Encounters (13 page)

On my way back to my bedroom I listened at Davina’s door. I could hear her sobbing and I raised my hand to knock. Then I lowered it again. There was nothing I could say to Davina. I had to think. I had to make up my mind what to do.

For a long time I lay on the bed in our bedroom staring at the ceiling. The house was completely silent around me. Nigel was going to drive down into Florence after lunch, he said, but I had declined his invitation to go with him. I wanted to be alone. His words were ringing in my ears. ‘Do you want to waste your whole life?’ Was that was I was doing?

The phone number was still on the pad by the phone in the hall. I sat down on the carved chair by the table and stared down at the scribbled figures for a long time before, hesitatingly, I picked up the receiver and dialled.

‘
Pronto.
’ The voice which answered was that of a stranger.

‘Can I speak to Tim?’ I said slowly, and groped for the Italian words.

There was a long silence, but he came in the end.

‘Tim!’ I tried to keep my voice calm. ‘Tim, I must speak to you.’

‘Can’t it wait till tonight? I’m working, Celia.’ He sounded exaggeratedly patient, like an adult humouring a fractious child. Something inside me seemed to break and I knew I was fighting; fighting for my marriage and my self respect.

‘No, it bloody well can’t wait,’ I hissed down the phone. ‘You get back here, Tim, and meet me at the cottage. I’ve got to see you now. I’ve found out something you’ve got to know about. Simon is involved in some shady currency deal and he’s using Davina. You’ve got to tell me what to do. She’s the one who is going to get into trouble. Now, get here.’ I hung up before he had time to reply.

There was a sound behind me and I turned to see Simon himself standing in the dining room doorway. His arms were folded and he was watching me. ‘I wonder what sort of trouble that could possibly be?’ he said quietly, with a small smile. ‘Perhaps you would come into my study a moment, Celia. It’s time you and I had a short talk I think.’

He ushered me into a carved rococo chair by the fireplace. Then, half leaning on his desk he turned to face me. ‘What exactly have you found out?’ he asked. His face was quite bland and un threatening, and yet suddenly I was afraid.

‘That you treat Davina like dirt,’ I replied. I had no intention of telling about my eavesdropping.

‘I see.’ He waited a moment, then he went to a cabinet beside the fireplace and produced a bottle. ‘Campari and soda?’ He put the glass in my hand. ‘What do you intend doing about it?’ A smile played across his lips for moment.

‘Do you know what happened this morning?’ I asked him suddenly, looking down at the glass in my hand without seeing it. ‘Your ex-girlfriend has gone off with my husband because she wanted to hurt Davina. Don’t you think that is rather funny?’ I heard myself laughing, a high nervous sound which bordered on hysteria. ‘Is that why you asked us here? So you could procure Tim for your wife and distract her from your illegal activities?’

I could have bitten my tongue out. His face had not altered but I saw the knuckles whiten on his glass. Slowly he raised it and drank.

‘So. I ask you again, what have you found out, sweet sister-in-law?’

‘Enough.’ I stared at him defiantly.

There was a long silence. He set down the glass and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Do you love this husband of yours, Celia?’ he asked.

‘Of course I do.’ It was true. It was agonizingly true.

‘Then I suggest you keep very quiet about whatever it is that you think you have discovered,
cognata mia,
or I will break Timothy’s career. Do you understand me? I can do it, you know. I’ll see to it that he never gets another commission as long as he lives.’ There seemed to be no animosity in his voice, no violence, just calm certainty. And I believed him. I stared at him, my heart hammering uncertainly in my chest as I set my glass down without tasting the drink.

‘You bastard.’

He bowed in acknowledgement as though I had paid him a compliment.

When Tim returned Sarah was with him. The car crunched to a halt on the gravel outside the villa as I was descending the stairs from my room in search of a cup of coffee. I had had no lunch and my head was aching violently. I stopped dead as the ornate doors swung open and they appeared on the threshold. Sarah was laughing as the soft jacket thrown across her shoulders caught on the elaborate arrangement of flowers in the hall and a spray of stephanotis fell to the floor. Tim looked at me intently for a moment. The anger which had shadowed his face as he caught sight of me was replaced by concern. ‘Sweetheart, are you all right?’

