Dead in the Water (7 page)

‘Sadly not – my father was Czech, not Polish.’ Marcus’s lips tightened, but he went on calmly enough, ‘Actually, they came here when I was away – put a card through the letter-box and asked in the bakery if the owner was around. They haven’t appeared again – you were obviously a better bet. At least, I suppose it was the same men. The shop girl said it was an older guy who did the talking—’

‘That’s him! Stefan,’ Diane interrupted. ‘Quite attractive, in a rough sort of way.’

‘That would suit you anyway – a bit of rough trade,’ Gavin said coarsely. ‘But seriously, Marcus, should we be talking in whispers? This old heap looks to me as if it could crumble on top of us any moment, if we raised our voices or laughed too loud. But maybe that’s just one of the natural hazards in a toff’s life?’

The chip on his shoulder was becoming uncomfortably obvious. His attempt at provocation didn’t succeed but the atmosphere was poisonous and Jaki, with an actor’s training in sensitivity to emotions, felt uneasily that Gavin’s feelings about Marcus came close to hatred.

At last the Hodges left, offering invitations to Miramar to the accompaniment of three sets of non-committal noises.

When they were safely out of the room, Sylvia, with a naughtily conspiratorial look, said, ‘Oh dear!’ and for the first time Jaki felt the full force of her charm.

‘Don’t you
want
to see how the wardrobes light up as you open the door?’ she asked, wide-eyed, and the two women were laughing as Marcus, looking frazzled, came back from seeing them out.

‘Are you sure they’ve gone?’ Sylvia asked. ‘I’m amazed you don’t have stab-marks all over from the looks he was giving you.’

‘I can’t think why. He’d have drowned if I hadn’t pulled the silly bugger out. He should be grateful.’

‘Stupid boy!’ Sylvia scolded him. ‘You never forgive someone for playing hero, especially if it made you look foolish at the same time. And Diane didn’t help, suggesting you were an old flame.’

‘Never!’ Marcus actually shuddered, and as both women laughed, went on, ‘I claim I always had good taste.’

Discussing the departed guests provided good entertainment, but when that petered out there was still a whole evening yawning ahead. Jaki was resigned to staying in, but if it was Scrabble again, like last night – with much laughter and cheating from Sylvia – she’d have a headache and go to bed.

It was worse.

‘Now, Sylvia,’ Marcus said, ‘guess what I’ve got. I found a DVD of
For Ever
– I know Jaki hasn’t seen it, so that’s our entertainment sorted out.’

Sylvia made token protests, but without being ruder than she cared to be, Jaki couldn’t show anything other than enthusiasm.

‘That’s so sweet of you,’ Sylvia purred. ‘But if you’re
too
bored, you absolutely must say.’

‘She won’t be.’ Marcus spoke for Jaki. ‘Now, I’ll just bring supper through. No, it’s all right, Jaki, I’m totally organized. I only have to take it out of the oven and everything else is on a tray.’

When he brought it, it was fish pie. With mussels. Jaki hated mussels.

Marcus finished stacking the dishwasher and collected up the food packaging to go in the bin. This weekend might be the stupidest idea he had ever had.

Jaki and Sylvia, for a start, were a lethal mix: Sylvia came over all feline and Jaki went silent. It was a pity, because Jaki was warm and funny on her own territory, with a young, appealing freshness. Perhaps it was that which had so attracted him: he was probably reaching a midlife crisis.

He still thought of himself as not quite ready to settle to serious maturity. But the ‘
You make me feel so young
’ effect promised by Sylvia’s old mate Frank hadn’t actually worked. This weekend was spelling that out in capital letters.

The relationship wouldn’t last, probably not past this week. They were still good in bed, but he’d found himself wishing she wasn’t sharing his room. It had a deep bay window giving views of the sea in both directions and he liked the curtains open, going to sleep in moonlight or starlight and half-waking with the dawn. Jaki wanted the curtains shut, and he felt claustrophobic; she wasn’t tidy by nature either.

