Crimson (64 page)

As Adam opened his bedroom door, Annabel felt revulsion and self-disgust. Standing aside to let her enter, he released his grip on her wrist. She smelled his erotic, country smell as she passed before him, and it made her nearly nauseous.

She watched Adam’s big black cat jump from the bed and run forward; he rubbed sinuously against Adam’s leg. Pitch was as wary and as independent as his master, and Adam was fond of Pitch, primarily because Pitch seemed determined not to b ‘e fond of Adam. Pitch might stretch out on the ocelot cover of Adam’s bed, but when Adam climbed into the bed, Pitch jumped off.

Outside, against a bleak, pale sky, the witch fingers of the trees in Cadogan Place bent beneath the weight of snow still on their branches. Adam drew the curtains. He said, “I won’t switch on the lights.” The firelight threw flickering shadows over his thin, taut face, making his dark eyebrows seem longer, more saturnine.

sat on an armchair and pulled Annabel to him until SM stood between his knees. His warm hands slowly travelled up her legs, over sheer black nylon.

Adam said, “You’re wearing tights!” it’s a very cold day.” Wearily Annabel thought that she must be the only woman in London not allowed to wear Oghts when it was snowing. But Adam liked to peel off lace bikinis, suspender belt, high-heeled shoes, and stockings, in that order. Sometimes he did not peel them all off.

“Naughty, naughty.” Adam unzipped Annabel’s black suede miniskirt. She felt his hands beneath her black skinny-rib sweater.

“Dear me, nothing at all,” he said. He pulled up her sweater, and when her face was hidden and her arms trapped, he licked her nipples.

When she was naked except for her black tights, Adam said, “Don’t move!” He stood up and walked towards the Georgian desk.

Annabel suddenly felt very frightened. Adam opened a drawer and produced a pair of scissors. He turned and said, “You’re shivering! Surely you can’t be cold with this roaring log fir eT “I’m … excited,” Annabel gulped. She found it difficult to breathe.

Adam returned, sat, and again pulled her to him.

“I told you never to wear tights. So I’m cutting these into stockings.” He hooked one finger over the waistband and drew it, towards him. The scissors flashed in the firelight. Adam pulled at each thigh and snipped until the jagged tights dangled down Annabel’s legs.

She felt him stroke her hair.

“You’re so silky,” he murmured.

“Some women are like an old saucepan scourer down there.” Adam never let a woman forget that she was not the only one.

Annabel felt him lick her: sick at heart, she felt her body melt, respond.

He looked up and whispered, “You’re very tense. Are you frighten ed?” “Yes,” Annabel breathed truthfully.

“I’m not surprised,” Adam said.

“You’ve disobeyed my orders. Don’t move.”

Again he moved towards the antique desk. And again Annabel felt terrified. Her heart seemed to leap up into the back of her mouth. She swallowed with difficulty. She held her breath. Was this some cat-and-mouse game?

Adam returned with a Victorian baby’s hairbrush, very soft and backed with ivory.

“First I’ll brush your bush, and then you can do it to me.” He stroked her pubic hair lightly, slowly, rhythmically.

“Adam … Can’t we just … go to bed?” Annabel had now faced the fact that bed was unavoidable and the sooner she got into it, the sooner she would be able to get out of it.

Adam put down the hairbrush and said, “Of course we’re going to bed. Turn around.”

Annabel did so. Adam stood up and pulled the pins from her elaborately dishevelled coiffure; he pushed both hands into the long fair strands at the base of her skull and started to shake her hair free.

He said, “Your neck is rigid. You’re very tense! What’s the mat terT “Nothing,” Annabel quavered.

“I’m just tired. I know it’s only three in the afternoon but that’s just how I feel.”

“I know what to do to women who are too tired.” He carried her to the bathroom, where he pulled off her shredded tights; together, they stood naked beneath the warm shower. He carefully soaped her body all over, watched her nipples harden. With difficulty, Annabel smiled at him.

Adam played the warm hand spray over each smooth and crevice of her body; then he wrapped her in a bkMowel and carried her to his bed. I. $A pretty picture,” he said, looking at Annabel’s plump white body on the ocelot bedspread.

He moved to one of the side tables; they were antique -Thai chests with elaborate silver locks, and upon each one, in -an eighteen-inch-high pewter holder, stood a huge, thick aubergine candle, which he now lit. Adam’s skilled lovemaking was never mechanical because he was genuinely interested in having a woman at his mercy hooked on him. He liked to manoeuvre his women partners into a sexual relationship in which they became increasingly subordinate to him in bed and eventually gave over to him total responsibility for their erotic response.

