“Tommy Tune is quite tall,” Fiona had pointed out when Luxford said no, no, definitely not to a pair of tap shoes Leo had wanted for his birthday. “And Fred Astaire. Wasn’t he tall as well, darling?”
“That’s hardly the point,” Luxford had replied from behind clenched teeth. “For God’s sake, Leo isn’t going to be a dancer, and he’s not getting any tap shoes.”
So Leo had taken matters into his own hands. He superglued pennies to the toes and the heels of his best pair of shoes and tapped energetically on the tiles in the kitchen. Fiona had labelled this behaviour inventive. Luxford called it destructive and disobedient, and he gated Leo for two weeks as punishment. Not that being gated mattered to Leo. He sat contentedly in his room, reading his art books, caring for his finches, and rearranging his photographs of the dancers he admired.
“At least it’s modern dance,” Fiona pointed out. “It’s not as if he wants to study ballet.”
“Out of the question, and that’s my final word on it,” Luxford said, and he made certain that Baverstock School for Boys hadn’t added dancing—tap or otherwise—to its curriculum since he had been a pupil.
“We were going to have toasted teacakes,” Leo was saying. “Mummy and I. After the dentist. My mouth’s all numb, though, so I don’t expect I would have much enjoyed eating them. Does it look peculiar, Dad? My mouth? It feels quite odd.”
“It looks fine,” Luxford said. “I thought we’d have lunch. If you can miss another hour of school and if your mouth isn’t bothered.”
Leo grinned. “Wicked!” He squirmed round in his seat and reached for his seat belt. He said, “Mr. Potter wants me to sing a solo on Parents’ Day. He told me yesterday. Did Mummy tell you? It’s to be an alleluia.” He squirmed back into position. “It’s not an actual solo, I suppose, since the rest of the choir will sing as well, but there’s a part where I get to sing all alone for something like a whole minute. That counts as a solo, I expect. Doesn’t it?”
Luxford wanted to ask if there wasn’t something else his son could do for Parents’ Day, like build a science project or give a speech exhorting his fellow pupils into a political uprising. But he bit off the words and started the car, guiding it into the late morning traffic. He said, “I’ll look forward to hearing you,” and added mendaciously, “I always wanted to be in the choir at Baverstock. They have a fine one, but I couldn’t carry a tune. Whatever I sang always sounded like stones clattering round in a bucket.”
“Did you really?” Leo homed in on the lie with a disconcerting perspicacity also inherited from his mother. “That’s funny. I wouldn’t ever expect you to want to be in a choir, Dad.”
“Why not?” Luxford glanced at his son. Leo was delicately pressing his fingertips into his upper lip, curiously testing his mouth for its degree of numbness.
“I expect you could get your lip mashed up after the dentist and you wouldn’t even know it,” the boy said thoughtfully. “I expect you could chew it off and not know it either. Brilliant, that, isn’t it?” And then, again like his mother, that unexpected shifting of conversational gears so as to take the listener by surprise. “I expect you’d think it was rather sissy, being in a choir. Wouldn’t you, Dad?”
Luxford wasn’t to be sidetracked off the topic of his choice. He also wasn’t going to allow his son to turn the conversation into an analysis of the father. Fiona did enough of that. “Have I mentioned that Baverstock has a school canoe club? That’s something new since I was a pupil. They practise on the swimming pool—these are one-man canoes, by the way—and they make a yearly expedition to the Loire.” Was that a flicker of interest on Leo’s face? Luxford decided it was and went on. “It’s part of the C.C.F., the canoeing. They make their own canoes. And during the Easter holiday they have a week’s camp for adventure training. Climbing, parascending, shooting, camping, first aid. You know the sort of thing.”
Leo’s head lowered. His pullover had got rucked up by the seat belt. The buckle of his trouser belt was exposed, and he fingered this.
“You’re going to like it even more than you expect,” Luxford said, aiming for a tone that indicated his blithe assumption of Leo’s complete cooperation. He made the turn up Highgate Hill, heading for the high street. “Where shall we have lunch?”
Leo shrugged. Luxford could see his teeth chewing at his lip. He said, “Don’t do that, Leo. Not while it’s numb,” and Leo seemed to sink farther into his seat.
