Gifted and Talented (32 page)

Farthingale shook his head indulgently. ‘Most amusing young gentleman.’ His tone was fond. ‘Quite a chip off the old block.’

‘Or a block off the old chip. The family made their fortune from frozen foods, Mr Farthingale, don’t forget,’ Scavenger reminded his colleague.

‘You’re right there, Mr Scavenger. Hence m’lord’s nickname, Chippy Crewell. Nothing to do with a sense of inferiority, of course.’

‘The opposite, indeed,’ Scavenger appreciatively agreed.

Isabel, with flying heels, left them to it.

The rain had now increased. It drummed on the road surface so hard it bounced back up again, and so Isabel got soaked twice by the same downpour.

‘Come on!’ she muttered under her breath, glaring into the hissing, steaming night as she willed a taxi to appear. ‘Come
on
!’

At the taxi rank, one battered-looking white car was parked in the bay, its driver settled comfortably behind a newspaper. He looked over his fat shoulder with irritation as Isabel threw herself into the back seat and panted, ‘Crewell Place.’

The driver tipped up his flabby, stubbly jaw. ‘You students, you’re always bloody moaning. Places can be crueller, believe me.’

‘I mean that’s where I want to go,’ Isabel said, exasperated. ‘It’s a house. Somewhere round here.’

‘Where?’

‘No idea,’ Isabel replied, with a spirit that surprised her. ‘I’m not the driver.’

The driver grumbled as he punched the details into his GPS and stuck his foot down hard on the accelerator. Isabel’s head slammed back against the plastic ribbing of the rear seat. For a second she saw stars.

The taxi was torture. It wasn’t just the initial startling velocity and the subsequent halting progress through what seemed an unprecedented number of traffic lights. There was also the oppressively soothing voice of the sat nav, the pounding yet slightly off-dial local radio and the sickening smell of air freshener, made worse by the overpowering heating. The taxi driver, who sat on a sort of mat made of small wooden balls, also kept up a litany of growling complaint. Most things seemed to irk his ire: the students, their bikes, the weather, the city council’s road repair programme. Isabel wondered if he would feel better if he didn’t have those hard-looking wooden ball things pressing into his back.

Her eyes stayed to the meter, whose green digital figures were increasing with merciless speed. It provoked the alarming recollection of giving twenty pounds to Farthingale and Scavenger. Was that really all she had had?

With deceptively calm movements, so as not to attract the attention of her chauffeur, Isabel reached for her bag and opened her purse. The note section was empty. Frenziedly dragging back the zip on the coin pocket, Isabel found two pounds forty nine pence in change. She grabbed her bag and rummaged wildly in it. Rather as she had suspected, no spare twenty-pound notes had slipped in there and become twisted in the debris.

She looked, panicked, out of the window. They were far out in the countryside now, miles from any cashpoint, in the unlikely event any such machine would oblige her. That Jasper had used up the last of her credit with the bank was the reason she was now forced to ask for cash from Mum. Her best bet was to say nothing until Crewell Place. Then she would face the music, or, more likely, the shouting.

But Isabel was a fundamentally honest person. She deplored deceit, and was ashamed of her recent obfuscation in money matters. Tonight’s act of bribery, necessary though it had been, seemed to her to mark a boundary. She must go no further. Her current predicament, in this car, was a sign. She must tread a more honest path from now on and not ask her mother for any more money. Jasper would just have to pay his way.

Having thus straightened out her own conscience, Isabel decided to place her faith in the taxi driver’s reaction to her penury. Perhaps, like many growly people, he had a heart of gold beneath. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she began. ‘But I actually haven’t got any money and—’

The violence of the brakes slamming almost knocked the breath out of her. This time she was flung against the furthermost extension of the seatbelt.

‘Get out,’ said the taxi driver, tipping back his head and glaring at Isabel in the rear-view mirror. ‘I know your sort. Get out. Now.’

Isabel was incredulous. ‘You don’t understand—’ she began.

‘I understand all right,’ he cut in. ‘You don’t have any money. What else is there to understand? What you doing taking a cab for if you don’t have the cash?’

‘I didn’t realise,’ Isabel gibbered. ‘It was a mistake.’

This seemed to tip him over the edge for some reason. ‘Do me a favour!’ he roared. ‘They all say that! Get out! Now!’

Isabel got out, hurriedly. He was big and frightening and she obviously had no choice. But, after the heat of his car, the outside air round her legs was a freezing shock. ‘You can’t leave me here,’ she yelped disbelievingly from outside on the damp verge. It was a winter evening and, by now, very dark. Mist was gathering.

‘Try me,’ he responded, revving his engine and looking each way down the road. Beneath his shaggy brows, his small eyes glittered with grim satisfaction.

