Folly's Child (32 page)

Sheet lightning illuminated the sudden darkness, almost like night, and rain lashed the windscreen of the ute.

‘We'd better get out of here,' Tom said above the grumble of the thunder. ‘ We don't want to get bogged down.'

He started the ute and moved off along the unmade-up track which was already turning to quagmire beneath the churning wheels.

The ferocity of the storm was awesome and in spite of the cloying heat Harriet shivered. This was elemental nature in all its raw majesty.

The ute bumped over a rise and down the other side into a morass of mud. The wheels spun, fighting to get a grip. Tom put his foot down hard and the engine raced but the ute remained stationary.

‘Take the wheel.' He opened the driver's door. ‘I'll see if I can push it out.'

He jumped down, mud squelching over his shoes, and ploughed around to the rear of the ute. Harriet moved into the driver's seat, stretching to reach the pedals. Her sandals too were filthy, mud clinging between her toes. As Tom pushed she tried to pull away and eventually, just when she had begun to think it never would, the ute inched forward.

‘Keep it going!' Tom yelled.

She drove slowly and he ran to catch her up, hauling himself into the passenger seat. ‘You want to take over?' she asked.

‘No – just keep going.'

She drove with intense concentration, manoeuvring the muddy track. As they hit made-up road the storm seemed to ease, the lightning sporadic, the thunder no more than an echoing rumble, the rain dying to a thick steaming mist.

She jerked to a stop, her ankles going into cramp from stretching to reach the pedals.

‘Thank goodness for that! You can take over now.' She turned to look at him and burst out laughing. His hair was dripping, face and clothes spattered with mud that had flown from the churning wheels. Yet he still looked as attractive as ever.

‘You can laugh!' he said ruefully.

‘I'm sorry. It's just that …'

‘I know. I'm in a bit of a mess.'

She looked down at her skin, clinging wetly to her legs, and her own filthy feet.

‘I don't suppose I'm much better.'

‘You,' he said, ‘are still the most beautiful girl in the Northern Territory.'

He reached for her wrist, holding it fast while he kissed her again.

‘Don't, Tom!' she warned. ‘We'll probably stick together.'

‘I can't think of anything nicer, can you?'

She couldn't.

‘Move over then and let me drive,' he said some time later.

After dinner they sat once more on the verandah of their hotel with the heady perfume of the wet shrubs in their nostrils. But tonight there was a sense of anticipation keeping the atmosphere electric. It was there each time their eyes met or their hands brushed, even three feet apart the air crackled with it as it had this afternoon with the energy of the storm.

‘What about a walk before bed?' Tom suggested.

The main street of Katherine, which followed the bank of the river, was almost deserted. Light spilled out from a bar but the garage had closed down for the night, its pumps standing like silent sentinels outside the sprawling workshop and office.

Tom took her hand and the attraction sparked again, sending sharp tingles up her veins.

No one had ever made her feel this way before, alive with longing. She thought of Nick and the pathetic efforts she had made to respond to his lovemaking but she found she was unable even to conjure up a vision of his face. He seemed so far away now – it was almost as if he had never existed. And perhaps he never had for her. What had unlocked her emotions? Was it the stress of the past week? Or being in a different country? Whatever the reason it was unimportant. She was in a trance now except that it seemed the trance was reality and everything else mere shadows.

They walked in silence, the tension growing between them until it was an almost tangible thing. When it became too much to bear he pulled her into the shadow of a doorway, kissing her, running his hands the length of her back, and the tension exploded to a fury of desire. Without a word they turned back towards the hotel. She stood back, waiting, while he got the keys, and her whole body was on fire with longing.

‘Your room or mine?' he asked roughly.

‘Mine.' She rumbled her key into his hand.

He unlocked the door and the moment it closed after them they were in each other's arms. He began unfastening her blouse and simultaneously her fingers were busy with the buttons of his shirt.

