‘Freedom to do what?’ she asked, and he saw it: when she looked up there it was … invitation. It was tentative, unrehearsed and not even flirtatious – but it was there.
With the sound of Miss Bailey screaming NO! in his normally sensible mind, Edward Summerbee shocked himself by following his threatened heart instead. ‘To do this,’ he replied, cupping her oval face with his free hand, turning her towards him. Without further hesitation he bent to kiss her, helplessly closing his eyes when his softened lips met hers. He’d been watching them move most of this evening, longing to know them. He tasted the honeyed flavour of the malt she’d sipped and much as he wanted to, he didn’t remain, pulling away gently to give her a chance to slap him and leave.
He watched in wonder as she refrained, instead touching a hand to her lips as if sealing his kiss with her fingertips. In silence she turned, placed her glass onto the nearby desk and in a fluid movement stood to look eye to eye with him with her imperfect stare.
‘I have never been kissed like that before.’
He realised he was holding his breath and was now uncertain of her meaning. ‘It wasn’t more than a lingering peck,’ he declared, needing her to make the next move.
‘And still no boy in my youth, no man in my adult life, has ever kissed me romantically. It was fleeting but it was as beautiful as your wishbones,’ she admitted, sounding awed.
He knew his expression fell. ‘Surely you’ve kissed …’
She shrugged sadly and shook her head.
‘Never?’ He knew he sounded appalled and should drop it.
‘Kisses in greeting, kisses of affection with friends and …’ She stopped. ‘No kisses of romance.’
‘We must address this immediately,’ he said in his doctor’s voice of earlier. ‘May I kiss you again?’
‘Yes, I think I must insist; we shall make your kiss the benchmark by which all other kisses are judged.’
He half laughed; was she teasing him or being truthful? ‘Katerina, is this genuine?’
She understood immediately but took a moment to reply. ‘I need your help; we both know that, but what you don’t know and should is that I wouldn’t set aside my integrity to win it this way. Believe me when I say I would give no man so much as a second glance unless I chose to. If I’m honest, I feel a bit out of control in your company.’
He grinned, their lips so close he could, if he wanted to, trace the outline of hers with the tip of his tongue. ‘You have my permission to go wild.’
Her laughter filled the room and also his heart as she tightened her long arms around him and he remembered little of the next few minutes. He kissed Katerina Kassowicz in a way that could only be reminiscent of his first real kiss, with Daisy Langford behind his father’s tractor on a chilly Guy Fawkes Night, both of them smelling of the bonfire smoke and sulphur. That kiss had fractured his ability to think straight. He had lost his sense of time and was sure they’d kissed for hours, when it was probably only moments. But that’s how it felt now: like he was discovering the joy of kissing for the first time with all its trembling awakening.
And yet it troubled him, as he sank deeper into their embrace and Katerina held him tighter still, that it was a flashing thought of Miss Bailey’s dismay at threatening his career, his fine reputation, for a woman. Edward snapped his hungry thoughts back from the bedroom, where this kiss was taking them, and away from toppling in love with the Czech beauty.
He was still holding his whisky glass when he broke the spell and pulled himself away from her. Edward placed the glass down deliberately and his voice was tight with fear as much as loathing for treating her so carelessly. ‘Katerina, I don’t know what’s in my head.’ He took a low breath of courage, knowing his rejection was rude and could only give affront, especially after her admission. ‘I’ve already breached professional distance. Forgive me, I …’
She stood apart, clearly embarrassed. That expression lasted only a few heartbeats before she gathered herself. ‘Please, don’t apologise,’ she said in a voice like a winter’s wind. Katerina held a hand up. Her expression was blanched, tight with controlled emotion. She’d admitted something so personal and this surely felt like he was throwing it back in her face. ‘I’m certainly not going to mention it to anyone and I feel sure we can rely on your discretion.’
