VIVIEN ARMSTRONG

The Honey Trap

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

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1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain in 1992

Copyright © Vivien Armstrong 1992

Vivien Armstrong asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780002323857

Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780008228392

Version: 2016-11-29

The Honey Trap

Rowan Morley, big and beautiful, made quite a splash when she went overboard from a pleasure launch into the Thames. Fortunately help was at hand, but Rowan’s rescuers were bewildered when she insisted on denying the existence of what seemed to them a clearly murderous attack.

Even when she was whisked away to an Oxfordshire village to act as housekeeper to two hapless males, Rowan remained a focus of mystery. Meanwhile Aran Hunter, art restorer, chafed at his inability to protect her; Frederick Flowers, retired civil servant, feared for her; Wayne Denny, general factotum of a fleet of Thames houseboats, lusted after her; and Inspector Laurence Erskine of Special Branch, now working with Interpol, found himself involved willy-nilly when he learned that Rowan’s previous employers were connected with a case he had been working on for months.

None of them, except perhaps Erskine, could believe this glorious girl was involved in international crime, but when murder struck close to home it became a matter of life and death to discover what Rowan Morley, wittingly or unwittingly, knew or possessed.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Other Books By

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

Littering the muddy shallows behind World’s End, dozens of small houseboats bob up and down on the tide like long discarded champagne corks. The long arm of Battersea Bridge encloses one side of the flotilla, the smart new towers of Chelsea Harbour posing against an orange sky enclose the other.

It is late evening in September. Warm as velvet. Two men relax on the deck of Christabel: one old, the other aggressively young with bleached hair, his tanned legs gracefully crossed in freshly laundered shorts.

‘Another, Frederick?’ The young one refills brandy glasses and they sink back, companionably silent, regarding the occasional passing of a launch upstream. High tide has raised the vessels by more than twelve feet as if to provide a better view. The Christabel rocks as if on tiptoe, ready to break anchor despite the solid pontoons.

The deck is scrubbed, pale boards evidence of a perfect summer, its perimeter hedged with neat window-boxes beyond which the oily swirl of the Thames slaps against the hull. The boat swings gently, rising and falling with soporific rhythm.

‘What time’s your appointment tomorrow, Frederick?’

‘Don’t you worry about me, my boy. I’ll push off about ten, give myself plenty of time. See myself off. Just routine tests, shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’d quite like to saunter up to the Arts Club after lunch. You’ve got plenty on, dare say?’

‘Nothing till three. I’ll drive you over to the clinic and drop you back at the club on the way back. It’s no trouble. I’ve got to check some locations in Regent’s Park. Tie up a few loose ends before I meet this chap. A photographer.’

‘Another book?’

‘Secret Interiors of Georgian London.’

Grimacing in mock dismay, the old man placed his glass on the burnished milk churn which served as a side table and lit his pipe.

‘Who buys these picture books, Simon?’

‘Illiterates.’

‘Sell well?’

‘Ever-expanding market of non-readers. Tourists, nosey-parkers, hairdressers. You’d be surprised.’

‘Not cheap, I’ll be bound.’

‘A bloody expensive business to set up,’ Simon countered defensively. ‘But the sort of thing that goes well in America, not just here.’

The old man drew on his pipe, ribbons of blue smoke disguising the faintly fetid smell of a turning tide. The sky had swiftly darkened, the merest wisps of coral flung against the silhouetted towers and roof lines. A bus, lit overall like a ferry boat, passed over the bridge now monumental with black shadows.

‘Want to go inside, Frederick? It’s getting chilly.’

His nephew’s concern was almost feminine in its solicitude. Decent of him, though, to put him up. Trips to London cost a packet without having to pay for a hotel bed as well.

‘Just finish my pipe, old boy. I know you don’t want my fug in your smart sitting-room. I had no idea how splended these houseboats were.’ Frederick Flowers turned to indicate the softly illuminated saloon. A walnut bookcase glowed beyond a small circular table still littered with the remains of their supper, lamplight blushing the pale mezzotints hung against the panelling.

‘Amazing what you’ve done with this old tub.’

Simon winced.

‘Quiet, too,’ the old man continued. ‘Is there no one aboard—’ he waved his pipe vaguely from side to side—‘these other boats?’

‘Excelsis belongs to some sort of pop star.’ Simon nodded towards the dark shape in the next berth. ‘Hardly ever there, uses it more as a party venue. But when he’s in town …’ He clapped his hands to his ears. ‘The racket’s unbelievable.’

‘The other side looks leaky as a colander.’

‘Just changed hands. Due for a complete refit.’

‘Sounds expensive.’

‘Mm.’ Simon began to shake out the cushions on the empty lounger. ‘Still works out cheaper than anything on shore. Especially round here. The mooring fee covers cleaning of the pontoons and the maintenance of the ropes and gangways. And the bottom of the vessel has to be scraped and tarred every five years or so, but all in all the running costs work out about the same as painting and decorating an ordinary house.’ He lifted his head, staring at the slabs and pinnacles of redevelopment sites on the opposite bank now shyly sprinkled with the first stars. ‘What I save living here enables me to run the farmhouse in Provence I was telling you about. Absolute heaven. You must come and stay in the spring, Frederick.’

Frederick had a soft spot for the boy. Funny bugger, he mused. Kind. Like Pris. But a sore disappointment to poor old Ned. He smiled. Serves him right. Mentally touching his bachelor state like a lucky charm, Frederick blessed his single life. He puffed away at his pipe, turning back to the plush darkness of the evening, mesmerized by the expanse of swirling water.

Simon rose, gathering the coffee cups to take inside.

‘I’ll just clear the table, Frederick, if there’s nothing else I can get for you. There’s a concert on three I’d like to catch. The Printemps String Quartet live from Shannon House.’ He flicked the stereo and the discordant expectancy of tuning-up broke in.

Frederick Flowers sank back into reverie, mulling over the check-up which had precipitated his trip. The prognosis was not good … No matter. A good run of it. Thank God I’ve still got all my faculties: good sight, a bit deaf but … His watery eyes skimmed the lights stringing the opposite bank, translating the unchanging simplicity of the Whistler riverscape laid out before him. An illuminated pleasure boat sharply outlined with fairy lights burst from the cavernous ramparts of the bridge. Heavy rock music pulsed across the river in a persistent jungle beat, the upper deck clearly visible, garishly clarified in the flash of disco lights.

Simon paused in the doorway and the two men watched the progress of the little boat, flat as a water beetle on the rising tide.

‘Not much of a party.’ Simon’s wry disapproval, primly in contrast to the old man’s eager scrutiny, struck a discordant note. ‘Nobody’s dancing,’ he explained.

Frederick craned forward to make out the partygoers in the brightly lit saloon below deck. A private do, he guessed, thinly attended but everyone clearly having fun. Some sort of game in progress. The pleasure boat chugged on passing upstream. Simon, smiling indulgently, produced a pair of binoculars for the old man, who swiftly applied himself to the disco boat.

‘Strip poker!’ he crowed.

Simon shrugged and moved to go back inside, hovering politely over the table as he cleared the plates, half attending to the old man’s enthusiastic commentary, straining to catch the opening chords of the Bach.

‘One’s had enough. Gone up on deck,’ Frederick said.

An amorphous shape in pale draperies leaned moth-like over the rail, spotlit by the alternate magenta and orange pulse of the strobe lighting.

‘Throwing up!’ he gasped, offering the binoculars to Simon. Shaking his head, the younger man moved as if to go back to the saloon, then found himself reluctantly hypnotized by the water pageant unfolding on the dance deck as it floated past. Below deck, the party was in full swing, two enthusiastically gyrating on what must be a coffee table, enticing glimpses of breast and gleaming shoulder visible above the heads of the others. Catcalls and rhythmic handclapping were clearly audible across the dark river, drowning the soaring opening bars of Simon’s radio concert.

Two men had followed the girl to the upper deck, one gripping her arms as her head rolled, doll-like, above the rail. An argument was obviously in progress. Despite himself, Simon found his attention riveted to the silent struggle of the girl who seemed to have passed out, supported by the second man, who, with appalling swiftness, slapped her face. Twice the ringing crack of his hand on her cheek sounded like rifle shots across the water. With a gasp Frederick witnessed the hoisting of the bundle of chiffon to the rail and the sudden disappearance of their victim over the side. No alarm was raised. The two men rejoined the party below deck. The boat chugged on, its music already absorbed by the continuous background noises of the river.

Frederick lurched to his feet, grasping Simon’s wrist, sagging with incredulity. The disco boat was vanishing into the darkness. A mirage? A trick of the flashing lights? Too much brandy?

The two stood rigid, disbelieving their own eyes. Simon snatched the binoculars and peered into the dark. The river flowed by, flecked with the wash from the pleasure boat. No sound rippled the surface. Their thoughts fused on the bizarre incident and the apparent unconcern of the men who perpetrated it.

