‘He was angry all right.’
‘But annoyed angry? Furious angry? About-to-take-his-business-elsewhere sort of angry?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But, Joe, what’s your judgement on it? What’s your reading?’
For Harry, not knowing was a serious enough failing, but not taking a flier was even worse, and when Joe gave a shrug the last of Harry’s good mood vanished behind a look of thunder. ‘Well, find out, will you?’ he snapped. ‘And quick.’
Joe got up to leave but Harry halted him with an irritated wave. ‘Amend that. You’re making me nervous, Joe. I’m beginning to think I’d be safer to call Ritch myself.’ Increasingly irritated, he looked at his watch. ‘When do they open up shop?’
‘Two thirty our time.’
He peered at his diary. ‘God. Client meeting. That’s all I need - two lots of clients getting temperamental.’ He flipped his diary shut and gave Joe a searching stare. ‘Not like you, Joe, to go and lose the plot like this.’
‘It’d take a saint to deal with Ritch.’
‘Well, I’ve certainly never had any trouble.’
At some point in prehistory the Litigation floor had been open-plan, but a rethink had brought in a series of glass cubicles whose walls had quickly accumulated a patchwork of calendars, postcards and lawyer jokes which blocked off much of the view. Starting down the central aisle, Joe could see someone moving around his cubicle, but he was almost at the door before he realised it was Anna. She was leaning precariously over the front of his desk, phone held loosely to one ear.
Spotting him, she capped the mouthpiece. ‘How’d it go?
Harry not in flesh-eating mode?’
‘He’s calling Ritch himself.’
‘I should bloody well hope so.’ She handed him the phone like a relay runner, already halfway to the door. ‘The Banco Something of Brazil, returning your call.’
Sitting down, Joe gave his name.
A female voice responded, ‘How can I help you, Mr McGrath?’
‘I was wondering if you could give me a number for Ines Santiago.’ He said the name slowly, so there should be no mistake.
‘You are speaking to her.’
‘I am?’ he exclaimed. And then just as stupidly: ‘You’re Ines?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t realise the bank were going to contact you. Thank you for calling back.’
‘So, how can I help you?’ The voice was cool and softly accented, with a hint of breathiness in the h.
‘It’s about Jamie Chetwood. I used to be a friend - I don’t know if he mentioned me?’
‘Yes, he did.’
Joe wondered: Why is it I never met you? Why was Chetwood so careful to keep you out of sight? Possessiveness?
Guilt? Or whatever else a man feels at running two women at the same time?
‘I’m trying to find him,’ he said. ‘And I was wondering if you had any idea where he might be.’
‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid.’
‘No idea of the country he might be in? The continent?’
‘I’m sorry.’ A silence. ‘Why do you wish to know?’
He tried to explain, and did it badly. He started with Marc, then jumped to Jenna, to the property, and back to Marc. ‘It’s rather complicated…’
‘So I realise.’
‘But you can’t help?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, well.’ Joe couldn’t bring himself to ring off without asking, ‘We’ve never met, have we?’
‘No.’
‘Strange.’
She didn’t answer that.
‘Perhaps when you’re next in London.’
Another pause, longer than the one before. ‘I finish at six.’
For the second time in as many minutes, Joe was ridiculously slow. ‘You’re in London?’
‘In Moorgate,’ she said, which was three streets away.
He spotted her as he came through the revolving doors of the bank: a still figure in black, dwarfed by the marble columns and arches of the grandiloquent lobby. She stood watching him as he walked the length of the floor towards her.
‘How do you do?’ she said formally. When she shook hands, her arm was at full stretch, as if to establish a distance.
‘I’m glad to meet you after so long …’ Joe was immediately in awe of her, though he couldn’t have said why.
‘There’s a coffee shop next door.’
She walked beside him in silence. She was short, not much more than five foot one or two, with dark, very shiny hair cut into a bob. In the coffee shop she slipped off her coat to reveal a plain black business suit over a generous but well-shaped figure. In a more frivolous woman, the word would have been voluptuous. Her face, however, was pure Modigliani: long and olive-skinned, with fine arched eyebrows and almond eyes. She was not conventionally beautiful - her nose was long and thin and set noticeably off-centre - yet her poise and her exquisite eyes made her utterly arresting.
‘Kate was sure you were in Brazil.’
Ines stirred her coffee. ‘I have not seen Kate for some time.’
‘Have you been back long?’
‘Three months.’
‘And you lived in London before?’
She nodded without volunteering any details.
‘Yet we never met.’
‘No.’ The almond eyes were unreadable.
‘You never came to see Chetwood in Bristol?’
‘I was abroad that year.’
‘Ah! That explains a lot.’ Joe heard himself laugh unnaturally.
‘Chetwood always seemed at a loose end when he was there. He complained that most of the students were hopelessly retrograde. Though I have to say he was a bit lame-brained himself that autumn. Trotting along parapets, frightening us all to death.’
Ines looked at him as if he were the one who was slightly lame-brained and Joe realised he had been jabbering. There was something about Ines that made him feel off-balance: her composure, the sense that nothing escaped her, the unwavering gaze, the feeling she had lived a hundred lives before.
