“It fizzled out,” she said.
Sita squeezed her hand again.
“Dear child,” she said, “you can’t stay on your own forever. It’s unnatural.”
“I’m not on my own,” said El weakly. “I have people.”
“And what about me and Auntie Ruby?” Sita continued, as if El hadn’t spoken. “We need grandchildren to tend to us in our twilight years.”
“You have grandchildren,” El said.
Sita had been married at least three times, that El knew of. Once at 17, to a Bombay steel merchant fifteen years her senior - an arrangement from which she quickly extricated herself. Then again at 30, to a Danish furniture-maker with a family fortune made in pig-farming, with whom she had two children - one now a stockbroker in New York, the other an engineer in Copenhagen. And finally at 50, to a Lebanese neurologist who’d succumbed, after only two years of marriage, to a fatal haemorrhagic stroke. There’d been an array of other lovers in-between and after, and in some cases (or so Ruby maintained) during the marriages - men and women of all ages, shapes, nationalities and dispositions, the only common denominator between them an ardent commitment to pleasing Sita, to accommodating her every whim and desire. Sita, El suspected, wasn’t looking for love; she was looking to be worshipped.
“Grandchildren I never see,” she said, sadly.
This, El knew, was a lie, since Sita spent at least two months of every year in the US and Denmark in the company of her sons and daughters-in-law.
“Where are you off to now?” asked El, doing her best to change the subject.
Sita took another long pull on the cigarette-holder.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to buy some very, very expensive cocaine from a man in Westbourne Grove. Can I drop you off anywhere on the way?”
———
El heard nothing for a week from Lady Rose.
When the call came, she was buried in a white paper on educational policy, weighing up the merits of re-engaging with Bernard Croft. She answered the phone, as she always did, in a neutral voice - one that wasn’t hers, but wasn’t recognisably aligned with anyone she’d recently been, either.
It was Karen, and not Lady Rose, on the line.
“She wants to see you,” Karen said, with neither introduction nor explanation. “Come in tomorrow morning at 11. She’ll be waiting for you.”
Then she hung up.
Early the following morning, El drove back down to Barnet, Claire Brandon’s purple streaks and beaded shoulder bag in place - parking in the same spot by Totteridge and Whetstone station as she had before, and taking the tube on to Highgate.
She was surprised, given Lady Rose’s security concerns, to find the electronic gates already open when she arrived. She walked through them and up the driveway to the house; knocked on the door with a clenched fist. The door was heavy, antique oak, and it hurt her knuckles.
One long minute later, Karen opened it. She was dressed much the same as before, in black shirt and Lycra leggings, hair pulled back and walkie talkie protruding from her back pocket, but she looked... different, in a way that El couldn’t immediately identify. Happy. Pleased with herself, or possibly with El - smiling at El like she was a long-lost relative she’d just spotted in an airport terminal.
“You came, then,” she said, still smiling.
“So I did,” said El, letting herself be led inside.
They entered the hall, El marvelling again at the thickness of the carpet underfoot – but instead of passing the kitchen to Lady Rose’s war room, Karen took a right, heading up the wide, winding stairs to the first floor, and El followed.
The minimalism of the ground floor hallway was absent here, El saw. The walls were white, still, but lined with photographs, almost all of them capturing a young red-headed girl - she assumed Lady Rose’s daughter - in landmark stages of development: on horseback outside a stable, grinning from under a riding hat; in a blue-and-white uniform on what must have been a first day of school, straw boater on her head and two front teeth missing from her mouth; on her back in a pinewood crib, chubby hands reaching for the mobile suspended above her. Some showed a man, floppy-haired and athletic, alongside the girl: carrying her on his shoulders in one, cradling her in his arms in another. A handful saw Lady Rose join the man and the girl in the frame, the three of them eating ice cream, unwrapping presents, reaching up to decorate a Christmas tree.
“Bit more human up here, innit?” said Karen, watching El as she studied the photographs. “Less of a show-home.”
She guided them into an upstairs room that looked to El like a home cinema - a dark-walled, windowless space lit by overhead spotlights, dominated by two vast black-leather corner sofas turned inwards to face a 60-inch projector screen, a long glass coffee table conveniently positioned between sofas and screen.
On one of the sofas sat Lady Rose, who stood up to greet them as they walked inside.
“Good to see you again,” she said, reaching out to shake El’s hand. “I really appreciate you coming in.”
She was different too, El thought; warmer, friendlier, more casual, in faded jeans and scuffed trainers and a long-sleeved t-shirt, her face less heavily contoured with makeup than it had been the last time El had seen her. Her voice, especially, was different, multi-layered, less crisp and less formal than it had been - the vowels, it seemed to El, now indexing Yorkshire and London as much as European finishing schools and elocution drills.
She was from Rotherham, El remembered, flashing back to the newspaper articles and magazine profiles she’d read as she’d constructed Claire Brandon. Maybe she’d lived in Brixton or Greenwich too, in her younger years - before she’d “married up,” as one of the articles had put it.
