The Stone Wife

by Peter Lovesey

  After such a wretched night, the soft spray on her skin couldn’t be bettered as a restorative. Expensive gels and hair treatments were ranged along a glass shelf. She showered and shampooed and used the thick white towels from the heated rail outside.

  “Help yourself to a change of underwear,” Stella told her. “It’s brand-new and top quality. I know, because I do the shopping for him. There’s a range of casual clothes in the wardrobe if you want. He likes his lady guests to feel pampered.”

  Pampered? It was tempting to comment that a night in the tower room wasn’t pampering, but why complain to Stella, who was being helpful? White jeans and a black cashmere sweater were a comfortable fit. Feeling infinitely better outside and in, Ingeborg used the range of make-up at the dressing table and then declared herself ready to eat.

  “Good. We’ll go down to the dining room.” Stella put her head round the door and told the henchman they were ready. He followed them tamely to the lift.

  The dining room had a panoramic view across sunlit lawns to Leigh Valley woods. “Take a seat and don’t hesitate to tell them what you want and how it should be cooked,” Stella told her. “I must get to my other duties now. Enjoy your meal. If you want a tip from me, the savoury crêpes are to die for.”

  “You’ve been kind.”

  “It’s my job. I expect he’ll join you shortly.” The first unwelcome thing she’d heard this morning.

  Places for two had been set at one end of a long polished wood table, so she did as she was asked and a waitress arrived at once to take her order. Nathan might be a barbarian, but he knew how to live.

  Coffee and freshly made crêpes were served. A variety of fillings made the meal a delicious guessing game. She recognised spinach and ricotta and red pepper and tomato, and there were other combinations with shrimps and mushrooms that were harder to identify.

  Then a less welcome side-dish appeared. “Are they looking after you?” Nathan’s voice came from somewhere behind her. A whiff of aftershave had crept in with him.

  “I can’t fault the cooking,” she said evenly as he took the seat opposite. He was in a black silk robe decorated with dragons. This guy didn’t underrate himself. “Is this the softening up process after the tower room treatment?”

  “That was a security measure,” he said, eyeing her with that penetrating stare that recalled the mugshot. “The alternative was to put you in a guest room with a minder for company and you might not have appreciated that.”

  “I don’t know why you want to put a guard on me. I’m not likely to run away.”

  “Lily did, so why not you?” He raised a hand to stop her from answering. The waitress had appeared from the kitchen. “My usual,” he told her without making eye contact, “with a slice of liver.”

  When they were alone again, he made a performance of offering Ingeborg more coffee. “So what do you think of my house?”

  “I haven’t seen much of it,” she said.

  “I’ll show you some more soon. I think you’ll be impressed. I’ve made a lot of changes since I bought the place. I’m modernising.”

  “The bits I’ve seen don’t look modern.”

  “It was owned by a baronet. Been in his family for centuries. He was the last of the line, saw out his days here and died a few weeks before his hundredth birthday. They put it up for sale full of all the crap he’d collected. It’s a good location and there’s plenty of ground with it, so I made an offer and bought it, house and effects. This was three years back. We had a massive auction on the lawn outside to get shot of the bloody effects. Two days it took. Marquee, dealers from all over. A lot of the stuff was antique and I came out of it pretty well.”

  “Who did you use as auctioneers?”

  “I don’t know. A Bristol firm, out of the yellow pages. Why do you ask?”

  “I met an auctioneer recently called Doggart, but he was doing his stuff in Bath. They get about, don’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, I decided to hold on to the armour on the walls until I redecorated, so that didn’t go into the sale. You know how it is. You plan to make changes and the years go by and you don’t. I’m getting round to it now, having it valued, and it turns out that some of the armour is very old. The trouble is, who wants to buy bloody suits of armour these days?”

  “Can’t help you there,” Ingeborg said.

  “The buyers take some finding, I can tell you, and it’s slow progress. I want a fair price. I’m not giving the stuff away. So that’s why the place hasn’t been given a makeover.”

  Nathan’s eyes slid to the right, waiting for the waitress to leave the room. Then he stopped talking like a TV presenter on one of those house transformation shows and got round to more personal matters. “We can sort this out in a civilised way. I won’t deny Lily and I have the occasional spat, but I’ve never roughed her up. We always kiss and make up. Always. That’s what couples do, isn’t it?”

  Unsure how to deal with this soul-baring, she watched him top up his cup. An insight into Nathan’s private life might be of use, but it wouldn’t be smart to put herself into a position where he felt he’d said too much and was getting nothing in return. She said, “I haven’t the faintest idea what’s on Lee’s mind.”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” he said, dropping the civility straight away. “You’re close, you two. You must be.”

  “I only met her yesterday.”

  He brushed that aside. “Who supplied the rope ladder?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “She didn’t bring it with her. I drove her to the ship for the shoot. I know a woman can stuff a lot in her bag, but I’m bloody sure there wasn’t a ladder in there.”

  “I can’t help you with this,” Ingeborg said, doing her best to sound cool.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ingeborg Smith.”

  His lip curled.

  She had a response she’d used a hundred times before. “I can’t help being called Smith, if that’s what bothers you. There are seven hundred thousand Smiths in Britain and I happen to be one of them.”