‘I’ll phone the police,’ Frederick croaked, stumbling sideways in his effort to raise the alarm.

‘Bloody hell!’ Simon burst out. ‘She’s waving!’

The old man grabbed the binoculars and, wiping his eye, fumbled to refocus on the tide bobbing with the assorted debris of plastic cups and driftwood. Far out, carried along with the flotsam, a flurry of foam circled a raised arm hoisted almost negligently above the water. With disgust Frederick found ‘Excalibur’ trembling on his lips and, pushing away this superfluous imagery, grasped Simon’s shoulder. ‘I’ll ring 999 and get help. Is there a rowing-boat? A lifebelt? Anything?’ he wailed.

In despair, Simon recognized the dreadful certainty that there was no time to waste. He would have to go in after her. He kicked off his trainers and, lowering himself into the filthy river, struck out towards the flailing windmill into which the freezing water had transformed the languorous signal. Garbled shrieks now accompanied the white bundle which was already being carried along at a rate of knots.

Frederick, rooted to the deck, strained to follow the action, a warm trickle in his trousers reasserting the awful humiliation of his wretched ailment. Simon swam on strongly, finally reaching the gurgling victim and grabbing an inordinate length of hair which swirled in the scummy water like tentacles. He attempted to encircle her chest in the classic lifesaving style he vaguely remembered and fervently wished he had never been called upon to practise. The woman seemed to be ‘parcelled’. Huge wads of drapery immobilized her body but, concentrating all her energy in arms now clasping Simon in a steel embrace, her vibrant screams denied any possibility of water in the lungs. He wrestled with the octopus whose numberless arms churned in an apparent determination to drown him also.

Angrily, he applauded the justice of the man who had slapped her down in the first place. With a gesture resembling a half-nelson—something which the lifesaving manual had stupidly omitted—he at last managed to grasp the ample bosom. There seemed to be a lot of it. Weary with the struggle, he managed to move in the direction of the houseboat, towing his catch now blissfully inert. He hadn’t the energy to worry about this.

The old man was kneeling at the edge of the deck, having shoved one of the pretty window-boxes into the river. Between them they pushed and heaved the spluttering creature on board, where she lay coughing on the scrubbed boards. Simon dragged himself up, flopping back into a chair while Frederick dabbed the girl’s face with his handkerchief, murmuring encouragement over her heaving chest in a miscast tableau of Romance.

Simon watched the girl’s efforts to raise herself to spew up the last of the Thames, wiping her mouth with the corner of the trailing shroud. She sat up, bright-eyed, with the air of happy release of one who has been sick and feels better now, thank you. Pushing strands of wet hair off her forehead, she atempted to untangle the sodden winding sheet and released herself to wobble awkwardly towards the saloon. Frederick struggled to his feet, all concern, his town suit spattered with tarry flecks.

‘Is there a loo?’ she asked in level tones, her aplomb undented, the junoesque figure entirely filling the doorway.

Simon wearily indicated below deck and the girl stepped inside, taking the spiral staircase in her stride, disappearing below like an over-ample water nymph. Slimy pools marked her progress across Simon’s Persian rug. He sighed, feebly patting the old man’s arm as Frederick emptied tots from the decanter into the miraculously intact balloon glasses.

After a decent interval in which they debated in urgent undertones the question of calling the police, the two men decided they really must first consult their uninvited guest. Perhaps they had misinterpreted the scene—the poor girl accidentally falling overboard in her struggle to disentangle herself from her escorts. After all, it was dusk, almost dark in fact …

Ever anxious to avoid unpleasantness, Simon Alington’s insistence on consulting her grew desperate. Frederick motioned his nephew to lower his voice and, emptying his brandy glass, miserably contemplated his damp trousers. At any other time the embarrassment would have been of epic proportions but eyeing the muddy disfigurement of chairs and polished floorboards, not to mention Simon’s sodden state, Frederick slyly concluded his own predicament would certainly go by the board just this once.

Simon rose stiffly, rancorously surveying the chaos in the cabin. He straightened the rug, flicking ineffectually at trails of what looked like electric blue plastic spaghetti. The string quartet, blithely winging its way through the Bach, lent an air of the Titanic to the wretched circumstances of Simon’s carefully planned interior.

He disappeared below. Frederick moved silently to the stairs, listening intently to firstly hesitant polite tapping on the bathroom door, then more urgent blows and finally, in exasperation, a loud ‘Excuse me!’ as Simon barged in.

Frederick leaned over, peering down, excited at the prospect of more drama. Simon emerged and looking up, called, ‘Frederick, you’ll have to help me. The silly cow’s passed out.’

They heaved at the heavy bundle, wedged between bath and basin, her hair spread across the floor as if in a Roman mosaic. Eventually, they managed to shove twelve stones of inert femininity into Simon’s double bed, too exhausted to wrestle with the problem of the wet chiffon dress. Anyhow, it already seemed not only almost dry but billowing in creaseless folds about her.

Frederick’s breath laboured in painful gasps, this last piece of exertion almost, but not quite, dissolving the vision of swelling flesh escaping it seemed in all the right places. She was out cold, lightly snoring, her lips parted in soft exhalations. Oh dear me, Frederick, acknowledged, Mayerton is going to seem a very dull ditch after this little lot.

CHAPTER 2

Simon slept badly, haunted by a recurrent nightmare in which he was trapped in a bottle bobbing on a vast ocean. There must be a message in all this: ‘Help’ perhaps? Wedged on the small sofa, gloomily aware of a faint smell of bilge pervading the Christabel he reached for his Rolex. Eight-fifteen! He crept down to the bathroom, inevitably occupied, presumably by his uninvited guest, Frederick’s snoring being clearly audible from the spare cabin.

He sidled into the main cabin and withdrew a clean shirt and cords, grimly noting the tumble of muddy bedclothes and the froth of discarded chiffon tossed in the corner. The bathroom door spun open, and the girl appeared, fresh and smiling as a society hostess, quite unabashed.

‘Good morning! It’s all yours.’ She stood aside with a flourish of welcome.

He nodded curtly, noting her acquisition of his new denim shirt and the rolled-up cotton trousers he had bought for Cowes Week, and pushed past without a word. If she had used all the hot water he would certainly throw her back overboard.

When he emerged, feeling considerably less barbaric after a bath and shave, a wonderful aroma of fresh coffee and bacon obliterated the musty stink of Thames water which the previous night’s adventure had introduced. Frederick appeared looking frail, wearing a dressing-gown voluminous as a horse blanket and a sickly air of anxiety. He moved towards the upper deck. ‘She still here?’ he whispered.

Before Simon could reply the girl’s voice rang out, cheerful as a wedding bell. ‘Roll up, coffee’s ready.’ Her head appeared over the stair rail. ‘Come on, just as you are, I’ve done a full grill job.’

The two men’s confusion left no alternative but to toe the line. Frederick bunched the dressing-gown to his chest and ascended, Simon at his heels crossly aware of feeling a visitor aboard his own boat.

To give the girl her due, she was a quick worker. The saloon had been whisked to rights, the table laid, coffee steaming, and sunlight sparkling through the open hatches danced about Simon’s brass knick-knacks. Even the trails of plastic debris had been eliminated, the rug still damp from a brisk set-to and all evidence of the near-drowning utterly erased.

Simon, taciturn, merely grunted, but Frederick quickly responded to the girl’s unstoppable sprightliness and introduced himself.

‘So you are Frederick,’ she prattled, ‘And you’re—?

‘Simon Alington.’

‘And Simon’s staying here for—’

‘It’s Simon’s boat.’ Frederick almost choked on his bacon in his urgency to divert Simon’s rancour.

‘Oh good.’ She smiled across the table at him. ‘I had to borrow some clothes, Simon. You don’t mind?’

It was hardly a question. Would he tell her to strip? Simon laid down his fork and finished his coffee.

‘This is all very well, Miss—’

‘Morley. Rowan Morley. Ro to my friends.’

‘Miss Morley. But you seem to have been the victim of a murderous attempt on your life. We must call the police. That is,’ he added lamely, ‘unless you can enlighten us?’

‘Murderous attempt?’ She laughed, throwing back her head, struggling with the preposterousness of such a suggestion.

‘You mean my falling overboard? I was pissed, of course.’

She became serious, laying a hand on Simon’s stiffly clenched fist. ‘I shall be forever grateful. You were wonderful!’ This last spoken with fervour, stressed by a warmly admiring gaze.

