Creeping Ivy (27 page)

‘OK.’ He waved to the bartender and gave the order. Trish saw from the man’s expression that her chosen drink was appallingly old-fashioned. She should probably have ordered something like a Sea Breeze, unless that was already passé; but she’d never liked that sort of mixed drink.

‘Cheers,’ said Robert inappropriately. He looked shocked and as ill as the rest of them; unhappier, too, than she had ever seen him. His black Armani jacket exaggerated the yellowness of his skin, and his lips looked chewed as well as dry. He seemed to have lost weight, too.

Trish, who had been rehearsing her questions all the way from Southwark, found it hard to begin.

‘You said Nicky left you a note?’ she said eventually.

He nodded and scooped a handful of roasted almonds from a silver bowl on the bar, pouring them into his mouth. Three dropped into his lap. He brushed them on to the floor with enough vigour to hurt himself.

‘Saying what?’

‘Just that she’d been arrested,’ he mumbled through the half-chewed nuts. ‘It wasn’t sealed and I assumed Antonia’d read it and that’s why she’d buggered off. But when I rang the plods they said there’d been no sign of her. She hadn’t left any message with Maria – at least not as far as I could discover.’ His voice sounded irritable. ‘Why Antonia needs to employ a woman who only speaks Spanish, I’ve never been able to understand. It’s ludicrous. On a par with …’

‘With what, Robert?’

‘What? Oh, nothing. What is it you wanted to ask that she couldn’t hear?’

‘Ah,’ said Trish, wishing he had not remembered the pretext she had used to get him on his own. ‘It’s really to do with how Nicky behaved with Charlotte. I’ve been told you saw quite a lot of them together.’

‘Who told you that?’ His thin face was clawed with suspicion. Trish smiled as soothingly as possible. It had no noticeable effect.

‘I went to the playground to talk to some of the nannies there the day after I first met Nicky. Antonia’s been convinced all along that Nicky’s guilty, but I wasn’t so sure. I wanted to talk to someone who liked her.’ Trish smiled. ‘I hadn’t realised you’d qualify, or I’d have rung you days ago.’

Robert didn’t comment.

‘Anyway, the nannies told me that you quite often picked up Nicky and Charlotte from the playground in the afternoons,’ Trish went on, wondering whether she’d ever get him to say anything useful. ‘They seemed to think a lot of you, Robert, unlike most of the parents they talked about.’

‘So that’s it, is it?’ he said unpleasantly before tipping some more beer into his mouth. ‘I wondered what had made her do it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You passed that little titbit on to Antonia, I presume?’

‘I haven’t a clue what you mean, Robert. I haven’t seen Antonia since I was at the playground. She’s furious with me about something and doesn’t return my calls any more. Why should it make her angry to know you’d been there?’

The barman put Trish’s spritzer in front of her, and substituted a second bowl of nuts for the empty one. Trish thanked him and turned back to Robert, her eyebrows raised.

He shrugged. ‘It bugs her whenever I knock off work earlier than she can. And she loathes me fraternising with Charlotte, and she thinks I shouldn’t even talk to Nicky unless it’s to give her orders. Being friendly to “staff” makes them uppity in her book. Silly cow.’

‘Robert!’

‘Well, she is sometimes. You must know how she treats people she despises.’

‘I suppose so. But forget Antonia for the moment. Robert, there’s something I can’t understand.’

‘The brilliant Trish Maguire at a loss? Good God!’

‘Oh, stop it, Robert. Isn’t what’s happened to Charlotte bad enough to make you take at least that seriously? Must you fart about like a child all the time? It drives me bonkers.’

He looked at her, the wary malice and suspicion in his eyes joined by sheer surprise.

‘What’s got into you?’

‘I want to know what’s happened to Charlotte,’ she said through clenched teeth.

‘So do we all, Trish. What gives
you
the right to be so fucking holy about it?’

‘Sorry,’ she said, catching a hint of desperation in his voice. ‘It’s just that I don’t understand.’

‘What, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Why everyone keeps talking about this crisis you’ve got in the office. You seem to me to have all the time in the world: time to go to the playground, time to go swimming on Saturday morning, time to go home for lunch today … What’s going on, Robert?’

He hunched his shoulders.

‘You were too busy to stay with Antonia on Sunday, but—’

‘Hah!’

‘What does that mean, Robert?’

