The Woodcutter (29 page)

Nutbrown grimaced and said, ‘Pippa says he’s gone back up to Cumbria. Is that right?’

‘Pippa’s always right. Yes, he’s up there, and I’m keeping a close check on him, believe me.’

‘Let me guess: the ineluctable Lady Kira?’

‘Yes. And from what I hear, he’s leading a hermitic existence, he’s a physical wreck, he exists on his social security hand-outs and, as for his state of mind, well, perhaps religion really has reared its ugly head as the only person he talks to is the local vicar.’

‘There you are then,’ said Johnny. ‘What’s to worry about? How’s Imo? You two heading off to Frog-land for Christmas?’

The Estovers had a farmhouse in Gascony.

‘No. Imo’s been rather off France since Ginny died. She doesn’t show it, but she took it really hard. So we’re going up to the castle. Imo’s there already. I’m joining her tomorrow.’

‘Wow,’ said Nutbrown, impressed. ‘Bearding Wolf in his lair, eh? Sounds more Imo’s style than yours, Toby.’

‘It is not, I assure you, my intent to do any bearding,’ said Estover. ‘You know Kira. She so loves an old-fashioned English house-party.’

‘Sounds grisly. Anyone I know?’

‘Nikitin’s going to be there, I believe.’

‘Pasha? He can be fun.’

‘Depends how you define fun.’

‘Still sniffing around Imo, is he?’ said Nutbrown sympathetically. ‘Still, the fees he pays you, I daresay he feels he has a big share in what’s yours. Only joking, old boy. And he is family, after all.’

‘He’s a cousin so often removed that Kira wouldn’t have paid the slightest heed to him if he hadn’t turned up in England trailing a few billion roubles,’ said Toby sourly. ‘Now I catch her watching me all the time, and I can almost hear her thinking: If only I’d trodden water a little longer, rather than encouraging Imo to marry this nobody, I could have had the fabulously rich Pavel Nikitin for my son-in-law. I’m sometimes tempted to tell her how he makes his money!’

‘You think it would make a difference?’ said Johnny. ‘At least she helped you get him as a client, so not all bad. Anyway, my love to all. And if you do bump into old Wolf, give him my best.’

Estover shook his head in bafflement. Talking to Johnny was like swimming in a goldfish bowl: you never ended up very far from where you’d begun. Except when you moved from words to figures. Ask Nutbrown how much they were worth and where it all was, and suddenly you were out in the open sea, only too glad to have this instinctive navigator leading you to Treasure Island. But on most other matters, to change the metaphor, it was like going down the rabbit hole.

As he rose to leave he said, ‘So how’s the sale going? Any interest?’

‘Nothing close to the asking price,’ declared Johnny, not bothering to hide his pleasure. ‘And you know Pippa, she likes her pound of flesh.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Estover, smiling reminiscently.

‘I daresay you do,’ said Nutbrown, returning the smile. ‘Though, from what I hear, in your case a pound might be stretching things a bit.’

Yes, when Johnny’s limbs moved independently, he could manage a fair old kick, thought Estover as he left the room.

In the hall he heard voices and tracked them to the kitchen where he found Pippa drinking coffee with a long thin man with a slightly lugubrious face. She was smiling and looked very like her young self till she became aware he’d entered the room.

‘Toby, you off then?’ she said brusquely.

‘Yes. If I could have a quick word . . .’

He glanced at the man, who stood up and offered his hand.

‘Donald Murray,’ he said in a Scots accent. ‘Not here to look at the house, I hope?’

‘No, just a friend.’

‘Good! This is my second viewing and it’s looking even better than on the first! No appointment this time, but Mrs Nutbrown’s such a welcoming kind of body, I thought as I was in the area . . .’

‘No problem, Mr Murray,’ said Pippa, smiling again. ‘Look, why don’t you wander around by yourself while I talk to my . . . friend. I won’t be long.’

The Scot nodded at Estover and left the room.

‘High hopes there, then?’ murmured the solicitor.

‘Hopes,’ said Pippa. ‘So what can I do for you, Toby?’

‘Nothing, it seems. I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.’

‘What? No wise words? No little lecture?’

‘No. You’ve clearly made a decision.’

