Dying to Write (23 page)

I took a deep but not obvious breath; the sort you take before plunging into a vicious class.

‘I do wish you'd put that thing away,' I said as mildly as I could. ‘And before we go any further, perhaps you'd like to tell me why you addressed me as Mrs Compton.' I looked inquiringly at my fellow passenger.

He spoke rapidly in Japanese. The driver pulled the car down a rutted and muddy track.

When he stopped the noise was appalling, despite the Mercedes's soundproofing. We were in a culvert that ran right under the motorway embankment.

‘Talk,' he said to me.

‘I can't!' I shook my head, pressing my hands against my ears. ‘Not here! You'll have to find somewhere quieter!'

‘I said talk!'

‘Please – anywhere. But not here!'

The man beside me tapped the driver on the shoulder. For a terrible moment we moved forwards, deeper into the noise.

Something cracked across my face. Then I realised some of the noise had been me, screaming. They'd slapped my face to stop me. But I couldn't stop, nor stop the tears.

At last we moved backwards. We pulled up with a jerk about halfway back along the track.

I retched. When I grabbed for the door, someone rapped an order and it opened under my hand. No one tried to stop me crawling to a bush and throwing up my early-morning tea. When I scrabbled to my feet, one of the men passed me an open packet of tissues. I took a handful, dabbing at my eyes and mouth. I gestured vaguely with them when I'd finished. All those prohibitions against dropping litter must have been dinned into them too. He held open a polythene bag for me. Even as I deposited the disgusting handful, I wished I could have shredded them and dropped them like a hare-and-hounds trail for Hugh and Chris. But I thought of Ade and tyre tracks and knew there'd be more sophisticated forensic-science methods on my tail.

Eventually.

Meanwhile, they gestured me back to the car.

‘You are not Mrs Compton?' said the rear-seat passenger.

‘No.'

‘So you are –?'

‘I'm a student on the writing course at Eyre House.'

There wasn't any reason for them to believe me, but they didn't argue.

‘You know Mrs Compton?'

So they didn't know she was dead. I decided not to enlighten them, not yet. I nodded.

‘Where is Mrs Compton?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Is she at Eyre House?'

I shook my head.

Back passenger reached inside his jacket. ‘Perhaps this will help you remember,' he said.

Despite myself I closed my eyes, bracing myself ready for the pain. But there was no pain, only a familiar smell of new paper. When I opened my eyes, eight inches from them was a wad of banknotes, about half an inch thick.

‘You should've taken it,' said Hugh, tenderly tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘Compensation for all that stress.'

I smiled, and wished the gear lever anywhere but between us.

He'd been driving frantically down the lane when I'd stepped out from the verge and flagged him down. At first he'd been at least as furious as Chris would have been, but when he'd let me explain he'd comforted me beautifully. Then he called the police on his car phone to let them know I'd turned up. I sat entranced, warm in the sun. He'd opened the sunroof, and I could smell countryside and listen to Birmingham's birds. All half a mile from Eyre House. Ten minutes away from a gun and God knows how much money. Maybe enough to buy a car like this: the notes were a denomination cash machines never fed to me. Maybe they fed them to Hugh, though. The car was more opulent than Chris's, and to me that was luxurious enough. At last Hugh passed the phone to me. I gave the policewoman at the other end the tersest explanation I could get away with. I'd save the rest for Chris. But the police would be looking for the car. I was reasonably sure I'd got most of the number right, and I didn't suppose there were that many gun-metal Mercedes saloons trundling round the West Midlands. Especially not many looking for the morgue.

‘The trouble is,' I said, ‘that if the Japanese lot are as keen as that to find Nyree, the other lot are likely to be equally keen. And less well-mannered, as I recall.'

‘You call kidnapping good manners?'

‘They were polite about it. Afterwards. Hugh, Kate …'

‘Kate?' he prompted.

‘Do you think they took her and she was less … cooperative?'

‘She might simply have taken the money and run?'

I shook my head vehemently. ‘She had plenty of money
and
wonderful prospects.'

He looked at me oddly.

