The Maestro's Mistress (27 page)

In a span of unmeasured time she registered
the arrival of Saul, watched as he leapt out of his car and run towards the
house. In the hallway she flung herself into his arms. He clasped her briefly.
His body was stiff with the urgency for action.

Rachel stood watchfully in the
background.

Tara saw his eyes move from her
to her mother. It flashed into her mind that for a fragmentary moment he
regarded them both as enemies; gatecrashers into his life, strangers who had
allowed harm to come to his child.

He answered the questions the
police put to him with barely concealed impatience and irritation. Tara saw
that it was intolerable for him to be constrained to remain passive and still,
placing himself in the hands of bland public servants. He needed to be on the
move, to be doing something active and positive towards finding his daughter.

Tara was dismayed, but not
surprised, when he declined to be transported in one of the police cars to the
nearest available venue where a news conference was being set up, and instead
strode out of the house to his own car.

She ran after him, feeling the
air around him crackling with pent up emotion.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to do the
orthodox thing and travel with the police?’ he asked, looking up at her from
the driver’s seat with chilling coldness. He seemed a grim stranger, his spirit
as far away from her as though locked in a box at the bottom of the ocean.

‘I’ll go with you,’ she said,
firmly resolved.

In the car he was granite-faced
and silent. She wanted to speak to him, to reach out and touch him and become
close. But a deep instinct told her to keep still and quiet.

His breathing was rough and
jagged, his face full of steely purpose. Glancing at his profile it occurred to
her that he knew something she did not.

His foot pressed down ever harder
on the accelerator. The car swung round a major roundabout and down the slip
road of a motorway.

‘This is going out to the west
country!’ Tara protested sharply.

‘Yes.’

‘Xavier! We should be going into
Oxford.’

‘I’ve no intention of wasting my
time at some conference set up by provincial police officers.’

Tara looked hard at him. ‘You
know where Alessandra is don’t you?’

‘I know
who
she is with.’

Her lips parted in astonishment.
‘Who, for God’s sake? WHO?’

‘You haven’t guessed?’ Cold
disdain.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus. Just tell me!’

‘The woman you mistakenly tried
to befriend. Your rival!’ The scorn in his voice lashed her. Dimly she groped
for the clues behind his words.

‘Georgiana!’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘No? Well, maybe it’s hard for
you to believe. You were always so keen to see her good points, to play the
good Samaritan, inviting her into the house and binding up her wounds.’

Tara flinched as though he had struck
her. She had understood his reservations about her forming links with
Georgiana, but she had never guessed at the caged animosity seething within
him.

His foot pressed relentlessly
down on the accelerator. The speedometer registered a hundred and twenty and
still accelerating.

‘Slow down!’ She put a hand on
his arm. He shook it off.

‘
Saul!
’ Now there was a
thrill of alarm. Primitive, self-preserving fear.

Ahead of them was a clear road.
No obstacles, no danger. There was a sudden blast beneath them. A sharp crack
like a gunshot and then the scent of rubber and fire. The car veered across the
central barrier, crab-like and crazy.

There was no way of stopping.

After the grating blasting impact
there was silence.

The double tragedy of Saul  Xavier’s
car crash and the abduction of his baby daughter on her first birthday made the
front pages of all the next day’s newspapers. It emerged from the stories
beneath the dramatic headlines that Xavier’s young live-in lover Tara Silk, a
talented violinist, had been in the car with him and that her side of the
vehicle had absorbed most of the impact.

Xavier had been discharged from
hospital after only a few hours, but Miss Silk had been detained. Medical
personnel were able to reveal that she had sustained a number of injuries but
it was too early yet to disclose further details.

CHAPTER
24

Dr Denton was startled from sleep
by the warble of the telephone. It was four in the morning of a drizzly summer
dawn. A luminous grey light filtered through the curtains.

His mind began to slowly uncurl
from a state of unconsciousness. His was not a profession in which one was
required to be ‘on call’ at any time of the day or night. He experienced a stab
of alarm.

He placed the receiver against
his ear. ‘Yes?’

‘Your patient, my wife Georgiana
Xavier has abducted my daughter,’ the voice on the other end announced with
brutal disregard for preliminaries.

Dr Denton shook his head like a
slapped dog. It then took him no more than two seconds to snap from drugged
somnolence into a state of red alert. ‘Xavier!’

‘Did you know this would happen?’
The tone was cold and accusing.

‘Of course not.’

‘You should have warned me.’

‘I would have done if she had
given me any specific indications.’ Dr Denton found himself backed against a
wall. He tried to rally some semblance of assertiveness. ‘Are you sure your
wife is the abductor?’

‘For God’s sake, the evidence is
staring us all in the face.’ The lacerating contempt in the icily reasonable
voice made Dr Denton understand how Xavier was able to put the fear of God into
orchestras.

‘I agree it’s a possibility,’ Denton
said lamely.

‘I suppose it was only a matter
of time.’ Suddenly Xavier sounded overwhelmed with weariness. ‘In fact I’m
surprised neither of us thought of it before.’

Dr Denton maintained a cautious
silence – the ultimate defensive weapon.

‘I want you to come with me to
get Alessandra back,’ Xavier commanded. ‘I don’t think I trust myself to handle
matters calmly.’

‘You know where Georgiana has
taken her?’

‘To her parents’ old holiday
cottage in Cornwall. It’s the obvious place.’

‘Yes.’ The doctor was inclined to
agree.

‘Well?’

