The Stone Wife
- Автор: Ловси Питер
- Серия: Peter Diamond #14
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Sphere
- ISBN: 978-0-7515-5405-2
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «The Stone Wife». Краткое содержание книги:
‘Now do I get my hands untied?’
This small mercy was conceded without comment. The door slammed behind her and she heard it locked. At four thirty in the morning you don’t spend long fretting over accommodation, especially when there’s nobody to listen. In under ten minutes Ingeborg was out to the world.
When she woke, she didn’t need long to recall where she was. Judging the time of day was more difficult. Although it still seemed early she looked out of one of those niggardly windows and saw that the sun was high. It could have been noon already. Lack of illumination was why she was disorientated.
The camp bed had not been comfortable, but she’d had enough sleep to get her thoughts straight and ponder what might happen next. Nathan had said they would talk later, as if he expected to find out things. She hoped his questioning would be confined to Lee’s disappearance. She could handle a grilling about that. The danger was that he might suspect she wasn’t after all a journalist. From there it was a short step to discovering she was more interested in him than in Lee — in which case she would be exposed as either from the police or a rival gang.
The next hours would be a minefield.
She heard steps on the stairs not long after, and the door was unlocked and opened inch by inch. Greatly to Ingeborg’s surprise, a woman was standing there in a pink sweater and jeans. She looked about fifty, short and a bit overweight. She said in the Bristol accent, ‘I’m not alone, so please do exactly as I say. My name is Stella and I’m Mr. Hazael’s housekeeper. Follow me and you’ll get a chance to shower and freshen up. Then you’ll get coffee and whatever you want for lunch.’
Good call. Things could only get better now.
The same bodyguard from last night was standing to the right of the door, looking as meek as a muscleman can. Starting a fight didn’t feature at all in Ingeborg’s thoughts. A shower would be bliss.
At the bottom of the stairs they emerged from the tower, crossed the hall and entered a more furnished section of the house, a corridor carpeted in red, with wood panelling hung with ancient jousting shields. Nathan clearly had pretensions of grandeur, with his interest in weaponry extended to this archaic décor.
The bodyguard remained in tow as Stella the housekeeper led them into a lift at the end.
The doors parted a level higher in what was clearly a woman’s dressing room, with a wardrobe, dressing table and shower cabinet. A disquieting probability was put to rest when Stella instructed the bodyguard to go through to the bedroom and wait behind a screen. ‘I’ll tell you when to come out.’
To Ingeborg, she said, ‘Take your time. He’ll behave himself. You can wash your hair if you want. Everything you need is in there.’
The glass sides of the shower were part-frosted, but Ingeborg had no inhibitions about stripping. She was confident from Stella’s superior manner that she outranked the bodyguard in this household and God help him if he stepped out of line.
After such a wretched night, the soft spray on her skin couldn’t be bettered as a restorative. Expensive gels and hair treatments were ranged along a glass shelf. She showered and shampooed and used the thick white towels from the heated rail outside.
‘Help yourself to a change of underwear,’ Stella told her. ‘It’s brand-new and top quality. I know, because I do the shopping for him. There’s a range of casual clothes in the wardrobe if you want. He likes his lady guests to feel pampered.’
Pampered? It was tempting to comment that a night in the tower room wasn’t pampering, but why complain to Stella, who was being helpful? White jeans and a black cashmere sweater were a comfortable fit. Feeling infinitely better outside and in, Ingeborg used the range of make-up at the dressing table and then declared herself ready to eat.
‘Good. We’ll go down to the dining room.’ Stella put her head round the door and told the henchman they were ready. He followed them tamely to the lift.
The dining room had a panoramic view across sunlit lawns to Leigh Valley woods. ‘Take a seat and don’t hesitate to tell them what you want and how it should be cooked,’ Stella told her. ‘I must get to my other duties now. Enjoy your meal. If you want a tip from me, the savoury crêpes are to die for.’
‘You’ve been kind.’
‘It’s my job. I expect he’ll join you shortly.’ The first unwelcome thing she’d heard this morning.
Places for two had been set at one end of a long polished wood table, so she did as she was asked and a waitress arrived at once to take her order. Nathan might be a barbarian, but he knew how to live.
Coffee and freshly made crêpes were served. A variety of fillings made the meal a delicious guessing game. She recognised spinach and ricotta and red pepper and tomato, and there were other combinations with shrimps and mushrooms that were harder to identify.
Then a less welcome side-dish appeared. ‘Are they looking after you?’ Nathan’s voice came from somewhere behind her. A whiff of aftershave had crept in with him.
‘I can’t fault the cooking,’ she said evenly as he took the seat opposite. He was in a black silk robe decorated with dragons. This guy didn’t underrate himself. ‘Is this the softening up process after the tower room treatment?’
‘That was a security measure,’ he said, eyeing her with that penetrating stare that recalled the mugshot. ‘The alternative was to put you in a guest room with a minder for company and you might not have appreciated that.’
‘I don’t know why you want to put a guard on me. I’m not likely to run away.’
‘Lily did, so why not you?’ He raised a hand to stop her from answering. The waitress had appeared from the kitchen. ‘My usual,’ he told her without making eye contact, ‘with a slice of liver.’
When they were alone again, he made a performance of offering Ingeborg more coffee. ‘So what do you think of my house?’
‘I haven’t seen much of it,’ she said.
‘I’ll show you some more soon. I think you’ll be impressed. I’ve made a lot of changes since I bought the place. I’m modernising.’
‘The bits I’ve seen don’t look modern.’
‘It was owned by a baronet. Been in his family for centuries. He was the last of the line, saw out his days here and died a few weeks before his hundredth birthday. They put it up for sale full of all the crap he’d collected. It’s a good location and there’s plenty of ground with it, so I made an offer and bought it, house and effects. This was three years back. We had a massive auction on the lawn outside to get shot of the bloody effects. Two days it took. Marquee, dealers from all over. A lot of the stuff was antique and I came out of it pretty well.’
‘Who did you use as auctioneers?’
‘I don’t know. A Bristol firm, out of the yellow pages. Why do you ask?’
‘I met an auctioneer recently called Doggart, but he was doing his stuff in Bath. They get about, don’t they?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, I decided to hold on to the armour on the walls until I redecorated, so that didn’t go into the sale. You know how it is. You plan to make changes and the years go by and you don’t. I’m getting round to it now, having it valued, and it turns out that some of the armour is very old. The trouble is, who wants to buy bloody suits of armour these days?’
‘Can’t help you there,’ Ingeborg said.
‘The buyers take some finding, I can tell you, and it’s slow progress. I want a fair price. I’m not giving the stuff away. So that’s why the place hasn’t been given a makeover.’
Nathan’s eyes slid to the right, waiting for the waitress to leave the room. Then he stopped talking like a TV presenter on one of those house transformation shows and got round to more personal matters. ‘We can sort this out in a civilised way. I won’t deny Lily and I have the occasional spat, but I’ve never roughed her up. We always kiss and make up. Always. That’s what couples do, isn’t it?’