‘I’m going to be late,’ Isabel squeaked. ‘Really, really late.’ She had no idea how near or far she was from Crewell Place.

‘Better start walking then,’ the taxi driver replied nastily. He pointed up the road with a thick finger. ‘It’s that way.’

As there was clearly no point in arguing, Isabel ran off. There was no time to walk and the agitation she felt demanded some arduous physical outlet. She plunged down the road in the rain. From time to time, cars passed, tyres hissing in the wet. Soon her legs were protesting painfully and despite all she had absorbed as a teenager about not accepting lifts with strangers, let alone soliciting them, the idea of sticking out her thumb was growing within.

She would, she promised herself, flag down the next car that passed.

Of course, from that moment on, the road traffic dried up completely.

There was no choice but to pound on. Ghastly pictures and impressions started to form in the drizzly darkness. Amber’s face seemed to hang before her, as Isabel had last seen her. Helpless beneath the water, head lolling, mouth open, hair stirring the surface in a hopeless, ironic imitation of life. Isabel had never thought it possible to feel sorry for her, or see her as a victim. But now the waste, the pity of it all, squeezed her heart as much as the running was straining it.

‘
Drugs
,’
the paramedic had said
.

Someone had given Amber those drugs. Someone in this town, very possibly. The raging hate she felt for them gave Isabel fresh energy. Just wait until she told Jasper. He would be furious too – more so, if anything.

After what seemed like hours, she saw on her right hand side a pair of ivy-swathed gateposts topped with hideously contorted, sharp-beaked gargoyles. They would have looked bad enough in full sunshine, but looked positively terrifying in the dark, gleaming with rain. To Isabel, however, they were the most welcome of sights. Below them, a verdigris metal plaque announced this to be Crewell Place, and them, by extension, its guardian spirits. She was here.

‘Crewell Place,’ exclaimed Alastair.

‘Isn’t it just?’ groaned Olly, turning from his computer screen. Coming in to work on Saturday had been a shock to the system. He had had no choice, however; Alastair had demanded all hands on deck to locate the still-elusive Bullinger party.

So far, despite frequently ingenious effort, they had come up with nothing. It was now, presumably, just a matter of hours before the party began. And while an outwardly relaxed Alastair was clearly not giving up – everything, after all, depended on it for him – Olly had started to detect a certain nervousness, although the editor’s tone now was almost boisterous.

‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Alastair said, the relief in his voice evident. ‘Crewell Place is a house. It’s where the Bullinger party’s being held. I’ve just found out; mind you, it’s bloody cost me.’

‘What do you mean?’

Alastair looked at Olly, a hint of incredulity in the eyes behind the glasses. ‘They’re called contacts. We talked about them before, remember? You’ll find them quite useful. If you stay the course,’ he added darkly.

Olly’s insides shrank in terror. He could not afford to lose this job. He would not. ‘What contacts told you about Crewell Place?’ he asked.

Alastair gave him a cryptic half-smile. ‘A journalist never reveals his sources, remember?’

Olly reddened. His only real talent at the job, it seemed, was saying all the wrong things. Across the room, Anna-Lou caught his eye from behind her screen. She winked and immediately he felt better.

Alastair had not finished; however, he sounded friendlier now. ‘But, as you’re one of us, I can exclusively reveal that it’s the porter’s lodge at St Alwine’s.’

Olly was amazed. But was it such a surprise, really? Farty and Skinflint, as they were known in college, had been keen extortioners. He had once had to hand over five pounds for shackling his bike to the wrong railing. The correct railing, Skinflint had enlightened him, was the one next to the one he had used, a mere few inches to the right. So Farty and Skinflint had another sideline in selling information.

But that was not the conversation’s most significant revelation. ‘One of us,’ Alastair had said. Olly felt wildly proud, and determined to justify the editor’s faith in him. Now they knew the location, he and Anna-Lou could get to work.

He hurried to put on the waiter suit. ‘Hardly Fred Astaire,’ Alastair remarked, stroking his stubbly chin with one hand. ‘More Charlie Chaplin. While you, my dear,’ he added, turning to Anna-Lou, ‘look like something out of
Cabaret
.’

Anna-Lou, who had disappeared into Alastair’s cupboard to change, now emerged looking spectacular indeed. Her tall frame was shown to stunning advantage in the long black trousers, while the monochrome bow tie and white shirt were the perfect background to her fall of golden hair. Alastair was right, Olly felt. She did look as if she were going to high-kick down some illuminated staircase.

‘Shouldn’t you put your hair up?’ Olly queried.

