The Stone Wife (18 page)

She looked up to where she had come from. Nobody was there yet. She was well placed to climb out of the dry dock and make a dash for her car.

Which was when she experienced a sensation of warmth on the back of her neck. She turned to look and felt hot breath on her cheek. Nathan Hazael had been standing right behind her. He must have been waiting there, watching her climb down. He grabbed her right wrist and twisted her arm violently up her back.

14

On the rear seat of Nathan’s limo, wedged between the crime baron and one of his bodyguards, her wrists tied behind her back, Ingeborg cursed herself for making such a disastrous start to her so-called undercover assignment. If Diamond or any of the others in CID could see her now she’d be mortified. She’d made the wrong call over and over. Her cover story of the photo-journalism was looking like a non-starter. Lee Li clearly wasn’t the single-minded wannabe she’d taken her for. There was a strong possibility she had been using Ingeborg as a distraction device rather than the other way round. Lee’s getaway down the rope ladder had fooled everyone. Yet it was Nathan who had been quickest to work out what was happening and ambush Ingeborg when she’d wrongly supposed he was still aboard ship with his two henchmen.

Humiliating.

However …

There was one thing on the plus side, even though she couldn’t take much credit for it: her objective had been to gain entry to Nathan’s house and it looked likely to happen. They were definitely driving in the direction of Leigh Woods. They had crossed the Avon on Brunel Way and looped northwards on the west side of the gorge, cruising at speed along deserted roads into millionaire country.

“Technically, this is abduction,” she said in as calm a voice as she could raise.

The minder on her right said, “Shut it.”

Nathan told her without a glance in her direction, “You don’t seriously expect to throw shit at me and walk away?”

“I’ve done nothing. I only met you an hour ago.”

“Don’t give me that. You and Lily pulled this off together.”

“If you’re talking about Lee Li, I only met
her
for the first time tonight.”

Nathan didn’t answer. But the reason Ingeborg was his prisoner was made clear. He now believed she and Lee had conspired against him. Lee had chosen this night to cut loose and because Ingeborg had used the same escape route, it was taken to be a joint arrangement.

She, too, lapsed into silence.

The hanging woods towering over the river on the Somerset side of the gorge rank high among the glories of the British landscape, making even Brunel’s suspension bridge look a modest structure. By night the blue-grey gap between plunging masses of black is decorated by the necklace-like lights of the bridge. From Rownham Hill the glow of the city on the opposite side confirmed to Ingeborg that she had correctly predicted the route. She was urging herself to be positive. Her earlier mistakes shouldn’t matter now she was being driven in style to Nathan’s mansion—even though her wrists were bound.

Near the top they took a right. The road map in her brain told her they were now heading towards North Road, a haven of affluence in an area known as Nightingale Valley, where many of the major properties were sited.

Sure enough, they reached a T-junction, turned left and travelled a short distance before braking in front of a substantial entrance between high stone walls. The driver pressed a remote. In silence the steel gate rolled aside.

A dog was barking nearby. Escaping from here wouldn’t be a breeze, Ingeborg noted as they started up a long drive. It wasn’t surprising Lee had chosen to decamp from the ship, rather than this penned-up place. Exactly what had prompted the escape bid was less certain. Things must have gone badly wrong for her to cut loose at this point. Nathan’s support of her career in pop had seemed to underwrite the relationship.

Well, he wasn’t Prince Charming, for sure.

Security lights blazed as they approached a tall, coal-black building with gothic features any director of horror movies would have sold his birthright to acquire.

Someone was awake at this hour of the morning and stepped forward to open the car door. He looked a clone for the other bodyguards.

Nathan stepped out without a word and made a gesture for Ingeborg to follow. She felt a cautionary hand on her shoulder from the heavy who had shared the back seat.

They passed through an arched doorway into a tiled entrance hall the size of a barn, with suits of armour displayed on the walls, along with shields, swords and lances. What message was that supposed to give out? An owner with delusions of grandeur? An interest in medieval history? Or a need to divert suspicion?

The collection of modern weapons would be stored somewhere less obvious, Ingeborg decided.

