Ben’s eyes were very sharp and very still. “You know?
“I took the precaution of buying Pavlik the best defence in town.”
“You whatr
Terry thrust up a quieting hand. “And I found him his alibi -or rather, I located the witnesses who could attest to his alibi, the ones the police in all their diligence had failed to find or failed to look for. It was true, you see. Pavlik was not there at the time of the attack. He was innocent of that charge. So ... in exchange for this service, Pavlik told me who had paid him to break in. And why. Well, more or less why. I think that’s where you might be able to fill in some of the details.” Without waiting for an answer, Terry continued in a musing tone, “Pavlik’s employer if that’s the word had already bought him a defence of sorts, but Pavlik didn’t trust his employer one inch. He had the feeling that the defence lawyer he’d been given might be renowned more for his obscurity and incompetence than for his talent, and that he, Pavlik, might have been cast in the role of sacrificial lamb. He feared to tell the police the truth because he feared for his life, and he had no name for his employer anyway, no proper name, so he doubted very much that they would believe him. With good reason, I would suspect.”
Ben seemed overwhelmed or frozen, or both, so Terry continued, “I will
say straight away that I began these investigations with the idea that
you yourself might have a very great deal to answer for. More, I mean,
than you have to answer for already. I had the idea that you had meant
to harm Catherine ‘
“For God’s sake!” Ben exclaimed, emerging from his daze with a jolt.
“Allow me to finish,” said Terry on a warning note. “I thought you might have harmed her because you believed she was someone else because you believed she was Maeve.”
The short but startled pause that followed was broken by Terry whose voice maintained an iron calm. “You were expecting Maeve or rather, you should have been expecting her if you had bothered to remember the arrangement you’d made. And, as I saw it, there she was, turning up at an inconvenient moment, a nuisance to you, an encumbrance’ his voice broke a little, it was all he could do to steady it ‘she’d become ill and bothersome, you wanted well rid of her, her sudden arrival was the last straw.”
“But I didn’t-‘
“That was how I believed it to be,” Terry interrupted, with his first show of impatience. “That was how I saw it at the beginning. For a long time it was hard to make out what had happened because when Maeve returned she was wild with grief. Inconsolable. Because you must have realised it was she who discovered Catherine on the floor.”
Ben looked defensive. “Oh.”
“At first I knew only what Maeve was able to tell me, and for a long time she could say very little. She was in a terrible state. Finding Catherine like that, thinking she was dead. And coming on top of her other griefs, which, as you will know better than anyone, were considerable and had been going on for some time.”
Ben dropped his head, though whether it was from anything as decent as shame it was impossible to tell.
There was another pause in which Ben turned to stare out of the window and Terry fought old battles with his own grief and anguish. The temptation to rage at Ben was very strong, he longed to beat his arrogant head against a wall and demand to know what had been going through his mind when he took Maeve’s innocence and generosity and trampled on it so mercilessly, he wanted to ask what kind of man could take satisfaction from such destruction. But he made the supreme effort to restrain himself, partly because he strongly suspected that Ben’s satisfaction had come precisely from the fact that Maeve was his daughter, and partly because at the end of the day there was no arguing with a man with only the slenderest grasp on decency and morality, there was no winning a quarrel in which painful revelations might come to light, only to haunt him cruelly for ever afterwards. It was almost more than he could bear, to stay quiet, but he told himself there was more to be gained by keeping a dignified silence.
“Then I heard that Pavlik had a story to tell,” Terry resumed after a moment. “For a price. So I struck the deal, not because I especially wanted to nail you though the Lord only knows, that would have given me the most enormous satisfaction but because I wanted the truth for Catherine. I wanted her to know that it was your dealings that had brought it all about.”
Ben opened his mouth as if to protest, only to think better of it and draw in his lips tightly.
“Pavlik told us he’d been hired to break into the house so that his employer could remove or copy some papers. What were the papers, Galitza?”
Again Ben seemed on the point of arguing, again he decided against it. “Details of financial transactions,” he replied in a flat sulky voice.
“What transactions?”
“Normal business transactions,” he said as if explaining the obvious to an ignoramus. “Money coming in and going out again. Bank details and statements. Access codes. The normal things.”
Without warning, something overturned in Terry, his stomach lurched, his anger flowed over him like a red-hot sea, his throat seized and it was all he could do not to shout. “Details!” he echoed in a voice that shook audibly. “Come on, come on. What details? Of money laundering? Of the profits from the secret deal for the generators that you pulled off behind everyone’s backs? Come on, let’s have a little truth for a change! I know it comes hard to you, the truth, but humour me, let me have a little flavour of it! What was it about -money that you had forgotten to pass on? Money that you had forgotten to share? Money that was illegally obtained? Come now let’s have something like the unvarnished truth here!”
“All right, all right!” Ben replied savagely. “It was money I was passing on for some customers. I didn’t ask where it came from, I didn’t ask where it was going, I only knew where it had to go when it left my hands, and that’s where I sent it.” He added in a more reasonable tone, “But I guess I upset some people along the way. There’s a dealer in Warsaw, a middleman I’ve dealt with for years, someone who’s got fingers in every pie or so he likes to think. He got miffed when he realised I’d cut him out.”
