Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire (22 page)

Shaking her head, Kris told her: “No, I don’t want to know. All I want is that it’s as safe and as healthy as it can be. Boy or girl, we’ll love it more than anything.”

Elaine smiled briefly but sympathetically. Her eyes were moving, searching Kris’s face, and finally she turned to what was really on her mind. “What I don’t completely understand is why you’re here. I’m very,
very
glad to see you, and I want to know as much as you can tell me about Daniel, but I still can’t think of why he sent you to me.”

Kris paused for a while, unsure of what to say for a few moments. “His message was actually very simple,” she said at last. “It was just three words. His instruction was to tell you: ‘Logan sent me’. That was it.”

As she said those words, Elaine blinked a few times and sat completely still on her chair.

“Logan sent you,” she whispered at last.

Kris nodded. “In any other circumstances, I would have thought it complete nonsense. I still remember sitting in this very room, and you telling me not to mention the name of Daniel Logan. I won’t say that I’ve never thought of it since, but that name seemed to belong to the distant past. What does it mean?”

Elaine paused and looked at Kris. “It means,” she said very slowly, as though weighing her words, “that he is in great trouble.”

Confused, Kris stared back at her. She did not need to travel all this way to London to hear that—she was very much aware of how much trouble Daniel was in. But why did he drag up this name now?

“As you are aware,” Elaine continued, “I’ve known Daniel for a very long time. Longer than just about everyone else in his life. He was not so very old when he was first brought here, one of our boarders. Yet though he was young he had already managed to bring himself into disrepute with countless other children’s homes. He was a fighter, always a fighter, dear, sweet Daniel.” Her eyes shone slightly as she cast her memory back.

“I’m probably the nearest thing he has to a mother since his own parents died. I knew very little about them, though I tried to find out a few details while Daniel was in my care. And he discovered much more, of course, once he had become more successful and had the resources to pursue avenues closed to me.”

“I understand that,” Kris interrupted, slightly impatient at this diversion. “But I still don’t get it. Why that message, that name?”

By way of reply, Elaine gave a sigh and went to one corner of the room, pulling aside the carpet there. To Kris’s considerable surprise, when the material came back she saw a safe buried in the floor.

“Daniel had me put this here. He wanted me to keep a few... valuables for him. I can’t actually remember the last time I opened this, and I bloody well hope I can remember the combination. Apparently it’s pretty much unbreakable. You’d have to dig it up and take it away with you.”

As she spoke, her fingers moved across various numbers and then rested on a pad that, Kris presumed, recorded her prints. With that there was a click and the safe door was open at last.

“I dread to think of the value of the materials I hold in here—most of it in abstract, admittedly. Encrypted keys to some bank accounts and...” she paused for a moment, reaching down and retrieving something. “Yes, here it is.”

Standing back up, walked back to the chair, a flat envelope in her hand. “This is what he wants, I think. You’ll need to take it back with you when you return to San Francisco.”

Tipping up the envelope, Kris frowned as a passport fell out onto her lap. It was for a UK citizen, and appeared to be recent enough to include biometric details. It was when she opened it up, however, that she encountered her greatest surprise.

“Daniel Logan,” she said. “Why... why does he have a passport in that name?”

“Because that is his name,” Elaine replied. “Or, rather, more accurately—that is the name he was born with.”

Kris’s nostrils flared. She was less shocked by that news than she would have expected only a week before, but what concerned her now was why Daniel had a passport in this name: what else was he keeping from her?

“This looks legitimate,” she said. “But I’ve seen his passport, and I know it says Daniel Stone. Whenever we’ve travelled, that’s been the one he’s used.”

“And that’s because Daniel Stone
is
his name. His official, legal name. He changed it when he was eighteen, as part of his attempt to leave his past behind.”

“Why Stone?”

Elaine smiled for a moment. “Christiansen is my married name. I was born Elaine Stone.”

For a little while, Kris felt that another chasm was opening up beneath her, threatening to swallow her whole. “You said... you said you’re the nearest thing he has to a mother. You’re not... you’re not...”

Elaine shook her head. “No, I’m not his biological mother. I never knew his parents. They died when he was very young, and from what I could find out at the time, and what Daniel discovered later, they were relatively poor, working class Londoners. Their death was tragic—and stupid. A gas leak in a faulty appliance, the landlord hadn’t fixed it. Daniel was lucky: they’d put him to sleep upstairs, and then they watched TV in their living room, slowly succumbing to a build up of carbon monoxide.

“I’m afraid there’s no fairy tale about Daniel’s childhood. From what I can tell, he came from a very mundane family—his parents seemed to love him the same as usual, and were average in most ways.

“No, what’s special about Daniel is that he is so thoroughly self-made. Hence his change of name. When he came to Lincoln Hall, he was already something of a loner—good with his fists and with a reputation for trouble. I could see, however, that he was also extremely smart. And I was flattered, incredibly flattered, when he asked if he could take my maiden name, and I was so pleased for him when he started university—that alone is quite a feat for children from a school like this. And I watched him, watched him grow and transform, becoming something quite remarkable as he flourished. I have never, in all my life, met such a man as Daniel.”

“But why this?” asked Kris, waving the passport in the air. “Why does he need this?”

Elaine hesitated. “I think... I think this was part of his security. I say that I watched Daniel grow into something remarkable, but I cannot honestly say that I’ve always been pleased by everything he’s done, especially after Karen died.” She frowned and paused again. “He came to me once, asking me for help—well insurance of a sort. He wanted me to keep some things for him, in case he ever needed them, in case things... went bad.”

“But this, is this even
legal
?”