The doorman helped Nathan out of his coat. The pinstripe three-piece underneath definitely hadn’t been bought off the peg.

“Will the lady be in the guest room, sir?” the doorman enquired. Perhaps, on consideration, he was a butler.

“The tower room,” Nathan said.

“I need a bathroom first,” Ingeborg said.

“It’s en suite, madame,” Nathan said with mock servility. “Tonight you’re my guest.”

“Your prisoner, you mean.”

“Have it your way.” He turned to the bodyguard. “Search her. She’s got a phone in her pocket. I need that.”

It wasn’t pleasant being frisked, but the handling was workmanlike. The man didn’t make it an excuse for a grope.

Nathan was handed her iPhone. He pocketed it. “I’m going to get some sleep. We’ll talk later. You will, anyway.”

The hand on her shoulder tightened. She was steered across the hall and through a door. A stone staircase spiralled upwards. They were in the tower already.

“Move it,” the minder said.

“It would be easier if you untied my hands. I’m not going to take you on.”

The suggestion was ignored. She climbed two floors and waited while a door was unlocked and a dim light switched on.

“The penthouse suite?” she said, stepping inside. Her wit was lost on the bodyguard.

In this house they must have been used to unwelcome guests. The light was mounted on the wall in thick glass behind a steel grille. The furniture consisted of a wooden camp bed that looked a relic from the 1950s, with two thin brown blankets lying across the canvas slats. The en suite was a bucket with a lid and no other comforts. A cat might have squeezed through the narrow lancet windows, but no human would.

“Now do I get my hands untied?”

This small mercy was conceded without comment. The door slammed behind her and she heard it locked. At four thirty in the morning you don’t spend long fretting over accommodation, especially when there’s nobody to listen. In under ten minutes Ingeborg was out to the world.

When she woke, she didn’t need long to recall where she was. Judging the time of day was more difficult. Although it still seemed early she looked out of one of those niggardly windows and saw that the sun was high. It could have been noon already. Lack of illumination was why she was disorientated.

The camp bed had not been comfortable, but she’d had enough sleep to get her thoughts straight and ponder what might happen next. Nathan had said they would talk later, as if he expected to find out things. She hoped his questioning would be confined to Lee’s disappearance. She could handle a grilling about that. The danger was that he might suspect she wasn’t after all a journalist. From there it was a short step to discovering she was more interested in him than in Lee—in which case she would be exposed as either from the police or a rival gang.

The next hours would be a minefield.

She heard steps on the stairs not long after, and the door was unlocked and opened inch by inch. Greatly to Ingeborg’s surprise, a woman was standing there in a pink sweater and jeans. She looked about fifty, short and a bit overweight. She said in the Bristol accent, “I’m not alone, so please do exactly as I say. My name is Stella and I’m Mr. Hazael’s housekeeper. Follow me and you’ll get a chance to shower and freshen up. Then you’ll get coffee and whatever you want for lunch.”

Good call. Things could only get better now.

The same bodyguard from last night was standing to the right of the door, looking as meek as a muscleman can. Starting a fight didn’t feature at all in Ingeborg’s thoughts. A shower would be bliss.

At the bottom of the stairs they emerged from the tower, crossed the hall and entered a more furnished section of the house, a corridor carpeted in red, with wood panelling hung with ancient jousting shields. Nathan clearly had pretensions of grandeur, with his interest in weaponry extended to this archaic décor.

The bodyguard remained in tow as Stella the housekeeper led them into a lift at the end.

The doors parted a level higher in what was clearly a woman’s dressing room, with a wardrobe, dressing table and shower cabinet. A disquieting probability was put to rest when Stella instructed the bodyguard to go through to the bedroom and wait behind a screen. “I’ll tell you when to come out.”

To Ingeborg, she said, “Take your time. He’ll behave himself. You can wash your hair if you want. Everything you need is in there.”

The glass sides of the shower were part-frosted, but Ingeborg had no inhibitions about stripping. She was confident from Stella’s superior manner that she outranked the bodyguard in this household and God help him if he stepped out of line.

