As Sister Jones hurried away, Duncan assumed an industrious expression. “Before you go, Jardine about Ben. I’m worried .. . He needs to have some of the load taken off his shoulders, you know.”
“When you say load, Duncan?” It always got Simon’s back up when Duncan called him by his last name, like some sort of hired hand.
“His workload,” Duncan declared as if this should have been self-evident. “The thing is, while Ben’s got so much on his plate taking care of Catherine, dealing with the doctors he won’t have the time to run the business as he’d like. Simply not possible.” He spoke in the sonorous tone he used for board meetings, the inflated voice of authority and experience. “And if I may say so, he shouldn’t have to dash around the place like he did yesterday.” He shook his head reproachfully. “Something you could have done, surely, Jardine. Not too much to ask, to step in and do the smaller trips.”
“He wasn’t actually on RNP business yesterday, Duncan.”
Duncan frowned, as though Simon were making a rather shoddy attempt to
deflect the argument. “Difficult for you to deal with the core
business on your own, of course I do understand that. But I was
thinking that if you liaised with Ben on a day-to-day basis, took
instructions on the main decisions, then you might be able to keep
things ticking over until Ben can get his eye on the ball again. I
know it’s a hell of a gap to fill-‘
Simon said stiffly, “I’m filling most of the gaps already, Duncan.”
“But you don’t speak Polish.”
“I speak enough.”
“But you don’t speak it fluently,” he argued triumphantly. “And then there are all Ben’s contacts. No, no He shook his head decisively.
“You couldn’t be expected .. . not on your own .. . The thing is, what
I wanted to say was that if things threaten to go belly up in any way,
I know this fellow who might be able to step in. Excellent chap. Bit
of a linguist. Excellent contacts ‘
Simon snapped, “I think I can handle things on my own, Duncan.”
“Oh? Well, if you’re sure,” he said doubtfully.
“Just like I handled your little crisis.”
Duncan didn’t like to be reminded that his business had been in need of rescue. “Hardly did it on your own, old chap,” he corrected him pedantically. “A team effort. That’s all I was suggesting Reading Simon’s expression, he broke off with a look of mild injury. “Never doubted you would do your bester Simon. It was just a suggestion, that’s all. Just trying to help. Just trying to do the right thing by Ben.”
It was typical of Duncan to back off suddenly, to justify himself with an air of baffled innocence, but it didn’t wash with Simon who had no time for insincerity of this or any other kind.
“So Alice,” Simon said resolutely. “You’ll tell her I was acting on your instructions?”
“The thing is, I know you meant well, Simon no doubt about that but it was a bit much, you know. Going in and bothering Catherine like that.”
“I didn’t bother her.”
“She was upset.”
“She was upset because of what has happened to her, Duncan. Not because of me.”
“You didn’t have to tell her. It was up to us, her family.”
“I’m sorry, she asked me what happened and I told her. Very gently. Incredibly gently. What was I going to do pretend she’d been in a car accident?” Simon was unable to prevent his voice from breaking slightly as he added, “I think the world of Catherine. I would never do anything to harm her.”
“Oh well, there we are, there we are,” Duncan muttered,
with a glance around the hall. “But, look, Simon, the thing is, Ben and I will be able to handle everything from now on. So, er you know.”
“I don’t think I do know.”
“No longer necessary for you to deal with the police. And, er, while we appreciate your concern your support well, we’re fine here too.” He angled his elegant head, waiting for a sign from Simon that he had understood. Forced by Simon’s silence to elaborate, he said, “No visitors except family, you see.”
“I see,” Simon said tightly. “When she’s a little better then?”
Duncan made the sort of gesture that could have meant anything, but which Simon recognised from long experience to be a rejection. From equally long experience, Simon carried off his departure with a composure and style that even Duncan with his fastidious eye for the social niceties couldn’t have faulted. It wasn’t until Simon reached the street that he allowed his humiliation and anger full rein. After all he’d done! After all the work he’d put in! Duncan and Alice had the nerve to treat him this way, like some paid hand! Had the nerve, he thought with a steadier passion, to think they could manage without him. Well, he thought grimly, time would teach them otherwise.
He continued to quiver with repressed indignation as he drove home to Chelsea to drop the car off. It was only in the cab on his way to the office in Marylebone that his deeper disquiet about Wilson’s words worked its way to the surface once more, and he again brooded unhappily on the ‘overtones’, the ‘articles’ that had been found next to Catherine. He racked his imagination as to what this something could be, his mind flitted across horrors and obscenities culled from films and books, and each image distressed and frightened him more than the last. He thought with a swell of emotion: I must stay close to her, I must protect her. And the thought of the months of guardianship ahead filled him with quiet joy.