‘So,’ he said, ‘when did you last see Chetwood?’
She took a moment to think about that. ‘When was it that he went away?’
‘Four years ago.’
She nodded slowly: this was her answer.
In the pause that followed, Joe noticed her hands, which were neat and well-manicured, and the plain pale-gold ring on the third finger of her left hand. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to him that she would be married.
‘Have you any idea why he should go and vanish?’ he asked.
A lift of one shoulder. ‘No.’
‘He never said anything about wanting a change? Or going travelling or anything like that?’
‘No.’
‘He gave no hint that he was planning anything at all?’
‘No.’
‘What about Brazil? Could he be there, do you think?’
‘No.’
Joe couldn’t make out if her reticence was habitual or reserved for talk of Chetwood. ‘You’re sure?’
She gave a slight nod.
‘Not with his mother?’
‘No.’
He gave a laugh of exasperation. ‘Any particular reason?’
Offering a gaze that was fractionally more approachable, she volunteered, ‘He never knew his mother. He never wanted to know her. He had no wish to go to Brazil.’
‘What about your own mother? He was close to her, Kate told me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Might she have heard from him, do you think?’
Ines looked down at her coffee. ‘My mother died four months ago.’
‘Oh,’ he said hastily. ‘I’m sorry.’
She was very still, her face ‘expressionless except for the downcast eyes, which seemed to contain a wealth of thought.
She broke the silence first. ‘When we spoke earlier I did not understand exactly why you want to find him. Could you
tell me again, please?’
Joe made a more logical job of it this time. He started with the property and Marc’s need for money, and went on through the difficulties of selling something in joint ownership when one of the owners can’t be found.
‘So a document needs to be signed?’
‘Well, yes. But there’s more to it than that. It’s Jenna’s parents - they’re desperate to know she’s safe.’
‘Why should she not be safe?’
‘Well, it’s been so long. Anything might have happened.’
‘They don’t believe he is taking care of her?’ Then, and afterwards, Joe noticed how she tried to avoid the use of their names.
‘It’s not a question of what Chetwood might or might not be doing. It’s the not knowing. It’s always thinking the worst.’
‘You don’t believe she has made a choice in this?’
‘For what it’s worth, I think she has, yes. But it’s no good saying that to Alan and Helena. It won’t make them sleep any better at night, it won’t stop their health from suffering.’
Ines regarded him quietly. ‘You are good friends with her family?’
‘Alan and Helena gave me a home from home when I was a kid. Kept me out of trouble.’ In a moment of inspiration, he added, ‘Like your mother did for Chetwood.’
The almond eyes did not waver.
‘I went down to see Chetwood’s family yesterday,’ Joe went on. ‘Which is how I met Kate of course, and got to hear about you. But the father - what a nightmare! It’s a wonder Chetwood survived at all.’
This subject prompted her first spontaneous offering of the evening. ‘A bad man,’ she agreed. ‘With a bad heart. Consumed with the hate and envy of a mean spirit. Sometimes he would try to stop’ - she brought herself to say his name at last - ‘to stop Jamie coming to us. He would refuse to pay the fare at the last moment, or he would cancel the arrangements, and then my mother would have to travel to England to collect Jamie herself.’ She pronounced Jamie in the Latin way, with a soft J that was almost an H.
‘It must have meant a lot to him, having a real family to come to.’
The wariness returned to her face.
‘Having you as a friend.’ Joe was pushing her, but he didn’t know what else to do.
She slid her coffee cup to one side and for a moment he thought she would make her excuses and leave. Instead, she said, ‘Tell me something… Joe.’ She might have been trying his name for size. ‘Did you visit them - Jamie, her - when they lived in the country?’
‘Once, for a short weekend, it must be six years ago. No, a bit less. Five and a half.’
‘And?’
‘They seemed fine.’
‘Tell me.’ Her shrug invited whatever impressions he cared to choose.
‘It was summer. June. Lovely weather. You never went there?’
She shook her head.
‘It was a rented place, a bit shambolic, a bit overgrown, but magical at that time of year. I got up there in time for lunch on Saturday. We ate outside. Late. Went for a walk at about five. Then supper - also very late - with a few other people, maybe ten of us. And I left before lunch the next day.
It was all very relaxed. Chetwood and Jenna both seemed okay.’
‘Who were the other people there?’
‘God, now you’re asking. There was certainly a musician called Dave Cracknell, plus girlfriend. Then there was a neighbour, a farmer - organic, that’s all I remember. And some other locals. An antique dealer, I think. The rest … no, I’m afraid it’s gone after all this time.’
‘Not someone called Sam?’
Joe shook his head doubtfully.
‘Nineteen or twenty. Fair-haired.’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
She blew a small puff of air through her lips, like an audible shrug. ‘Something that was said once. And the next time you saw them?’
‘It was in London, a year or so later.’
‘And?’
‘Jenna seemed ill. Depressed. Chetwood seemed … the same.’
‘He said nothing about what was wrong?’
‘No. And to you?’
Ines paused, as if to debate the wisdom of what she was about to say. ‘I think they had come to London for her to see a doctor. A - what do you say? - specialist.’