He could feel her building the fortress around herself. The gaze he now feared, one filled with icy disappointment, perhaps mostly at herself for leaving herself open to this pain, landed on him now and he found it hard to hold the searching look of that cat’s eye.
‘Apart from me contacting the museum about the party behind the Pearls, is there any other advice you can give me without compromising your position?’ Her voice was hard, like a hammer against the nails of her words.
He was still remembering the kiss and was angry with himself for lacking the mettle to resist her, her letter, her powerful story. Edward Summerbee shook his head. ‘I want to but I cannot help you … not like this and certainly not from this perspective. It’s compromising and will only become more awkward.’
He watched her nod with resignation. ‘May I use your telephone, please?’
‘I can call you a taxi, if that’s —’
‘It’s not. I must make a couple of urgent calls. One will be to Europe. I shall pay you for it.’
‘Don’t insult me,’ he said, deeply cut. ‘Here,’ he twisted the telephone around on his desk. ‘Please feel free to make whatever calls you need. I’ll leave you alone. Violet and Pansy would enjoy being fed this evening.’ He turned and left the room, burning with his internal shame; the transgression was his, not hers, and he was glad he had managed to keep his tone even.
Edward took his time feeding the two dogs, essentially using it to find his equilibrium once more. They’d gone into the study to hatch a plan; he was the one who had hijacked it. He wanted to repair the damage but didn’t know how. It was the noise of her footsteps in the hallway that had him moving swiftly out of the parlour again.
‘Let me help with you that,’ he said, but she had already fetched her coat, pulling it on quickly. A light waft of her perfume reached towards him to sadden him. He’d lost her.
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She opened her handbag and her purse.
‘What are you doing?’
She offered three crisp five-pound notes. It was far too much. Their dark shade of blue matched the mood in the hallway and the young Queen of England, unlike previous denominations where she looked ahead, stared directly at him with accusation from Katerina’s hand. ‘Please,’ she insisted.
He refused to move. ‘I told you —’
‘I am indebted to you. I’ll leave the money here,’ she said, placing the notes on the sideboard near some wilted flowers that his housekeeper would surely refresh tomorrow. Even they spoke of the atmosphere between them.
‘Katerina, could we —’
‘No. I’m sorry, but I think I’ve taken too much already of your time. I was wrong to ambush you this morning and even more ridiculous to hope that I could persuade you to offer some insight into my situation. I’ve behaved badly and I want to apologise for all transgressions today, particularly … well, let’s not mention our intimacy. If we could leave it at that, you would save me some heartache.’
She wasn’t looking at him. Edward reckoned few people had disappointed her more than he had this evening. He hated himself.
‘I don’t want your money.’
‘Well, I don’t want you … er, thinking that I came here this evening to … to —’
‘I don’t think that!’
‘That’s a relief. I can find my own taxi. Thank you.’ She walked ahead. Violet whined from the stairs.
Edward glared at his dog and returned an awkward gaze to the woman now reaching for his front door.
‘Katerina, where will you go?’
She blazed an angry look towards him. ‘That’s none of your concern. Goodnight, Mr Summerbee. Our paths will not cross ag
ain.’ She yanked the door open and left to walk down his path without looking back. He wanted to run after her, apologise, find some common ground for them both to retreat to, but he knew she would punish him.
A taxi, like a treacherous dark beast, moved down his street. He watched her lift a long arm in hope and the taxi driver slowed the vehicle. She got into the back, slanting him one final disappointed gaze before the taxi shifted into a higher gear and took her away into the shadows of Kensington.
Katerina Kassowicz was gone and Edward had never felt more hollow at abiding by the rules of his profession and the oath he’d taken at the bar.