Anna-Lou smiled and held up her hair in both hands. Hanging down the back was a small but definitely professional-looking camera. The shining tresses, replaced, hid it entirely.

Both Alastair and Anna-Lou, Olly saw, perfectly understood the job. They felt confident about it; were even looking forward to it. He, on the other hand, was full of a sudden, sickening, all-consuming fear. ‘What makes you think,’ he jabbered at Alastair, ‘that we’ll get past the doormen? Just looking like waiters might not be enough. We might get thrown out. Anna-Lou’s very obviously a girl, for one thing.’

Alastair did not reply immediately. He leant his close-cropped head on one hand and looked wearily at Olly. ‘You might get thrown out,’ he agreed. ‘And it might not be enough. There are no guarantees.’

Olly’s heart, already thumping, thumped louder. He felt nauseous with nerves.

‘But you have to make it work, that’s all,’ Alastair went on quietly. ‘Your own job depends on it. My job depends on it. And you want to get Jasper De Borchy, don’t you?’

The trilling nerves feeding Olly’s fear now seemed to burst into flames. A violent rage leapt within him, of an intensity that vaporised the apprehension he had felt. ‘Yes,’ he said, over his thumping heart.

‘And I don’t think it matters that Anna-Lou looks like a girl,’ he heard Alastair say over the thumping. ‘They go for that androgynous thing, those Bullinger types.’

An expression of disgust crossed Anna-Lou’s face. ‘Well, they won’t be “going for” me.’

They wouldn’t, either, Olly thought. Anna-Lou had fended off tigers and lions; the Bullinger Club would be child’s play.

As they prepared to leave, Alastair was frowning into his screen again. ‘Story coming through,’ he said. ‘Some girl collapsed in the bath in one of the colleges. Drugs, it looks like.’ He shook his head. ‘Again. Why can we never get these creeps?’ He rubbed his eyes and reached for the phone. ‘Better see what the guys at the station have to say about it.’

Olly and Anna-Lou left quietly. It was evident that their leader’s mind was on other things.

‘Oh, and by the way,’ Alastair shouted from behind them.

‘What?’ called back Anna-Lou from the chilly stairwell.

‘Good luck!’

It was raining outside; nonetheless, they flagged down a cab in minutes. Or, rather, his colleague did. Few taxi drivers, Olly reasoned, would have been able to resist the sight of six feet of gorgeous blonde at the roadside. Hopefully this luck would keep up.

As they rattled along to Crewell Place, Anna-Lou, unruffled as ever, was telling him of her adventures photographing tigers.

‘You see,’ she said earnestly, ‘they don’t mean it when they growl at you the first time. But if you don’t get out of the way then, you’ve had it.’

Normally, Olly supposed, he would have fallen in love with Anna-Lou. But it was unlikely to be reciprocated; her heart obviously belonged to faster, stronger, more exotic and exciting males than himself. And his own heart these days felt like a car that wouldn’t start, until, that was, he thought of Isabel. Then the lights went on, the heater whirred, everything roared into life.

He wondered where she was and what she was doing now.

Isabel was almost too tired to feel now, but turning the last bend in the Crewell Place driveway, she was conscious of a certain faint relief. Soon, any time now, she would be with Jasper.

Her battered senses took in only that the house seemed a shapeless lump in the darkness. Light was spilling down a wide flight of steps. Staggering up it, Isabel found herself in a lobby. Light from flaming torches licked the faces of bored-looking waiters holding trays of champagne. ‘No, thanks,’ she muttered, stumbling past.

She plunged into the crowd beyond the lobby. She registered vaguely that a lot of the men wore the same thing: pink coat, yellow waistcoat and yellow bow tie. But so what? She was not here to look at clothes.

‘Where’s Jasper?’ she bawled at the nearest person. ‘Jasper De Borchy! Where is he?’

The man she had chosen to interrogate was startlingly tall and thin. He had wispy, strawlike hair and a strangely squashed-looking face. As, now, he opened his mouth, it was to display teeth that bent inwards.

‘I say,’ he said, swaying like a reed in the wind. ‘You strike me as very good breeding stock.’

He was, Isabel saw, so drunk that only the fact he was in a crowd and being supported on each side by the people next to him prevented him falling. Her theory was proved as his neighbours now moved away and, after swaying back and forth on heels and toes, he headed face-first towards the parquet floor with the force of a felled redwood. ‘Timber!’ shouted someone behind Isabel. ‘Chippy’s down!’

As Chippy’s face made contact with the ground, Isabel understood why he looked the way he did. She also realised, from the name, that the prone form at her feet was the amusing young gentleman of whom the St Alwine’s porters had spoken so highly and whose family dominated the frozen food market.

