Birdman

'I have no idea.'

'Don't be naive. He deals drugs, deals to Joni, that's why.'

'Oh, Jesus.' Caffery shook his head, frustrated. 'You know, don't you — Rebecca, you do know how serious this is?'

'Of course I know. Don't you think I've thought of nothing else?' She bit her lip. 'Gemini's got nothing to do with it.'

'OK, OK.' He rubbed his forehead. 'I think you're right. But the problem is I'm alone with that. Everyone who matters thinks Gemini looks pretty bloody choice right now. He's in trouble, Rebecca, genuine, no-fucking-around trouble.'

'It's not him. I don't know how you can even think—'

'I don't! I just told you — I don't think it's him!'

'Jesus.' She turned the handlebars away from him, suddenly subdued. 'There's no need to be shitty about it.'

'Rebecca — look.' He subsided, suddenly feeling foolish. 'I'm sorry. I just — I need some help here. I need someone to be straight with me, give me a break for a change.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' she murmured. 'We all need a break. And you're being paid to figure it out.'

'Rebecca—'

But she didn't look back. She pedalled away, the sweater slipping off one brown shoulder, leaving Caffery to stand in the middle of the pavement for several minutes, angry and confused, watching the exact point where she was swallowed by the city.

21

Lucilla Hartevelt, having failed to shift the medically recommended six stone, suffered a second MI in 1985. This one produced uncontrollable arrhythmias and was fatal within thirty minutes.

After the funeral Henrick came back to Greenwich with Toby and they walked together in the park. In the shadow of Henry Moore's Standing Figure, Henrick paused. He turned, unprompted, to his son and, quietly, in his rich, Gelderland accent, began to tell the story he'd kept to himself for nearly sixty years. She had been a Dutch nurse, he explained; he'd last seen her on Ginkel Heath, 20 September 1944. Later he was told she'd perished in the chaos of the Arnhem battle — along with the members of the South Stafford Brigade she was tending. He had continued to believe this until thirty-five years later, when she resurfaced — freshly widowed by a wealthy Belgian surgeon and working in an orphanage in Sulawesi.

Toby stared past Henrick as he spoke, down into the valley, where the pale pink colonnades of the Queen's house glowed like the inside of a shell. Slowly it was dawning on him that for most of his parents' marriage his father had been marking time.

A month after the conversation Henrick sold the Wiltshire estate, passed another £2 million to his son and moved to Indonesia.

With his father abroad and the new money, Toby slipped further out of the mainstream: he rarely went into the Sevenoaks office. Now the only time he put on a business suit was for committee meetings at St Dunstan's — the rest of the time he stopped shaving and dressed, as if on permanent vacation, in linen suits, expensive shirts — sleeves rolled up, espadrilles or calfskin shoes on bare feet. The opium, and later the cocaine and heroin, were doing their job; they blotted up his worst impulses, they tamped and quietened, leaving no evidence that they had harmed him physically. He was careful not to keep a large supply in Croom's Hill, using the lonely little Lewisham flat as a safe house. None of his contacts knew the address and he could visit, replenish his stocks incrementally.

For over a decade he maintained a shaky control of his life.

By the late Nineties, however, the parties had taken on a different hue, a new casualness. Now, along with the chilled glasses of Cristal and Stolichnaya, came cocaine served in willow-pattern Japanese miso bowls. Girls he had met in Mayfair clubs slouched against the walls, smoking St Moritz cigarettes and tugging at the hems of their miniskirts. He shopped closer to home too, using a discreet network of contacts to guide him to resource pools. Some of his acquaintances lingered on, but they were soon hopelessly outnumbered by the new breed of guest: the girls and their tag-alongs.

'This is wild, isn't it?' one said to Harteveld, who — seconds-fresh from a heroin hit — was lowering himself into the walnut highback in the library.

'I'm sorry?' He looked up, hazy. 'I beg your pardon?'

'I said it's wild, isn't it.' She was a tall, calm girl in her mid-twenties, fine-boned, with swinging chestnut hair and long supple legs. He had never seen her before. She was oddly out of place in her pared-down make-up, buttoned grey wool dress and low pumps.

Is she really one of the girls? Really?

'Yes,' he managed. 'Yes, I suppose, I suppose it is.'

'I've never seen anything like it. Apparently the guy who's throwing it shoots up for people if they want. Just go into the bathroom and he's there — oh — handing it out like candy. Even shoots it for you if you're going to be a baby about it.'

Harteveld stared at her in disbelief. 'Do you know who I am?'

'No. Should I?'

'My name is Toby Harteveld. This is my house.'

'Ah.' She smiled, unrattled. 'So you're Toby. Well, Toby, it's nice to meet you at last. You've got a lovely house. And that Patrick Heron on the landing — an original?'

'Indeed.'

'It's exquisite.'

'Thank you. Now—' With an effort he pushed himself out of the chair and held out a shaky hand. 'Regarding the heroin. I take it an invitation to partake would not be rejected?'

'No.' She shook her head, still smiling. 'Thanks, but I'm crap with drugs. I'd only throw up or something pathetic.'

'Very well. A schnapps perhaps? In the orangery. There's a, let me see, a Frida Kahlo in there. I believe you'd be interested.'

'A Frida Kahlo? You're joking, aren't you? Of course I'm interested.'

The orangery, piggy-backed onto the house, was chilly. Mango loops of light from the party fell on the potted trees, casting plush grey shadows on the stone floor. In here it smelled of plant food and cold earth, the voices of the guests were muffled. Harteveld scratched his arms, his thoughts meandering. Now why were they here? What was it he wanted?

The living blue of her veins. Toby, raised and frozen. Her hair soaked and smoothed away from her forehead.

The girl turned and looked up at him. 'Well?'

'I'm sorry?'

'The painting? Where is it?'

'The painting,' he echoed.

'Yes. The Kahlo?'

'Oh, that—' Harteveld scratched his stomach, looking down at her soft-edged face. 'No, I've got it wrong. It's not in the orangery. It's in the study.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake.' She turned to go but he gripped her arm.

'Look, there's something I need you to do. Usually—' His head was swarming. 'Usually I give two hundred, but with you I'd make it three.'

She gave him an incredulous look. 'I'm not on the game, you know. I came with my flatmate. That's all.'

'Come on!' he said, suddenly alarmed by her rejection. 'Four hundred, make it four. And I'm not hard work — all you have to do is keep still, that's all. I don't—'

'I said, I'm not working.'

'I don't take long.' He tightened his grip. 'If you keep very still I'm over in a few minutes. Come on—'

'I said no.' She shook her arm to loosen his fingers. 'Now let go or I'll scream.'

'Pleas—'

'NO!'

Harteveld, shocked by the new imperative in her voice, dropped her arm and took a step back. But the girl had been ignited, wasn't dropping it. She matched his movement, advancing on him, furious.

'I don't care' — she lashed out, catching him under the chin with clean, pink nails. Drawing blood — 'Who the fuck you are—'