‘Yes, I have. If I had any doubts, that card removed them.’

‘You think it’s from Wolf?’

She laughed and said, ‘You know it is. It’s that bloody picture he was so fond of he had a copy in his office at work and another in his study at home.
The Woodcutter
, it’s called. But you know that, don’t you, Toby?’

‘Perhaps. But so what? Perhaps these are some cards that survived from the old days. Perhaps the poor chap can’t afford to buy new Christmas cards.’

She shook her head and said, ‘Do people really pay you thousands to talk such bollocks, Toby? What’s the problem? You can’t drop everything and leave the country and you’d rather we didn’t either? Safety in numbers, that what you think?’

‘Safety from what? It’s a Christmas card, not a threat.’

Pippa said, ‘Take another look, Toby. I checked it out on the Internet just to be sure. In the original painting, the blade of the axe doesn’t have any red on it.’

Estover examined the card, frowning, and said, ‘Just a poor reproduction, perhaps. I noticed you don’t seem to have shared any of your concerns with Johnny.’

She shook her head impatiently and said, ‘Of course I haven’t. You know Johnny. He can’t take too much reality. You haven’t been upsetting him, I hope?’

‘Upset Johnny?’ Estover laughed. ‘You’re joking, of course. You know what he said to me as I left?
If you run into Wolf in Cumbria, give him my best!
’

She said, ‘And that didn’t convince you we were wise to be getting away?’

‘On the contrary. If Wolf did have any notion of coming after us, Johnny in the witness box would be worth at least six jury votes.’

She said incredulously, ‘You think Wolf would be using the law? Jesus!’

‘What else would he do?’

Pippa shook her head and said, ‘You may be a great lawyer, Toby, but it’s real life out here, not just words. Didn’t having your tree chopped down teach you anything? I doubt if Wolf Hadda is looking to get himself a good brief. He’s a dangerous man.’

‘You think so?’ said Estover. ‘Well, I have some dangerous friends too. But it bothers me to see you reacting like this, Pippa. I’ve always regarded you as a rock. Why would you think Wolf might be truly dangerous? I understand he’s pretty well a broken reed after all those years inside.’

‘I just don’t care to be around if and when he puts himself together again,’ she said. ‘You can rely on your dangerous friends for protection, Toby. From my memories of Wolf, I prefer distance.’

Estover observed her thoughtfully for a moment, then began to smile.

‘Now what memories would they be? Let me guess. I often wondered why you were such a non-fan of Wolf’s. I’m guessing that, back in the golden days when we were all such dear friends together, you tried your charms on him and he turned you down. He must have given you a real scare for you to be still feeling the aftermath!’

She didn’t react to his gibe but said quietly, ‘Right as always, Toby. He said, “I’ll screw you if you really want it, Pippa. But I’m sure that, even while you were hitting the high notes, you’d be thinking of half a dozen good moral imperatives for confessing to Imo. So I’d probably have to kill you soon as we finished. So what do you say? Still up for it?”’

‘And you actually believed him?’ said Toby.

‘I’m selling the house, aren’t I? And I’d better get on with it. By the way, you got your card at your office, did you?’

‘That’s right. Why?’

‘Interesting he didn’t send it to your house. Perhaps he’s got some other form of greeting in mind for Imo. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Toby.’

She walked out of the kitchen. When Estover followed, she was halfway up the stairs.

She didn’t look back.

14

A noise woke Alva Ozigbo in the middle of the night and for a second she experienced that heart-stopping feeling of not knowing where the hell she was.

Then she remembered, and in her confused mind
where?
was pushed aside by
how?
and
why?

Professionally, there was nothing wrong in a psychiatrist accepting overnight hospitality from a patient. As long as they didn’t share a bed, of course, and she had minimized any danger of this by wedging a chair against the door. Not that anything in Hadda’s manner had suggested he regarded her as desirable. Indeed, as her analysis had probed deeper and deeper after that first impassioned cry for help, he had revealed that his sexual urges seemed to have gone into hibernation during his prison sentence.

‘I don’t even wake up with an erection now,’ he told her. ‘But of course you’ll probably have to take my word for that.’

And this, apart from the time he had tested her assurance that the sound channels of the CCTV system were turned off, was the only time he had come close to suggestiveness.

