A Bed of Scorpions (11 page)

‘And we used them too. Most of the souvenirs have the most famous images, but it’s also good to have a few less well-known ones, for people like you.’ He looked at me mock severely over his spectacles. ‘For mugs or cards, we tend to go for fame, but sometimes there’s a piece where the subject matter suggests a use, just like the paper clip suggested a souvenir that would be used to clip things up. For Stevenson I wanted to use a piece with a book jacket in it to wrap around something book-shaped.’ He shrugged. ‘Not rocket science.’

‘No, and you’d think fairly uncontentious, especially as they hadn’t argued with the paper clips.’

He snorted. ‘It was never the Tate. The Tate was fine with the idea. Or as fine as they ever are, after they pick and fuss and meddle … Never mind, standard freelance complaining. But it wasn’t them. It was the estate that said no.’

‘That’s odd. You’d think that they’d want the
lesser-known
pieces to have a moment in the sun.’

Jim made a face.
Don’t ask me
, it said. So I didn’t, and changed the subject. ‘Did you go and see Lucy in the end?’

He could have been eighteen, he was so transparent. ‘I did what you suggested, went up and took her out for breakfast on Saturday morning. I think she was glad to get
out of the house for a while. She’s usually laid-back, but she was really stressed.’

She probably was. Sitting with Toby and her family and friends waiting for a funeral couldn’t be much fun. I made a mental note, I really had to go over and see Toby again.

The phone rang before I’d been back in the office for ten minutes. I was eating a salad at my desk as I went through my email, and I contemplated letting it go to voicemail. I looked at the caller ID. Helena. Even more reason, I thought. Then I was ashamed, so I picked up.

I had spoken to her the day before, telling her briefly about my accident, although I only said I’d been knocked off my bike, leaving out that it needed a trip to the hospital, and definitely not adding that Jake had decided an unknown crazy had decided to exterminate me. I know, I’m exaggerating, but he’d frightened me, so I’d decided to blame it on him. Anyway, I assumed Helena was ringing to check up on me. I can be so dim.

She didn’t trouble with a greeting. She rarely did. Her view was, she was busy, the person she was speaking to was busy, why waste time? ‘I’m going to Thomas and Stella Wynford’s for dinner tonight. I’ve asked them if I can bring you.’

I pulled the receiver away from my ear and stared at it accusingly. That was no help, so, ‘Why?’ I said in an anguished voice. I knew from long experience that saying no would make no difference. Hell, dying between now and dinnertime probably wouldn’t make a difference.

‘Since he left Merriam–Compton, Matt Holder has been working as a private curator for a hedge fund owner. He’s
a client of Tom’s, and he’ll be at the dinner they’re giving tonight. I thought it would be a good idea to see him.’

I’d completely forgotten her questions about Holder. It had sounded so tenuously connected to Frank’s death. Helena thought that anyone who had bested her at law was suspect, and I thought she was fixating. I still thought so.

‘If the police aren’t continuing with their enquiries, why would we do that?’ I bit my tongue. I’d said ‘we’. Now she knew that I knew that I was going to this bloody dinner.

‘The inquest hasn’t been held yet, so it’s not final. And all we’re doing is going to dinner at friends’.’

Last chance saloon. ‘I can’t go. My face looks like hell – it’s covered with scabs and raw.’ I’d played down the accident yesterday so she wouldn’t worry, but if it got me out of dinner with a bunch of lawyers, I’d be happy to tell her they’d had to amputate my nose and the stump wasn’t healed.

‘It can be a conversation opener.’

Fabulous. I hung up, my mind a jumble, zipping back and forth between trying to remember if my posh frock was clean and thinking up new and inventive ways to torture Helena. I also needed to let Jake know I wouldn’t be home for dinner. I picked up the phone. Then I put it down again. Did he know about Matt? Theoretically, there was no problem, case closed for him. But did I need to highlight a problem at the gallery, just in case? Finally I texted,
Going to dinner w Helena. See you after? Or tomoro?
When in doubt, prevaricate.

The Wynfords’ house was what you’d expect for a senior QC and his McKinsey consultant wife. Large, elegant, and neutral-toned, and with a sprinkling of good
contemporary art, everything the best that money could buy, but as personal as a five-star hotel, just with extra family photographs. I don’t know why I felt so hostile. They’d been friends of Helena’s for years, and her friends were usually people I liked, even if we didn’t have much in common. I valued her judgement.