My stomach rumbled. ‘My God, I'm so hungry!'

‘D'you want to go back to Eyre House and find some food?' he asked, without enthusiasm. ‘Only a couple of minutes away.'

I shook my head. The last thing I wanted at the moment was to share Hugh, and the thought of all the explanations and exclamations made me cringe.

‘But I think we ought to find you something soon,' he said. ‘You're very pale.'

I probably was. I kept my hands in my lap for fear he would see how much I was shaking.

‘I'm not exactly dressed for your average restaurant,' I said: I was still in my sweaty tracksuit and muddy trainers.

‘I know,' he said, his smile sweetening his whole face, ‘exactly where we could eat. If you don't mind eating alfresco, that is?'

But food would have to wait while we drove into the city centre, where Hugh's big-shot lawyer was based.

Whenever I try to park anywhere in Birmingham I know the whole exercise is pointless and that I ought to have caught the bus. I know that drivers of big cars don't necessarily share my scruples about parking on double yellow lines – perhaps the flashing hazard lights spell out some Masonic code to passing wardens. But I didn't want Hugh to be as arrogant as that. I wanted him to be human, and fail to find a space and have to trail on foot several hundred yards from a crowded multistorey. I suppose. Or did I want him to find, as he did, a space that was somewhat shorter than was comfortable, and park with consummate neatness?

‘Well done,' I said sincerely.

‘Power steering,' he said with a mixture of pride and apology. ‘Would you rather come with me or stay here?'

‘Come with you,' I said firmly. ‘Provided you can guarantee no Japanese in big Mercs.'

Perhaps I expected him to take my hand as we walked; he didn't, but as he held open the solicitor's door for me, he ran his free hand the length of my back.

The receptionist looked at me and my tracksuit doubtfully, of course, and at Hugh with enthusiasm. She was about my age, perhaps a little older. Very svelte; very well made-up.

‘I'll just tell Mr Cordingley you're here, Mr Brierley – I'm sure he won't keep you a moment. If you'd like to take a seat. And perhaps you'd like coffee?'

‘I'm sure we'd both like some,' said Hugh firmly.

The receptionist didn't blink. She produced a percolated brew that was too strong for me, and then a tin of biscuits. I told myself not to snatch. Hugh reached for the tin and left it casually and tantalisingly on the low table in front of us.

‘Help yourself,' he said quietly. ‘This guy's fee for sorting things out yesterday must have paid for several hundred tins.'

The receptionist smiled automatically, and then looked at me more closely. ‘Are you all right?' Her tone changed from professionally plastic to genuinely concerned.

I smiled wanly and nodded.

‘We passed a road accident,' said Hugh.

They spent the next few minutes discussing details of crashes, real and imaginary. I tried to work out why he'd bothered to lie, why he needed to explain the pallor of a total stranger to someone he hardly knew. Perhaps charm is something that needs to be practised, and he was merely giving his a bit of a work-out.

I didn't want to talk about blood and sudden death. I helped myself to the last of the chocolate digestives and looked around me.

The building must have been well over a hundred years old, built when Birmingham believed that civic pride was best expressed in terracotta curlicues and Minton tiles. But they'd gutted it into anonymous modernity. No mahogany desks, no wondrous cabinets for legal tomes. Just quiet, simple, confident luxury.

A buzzer reminded the receptionist why Hugh was here. She smiled him through the heavy teak-faced door, and then resumed her word-processing. But she noticed when I emptied the coffee cup and was quick to offer more, which I declined. I wondered idly what makes a woman take a job like that. If you want to care for people, you could nurse; if you want a business career, for goodness' sake get on the other side of that door. Perhaps she did it for the clothes. I would bet any money that in real life Hugh would wear the male equivalent of that suit. Probably an even better one. I'd have to ask, of course, what he did. In a sense I was sure he was setting me some sort of test. Did I care for him or his money? Certainly he'd clammed up when I asked him about his home.

Hugh. Matt. What did I really know about either of them?

Then Hugh emerged, smiling jubilantly at me.

Matt was now represented. Whether he wanted to be or not.

