Helen paused by the cheval mirror, which was a mistake. She had lost so much weight that her clothes hung off her. Her face was gaunt and there were already thick grey streaks at her temples. She was only thirty-three.

  ‘Don’t start moping,’ she said aloud. ‘You’ve got to look confident today.’

  She straightened her aching shoulders, ignored the fraying cuffs of her coat and the cracks in the leather of her shoes, and went downstairs to collect the tube with one of Jean-Pierre’s paintings in it. Every night for the past week she had woken in a sweat of anxiety, with the question eating at her heart: was it fair to sell one, just one, of the paintings, in order to get proper care for Ivan?

  Her part-time job paid for no more than necessities. In six years more he could leave school and find employment in the City, but until then she had to have money for his food and clothes, and for doctors. His choking fits became more terrifying every year and he was dangerously thin.

  There was a long queue for the bus, and so she could not get on the first two that drew up at the stop. At last she was on her way, holding the tube far more carefully than she had been able to do when she had brought them all over from France with the convoys of wounded. As the bus lumbered westwards, she gazed out at the once-familiar landmarks. It was hard to remember she had ever been a young lady trained to behave as though she were incapable, delicate and needing shelter from anything dangerous or distasteful.

  Here was Piccadilly. The bus went on to Knightsbridge and Kensington rather than going up Bond Street, so she would have to get off at the next stop and walk. When she had first hatched this plan, she had been afraid she might run into her mother or sister, but the reflection she had seen in the cheval glass had told her she need not worry. She looked nothing like the girl they had known, or even the angry exhausted nurse who had given them so much of a shock on her leave in 1915.

  ‘Oh, Jean-Pierre,’ she whispered and saw her breath misting the glass. Someone else rang the bell and the bus squealed to a halt. She had forgotten everything, even that this was a request stop.

  She scrambled out of the double seat, apologizing as she stepped on the well-polished shoe of the man who had shared it. He looked curiously at her and she realized she must have been talking aloud to herself. That kept happening now. Sometimes with Ivan asleep, she would walk around the huge, dusty, horrible house talking to the walls and the lamps, begging them to help with her son or to tell her how to find Jean-Pierre.

  There was a puddle just beside the bus’s platform, but she managed to avoid it, which was strange. There weren’t many kinds of clumsiness she had avoided recently. The picture was still securely in its tube and wrapped in brown paper, neatly tied with clean string. She had nothing to be ashamed of there, even though her clothes marked her out as little better than a beggar.

  The gallery looked exactly as she remembered it from her girlhood, the big gleaming window revealing a small oil landscape in an ornate frame balanced on a miniature easel. The rest of the window was empty, the floor and walls lined with pale-gold velvet. She could see a wide plane of pale-gold carpet beyond and a beautifully dressed young man sitting at a desk halfway down the long room. Coughing, remembering everything she had seen and done in the war to give her courage, she pushed open the gallery door.

  She caught the end of the tube in the door and had to tug it free, which did nothing for her poise.

  ‘May I be of service, madam?’ said the young man in a voice that told her what a fool she had already made of herself.

  ‘I have a painting here,’ she said, dredging up the old confident Kensington voice, ‘which I am considering selling. I should like to know whether you would be interested in buying it.’

  ‘We buy very little from members of the public,’ he said languidly. But he did come closer to her. ‘Would you like to unwrap it?’

  ‘If you could show me somewhere I could lay it. It is rather large.’

  ‘And clearly not framed.’

  ‘No. My … my late husband had it sent to London for me in this tube. I have never had it framed.’ She couldn’t tell this horrible young floorwalker the story of Jean-Pierre and his paintings.

  ‘I see.’ He was looking over her shabby hat, as though he couldn’t bear to lower himself even to meet her eyes. He led her to a backroom, that was far more brightly lit than the gallery. A long plan chest filled the further wall. ‘Please unwrap your picture there.’

  She struggled so hard with the knots she had tied in the string, that the young man lost patience and leaned forwards and cut it for her. Angry now, she tore the brown paper away, borrowed his knife to cut the tapes that closed the tube at top and bottom and fairly shook out the canvas. As she unrolled it on the flat top of the plan chest a few flakes of paint fell out.

  The canvas showed a dark-browed madonna in an orange frock, seated against an arched stone window. The child on her lap looked as unlikely as most old master babies.

  ‘Ah yes, I see,’ said the young man. ‘Yes, I do see. I suggest that you parcel it straight up again and take it home. Your local pawn-broker might give you a fiver for it, if you’re lucky. It is not the kind of work we handle.’

  Helen had never been spoken to with such contempt in her life.

  ‘But it is exactly the kind of work you sell,’ she said. ‘You specialize in old masters.’

  ‘My dear lady, what makes you think that this is an old master? A Derby winner does not come out of a … a hill farm in Wales.’

  She turned her back on the curling, flaking canvas and faced him, glad to see a spark of surprise in his eyes. He could have been no more than twenty-two or -three, she thought. He had not fought in the war. He had not learned what he was capable of, or how even the bravest of men could be reduced to weeping, shaking invalids by daily fear.

  ‘Just because I am poor, there is no need to assume that I am a fool. This is an old master painting, the property of my late husband, who was a French collector before the war. If he had not been killed, I would not have been reduced to these shifts, and it would never have crossed my mind to sell any of his collection.’

  Something, perhaps a scruple of the shame he should have felt, moved him to say that he would consult one of his senior partners.

  Helen waited, hoping the anger would see her through. But the man who came to talk to her was so much less contemptuous, so polite and so kind that she lost it and was once more
on fire with humiliation. This man took much greater care as he looked at the painting, but his verdict was little different from the first.

  He told her gently that it was the work of a gifted amateur, painting in the style of the Italian Renaissance, perhaps in the last century or perhaps at the beginning of this one.

  ‘Perhaps it was even your husband himself, who painted it. Many French gentlemen, connoisseurs of course, took pleasure in reproducing the work of great artists. See here, and here.’ He pointed to the painting of the madonna’s face with a well-manicured finger. ‘And again the sky. These are the giveaway points, madam. I am very sorry to have to tell you, that this is not an original work.’ He smiled at her most kindly and asked if she had come far.

  ‘Thank you, no. Not far. But I had best be going now.’ She started to gather together the torn wrappings.

  ‘Please do not trouble yourself. One of the porters will repack it for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I am sorry I could not give you more encouraging news. Thank you for letting us see the painting. Good day.’

  He left her with his disdainful assistant and a porter dressed in a brown linen coat, who proceeded to reroll and wrap the painting for her. All she wanted to do was grab it and get herself home to cry in peace. She did not know what to do. The disdainful young man, perhaps rebuked for his rudeness, made polite conversation throughout the elaborate wrapping process. But all Helen could think about was Jean-Pierre and his motives for making her take all those dozens of tubes of worthless paintings in the trains full of wounded and dying men.

  Had there been something else in the tubes, something Thomas had removed before he took the tubes to the house by Southwark Bridge? If so, what could it have been? What had she brought in to England from France? And how had she been mad enough to believe Jean-Pierre’s protestations of love? No wonder he had never come to see her and Ivan. No wonder she had had no answers to the letters she had sent to the curé who had married them and the mayor of the town where Jean-Pierre claimed to have lived.