‘She was ill then?’
‘I cannot be sure, I can only guess. But I think she had a problem here.’ She tapped the side of her head.
‘Physical? Mental?’
‘Mental. I think something bad happened.’
Joe felt a small surge of tension. ‘Bad in what way?’
Ines made a more eloquent shrug, a lift of both shoulders, a flicker of an arched eyebrow. ‘It was winter. Jamie called me from the farmhouse to say he could not leave. I thought it must be snow, but he said it was not snow. He would not explain.
He would not say why. He said only I cannot leave. And he did not leave for a long time. Usually he was away every two weeks, three at the most, to Bombay, Jakarta, Shanghai. But after this he did not travel for four months. And he did not say why. I thought maybe she wanted him home. That she was making him stay. That she was having - what do you say - a nervous attack?'
‘A breakdown?’
‘A breakdown. But when I said this to Jamie, he was angry, he told me this was not true.’ Lost to this memory, clearly troubled by it, it was a while before she worked her way free.
‘At last he began to travel again,’ she resumed distractedly. ‘To be busy with his work. But nothing was the same after that.
Nothing.’
Joe wanted to ask: And your relationship, was that never the same either? Did Chetwood tell you it was over? Because it seemed to Joe that Ines was being a touch ingenuous about all this, that she was rather conveniently ignoring the possibility that Jenna had found out about their love affair and forbidden Chetwood from seeing her again, or even travelling through London. It would not have been the first time that a wife had issued a drastic ultimatum.
‘Chetwood never explained what had happened?’
‘You know the way he was. He could talk about so much, but in the end he only said what he chose to say.’
And what about you? Joe wondered. Are you telling me only what you choose to tell?
She might have been reading his mind. ‘Oh, do not think I did not try to discover what had happened. I wanted more than anything to understand. I saw so little of him after that, you see. I lost my best friend.’
Joe wasn’t sure what best friend meant any more. When you were a kid your best friend was the person you went cycling with, like Jenna, or kicked a football with, like his schoolfriend Paul, but when you got older a best friend became something much more confusing, anything from a drinking mate of either sex to a superior kind of lover, a sort of kindred spirit, life traveller and sexual partner all rolled into one.
Finally he asked: ‘You mean best friend or…?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘More than a friend?’
Ines’s eyes darkened. It was a while before she whispered, ‘Is this what Kate said to you?’
‘Sort of.’
Ines shook her head coldly at the absent Kate.
‘Oh. It’s not true?’
In slow motion, with an air of injured dignity, Ines reached for her coat and pulled it onto her lap. ‘He married her. There you have your answer.’
She turned in her seat, on the point of getting up, only to stop and fix Joe with a long appraising look. ‘I will tell you something. I will tell you that in that last winter before they left the farmhouse they were going to split. To separate. He was ready to leave. In his mind he had already gone.’
A number of thoughts went through Joe’s head just then.
That this could explain a great deal. That men don’t usually leave without a good reason. That the good reason might well be facing him across the table. That it was nothing like that at all: that Ines had merely talked herself into
believing what she wanted to believe, that at the end of the day intelligence was no barrier to love and delusion.
‘Yes,’ she said as though he’d spoken these thoughts aloud, ‘I hoped he would come and live with me. But no - nothing was arranged between us.’
‘Why was he leaving?’
She dropped her eyes briefly. ‘He did not say.’
‘What, no reason at all?’
‘He spoke only of … difficulties.’
‘Had he told Jenna he was going?’
‘Oh yes.’
Joe felt a stab of sympathy for Jenna, but also unmistakeably a small glimmer of vindication.
‘Well, there’s your event,’ he suggested. ‘There’s the reason Jenna was depressed. The reason Chetwood stayed at home.’
Ines stood up, and he hurried to help her with her coat. It had a long row of buttons down one side, Cossack style.
Fastening them with swift fingers, Ines declared, ‘People do not get so badly ill for love.’
‘Oh. I thought they did.’
‘I think, only in romantic books. Besides …’ Again she seemed to weigh Joe up, to decide if he was worthy of her trust. ‘She had someone new already.’
Joe stared at her.
‘Oh yes,’ she insisted. ‘This younger guy called Sam.’
It wasn’t until they reached the door that Joe asked, ‘Chetwood told you this?’
She nodded.
She seemed to catch some criticism in his face because she was suddenly very formidable. ‘He would not lie about such a thing to me.’ She pulled the door open before he could do it for her. ‘He never lied in the important things.’
Standing in the street Joe said, ‘Well, I’m glad to have met you at last.’
‘Yes.’
‘Typical Chetwood, to have kept us from meeting.’
‘He liked his friends in different compartments.’ She added, ‘Though we almost met once.’ ‘
‘We did?’
‘There was a party he talked about. In the summer after he was in Bosnia. It was going to be in a strange place. A castle that had fallen down? A place with holy stones? Do you remember? He said you would be there. But then he cancelled.
He argued with the person giving the party - something like that. We did not go.’
A police siren screamed and Joe tracked the squad car as it raced past. ‘Oh, but I didn’t go either,’ he said. ‘So it wouldn’t have made any difference.’
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