Unlike most men, Adam had developed his gift of imagination, and put it to use. Fantasy was an important part of his lovemaking because he saw that it excited women. He was adept at playing Rhett Butler, Lewis Carroll or Petruchio; master and slave girl, doctor and nurse, vicar and choir girl teacher and schoolgirl.

Adam was especially attractive to the woman who liked the fantasy of being ‘forced” to have sex with some authority figure: this exonerated her childish feelings of guilt and her wickedness for thinking sexy thoughts. When his partner eventually confided them, Adam always acted out her own fantasies, which aroused her even more.

Whatever their wishes, there were few women who did not stagger, dazed by pleasure, from Adam’s long bedroom.

Annabel, however, felt only cold apprehension as, lying on Adam’s bed, she watched him go back to the bathroom and return carrying thick white towels. She looked up at his well-muscled body, at the shadow of hair that ran from his neck to his thick penis, and she thought: Oh God, he’s going to give me a massage.

She wouldn’t be able to get away for at least another hour!

Adam picked up a cut-gld-ss bottle of baby oil; he warmed some in his hands.

It was warm and still in the bedroom. Annabel ‘listened to the soft strains of “The Swan of Tuonela’: Sibelius always made her feel as if she were in a cosy, dark hut, in the middle of a quiet, snowy forest, while hungry wolves howled faintly on a distant skyline.

She lay face down on the bed as Adam started to rub his oiled hands slowly over every inch of her body, movements that were firm but fluid, and never hurt.

Using the entire surface of his hands, keeping his fingers together, he blended each movement into the next. His stroking seemed one smooth and continuous motion as he moved silently from one part of her body to the next, always keeping to the same rhythm and pressure, always repeating each movement three times. Adam smoothed her body until it felt supple as satin. Annabel felt her eyes close and her thoughts drift-away. Slowly his hands travelled upward.

Then she felt his tongue on her spine, gently moving up it … down … and up again.

“Feel bet terT Adam’s voice caressed her as softly as his hands. Gently he pried her thighs apart and stroked them, first with his fingertips, then with his tongue. He turned her over. As his lips touched her breast, Annabel quivered with pleasure. She breathed, half panting now, as if she had been running.

As his head befit over her, she felt his warm breath just before his lips touched hers; she felt her own lips part before the moist, insistent tip of his tongue; she felt his tongue thrust deep into her mouth. Softly Annabel groaned. It was not only as if Adam were playing her Eke a fine violin but as if the entire Philharmonic string section “Vftying arpeggios over every ring inch of her qui ve the chords ascending, then descending, in rapid soccemion, without stop.

Adam knew so well the responses of her body, how to gradually excite her to frenzy, so that she neither knew Where she was, or with whom, nor cared who knew it or might observe them.

she groaned with pleasure, Annabel forgot that this j” had clawed and shredded her emotions, had sought to her family and might have succeeded. She knew only it the animal smell of his body, so close to hers, made her lose all grip on reason, and the hard force of that muscular weight against her softness made her forget everything but their swiftly rising passion. I How could I do this? Annabel thought fleetingly, and then she did.

Just after four o’clock, Miranda appeared at the offices of Owen and Fraser. The orange suit that she had worn to the EGM was very crumpled; she looked a little dazed and very happy: clearly, Angus had found New York educational, but Miranda was too pleased to feel jealous.

She was shown into a room with a large oval table in the centre, strewn with paper. Behind a pile of documents, Sam sat beside Richard Fraser.

“You’re late,” Sam said crossly.

“And so’s Annabel. It’s after four. God knows why the traffic comes to a standstill all over this island whenever it rains or snows! You’d have thought that by now they’d have all gotten used to the idea that this is normal British weather.”

“Sorry, Sam. Everything went as planned at my end.” Miranda smirked.

“Did Annabel find anything?”

“She found three notebooks in Adam’s desk. She left here at one o’clock to put them back where she found them.” Sam nodded towards the papers piled on the table.

“These are photostats.” He did not mention the envelope hidden in his jacket pocket.

With a smile, Richard Fraser said, “We’ve got what we need to prove your case.”