“Happy to,” said El, returning the handshake.
Lady Rose sat back down on the edge of the sofa, and gestured for El to do the same. Karen closed the door, blocking out the natural light from the hallway, and perched on the coffee table, the antenna of her walkie talkie scraping against the glass as she descended.
“I owe you an apology,” said Lady Rose.
She’s not going to pay up, El thought. She’s sold the painting, or she thinks she has - but she’s not going to give me my cut. Which means I’m going to have to threaten her, try to blackmail the money out of her, security or not. And it’s going to get nasty.
And then I’ll have to tell Ruby, and it’ll get even nastier.
“Do you?” said El carefully. “Why?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” Lady Rose said. “I imagine you came here expecting a cheque, and I don’t have one to give you.”
“Did the sale fall through?” El asked - still hoping, faintly, that this might be the case.
“Not quite,” said Lady Rose, and paused. She looked hesitant, El thought; uncertain.
“The buyer pulled out?” El said, pushing.
“No,” said Lady Rose. “Not that.”
She paused again.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” said Karen impatiently, getting to her feet. “There’s no sale, alright? There’s no cheque because she’s not selling the painting.”
“Karen,” warned Lady Rose.
“I’m sorry,” said Karen, sounding not remotely apologetic, “but you were just sat there umming and ahing, and it was bloody excruciating to listen to. Just tell her.”
“Tell me what?” said El angrily, letting Claire Brandon’s outrage drown out her own incipient panic. “What’s going on here? We had a deal.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Karen slowly, as if explaining a difficult concept to a very small child. “There was never any deal because there was never any sale. Her ladyship here,” she pointed towards Lady Rose with one thumb, “was no more selling a painting than your mate Sita was intending to buy one. You with me?”
El swallowed; tried to steady her breath, slow the speed of her racing pulse.
They know, she thought. I don’t know how, but they kno
w. Whatever else this is, it’s a trap.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, brazening it out.
“Fucking hell,” said Karen, exasperated. “You’re as bad as each other, you pair. Watch my lips,” she said, looking directly at El. “There. Is. No. Money. Because. There. Is. No. Deal. It weren’t real, none of it.”
El scanned the room for exits; calculated what it would take to push past Karen and get down the stairs and out of the house. She could move quickly, even with walking boots weighing her down; if she could make it to the front door, she could be out onto the main road and in the back of a cab before either one of them could catch up with her.
“You set me up?” she said, slipping out of Claire Brandon and into her own voice now - not standing up, not yet, but tensing the muscles in her legs and pressing the balls of her feet into the carpet, ready to sprint.
“As if you’re one to talk!” said Karen with a snort.
Lady Rose stood up; raised her arms, the palms turned outwards placatingly.
“It wasn’t my intention to trick you…” she began.
El sprang upwards, towards the door, but Karen was faster, blocking her path.
“Please, El,” said Lady Rose from behind her. “Sit down. There’s no need for alarm, I promise.”
El froze at the sound of her name.
“You know who I am,” she said, turning to face Lady Rose.
“Yes,” said Lady Rose gently.
“How?” El asked.
Don’t say anything else, she told herself. Don’t give her any more than she’s got already.
“A friend thought we ought to… meet,” Lady Rose said.
“You might know her,” said Karen, plonking herself back down on the coffee table. “Old bird, grey hair, big fan of kids’s comics?”
Ruby, El thought. Fucking Ruby.
“Ruby set me up?” she asked Lady Rose - if, El thought, Lady Rose was who she actually was.
“This isn’t a set-up,” said Rose.
If it was a practical joke, El thought, then it was a bloody elaborate one, even by Ruby’s standards.
“You might want to think of it as an audition,” said Karen, smirking.
“And what am I auditioning for?” said El, biting back sarcasm with only moderate success.
“A job,” said Rose, entirely seriously. “If you want it. And I very much hope you will.”
———
Rose sent Karen downstairs to make coffee, while El arranged herself on one of the sofas uneasily.
Three weeks, she thought. Three weeks of work, God knows how many art history books and endless hours smelling like a Body Shop perfume counter - and for what?
What the hell was Ruby playing at?
Rose settled down on the sofa across from her, crossing and uncrossing her legs nervously.
“Who did you get to do the mock-up of that painting?” El asked, conversationally.
“What, the Haring?” said Rose. “No-one. It’s real - as far as I know, anyway. I picked it up in Tokyo last year.”
“Right,” said El - more perplexed by the situation with every new revelation. “So, you are who you say you are, then?”
“Who did I say I was?”
“Alright - who Ruby said you were. And the press.”
“And who is that?”
“A collector. With deep pockets.”
And a grade-A bitch, she added silently.
“I have a lot of money and sometimes I spend some of it,” said Rose. “Is that what you mean?”
El smiled, warming to her a little.
“So this job,” she said, “it’s an art gig?”
“No,” said Rose. “Nothing like that.”
“Then what? What sort of job warrants you and Ruby - and Sita, I suppose? - luring me down here just so you could lasso me into it?”