I glanced at the dining room door which stood open. Beyond it Simon was still in his study. ‘Come to the cottage,’ I whispered. ‘I must see you alone.’

Sarah was watching me. I saw a slight sneer flicker across her lips. ‘Go on, Tim. I shall speak to Simon. I know exactly what this is all about. He tried it once with me.’ She kissed her fingertips and laid them quickly on his lips. Then she went through the door and closed it behind her.

In the cool of the cottage Tim held me for a long time before he would let me speak. Then slowly he pushed me away, holding me at arm’s length. ‘I was only sketching her, you know. It never crossed my mind she was trying to make Davina jealous.’

His eyes held mine steadily and I knew that I believed him.

‘And Davina? Did she have any reason to be jealous?’ I asked softly.

‘What do you think?’ He was holding me tightly again and his lips on mine were urgent and demanding. It was a long time before I remembered my excuse for bringing him back to the villa.

‘He said if I told anyone he’d see you never got another commission, Tim,’ I whispered when I had finished telling him what had happened.

Tim laughed softly and the sound sent a shiver up my spine. ‘I think I’m prepared to risk that,’ he said.

Half an hour later I was packing when the door of our room burst open. It was Simon and his face was puce. ‘Get up,’ he said roughly and he bent to pull me from the bed where I was sitting. ‘You silly bitch. You thought I didn’t mean it? You thought you could double cross me, is that it?’ He yelled at me. I heard a door open in the distance and I guessed it was Davina’s.

‘What do you mean?’ I pulled away from him angrily. ‘Take your filthy hands off me!’

‘Simon, let her go!’ It was Davina in the doorway. Her voice had risen to a scream.

‘You told Sarah. She’s just confronted me with my plans downstairs. She thinks I’m going to cut her in.’ He gave an unpleasant laugh. ‘I told her to go and screw herself.’

I wrenched my hand free. ‘You’re mad. I haven’t told Sarah anything. I haven’t spoken to her. She must have guessed.’

‘I don’t care how she knew,’ his face was ugly. ‘But there’s nothing she can do. No one can, because it’s too late and my plans are always foolproof.’ He turned to look at his wife, then swung back to me. ‘If you want to stop your sister going to jail you are going to do as I say for the next few hours. That is all I ask.’

Davina and I stared at each other. Her face was white and pleading.

I subsided onto the bed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

He lifted my bag off the side table and wrenched it open to look inside. Then he threw it in my lap. ‘Get downstairs and wait for me in the car,’ he said.

In the hall the spray of fragrant white flowers still lay on the Bokhara rug where Sarah’s jacket had flicked it. I bent and picked it up then I went out and climbed into the blue Alfa Romeo which stood outside.

He took the hairpin bends of the mountain road with screaming tyres as we swooped down towards Florence. The glare off the white road reflected through the windscreen and I closed my eyes.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked wearily.

‘England.’ He did not look at me.

My eyes had flown open. ‘England!’

He chuckled suddenly. ‘I told Davina that if anyone wanted to see you alive again they had better keep very quiet about what they know.’ He glanced up at the driving mirror and smiled at himself. ‘You could say,
cognata mia,
that I am using you as a kind of hostage.’

A wave of nausea swept over me and I felt myself clinging to the sides of the seat. The palms of my hands were clammy with fear.

‘You’re going to kill me?’ I whispered in disbelief.

‘Of course not. I don’t want a murder charge hanging over me, Celia. I’m not that much of a fool. But they don’t know that do they!’ He laughed out loud. ‘And I know you will behave because of what will happen to your sister – and your beloved husband – if you don’t. You are merely an insurance policy, my dear. I have a plane waiting at San Giusto and like any good tourist you carry your passport in your handbag. So we should have no more problems.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re kidnapping me!’

‘You are hardly a kid,’ the scorn in his voice flicked at me and I flinched. He was right. I was no kid, and I understood perfectly that I had no choice but to do everything he said.