‘Do you really think I wouldn’t have stayed on Sunday, if Antonia had let me?’

‘What?’

‘My meeting was important all right, but I’d have stuck to Antonia like glue if she’d allowed it, whatever the cost at work. But you know what she’s like; she can’t bear being helped, or having anyone near her when she’s miserable. It makes life bloody difficult.’

Trish remembered that Antonia had told the police that she knew she and Robert would have quarrelled if she’d made him hang about waiting for news of Charlotte.

‘Perhaps I ought to apologise,’ she said slowly.

‘Good God! The great Trish Maguire apologising to me. Halleluja, Mary!’

‘Oh Robert, I wish you wouldn’t. But look, quite apart from the meeting on Sunday, if this crisis is so awful, why have you got so much spare time now? It doesn’t hang together. You must see that.’

‘So you suspect me of killing Lottie, too, do you? Christ! You women. I could’ve been Doctor Mengele from the way Antonia’s been treating me. Ever since the airport. And she’s been giving it to them. I’m sure it was her. There isn’t anyone else. And it’s just the sort of thing she would do.’

‘What is?’ asked Trish, wishing that he would talk in complete and sequential sentences. She assumed that his habit of cutting from one subject to another without finishing any of them must have something to do with the fractured, flashy techniques he used in his advertising campaigns. Accustomed to the rounded wordy sentences of the courts, she found his tricky style exasperating. ‘What has Antonia been doing?’

‘Giving the police all sorts of irrelevant facts about me,’ he answered much more clearly. ‘They’ve put it all together and added it to their own prejudices and turned me into Suspect Number One.’

Trish’s guts contracted in sympathy – and suspicion.

‘Hasn’t Antonia told you?’ asked Robert curiously.

‘No,’ said Trish. ‘She’s been incredibly loyal to you all along; hasn’t said a word against you that I’ve heard.’

‘You do surprise me.’

‘But if you’re Suspect Number One, why have they suddenly arrested Nicky?’

‘God knows,’ he said, his narrow face looking even more ratlike than usual. ‘They laid off me yesterday. I thought they’d seen the light. Now I’m not so sure. It’d be par for the course if they’d planted some evidence so they could get an excuse to bag Nicky and try to force her to say she saw me killing Lottie.’

‘Did she?’ asked Trish before she could stop herself. To her astonishment, Robert coughed and bent his head, putting his thumb and forefinger either side of his nose, almost as though he was trying to push back tears. It was absurd. Nothing she’d ever seen or heard of him could make her believe he was upset.

‘Robert? What is it?’

‘For Christ’s sake! Can’t you tell? Why is Nicky the only person bright enough to grasp the fact that I liked the little brat?’

‘Did you, Robert?’ Trish had noticed his use of the past tense and looked even more coldly on his performance. ‘Why?’

He looked up and blew his nose on a paper napkin from the bar. Trish thought she could see real tears and felt even more confused.

‘She had guts and she could be fun, great fun. She was the first kid of that age I’d ever known.’ He drank some more and then went on with almost idle antagonism: ‘You are a bitch, you know, Trish. I didn’t see it till now.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You tricked me into meeting you, didn’t you? You said you had things you couldn’t ask Antonia, but you just wanted to accuse me and see what happened. Even Antonia hasn’t gone quite that far. Yet.’

‘Robert …’

‘Or is she behind this little frolic of yours – is that it? Did she think the police plan with Nicky wasn’t going to work and decide that her precious, brilliant Trish might do better?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Trish said, working hard to hold on to her temper. ‘I told you, I haven’t spoken to Antonia today. And I haven’t accused you of anything. All I wanted to know was about your work crisis. It was you who raised the rest. I can’t think why you’re being so cagey about the office.’

For a while she thought he was going to refuse to say anything more as he signalled to the barman for another beer.

‘Oh, why not?’ he said, when he had drunk nearly half of it. ‘If it’ll get you off my back I might as well tell you. The news is going to ooze out soon anyway – the bank’ll see to that. And it doesn’t matter a toss compared to Lottie. We’re up shit creek, Trish. Our biggest account has been poached and the cash-flow’s been dire for the past six months. The bank’s given us until close of business on Friday to get another backer or a crunchy new client. There – satisfied?’

‘Couldn’t Antonia help?’

