Husband-To-Be

by Linda Miles

  The article concluded on a more sinister note. Dr Parry, it said, had remarked that the male birds typically began singing in early May; he had expressed surprise that their presence had not been noticed in the course of an in-depth survey of the reedbed which his predecessor had been conducting for the last two months. Financial analysts predicted that the implication of a possible cover-up would further undermine investors’ confidence in the scheme.

  Rachel bit her lip. A Savi’s Warbler? Spotted by Driscoll, who’d never been able to spot anything smaller than a barn owl? Something was seriously wrong.

  She remembered, suddenly, Olivia’s promise to introduce Driscoll to Matheson. Suppose she’d done it? Driscoll wanted a secure job—it wouldn’t take much of an offer from Matheson to persuade Driscoll to undermine the ecological impact assessment.

  Well, however badly Grant had behaved, she didn’t want his project destroyed. If there was any possibility that he was being sabotaged, she had to do what she could to expose it.

  Rachel hesitated, then picked up the phone and dialled the mansion. Could she speak to Mr Mallett? Mr Mallett was in New York. No, there was no message.

  Rachel couldn’t quite face talking to Olivia over the phone. Still, if Olivia was that desperate for the place to turn a profit, surely she’d jump at the chance to prove the sighting of rare species was a false alarm?

  At last she forced herself to bicycle over to the conference centre after work. After a short argument with the secretary, she was shown into the office.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ Olivia didn’t trouble to disguise her boredom.

  ‘I saw the piece in the FT about the rare species,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The more I think about this, the fishier it looks,’ Rachel persevered. ‘Could someone be trying to destroy Grant? I think those rare species may have been planted…’

  No need to say she thought Driscoll was responsible. It was possible someone else had done it. It was possible he’d just seen a small bird and misidentified it. It was even possible he’d seen a small bird and identified it correctly, but if so it would be for the first time in his life.

  ‘You mean the plants, I take it,’ Olivia said curtly. ‘Are you implying that Driscoll deliberately manufactured false sightings of the birds as well?’

  So much for protecting Driscoll. ‘No, but misindentifications aren’t as uncommon as you’d think,’ said Rachel uncomfortably. ‘Anyway, you can’t prove that one way or the other, whereas you can prove it if the plants aren’t native. All you have to do is get soil samples from close to the roots of the plants and from the surrounding ground, and compare them—my bet is they’ll be different.’

  Olivia tapped her pencil on the desk. That’s wonderful news if it’s true,’ she said. ‘But obviously we don’t want to get Grant’s hopes up. I’d rather we didn’t tell him until we were sure.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rachel. ‘But mightn’t we want to spread a counter-rumour? I mean, isn’t it worth keeping the share prices up if we can?’

  ‘If we act rashly we may make things worse,’ Olivia said obscurely.

  ‘Well, at least let me have a look,’ said Rachel. ‘Driscoll must have drawn up a map showing where he saw these things. Let me get some soil samples and have a look at the context to see if anything looks suspicious.’

  Olivia inspected her nails, ‘I think we ought to get in an independent assessor, to be perfectly honest,’ she said, in her bored, drawling voice. ‘After all, it’s not as if you don’t have a vested interest in this. These discoveries have put a question mark over your professional competence, and, to be perfectly frank, what’s to stop you from collecting fake samples, or even destroying the plants, just to protect yourself? I’m not saying you would do it, but the possibility’s there, and we can’t be too careful.’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion!’ Rachel said hotly.

  Olivia shrugged. ‘You must try to see my position,’ she said smoothly. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you not to come on the grounds without prior permission. Of course I’ll arrange for someone else to come in. Meanwhile, if there is nothing further you want to discuss…’

  Rachel shook her head in frustration. If she could only believe that Olivia would do something, it wouldn’t really matter who made the investigation…but would she?

  Well, it wouldn’t hurt if it was done twice, she decided.

  ‘No, that’s all,’ she said, with a bright, false smile, and left the room before she could say anything impolite.

  Rachel’s first move was to go instantly to the small room which had once been her office. Her bet was that Driscoll would have gone home for the day—Driscoll did.not like working long hours. So with any luck she could unearth a copy of the list and the map herself…

  Finding them was easy. They could hardly be hidden when they were supposed to be part of perfectly genuine research; Driscoll had simply started a new tab in the lever arch file and inserted the papers behind it.

  Now came the hard part. Rachel extracted the papers from the file and tiptoed across the corridor to the photocopier. The map had to be darkened and reduced, and the list was double-sided; at each groan of the machine she was sure she’d be discovered.

  No one came, however, and five minutes later she was outside, heart pounding, the precious pages stuffed into a pocket.

  If there was one thing Rachel hated more than anything else in the world, it was getting up early in the morning, but for Grant she would even do that. She spent the evening going through her research books reading up on the species on Driscoll’s list, making copious notes on the features one would expect to find in their surroundings; then, with a grimace, she set her alarm for five a.m.

  The morning was grey and cold, with a mist that would probably lift later in the day. Rachel stuffed her notes and a camera into a backpack, then set off on her trusty bicycle.

