A Place of Safety Read online

  There was no sign of anyone in the school courtyard, so Toby rested against the broad granite balustrade and stared out across the river at the Oxo Tower, trying to hold on to hope. He’d always thought of good as the opposite of evil before; now he knew goodness wasn’t enough. Only hope could keep you fighting.

  The stone felt like ice under his clasped hands. He pulled them back to stuff them in the pockets of his expensive coat and felt his teeth chattering as he shivered. That reminded him of Nepal, even though it had been fever then, not cold or fear, that had made his whole body shake.

  How could Peter have treated him with such gentleness then, fought so hard to keep him alive and wanting to live, and now do this to him? Had Peter nursed a grievance for eighteen years and been thinking of the cruellest possible revenge? Had he blamed Toby for his exile? Or had he thought Toby insufficiently grateful for everything that had been done for him?

  Voices, high and excited, broke into his misery. There were clattering feet too, and the heavy rhythmic slap of a kicked football. Dragging himself back into the present, he turned to look. Boys in the familiar uniform were pouring down the grandiose steps in a yellow-and-grey river. He stared, squinting, until he caught sight of Mer hopping down the steps beside another, even smaller, boy. Moments later he saw his brother Timothy, too. Thank God. Both of them were still safe.

  Toby turned east without trying to attract their attention and set off towards the gallery. His phone rang before he’d got as far as the pedestrian crossing all the boys used. The sound made him feel as though icy spikes were being driven into his spine. Even though the number on the screen was unfamiliar, he knew who was at the other end of the phone, just as he knew he had to answer.

  ‘Toby Fullwell,’ he said, trying to believe it could be an ordinary call from someone who didn’t matter, but knowing it wasn’t.

  ‘Nice to see Mer’s in such a good state, isn’t it?’ Ben’s sarcasm sharpened the spikes and dug them further into his spine. Toby’s hand clenched so hard on the phone he heard the plastic casing crack. He looked behind him, but there was no one there.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Ben said. ‘You won’t see me. But I can see you. I’ve been watching you as you mooned over the river. What did you think of the Bosch? I know you’ve just been to Goode & Floore’s.’

  ‘You bastard!’

  ‘There’s no need for that. Treat this as a business transaction and you’ll find it easier to keep your head. So, what did you think? We went to a lot of trouble to make it look right.’

  ‘It’s just about convincing enough for me to buy,’ Toby muttered.

  ‘Good. And you should sound a lot happier about that. Don’t forget it means you’ll have less to worry about. Not nothing, mind, but less. And your boys will be safe.’ Ben cut the connection.

  Toby looked all round, but he couldn’t see anyone obviously watching him. Of course, Ben’s heavies could be anywhere, hidden in one of the buildings or tracking their quarry from one of the hundreds of cars that were inching along the Embankment. A man on a motorbike, dressed all in black leather with vicious-looking studs, sneered at Toby from across the road. Was he one of them? Or the man who looked like a low-grade sales rep, picking his nose at the wheel of a red Vauxhall?

  It could be either, or any of a hundred others. There was no way of knowing. Toby felt as though he was living inside a net, ready to be hauled out of his real life at Ben’s whim. How was he ever going to get free? And how was he ever going to keep Mer and Tim safe if Ben was keeping this close a watch on them all?

  They’d have to leave London. There was no other way. Margaret would have to take them somewhere and hide them until this was over.

  Ten minutes later Toby was standing in front of her in the middle of the main gallery. His hand was stinging and Margaret was holding the side of her face. He knew he must have hit her, but he couldn’t remember doing it. He couldn’t remember anything since the moment he’d come in and found her here in front of the Fragonard, waiting to tell him that Henry Buxford had invited himself to lunch on Sunday.

  Her lips were moving now, pulled from one side to the other, although she wasn’t making any noise. She was obviously exploring the inside of her mouth with her tongue. Could she be tasting blood?

  ‘Have you gone mad, Toby?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Shock had wired his jaws together so that his voice was thin and hissy and his cheeks blew out like balloons with every syllable. He forced his teeth apart so that his mouth opened properly. ‘I’m only trying to make you understand that this is important.’