“What have you found

“The notebooks contain details of each financial transaction, as Grant moved the money from one bank account to another, until it became untraceable. They clearly show which bank account each sum of money eventually reached.” Sam added, “He seems to have five final bank accounts in which the money accumulates; they are referred to as accounts A, B, C, D, and E. Unfortunately, the notebooks don’t give the account numbers or addresses of the banks; they might all be in a single Swiss bank’ or scattered in five different places throughout the world. There’s no way of telling from the notebooks.”

“Of course,” Richard Fraser went on, “Grant could remember the names of the banks and their addresses: it’s not difficult to remember that your A account is in Bank Leu, Zurich. But he must have some record of the numbers of these five bank accounts, because without the correct number, you cannot have access to a numbered bank account.” Sam said, “So although we now have hard evidence to convict Adam of embezzlement, we can’t get the money back until we find where it is. So there’s still a missing bit to our puzzle.. Now we’ve got to look for a list of five numbers.” “I’m glad we can nail the bastard,” Miranda said.

“But I’m worried about Annabel. What could have happened to her?” “Her cab’s probably stuck in a traffic jam,” Sam grunted.

“But if you say she left here around one o’clock, she should have got to Cadogan Place by… two at the latest,” lkmdo.Valculated.

“So she should have been back here by ffi W matter how bad the traffic was.” 0” A.tl ?Aaybe someone was there,” Sam said.

“Maybe Adam turned up, and she hasn’t yet been able to put the stuff back,in the desk. She said once Adam yelled at her when he saw her open it.” 6.1 suppose we couldn’t telephone … T “If Adam’s not there, then we can. But if he’s there why would you be telephoning him, Miranda? Why would you telephone Annabel? And how could I know that Annabel’s the re?” “She might have phoned you.” Sam shook his head.

“By now that matron has reported back to Adam,” he said, assuming incorrectly.

“So he knows Clare and I took Elinor from the nursing home. We gave our real names and showed our passports. It’s clear ‘that we suspect dirty work. So I cart exactly telephone him for a friendly chatV “Annabel might have had an accident,” Miranda worried.

ou women blow a raindrop into a storm,” Sam said. “If I telephone the police, they’ll think I’m crazy. “My should have been back an hour ago so I thought I’d better report her as a missing person.”” Seeing dubious expression, he relented and picked up the telephone.

“Still, if she’s been in an accident, the police’ll know about it.” Richard Fraser said, “We’ve still got work here, Sam. Let Miranda call the police while we finish listing these documents.” Just after five-thirty, Fraser looked up from the boardroom table and said, “It looks as if most of the trust money has been transferred to these five accounts. There seems to be about seventeen per cent of the original sum left in the trust.”

“How did he manage to shift it? Miranda asked.

“Most of the money was sent to a Hong Kong firm of investment brokers, who deducted three per cent in various ways, then passed the remainder to bank accounts A, B, C, and D. Grant never sent further money to these brokers until the previous amount had been passed to the A, B, C, or D accounts: that’s one reason why it’s taken a long time to process the money.”

“Adam didn’t trust th em?” Miranda said.

“Why should he?” Fraser replied.

“The Hong Kong brokers take a commission of three per cent for legally laundering the money. I expect they’ll be able to produce “records” to account for every penny; on paper, it’ll look as though they’re mighty unlucky stockbrokers: either the firms they invest in go bankrupt, or the stock dives shortly after they’ve invested in it. Although not all the money passed to them has been lbst. They still hold some of it as a stockbroker easily might in the account referred to as E. I would guess that’s a genuine investment account, to give a little plausibility to their cover story.”

“The fraud squad should We interested in this Hong Kong outfit,” Sam said.

Fraser said laconically, “Probably nothing they can do about it because it’s outside UK jurisdiction. But I expect they can now pick up Grant.” He pulled over the telephone and dialled.

“Detective Inspector Piper? … The O’Dare case. I’m looking at clear evidence that you can smack him with. I’ll need a couple of days to get it in order and check it carefully, but by Monday morning I should have enough for you to act on … The photostats of his account books … Yes, all in Grant’s handwriting, according to Miss O’Dare … No, we haven’t any bank statements yet … I know you need to see that the money ends up in a bank statement in Grant’s name but in the meantime, surely you won’t let Grant leave the country? There’s certainlyAgh stuff, right in front of me, for you to ask him for q:” ljowith your inquiries … Okay, I’ll bring it straight over to you … Certainly, with one of the family to lodge the complaint.” “Come on, let’s go.” Sam stood up.