Their polite, prim voices made Sophie want to laugh hysterically. This was such a different world to the one she had been moving in over the last few days – outside in the night the dangerous animals prowled with bared fangs. In here, in this elegant room, people spoke with all the formality of dancers in a stately quadrille, showing no emotions, no fear or alarm. Death had no meaning for them; that car beyond the gates had never blazed and consumed the woman inside it.
The policeman turned to look at her, his eyes like round black currants, in his bony, weatherbeaten face, curious, but only with a calm, professional interest. ‘Good evening, miss. I’m told you both saw the accident – could I ask you a few questions?’
‘Sit down, Constable Hawkins,’ Cathy said with a friendly smile, and the man took a brocade-seated, upright chair, placed his peaked cap on a nearby occasional table, put his black-shod feet together primly and got a little black notebook and pen out of his jacket pocket.
‘Could I have your name first, please, miss?’
Half an hour later, the little police car drove back through the open gates of Arbory House. The gatekeeper stood on the doorstep waiting to close the gates, but still more engrossed in what was happening on his television, eating a sandwich with his head screwed round to stare into his living-room.
If he had been more alert he would have noticed the big, American car waiting in the shadows just to one side of the gates, he would have been in time to stop them suddenly shooting past the police car and vanishing up the drive a great deal faster than the five miles an hour requested on the signs at intervals along the way up to the house.
‘Oh, no! JC and his twelve disciples!’ the gatekeeper groaned, coming out to stare after the disappearing tail-lights. ‘That’s tore it.’
He ran back into the cottage and picked up the phone. ‘Nora, trouble,’ he puffed. ‘Tell madam those Yanks have got past me, they went in while Hawkins was going out, I couldn’t stop them, they might have mowed me down, the speed they were doing! You’d better warn her, though, and pronto. And tell her it isn’t my fault, nothing I could do.’
The housekeeper made a contemptuous, disbelieving snort and hung up to hurry off to break the news to her employer.
‘My husband should be here soon. You can tell him your far-fetched story,’ Cathy was telling Sophie as the housekeeper knocked on the door and entered without waiting.
Flushed, Nora began at once, ‘Madam, it seems the American security people have got past the gates and are on their way here. What do you want us to do? Should we let them in?’
Sophie’s intake of breath was audible, her face had filled with panic. ‘I knew it . . . I told you what they’d do . . . they’ve come to get me.’
‘They’ll have me to reckon with,’ Cathy said with all the natural confidence of someone who has been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, educated to rule, and filled with a cool belief in her own invincibility.
The heavy doorknocker thudded sharply outside in the hall. Sophie shrank back among the cushions of the couch.
‘Tell them to go away, don’t let them in,’ Cathy said, her chin up.
‘No! Don’t open the front door!’ Sophie pleaded, but the housekeeper was already obeying her mistress.
They heard her voice from across the hall. ‘Mrs Brougham wants you to leave imm . . . Stop! How dare you, come back here!’
The heavy front door crashed shut, there was a clatter of footsteps across the wood floor and two men loomed in the doorway. Cathy recognized their look rather than their faces; she had seen it all her life, those rapidly moving, all-seeing, emotionless eyes, the faces smooth-shaven, angular, the hair very short, close to the skull, the bodies fit and yet bulky, hard with muscle, and no doubt packing guns under their expensive tailoring, the dark suits, the heavy overcoats.
‘They pushed their way in, madam,’ said the housekeeper.
‘How dare you force your way into my house? I told you to wait until my husband arrived. He’s on his way here now, he’ll be here any minute.’ Cathy got between Sophie and the intruders, her manner immediately becoming arrogant, high-handed. It was what they understood from people like her and her father. She knew men like this, too; it was only power they respected, a power greater than their own, and she was certain she possessed it.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Brougham, but Senator Gowrie sent us to get this young woman without delay. I’m sure you understand our position.’
The older man of the two spoke in a civil voice, smiling insincerely, his thin mouth stretched like rubber which snapped back into its usual tight line as soon as he stopped smiling. Cathy glared, disliking him and his companion intensely, admitting for the first time how much she had always disliked having men like this around her and her home. They were always in the background, watching, waiting. She still had men like this around her now that she had married Paul, because although he was not a politician he was a very wealthy man with a lot of power in the media, and he needed protection too, he was always a potential target for crazy people with grievances, criminals and terrorists. OK, she knew that, she wasn’t stupid, she realized she had to put up with them, but she didn’t have to like these guys.
Her voice icy, she said, ‘I don’t believe my father told you to push your way into my home and throw your weight around!’
Softly he said, ‘Your father wants Miss Narodni taken back to London. He told us to come here and get her, at all costs, so that is what we are going to do. We don’t want to upset you, Mrs Brougham, but don’t waste your sympathy on her. I’m sure she talks a good story, that’s what she gets paid for, she’s a con artist, but the truth is she was sent over to Britain to cause trouble for your father. She’s part of a dirty-tricks brigade who’ve been following him around the States for quite a time, trying to discredit him with lies, anonymous phone calls and letters, the usual game. I’m sure you’re familiar with the techniques. You’ve been around politics all your life, you know the way it gets done. Anything she has told you is a lie.’
This was what Cathy had been telling herself, that Sophie was lying, that this wa
s just a con game, a dirty trick, to wreck her father’s chances of nomination – but somehow when this man said it aloud she didn’t believe it.
The other man had wandered behind the couch while Cathy was talking to his colleague. Before Cathy had time to realize what he was up to he was beside Sophie, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her up from the couch.
‘Come along, Miss Narodni!’ he said, forcing her arm up behind her back.
‘Leave her alone!’ Cathy said, her stomach twisting in a strange pain as she saw Sophie being hurt. At that instant she felt as if she shared Sophie’s pain and fear, as if they inhabited one body, their minds linked, too.
Instinctively she ran towards them and the older man caught at her shoulder with a hand that pulled her back and made her wince and gasp in shock. She had never been manhandled that way before; she couldn’t believe it was happening to her.