‘It was a wild party. I’ll get the sack for this …’ She paused, choosing her words. ‘I was employed by the party organizers to supervise the catering in a discreet way. Seem part of the party. They wanted it informal. Then two men I knew in Marbella recognized me and seemed to think I knew the address of a Spaniard who’s skipped to London and owes them money. We were all pretty boozed and their English had got a bit garbled but I did think threatening to throw me overboard if I didn’t cough up this man’s whereabouts was coming it a bit strong. Especially as I haven’t a clue what they were on about. I laughed: quite the worst possible thing to do! Do you know Spain? The men can get quite macho if they think a woman’s having a giggle at their expense so I quickly gave them my old address in New York just to give them something to think about. When they started slapping me around, it seemed simpler to jump. I’m an excellent swimmer,’ she assured Frederick, ‘it’s my build, you see. My mother thought I could do the Channel, given a bit of training.’ She poured more coffee, her shy boast crowning the incredible story with a glimmering of veracity.

Simon returned her insouciance with wry disbelief. The Olympic proportions were undeniable but her swimming hadn’t seemed much in evidence when he had been struggling against the undertow. There was her blasted winding sheet of a dress, of course, and being drunk couldn’t have helped. Or perhaps it did?

He shrugged. ‘Well, if you’re satisfied it was some sort of joke …’

Frederick stared from one to the other, nonplussed.

She cleared the plates and was moving towards the sink as the telephone rang.

Simon took it, standing at his desk, his back to the clumsy efforts of Frederick to withdraw out of earshot. The old man shambled across the saloon, passing plates to Rowan now rapidly disposing of the breakfast wreckage. The receiver was replaced with a click.

Simon said, ‘Frederick, old chap. Something’s cropped up. That was my publisher. There’s some sort of foul-up at the printers’. They’re in the process of completely buggering up the layout. I’m afraid there’s no alternative. I’ve got to fly out to Amsterdam today and sort it out.’

Frederick airily waved his hand, the picture of unconcern.

‘My dear boy, don’t give it a thought. I’ll get a taxi.’

‘It’s not just your clinic appointment, Frederick. I promised to drive you home. You can’t go on the train.’ This bald affirmation of Frederick’s incapacity for public transport hung in the air.

‘Could you stay on here?’ Simon parried. ‘For a few days?’

Frederick looked confused, the possibility of changing plans seeming unsurmountable. Simon’s clock ticked fussily in the silence.

The girl broke in. ‘I’ll drive.’

The two turned abruptly towards her, now busily drying her hands. She smiled. ‘It’s the least I could do. Fishing me out and all. I’ve presumably lost my job after getting sozzled last night, anyway.’

‘It would help,’ Simon conceded, his mind already fizzing with the total cock-up the Dutch were likely to make of his considered presentation. He checked his watch.

‘I would rather go back today, Simon,’ Frederick ventured. ‘Perhaps I could get a hire car all the way?’ The two men regarded each other in mute confusion, the girl pensive. Simon assessed her English rose complexion, dark hair now lying in a smooth pigtail across the shoulder of his immaculate shirt. He agonized. I don’t even know the kid, but she looks OK, speaks like a lady and at worse can only make off with the Volvo. He capitulated.

‘You’re on.’

Like a clockwork roundabout, the three suddenly jerked into motion, Frederick striding to the stairs before Simon changed his mind, the girl swiftly restoring the saloon to its usual uncluttered formality and Simon turning back to his desk to fill his briefcase.

Later, below decks, Simon reiterated the arrangements with Frederick while he stowed his overnight bag under the bunk ready for a swift take-off.

‘You’re quite happy with this, aren’t you, Frederick? If you would rather not be driven by this female, do say. I can easily,’ he lied, ‘get someone else to drive you.’

‘Not at all, my boy. Delightful girl.’ He expanded in confidence. ‘Old-fashioned figure, just like women used to be.’

‘You’ll have to push off pretty soon, leave plenty of time to get to the clinic. Your suitcase ready?’ Simon persisted. ‘We could put it in the boot with—’ he indicated the pile of canvases and carrier bags stacked behind the door—‘your shopping. I’ll lock up when I go to the airport. The girl can drop off the car keys at the office tonight when she returns the car. There’s always someone on duty at night.’

‘Where do you want her to park it?’

‘Anywhere round here as long as it’s on a residents’ spot. She’ll know. She can leave a message with the boy in the office, Wayne I think he’s called, and if there’s a problem he can repark it early tomorrow morning. Is that clear?’

Simon’s confidence in the old man’s concentration had been dampened since this last little visit. Frederick’s faculties were fuzzy at the edges these days. The girl reminded them of the time, calling over the rail with smooth assurance.

Simon followed his uncle up on deck, passing the suitcase to Rowan together with most of the parcels.

They paused by the Volvo parked near the quay. A beady-eyed onlooker joined them from the boatyard office as Simon stowed the luggage in the boot and settled the old man in the passenger seat.

Simon handed the keys to the girl. ‘See Frederick safely inside the reception area even if you have to double park and get booked.’ He slipped a handful of notes to her and elaborated on the arrangements. ‘He can’t travel far without a stop but hates to admit it,’ he confided. ‘The drive to Mayerton is pretty straightforward. Take the Oxford road and when you get back here tonight drop off the keys at the office with Wayne.’ He introduced the sharp-featured watcher from the boathouse and Rowan grinned and said, ‘I’m Rowan,’ with an ice-breaking warmth to melt even Wayne’s suspicious nature.

‘I’ll telephone Frederick at home tonight when I get to my hotel so there should be no problem.’ Simon grudgingly smiled at the girl, her soft mouth level with his own twitching with amusement.

‘There’s a full tank,’ he assured her sternly. ‘And—thanks.’

‘Lucky I swam by,’ she replied, laughing. ‘I’ll post on your stuff.’

He shrugged in a gesture of insincere generosity made awkward by his conviction of the inevitable end of his Ralph Lauren shirt. Simon was never one to look on the bright side. He dropped his gaze to the canvas espadrilles. She’s welcome to those, he thought, mustering enough grace to smile at his own perfidy.

He waved them off, checking the time as he ran back down the gangplank to finish packing.

CHAPTER 3

Frederick’s Civil Service pension allowed few luxuries but one of them was private medical treatment. The Darwin Clinic sat grandly just off the Marylebone Road and he was grateful to Simon for loaning his splendid limousine. It certainly made for a smooth conclusion to a very exciting few days, almost too absorbing to allow him to fret about the proposed tests.

The girl was a better driver, for a start. She handled the car with smooth dexterity and was not the victim of the irascibility which clouded any drive with Simon. Gliding through Hyde Park opulent with the merest touches of autumn gold was a royal progress indeed.

He almost purred.

Drawing up outside the hotel-like entrance of the clinic, the girl leapt out and shepherded him to the reception area, smiling disarmingly at the doorman’s appraisal of her double-yellow parking. Inside, all was soft lighting, easy chairs and lots and lots of pink carnations. Very like a hotel foyer, in fact. He was early, the appointments clerk’s softly-spoken response reassuring. Frederick felt like a famous vintage lovingly passed from hand to hand. Rowan passed him a current copy of Country Life and settled him on a leather sofa before disappearing to park the car.

Cocooned in the gentle ambience, Frederick relaxed, secure in twenty minutes’ respite before the jaws of hell were due to pluck him into one of the stainless consulting rooms. The rasp of someone demanding his missing copy of The Times struck a discordant note. An argument ensued, clearly audible to the waiting patients and hovering relatives all too eager to be distracted from the matter in hand. A large young man in a tentlike kimono, seated in a wheelchair, his leg encased in plaster, harangued the woman behind the counter of the kiosk in the corner. Being seated and well below her line of vision in no way diminished the man’s control of the dispute, which ranged from icy contempt to flashes of childish temper. It seemed a lot of fuss about a newspaper.

Frederick swivelled round, curious, open to live entertainment of any kind. The voice seemed familiar. The doorman was moving in, sternly intent on shifting the chairborne patient who was ruffling the carefully nurtured calm.

Frederick strode to the kiosk.

‘Aran. Aran Hunter, you noisy bugger!’

The young man expertly spun the wheels of his chair, grey eyes skewering the interfering old party. The frown evaporated.

‘Fred! What are you doing in this Valhalla?’

Frederick smoothly manœuvred the wheelchair back to his sofa and the abandoned Country Life and sank back, smiling broadly, ignoring the question. He tapped the plaster cast. ‘Been kicking up the dust, old son?’

‘Fell off some scaffolding in Venice. Trying to photograph some bloody frescoes for assessment. Flew me home, luckily my insurance covered it.’

‘Bad luck. In here long?’

‘Ten interminable days. It was a complicated fracture. But I’m pretty fair now, just pissed off wasting time I could usefully spend in my studio.

‘When are they discharging you?’

‘As soon as I’ve convinced them I’ve got some place to go which doesn’t involve any more monkey tricks.’ His scowl reappeared, furrowing a tanned forehead untidily overhung with hair the texture and colour of Shredded Wheat.

‘Can’t you work from a wheelchair?’

‘Some,’ he replied guardedly. ‘Problem is they’re trying to shunt me to some convalescent palace of varieties in Torquay which they use here.’

‘If you got an au pair or someone you could probably rest at home just as well.’