  ‘So is my life. And the boys’ education. Take them out of school and drive them up to your bloody mother’s? It’s only three weeks since half term. And they hate her as much as you do. You must have gone mad.’

  ‘Margaret.’ He stopped and breathed hard through his nose. Somehow he had to make her sense the urgency without giving her any clue to what was going on all round them. He knew he looked ridiculous, while she stood swaggeringly beautiful in front of him. Her flowery scent made her seem even more superior now that he smelled of fear all the time. He tried to straighten up and his vertebrae crunched. His face hurt. His back hurt. His sore hand twitched. Somewhere another phone was ringing, as though to remind him how close Ben must be. Not that he needed any reminding.

  ‘If you hit me again,’ Margaret said in a voice like a knife, ‘I will call the police.’

  He turned away, to face the Fragonard. He’d once loved the idea of the frothy woman kicking her legs on a swing. Now he hated her for her insouciance, just as he hated Margaret for her stubbornness.

  ‘Why can’t you ever listen?’ Toby said, trying to put some authority into his voice. ‘You have to take the boys to Scotland, Margaret. Today.’

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are to give me orders?’

  Hot tears were bubbling up round his eyeballs. He knew if he tried to speak they would leak out.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Her voice had softened, as though she might still care a little, but that made it harder to hold on.

  His lips felt stiff, as though they’d been sprayed with local anaesthetic. He licked them and forced some sound out of his throat: ‘Nothing. I told you, I want you and the boys out of London for the next two weeks. Scotland’s the obvious place. I’ll phone when you can come back.’

  Margaret looked as beady as she always did when she was deciding how to win her current argument. Toby had never been a target before. In the past her most effective insults had always been flung in his defence.

  ‘Is this about Jo?’ she said nastily. ‘Do you want everyone out of the house so you can screw her in peace?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘I’m not. When she first came to work for you, she wafted around the house, looking at you as if you were some kind of love god. And you enjoyed it.’ Margaret laughed with the kind of cruelty he hadn’t heard from anyone since the last time he’d been up to Scotland himself. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you. Not that I’m bothered. I know she won’t get much of a bang for her buck.’

  The ache between his shoulders sharpened. If he’d been able to tell her the truth about Ben, she might have softened. But he couldn’t. It would be far too dangerous. She might insist on standing up to Ben or going to the police or doing something equally fatal. He knew now that Ben could get to them at any time, so there was no way the police could keep them safe, even if they wanted to.

  Only getting her and the boys away from London would give him the slightest hope of protecting them. Even that might not work. But it was their only chance.

  ‘It’s just work, Margaret,’ he said, knowing he sounded feeble. ‘Far too much work. And I can’t get it done while you and the boys are here.’

  That might persuade her. She knew he had to satisfy the trustees if he were to keep his job and the flat. Oh, God! Henry. How could he sit through a whole meal with Henry cross-examining him all over again about the d
e Hooch and why he’d wanted five million pounds? Margaret would have to phone him back and say he couldn’t come.

  ‘Why not?’ she demanded, making his eyes hot and wet all over again. He swallowed hard.

  ‘Because I don’t want him here.’

  ‘Him? Who? You really are cracking up, Toby. We’re talking about your ludicrous conviction that the boys and I might stop you working. When has anyone ever stopped you doing anything you want? We never come down here or to your sacred basement without an invitation as it is.’

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ Toby said, feeling better now he had some justification for what he had to say. ‘Mer followed me down there again only yesterday, in spite of everything I’ve always said, getting in the way and putting his fingers in—’

  ‘Is that what all this is about? Poor Mer’s attempt to get a little fatherly attention after weeks of alternating blankness and snapping?’ The pupils in her toffee-like eyes grew smaller as she peered into his face. ‘Just exactly what have you got in the basement, Toby? Body parts? Or are you adding exciting signatures to second-rate canvases down there?’

  He grabbed her shoulders and started to shake her. He couldn’t see her any more, only the paintings turning into a bright kaleidoscope around them as his head rocked in time with hers. Her shoulders were dense under his hands, and her weight threw them both off balance.

  ‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.’ Mer’s voice battered at his ears.

  Toby’s hands tightened, then let go. His eyes cleared. He saw his younger son crying in the doorway. Margaret was wiping her face. She coughed and straightened her hair, moving round him as she tucked most of the thick dark-red curls behind her ears.

  ‘It’s all right, Mer. Daddy and I were just arguing. You go on up to Tim. I’ll be up in a moment. It’s not a problem. Run along.’

  Mer scuttled off.

  ‘I’ll take the boys away all right,’ Margaret said, slicing the edges off each syllable with a viciousness that made her seem almost as cruel as Ben. ‘But not to your bloody mother’s. Or to anywhere else you might think to look, so don’t even try to find us.’

  Nicky put a full mug of coffee down on Trish’s desk in the flat, asking: ‘D’you want a biscuit or anything to eat with that?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘OK.’ Nicky dragged over the spare chair and sat down, facing the desk. ‘I asked David about the fight on the way to school this morning. And I think you’re worrying unnecessarily. Stephen’s back in school and very proud of his stitches. The only thing scaring David now is that you might be so cross with him for getting a detention that you’ll let George persuade you to send him to boarding school.’

  ‘Oh, shit! I didn’t think he knew anything about that.’

  ‘David knows everything,’ Nicky said, sounding as though she pitied Trish for her delusions. ‘Haven’t you got on to that yet? He’s incredibly bright anyway, but he also watches everyone all the time, and listens to everything that’s said. He knows all about you and George and what George thinks about him living here.’

  Trish frowned, trying to remember the worst things George had said about him. There wasn’t anything she could do about that.

  ‘But I will find a way to make him see that I’ll never send him away,’ she said aloud.

  ‘That would help. It’s his biggest nightmare. Far worse than the body in the river.’

  ‘OK. By the way, Nicky, have you ever heard him mention a boy called Mer Fullwell?’

  ‘Often. David thinks he’s awful.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He hasn’t said. D’you want me to ask?’

  ‘Only if it crops up easily. I don’t want him worried by questions.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  Trish blew Nicky a kiss. ‘I couldn’t do it without you, you know.’

  ‘Good. I love it here,’ she said with even more warmth than usual. ‘And I love David. He’s the nicest boy I’ve ever looked after. Now shouldn’t you be in chambers?’

  ‘Slave-driver,’ Trish said. The insult made her think of Buxford and the questions she had rehearsed with such care. ‘I’ve got one phone call to make before I leave.’

  When Nicky had gone down the spiral stairs to sort out the mess in David’s room, Trish rang Buxford’s office, only to hear his secretary saying that he would be out of the office until Thursday. He’d given Trish his home number, too, although not a mobile, so she tried him there.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s away today,’ said a smooth female voice that sounded old enough to be his wife’s. ‘But he’ll be back at the weekend. Can I give him a message?’

  ‘Could you say that Trish Maguire called? I need to talk to him. He’s got all my numbers.’

  ‘I’ll make sure he gets the message. Goodbye.’

  Chapter 9

  Saturday was rugby day. The alarm brought Trish out of a tangle of duvet, gasping for breath. Choking, she grabbed a Kleenex from the box by her bed and blew her nose. She hated colds for the way they slowed down her brain. This one must have been incubating inside her all week.

  ‘You OK?’ George pushed himself up the bed.

  ‘Sorry to make such a noise,’ Trish said, blowing again and blinking to clear her sore eyes. ‘What a way to wake you up! I seem to have a cold. I hope you don’t get it.’

  ‘I don’t usually. But you’d better stay in bed today.’

  ‘No, I must get up. It’s rugby. David needs breakfast first.’

  George flopped back against the pillows. ‘Why did we decide to give Nicky Saturdays off? Remind me.’

  Trish laughed through the ache in her head and the blockage in her nose. ‘Because it gives us the chance to have Sundays in Fulham on our own. Maybe not this weekend, though. The least I can do is leave your house free of germs.’ She put one long bare leg out of bed. ‘Thank heavens for central heating.’