“So it was him, is that what you’re saying? It was him who sent the employer to come and reclaim the money?”
“Yup. He as good as told me he was coming after it.”
“What did he get for his burglary?” Terry demanded, not letting up for a moment. “Precisely.”
Ben didn’t want to answer that one, he would have shrugged it off, but
something in Terry’s expression made him give in with bad grace. “He
managed to empty my bank account ‘
“So he got all the pass-codes and access details!”
Ben didn’t like being reminded of his stupidity. “Yes!” he hissed sardonically.
“Foreign banks?”
“Bermuda, the Caymans.”
“But he wanted more?”
“He demanded the same again in lieu of his cut.”
“Or else? There has to be an or else.”
“Or a photocopy of the transaction details to the authorities.”
“So stymied. Your profit gone, and then blackmailed to boot. That must have hurt. My Lord, that must have hurt!”
Not sure whether this was offered in a spirit of gloating or irony. Ben clenched his jaw furiously.
Terry continued in the same tone of jaunty sarcasm, “This middleman must have felt as sore as a scalded cat to go to all that trouble. Polish Mafia, was he? Dabbling in drugs and all sorts, didn’t like you muscling in was that it? Still ... to go to all that trouble. But then, I suppose the money alone was worth it. Your cut was what? - a million dollars or so? And then the million in recompense. So, two million dollars. Well, yes, that would have gone a long way to making him feel better. It would make anyone feel better, would it not?”
“None of it excuses what was done to Catherine!” Ben cried bitterly, finding his voice again.
“Nothing I’ve done could ever justify that sort of thuggery!”
“No,” Terry agreed abruptly, calming down at last. “No, nothing at all.”
He watched a pretty woman coming out of a house opposite, carrying a small child on one hip, its short legs straddling her waist. She had a large bag over her other shoulder, and a folded push chair in her hand.
Despite all the paraphernalia, she made her way down the steps with
assurance and grace, and in some unfocused way Terry was reminded of
Catherine. Except that Catherine would never know the simple pleasure
of carrying her child on her hip and depositing it -crying now into a
push chair
“Did it never occur to you’, Terry murmured, his eyes still on the woman, ‘to try to get even with this man after what he’d done?”
“What declare war against the Polish business community? This guy’s still doing a whole bundle of legitimate deals. He’s got influence. He’d make my name mud. I’d never be able to do a deal there again.”
“So you decided to take your medicine instead.” He added, with the slightest touch of irony, “Like a man.”
Ben closed his eyes expressively.
The moment of revelation had almost come. Yet again Terry felt no sense of triumph, only emptiness. “It never occurred to you to look closer to home?”
He got Ben’s full attention then, the eyes swung round, alert, wary.
“You didn’t think there was anyone here who might have felt entitled to that money?”
“Like?”
“Someone you’d cut out of a deal he was expecting to share in?”
“No.”
Ben might have cunning, he might be quick, but Terry always forgot to allow for the fact that he wasn’t outstandingly bright. “What about your company? Wasn’t it expecting the benefit of your profits?”
“You mean .. .” Ben hesitated, he thought it through, he dismissed it with a laugh. “Simon?”
Terry lifted his eyebrows.
“Simon?
Tavlik met him in a gay club, knew him as someone called Christian. It was a cash deal, the burglary. Half up front, half after the break in.”
Ben was already shaking his head with a superior knowing smile. “Simon couldn’t wouldn’t he’s incapable .. . No, no, for God’s sake .. . We were are friends.” With each denial he was slowly but surely talking himself into the possibility. “And a gay club? He’s never been that way I mean, not to my knowledge! And why would he want to I’ve never cut him out of anything He stalled suddenly, his eyes flickered crossly, he became indignant. “Christ, he did okay, we made money, he had nothing to complain about. I mean, he was my number two, for God’s sake. I mean, we were partners, I gave him half of everything, of course I did, but I did all the deals, I had all the contacts, nothing would have happened without me. And then he goes and He made a dismissive exclamation, then in the next breath demanded coldly:
“You’re sure}’
Tavlik described him, we showed him a photograph.”
“But he only met him the once, was it? in a club! How could he be sure?”
Terry paused, embarrassed. “According to Pavlik, they had a, er transient relationship.”
Ben pulled back, startled. “Jesus. Jesus.” His face slowly contorted as his fury grew. “And Pavlik identified him from a photograph?”
“For sure.”
“That bastard! He cleaned me bloody out! Took everything! And had the brass nerve to And after all we did together! God what a two-faced God!” He had flushed with anger, his handsome mouth was pinched and rigid. Then his expression clouded as fresh realisations and doubts came to him. Twisting round in his seat, he stared at Terry. “He was the one who attacked me?” It took him a moment to absorb this. “God, if I could ...” He clenched his fists like a schoolboy itching to get his own back. Again he turned to Terry and stared. “And Catherine?” He couldn’t bring himself to spell it out. “He did that to Catherine? He .. .” Then, with confusion, “But he adores her, he’s always hanging around her, he’s like her bloody shadow! He’s like a lapdog!” And finally, in a murmur: “The burglar alarm, he knew the code of course. It was the same as the office. Yes, yes ... he knew the code.”