Denton passed a hand over his
forehead. ‘I’ll leave a message for my secretary to cancel today’s
appointments.’

Sitting beside Xavier in a silver
Jaguar an hour later, Dr Denton observed the great conductor with a mixture of
professional detachment and personal interest.

Xavier bore no outward signs of a
man who was undergoing a cruel ordeal. His hands on the wheel were steady, his
reactions keen, his speed nerve-chilling.

He spoke little for the first few
miles. Then he said abruptly, ‘Alessandra is my only flesh and blood. My
parents are dead, I have no close family.’

So his child is more important
than anyone, anything, Dr Denton thought. His clinical eye saw in Xavier a man
who had spent years in ferocious slavery to his growing musical talent,
single-mindedly devoted himself to his massive drive for fame, power and glory.
He would have regarded the people in his work and social orbit to be little
more than shadows; hazy satellites revolving around the sun of his ambition.
But now there was another human being he could truly care for; flesh of his
flesh, bone of his bone. What an intensity of feeling would be focused on that
child.

Dr Denton did a quick mental
recall of Georgiana’s accounts of her husband’s background and genealogy, both
of which had been extremely vague. Denton had put this down to Georgiana’s
extraordinary self-centredness. Now, observing Xavier’s demonically disciplined
features, recalling the almost menacing emphasis of his statement –
My
parents are dead
– he experienced a fresh surge of interest. The analytical
part of his mind began to conceive new theories.

‘You never knew your parents?’ he
said quietly to Xavier, gaining in confidence as he slipped back into the
familiar role of therapist and priestly confessor.

‘No.’

The silence prickled.

‘That must have been hard.’

‘Not at all. From what I have
observed over the years a parent can be one of the greatest crosses some
children have to bear. I’m often surprised at how resilient they are, turning
out so well when their parents are so woefully inadequate.’

‘We are all a strange and unique
mixture of our genetic inheritance and our experience,’ Denton remarked in a
professional manner: neutral, unchallenging.

For some people such a comment
would have been an irresistible invitation to tell their life story. Xavier
made no response. Then he said abruptly, ‘I never talk of the past.’

‘Of your childhood?’

‘The hooded lids drooped
slightly, indicating concealment, a shutting out of the external world.

‘Silence is sometimes the best
way of dealing with painful memories,’ Dr Denton said with a clinician’s knee
jerk response. As soon as the words were out he wished he could draw them back.

‘Don’t patronize me,’ Xavier
said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I take it your interest in me is
professional?’

‘I am a human being, besides a
psychologist.’

‘It is personal then?’

‘I don’t think that is what I
said.’

‘You should practise the art of
making up your mind, Dr Denton.’

Denton winced. As psychologist he
had learned to view the human condition with an impartial eye and to maintain
an open mind on a variety of differing interpretations. On the one hand this,
on the other hand that. No single absolute truth. Just an elegant dispassion.

He guessed that for Xavier such
flexible attitudes were probably to be written off as contemptible dithering.

Xavier was speaking again. ‘I
suspect that your interest in me and my past is very personal indeed. Based on your
interest in my wife, which I am sure strays far beyond the professional.’

Denton found himself shocked and
impressed by this cool analysis, this capacity for an almost psychopathic
clarity of thought in the face of impending disaster.

No, not tragedy, Denton told
himself desperately. It will be all right. Things will turn out fine.

‘Alessandra will be safe,’ he
told Xavier. ‘Georgiana wants only to possess, not to destroy.’

‘Please God you’re not mistaken!’

‘Amen to that,’ Denton murmured
to himself, sending up a fervent prayer.

‘The baby Tara was expecting was
aborted last night,’ Xavier announced with brutal unexpectedness. ‘And there
won’t be any more children.’ There was an unnerving cold detachment in his
tone. He seemed to be issuing some kind of threat.

If anything should happen to my
only child.

Denton felt great pity for Tara. And
no mean pity for himself at this moment. His mind ran forward to the possible
scenario at the cottage and a grey mist of apprehension descended on him, its
droplets crawling down his spine with the tread of a poisonous spider.

CHAPTER
25

Georgiana could not understand
why the child would not stop crying. ‘I am to be your new mother. You are my
own lovely darling,’ she told her. ‘There’s no need to cry.’ And later on, more
sharply, ‘You mustn’t cry any more, my precious.’

Things had gone very well to
begin with. Alessandra had been happy to go with Georgiana in the car. But at
lunchtime when they stopped at a country hotel she would not eat her food. She
kicked out her legs and stiffened them to rods of steel as she wriggled to get
down from the high-chair.

The waiter brought minced beef
and mashed vegetables and then semolina pudding which Georgiana knew were the
child’s favourites. But Alessandra simply spat the food out, her face red with
disgust and outrage.

Georgiana had been dismayed, and
deeply embarrassed. The eyes of all the diners had been on her and the child.
Assessing, disapproving eyes. She had never experienced anything quite like it.
In the car later Alessandra had yelled solidly for over an hour and then
suddenly fallen into an exhausted sleep.

Georgiana began to breathe more
easily. Her panic and escalating anger dissolved. She was sure things would go
smoothly once they got to the cottage.

She had made her preparations
with meticulous care. She had spent hours in Harrods selecting the most
luxurious and stylish pram, the smartest pushchair, the most splendid cot. All
of these were safely installed in the cottage. The Mercedes now sported a baby
seat, and its boot was packed with little dresses, dungarees, anoraks, toys and
books. The refrigerator at the cottage was stocked with baby dinners, milk and
eggs.