She pushed on. The urge to get out was growing irresistible. She had not found Jasper and her object in doing so seemed less clear now . . . Perhaps he would not thank her for the intelligence about Amber; he might shoot the messenger; perhaps ignorance was bliss. She felt confused and very tired. Pressing insistently upon her thoughts was the question of what someone as charming as Jasper was doing at such an awful event. He had said that his family had always been Bullinger members. He must have to be here for some reason. He must hate it, she was sure.

Dredging up her last reserves of spirit, Isabel fought through the crowd towards the distant wall where she could see the top of a giant doorcase carved in marble the colour of liver pâté. From the centre of a pediment grinned one of the griffins she had seen on the gateposts. The aesthetics of it all, however, concerned Isabel less than the fact that it promised a way out.

She approached to find that a fat teenager leaping about to Status Quo was blocking her escape route. Isabel sidled past but then a great shove from the rear propelled her into the huge mahogany door with a velocity not unlike that with which Chippy Crewell had met the floor. The door gave way and she shot through.

Olly had never seen anywhere so creepy. The drive to Crewell Place was like a Hammer Horror: long and twisting, flanked by contorted, thick-trunked trees. At the end, the house loomed large and forbidding. Castellations jutted up from the roof like teeth. In the dark walls, long slashes of windows threw light into the rain.

As the taxi drove away, Olly fought the urge to run after it. Terror welled up within him again. There was no chance they would get away with it! They were miles from any help; what would the famously savage Bullinger Club do to them if they caught them?

‘Come on,’ Anna-Lou said, confidently. ‘That bastard De Borchy’s in there. Let’s go get him.’

Olly felt better instantly. They were here to expose De Borchy and his like. And even if they died in the attempt – which hopefully they wouldn’t – it was a noble cause. Nonetheless, he ascended the steps in Anna-Lou’s wake hoping no one would notice his trembling hands.

No one at the door noticed anything, however. As Anna-Lou sailed through as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the doormen stared, blank-faced, into the middle distance.

A strange place, was Olly’s immediate impression. There was something louche and licentious about it. The painted ceiling above them seemed to feature nothing but fat pink bottoms. Beyond was a great room in which two blazing chandeliers hung like vast illuminated breasts. Olly and Anna-Lou pushed on, into it.

It was boiling hot and the crowd was rough and noisy. Looking about him, Olly was struck by how strange many of them looked. No one looked normal. Some were unnaturally handsome, with smooth faces, full lips and long, blank eyes. Others, less fortunate, had features that were either exaggerated – noses for example – or non-existent (chins seemed few and far between). Hair was greased back and side-parted; spectacles were anachronistic and fogeyish.

The silly Bullinger uniform, all yellow and pink, made everyone look like a pear drop, Olly thought. Or, as Alastair said, a pantomime. The pink matched many of the men’s faces exactly, as the yellow bow ties did their teeth. Everyone had what looked like an onion rammed into their buttonhole, some with dirt still adhering to the roots. A joke, Olly guessed, although a smelly one, especially in this heat. He had only been in the room a few minutes and sweat was already beading his forehead.

The women, on the whole far better looking than the men, wore fancy dress too. A maid in fishnet stockings was raucously applying a feather duster to the thinning hair of her accompanying swain. A girl in a red leather bondage outfit, complete with chained cap and studded gloves, was hanging unsmilingly on the arm of a languorous youth in a monocle. A woman in a flapper costume, drawing on a long black cigarette holder, was ignoring the male hands feverishly groping her bugle-beaded breasts. The hands belonged to a porcine type with several shining chins.

The woman with the cigarette holder had her mind on other things. Like a spider snatching its prey, she extended one long-black-gloved arm and grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing tray. She tipped it back in one.

Olly’s fear he would be spotted as an interloper was fading. And, as Alastair had predicted, Anna-Lou had passed muster; a lot of the men here were unusually tall. The crowd, anyway, was in no state to notice anything much. The noise was increasing. Everyone was yelling.

‘Unbelievable,’ Anna-Lou shouted from behind. ‘They sound like a jungle.’

‘More a farmyard,’ Olly returned. His ears were full of people braying like donkeys or whinnying like horses.

Champagne bottles popped like gunfire and intimate items had started flying through the air. A youth before Olly slowly peeled a G-string off his nose before looking carefully at the label. A red lacy garter whirled over Anna-Lou’s head. Bras shot past like double-headed comets. A pair of leopardskin-print cups of a particularly generous size described a graceful trajectory over the crowd.

It was the perfect photo opportunity and, right on cue, Olly could see one of Anna-Lou’s hands reaching back into her hair. She pulled round the camera and raised it to her eye.