Tesco's was full of lunchtime shoppers; the queues for handbaskets, cash only, were as long as the others. We had a baguette, a variety of cheeses, olives, fresh fruit, wine, paper plates and plastic cups. We had a feast. The checkout girl, who'd passed three A levels at William Murdock but then had been confronted with Tory employment policies, commented on my extravagance: all too often I contented myself with cheese and an apple, or sometimes a packaged sandwich. I smiled in Hugh's direction by way of explanation. He dug out a fold of fivers. For once I did not argue.

We didn't speak the short distance to the multistorey car park, and I wondered if something had upset him. But in the car, he kissed my hand lightly before putting the car into gear.

So many other people had had the idea that the Botanical Gardens would make a wonderful place for a picnic that we couldn't find anywhere to park, and were relegated eventually to the overflow car park.

‘Don't worry,' said Hugh, as we waited to cross the road, ‘the gardens are big enough to absorb even a bank holiday crowd. We used to come for our big treat when I was a kid.'

To my surprise he produced a membership card. A lot of my neighbours and friends are members, but they live locally and it's a bonus to have a dog-free park for their children. Then he ushered me through the hothouses, remarking on changes. At last, after picking our way past cockatoos, rabbits and ducks, we left the main path and found an idyllic bench by a rock pool. To reach it, we had to pass through a gate marked ‘No Children'; Hugh opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. In the distance were the grounds of a private tennis club. If you wanted, you could watch more energetic people hurtling round grass courts, their expensive-looking gear at odds with their amateurish shots. The sun was now distinctly hot; already turrets of thunder clouds were piling up to the west of the city. Why I should suddenly be so interested in the view, I'm not sure. Perhaps now I was with Hugh in such a public yet intimate setting, I felt shy. Certainly I showed him little but my profile. At last he touched my cheek.

‘You're beautiful,' he said. ‘Why don't we go back to your house? We're only ten minutes away.'

High marks for taste, low for subtlety. And then, what about Matt? We'd come over here to rescue him, not to spend the afternoon in my bed, no matter how desirable the prospect might be.

‘OK, so we stop off at Rose Road first,' said Hugh. ‘And then, come to think of it, at a chemist's.'

We walked back to the car rather more purposefully than we'd come, but still not touching. And drove in silence to Rose Road Police Station.

‘I suppose,' Hugh said, pulling the handbrake on, ‘that as a writer I ought to be grateful for the experience. But I'd rather be parking out here than be taken through those gates.'

We were in the parking area in front of the police station. A couple of pandas were in the spaces reserved for disabled drivers. A motley collection of civilian cars filled the others. Civilian! But we had a civilian police force, not a military one. And where on earth had I picked up such awful lingo anyway?

Hugh walked not towards the entrance, but towards a heavy set of gates: that was where they must have taken him. He stared grimly at the TV camera scanning us, but said nothing. I touched his hand – apology? Comfort?

After a moment, he turned and smiled at me. ‘Hope Matt doesn't suffer from claustrophobia. When I heard those shut behind me, I nearly shat myself. And then the airlock where they make you wait until they can have you in and charge you – Christ!'

‘I'm sorry.' Even if I wasn't quite sure what for.

At last he turned. He took my hand and we walked back to the main entrance.

On the whole I was glad he had let go my hand by the time Chris arrived at the front desk. But perhaps Chris wouldn't have seen anyway. We were sitting in the little waiting area, from which you can't see what's going on, and Chris called me before actually lifting the flap and coming out. Perhaps he didn't want to know if we were holding hands.

He ushered us both into the small interview room our side of the reception desk where Hugh and I had been reunited before.

‘A more tasteful shade of paint than the room I was invited into,' said Hugh, grinning to show he bore no ill will.

Chris grinned back. Then he stuck out a hand. They were going to do the macho no-hard-feelings bit. And then Chris moved into mine-host mode. Coffee. Proper cups for visitors, please. Sorry about the stains on the carpet – and the place only two or three years old.

At last we settled down. Us one side of the table, Chris the other. Business.