Reaching the office, he got through his own work and much of Ben’s as well, and some of the secretary’s too because she was off sick. He worked quickly and conscientiously because it was not in his nature to do anything sloppily, but at some point in that long day a thought came to him and kept returning until it took on the solidity of a decision. He would give Ben and the business three months before leaving; he would not abandon either until they were functioning properly again. He at least understood the meaning of loyalty. He searched his compendious memory for the apt quotation and located it with satisfaction. I’ll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange.
It was nine when he finally locked up. He took a cab to a fashionable media bar in Soho and drank two Manhattans before going on to a club he knew well, where the pleasures were certain and the price well within his budget.
Chapter Four
IN THE afternoons Catherine slept fitfully; a way of passing time or of postponing it. The interventions and routines of medical rounds were over, the physiotherapist gone, the family not expected nor encouraged until after five. She lay, eyes closed, absorbing the sounds of the city: the swish of tyres in the monsoon wet, the suppressed throb of the hot dry days, the rumbling of a stationary bus in the build-up to the rush hour. With these sounds came dreamy half-realised images of umbrellas and scorching sunshine and pallid faces on the number 19 of her student days. A life passing her by.
Her sense of detachment was reinforced by listening at a remove, with one ear only, for while her right ear had become attuned to the world beyond the window, the other explored an obscure inner world, a new-found universe in which reverberations and echoes moved secretively through layers of silence. The bones of her left ear had been damaged in the fall. Oddly, or perhaps not oddly at all, she concentrated her resentment and irritation on this one deadened ear, which of all her injuries seemed openly offensive.
Sleep, when it came, was uneasy, filled less with nightmares than a deep extended anxiety. Sometimes when she was disturbed by one of the staff she woke to find another more particular image imprinted on her mind, of an amorphous shadow blotting out the light, of seeing herself running, running, though never quite fast enough, so that she felt the heat of his hand inches from her shoulder. This scene repeated endlessly with different variations, darkness, light, doors, corridors. An anxiety dream. Or a reality dream.
&nb
sp; “Catherine?”
She woke with a beat of alarm.
“Sorry to disturb you.” It was one of the black nurses, a woman with a rich mellifluous voice.
It was a moment before Catherine regained her bearings. Late afternoon. Hot and airless. Her last day before being moved.
“There’s two police,” the nurse said. “They want to know if they can talk to you. One is named Wilson. He says you know him.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll see them.” And get the whole business over and done with.
She asked the nurse to bring her a face-wipe, comb and mirror and to give her a few minutes before letting them in. Since losing most rights over her body, tidiness had become excessively important to her.
She did not realise that Wilson had entered the room until she felt the gaze of his button eyes. Behind him came the broad smiling face of Denise Cox. When Wilson made for Catherine’s deaf side it was Denise who called him back with a diplomatic “Boss?” and signalled him round to the other side of the bed.
“Right,” said Wilson, backtracking.
Denise was the victim liaison officer, a big-boned big-busted woman of about Catherine’s age with cropped bleached hair, startlingly blue eyes and a soft confiding voice.
“So,” Denise said, ‘off on your travels tomorrow.”
“Out of jail,” Catherine said. “Into prison.”
Denise chuckled. “They say prison’s an improvement. Still running a florist’s shop, I see.”
The flowers had kept coming, many from names she didn’t recognise, people she and Ben must have met at the races or weekends away, others from distant friends of the family, or, on Ben’s side, emigres and ancient Polish countesses. “Don’t know half of them,” she said. “Don’t know how they heard.”
“Catherine, it was in the newspaper.”
This startled her. “Why?”
“You’ve appeared on television. It made a story.”
“I don’t want to be a story. Why was it a story?”
Denise used her reassuring voice. “It was just a small piece. Nothing since.”
Wilson moved forward. “We have no particular developments to report on your case as yet. But we still have several avenues to pursue. Three detectives are on the case this week.”
Catherine said, “You’re putting in a lot of work.”
“And will continue to do so,” he replied, adding one of his rather forced smiles.
He had no idea of how little she expected from him. She had no wish to know anything about her attacker, no wish to discover any details of his doubtless miserable life. While he remained an abstraction he remained safely in the past, like an encounter with lightning or a tornado, something which, though catastrophic at the time, would never touch her again.
“There’s one thing we’re having difficulty with,” Wilson said in his rather high voice, ‘and that’s the list of stolen property. Is your husband away? Abroad perhaps?”
“No.”
“Oh?” He looked a little puzzled. “I see ... He promised us a comprehensive list of missing items some time ago, but we can’t seem to make contact. We’ve left numerous messages.”
Automatically coming to Ben’s defence, Catherine said, “He’s always very busy. He works very hard.”
“But he’s in London? He’s been in to see you.”
“Oh yes.”