Tonight after the film – which Marcus had to admit had dated, rather – she’d pled a headache and gone to bed early. He’d kissed her goodnight, saying he’d sleep in the spare room, and she hadn’t demurred.

He’d been thoughtless, bringing her here. It wasn’t her sort of place, and it was all too clear what Sylvia thought.

And somehow, with Sylvia here, the house felt full of ghosts. Perhaps she had summoned up his father’s presence in the conservatory, so that Marcus felt awkward about sitting in the wicker chair where Laddie had always sat, immaculate in well-cut trousers and a hand-made shirt with the cravat he affected at its open neck, talking languidly in his not-quite-perfect English. Sometimes Marcus could almost smell the lethal little black cheroots he always smoked. Here in the kitchen where the dogs’ beds still lay – he’d never got round to throwing them out – he almost expected to hear his mother’s voice, with its cut-crystal, upper-class vowels, calling them for a walk.

How had Flora felt about her husband’s mistress? Had they ever discussed the situation? Marcus doubted that; his mother preferred to ignore inconvenient facts if at all possible. Though Marcus had never had an intimate conversation with his mother, he believed she had loved her husband deeply, and Tulach House, unchanged since his death, spoke of the way she treasured his memory. Perhaps she had accepted deliberate ignorance as the price for Laddie staying. Was the unspoken bargain tolerance for his mistress if Flora was spared humiliation among her friends?

If so, bringing Sylvia here in his wife’s absence was reneging on the deal. Laddie was an intensely charismatic and lovable man, but he was in many ways a total bastard, and it would be small wonder if Flora’s gawky, awkward shade were restless tonight.

Marcus had hero-worshipped his father, but it wasn’t easy being his son. What could you ever do to match being one of the Few who had done so much? To be fair, Laddie had never demanded that he achieve; he adored Marcus and simply assumed he would, which was almost worse. Any small triumph was inflated, any failure brushed aside and instantly forgotten. Such unquestioning admiration should have made his son supremely confident, but somehow it made him more aware of his own inadequacies and ineffectiveness. Even tonight, he had experienced the bizarre feeling of guilt he’d always suffered from, when he didn’t take Gavin Hodge on instead of submitting to being bullied.

Anyway, Laddie had lived to see his son a successful actor, and Marcus still saw that success as a filial duty. Like his duty to Laddie’s beautiful house, and to his beautiful mistress too.

Marcus had been distressed lately to see how frail and sad Sylvia was becoming: her fame forgotten, her activities restricted and her old friends dying or becoming frail themselves. This weekend had seen her confidence restored, her personality sparkling once more. His intentions had been good, but in proverbial style it looked as if they were paving the way to a week of absolute hell.

Jaki hadn’t gone to bed. It was only half past ten, for God’s sake, and if she took a blanket and wrapped it round her the cold was bearable. And the view from the window was amazing, even now it was dark. There were lots of stars and every so often she could see the flash of light from the lighthouse, making the darkness blacker than ever after it passed.

She was grateful Marcus had suggested sleeping in the spare room. It felt all wrong to come to bed to make love when they’d hardly spoken together all day, with Sylvia dominating every conversation.

There seemed to be a power struggle going on, one that she was losing. Sylvia and Marcus had a funny relationship; he’d told Jaki she’d been his father’s mistress, very matter-of-factly – but surely it was kind of weird to bring her here to his mother’s home?

Sure, Jaki had modern attitudes and all that, but she felt a gut distaste for this sort of decadence. Sylvia was almost flirting with Marcus – sort of like he was his father over again, in a kind of jokey, possessive way that cut Jaki out.

This was going to be one tough week, and it looked like they’d be history by the end of it. Fun while it lasted, but now it was only about the best way to get from here to there.

They wouldn’t quarrel. They still liked each other, and Marcus was famously courteous. And perhaps she’d be so great in this series she’d fix her place on her own merits – and even if she didn’t, quite, it had been good experience.