Her breasts were bare, nipples thrusting at the thin silk. He freed them, burying his face in them, sliding her skin down over her hips. Her body arched towards his, aching with wanting him. Earlier she had dumped her wet clothes unceremoniously on the bed, now he swept them to the floor and turned back the covers, lifting her bodily and laying her down on the cool cotton sheet. She lay in an ecstasy of total abandon watching him undress and loving every line of his muscular body. She held out her arms and he came to her without preamble for they were already past the point where they could sustain the waiting a moment longer. For a brief agonising moment the suspense mounted to unbearable proportions, then he was in her and nothing in the world existed beyond the united movement of their charged bodies.

Too soon it was over. They lay entwined, skin damp with perspiration, Tom's hand still cupping her breast. She ran a hand down his long hard thigh muscle, enjoying the delicious languour of passion satisfied, glowing with an inner happiness she had never before experienced in the aftermath of love making.

I believe I love him! she thought and suddenly longed to say so, to whisper it into his shoulder and shout it to the world. But something held her back, some echo of her former self. The emotion was new and so was the desire to share it and she felt shy suddenly and oddly defensive. Better to cherish this moment and hug it to herself. Later there would be plenty of time to tell him how she felt.

The languour crept up her limbs; her eyelids felt heavy. She was almost, but not quite, asleep, when the telephone rang.

Startled she reached for it and heard the receptionist's voice, energetic Darwin as opposed to laid-back Sydney, with each sentence ending on a raised note.

‘Would Mr O'Neill be with you by any chance? There's a call for him from London and I've been ringing his room but there's no reply.'

‘Yes, he's here.' Harriet transferred the telephone to her other hand, holding it towards him. ‘Tom – it's for you.'

Instead of relieving her of the receiver he got up and reached for his slacks.

‘I'll take it in my own room.'

His businesslike manner was in such contrast to the intimacy of a few minutes before that she felt ridiculously hurt at the sudden exclusion. She watched him go out the door and lifted the receiver to her ear again to check that the call had been transferred. As she did so she heard the click of his extension being picked up but instead of her own line going dead she heard a girl's voice with a broad Cockney accent say: ‘Boss? It's Karen. Sorry if I interrupted something but you did say ring any time.'

‘That's right, I did. And you didn't really interrupt anything.'

‘Whew, thank goodness for that! When I realised you were in her room I thought I might have caught you at just the moment when she was going to spill the beans. After all, you did say you were going to try and catch her when her guard was down, didn't you? Is that what you were up to?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Hmm, trust you, boss, to manage to mix business with pleasure. Perhaps you don't need my info any more. Perhaps you've already found out everything you need to know from her …'

‘Karen,' Tom said sharply. ‘This is a long-distance call, very long distance, and it is charged by the minute. If you don't want your wages docked just get on and tell me what you've found out, OK?'

‘OK.' She sounded disgruntled. ‘ I've been checking on the movements of the Varna family at the time of the accident.' Her voice was eager; instinctively he knew she had unearthed something and the sixth sense that made him a good investigator began to jangle like the trip wire of a booby trap.

‘And?'

‘All very much as you'd expect. Except that …'

‘Yes?'

‘A couple of months after it was all over Sally, Paula's sister, went to Italy. She'd gone haring off to the States from her home in London when the news broke, taking her son with her, and moved in with the family. Then quite suddenly she buzzed off on her own. To Italy.'

‘Perhaps she wanted to see for herself the place her sister sailed from on that last fateful cruise.'

‘Perhaps. But Hugo didn't go – and she didn't take her son either. And she didn't go to Positano. From my investigations it appears she went to the Aeolie Islands. They're a group of small islands off the toe of Italy, north of Sicily.'

‘I know where they are,' Tom said a trifle impatiently. ‘They are where Aeolus, King of the Islands, gave Odysseus the bag of wind to speed him back across the sea to Ithaca.'

‘Pardon?' Karen said blankly.

‘Homer's
Odyssey
. Didn't you do it at school? Anyway, never mind your classical ignorance. It's Sally Varna I'm interested in, not Odysseus. Which island did she go to?'

