Betrayal (4 page)

‘How are things with you?’ I asked automatically.

‘Me?’ he said in a tone of self-mockery. I noticed that his hair, once so dark, was greying rapidly at the temples and that his cheeks were criss-crossed with deepening lines, though these signs of age did little to detract from his patrician looks, which women found impressive enough to remark on. Like me, he seemed to have gone against the trend and kept his waistline. Unlike me, he had lost none of his hair. ‘Oh, I survive,’ he said with irony.

‘The old loves playing up?’ South Devon was retirement country, with a population that David had once described as ninety and skyrocketing.

‘They get ill and fed up,’ he said heavily. ‘They want magic potions.’

Watching him tidy his desk it occurred to me that he, too, was a tired man, and that he was tired because he didn’t enjoy his work. With his sharp brain and wide skills, he would have made a good consultant, but though he’d completed two years as a senior houseman he had failed the big surgical exams and never given them another shot. This had caused my father much grief, not because of the failure itself, but because David hadn’t had the backbone to persevere. For my father, lack of effort was almost the greatest sin of all, and doubly so when you were blessed with inherited money. He believed that financial security gave you a duty not to depend on it, that it was almost immoral to rely on the sweat and tears of previous generations. It seemed to Pa that David had succumbed to the easy option, and he never quite got over it.

I looked nervously at my watch.

David stood up. ‘I’ll fetch Mary.’

But he made no move towards the door. Instead he glanced back at me and said in his cool professional voice, ‘You heard about Sylvie Mathieson?’

‘I did, yes. Awful.’

‘She was stabbed apparently.’

‘God,’ I breathed.

‘Dumped in the river.’

‘They have no idea who—?’

‘No.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted more details, but I couldn’t stop myself asking, ‘Where did they find her?’

‘On the first bend there, near the Anchor Stone. The body was caught against a rock. Dead less than a day, they think. Wrapped in plastic, tied up with rope.’

‘God.’

David picked up a pen and examined the nib, then put it down again as if it had been guilty of distracting him. When he spoke again his tone was hedged with reservations, as though he were still debating the wisdom of mentioning the subject. ‘She was all over the place, you know.’

I stared at him, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, the full bit,’ he said airily. ‘Lovers. Drugs.’

My stomach tightened. I felt an unreasonable anger. ‘How do you know?’

‘Oh . . .’ His shrug implied contacts in the right places. ‘One hears.’

I wanted to ask him why he was so quick to believe such rumours, but I pushed myself to my feet instead so that he couldn’t read my face. ‘She was always a free spirit,’ I proclaimed. ‘She always went her own way.’

I didn’t have to look at him to know he was wearing a sceptical expression.

‘Thought you’d better know, that’s all.’

I turned. ‘Me? Why?’

‘Well, you were in love with her once, weren’t you?’ He spoke in the curt voice he used to distance himself from anything that bordered on the emotional.

‘Yes . . .’ Why had I thought he meant anything else? ‘Yes, I was. Yes.’ And saying it, I had a fleeting memory of those distant feelings, so intense and innocent and full of hope. ‘A long time ago.’

‘Look—’ David began irritably.But he broke off at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

Mary came in and her face lit up. ‘Hugh!’ she sang.

I went to kiss her cheek but, with the reproving tut of a mother hen, she pulled me into a generous hug. Standing back to inspect me, she cried, ‘How
are
you?’

‘I’m fine.’

She shook her head and rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. ‘I don’t know . . . Is it worth it? Just look at you!’

‘Don’t
you
start,’ I protested. ‘David’s bad enough, giving me pills.’

‘It’s not pills you want, it’s a rest! Isn’t it, darling?’ she flung at David. Turning back to me. ‘You’ll stay for lunch at least?’

‘I’ve got to leave at two.’

‘Hopeless!’ she declared. ‘Hopeless!’ And her eyes flashed with their habitual amusement.

I said, ‘I can always come back again if we don’t get through it—’

‘I meant, you have to eat! I’ll go and fetch something now.’ She threw a questioning look at David. ‘Shall I?’

‘Well, perhaps we can just get started . . .’