Frederick had known Aran Hunter for several years, admired his work enormously, but could hardly imagine this dynamo quietly recuperating in a post-operative lay-by until his plaster was removed.

‘Tried that. Got one of my students to agree to live in but it won’t work. You see, I’ve no lift. Four floors up and I couldn’t possibly cope with the stairs.’

The soft announcement of Frederick’s appointment led them to break off, but, anxious to catch up with Hunter’s news, Frederick pressed him to meet after his check-up. They exchanged details of Aran’s room number and Frederick hurried in the wake of a pair of dark stockings leading him towards the row of steel elevators. In contrast to the cosiness of the reception area the streamlined efficiency of the lifts gave the game away: the Darwin Clinic meant business. Like everything else beyond the ground floor, the lift equipment was probably sterilized daily, he decided.

Rowan was waiting in the reception hall when Frederick reappeared, sickly pale but determinedly cheerful.

‘Hope I haven’t kept you waiting, my dear. I bumped into a young friend of mine who’s a patient here. We had a chat in his room after my tests and I persuaded his doctor to let him out to lunch. He’s on parole,’ he confided as she took his arm, ‘so we must return him reasonably sober.’

Frederick’s protégé appeared on cue, now turned out in a kilt of virulent yellow and black tartan and a tweed jacket of such proportions as to involve the cooperation of several alpaca. Wheeling himself between the leather sofas, Aran Hunter, bright-eyed as a schoolboy on half-term release, was greatly impressed by the old man’s driver. Michelangelo would have swooped on this one, all woman indeed, her male get-up lending a tantalizing fillip to this unexpected exeat.

The doorman gladly assisted the unlikely trio into the street, anxious to maintain the reverential hush which distinguished the Darwin from other less classy establishments.

The Volvo was illicitly to hand.

‘Where to?’ she said.

Confused, Frederick began to stutter about the wheelchair. She patted his arm. ‘Now, have you booked, Frederick?’

‘I thought the Chelsea Arts Club.’

‘Oh no.’ Aran’s response was unyielding.

‘Your leg—?’ Frederick queried.

‘It’s not that. I really can’t face that nosey crowd. To be honest, Frederick, I’d rather the word doesn’t get around that I’m back from Venice,’ he explained, only adding to the confusion.

Rowan took them in hand.

‘Well, how about a little place I know where we can eat in the garden? There’s a back entrance so we can wheel you straight in without struggling through the restaurant proper. Wonderful food. No hassle.’

Frederick nodded; Aran concurred; the matter was settled.

‘We’ll get a taxi,’ Aran said. ‘While you go ahead to clear the way for me and the leg.’

Rowan expertly summoned a cab with an ear-piercing whistle.

The taxi-driver manœuvred Aran, the plaster cast and Frederick into the cab and folded up the wheelchair with a flourish, stowing it inside. Frederick bounced about trying to catch the girl’s eye, worried about the lunch booking.

Aran leaned out of the window.

‘What’s your name? In case we get there first?’

‘Rowan. Just Rowan. They know me. Ask for Toto.’

Aran looked nonplussed. ‘Rowan?’

‘Mountain ash,’ Frederick explained.

‘My mother smoked a lot,’ she said.

‘I thought Rowan was a man’s name.’

‘Well, it’s not. What’s yours?’

‘Aran.’

‘I thought Aran was a jumper.’

He laughed. ‘Touché.’

Lunch was a huge success. They spread themselves beneath a flame-red maple in the walled garden behind the restaurant. The sun lent a gilded touch to the fag end of a hot summer and for weeks tables in the courtyard had been in great demand, giant tubs of geranium, rosemary and basil lending a spicy un-English scent to a backyard only yards from the choked artery of King’s Road.

Aran sat sideways to the table, his leg propped on a chair, his restored bonhomie embracing the entire population of Chelsea. They ribbed Rowan about her previous night’s dip in the Thames, she, in turn, refusing to elaborate on the bizarre event. Aran, more than a little drunk, leaned across the table.

‘Why hide all that loveliness under a man’s shirt?’

‘Same reason,’ she tartly retorted, ‘you wear a skirt.’

Frederick roared with laughter. They made wonderful sparring partners.

‘Needs must,’ Aran confessed. ‘I wasn’t going to pass up Fred’s generous offer of lunch away from that snake pit. One of the orderlies, Jimmy Macleod, offered to lend me his Burns Night kit.’ He patted the plaster. ‘Trousers over this are a problem. I could get used to the kilt,’ he said, grinning. ‘Convenient all round.’

‘Couldn’t you try shorts, the baggy Boy Scout sort?’ Rowan suggested.

‘It’s an idea. My flat’s just round the corner.’ He paused and then urgently addressed Frederick. ‘Would you mind if this glorious girl of yours nipped up to my apartment and packed a few things? It wouldn’t take more than five minutes.’

Frederick turned to Rowan, who shrugged and laughingly agreed to go through Aran’s drawers. Aran emptied the bottle and mentally weighed Frederick’s discretion. ‘There’s something else, old chap. I hate to ask you but this accident has put me well and truly in the cart.’

He lowered his voice and Rowan, unabashed, moved in, all three heads bent over the littered table.

‘My flat’s in a new block at the end of Tite Street. The developers put in for eight floors but the planning people cut them down to four—something to do with existing rooflines. As the profit depended on twice as many units the builder cut his losses by eliminating lifts, which is OK unless you have luggage or a broken leg. I agree it’s a luxury “walk-up”, as they say in New York, but in practice there’s no real problem. In the normal course of events, four floors is nothing out of the way in London. I don’t use it all that much. Travel a lot,’ he explained, ‘working on site, and then there’s this workshop and photographic studio I rent in Rome which has most of my technical gear.’

‘What do you do?’ Rowan interjected.

‘I’m a conservator.’

‘A leading restorer,’ Frederick enthused. ‘Aran Hunter’s put his hand to some tremendously important art works, the royal collection, too, am I not right, my boy?’

Making a dismissive gesture he continued, sotto voce.

‘I’m freelance these days. Mostly Italian fifteenth- and sixteenth-century stuff, all scientific tricks mostly, a sort of make-do and mend.’ He paused. ‘The problem is, Fred, I have a picture at my flat which I intended to assess for one of the dealers. The building is pretty secure, only one entrance and a twenty-four-hour porterage, but I had no notion the thing would have to sit possibly for weeks in an empty flat. Could you, as an enormous favour, take it back with you to the country? Just for a month or so? It would be safer in your custody and I’d feel happier. The central heating goes on this week and most of the residents in my block seem to prefer desert heat.’ Appealing to Frederick’s kind heart, he wheedled, ‘It’s a very small painting.’

‘I suppose it will be all right,’ the old man reluctantly agreed. ‘But you would have to introduce Rowan to the porter. He’s not going to allow a stranger to enter your flat and pack a suitcase unless he sees you in person, is he?’

Rowan said, ‘We could follow Aran’s taxi in the Volvo and I could pack a bag and get the picture from the flat. Then you could take the cab back to the clinic and Frederick and I drive straight to Oxford.’

‘It’s a big responsibility,’ Frederick demurred, desperately aware of the treasures Aran dealt in. An alternative struck him. Excitedly he banged the table, overturning his Chablis.

‘Why don’t you come down to Mayerton with us? Stay as long as you like. I couldn’t guarantee a thatched cottage would be more environmentally sound than an overheated flat, but you could keep an eye on the picture yourself. What’s the insurance situation, moving these priceless objects?’

‘No problem,’ Aran assured him. ‘I do it all the time. Even big stuff. I’ve got my own security van parked at the flat, fitted with special niches for crates and so on.’

‘How about convalescing at Mayerton, then?’ Frederick enthused.

‘Would get you out of the clinic,’ Rowan added. ‘And if you like, I could drive us all in your van and then you’d be able to spread out your leg in the back and take the wheelchair along too.’

Aran brightened. ‘That sounds really too generous for words, Fred. Are you sure? I’m a cantankerous sod, hell to live with even without a broken leg.’

‘We’ll manage.’ Frederick beamed across the table, enchanted by the unexpected turn of events which had brought such exhilarating company into his dull pond of a life. ‘Will your doctor allow it?’

‘Let’s not ask,’ Rowan countered. ‘Just go. I’ve got to come back to London. I’ll call in and return the kilt if you like and Aran can phone his doctor from the cottage.’

It all seemed preposterously simple. They looked at each other and clinked glasses, conspirators in crime.

The sky had become overcast. The waiter brought the bill, anxious to clear the outside tables before the rain. Rowan went off with him to greet the chef, an old chum of hers who appeared fifteen minutes later, wreathed in smiles, one arm affectionately about her shoulder. She and the waiter bundled Aran back in his wheelchair amid much ribald speculation from the chef regarding the underpinnings of ‘ze wunnerful Scotch skirt’.

