Kit steered the big car around the turning circle, at the centre of which was a huge circular stone and bronze non-working fountain, covered in algae and verdigris, depicting Neptune arising with rippling muscles and a fish’s tail from a sea of starfish and leaping dolphins.
‘So Daisy grew up here?’ asked Rob as Kit turned off the engine.
‘Yep,’ said Kit.
‘Oh shit.’ Rob was transfixed.
The pieces were finally falling together: Daisy with her cut-glass accent and her impeccable manners, this place… He thanked God that he’d had the sense to pull back from her because, look at this. She’d grown up taking this for granted. What could he ever offer a girl like her? He’d been raised on a council estate, part of a big boisterous and not entirely honest family; it had taken him years of hard graft to work his way up to his present position: her mother’s minder – a fucking bodyguard and a head breaker. He was so far beneath her on the social scale, he was the bottom dregs of society while she was plainly an out-and-out nob.
No, he’d pulled out of all that in the nick of time. What could it ever have brought either of them but trouble?
Kit wasn’t noticing the house. Impressive as Brayfield was, his mind was on Michael, and what he could have been doing, phoning Vanessa Bray the day before his death.
When he’d called the number yesterday and she’d picked up, he’d been both surprised and bewildered. Michael and Vanessa surely had nothing in common, nothing to talk about. And when he’d questioned Vanessa about the call, she’d been evasive. His request to come and see her, talk about it, had been firmly rebuffed. But he’d persisted, and finally she’d agreed.
‘I can’t spare you much time,’ she’d said, her accent reminding him of Daisy. The elite tones of the Home Counties, frosty from Vanessa, full of warmth from Daisy.
‘That’s all right,’ he said.
‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning then.’
‘I’ll be there.’
She put the phone down.
Now here they were. They left the car and went up the front steps and pulled the bell. Way back in the house, the thing chimed and echoed.
Must be big as a fucking football pitch in there, thought Rob.
He half-expected some tailcoated flunkey to come to the door, saying, I’ll see if the mistress is at home to visitors. Or, The tradesman’s entrance is at the back of the house.
But no. There was a pause, and then Lady Bray herself opened the door. Small, weak-looking, with long greyhound features. Her hair was blonde, fading to grey, her deep-lidded eyes were a milky blue, and her lips were thin. She wore no make-up, and was dressed in old jeans and a workman’s shirt and black socks, no shoes. There was a hole in one, and her big toe was poking through, Kit noticed.
‘Oh! It’s you. Well… do come in,’ she said, seeming flustered that Kit had kept the appointment.
Kit and Rob followed Vanessa down a cavernous hallway and into a room that seemed to burst with vivid sunlight. All done out in faded golds and duck-egg blue, it had big French doors that led out to a terrace and beyond that to a huge garden. The doors were wide open to admit the first faint suggestions of the coming summer. Bees hummed near the doors, and fresh country air wafted in.
‘Do sit down,’ said Vanessa, and Kit and Rob sat like a pair of bookends on one threadbare and no doubt horrifically expensive tapestry-covered sofa. Vanessa sat opposite, on a small Victorian nursing chair covered in thinning cream velvet. ‘Well now,’ she began briskly, ‘as I told you on the phone, I know very little about any of this.’
Kit leaned forward, clasping his hands loosely between his knees, mirroring her posture.
‘I have no idea why Michael phoned you, Lady Bray,’ he said. ‘It might help if you can tell us anything about the conversation you had with him.’
‘Help what?’ she asked. ‘The man is dead.’
Kit drew a breath. ‘Michael was murdered, Lady Bray. And we’re trying to find out more about the events surrounding his murder.’
‘Surely that’s a matter for the authorities, for the police?’ she said.
She was stonewalling him. Kit could feel it. Could feel his irritation rising in response, too.
‘The police don’t seem too interested,’ said Rob.
Vanessa turned her head and stared at Rob as if surprised to see him there. ‘And why is that?’ she asked.
‘Michael… had a reputation,’ said Kit.
‘Cornelius always said he was a crook. But then Cornelius liked crooks. He was fascinated by them.’
Rob shot a look at Kit. Coming from Cornelius Bray, who’d strong-armed and shagged his way through the establishment to get himself a seat in the Lords, that was pretty damned rich.
‘And when crooks get themselves killed, I don’t suppose anyone is too surprised,’ said Vanessa.
‘Even crooks have people who care for them,’ said Kit.
‘And did you?’
‘What?’
‘Did you “care” for Michael Ward?’
‘Yes, I did. He was like a father to me. A real one.’
‘Then I am sincerely sorry for your loss,’ said Vanessa.
‘Can you tell me what you spoke about?’
‘You’re looking for revenge,’ said Vanessa.
‘I want to find out who killed him.’
‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know.’
Vanessa was silent, staring at Kit’s face. ‘You look very like your mother,’ she said. ‘You have that same physical look about you.’
She sneered the words. But Kit reminded himself that this was the woman whose husband had betrayed her, fathering both him and Daisy on the beauteous Ruby Darke. Of course that must have hurt weak, barren, useless Vanessa. Of course she must be bitter.
‘What did you talk about that day?’ he asked. ‘Please tell me.’
‘He phoned to see how I was,’ said Vanessa. ‘I was quite impressed by that, actually. That he made the effort to enquire.’
‘Because you’d lost your husband not too long before?’
‘Because of that, yes. It was considerate of him, I thought.’
‘And that’s all?’ asked Rob.
Vanessa turned her hands up. ‘What other reason could there possibly be?’
‘They’re gone then,’ said Ivan, Vanessa’s gardener, coming to the French doors ten minutes later.
Vanessa smiled at him – small, whip-thin, red-bearded Ivan. He’d been with her for years and she was very fond of him. Fonder, truth be told, than she had ever been of big handsome blond Cornelius, her husband.
‘Yes – they’re gone.’
‘And they believed what you said?’
‘They seemed to.’
‘Good.’ He paused. ‘So… do you think they’ll come back?’
‘No. Why should they?’
67
Tito dropped Gabe off at his parents’ house, where he still lived.
‘You keep this quiet, yes?’ said Tito, giving him one last icy glinting glance. ‘This is never mentioned, capisce?’
Gabriel nodded. He went indoors, into his father’s house, and his mother Sheila was out somewhere, he didn’t know where but he was glad because he knew she would see something was wrong the instant she laid eyes on him.
The first thing he did was take a bath. Try to wash the whole horrible episode off. He scrubbed at his skin with a nail brush until it was a vivid, angry pink, scrubbing harder and harder, more and more desperately, but it was no good, still he could see it, could see Tito doing it, and the little girl at first silent – and wasn’t there a word for that, wasn’t it catatonic? – and then smiling up at him so trustingly. Finally he sat there in the bath and just cried. He’d always thought of himself as tough, a bit of a handful, but Christ he was nothing compared to Tito. Tito was a fucking psycho.