‘Fine!’ she said immediately. ‘In a minute then!’ She perched on the chair David had pulled up for her and fixed me with a bright stare. I had always liked Mary. S he was a determined extrovert who believed that the secret of life was to laugh at whatever came your way. If her high spirits were sometimes a little relentless they hid a compassionate and generous personality, quick to leap to the aid of those in trouble. A solicitor who had given up her practice on marrying David, she did good works on the boards of hospices and children’s homes, and was a prison visitor at Dartmoor.

She had a sturdy body with an angular face, ruddy cheeks, and eyebrows that seemed too dark and bold for her colouring, and her appearance wasn’t enhanced by her practical tweed skirt, shapeless jumper and cropped hair. But if her looks were plain, they were thoroughly redeemed by her unwavering good nature.

She could not have been more different from Howard, either in appearance or personality, and sometimes I had to remind myself that they were brother and sister. Mary was so much a part of our family, both in spirit and fact, that I tended to forget she might sometimes have divided loyalties. When our two families had jointly and harmoniously controlled HartWell this had not been an issue. But if Mary had felt torn over the acrimonious falling out between Howard and me, she had been very discreet about it.

‘We’ve looked through this buyout proposal thing,’ David began, leaning back in his chair and pulling his spectacles off his nose in a practised gesture. ‘I can’t say we’re a hundred per cent clear on
everything
. . .’

So I took them through it, item by item. The investment opportunity, the risks, the potential for significant capital gains. I told them what the new team had already achieved, what was left to get right. When I talked about the future, how we believed we could turn the company round in a few months, some of my old fire returned, I began to sound evangelical again.

Mary listened with partial attention, her sharp eyes on mine, a smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. When I had finished she looked meaningfully at David, and I guessed she was prompting him to ask some pre-arranged question.

‘Yes . . .’ murmured David, catching her eye. ‘Suppose we put in, say, fifty thousand now, could we put in more later?’

I tried not to show my disappointment. Only last week David had been talking about a minimum of a hundred and fifty thousand. ‘It would be difficult,’ I said carefully. ‘You see, there’s only going to be so much equity and once the buyout’s gone through, that’s it, there won’t be any more for sale.’ I glanced from one to the other and wondered if they had actually decided on this reduced figure but didn’t like to tell me.

Mary recognised my anxiety and gave me a sympathetic little grin.

David roused himself to murmur, ‘After the last two years, the losses . . .’

‘I know. And that’s why I want you to come in with us, David. To make good your losses. The potential is there, we believe that very strongly.’

Engrossed in some inner deliberations, David narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingertips together.

Mary tried to catch his attention again but, failing, shrugged at me and said in a theatrical whisper, ‘We wanted to ask – what about income? What income could we expect?’

‘There would be no dividends until we got into profit.’

David picked up on that. ‘And that could be years?’

‘Hopefully a lot less.’

‘
Hopefully
,’ he repeated with a censorious look, as though he had succeeded in catching me out.

I started on our strategy then, how we intended to go out and sell ourselves hard on the Hartford name and quality. But catching the expression of boredom on David’s face, an expression I knew so well – lids hooded, his dark winged eyebrows lifted outwards in a satanic arch – I cut it short.

‘Listen—’ I said forcefully, ‘I’m putting everything I have into this. I wouldn’t be doing it unless I believed
absolutely
that we could pull it off.’

Mary exclaimed in mock horror, ‘Everything?’

‘Certainly all the cash I have. And’ – I gave a weak chuckle – ‘quite a lot I don’t. I’m borrowing as much as I can.’ And far more than was safe or wise, though I didn’t say that.

I tried not to think of how much I stood to lose if the buyout failed, and how much I had at risk if it succeeded. I tried to forget how very overextended I already was. Ginny and I had a lifestyle that didn’t come cheap. We had second homes in Provence and Wiltshire, we had staff and cars, until last year we had bought good modern pictures, and we entertained on what could only be described as a grand scale. Even allowing for all this, the outpouring of cash was so relentless that I could never quite grasp where it went. Since last year when the HartWell dividends had plummeted and I had taken a voluntary reduction in salary, w e had tried to cut back. Ginny had been in charge of the economies, but for some reason I could never understand her cuts seemed to make little impact on our bank balance, and whenever I thought of the future I felt an upsurge of panic.