  ‘No, I meant it, Trish. Don’t get up. I’ll take him to rugby today.’ George was already on his feet and wrapping his scarlet towelling dressing gown round himself. ‘I’ll bring you breakfast in bed. LemSip or coffee? Or both?’

  ‘Oh, both, please. You are a saint.’

  ‘I know. I won’t kiss you because you’re disgusting when you have a cold.’

  ‘Such charm, George! You will be gentle with him on the way to rugby, won’t you? You know he’s having a rough time at school.’

  ‘What d’you think I’m going to do? Torture him?’ he said from the door. ‘I only told the boy not to play with his food.’

  That was a mistake, Trish told herself as she listened to him thump down the spiral staircase to call David.

  Nearly an hour later, when they’d gone, she had a bath instead of taking her usual quick morning shower. She usually avoided the waste of time involved in lolling in hot water, but this morning it was comforting. She leaned back, enjoying the coolness of the enamel against her neck and the steam sorting out her nose.

  The whole process had such a good effect that there seemed no point going back to bed. She filtered some more coffee and took it to her desk, wondering whether Buxford would ring today. She couldn’t keep the lines free just on the off chance, so she picked up the phone to make her usual Saturday morning call to her mother.

  ‘How’s Bernard?’ Trish asked, after they’d swapped the week’s news.

  ‘Fine, apart from the sciatica, which makes him rather bad tempered.’

  ‘Poor you,’ Trish said with real sympathy as she thought of George’s recent bouts of irritability.

  ‘Bernard’s the sufferer, Trish,’ Meg said firmly. ‘Not me. Now, how’s your brother?’

  ‘Oh, OK. Does the sciatica mean—?’

  ‘Trish.’ Meg’s voice was even more firm. ‘I know you don’t think I should be burdened with your anxieties about him, but your father and I had been divorced for decades by the time he had his affair with David’s mother. And even if we hadn’t been, it’s not the child’s fault. He’s the most important thing in y
our life at the moment. Don’t shut me out of that.’

  Throughout Trish’s childhood, Meg had always done everything she could to counteract the way Paddy had deserted them soon after Trish’s eighth birthday. It seemed amazingly generous of her to go on trying to make everything right, even now that her daughter was an adult and definitely ought to have been able to cope on her own.

  ‘Come on,’ Meg said. ‘What’s up? Tell me.’

  So Trish gave her a full account of the body in the river and David’s playground fight, got the usual dose of warm common sense in return and felt a lot better for it.

  ‘And don’t push him to talk,’ Meg added at the end. ‘If he’s anything like you were, that’ll make him even more stubbornly silent. You were always the original clam whenever there was something I particularly wanted to know.’

  Trish laughed, remembering her efforts to keep her worst misdemeanours to herself. ‘Now, when am I going to see you?’

  When they had eventually said goodbye, she dialled her father’s number. He wasn’t there, but his answering machine invited her to leave a message. Fighting the fury that would make him even less likely to pick up any of his responsibilities, she tried to make her voice sound reasonably friendly.

  ‘Paddy?’ she said. ‘Trish here. It seems ages since we met, and I miss you. What about coming round here for a drink sometime? Or dinner, maybe? David and I need to see you soon. Let me know. ’Bye.’

  It was ironic that she now had to be the suitor in their relationship. Was Paddy taking revenge for the years when she’d refused all his overtures? Or was it just that he still couldn’t handle the fact that he had a son he had never seen, by a woman he’d left even before he knew she was pregnant and who was now dead?

  Whatever it is, Trish thought, he’ll have to get over it.

  She poured herself more coffee to sharpen her mind in case Buxford called, but she couldn’t think what to do while she waited. The Times was spread all over one of the black sofas, showing plenty of signs of George’s touch. For someone who was so neat in the kitchen, he was extraordinarily heavy-handed with newspapers. Every page was crumpled and out of line with the rest. But he’d finished both the cryptic and the baby crosswords, in spite of everything he’d done for her and David. She couldn’t have done that in the time.