He was finally there. He understood it all.
Now that the unpleasant task was over, Terry was suddenly desperate to be away. The sense of revulsion rose in him like a panic, he felt he would suffocate if he stayed in the same space as Galitza for a second longer.
“I propose to tell the police this morning,” he announced, opening the window to a blast of cold air.
Ben raised his head to this. “Hey, what about me} I don’t want them bloody nosing about in my affairs. No, I think that would be an appalling idea!”
“I’ll leave it twelve hours, then. That will give you time to settle on your story.”
“You shit:
Ignoring this, beginning to feel more cheerful all of a sudden, Terry asked, “Where’s Jardine now, do you know?”
“No idea.” Then he hissed bleakly, “Spending my money, presumably.”
Heavy clouds swept low over the valley, driving veils of thin sleet up the ramp of fields into the exposed garden, agitating the animals in the topiary and swirling plumes of leaves up into the branches of the black-limbed beeches.
“Not much point in seeing more,” Catherine said.
“But it gives you an idea?”
“Oh yes.”
Simon turned the wheelchair round and pushed her back along the path through a brick arch into the relative sanctuary of the rose garden.
“It’s beautifully maintained,” she called back over her shoulder.
“You like it?”
“I think it’s a splendid garden.”
“You wouldn’t want to change it?”
“Not in any major way. It’d be a waste of your money.”
He turned the chair round and tipped it backwards a little to pull it up some shallow steps. “But it could be improved?” he asked.
“Oh, the planting could be improved, I’m sure, but you’d have to see it through an entire season before you’d know what you wanted to do.”
“So if I bought it now .. .?”
“You’d begin to have a good idea by May.”
They came round the side of the house onto the gravel sweep where the car was parked. “Six months then,” he said.
“More or less.”
He opened the car door for her and held the chair steady while she transferred herself. He waited until she was settled then brought a rug round from the back to lay over her knees.
“Really, I’m fine,” she insisted, but he was already crouching down to wrap the rug around her legs.
“Just until the car warms up,” he said protectively, and cast her a diffident smile.
When he’d stowed the wheelchair he sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and his feet on the gravel and changed his shoes, placing the dirty ones in a plastic bag, which he carried round to the boot. He then took off his waterproof jacket and, shaking the rain from it, folded it neatly and laid it with care on the back seat. Watching this, Catherine wondered how he was going to manage country life, in which mud, dirt and wet clothes had a way of sneaking into the best-defended homes. But then the whole day had been overlaid with an odd sense of unreality. Leaving shortly before ten, they had taken the slow road along the Thames through Henley and Cliveden, arriving at Bray at exactly twelve thirty Simon had speeded up a little so they shouldn’t be late where they’d eaten a rich ornate lunch. Simon had talked a lot about lifestyle, the importance of getting it right, of the futility of working hard unless you had something worthwhile to come home to, how the bedrock of a good life was non-negotiable: strong values and a united family and un stinting loyalty and solid friends. The house, still unseen, appeared to be central to this vision, a pivot or a symbol, and the garden too, though by his own admission he’d never felt the need for
one in the past. He’d rambled a bit, repeated himself a great deal, but there was no doubting his passion and sincerity, nor the sharp edge of desperation beneath, as though by focusing so closely on his dream, having earned the money to realise it, he knew it would slip from his grasp. He was suffused with a nervous jumpy energy that had the moods chasing over his face faster than she could follow them. Hope, despair, anxiety she had never seen him in such turmoil. His cheek trembled almost continuously, he had developed a new habit of sucking in his lips, and now and again when he looked away it seemed to her that his eyes contained desolation.
Climbing into the car at last, Simon sat with his hands on the wheel and looked up at the facade. “Well,” he said, ‘what do you think?”
He had asked this several times during their tour of the house. She could only repeat, “I think it’s stunning.” She added on a cautionary note, “Though I hate to think what they’re asking for it.”
“It’s a fair price.”
“You’ll need to add a lot for the furnishings,” she warned him. “And then there’ll be the maintenance, of course. A full-time gardener, I’d have thought. And probably a housekeeper too.”
He said softly, “Could you live here, Catherine?”
She was about to make some mundane reply when, glancing across at him, she found him watching her with a strange intensity, and paused. She was struck by the uncomfortable thought that he was serious. “Me? I’d love to live in a beautiful place, of course I would. But,” she added hastily, “I think something smaller would suit me far better.”
And still his brilliant eyes remained fixed on her face. “But ... if you found yourself here .. . you could like it?”
Oh God, she thought, he’s about to make a declaration. “You can like all sorts of places, can’t you?” she said in a tone that was deliberately offhand. “It all depends on She was about to say, on who you’re with and whether you’re happy, but pulled herself up just in time, and said lightly, “On where you happen to find yourself.” She ducked forward to look up at the sky. “Could we get going now?” she asked breezily. “It’ll be dark soon. And I’d like to get home.”
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