Wilson’s mouth twitched. “Could you ask him to get in touch? It would be most helpful.” Lifting his head, drawing himself up as if to indicate the start of the real business, he said, “WPC Cox informs me that you have something to tell us.”
“I have very little to tell you,” Catherine informed him. “I hope she explained.”
At Wilson’s shoulder Denise nodded in confirmation.
Wilson made a concessionary gesture. “You’ve remembered something at any rate.”
Catherine persisted, “Nothing useful, really.”
“All the same, we’ll take it down as a statement and ask you to sign it, if that’s all right.” He half turned to Denise, as if to remind himself of the right procedure for hospital cases. “Yes -so long as you’re up to it. You will stop me if it’s too much?”
Catherine told herself, Soon it will be over and done with.
Denise produced a pad and sat down near the foot of the bed, so that all Catherine could see of her was the crown of brilliant yellow hair.
Wilson remained standing, hands in pockets, affecting an unhurried air that was belied by the restlessness in his eyes. “If we could just get the matter of these calls out of the way. For the record. You say they were wrong numbers, not nuisance calls as such?”
“That’s right. I’m sorry you were told otherwise.”
“How could you be sure they were wrong numbers?”
“A man asked for someone I’d never heard of.”
“He asked for the same person every time?”
“The other times he just rang off when he realised he was still getting the wrong number.”
“So in fact forgive me but you had no way of knowing it was the same caller?”
She explained slowly, “But I do, I did. The other calls came regularly after that first call. And once I got the last call details.”
“Last call details?”
“The number. Off the ‘last call’ thin gummy .. . function. It was the same number both times, not one I knew.”
“Did you make a note of the number?”
“No.”
“It wouldn’t be stored on your mobile?”
“No. It only keeps the last I think ten calls.”
Wilson accepted this with no sign of disappointment. “Do you remember if it was a London or country number? Or a mobile?”
“Really, it’s so long ago. But.. . London, I think.”
“And how many calls did you get in all?”
She didn’t try to suppress the flutter of exasperation in her voice.
“Oh five? Six?”
“And all on your mobile?”
“Yes.”
“Spread over what length of time?”
“Look, I really can’t remember.”
“But somewhere around Christmas?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
Wilson appeared to absorb this slowly. “I’m not clear, then, why you told Emma Russell that you’d been having nuisance calls since November.”
“Emma was there when I got one of these calls. She got the wrong end of the stick. That’s all.”
“She sounded very sure.”
“She always does.”
“Ah.”
And still Wilson seemed reluctant to let it go. Did he actively disbelieve her? Or did he think she’d forgotten to mention something whose significance only he could recognise?
“The television series you did, Catherine it came out last autumn, didn’t it? Did you get any calls as a result?”
“From possible clients, yes.”
“Is there a list?”
“It’ll be on my desk at home somewhere.”
“Could someone find it for us, do you think?”
“I’ll ask Ben. But, really, they were just ordinary people -people with gardens.”
“That may well be so, but we need to check all the same.” He moved on at last. “Now the evening of the burglary .. . Why don’t you take it at your own pace. In your own time.”
It was hard to get started. She looked up at the ceiling and tried to fix on the fragments of memory that had been coming back to her mysteriously and haphazardly, like snapshots arranged out of order.
“I remember the journey home from France,” she said. “I remember the airport, and picking up the car and arriving at the house. I remember finding we had been burgled and hearing the sounds of a fight and running upstairs. Then this .. . shape rushed at me out of the darkness. I’m afraid that’s all, from that time anyway. Later ... I remember someone being there. I remember someone saying that help was on its way.” Catherine pulled
a face. “There you are. I warned you that it wasn’t very much.”
Wilson nodded again, sombrely. “Could I ask about the trip to France?” he asked in his rather nasal voice. “This was a holiday?”
“A short break, yes.”
“You were away how long?”
“Three .. . four days.”
“You were planning to stay longer though?”
“Yes .. . Ben had to come back a couple of days early, and in the end I decided to come back with him.”
“Who knew about your plans?”
“What?” She had to think about this. “My father .. .” She corrected herself uncertainly, “No ... I don’t think I told him in fact. I don’t think I told anyone. Not that I remember anyway.”
“The people you were staying with in France,” he prompted.
“Oh yes them.”
“And your husband, he was coming back for a meeting, I believe?”
“He was going to America for a meeting the next day.”
“Ah, so his business associates in America would have known. Anyone in England?”
She sighed. “You would have to ask him.”
Wilson made a show of absorbing this suggestion, and Catherine wondered if he was rather slow or rather pedantic or both.
“Could I ask about when you got to the house?” he said. “It was your husband who unlocked the door, was it?”
“Yes.”
“And went in first?”
“Oh yes. I was still in the car, I was going to park it. I only waited till I was sure he was in the house.”
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