But tonight it was as though everything was a personal insult: a bunch of rich, smooth people enjoying their rich, smooth lives. I wanted to bite someone.

Spencer Reichel appeared to be an excellent candidate to be the bite-ee. The hedge fund employer of Matt Holder was the opposite of the caricature of the City fat cat, being thin, stooped, and vague-looking. If I’d been told he taught geography in a secondary school and played the organ in church on Sundays that would have been entirely believable. Believable until I’d listened to him for two minutes, because he had the City fat cat essentials, and then some. He thought he was the smartest man in the room, and he had no time, nor desire, to listen to anyone else, particularly not women.

And, oh joy, I was seated next to him at dinner. He looked me up and down, as if to check I wouldn’t damage his expensive pinstriped suit by putting my nasty non-brand-label dress in close proximity. I gritted my teeth and gave my well-brought-up-girl smile. It’s not as if I hadn’t had practice making polite conversation with men who thought they were wonderful. There isn’t a woman on the planet who hasn’t. ‘Have you known the Wynfords long?’ Anodyne was definitely the way to go.

He barely bothered to look at me. ‘They have an early Hockney drawing I want.’

I was channelling middle-class manners so hard I nearly snapped ‘I want never gets’. I thought of telling him to take his elbow off the table while I was at it. Instead I substituted a mild, ‘I didn’t know they collected.’

He looked around their really beautiful dining room as if it had been a Travelodge. ‘I wouldn’t call them collectors.’

He began to expand. And expand. Truth to tell, I stopped listening after the fourth ‘I’. It was all about how clever he was, how he’d outsmarted somebody about something, or lots of somebodies about lots of somethings. It didn’t matter. I knew how to do this. I smiled and nodded and said, ‘No, really?’ intermittently, in an admiring little-pixie voice.

Then something went wrong. I don’t know what, because I wasn’t paying attention. Either a ‘No, really?’ was in the wrong place, or he’d realised I was off on the planet Zog communing with a more interesting life form, because all of a sudden he barked, ‘You fell off your cycle, I hear?’ It was presented as if it were a joke, but he was sneering, making me sound like a three-year-old who’d come off her trike. And if the patronising contempt in his voice weren’t enough, he actually held my chin with his hand, to get a better look.

I jerked back sharply. Helena was directly across the table from me, and her eyes signalled,
Do
not
throw anything at him
. There was no point, anyway, we were only on the first course, and the white wine wouldn’t make a permanent stain. I thought briefly about waiting for the red, and then I lost my head, and kicked him sharply on the shin.

I don’t know what came over me. I’m never physically
violent, but he’d pushed all my buttons. It looked like I’d pushed his too, because his face turned a deep purple.

His voice was terrifyingly calm, however. ‘How
dare
you. Do you know who I am?’

If he’d stopped after that first sentence it might have worked, because I didn’t quite know how I’d dared to kick a total stranger at a dinner party. But
Do you know who I am?
Come on.

I put my head to one side, the picture of someone giving a question deep consideration. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe if you were taller? Or shall I ask if anyone here recognises you? Somebody must know who you are.’ I bared my teeth. I don’t think even the most optimistic would have called it a smile.

He stared at me, speechless. Apparently no one had ever told him in so many words (all right, so many words and a good swift kick to back it up) that his behaviour was unacceptable. I let my smile die and we both, with the precision of a long-established synchronised dance team, turned our backs on each other and began to speak to the people on the other side.

I didn’t look at Helena. I knew that her social mask would be firmly in place, but my daughterly x-ray superpowers enabled me to see her eyes rolling to the heavens, wondering why with all her years of hard work, her training still hadn’t taken hold.

Tough.
No one should be trained to put up with behaviour like that,
was the message I stared back across the table. I didn’t unfurl a suffragette banner and sing the famous suffragettes’ song, but that was mostly because I hadn’t thought to bring a banner, and I didn’t know if
the suffragettes had had a song. I’d come better prepared next time.

The man I’d turned to made me half-hope that there would be a next time. As I took a steadying sip of my wine he smiled and said, ‘I’ll keep my hands on my cutlery, where you can see them at all times.’

