Kingdom of Shadows (51 page)

‘For good?’ Paul’s voice was very loud in the room suddenly.

‘She’s taken two coats and the dog. And she left her keys behind. She put them back through the letter box.’

‘I see.’ He sounded suddenly flat. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do tonight. I’ll see you in the morning, Sarah. I shall be spending the night here in the office. I have a great deal of work to do. We’ll discuss this further then. Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s an explanation.’

Sarah hung up. She sat for a long time staring into space, then slowly she stood up. She walked over to the chest of drawers and pulled open the bottom drawer. The candles had disappeared. Wherever Clare had gone, she had taken them with her.

She was about to push the drawer shut, smoothing down the clothes in it, when she stopped. She picked up the top garment and held it up. It was a long, sheer black nightdress. She held it against her cheek, feeling the cold softness of the silk, then slowly she turned and laid it reverently on the bed. Moving like someone in a dream she undid her dressing-gown cord and took off her dressing gown, dropping it at her feet. Then she pulled her high-necked thermal nightdress up over her head and threw it down as well. For a moment she stood quite still, embarrassed, even though she was alone, her hands crossed defensively across her small breasts. Outside, the loud bangs of a thunderflash rattled the windows.

She held her breath as the silk slid smoothly over her head and down to her feet. Slowly she walked, head erect, to the cupboard. She opened it and stood, staring at herself in the long mirror which hung on the inside of the door. After a long pause, she smiled.

In the office Paul sat staring at his desk. He was very thoughtful. At last he picked up the phone.

Chloe was furious. ‘Geoff went all the way over to Kensington and when he got there Clare wasn’t in!’

Paul winced. He had been hoping that perhaps Geoffrey had persuaded Clare to go away somewhere with him.

‘I’m sorry, Chloe. Mrs C shouldn’t have left her.’

‘So, where is she?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps with Emma?’ If Emma heard Clare’s story he would be finished.

‘I tried ringing them, but their line is engaged constantly.’ Chloe sounded disapproving. ‘It’s too bad, Paul! Geoffrey is a busy man. He has better things to do than traipse halfway across London for no reason. He had to miss most of the fireworks party at the school, which he was supposed to go to.’

‘I’m sorry, Chloe.’ Paul sighed. ‘What more can I say?’

He slept in a chair, waking frequently, gnawing at his problems. Where was Clare, and what was she saying to people? He turned restlessly, trying to make himself more comfortable. Would anyone believe her if she told them what had happened in the lift? Geoffrey wouldn’t. Of that he was fairly certain but what about the others? What about Emma? He chewed the inside of his cheek. Emma would believe Clare. Emma would believe anything of him. Unless he destroyed Clare’s credibility totally and for good, he was finished. He glanced in the semi-darkness across at his desk where the calendar stood. So short a time to go until settlement day, and then, unless he could pay, he was finished.

It was just after eight the next morning when, returning from a trip to the washroom to shave and change his shirt, he noticed the envelope which had been put on his desk whilst he was out of the room. He stood staring down at it with a frown while in the corner behind him the computer screen flashed quietly with the morning’s prices.

He sat down and picked the envelope up from the blotter. For a moment he just looked at it, then at last he tore it open. Inside was a clipping from
Private Eye
. Attached to it was a note from Sir Duncan Beattie. ‘Don’t know if you saw this,’ it said. ‘I should like your comments.’

The short piece was to the point.

Rumours in the City of yet another cock-up as leading financier gets his calculations wrong. Again. ‘For Rent’ signs are appearing on strong boxes all over Switzerland. Pollo Royfield, director of one of the mega conglomerates, must be shaking in his shoes. Watch this space.

Paul screwed the cutting into a little ball and hurled it across the room. Diane Warboys! He could never prove it, of course. But it had to be her. Who else knew? The bitch! The disloyal, vindictive bitch! He would see to it personally that her career in the City went no further.

What the hell was he going to tell Sir Duncan? Sweating heavily suddenly he picked up his attaché case and putting it on the desk clicked back the locks.

