Walking in Darkness

The older man quickly said, ‘Mr Brougham, we’re security men sent down here by Senator Gowrie. He wanted us to bring this girl back with us.’

‘This guy manhandled me,’ Cathy said, touching her upper arms and wincing. ‘I’ve got the bruises to show for it!’

‘He did what?’ Paul said through his teeth, and suddenly there was danger in the air. Paul Brougham was a hard man, aggressive, if he needed to be – in fact you felt he could be violent.

‘Mrs Brougham’s upset, sir,’ the older security man hurriedly said, ‘She’s exaggerating –’

‘I’m not,’ Cathy interrupted. ‘He’s a liar, don’t listen to a word he says. He grabbed me and held me, and tried to railroad me into letting him take Sophie, and when I wouldn’t have it he pushed me down on the couch.’

Paul made a snarling noise in his throat, like a lion, his teeth bared. ‘You did, did you, you bastard?’ His hand flashed out and got the older man by the throat, shook him like a dog with a rag doll between its teeth. ‘You hit my wife, did you? Like hitting women, do you? They’re an easy target, aren’t they? Not like men.’

‘No, sir, really . . . I didn’t mean . . . I just . . .’ The security man couldn’t think fast enough and floundered helplessly. His face was drawn and afraid.

Cathy saw Sophie sagging at the knees and rushed to put an arm round her. ‘Sophie? Paul, help me get her back indoors. She’s as white as a ghost, and she’s in shock already, she was almost killed by another of their people out there.’ She pointed towards the village at the far end of the drive, beyond the high ironwork gates.

Paul let go of the man he was shaking, turned to stare down the drive. ‘What do you mean, almost killed?’

Cathy gabbled, her voice shaking. ‘A car tried to run her down outside, then I drove out of the gates, and the other car went into a skid and hit a tree and exploded and the driver was killed, she must have been killed outright, I hope to God she was, anyway . . . The car burned for ages, it was terrifying, I should think you could see it for miles, half the village was out there and –’

‘Who is this woman?’ Paul broke in to stop her high-pitched, shaking voice, frowning at her anxiously. ‘What the hell has been going on here?’

She was still supporting Sophie with one arm round her. ‘Help me get her indoors first.’

Paul nodded to his own security staff. ‘Take this lady into the house, will you? And be careful with her.’ He turned on the other men. ‘As for you – get off my land

, go back to London and tell the senator that he can talk to us himself when he comes down here tomorrow. And tell him I don’t take very kindly to his men manhandling my wife or busting into my home, pushing my staff around and laying down the law. Now get out of here before I really lose my temper.’

They scuttled away in a mixture of sullen resentment and relief at getting away from him. Paul watched them get back into their big American car; the engine flared, the lights came on, they reversed and drove off, their tyres screeching on the gravel and sending up a flurry of little stones.

Once they had driven out of the gates, which closed silently behind them, Paul went inside and found his wife with Sophie in the firelit room they had left earlier. Sophie was shuddering, sobbing silently, her body shaking with dry little sobs you saw but could not hear.

‘Go through the house, check that there’s nobody else in here, and check for bugs, too, in case they’ve managed to plant some,’ Paul told his men. ‘Check in here, first, Jock.’

One of them, a thin sandy-haired man with a bony face, pulled a box out of his overcoat and began moving quietly around the room, testing each corner of it for bugs. He had finished in a moment and walked back, shaking his head at Paul.

‘Clean.’

He left, and Paul closed the door, turning to watch his wife who was bending over Sophie, pulling a tartan rug over her shivering body.

‘Is she OK?’ he asked her.

‘Physically . . . I think so. But she’s badly shocked. She ought to go to bed.’

‘She’s not staying here, is she?’

‘She booked in at the Green Man.’ Cathy came over to him and Paul put his arm round her, protective, possessive, dropping a kiss on the top of her dark head. She leaned on him, sighing. Their bodies instinctively moved together, seeking each other’s warmth and reassurance.

‘Oh, I’m so glad you got here, I needed you – I was scared stiff when those men broke in here.’ She lifted her face and he kissed her curved pink mouth lingeringly. She put a hand to his cheek and stroked the hard angles of it, loving the faint prickling of his stubbled skin against her own. The way he looked always made her heart move with passion; he was so distinguished, every woman she knew fancied him and he was hers. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me, but I’m here now, darling, you can stop worrying,’ he said, smiling tenderly down at her. ‘Tell me what’s been going on.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper again, ‘And who on earth is she?’ He gestured with his head. Sophie was lying with closed eyes under the rug. Her too-rapid breathing had slowed; she seemed half-asleep.

‘Her name is Sophie Narodni. She claims she’s my sister.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’ Paul looked as if she had hit him with a brick and she knew how he felt because when Sophie first talked to her Cathy had felt just the same.

‘She isn’t, obviously, she has to be either mad or deluded, but I don’t believe she’s part of a dirty-tricks gang, although that is what Dad’s men said she was. I think she really believes her story. Maybe somebody has primed her, she’s being used by somebody a lot cleverer than she is, but, whatever the truth, someone has convinced Sophie that my father bought me from her mother, that I am her older sister, who was supposed to be dead, a girl called Anya.’

‘Anya?’ Paul repeated, hoarsely as if his throat was suddenly ash-dry.