  “You’re a writer. Get a pen-name.”

  She took this as humour and smiled. “It’s what I’m known as. Why change it now?” On an inspiration, she added, “Wilbur Smith is one of the most famous writers in the world and he doesn’t find it a handicap.”

  Nathan was unimpressed. He didn’t look like a book-lover. “If you didn’t know about the rope-ladder,” he doggedly returned to his main line of enquiry, “how come you used it to get off the ship?”

  “It was hanging over the side when I ran along the deck. I was being chased. Your men were shining flashlights at me. What would you have done?”

  Nathan wasn’t interested in replying.

  “They could have been armed,” she added, becoming more confident. “Someone comes after me in the dark, I don’t hang about.”

  Another temporary halt was called for the arrival of Nathan’s lunch, a plate piled high that made her think fleetingly of Peter Diamond. In this situation Diamond, like Nathan, wouldn’t have ordered the crêpes. But he might have approved of the way she was coping with the interrogation.

  “What was that about my men being armed?” Nathan asked when the waitress was gone.

  “You’re a major player,” she said. “I expect you need to defend yourself.”

  He didn’t deny it. “Tell me what you know. Is Lily playing silly games or has she really jumped ship?”

  “I can’t answer that. I keep telling you we aren’t friends. My dealings with her are professional. She’s someone I arranged to interview, that’s all.”

  He used his knife on the fried liver, served so rare that blood oozed from it. “I don’t like being pissed about. I invested a fortune in that girl. I treated her well.” He looked up from his plate. “Did she say something was bugging her?”

  “Not to me. We hardly talked at all.”

  “After the shoot finished, did you speak?�
��

  Ingeborg shook her head. “I went to the dressing room and they told me she’d already left.”

  “How soon was that?”

  “Not long after the wrap.”

  “Was she with anyone?”

  “They didn’t say so.”

  Nathan used his blood-stained knife to stress what he said next. “She wasn’t acting alone. Some toe-rag supplied the ladder and fixed it to the side of the ship. She knew where to go, and she had wheels to get away. It was all arranged.”

  Ingeborg had worked this out for herself. It didn’t require great deductive powers. She sipped her coffee and said nothing.

  “Am I reading it right?” Nathan asked.

  Difficult. Neutrality was her preferred stance. “I’m not in a position to say.”

  “Come on, I’ve checked your phone. You took pictures of her. You were with her.”

  “On and off.”

  “Was she nervous? Excitable? Angry?”

  “How would I know? We’d only just met.”

  He pointed the knife at her. “You’re not helping.”

  “I’m being honest.” And she added something which was not honest at all. “If you want to know who’s angry, I am. I’m angry with Lee. She played me for a sucker, letting me think I could get a magazine piece out of this.”

  The mean eyes widened a fraction. Maybe she’d made a telling point. “Where was this going to appear?”

  “In one of the Sundays, probably.”

  “A national?”

  She nodded.

  Nathan was clearly interested. He pressed his fingers to his lips and tapped them thoughtfully. “It’s not like Lily to turn down the chance of publicity.”

  She was content to let him think the matter through in his own time. If he came to the right conclusion this could be helpful.

  “The silly little bitch is bound to come to her senses soon,” Nathan spoke his thoughts aloud. “She’ll find she can’t hack it as a pop star without me backing her every inch of the way. She’d never have got this far without me. She’s not answering my calls. All I get is some recorded message.” He put down the knife and fork and leaned back in the chair. “But I know what to do.”

  Ingeborg waited.

  “You can talk some sense into her.”

  She shook her head, acting dim. “I don’t know how.”

  “Like I just said, she needs to be in the papers all the time, or she’ll find herself at the bottom of the heap. Tell her you still want to write about her, even though she let you down.”

  “But we don’t know where she is.”

  “She’ll have her phone with her. Call her on your mobile.”

  “You took it off me.”

  “Play along and you can have it back. I don’t know why you’re bothered about the phone. There’s fuck all on it.”

  “It’s brand new,” she said, which was true. “I got it especially for this project. It’s supposed to take better pictures than my old one.” In reality she would have been idiotic to have brought her own phone with all its data. “Can I have it back now?”

  “All in good time. You and I are going to strike a deal. She’s not answering my calls, but you can bet your little cotton socks she’ll talk to you. What did Mrs. Thatcher call it? The oxygen of publicity?”

  “Something like that.” In her wildest dreams she hadn’t expected to hear Margaret Thatcher being quoted by Nathan Hazael.

  “It’s neat,” he said, leaning back and rubbing his hands. “I’ll tell you what to say. We’ll soon find out who she’s shacking up with.”

  “And what do I get out of the deal?”

  “Your ticket of leave. You’ll be free to go after I get her back.”

  “I can’t guarantee she’ll come back.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Nathan said. “When I know where she is, I’ll fetch her.” A simple statement of intent with a grim subtext. He dipped his hand into a pocket of the robe and produced Ingeborg’s phone and held it out. “Call her now.”

  She took the phone and let it rest in her palm as if she’d never seen it before.