‘I don't know,' Karen confessed. ‘I haven't been able to find out. But if she intended to have a holiday there she didn't stay long. A couple of days later she was on her way back to New York and a week or so later she was flying to London.'

‘Going home?'

‘Again, she didn't take her child, and again she was gone only a few days. In the six months following she went to London three times – all short visits.'

‘But she didn't go back to Italy, again?'

‘No, not as far as I can make out. I don't know if it means anything, boss, but I thought you ought to know.'

‘Thanks, Karen. Stick with it,' Tom said. There was a click and the line went dead.

Harriet sat with the telephone still at her ear, shocked into total immobility. She should not have listened to the conversation, of course. She should have replaced the receiver the moment he'd picked his up. But she was only glad she hadn't. No wonder he hadn't wanted to take the call here, lying in bed beside her! He had been using her and she had been too stupid to realise it. How could she have allowed herself to be taken in so completely? She'd thought, she'd really thought, that he had felt the way she did and there was something special between them, when all the time … What was the expression that dreadful girl had used? ‘Catch her with her guard down.' Well he was a convincing worker, not a doubt of it. And she had fallen for it like a naive school girl.

Suddenly Harriet was furiously angry. What a heel! She slammed down the receiver, pulled on her kimono and picked up Tom's shirt which was still lying on the floor where he had discarded it. She slammed out of her room and down the corridor to his, throwing the door open without knocking.

Tom had his back to the door, the fingers of one hand were splayed through his hair as if he were deep in thought. As she threw the door open he spun round, surprised. ‘ Harriet!'

‘Yes, Harriet,' she grated. ‘I've brought your shirt.'

‘What did you do that for? I was coming back …'

‘Oh you were, were you? To see if I could tell you where my aunt went just after the accident and why, I suppose. Well you needn't bother. I know nothing, Tom – nothing. From the start I've levelled with you. And fool that I was I thought you were levelling with me. But you weren't, were you? You were using me.'

‘Did you listen in to my phone call?' he accused.

‘Yes – and thank goodness I did! I never have realised that anyone could stoop so low …'

‘Harriet, for heaven's sake, it wasn't like that!'

‘No? Don't try to pretend, Tom. I'd heard what that girl said. You were trying to catch me when my guard was down. And you didn't contradict her. God, what a fool you must take me for! I'm only sorry your plan didn't work. It must have been a great disappointment to you after all the hard work you put in …' She broke off, trembling with fury and hurt.

‘Harriet, listen to me!'

‘I think I've listened enough, don't you?'

‘No!' He crossed the room to take her by the forearms. ‘You've got it all wrong.'

She shook herself free. ‘Tell that to your assistant. It seems she's got it wrong too.' She flung the shirt at him ‘I'm going to bed now. I suppose I'll see you in the morning. I still want to get to the bottom of this business whether you believe that or not. And in any case I suppose I'm still dependent on you to get back to Darwin. But don't ever –
ever
– try to make a fool of me again, Tom. Because I promise you, it won't work.'

She slammed out of the room. But it was only when her own door closed after her that the tears began – hot, angry tears that quickly became tears of hurt and regret for what might have been.

Tom swore as the door slammed shut after her, crossed to the small refrigerator equipped with miniatures of spirits and mineral water, and poured himself a whisky.

What a foul-up! Why the hell had he been careless enough to carry on a conversation with Karen without making sure he was not being listened to? An elementary mistake and one he'd made, no doubt, because his mind had not been on the job. Instead he had been thinking about Harriet and the way he felt about her.

It was a mistake he had never made before, letting personal considerations interfere with professionalism, and it was a measure of the way she had affected him that he had allowed it to happen now.

Well, thanks to his laxness she had heard the lot and understandably she was mad as hell. Not only did she know her aunt had been involved in some very suspicious comings and goings, she also believed his only motive in making love to her had been trying to trick her into revealing family secrets. He could hardly make up his mind which mattered most.