  It took twenty minutes to cover the five miles to the back entrance to the property, and forty minutes of furious pedalling over the rutted access road to go the next two miles to the turn-off to the woods. The road branched off by the waterway and became little more than a pair of tracks climbing through the trees. Noise was deadened by the thick carpet of leaves; there was something a little spooky about the silent road disappearing ahead in the mist between ranks of fog-shrouded trees.

  Atmosphere was irrelevant, Rachel told herself sternly. The important thing was the job at hand. She dismounted and leant her bicycle against a tree, and with a show of scientific matter-of-factness took out Driscoll’s map and opened it up to get her bearings.

  As she did so a sharp chill ran down her back—in her mind’s eye Rachel saw, with horrible vividness, the first, unreduced copy of the map which she’d made and put to one side and forgotten to take with her. What if it was found? What if someone suspected she was here? Suddenly the forest seemed full of mysterious rustling noises, as if someone was lurking just out of sight. A branch scraped across a tree trunk; Rachel whirled around, heart beating violently, then sighed with relief when she saw the branch swaying in the wind.

  At last she forced herself to shake off these nerves. Working her way down the list, with the map as a guide, she tried to find what Driscoll had seen. A couple of the items had withered to limp little clumps of vegetation; Rachel took pictures, and scooped soil samples into plastic envelopes. There were no Savi’s Warblers, naturally—the bird was a great skulker, and skulked exclusively in reedbeds even when somebody hadn’t just pretended to see it. None of the rare insects were to be seen either, but she took ,pictures of the places where they were supposed to have appeared.

  At last there was only one plant left on the list. Rachel strode through the undergrowth and clambered over fallen trees, following Driscoll’s map. Once or twice she stopped, startled by a crackling sound behind her—but when she listened and looked back she heard only the wind in the leaves overhead.

  She started again—and now
she felt an odd prickling at the back of her neck, as though she were being followed. She looked around, but there was no one to be seen; that was what came of an over-active imagination, she told herself.

  She stepped at last out into the clearing marked on the map. Resolutely she knelt down beside the wilted leaves and drooping purple blossom which had once been a Lady Orchid. There was a violent blow on the back of her head—and everything went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RACHEL woke in a room she had never seen before. She was lying, feet tied at the ankles, wrists tied behind her back, on a dusty mattress on a rusting bed; above her head a sharply gabled roof suggested that she was in an attic. There was a throbbing pain in her head, and her arms protested against her uncomfortable position; she wished she hadn’t come to. She supposed she should consider herself lucky she hadn’t been gagged. This wasn’t entirely comforting, however, since this must mean her captors thought there was no danger of anyone hearing her if she did cry out.

  Sunlight streamed through a window onto the far wall. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, and as she didn’t know which direction the room faced she was unable to guess the time. She lay on her side, trying to work out what had happened and why, but her brain was too weary. She closed her eyes and fell asleep again.

  She woke again in semi-darkness. Her arms felt as though someone had stabbed them with red-hot wires; her neck and shoulders were cramped and stiff. There was still no sign of her captors. There was nothing to do but wait, and hope they had not abandoned her altogether. She lay for an indefinite period staring into the gathering darkness, wondering whether she would ever see Grant again, until at last she slept…

  The next time she woke suddenly, as something heavy dropped onto the bed beside her. The room was still dark, too dark to see.

  The door closed, the lock turned. She was left on the bed with—something. Something human, anyway, for it was breathing heavily. Rachel had not thought it possible to be more uncomfortable, but now, jammed against the wall by this temporarily lifeless body, she found it impossible to sleep.

  Slowly the dark thinned, then lightened to a grainy black, then to grey. Gradually she was able to see the features of her fellow captive. It was Grant.

  There was a dark smear on one side of his head that looked like blood; the dark blond hair was matted with it. A thin film of sweat glistened on his skin; she didn’t know whether that was a good or bad sign. He was unshaven, the dark bristles thick on his jaw—not that that was a sign of anything but an unusually long separation from his razor, but it was so at odds with his usual casually debonair appearance that it made her uneasy too.

  Still, there was nothing she could do for him. Like her, he seemed to be tied hand and foot. He, too, would probably have a splitting headache when he woke; he might as well sleep as long as he could.

  Even as she thought it, his eyes opened and met hers. Their expression was perplexed.

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Rachel,’ he said again. His head was beside hers on the mattress; he lifted it, seeming surprised that he couldn’t move his arms. His eyes stared into hers; suddenly his head bent towards hers and he kissed her hungrily.

  Other things being equal, Rachel would have thought this as good a way of passing the time as any, and better than most. After all, it wasn’t as though they were going anywhere. But what on earth was going on? Grant had been as good as, or rather worse than, his word in maintaining an icy formality ever since the party.

  Still, looking on the bright side, her headache had magically disappeared.

  His chin rasped against hers, but his mouth was soft and warm. How long it had been since she’d tasted it! Perhaps he thought they were going to be killed. If they couldn’t literally die in each other’s arms, they could have the next best thing. Rachel responded enthusiastically, hampered by the awkwardness of holding her neck up.