Jaki yawned, then shivered. The wind was rising: she could hear it rattling the windows and whistling through the gaps, penetrating even her woolly swathes. She wasn’t going to decide anything tonight; she’d sleep on it, and see how things looked in the morning. She got up to close the curtains.

There were still lights on downstairs, throwing patches of gold on to the overgrown garden below. It was a spooky sort of place even in daylight, and tonight the waving branches of trees and shrubs cast dancing shadows. There were still shadows too, cast by the angle of the house, but there was another shadow, one Jaki couldn’t quite work out. She stared down at it, frowning.

It was still too. You could almost imagine it was a man there in among the trees and bushes of the shrubbery, standing motionless, watching. It gave her a creepy feeling.

Don’t be daft, she told herself. Watching what? And what on earth would anyone be doing away out here in the middle of the night, apart from freezing to death? The atmosphere in this house was getting to her, that was all.

It still hadn’t moved. It was a shrub, of course it was. She’d only make a fool of herself if she went downstairs and wittered to Marcus about men lurking in the shrubbery. She drew the curtains firmly and got into bed.

In the centre of Kirkluce, it was a normal Saturday night. The pubs and takeaways were doing good business; it was a bit noisy, with groups of young people milling about and a few staggering a bit, but when the police patrol car drove through on one of its usual rounds there was nothing to demand attention.

The men who emerged from the Horseshoe Tavern weren’t noisy. In almost total silence they split left and right, into two groups of perhaps ten or twelve, locals and Polish incomers, then crossed the road separately, heading for the square opposite. As they confronted one another at the foot of the War Memorial scuffles broke out, punches were thrown and the shouting started.

The skinny young man who was moving round the edge of the fray, eyes narrowed, spotted his quarry at last. Slipping through, quick as an eel, he confronted the tall, dark young Pole. He was holding a knife in one hand, the other extended for balance.

‘Here, you and me – we’ve stuff to settle. Remember?’

The Pole’s reaction was immediate. As he turned, the streetlamp glinted on the blade which had appeared in his own hand. Eyes locked, the two men performed their almost balletic movements, circling each other, feinting, gaining ground, retreating.

But the Pole was gradually, inexorably, being driven back. The other man’s teeth were bared in a grin of savage delight and the lightning slashes of his knife, first to one side then the other, were becoming more difficult to dodge.

At last, the Pole found himself with his back to the plinth of the War Memorial, and with no room to retreat. The blade flickering in front of his eyes seemed almost to be mesmerizing him. His own thrusts had become wild and there were beads of sweat appearing on his face.

In a movement as swift and deadly as a snake striking, the other’s blade came in under his guard and ripped up his right arm from wrist to elbow.

With a cry of pain the Pole dropped his knife. His assailant gave an animal snarl of satisfaction, then menacingly closed in. He raised his knife again—

‘Polis! Polis!’ The warning cry froze his hand. The patrol car was coming back along the High Street and seeing the gathering of men, turned into the square.

A moment later, the square was empty.

Karolina Cisek looked at the clock, frowning. It was almost eleven, and Rafael with his early start was usually in bed at half past ten. He had gone to the pub in disgust when she told him she must spend the evening preparing the Flemings’ evening meals for the days when she would be working in the film canteen.

It was quarter past eleven when she heard their elderly Honda returning, and Rafael came in. He was a big, solidly built man, square-jawed and brown-haired.

‘You are very late.’ Karolina greeted him in the Polish they always used at home, trying not to sound accusing, but knowing she had failed.

‘I expect you managed to fill in the time.’ Rafael had the sort of excited aggression about him she’d seen in people on the way to being drunk, but he wasn’t a drinking man and he was entirely sober.

‘Cup of tea?’ she said, trying to defuse the situation. ‘I finished what I needed to do and I made some apple cake.’

‘Fine.’ He sat down by the dying fire, looking into it as his wife switched on the kettle. He didn’t seem inclined to talk.

‘Was the pub busy tonight?’ she asked.

‘Yes. A lot of us gathered there – and there were some strangers.’

‘Strangers?’ Karolina frowned. ‘What do you mean?’