Once out on the pavement, Rowan proposed getting a taxi for the men while she followed in the Volvo. Just as she magically produced one, Frederick declared an undeniable call of nature and ducked off down to the men’s lavatory conveniently to hand.

Simon had warned Rowan about Frederick’s unscheduled stops, often of indeterminate duration and always inconvenient. It began to pour. Aran had already lurched awkwardly inside the taxi and she joined him, anxiously wondering if it would eventually be necessary to dispatch the cab-driver to winkle the old man out.

Seated close to her, Aran relaxed in her fragrance. It was what he could only describe as ‘earthy’: entirely natural and infinitely appealing to a man whose girlfriends moved in synthetic clouds of Chanel and Givenchy. Unaware of his appraisal, she sat on the edge of the seat, holding the door ajar, watching through the sheeting rain for Frederick’s reappearance at the top of the steps.

With a sigh of relief she jumped out and pushed the old man into the taxi, mouthing directions to the driver, her hair already drenched. Frederick offered up a silent prayer that he had not seen the last of Simon’s Volvo and Aran for his part prayed that he had not seen the last of this new style Artemis rapidly disappearing into the wilderness of rain-sodden Chelsea.

CHAPTER 4

The sudden downpour seemed to penetrate Simon Alington’s mood, settling in a gloomy puddle in his brain. Removing his wet raincoat, he sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow dismally contemplating the wrangle ahead of him in Amsterdam. The printers often took a stolid, obdurate stance and Simon, ever wishing to sidestep a disagreement, knew he must stand firm on this one. He lit a small cigar and hunched over his flight bag, staring at the floor, trying to assemble a tactful line of attack.

‘Hello. It is Simon Alington, isn’t it?’

Simon’s head shot up and he found himself the focus of a tall man wearing a dark, double-breasted suit and an immaculate shirt which only the devoted attentions of a whole team of body slaves could have produced. Simon stood, fumbling for the key to this obviously familiar face now level with his own. The man held out his hand.

‘Oxford. Then Paris on that post-degree shindig. We briefly shared that awful apartment in Pantin, remember? La Nécropole!’

‘Laurence, Laurence—er …’

‘Erskine.’

They shook hands, now neatly tabbed, half-remembered disagreements swirling awkwardly between two grown men on business trips.

They conferred on flights and agreed on a quick drink in the bar.

‘So we’re both going to be in Amsterdam?’

‘I’m at the Lely for a couple of nights,’ Simon replied, ‘probably longer. I’m not sure. And you?’

‘Interpol conference. Three days. I’m waiting for an American colleague. We’re taking an afternoon flight. Get our act together before Amsterdam.’

‘I have always said conferences were a waste of time. All the talking done in quiet corners, anything useful that is,’ Simon joked. He checked his watch. ‘And Laurence Erskine’s Chief Commissioner by now, I imagine,’ he added, amused by the divergence of their paths since Paris.

‘Inspector. But upwardly mobile, you might say.’

Simon was intrigued by the emergence of such a sleek creature from the rather ordinary chrysalis of scruffy fellow-student he remembered. They had both changed since La Nécropole. Erskine was certainly attractive, he would grant him that: his glance direct, his smile genuinely humorous. But the easygoing air seemed merely the velvet glove, an innate intelligence sheathed in social acceptability. Affable yet somehow dangerous.

‘Amazed you joining the police.’

‘Amazed you becoming a fancy decorator. Saw your picture in Interiors last month. Knew it rang a bell.’

‘Didn’t know flatfeet trod the glossies.’

The years stripped away with the well-worn lashes of undergraduate banter and by the time they had filled in the more obvious blanks, Simon’s flight was called. He swallowed his drink, gathered his raincoat and they shook hands. He became serious.

‘Funny bumping into each other like this. I feel rather guilty about something I should have reported before I left. This urgent trip somewhat threw me and—’ he shrugged apologetically—‘no one’s keen to get involved with the police. I couldn’t chance being held over in London just now. But I would value your advice.’

‘Fire away.’ Laurence Erskine’s jocularity was replaced by a steely professionalism, mentally filing Simon’s elusive, sliding glance.

Nervously running his fingers through slightly overlong hair, he answered, ‘No time now, Laurence. How about a drink at my hotel this evening.’

‘Have to be early. We convene at seven-thirty. How does six o’clock in the Orange Bar suit you?’

‘Perfect.’

They parted on an uncomfortable footing, drawing away like two acquaintances passing on moving escalators.

Erskine watched Simon disappear through the barrier, then settled back to wait for Chuck Gombrich. It was uncharacteristic to have sought out an old chum but the Limboland of a departure lounge seemed to invite unlikely behaviour. Perhaps some underlying apprehension about setting out on any journey? The police inspector in him laughed at the notion, deliberately erasing the psychological ramble his mind enticed him to follow.

Erskine withdrew some notes from his briefcase in preparation for the international cooperation which at last seemed to be bearing fruit.

In Tite Street the taxi-meter ticked expensively outside Aran Hunter’s apartment building, the two passengers anxiously contemplating the complications of their vanishing Girl Friday.

‘Here she is!’ Frederick squeaked with relief as the Volvo drew alongside.

She wound down the window.

‘Sorry, folks. Got held up in the square. Filming in one of the houses on the east side, floodlighting, road closed, the lot.’

‘Some Agatha Christie TV job,’ the taxi-driver confirmed. ‘Been at it all week. As if the effing traffic ain’t bad enough as it is.’

Frederick paid the taxi and the driver helped Aran back into the folding wheelchair. Rowan slid the Volvo into the kerbside and the three conferred in front of the wide shallow steps which led to the foyer. Aran took command.

‘Ask the porter to come out, will you?’

Rowan glanced through the glass doors.

‘Hunter, wasn’t it? Flat twenty-two?’

He nodded, giving her a little push.

Frederick gripped the wheelchair and watched the girl run through the entrance, exhausted already by the attenuated departure. He wanted to be home. Also, he could do with another pee …

The porter emerged, greeting Aran with deferential ethusiasm, warily eyeing the Scottish kilt from which the plastered leg protruded like an Awful Warning.

‘Been in a pile-up, Mr Hunter?’

Aran shrugged irritably.

‘I’m going to the country for a few days, Ted.’ He opened his wallet. Notes were discreetly handed over. ‘You haven’t seen me, have you?’ Aran transfixed the doorkeeper with 500 volts of steely eyeball. ‘That young lady—’ he indicated Rowan sheltering from the rain inside the vestibule—‘is going to pack a bag for me. No one else,’ he emphasized, ‘is to enter my flat.’

‘Not even Dolly to clean?’

‘Not even Dolly to clean.’

‘Suppose I get a message for you?’ This Hunter bloke was starting to get up his nose, Ted decided.

‘I shall be staying with Mr Flowers here.’ He turned to Frederick and, taking a business card from his wallet, asked him to add the Mayerton phone number. The old man scribbled on the back, glancing into the brightly-lit foyer where Rowan was clearly visible flicking through the porter’s copy of the Sun.

Ted pocketed the card, tapping the side of his nose in an oddly mysterious gesture which only seemed to increase Aran’s irritation. As the porter turned to go, he grabbed his sleeve. ‘She’s also taking my van from the garage. While we’re waiting, would you push this bloody contraption round to the parking exit at the back to save her doing the full circuit on the one-way system to pick us up?’

‘Well, sir,’ the porter demurred, ‘as you well know, I’m not permitted to leave the front desk.’

‘Absolute codswallop!’ Aran exploded. ‘Five minutes at the outside. You don’t do an eight-hour shift without a leak, surely?’

Frederick looked on, visibly agonized at the very idea.

‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Aran grunted as Ted painfully jerked the wheelchair up the steps, ‘this gentleman would like to avail himself of the facilities.’

The porter pushed Aran through the wrought-iron gate which linked the foyer with the parking area at the rear of the building and carefully relocked it before ushering Frederick before him to join Rowan at the reception desk. Rowan disappeared to the fourth floor while Frederick gratefully gained the sanctuary of the staff cloakroom.

Rowan let herself into the flat, closing the door quietly. The climb had left her slightly breathless and she leaned against the door contemplating Aran Hunter’s home ground. The corridor had been dark but once inside the flat its clarity was almost blinding.

All the walls were white, the entire flat seemingly on view at a glance. The minute hall area was half partitioned with a filigree metal trellis supporting some sort of ivy through which a matt black dining table could be glimpsed in the short leg of an enormous L-shaped living-room.

A spiral staircase led to a wide gallery, presumably bedroom and bathroom. Moving forward, Rowan discovered two mirrored doors revealed a small cloakroom and study-cum-workroom.

A short passage led to a kitchenette, ranged with chrome and black fitments and a window overlooking the street. Parting the slats of the venetian blind, Rowan looked down on to Simon’s Volvo parked beside the wide empty pavement. No sign of Aran or Frederick. The rain had stopped.