Elaine snorted. “You know the answer to that, so please don’t ask stupid questions. Listen, Kris, your husband isn’t an angel, but I don’t think that he has ever thrown himself completely into criminal dealings. He’s not a drug runner, or sex trafficker, or anything like that. But I’m pretty sure that some of his business would not be looked on too kindly by some authorities somewhere. One day, he thought he might need a back door out of any difficulties. This was part of his escape plan.”

“He never... he never told me about this, about any of it.”

“Did you ask him?”

Kris shook her head. In her hands, she opened the passport and stared at the picture. A man, solemn faced with dark hair, his eyes slightly mismatched, scars faintly visible in the light. There could be no doubt who this was.
I may not tell you everything, but I don’t lie
. How many other things had he not told her?

“I don’t... I don’t understand.”

If she had been expecting sympathy from Elaine, Kris was in for another surprise. As she lifted her head, she saw the headmistress looking at her sternly.

“He needs your help. He may have kept some things from you, just as I’m sure he’s kept them from me. I certainly don’t know everything about Daniel Stone—or Logan for that matter. But I do know this: he is not some international criminal, though I am sure he has his moral failings as do we all. For God’s sake, Daniel knows that more than anyone. That’s why, I suspect, things have been so difficult for him over the past few months: he wants to change his habits, his business dealings, his partners even.” Elaine shrugged. “After so long, that can’t be easy and he has suffered for it, but before you judge him, you may wish to consider why Daniel has been so eager to clean up his life.”

Letting the hand that held the passport fall into her lap, Kris let out a sigh and nodded. “I know,” she said quietly. “I do know. And I’ll do anything I can for him.
Anything
!”

For two weeks, Kris remained in Lisbon after she had left her meeting with Elaine. Part of her wished to rush back to San Francisco, to be as close to Daniel as possible but he had expressly asked her not to do this. The betrayal by Willard and others had left him increasingly nervous for her safety.

Strangely, Kris felt less concerned about this than she would have expected. In many ways she was more vulnerable than ever before: she could feel her body changing now, and she was almost certain that she could feel her child moving inside her from time to time. Yet despite this—even because of it—and the transformation in her emotions that she felt pulsing through her veins, she was hardening inside when she thought of anyone who might hurt Daniel.

If she had paused to consider the fact that she was not even thinking about someone hurting
her
, she would certainly have found it bizarre and might even then have begun to worry about herself. As it was, however, a burgeoning protectiveness was building up inside her towards Daniel and their child. Roth and the others were attacking her husband, and by god they would pay for it. She didn’t know how if she was honest, but pay they would.

And this despite the passport she had carried with her from London. Daniel Logan.
I may not tell you everything, but I don’t lie
. In some respects, however, this name had been the first thing that Kris had known about him: Daniel Stone had not been revealed to her until many weeks after they had met—weeks after she had been captivated by him. As strangely as she feared more for Daniel than for herself, so any anger she may have expected to feel towards this revelation quickly abated: he was in trouble, and while there still remained wheels within wheels operating here, gaining his release was more important than anything else.

Fortunately, two weeks in Alfama also helped her deal with the fatigue she was beginning to experience. Even without the emotional rollercoaster of Daniel’s incarceration, being twelve weeks pregnant was starting to drain her physically. The hot, Portuguese sun, which she had always adored, now felt a little
too
warm and often she would spend time in the cooler rooms of her apartment, sketching and painting, passing the time until she could speak to Daniel during the periods he was allotted for phone calls.

She also spent fairly long periods of time speaking to his lawyer, or engaging in extensive email conversations with him. The charges of rape against Francis and Matthew Doherty, and counter-charge of assault against Daniel, were dragging on and would likely not reach court until the new year as each side’s lawyers made claims and counter-claims, lodging depositions and paperwork with the court, dragging the process of justice into a thick mire where nothing would happen quickly. It was becoming increasingly clear that Kris had no chance of winning her case against Francis Roth and his accomplice, but at the same time Maximilian Roth did not seem particularly keen to pursue Daniel. Nathan Armstrong suspected this was because a court case would once more cause the claim of rape to rear its ugly head in the public domain. A game of wills was being played out between Daniel and Maximilian, but increasingly all Kris wanted was for Daniel to be released so that she could be with him.

“Can you be here within the next two days?” Nathan Armstrong’s voice was somewhat strained. It was early in the morning and, judging by the emails she had sent him, he had evidently spent very little time sleeping.

Can you be here within the next two days?
His question went round her skull like a mantra or a magic spell. At last! “Of course,” she told him quickly. Daniel had been adamant that she was not to return to San Francisco: he was determined to protect her and she knew that Nathan would not go against his request. As such, this could only mean that Daniel was going to be released.

And yet the lawyer hesitated, for a moment. “You know that McGuire and I have been working on a deal together.” McGuire was the main lawyer representing the Roth interests in this case although, as with Nathan, he was heading a team of advocates.

“Yes, I know that.” Kris frowned slightly. Where was Nathan heading now?

“If Daniel Stone is to be set free, you know that you’ll probably have to drop the rape charge...”

Kris sighed impatiently. “I realise that, Nathan. We’ve been over this so many times now.” It galled her that Francis Roth and Matthew Doherty would get away with their crimes, that there was no justice in this world, but more than anything now she wanted her husband by her side.

“Look,” she told the lawyer sternly. “Just do whatever needs to be done. I’ll be there. Damn it, I’ll be there
tomorrow
. I want Daniel freed, do you understand? I’ll do whatever it takes to get all charges dropped. I don’t care any more. I just want him.”