  She realised, suddenly, that something was not quite right. He kept rolling jerkily towards her, flailing his bound body on the bed as if in a terrible effort to get closer to her. His mouth was almost desperate, pushing against hers until her head was backed right up against the wall. Then a violent movement of his body shook his head sharply back. His eyes closed briefly, then opened wide.

  ‘Rachel!’ he said incredulously. And then, as realisation hit him, ‘Oh, my God!’

  The room was a little lighter now. Rachel could see the dull tide of crimson staining his cheeks.

  ‘Rachel, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. What the hell is going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rachel, trying to ignore the fact that her pulse seemed to be up to twice its normal speed. ‘I went to collect some soil samples, and—I think I must have been hit over the head. One minute I was putting some soil in an envelope, the next minute I woke up here. What are you doing here? I thought you were in New York.’

  ‘I was. Then I read in the paper that a lot of protected species were turning up here, so planning permission was likely to be refused for further development. Share prices were going through the floor. I thought I’d better get back and see what was going on.’

  Now that he was really awake his eyes were suddenly chilling. ‘Olivia told me you’d quit—’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘Does that mean you didn’t?’ His eyes softened slightly.

  ‘She told me to go because they’d found all this new stuff which she said I’d overlooked. She told me you knew all about it!’ Rachel said furiously. ‘And then when I said I thought something suspicious was going on, and we should investigate, she said I might be trying to protect my reputation and she didn’t trust me to do it myself.’

  There was a glimmer of a smile in the dark blue eyes, though she had the impression that his head was hurting. ‘So naturally you went quietly home to seek solace in Vogue…’

  Rachel flushed. ‘I just had to be sure, Grant. I thought there was no time to lose. I wasn’t sure how long it would take Olivia to find someone else.’

  He was frowning. ‘So—let me get this straight—you’re saying all these species might have been deliberately planted?’

  ‘There’s just something wrong about it, Grant,’ she said. ‘It’s all so—so ostentatious.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, all these things turning up. that a non-ecologist could understand,’ she explained. ‘I mean, a survey might turn up all kinds of things that I’d find worrying. Your science park might have an impact on some extremely common water plant, for instance, that was the main food of an insect that was the main food of a bird that wasn’t rare but was found in only a few places.’

  She frowned. ‘It seems to me that’s already too complicated for the average investor to be instantly worried, and that’s a simplified example of what I’d be looking for. Whereas a rare bird, or a rare plant, is so obvious. It’s so easy to leak to the Press.’

  ‘By Jove, Holmes!’

  ‘I should have seen it before,’ she admitted. ‘But I could have overlooked something. It was only when the paper said that Driscoll had spotted a Savi’s Warbler that I smelled a rat.’

  ‘Not one of our leading birdwatchers, then?’

  ‘No,’ she said shortly. After a moment she added, reluctantly, ‘I think Olivia introduced him to Mr Matheson, and I wondered… That is, there probably isn’t much he wouldn’t do to get a job.’

  Grant tactfully refrained from making another of his pungent comments on Driscoll.

  ‘I got my secretary to fax the list of plants and the map to me in New York,’ he commented, abruptly changing the subject. ‘I went straight to your uncle’s house the minute I got back—I wanted you to tell me what the hell was going on. Then he told me you weren’t there, but he thought you’d gone to the woods, so I just went after you. Then I found your bike leaning against a tree trunk.

  ‘I started looking around. There seemed to have been some
thing dragged along at one place. I started following the trail—there was a lot of broken undergrowth—and someone attacked me. I think I gave a pretty good account of myself, but someone hit me over the head, end of story. Next thing I knew I was here…’ His face reddened again.

  ‘I’m sorry about just now,’ he said awkwardly—when had she ever seen Grant awkward? ‘I—I’ve been having these dreams where I see you and try to get to you but I can’t, or I get there too late. You know how in dreams you just do what you want…it was like one of those. My head must have been a bit unhinged after the blow—’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rachel.

  ‘You know what I mean. Anyway, how was I to know it wasn’t a dream? The way you kissed me back was more like a fantasy than a lot of fantasies I’ve had.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rachel, not very repentantly. ‘Do I look like a mind-reader? I thought it was odd, but you seemed to want to—who was I to object? It seemed a good way to pass the time. After all, there’s not much else to do. And anyway, if this is the end of the road, we might as well enjoy the time we’ve got left. Our captors don’t seem very interested in us. I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours—I thought you thought we might as well die happy.’

  Grant grinned suddenly, then winced. It occurred to Rachel that he actually looked a lot more cheerful now, having been knocked over the head, wounded, tied hand and foot and probably left for dead, than he had comfortably playing chief executive behind a big desk. That was probably why he’d looked so oppressed, she decided. A man who was used to being shot at on a regular basis did not thrive on a milk-and-water diet of angry faxes.

  Just look at him! His eyes were sparkling. A week or so of starvation, with maybe the odd beating thrown in, and he’d probably be spouting limericks and telling knock-knock jokes. If only, if only they had put him in a separate bedroom. Well, maybe not that exactly, she amended, remembering the kiss. But did he have to look so happy?