Rose drummed her fingers on the sofa’s leather. Whatever indecent proposal she’s about to suggest, El thought, it’s making her nervous.
“Can I be honest with you?” Rose said, avoiding eye contact.
You haven’t been yet, El thought.
“Okay,” she said, warily.
“What I’m trying to do, what I’d like you to help me do - it’s personal for me. It isn’t about money.”
And I don’t work for free, El thought.
“I don’t know what Ruby’s told you,” she said, “but I’m not a contractor. People don’t hire me. The jobs I do - I do them for myself.”
“Then why do this one?” said Rose. “Why try to work me over? I know you weren’t doing it for the cheque.”
“It was a favour. To Ruby. Before I found out the two of you were playing me, obviously.”
“So it isn’t always about money for you, either.”
El hesitated, feeling the threads of the conversation she’d anticipated beginning to unravel.
“What I’m saying,” she said, “is that I’m not for hire. So whatever job you’re trying to recruit for, I’m not the one to do it.”
“I disagree,” said Rose firmly. “Ruby tells me you’re the best inside woman she knows. And having seen you in action, I have to concur. This… thing I’d like to do - it needs someone like you to even get it off the ground. Someone exactly as good as you are.”
“I think you might be deliberately misunderstanding me here. I don’t work for other people, and I don’t do other people’s cons.”
Rose looked up at her, making eye contact for the first time since Karen had left the room.
“And I think you might feel differently,” she said, “when I tell you who the mark is.”
“Why? Who is he?”
Rose inhaled deeply, her fingertips stilling on the leather.
“James Marchant,” she said quietly.
El paused; thought back to a name she’d occasionally glanced over, or so she thought, in the columns of the FT and the Economist.
“The property guy?” she said. “Marchant Holdings?”
“Property,” Rose agreed, “and shipping, and publishing, and steel. He has a lot of interests.”
“Sounds like he’ll be very lucrative for whoever does the job for you. But I’m not sure why you think dropping his name would change my mind.”
“He’s… not a good person.”
El laughed.
“Are any of us?” she said.
“He’s worse,” Rose said. “Whatever your understanding of bad or corrupt or immoral might be, I can absolutely assure you that he’s worse.”
“Should make him an easy one to fleece, then,” said El. “The unethical ones are always the greediest.”
People say you can’t con an honest man, Ruby had told her once. Now, between you and me, that’s bollocks. You can con anyone. But the bent ones, the greedy ones - they’re always looking for more. They’re waiting for someone to give them something, or they’ve got an eye out for something they think they can take off you without you knowing. And it makes them easier pickings than some normal bloke just going about his day.
More satisfying, too.
“I don’t want to fleece him,” Rose said. “I want to destroy him. I’d kill him if I thought I’d be able to get away with it. But I suspect I wouldn’t, and since I don’t relish the prospect of languishing in a prison cell for thirty or forty years, destroying his life is what I’ll have to settle for.”
El was shocked - as much by the calmness of Rose’s delivery as by the sentiment.
“Why?” she said. “What did he do?”
Rose shook her head.
“It isn’t important,” she said. “Or rather, it isn’t something you need to know. Not for the purposes of what I’m planning.”
The hell it isn’t, El thought.
“I wish I could help you,” she said, as politely as she could, “but like I said, I’m not the person you want here. Have another chat with Ruby - I’m sure she’s got some other names she can pull out for you. Although,” she added with a smile,
“you might want to think about revisiting your recruitment process.”
She stood up from the sofa, ready to leave - already planning the talk she’d be having with Ruby and Sita herself that evening.
“It has to be you,” Rose said.
“There are other people out there, I promise,” said El, stretching her legs. “Good ones.”
“This isn’t just about good,” said Rose, urgently. “I told you - this is personal. I don’t just want someone who can do the job, they’re ten a penny, even if they don’t have your panache. I want someone who cares. Someone who wants to bring Marchant down as much as I do.”
“All the more reason to get someone else,” said El, feeling herself bristle at Rose’s tone. “It’s not that I don’t believe you when you say he’s a bastard, but I’d barely heard of him before just now. I really don’t have much invested in doing him over.”
“You would have,” said Rose, “if you knew who he was. What he’d done.”
“I don’t care who he is,” El said, hackles rising higher. “And I’m sorry, but I’m leaving now. Good luck with the job.”
She was halfway to the door before Rose spoke again.
“He killed your mother,” she said softly. “And she wasn’t his first."
Chapter 8
Leicester
1976
The babysitter was rowing with her boyfriend.
It wasn’t the first time El had heard her fighting with him over the phone, or the first time she’d heard her shouting. But it was the first time she’d felt personally implicated in the argument.
“I can’t just leave her here on her own,” the babysitter - Debra - was saying angrily into the receiver. “She’s a kid, Dave. What if she hurts herself on the stove?”
I can cook better than you can, El thought. I’m not the one who had to make cheese on toast for dinner because I burned the omelette.
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