‘I’m not armed, I promise.’ I couldn’t believe I’d behaved that badly, much less that everyone knew. ‘Did you really see me kick him?’

He looked at me pityingly. ‘
Everyone
saw you kick him. And,’ he smiled again, ‘as an officer of the court I am legally obliged to disclose that there isn’t a woman here who didn’t cheer you on. And more than half the men. So who are you, and why did Reichel want to intimidate you?’

That was interesting. I’d only thought Reichel was a prick. It hadn’t occurred to me he’d done it deliberately. My new friend watched me work it out, and nodded when he saw I’d got there.

I smiled, sincerely this time, and put out my hand. ‘Sam Clair,’ I said. ‘And you can put your fork down whenever you like. I’m not ready to go cold turkey yet, but I’m cutting back: one kick a night is my new limit.’

‘Alan Derbyshire,’ he replied, and we shook hands. He smiled with tired grey eyes that looked like nothing surprised him. At first glance there was nothing to make this man stand out in a crowd, but one look at those eyes and you’d quickly revise. In his way, he was as formidable as Reichel. But his power was contained, and he didn’t need to make a show of it. Maybe that made him more formidable.

I answered his last real comment. ‘I’m not sure why
he wanted to intimidate me. I’m sort of an add-on here. Helena’ – I nodded across the table – ‘is my mother, and I’m her date. She and the Wynfords are old friends.’

‘Helena and I are old friends too. I can’t imagine why she’s kept you hidden.’ He let his gaze drift down to where my feet would be under the table. ‘I’m a solicitor too, and we’ve occasionally worked together.’ He glanced down towards the end of the table, where a dark man sat quietly. I’d noticed him earlier, as he and I were the youngest people at the dinner by at least twenty years, if you didn’t count Reichel’s wife, who was in her twenties. And no one did count Reichel’s wife, including Reichel. And she’d always be in her twenties, because he’d trade her in for a new model each time she hit thirty. Some people have children, some people marry them.

‘The last time we were on opposite sides. That was my client.’

I refocused my attention on my neighbour, and on the young man he’d pointed out by not looking at him. ‘Who is he?’

‘I was advising him on a termination of employment, a non-disclosure agreement. Not very interesting.’

‘Matt Holder,’ I said. I knew Helena was a magician who waved her wand, and abracadabra, rabbits fell over themselves to jump out of her hat, but that she’d got me sitting between Holder’s lawyer and his current employer – even if I’d been foolish enough to declare open war on the latter – was pretty nifty rabbit-wrangling.

Derbyshire raised his eyebrows at my instant identification and I answered the unspoken question. ‘Aidan Merriam is a friend.’

He nodded. ‘It was nastier than it should have been, and the agreement was …’ he smiled in Helena’s direction ‘forceful. More than necessary. Especially as Holder moved straight over to Reichel. I assumed then, and now, that the job was already lined up.’

I was puzzled. Why would Holder’s solicitor be talking like this about his client? Even if Holder had only hired him once. Then I saw the flat, dead look he flicked over my shoulder, at Reichel. There was hostility there. ‘If he had a job lined up, why do you suppose he bothered? I don’t want to disparage the legal profession, of course …’

‘Of course.’ He smiled quietly, looking down demurely, like a cat. I suspected that for him that was the equivalent of a huge hyena laugh.

‘… but Helena said he’d never had a case to begin with, and to bring you in to advise on the settlement? The legal costs had to have been a killer for someone who had been working as a junior in a gallery.’

‘Makes you wonder who was paying for it, doesn’t it?’

I put down my cutlery and glanced slightly to my right before answering Derbyshire. ‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

I was quiet for the rest of the meal. Which was probably a relief to at least one of my dinner partners.

When I got home, Jake was sprawled across the sofa watching football. He rolled his head along the sofa back to say hello, but he didn’t lift it, although his glance paused consideringly when he saw I was dressed up. He patted the cushions beside him, but I shook my head. ‘Let me hang my clothes up first. I don’t want to have to iron.’

Back in jeans and a T-shirt, I recapped on my meeting
with Jim that morning, and then on the evening. I told him about Holder too. It didn’t seem to matter anymore, now the police were officially out of it.