‘Rich though she is, Trish,’ he said in a patronising tone that set her teeth on edge, ‘she’s a minnow compared to the sharks circling about our pool. We have got pretty big in the last four years, as you’d know if you ever listened to anything anyone said to you. I distinctly remember telling you all about it nearly a year ago. You looked bored to buggery at the time, but I hadn’t realised you weren’t taking any of it in.’

Trish remembered both the occasion and her dislike of Robert’s remorseless insistence on informing everyone he met about his successes.

‘Anyway, I wouldn’t ask Antonia even if she wasn’t such a minnow.’

‘Although as a banker,’ said Trish, ‘she must be in a position to know of lots of potential backers you could have approached, isn’t she?’

He shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. For the first time Trish caught a hint of hard anger in his petulance. After a moment he swung round on the stool to wave his empty bottle at the bartender to ask for yet another beer. Fie stayed with his back to Trish. She could see how tense he was.

Oh no, she thought. He did ask for help and Antonia refused. No wonder the atmosphere in the house is so peculiar. And no wonder she’s been so suspicious of him. Does she think he took Charlotte out of revenge? Or to get a ransom that would pay off his bank? Is that what she’s afraid of?

Or is it worse? Are the police right about the paedophilia? They could be. Stress is one of the best-known triggers for child abuse. Is that what this crisis was for Robert? Did Nicky really believe she could have made the bruises Antonia saw on Charlotte’s arms, or was she trying to cover up for Robert?

Suddenly the questions that were rushing through Trish’s brain gave way to a clear memory of what Charlotte had said about her nightmares during the dinner party.

‘Did Charlotte ever talk to you about bad dreams?’

‘No,’ said Robert without turning to look at her.

‘Dreams about “huge wiggly worms”?’

He did shift a bit then, and glanced at her over his shoulder.

‘Worms?’ he said in a voice much higher than usual. The shrillness could have come from surprise, but Trish thought fear was more likely and struggled to keep a tight grip on her imagination.

‘Yes,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘Big, pink worms.’

He shook his head and looked back towards the bartender. Having given his order he swung back to face her.

‘You look awful, Trish. What is it?’

‘Nothing. Why? What?’

‘You’re white as a sheet and you look as though you might throw up.’

‘I do feel a bit weird,’ she admitted. She sipped her white wine and soda water, but it did not help. ‘It keeps happening whenever I think about Charlotte and what someone may have done to her.’

But it didn’t. Or not quite as badly as that. Not usually.

‘Not pregnant, are you, Trish? Is that it?’

‘What?’ she asked, angry at the idiotically irrelevant question. ‘No, of course I’m not.’

‘That’s what it sounds like. You look it, too. And if you keep feeling sick … Natural assumption. And the biological clock must be ticking away pretty loudly for you these days.’

That’s just the kind of tone the police took, thought Trish. So was it you, Robert, who briefed them about my past? Out of revenge for the way they’d been grilling you? Biological clock indeed!

‘You’d better get one of those test things from the chemist to find out before it’s too late to get an abortion.’

Trish glared at him, not prepared to dignify his various insults with a protest. He raised his eyebrows and looked as though he was prepared to enjoy himself.

‘You’re sure she never mentioned the worms?’ she said.

‘How many more times? I’m quite sure. She never talked to me about bad dreams of any kind.’

‘Well then, did Nicky ever mention the dreams? She knew all about them.’

He seemed surprised, completely unaware of her suspicions.

‘Look, at that dinner party of Antonia’s when I took Charlotte back up to bed, she asked me to search everything in the room, even through all her toys in case there were worms there. She said Nicky always checked to make sure there weren’t any before she turned the light out, but that Antonia hadn’t had time that night. It seems bizarre that neither of them should have mentioned it to you.’

‘Well, they didn’t. You’re on a wild-goose chase here, Trish. And a bloody silly one, too. Neither Lottie nor Nicky ever said a word to me, and one of them would have done if it was half as important as you seem to think. I’m off.’ He drained the remains of his third beer and slid off the tall stool.

Without making any attempt to pay for his drinks, he walked to the door with the stiff, strutting gait Trish had always assumed was supposed to make him seem taller than he was.

She watched him go, almost able to feel Charlotte’s hand curling round hers as her small breathy voice confided the terror of the huge wiggly pink worms. The possible significance of the words she had chosen seemed so obvious that Trish could not understand why she hadn’t seen it sooner. The thought that Charlotte might have been asking for help that night – help she did not get – was agonising.