Mary screwed up her face in an extravagant imitation of alarm. ‘I hope you’re not expecting us to do the same!’

‘Of course not. I wouldn’t want you to. You must only invest what you can afford.’

David drawled, ‘And if the company goes down the plughole?’

‘It won’t.’

‘But if it does?’ he insisted with a tinge of impatience.

‘Then the banks would get first call.’

‘And we’d get—?’

‘Nothing.’

He grimaced, ‘
Exactly!
’

I was aware of Mary watching me closely again. She gave a sudden chuckle. ‘A bit of a gamble then!’ She made it sound like a flutter on the horses.

David sat forward. ‘We’ll need time to think about it.’

‘Of course.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘Though it would help enormously if you could give me some idea of how long you’ll need.’

David pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know—’ He shot a look at Mary. ‘The weekend? Say, Tuesday?’

She shrugged her agreement.

‘Tuesday then.’

It could have been worse. Suppressing the urge to press my case further, I mustered a grin.

In the short silence that followed, Mary jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll go and do that lunch!’

‘I’m not sure I’ve got time, Mary.’

She wagged her finger at me. ‘It’s only a sandwich. Won’t take a moment.’ There was something brittle, almost peremptory, in her tone. She paused at the door. ‘Have you told Hugh about Dittisham, David?’

‘Ah . . . no.’

Mary caught my eye and, reverting to her more familiar role, made a face of jokey forbearance as she disappeared into the hall.

‘The thing is, we might have a buyer,’ David told me when she had gone. ‘Someone who wants it pretty quick. We heard this morning. Prepared to pay the asking price.’

I felt a pinch of loss. Dittisham had been the home of our childhood, the place in which I had spent many untroubled years, the house in which our parents had lived all their married lives. Until our mother’s death twenty years ago, it had stood at the very core of the family. Yet while the child in me hated to think of other people living there, the realist knew that, with Pa dead too, it had to go.

‘When do these people want it?’ I asked.

‘In a month.’

‘You’ll let me know, will you? I’ll need to clear some stuff out.’

‘You can’t clear it out now?’

‘No chance.’ Reminded as always of the time, I reached for my briefcase and jumped to my feet.

‘Hugh—’

There was something about his tone, a warning note, which made me pause. He came round the desk and, half sitting on it, folded his arms. ‘The thing is . . .’ he said with a sigh of annoyance, ‘the police have been asking about Sylvie.’

A small pull in my chest somewhere. ‘Asking?’

‘They came to see me yesterday.’

‘You? Why you?’

David frowned as if I were being particularly dense. ‘Because she was my patient.’

I must have let some of the surprise show in my face because he said, ‘Didn’t you realise?’

I gave a shrug. ‘No . . . Well, I simply never thought about it. You didn’t say . . .’

‘Anyway, the point is’ – and he hesitated as if he would rather have avoided the whole subject – ‘they seem to think that Sylvie was on the boat a few weeks ago.’

I didn’t need to ask which boat he meant. During the summer David and I had been keeping an eye on Pa’s cruiser
Ellie Miller
while we decided what to do with her.

I made a show of puzzlement. I asked evenly, ‘Why do they think that?’

‘They didn’t say. Listen, it’s none of my business, but . . . Well, be careful of those cretins, won’t you?’

‘Careful?’ But we both knew what he meant.

‘If Sylvie was seen on the boat with you, they might make too much out of it. Assume you were, you know –’ he flapped an impatient hand – ‘together.’

‘Did they say that?’ I blurted.

‘No,
no
. But you know how their minds work. One-track. In
my
experience, anyway.’

I had been so desperate to talk to someone about Sylvie for such a long time that I almost told him then. I wanted to explain the extraordinary hold she had always exercised over my imagination, and in telling him perhaps to explain it better to myself. I think I wanted to hear him say that he understood, that it could have been the same for him. Yet something held me back: an instinct for secrecy, a fear of being misunderstood, a doubt as to how he would receive such confidences. David had never been one for letting his feelings get the better of him; as far as I knew he had never lost his head over anything, far less a woman.