She explored further, her espadrilles silent on the parquet floor, a prevailing sensation of being watched totally at odds with the clearly unoccupied apartment illuminated by an enormous studio window from floor to ceiling which bathed both the living area and the galleried sleeping quarters in a cold north light.

‘Stunning,’ she breathed, her normal ebullience strangely muted by the Immaculate Conception of Aran Hunter’s den. She padded round, lifting lids, checking drawers, opening cupboards. Utterly fascinated.

The scream of a patrol car siren in the street jerked her from this awed contemplation and she hustled, confident that the man whose home resembled a filing cabinet had described the exact disposition of his socks and pants.

Swiftly filling a suitcase, she added her own little extras: some after-shave, a sketch pad, Valentino sunglasses, a framed photograph of a girl in a strapless ballgown. Rowan snarled at the simpering face held up to the camera lens and hoped his plastered leg was sexually inordinately inconvenient.

Placing the suitcase near the door, she selected another key and opened the rolltop desk, the only item in the entire flat which had seen better days. Its battered, scarred surface was reassuring, the lock flimsy and really not worthy of a key at all. Presumably, confident of the mortice locks, entryphones, unopenable windows and the televisual surveillance of Ted the doorman, the ultimate pushover of an antique desk was a sop to fatalism.

A small rectangular parcel propped against the pigeonholes was taped and secured as Aran had described. Rowan guessed she had already outstayed her welcome and the shrill summons of the entryphone came as no shock. Leaving the desk gaping, she lifted the wall-mounted receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Ted, miss. Mr Hunter asked me to tell you he’s waiting.’

An edited version Rowan guessed, cheerfully assuring the porter she was on her way. She placed the brown paper parcel with the suitcase, relocked the desk and had a final look round.

Unable to resist the kitchen in any house, Rowan hurried through to see what sort of catering arrangements an art restorer felt necessary. Stuffed quails? Caviare? Moules au beurre d’escargot?

The fridge was a let-down. Butter, the mildewed remains of some Stilton, a large carton of yoghourt and some Parma ham. The freezer was worse: almost totally empty, the biggest item a party pack of ice cubes. The wine rack looked promising but, she discovered, apart from one bottle of Bollinger, contained only numerous flagons of distilled water, white spirit and industrial meths. A serious alcoholic?

Purloining the champagne, she tossed the ham and cheese into the rubbish chute, hearing it bounce noisily down to the basement. Remembering the yoghourt, she turned back to the fridge, removing the carton to throw after the odorous Stilton. Its peculiar lightness seemed odd. Expecting a foul watery curd, she opened the lid. Surprise, surprise. Inside, carefully rolled and rubber-banded, were several hundred large denomination banknotes. With reverence she mentally calculated the value of Aran’s little nest egg and let out a low whistle. And it had been within an ace of the waste chute!

Firmly reining in her imagination, Rowan pocketed the roll of notes and remonitored the flat. The sky pinned up within the frame of the huge studio window gleamed theatrically mauve after the rain, a pair of geese winging rapidly to the edge of the picture lending a lively signature. Two shiny yellow sofas upholstered in a shade she could only describe as canary in aspic confronted the cloudy sky in a largely empty room. Rowan suspected panelled wall cupboards decorously hid such ruderies as TV, stereo and ashtrays.

Turning aside, she shivered, struck by the sterile luxury of a minimalist interior. In her haste to depart she almost spun into the bottom step of the staircase, stumbled and found herself facing a french window leading on to a minuscule balcony. She peered through the glass, dismissing the balcony as a useless sitting-out area, it being barely large enough for two chairs. It overlooked the parking spaces on the ground floor. A fire escape? Only if one had a parachute. Not daring to spend more time exploring, she hurried out, snatched up the suitcase and, cradling Aran’s precious parcel and the champagne to her wonderful chest, slammed the door, relocking it top and bottom before flinging herself back down four flights of stairs.

The garage area extended along the back of the building, marked spaces numbered and mostly vacant mid-afternoon. A few BMWs, a Mercedes and one Rolls-Royce were stabled like expensive bloodstock, rendering Aran’s van incongruous as a carthorse. The van was as minimally decorated as the flat, its beige paintwork elegantly enlivened by classic black lettering which announced Aran Hunter, Fine Art Restorations, 22 Raphael Studios and the telephone number. She stowed Aran’s gear on the passenger seat and carefully backed out, using the remote control to escape through the double steel electronic gates which opened to a one-way street behind Cheyne Walk. Aran had warned her about this and she mentally plotted the arrows to arrive back at the front of the building. But they were waiting just outside in the quiet backstreet; Aran tense, Frederick exhausted, both men touchingly forlorn like luggage left at the side of the road.

Frederick brightened visibly as she jumped out of the van and between them they lifted the wheelchair in the back, clamping the wheels to a steel runner on the floor of the fitted interior before bundling the impatient patient to sit cushioned on the floor beside it. As Frederick made as if to join her in the front, Rowan explained he would have to drive the Volvo back to the riverside. Dismayed, the old man reluctantly accepted Simon’s keys and at last the Volvo lurched into convoy behind the van.

With a real sense of achievement Frederick smoothly proceeded along the Embankment and parked within fifty yards of the Christabel. Rowan applauded from the parked van, Aran invisible in the back.

Locking up, Frederick confidently approached the office, recognizing the spotty youth who disposed of the rubbish and dealt with general maintenance. He greeted the gimlet eyes, all that was visible between a thick muffler pulled up to his ears and the sharp peak of a baseball cap.

‘Wayne, isn’t it?’

The gimlet eyes bored on but, sure of his ground, Frederick pushed the car keys through the cubbyhole. These ‘punky boys’ he regarded with even less favour than the lager louts who had invaded the village most weekends that summer.

‘Mr Alington from the Christabel asked me to leave these in your safekeeping, young man.’ Frederick’s fruity Edwardian tones would have offended the sensitivities of Wayne, always alert to piss-takers, had he not been subjected to the old man’s rich phraseology on previous visits.

He nodded, shoving the keys in a drawer, mumbling some sort of response, but the words, entangled in the muffler, refused to emerge.

‘I say, what?’

Wayne lowered the grubby scarf to disclose a bruised and swollen lip. ‘I said Si told me the girl’d bring the keys back tonight,’ he repeated.

‘We changed our plans,’ Frederick answered airily, moving off.

Wayne rapped on his window. ‘Hang about, mate!’

Frederick half turned.

Wayne pointed to Simon’s berth. ‘Si’s winder-box. Found it at low tide. Right old state it’s in. Done me best but you know how he goes on about them flowers of ’is. I put it back on deck but everyfink’s broke. How’d it get shoved overboard?’

Frederick shrugged, at a loss for words. At last he murmured something about ‘A bit of a party …’ Warming to his theme, he winked. ‘High jinks, you understand. Got a bit out of hand.’

Wayne replaced the muffler and stared balefully at the over-ripe plum driving the van, now leaning on the car horn, laughingly urging the old codger to get a move on. Looked just like Sharon, she did. Fat bum … Big tits … Fuzzy bush down there, shouldn’t wonder …

He snorted. Silly bugger. Wayne knew all about old farts like Frederick. Money talks, he sourly concluded, watching the old man’s hurrying steps back to the van. As it drove away Wayne jotted down the details painted on the side. Might come in handy. Never know. Fine Art Restorations?

‘Need a bloody lot of restoring before that poor old sod could do anything for a girl like that.’

CHAPTER 5

Simon felt comfortable in Amsterdam and relaxed in his hotel room, putting aside the problems that had brought him there. He made several phone calls, sitting near the window, enjoying the slant of afternoon light silhouetting the gables of houses across the canal. It reminded him of Cheyne Walk seen from the riverside promenade in Battersea Park. The brick façades unified in their confident Protestant affluence presented a slab of bourgeois urbanity.

He briefly concluded his conversations, arranging meetings for the next day, completing notes in the margin of his schedule, underlining the matters for compromise, doubly underlining the matters on which he must stand firm.

Glancing at his watch, he decided to slip out for a brisk walk along the canals before his appointment with Erskine. He left the hotel with alacrity, eager for a breath of air. A clear lemon sky gilded rooftops reflected in the smooth water. It was a static version of his view from the Christabel, there the Thames turbulent, tidal, busy with river traffic: barbaric by comparison.

He stepped out under the lime trees eager to reach the houseboats moored, if he remembered rightly, in the next canal. He wished he had brought his camera, wished he could pretend to be just another tourist with nothing more on his mind than choosing a delicious Indonesian rijstafel.