23
Across town in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury a man waited in the shadow of an unlit doorway, his gaze fixed upon the threshold of a mansion block called Museum Chambers. He glanced from time to time to the flat in the gods where he knew there lived a woman called Katerina Kassowicz, but who went by the name of Severine Kassel. Time was ebbing; he had anticipated she might be home by now. He’d watched her climb into a taxi with the solicitor; he’d not been able to follow quickly enough in the rain and so he’d come to where he knew she must return. He flicked his lighter to briefly glance at his watch, extinguishing the flame a second or so after ignition. It was nearing ten. Couldn’t be long now.
Further down the same road, seated in the dark of a London taxi, Daniel observed the man in the doorway he had nicknamed the Watcher. The taxi driver – after a brisk price negotiation – had obliged him by switching off his light and leaving the vehicle to go for a cup of tea and a smoke and to relieve himself. An hour, he’d said. It wouldn’t be cheap. It didn’t matter. Daniel paid up-front. This left him alone in the back, entirely hidden in the shadows and able to keep the Watcher in view. He saw the flare of a single flame that was put out almost as soon as it caught and he trapped the image in his mind of a tall man in a long raincoat, wearing an old-fashioned felt trilby that couldn’t fully hide his square, flattish face. Daniel was patient but it was another twenty minutes before the figure emerged from the doorway, clearly resigned to the fact that Katerina Kassowicz would not be returning to her flat this night. The man of the Mossad took in every movement of the Watcher as he tucked his scarf tighter, raised an umbrella and ambled towards the taxi in which the spy hid, but Daniel felt confident in the dark, having already taken the precaution of having the street lamp smashed the previous evening by a couple of teenagers. It was worth the pound spent so no light could spill into the spot where the taxi was deliberately parked.
The Watcher had an odd gait. There was an obvious limp and Daniel gathered that pain was involved simply by the cast of the man’s features from that snapshot he held in his mind. It was old pain, though, because the Watcher shuffled along in a rhythm that revealed the gait was now habitual: part of him. He passed beneath a street lamp and Daniel got his first clear glimpse of his prey. The height that would have held him beyond six feet had become stooped, and beneath his overcoat that he was buttoning up against the cold he carried a big belly. He adjusted his hat, sweeping back a few wisps of golden hair against an otherwise bald pate. Fluffs of that golden hair sat around his ears, he noted, as the trilby was pulled down firmly now to cover them. As he passed, Daniel turned and saw the taxi driver walking back to the vehicle.
He experienced a moment’s sharp alarm when the limping man paused directly alongside the vehicle to light another cigarette. A cough that came immediately on the back of his first draw from it seemed to arrive from the depths of his chest, rattling up to explode wetly; he gave a groan of pain but again it sounded rote, as though he was expecting it.
‘You should give up the fags, mate,’ the driver said, arriving at the vehicle.
‘Is this your taxi?’ the Watcher asked. Daniel heard the European inflection even though it was well couched in a British accent.
‘It is. Just returning from a break.’
‘Can I hire you?’ He coughed long and loud again; it was the hack of a bronchitis sufferer and he was observed from the vehicle wiping his mouth with a large handkerchief to clear it from whatever had ridden up on that cough.
Daniel felt a clench of fresh anxiety. Would the taxi driver take the fare? He could be forgiven for agreeing, given that they’d only negotiated for him to sit in the taxi, alone, for one hour. If the driver opened the door now and the light came on, Daniel would have to barrel-roll out of the opposite door and run for it. He’d be seen, of course, but could not risk being identified; he hoped the fake beard would hold up its end of the bargain in the dark. He slowed his breath as he’d been taught, his hand already gripping the door handle, ready for flight.
‘I’m sorry, mate,’ the taxi driver said. ‘My shift’s done. I’m turning in for the night. But listen, you keep going, take a left and not far from this corner is a rank. There’s two cars there right now.’
‘Oh, that’s helpful, thank you. Goodnight.’
‘Night, mate.’
Daniel made sure the Watcher had turned and begun his distinctive limp down the street. The driver’s door opened, the light he’d feared switched itself on and he ducked.