  Put on the spot like this, she felt her veins ice up. She hated the idea that Lee would be tricked into revealing where she was and brought back by force. But if Nathan didn’t get his way, the ferocity would swing in another direction. He was in charge here.

  Crunch time.

  The bigger picture was that she couldn’t allow herself to fall out with Nathan. Her reason for being here was to get the truth about the hold-up at the auction and the fatal shooting. She needed to stay on speaking terms with the man. She felt a strong empathy with Lee, but it wasn’t a case of Lee being totally ignorant about Nathan’s intentions. The singer would be expecting him to come after her. She’d lived with him and she knew he wouldn’t be dumped without a fight.

  Lee had the intelligence to work out what was going on.

  The bigger picture had to win.

  “If I get through, do you want to speak to her?”

  He shook his head. “She’d cut me off. Besides, we don’t want her knowing you’re with me. You’re calling for yourself, got it?”

  Lee’s number was one of the few she had stored. She called it.

  There was still a chance of getting a recorded message.

  But Lee’s voice came through. “Hi. Is this Ingeborg?” As chipper and friendly as if nothing had gone wrong.

  “How are you? We seem to have lost contact.”

  Across the table, Nathan made a fist and held it up in triumph.

  Into the minefield.

  “I’m good,” Lee said. “Hey, I don’t know what to say about last night, leaving so suddenly. But at least we met.”

  “Where are you?” Ingeborg asked, and saw Nathan’s nod of satisfaction at the question.

  “Right now? With a friend.”

  “In Bristol?”

  “I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind. Change in my personal arrangements. I’m not at Nathan’s place any more.”

  “The thing is … are you still up for the photo shoot?”

  After a pause, Lee said, “Sure. We can do it, only it won’t be exactly as we planned, and we may have to wait a few days.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t wait that long,” Ingeborg said and improvised: “I pitched the idea to the Sunday Times and the magazine editor is keen to use it. I promised to deliver by the end of the week.”

  “The Sunday Times? Diggety dog, that’s cool.” The excitement was so clear in Lee’s voice that Ingeborg felt a stab of conscience. It was one thing telling lies to Nathan, but this young woman wasn’t remotely evil.

  “I can’t mess them about,” Ingeborg felt compelled to say. “I was counting on doing most of it today.”

  “Aw, shoot. That’s so difficult. I can’t tell anyone where I am, not even you. Ask no questions and hear no lies. Well, I’d better say this much: I’ve split with Nathan. My life was getting impossible for all sorts of reasons I won’t go into. So, you see, we can’t do the photo shoot at his house like we said we would.”

  “That is a problem,” Ingeborg said, her brain in overdrive, conscious that Nathan was hanging on every word she spoke. “It’s supposed to be a typical day in your life.”

  “Can’t you change the format?”

  “Not at this late stage. Really it doesn’t matter where we do it, as long as it’s about you from morning till night. I took those shots on the ship last night. They’ll go in nicely and show you at work. Great publicity for the video, too.”

  “You’re right. Oh, God, this is difficult. I’m really up for it, only I don’t see how it’s possible.”

  The conflict in Lee’s voice was painful to hear and Ingeborg felt desperately mean, but she couldn’t allow this call to end yet. “There must be a way round this. Can we meet somewhere and talk it through?”

  Nathan raised both thumbs.

  The pull of publicity was too much for Lee to resist. “Righty. I’ll meet you. Only
it has to be somewhere I can feel safe. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve. Let me think.”

  Ingeborg was tempted to tell her she’d think better if she stopped trotting out these stupid proverbs.

  “Do you know Queen Square?” Lee asked.

  “I do, but where in Queen Square? It’s huge.”

  “The middle, where I can see in every direction.”

  “Where the statue is? Okay, what time?”

  “What is it now? Half-twelve? I can be there by two, just to meet, right, and work out what we do?”

  “Two it is.”

  Nathan had a smile like sunrise over the Bristol Channel when the call ended. He didn’t ask for the phone back. “I heard your side of it. Queen Square. Did she say where she is now?”

  “No. She was being careful.”

  “She can’t be far off if she’s meeting you at two.”

  “True.”

  “Not long until I get her back.”

  “That isn’t what she’s expecting.”

  He chuckled. “Women like surprises.”

  “Do you need me there, or can I go now?” Ingeborg asked, already guessing what he would say.

  “You’ve got to be there.”

  “I feel like Judas.”

  “Relax. She’ll come to her senses when she knows how much I care about her.” And his eager voice suggested he really did care. “Have you seen the sound studio I built for her? Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Recording studios held no particular interest for Ingeborg, but the chance to see more of the house was unmissable. She followed Nathan from the room and through a spacious sitting room equipped with a plasma TV, on the lookout all the time for anything resembling an armoury. But this was a place to relax, more modern in style than the other living rooms she’d seen, with deep armchairs, sofas and subdued lighting.

  “We’re entering her private quarters now,” Nathan said, pushing open another door. “I don’t often come in here. Had it built for her only three months ago. You can still smell the paint. There’s also a small gym. She’s quite an athlete, as you saw on the ship.”

  “Do you have your own gym?” Ingeborg asked.