He found the houseboats: a motley selection, not as self-conscious as the Chelsea lot but looking more seaworthy, more ‘boat’ and less ‘house’, he admitted to himself with a smile. The curtains were mostly drawn, the decks empty, no old man and his nephew sipping brandy at dusk, watching the tide churning deep water. He shrugged off this line of thought, unwilling to relive the ghastly rescue of that vast female. It was only in recollection that fear had set in. Simon now realized with an icy twist in his gut that both he and the girl were very lucky indeed to escape drowning. He found himself staring at the barely rippling surface of the canal and flung aside this morbid certainty which the sheer banality a swim here would present. Lifesaving in a Dutch canal would have been a Mickey Mouse affair by contrast.

Back in the hotel, he showered and changed and tried to ring Frederick again. At first the engaged signal was heartening—at least the old boy was safely back in residence—but the continued blocking of the line was very strange. With mounting anxiety Simon called the boatyard office and recognized the nasal growl of the dreadful Wayne.

‘I am a little concerned about the gentleman who stayed on board last night, Wayne. My uncle, Mr Flowers, you remember? Is the car back yet?’

‘The Volvo’s ’ere, in full view, Si. I got the keys from ’im just after me dinner.’

Simon glanced at the time. ‘You mean early this afternoon?’

‘’Sright. He came back driving your motor and ’opped off with that plump new bird of yours what stayed last night,’ he said, the innuendo strongly underlined.

Simon frowned. ‘You say Mr Flowers drove the car himself?’

Wayne sniggered. ‘Parked it an’ all. Not so much as a scratch. I give it the once over jest in case. Thought he didn’t drive?’

‘Not for years.’ Simon’s confusion grew. ‘Then the girl didn’t drive him home, after all?’

‘’e went off with ‘er all right. She had this van, see, and he ’opped off with her like I said, right as ninepence. Can’t say where they went, though.’

‘I’ve tried telephoning his house but the line’s engaged. I expect he’s there all right but I told the girl to drive him home. At least,’ he added, ‘the Volvo’s back. Wayne, don’t give the keys to her if she comes back for the car. I’ll be home myself in a few days.’

After he had put the phone down, Wayne fingered his jottings of the van’s particulars on the grubby page of the log-book. He hadn’t shared this morsel yet, maybe he would follow it up himself. Or find a buyer … Wayne Denny, aged twenty-two, greasy collar-length hair and sallow complexion, was old for his years. Being taken into care on his eighth birthday had made an indelible impression, and streetwise intelligence—honed by two short custodial sentences for petty theft—had completed his education, preparing him for a variety of jobs and a lifetime of living on his wits.

He liked this present lark looking after the houseboats. It left him free to poke about, gave him a degree of power over the naïve—by his standards—tenants. It also placed him at the trendy end of Kings Road. Wayne had many contacts and no friends, his innate cunning armour in the war of survival. He missed Sharon since she disappeared up west with Fletcher but there were plenty more fat chicks scratching round this back yard. That one on Si’s boat, for instance.

Wayne wiped his nose on the ragged cuff of a nasty maroon jumper and tore out the sheet of the log-book where he had scribbled the address of the girl’s van.

The Orange Bar at Simon’s hotel was already filling with businessmen and tourists relaxing after a footslogging day on the Dutch cobblestones. Simon caught sight of Erskine already seated at a corner table, his back to the wall. Simon guessed this to be a precaution acquired since the Pantin days. Erskine made a languid signal indicating the bottle already ordered. They shook hands, as continental as true Europeans, chameleons under the skin.

‘OK with you?’ Erskine poured a glass of wine for Simon and they settled back, covering a polite hurdle of general commentary regarding their flight out, their familiarity with downtown Amsterdam, their assessment of the local restaurants. To the casual onlooker, two attractive Englishmen, thirty-something, already confidently on the way up.

‘About this little problem of yours,’ Erskine prompted, his mind shuffling the possibilities, not altogether approving of the more fanciful hairstyling Simon now affected.

After a moment’s silence, Simon plunged into his version of Rowan’s rescue. Erskine, visibly startled, butted in.

‘You mean to say you leapt off your boat, swam out and brought this crazy woman back on board?’

Simon nodded.

‘You’re bloody mad!’ Erskine raised his glass and sardonically added, ‘Congratulations. The Press will be pounding on your door any minute now. Sir Galahad is not dead! I can see the headlines.’

Simon looked uncomfortable but pressed on with the strange story.

‘I sincerely hope not. That’s the funny thing, Larry. I didn’t report it, it was all so confusing last night, I was only too relieved she wasn’t dead, not to mention myself,’ he said with a grin. ‘I am pretty sure Frederick let it go at that and this mysterious female insists we misinterpreted the whole incident and that she actually jumped overboard.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Not at all. If you met this great Juno you would realize she’s the very last person to take her own life. Irrepressible,’ he said with feeling. ‘No, the weird thing is, both Frederick and I are convinced she was shoved overboard deliberately by these two men. You remember my uncle from the old days, don’t you? The jolly old cove who used to come to Oxford and treat us to the odd case of wine at Christmas. He’s not as clear-headed as he was but we are both absolutely sure of what we saw, and even if we were wrong surely the police are looking for a missing person who disappeared from a disco boat in the course of a party?’

‘Can you say exactly when this incident took place?’

Simon winced, recognizing the stiffened phrases of an official request.

‘Oh, heavens, let’s think … I know! It must have been almost exactly eight-fifteen. I had switched on the radio to hear a concert and it had just started as Frederick was watching the boat through my binoculars.’

‘Do you want me to make a report?’

‘Christ, no!’ Simon leaned across the table, lowering his voice. ‘Look here, Larry, I know this puts you in a difficult position but as an old friend,’ he appealed, ‘could you just pass on the word informally that this girl’s safe? They’ll be sending down divers next, presumably, if they’ve already started searching.’

‘Her name and address?’ Erskine’s attention wandered, his interest in Simon’s story waning, more important problems on his mind.

‘Rowan something or other. Frederick may know it, I’ll give you his number. She was supposed to drive him back to Mayerton, to his cottage near Oxford, but that’s another peculiar thing. She didn’t take my car. Frederick parked it and left the keys at the boat company’s office with a boy called Wayne Denny and I’m told the old boy went off in this girl’s scruffy van. Why should he do that? She said nothing about preferring to drive her own vehicle and Frederick’s telephone has been engaged all afternoon so I can’t check up to see what’s happening.’

Erskine’s attention wavered like a man with an appointment elsewhere but he politely closed his notebook on the fragmentary facts Simon had been able to supply and promised to have a word with the river police and leave a message at hotel reception next day.

Simon ordered another round and said, ‘Frederick’s retired now. Nice old buffer but a real pushover when it comes to a pretty face. He took up painting in his old age and this girl’s just the sort to bowl him over. I wouldn’t like to think she’s taking advantage of the old boy.’

‘Having the time of his life, no doubt.’ Erskine rose, his drink untouched. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Simon. Duty calls.’

They formally shook hands again and parted with assurances on both sides that they would not lose touch.

Simon sat alone after Erskine had left, finishing his wine, mulling over the perplexing permutations of the whereabouts of the missing girl, not to mention his uncle. Did she jump or was she pushed? The old chestnut struck a sour note. Had she charmed Frederick into some new escapade? Where were they?

Only one thing was certain. A woman with an androgynous name, wearing men’s clothing, had disappeared as dramatically as she had entered Simon Allington’s ordered existence.

And he didn’t like it one little bit.

CHAPTER 6

Bowling along the M40, Rowan led a rowdy sing-song. Bar ballads, rousing hymns of the Salvation Army sort, a smattering of Victorian music hall songs and Cole Porter, of all of which by some time-warp she seemed to know most of the verses. She said her stepfather had taught her.

‘My first stepfather, that is. Before Mumsy discovered younger men. He collected old records. We used to play them on a wind-up gramophone in the garden. If you didn’t keep cranking the handle the songs got slower and sadder and even Jessie Mathews developed a growl.’

Frederick was enchanted. He hadn’t had so much fun in years. Aran started off well but by the time they had turned off at Junction 7, sitting on rolled-up dust sheets in the back of the van had made its mark. He grew silent, wondering if this was really such a good idea. By the time they pulled into Mayerton even Frederick’s spirits had dampened, home truths such as clean sheets and milk for the morning raising admonitory fingers. Luckily it was still daylight.

Rowan, however, seemed unquenchable, her delight in the village green set about with its half-dozen dwellings and a thatched pub spilling over in praises the British Tourist Board paid their advertising agency to invent. She insisted on driving round the village, getting her bearings—one of the compulsions evolved from a lifetime in strange places. She asked Frederick how Mayerton had remained so compact, complete in itself as if a thick line had been drawn round the houses in 1914 and nothing ever added.

It was a chocolate-box place, its single street winding like a snail’s shell, turning inwards to the Norman church. Frederick explained.

‘Until the early ’fifties the village was almost entirely owned by the Edens, surrounded by the Eden Court fields and pastures, dominated by a single family. Inheritance tax and a diminution of the vigour of the Eden bloodline resulted in the sale of the estate, the remnants of a dynasty now being represented by the two remaining Misses Eden.’