But hibernation was not a permanent state, and better safe than sorry, so in lieu of a lock, the chair had been jammed up against the door handle, though she couldn’t avoid a sense that her motives for such a melodramatic gesture were at best muddied.

She set that aside for later consideration and concentrated on examining how she’d come to be staying at Birkstane.

Her practical reasons were those urged by her host. Dusk had been fast approaching, the first swirls of mist were already rising, and she needed more time to talk to him about the money. Pretty feeble. The mist had proved little more than a frost haze, she would have had no difficulty in driving slowly back to the village, and even with the pub a no-go area, the vicar would hardly have turned her away.

In the event, the fact that she stayed had turned into a reason for denying her the object of her staying.

Their simple dinner had been accompanied by a far from simple bottle of excellent burgundy. She’d examined the label and felt this was a good cue to bring up the subject of the money chest. As soon as she started, Hadda had put one of the two fingers on his right hand to his lips and said, ‘Football and finance are banned topics at civilized dinner tables.’

‘I thought it was religion and politics,’ she said.

‘Not in Cumbria,’ he said.

Afterwards, mellowed by the wine plus a shot of whisky in her coffee, she had not resisted when in reply to her attempt to return to the subject he said, ‘Let’s leave the dénouement till tomorrow, like in the
Arabian Nights
, OK?’

It was only as she was on the point of slipping into sleep that it occurred to her that in the
Arabian Nights
it was Scheherazade who kept on postponing the conclusion of her tale because she knew that, when it was finished, she would be put to death.

Now, waking, it struck her that the bedroom was remarkably light. Her last impression just before she closed the curtains had been of complete and utter darkness, the kind of dark that anyone used to the permanent half-light of the modern city never sees. So the square of brightness marking the small window made her wonder if some intruder had triggered a security light, though somehow the ideas of Birkstane and modern technology didn’t sit well together.

She slipped out of bed and drew back the curtains.

Not modern technology; more like ancient mythology.

The evening mist had vanished and the moon had risen. Its pearly light suffused the sky and the countryside, exploding to brilliance, like gunpowder scattered over embers, wherever it touched the hard hoar frost clinging to twigs and branches and blades of grass and the ribs and furrows of ancient stone walls.

It wasn’t a human landscape she looked out upon, it was the land of faerie, a land where human
why’s
and
how’s
didn’t apply. It was magic that bound her here. Her only safety lay in flight from the enchanter, but her books of knowledge held no elfish charms to see her safe through these fields of light.

Her gaze drifted down to the farmyard below her window. There were marks on the whitened cobbles as if something had moved across them since the frost fell. She remembered that a noise had awoken her but she couldn’t remember what it was.

She went back to bed, and must have slipped back into sleep immediately for it seemed only a few seconds till she was woken again, this time by a fist banging on the bedroom door and Hadda’s voice calling, ‘Breakfast in fifteen minutes. After that it’s DIY!’

She rose. Perhaps the remnants of the fire in the grate had still been warming the air when she got up in the night as she hadn’t noticed the cold then, but now it was freezing. She dragged on her clothes. Through the window the countryside still looked magical, but only in a glitzy Christmas card kind of way. She removed the chair from the door and headed out to the bathroom. There was a trickle of warm water. Getting enough to fill the ancient tub would have taken half an hour, by which time she would probably have contracted pneumonia, so she settled for a perfunctory splash in the cracked basin. Then after dragging a comb through her hair, she descended to the kitchen.

Here there was warmth from the crackling fire and the smell of frying bacon. Hadda greeted her with, ‘Perfect timing, Elf. Sleep all right?’

This was the first time since her arrival that he’d used the nickname. Last night he’d called her . . . in fact, he hadn’t called her anything, and she realized now that this sense of a barrier raised had distressed her.

‘Yes, thanks. Anything I can do?’

‘Make the coffee, if you like.’

His face had a healthy ruddy glow that made the scars on it stand out like ribs of quartz in a granite boulder. His hair, she noticed, was damp and looked as if it had been roughly ordered by drawing his fingers through it.

As she made the coffee she said, faintly accusing, ‘You look as if you’ve had a shower.’