‘Yeah, I thought so,’ the driver said, his cockney accent sounding suddenly broader. ‘Wot you up to then, mate? Watching ’im? I did you a solid just now.’
‘You did. Could you turn the light off, please?’
The driver obliged, closing his door and physically switching off the light so they were plunged into darkness.
‘I shall double the fee.’
‘You’d want to. I don’t like peeping Toms.’
Daniel rummaged for his money and peeled off five ten-pound notes. ‘That man?’ The driver nodded. ‘Is a war criminal. And that mansion house he’s watching – he’s looking for a woman … and he means her harm. She’s an innocent.’
‘Are you a plain-clothed “D”?’
‘Sort of.’ He nodded, trying to skirt the truth of whether he was a policeman.
‘Why didn’t you say so? Keep the money.’
‘I insist. You could have been earning this past hour … and you should know you’ve helped the woman.’
The driver took the money. ‘I’ll sleep straighter for knowing that. All right, then, I’ll drop you somewhere on my way back to Pimlico. Victoria Station all right for you?’
‘Perfect,’ Daniel murmured.
A different taxi lurched towards another of London’s great railway stations. Inside, its passenger was glad of the cabbie’s cheerful conversation or she feared she may just weep. How could she have laid herself so open to hurt again? She wouldn’t allow herself to ponder this now – it was too painful. She needed distance and her plans were set; people were already in motion on her behalf.
‘You’ve missed the last train, miss,’ the man continued after she’d mentioned she was headed to Yorkshire. Her spirits plunged at this news. ‘So I think it will have to be a hotel for tonight.’
She considered heading back to the flat but she wanted to be within walking distance of the first train out in the morning and not to have to negotiate London traffic. The idea of backtracking to Bloomsbury now would feel like she was treading water. And still smarting from rejection, she needed to be in motion with her new plan. Besides, she was in such an unhappy frame of mind, the loneliness that the Bloomsbury flat offered might undo her. No, the dislocation that a hotel room could achieve would help her mood.
‘Where’s the closest hotel?’
‘The Great Northern, of course, but you might prefer a guest house, or …’
‘No, that will be fine. I have no luggage and I think landladies might frown on a single woman arriving this late at night with no overnight bag.’
He grinned into the rear-view mirror. ‘I think you’re right, miss. Righto, it’s not far now. You know when the Great Northern Railway corporation built King’s Cross Station, the Victorians hated it. They were used to lots of ornamentation and the new station back in the late nineteenth century was offensive in its simplicit
y.’
It was a rare feeling but she welcomed the conversation. ‘Northerners are known for being no-nonsense, right?’ she said, deliberately encouraging him and drawing on what she’d learned over her years of visiting Yorkshire.
‘Exactly! They couldn’t care a whit; they wanted straight-forward and functional. It was built by being squeezed beneath Regent’s Canal. It was enough of a feat of engineering to achieve that without worrying about making it fancy.’
She smiled in the darkness, pleased by his historical knowledge. Enviously, she watched him take a final drag on his cigarette and flick the fag end out of his side window, blowing the smoke out with it. ‘Are you French?’
‘I am,’ she lied.
‘Just visiting?’
‘Bit of work, bit of sightseeing.’ She distracted him from her story. ‘St Pancras must have looked like a palace by comparison when it was built.’
‘Oh my word, yes. Caused quite the storm and probably cost ten times as much. They say Euston’s Great Hall and portico cost more than the entire build of King’s Cross. Cubitt also built the hotel I’m taking you to. It’s a little more glamorous but was still simple and stark for its time. Here we go.’
The hotel’s curving sweep of tall architecture came into view. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I’d pick this as instantly Victorian with those gabled windows and chimney stacks.’
‘I’ve always liked it.’ He winked as he turned to switch off the meter.
She thanked him, paid, told the young man who raced out to open her door that she had nothing to carry in and was through the main doors in moments to register for an overnight.
The Pearl Thief Page 30