The Learjet was waiting on the tarmac near the terminal buildings, a beautiful glittering bird, poised for take off. Within twenty minutes we were cleared and in the sky.

I remember little of that flight. Europe lay beneath a haze of thin cloud which flattened the countries below into a tableau of white. I did not know when we crossed the Alps; I did not know when we crossed the Channel, but suddenly we were losing altitude and Simon himself took the controls from his pilot as we began to circle southern England. Gatwick was wet and glistening beneath a summer shower and very crowded, but Simon took my arm and guided me through the formalities with the minimum of fuss. Then we were in the chauffeur-driven maroon BMW swooping down the lush green lanes of Sussex.

Two cars were parked outside his Queen Anne mansion, an XJ6 and a sleek Rolls and he chuckled when he saw them. ‘You see, I don’t even have to go to London. They are here to meet me. You will excuse me, Celia, for half an hour or so, I know,’ he said as he handed me out into the soft mist of the rain. This business won’t take long.’ He showed me into a pretty drawing room, furnished in pale greens and greys – Davina’s favourite colours. ‘Sit down. Help yourself to a drink,’ and he was gone. This time I poured myself half a tumbler of Scotch.

There was nothing I could do. Outside the window the rain lent the countryside the smell of sweet grass and bruised velvet roses; somewhere a blackbird was singing undaunted. The house itself was very quiet.

Later I heard the cars leave. I did not move. I was too weary. When Simon appeared he was smiling. ‘Celia. What about some food? Forbes has left steaks and champagne in the fridge.’

I followed him into the gleaming kitchen.

‘How long do you intend keeping me here?’ I asked. The house was quite empty, I discovered; his staff lived in cottages on the estate.

‘Not long. You’ll find a spare room that’s comfortable – and I assure you I shan’t bother you.’ He eased the cork expertly out of the bottle and caught the bubbles. ‘I find sex greatly overrated as a field sport.’ He handed me a glass. ‘Unlike so many of your contemporaries.’

I ate the steak and sipped a little of the champagne and then excused myself. Climbing the stairs slowly to the pretty chintzy bedroom which had been allotted to me, I kicked off my sandals and fell, fully dressed, onto the bed. It was barely half past nine.

Below me in his study Simon sat alone in the dusk with his telephones and his Telex and a new bottle of Scotch.

I was awakened by the sound of shouting. Somewhere a door banged and there was a rush of feet. I sat up disorientated for a moment, then I ran to the door and looked out. It was pitch dark in the body of the house but I could hear the sound of shouting, muffled now, from downstairs and barefoot I ran down towards Simon’s study.

Tim and Nigel were in the study with Simon and all three men were shouting.

‘Tim? Oh Tim!’ I ran to him and fell into his arms.

‘Are you all right, Celia? Don’t worry, the police are on their way.’ I heard him reassuring me as his hug closed over me.

Nigel was grinning. ‘I bought some air tickets when I went down to Florence yesterday,’ he said good humouredly. ‘I was hoping I could talk you into eloping with me, Celia. But I found myself eloping with this reprobate instead!’ He punched Tim on the arm and both men laughed.

I stared from one to the other bewildered. ‘Davina told you where I’d gone?’

‘She told us everything,’ said Tim grimly, ‘including Simon’s nasty little threat and Nigel here persuaded Jocelyn to fill in the rest. There was quite a show-down after you left.’

Simon broke in. ‘You’re too late, Armitage. If you’ve called the police it’s too late to stop the deal. And it is Davina who will suffer if anyone does. And you. I’ll break you for this. Ask your wife. I’ll see you never sell so much as a flying duck to go on somebody’s wall!’

Nigel turned to him slowly. ‘Shut up, Simon, old boy,’ he said tolerantly. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll see to it that Tim does all right. I do have a certain influence, you know. If you remember, that is the reason why you bother to know me at all.’ His tone dropped in heavy sarcasm. Then he turned back to us. ‘Now you two, I want you to get going. Take yourselves off to a motel or somewhere for the rest of the night. Borrow his car, he won’t mind, and Uncle Nigel will take care of things here.’