Rowan was intrigued. ‘What happened to them?’

‘Cressy and Blanche? Still living in the village, of course. At the Lodge opposite my cottage across the Green. They must be seventyish now. Blanche, the younger one, is a bit peculiar. She doesn’t get out and about much but Cressida still runs Mayerton. She’s a JP, churchwarden, school governor: the lot!’ he chortled. ‘To be fair, though, Cressida keeps the wheels turning. If it hadn’t been for the Edens, the developers would have mopped up Mayerton long ago. The local planning officer goes in fear and trembling of Cressida Eden.’

At Frederick’s direction the van stopped on the Green and he stiffly climbed out. Rowan joined him, standing at the edge of the circle of houses, lost in contemplation, for once her energy stalled. Aran shouted from the van, feeling like a hostage, chained by the blasted plaster cast. Rowan, jerked back to reality, waved Frederick ahead to open up and laughingly set about releasing their prisoner.

In fact, it was no laughing matter. Aran complained loud and long, a tirade falling on deaf ears, Rowan seemingly immune to the vituperation which had reduced even the male nurses at the Darwin to despair.

Frederick quickly recovered, the comfort of his own things about him renewing the joy of having friends to stay. A bachelor life was all very well but lonely, sometimes a little lonely.

Melrose Cottage was very old, thatched and with low beams—dark as pickled walnuts—spanning the sitting-room, drawing the eye to an inglenook in which the fire stood ready laid with logs and screws of paper. He applied a match, the magical transformation of flames leaping in the hearth enlivening the walls with dancing shadows, greeting the grotesque figure of Aran in his kilt, his arm looped round Rowan’s shoulder, framed in the doorway like a Victorian oleograph of a wounded Highlander home from the wars. In the confined space, the combined struggles of Rowan and Frederick to manœuvre him on to the sofa dislodged the phone. It slipped off the hook. Aran was the only one to notice and kept mum. Telephones as far as he was concerned only brought bad news.

Rowan unloaded the van, parked it at the back and, closing the door on the dusk, found herself enfolded in the overblown roses of Frederick’s enormous couch, toasting her toes. She patted his arm, saying, ‘Frederick, this is just marvellous. How long have you lived here?’

‘Oh, years on and off. Only permanently since I retired. Before that it was my weekend place, an escape from the Ministry.’

‘A bolthole like this only an hour or so from London. You clever old sod.’ Aran was impressed, his glimpse of the tiny hamlet a reminder of so much he had forgotten jetting between London and Rome, Rome and Venice, Florence and New York. Were there really hideaways like this huddled all over England, just waiting for the B roads to be swept aside like coy draperies?

‘How about some tea?’

Frederick, all consternation, offered to dash over to Ron’s. ‘The village sub-post-office,’ he explained. ‘It stays open till seven. You can get anything at Ron’s—videos, weedkiller, stamps, not to mention the off licence, of course.’

‘You mean you can buy booze at the post office and when that shuts the pub opens?’ Aran laughed. ‘O, country life, where is thy sting?’

Rowan pushed Frederick ahead and did her habitual stock-take of the kitchen. Recalling the cache discovered in Aran’s fridge, she patted the roll of banknotes in her pocket, wondering if there would be a right moment to confess. She shrugged. It would have to be the right moment: Aran’s temper was likely to evaporate into a red mist at the merest spark the way he was feeling after the bumpy ride from London.

‘I’ll go to the shop,’ she offered. ‘You’ll need some bread, milk and things for breakfast.’ Waving aside Frederick’s proffered notes she said, ‘We’ll use Simon’s petrol money.’

She left the two men secretly mulling over the strange enchantment the girl seemed to weave about her: an indefinable charm, unforced and unconsidered. ‘A honeypot,’ Aran concluded. ‘I’ve never come across one of those before!’ Delighted to have put his finger on it, he relaxed in the sepia warmth of Frederick’s cottage.

They had tea and muffins by the fire. Rowan had also prised some home-cured ham from Ron’s private supply he kept under the counter for his special customers, and some brown rolls which she warmed in the Aga and spread with butter flavoured with a hint of mustard.

They quizzed her about her various jobs and managed to extract a few nuggets. Rowan admitted to a peripatetic childhood, trailing her mother through Europe and America, educated in fits and starts. ‘Though finally, when the size of her cuckoo of a daughter became a handicap, my beautiful parent sensibly dumped me in a Swiss school where I learned to cook.’ After that, mother and daughter had crossed paths rarely, it seemed. Rowan had taken jobs from time to time. ‘Mostly Cordon Bleu gigs, directors’ lunches and such,’ she admitted, ‘but sometimes with a family, skiing chalets, that sort of thing …’

She went off to add water to the pot and Frederick lit his pipe.

Aran waved a packet of cigarettes, ‘You don’t mind?’

‘With all this woodsmoke,’ Frederick laughed, ‘the walls are addicted to fug.’

‘What a relief.’ Aran’s confinement in the Darwin had taken its toll and he enthusiastically puffed at the first cigarette in days. ‘Tell me more about the Edens,’ he prompted.

‘A paternalistic lot. Not landed gentry,’ Frederick assured him, ‘but rich enough to be dictatorial. Cressy has made bitter enemies in this village because of her attitude. George Camelford for a start.’

‘Who’s he?’ Rowan refilled the cups and added a log to the fire.

‘He bought Eden Court. You may have heard of him: Aden, a big noise in the transport industry, container lorries, you know. See them all over Europe. A camel logo. Quite eyecatching.’

‘Go on,’ Aran persisted. ‘Don’t tell me there’s a dark side to this idyllic spot: a blood feud with the new robber baron turning the peasants out in the snow.’

Frederick looked puzzled, never entirely at ease with Aran’s jokes.

‘Well, George Camelford’s been here a number of years, bought the place from some jack-in-the-box who tried to run it on a shoestring when Cressy and Blanche had to sell up. Uses Eden Court as his country seat, one might say. Good chap, absolutely no side to him, no side at all. Often in the Boar’s Head at weekends. Done a lot for this village one way and another.’

‘Talking of the Boar’s Head, how about a round or two after supper?’

‘Supper!’ Rowan echoed incredulously.

‘Well, a sandwich then,’ Aran conceded. ‘I need to keep my strength up.’

‘Sounds an excellent idea to me,’ Frederick agreed. ‘You’ll enjoy the pub—we could get a snack there. They do a good plate of sausage and mash.’

Rowan gaped. ‘After that wonderful lunch? Sacrilege! By the way, where’s the doings, Frederick? I need to freshen up.’ She stepped back, catching her head a glancing blow on the low beam of the inglenook. ‘Whoops! I’d forgotten that.’ She grinned, leaning against the wall, rubbing her head.

Frederick beckoned her into the passage and proudly gave a mini-tour. All the rooms seemed to connect: the front door went straight into the sitting-room and, opening a latched door, he led the way up a precipitous and curving stairway to the double bedroom above. It had its own bathroom, presumably fashioned from the communicating second bedroom. He went back downstairs. Rowan glanced round Frederick’s bedroom, cosy and inviting, warmed by the flue from the fireside below. Upstairs the windows were small, fringed by the overhanging thatch and, bending to look outside, Rowan could still make out the blurred outlines of flowers in a walled garden.

Downstairs Frederick explained to her that the kitchen had been the original smithy and out of this he had also contrived a small guest room with its own modern French hip bath in the bathroom. Rowan chortled over the shot-off tub, deep and relaxing, the first she had seen apart from Parisian hotel rooms.

‘It was the only sort of bath to fit in this small space,’ Frederick explained, ‘and because the cottage is listed I couldn’t extend.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ Rowan loved Melrose Cottage. Thick walls which had absorbed centuries of rain and sunshine stood squarely on the Green, its dignity underlying the importance of the village blacksmith. Rowan ruefully compared the slick stylishness of Aran’s London flat and wondered how he would endure convalescence in this rural backwater. He had discovered the TV and the doom-laden toll of the nine o’clock news announced itself in the next room.

Unself-consciously she checked the contents of Frederick’s larder and faced him with a wicked eye. ‘Well, Freddie dear, you’re not going to starve, either of you. Shall we go over to the pub for a quick noggin before I get the train?’

‘The train?’

He followed her back into the sitting-room. Aran looked up from the screen.

‘Yes, of course. The train. If you ring for a taxi I can pick up something from Oxford at a pinch. It’s been a long day but all good things come to an end.’

‘I’ll check the timetable.’ The old man hurried out of the room. Aran, reclining on the huge sofa, was absorbed in the news, his kilt spread about him.

Perched on the arm of the sofa, Rowan became caught up in a news flash of a rabies scare at a kennels near Dover. She tensed, stung by the dire warning of the man from the veterinary association. Frederick stepped in front of the set, unaware of her intense concentration and launched into a welter of train times and connections.

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