After such a wretched night, the soft spray on her skin couldn’t be bettered as a restorative. Expensive gels and hair treatments were ranged along a glass shelf. She showered
and shampooed and used the thick white towels from the heated rail outside.

“Help yourself to a change of underwear,” Stella told her. “It’s brand-new and top quality. I know, because I do the shopping for him. There’s a range of casual clothes in the wardrobe if you want. He likes his lady guests to feel pampered.”

Pampered? It was tempting to comment that a night in the tower room wasn’t pampering, but why complain to Stella, who was being helpful? White jeans and a black cashmere sweater were a comfortable fit. Feeling infinitely better outside and in, Ingeborg used the range of make-up at the dressing table and then declared herself ready to eat.

“Good. We’ll go down to the dining room.” Stella put her head round the door and told the henchman they were ready. He followed them tamely to the lift.

The dining room had a panoramic view across sunlit lawns to Leigh Valley woods. “Take a seat and don’t hesitate to tell them what you want and how it should be cooked,” Stella told her. “I must get to my other duties now. Enjoy your meal. If you want a tip from me, the savoury crêpes are to die for.”

“You’ve been kind.”

“It’s my job. I expect he’ll join you shortly.” The first unwelcome thing she’d heard this morning.

Places for two had been set at one end of a long polished wood table, so she did as she was asked and a waitress arrived at once to take her order. Nathan might be a barbarian, but he knew how to live.

Coffee and freshly made crêpes were served. A variety of fillings made the meal a delicious guessing game. She recognised spinach and ricotta and red pepper and tomato, and there were other combinations with shrimps and mushrooms that were harder to identify.

Then a less welcome side-dish appeared. “Are they looking after you?” Nathan’s voice came from somewhere behind her. A whiff of aftershave had crept in with him.

“I can’t fault the cooking,” she said evenly as he took the seat opposite. He was in a black silk robe decorated with dragons.
This guy didn’t underrate himself. “Is this the softening up process after the tower room treatment?”

“That was a security measure,” he said, eyeing her with that penetrating stare that recalled the mugshot. “The alternative was to put you in a guest room with a minder for company and you might not have appreciated that.”

“I don’t know why you want to put a guard on me. I’m not likely to run away.”

“Lily did, so why not you?” He raised a hand to stop her from answering. The waitress had appeared from the kitchen. “My usual,” he told her without making eye contact, “with a slice of liver.”

When they were alone again, he made a performance of offering Ingeborg more coffee. “So what do you think of my house?”

“I haven’t seen much of it,” she said.

“I’ll show you some more soon. I think you’ll be impressed. I’ve made a lot of changes since I bought the place. I’m modernising.”

“The bits I’ve seen don’t look modern.”

“It was owned by a baronet. Been in his family for centuries. He was the last of the line, saw out his days here and died a few weeks before his hundredth birthday. They put it up for sale full of all the crap he’d collected. It’s a good location and there’s plenty of ground with it, so I made an offer and bought it, house and effects. This was three years back. We had a massive auction on the lawn outside to get shot of the bloody effects. Two days it took. Marquee, dealers from all over. A lot of the stuff was antique and I came out of it pretty well.”

“Who did you use as auctioneers?”

“I don’t know. A Bristol firm, out of the yellow pages. Why do you ask?”

“I met an auctioneer recently called Doggart, but he was doing his stuff in Bath. They get about, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, I decided to hold on to the armour on the walls until I redecorated, so that
didn’t go into the sale. You know how it is. You plan to make changes and the years go by and you don’t. I’m getting round to it now, having it valued, and it turns out that some of the armour is very old. The trouble is, who wants to buy bloody suits of armour these days?”

“Can’t help you there,” Ingeborg said.

“The buyers take some finding, I can tell you, and it’s slow progress. I want a fair price. I’m not giving the stuff away. So that’s why the place hasn’t been given a makeover.”

Nathan’s eyes slid to the right, waiting for the waitress to leave the room. Then he stopped talking like a TV presenter on one of those house transformation shows and got round to more personal matters. “We can sort this out in a civilised way. I won’t deny Lily and I have the occasional spat, but I’ve never roughed her up. We always kiss and make up. Always. That’s what couples do, isn’t it?”