Amongst the sheaf of papers was a copy of his father’s will. He walked with it to the window and read through it slowly yet again, the paper trembling slightly in his hand. He knew what it said by heart. The Royland shares to be divided evenly between the four children. Then the sentence which trapped him. ‘If at any time any of the four should wish to sell his or her share in the company, he or she may do so only if they first offer the shares to the other three severally or together. At that point it is my wish that that person offers up all the rest of the shares and dividends bequeathed by me to the others in this will. To sell a holding in the family company means he or she is desperate for money or no longer interested in Royland International and its holdings. Either way he or she will need to liquidate.’ He could still hear his father’s voice dictating the succinct words and imagine the haughty stubborn face behind them.

He could never tell David that he had to sell the Royland shares; and he would not admit to anyone, ever, that he had already liquidated the rest of his holdings. He was trapped.

He folded the document back to the first page and threw it down on the desk. Damn and blast Clare! She could save him from all this. With one stroke of the pen she could pay his debts and leave him enough over to keep the rumour-mongers quiet. He glanced at the chair where he had dropped her unconscious form two nights before. For a long time he had stood looking down at her whilst she lay there, all sorts of strange thoughts flitting through his brain. If she had died, there in the lift, if she had had a heart attack, he would have stood to inherit Duncairn and all that went with it. As he stood looking down at her he had, just for one moment, been tempted, tempted to wrap the soft suffocating fur of her mink around her face and press; then horrified by his own thoughts he had turned sharply away.

He picked up his father’s will and threw it back into the case. A copy of his own was there in the folder too, and a copy of Clare’s. Idly he picked hers up. They had made them together, four years before. In it, apart from small legacies to all her nephews and nieces, she had left the bulk of her property to him. There was no mention of Duncairn as a separate package. She had been confident then that she would have a baby, an heir to the Gordon estates, so she had had no thoughts of leaving it to James, who in those days anyway was still without any sense of family – the reason that Aunt Margaret had not left Duncairn to him in the first place. His interest in the past had begun and ended with the battles of Robert the Bruce, something Margaret Gordon had quickly spotted. It had not displeased her. He would come to it in the end, as Alec, his father, had done, and in the meantime Clare would be the right caretaker for the place. It had always been the women who had loved Duncairn.

Paul read it through again, then slowly he put it back in his case, his face impassive.

He was about to walk through to Sir Duncan’s office when the telephone rang. ‘Royland? It’s Cummin.’ The American voice was crisp and aggressive even after the long flight from Houston and the gruelling rush-hour drive into London from Heathrow. ‘Can you make lunch?’

Paul pulled his diary towards him automatically, then with a surge of irritation he pushed it away. ‘I’m sorry, but that won’t be convenient,’ he said coldly. He could feel the receiver slipping against his palm. Let the bastard sweat a little, as he was.

‘I told you, Royland, I need to see you soon.’ Rex kept his voice even with an effort. ‘You had better make it today.’

‘Very well.’ Paul was curt. ‘I can spare you half an hour at four o’clock, if that would suit you.’

As he hung up he slumped into his chair and put his head in his hands.

Rex turned away from his desk and stood gazing out at the view across the river. The Thames was grey and sluggish beneath the rain. On Westminster Bridge the pavements were invisible beneath a procession of umbrellas. Even the scarlet of the buses and the bright gold tops of the triple lanterns on the street lamps were subdued. He put his hands in his pockets glumly. He loved this office, with its view over the heart of London – the centre of the world, he sometimes thought, as he gazed across at the clock tower where Big Ben was barely visible through the rain.

Mary had not relented and come with him at the last moment, and she had not been home when he rang her to say he had arrived. ‘A lousy heap of stones!’ was how she had described Duncairn with every inch of scathing contempt at her command. ‘An old man’s dream!’

An old man’s dream. He turned his back on the window ruefully. Perhaps. And if it was a dream, was it a dream about oil, or a dream about owning a piece of Scotland; a castle; a piece of history? He walked over to the table by the wall where there was a scale layout model of some of the south-coast oil wells. He ran his finger thoughtfully over the miniaturised hills and picked up one of the little toy rigs. Had he really wanted to carve up the countryside near Duncairn? Put in rigs, pipelines, bring trains across the moors?

He smiled grimly to himself. This goddam site was getting to him. As owner he wouldn’t profit from the oil, but whichever company got lucky – and one of them was bound to pick up the licence – his judgment would be vindicated. It was going to prove him the oil man he really was. And he would get his castle; the ancient seat of the Comyns. He was prepared to spend every cent he owned on that castle.

Clare had stopped the night before at a motel near Bishop Auckland, too tired to drive further. She had pulled up twice to give Casta a short run, and once again at lunchtime, driving off the A1 to find a pub where she could eat a quiet sandwich before taking the dog for a long tramp through the Yorkshire countryside. She was about halfway, she supposed, but it didn’t matter. She was free. There was no Paul, no Sarah, forever creeping round corners, spying on her, no worries, just the feel of the soft rain on her face and in her hair, the clouds tearing across the sky over her head and the rustle of the dead leaves in the hedgerows. She pulled her collar up around her neck and smiled, and Casta, sensing her sudden happiness, barked and wagged her tail.

No one was expecting her; no one knew where she was. It was a wonderful feeling. The sudden complete freedom made her realise suddenly just how trapped she had been.

She bought a tin opener at a village store, with a dog bowl and some cans of dog meat, and some ham and bread for herself, and once they had settled in she and Casta had a picnic together in the motel room, sitting on the floor in front of the TV.

For a while she watched, then, tired and her sandwich finished, she turned off the programme and, walking idly to the window, threw it open. The night air smelt glorious after the long days in London and the drive in the car. It was soft and rich and intoxicating as she leaned on the window sill, feeling her elbows cold and damp on the mossy bricks.

In the garden behind the reception area in the main house there were a lot of people milling around. She could hear laughter and talking, and the children’s shouts, and she could just see the flickering light crystals from the sparklers the children were holding. Suddenly there was a cheer. A sheet of flame shot upward and she saw the whole garden lit for a moment in flickering orange lights as a huge bonfire, built in the motel’s kitchen garden, burst into life. For one moment she saw the face of the effigy, strapped to an old wooden chair on the top of the fire – an impassive, round, expressionless face – then a cloud of thick smoke swept down across the garden and blocked everything from sight.

Clare turned slowly away from the window and sat down on the floor, putting her arms around Casta’s neck. Her eyes were full of tears. For a moment the reality of the scene had been vivid. The figure, the fire, the staring, shouting crowds. ‘If only they knew, Casta,’ she whispered. ‘If only they knew what it was really like.’ She shivered.

Standing up slowly she closed the window and drew the curtains. Tidying up the empty food bowl and the paper bags she had a shower and washed her hair, then, wearing nothing but a bathrobe, she pulled back the bedspread. Perhaps she could do some yoga to ease the stiffness in her shoulders after the long drive.

Behind her Casta whined.

Clare turned and stared at her. The dog was trembling. Outside in the garden a volley of deafening explosions rang out. Relieved, Clare found she was smiling. ‘Casta! You fraud. You’re not afraid of the bangs? You’re supposed to be a gun dog!’ She bent and rumpled the dog’s ruff affectionately.

Casta backed away from her, her hackles raised.

Clare frowned. The room was cold. She glanced at the window, but she knew she had closed it properly. The curtains hung still with no sign of a draught. Biting her lip she looked back at Casta. The dog was growling now and as Clare watched she jumped, with a little whine, on to the bed, pressing herself backwards against the headboard. She was staring into the middle of the room, her eyes tracking back and forth across the empty space as though she could see something there.

Clare backed towards the bed too. She was suddenly very afraid; her mouth had gone dry as she stared round. The lights were on; the white-painted walls were stark, decorated with bright prints of wild flowers. There were no shadows here. It was the fireworks, that was all. They had unnerved the dog, just as the fire itself had unnerved her.

She sat down on the bed, groping behind her for the TV remote control which she had dropped on to the quilt. She snapped it on and clicked up the sound, filling the room with the voice of the newsreader.