Since no suggestion was forthcoming from his son, Luxford chose randomly, sliding the Porsche into an available parking space near a trendy-looking cafe in Pond Square. He ushered Leo inside, ignoring the fact that his son’s usually light-hearted gait had altered to a heavy-hearted trudge. He squired him to a table, handed him a laminated ivory menu, and read the illuminated chalkboard aloud for the daily specials.
He said, “What’ll it be?”
Leo shrugged again. He set down the menu, rested his cheek in his palm, and kicked the heel of his shoe against the iron chair leg. He sighed and with his other hand he rotated the vase at the table’s centre and repositioned the sprig of white flowers and their accompanying greenery so that they could be viewed from every angle. He did this with apparent unconsciousness, a second-nature activity that raised his father’s hackles and destroyed his patience.
“Leo!” Luxford’s voice had completely lost its air of paternal bonhomie.
Leo hastily withdrew his fingers from the vase. He picked up the menu and made a show of studying it. “I was just wondering,” he said in a low voice, his chin drawn in to illustrate the fact that his wondering was a wondering wondered to himself.
“What?” Luxford demanded.
“Nothing.” The foot kicked at the chair leg again.
“I’m interested. What?”
Leo lifted his nose towards the flowers. “Why Mummy’s lunaria has smaller flowers than those.”
Luxford set his own menu down with painstaking diligence. He looked from the flowers—whose name he could not have uttered even under threat of death—to his maddening son. Baverstock School for Boys was called for, all right. And the sooner the better. Without it, in another year Leo’s eccentricities would be beyond remedy. How did he know the damn things he knew anyway? Fiona talked about them, true, but Luxford knew his wife didn’t sit Leo down and lecture to him on the marvels of botany any more than she encouraged him to devour art books or admire Fred Astaire. “Dennis, he’s beyond me,” she said more than once late at night long after Leo had gone to bed. “He’s his own person, and it’s a lovely person, so why are you trying to make him you?”
But Luxford wasn’t trying to make Leo into a miniature version of himself. He was just trying to make Leo into a miniature version of Leo the future adult. He didn’t want to think that this current Leo was a larval form of the Leo to come. The boy merely needed guidance, a firm hand, and a few years away at school.
When the waitress came for their order, Luxford chose the veal special. Leo gave a shudder, said, “That’s a baby cow, Dad,” and selected a cottage cheese and pineapple sandwich. “With chips,” he added, and told his father in a typical display of honesty, “They’re extra.”
“Fine,” Luxford said. They both ordered their drinks and when the waitress left them, they both stared at the lunaria that Leo had rearranged.
It was early for lunch, just before noon, so they had most of the restaurant to themselves. There were only two other occupied tables, and these were at the far end of the restaurant and sheltered by potted trees, so they had no means of true distraction. Which was just as well, Luxford decided, because they needed to have their talk.
He made the first foray. “Leo, I know you aren’t particularly happy about going to Baverstock. Your mother’s told me. But you must know I wouldn’t make a decision like this if I didn’t think it was for the best. It’s my own school. You know that. And it did wonders for me. It shaped me, gave me backbone, made me feel confident. It’ll do the same for you.”
Leo went the direction Fiona had predicted. His foot kicked rhythmically at the chair leg as he spoke. “Granddad didn’t go there. Uncle Jack didn’t go there.”
“Right. Quite. But I want more for you than either of them has.”
“What’s wrong with the shop? What’s wrong with the airport?”
It was an innocent enquiry made in a calm and innocent voice. But Luxford wasn’t about to engage in a discussion of his father’s appliance shop or his brother’s position in security at Heathrow. Leo would have liked that, since it would have directed the spotlight onto someone else and possibly caused a complete shift in the conversation if he played his cards right. But Leo wasn’t in charge at the moment.
“It’s a privilege to go to a school like Baverstock.”
“You always say privilege is bosh,” Leo pointed out.
“I don’t mean privilege that way. I mean that to be able to go to a school like Baverstock is something not to be turned from lightly, since any boy in his right mind would be happy to take your place.” Luxford watched his son toy with his knife and fork, balance the blade of the one between the tines of the other. He couldn’t have looked less impressed with the privilege his father was attempting to explain to him. Luxford went on. “The teaching’s top notch. And it’s up-to-date. You’ll work with computers. You’ll learn advanced science. They have a technical activities centre where you can build anything you’d like…a hovercraft, even, if you’ve a mind for it.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You’ll make dozens of friends, and within the year you’ll be enjoying it so much that you won’t even want to come home for half terms.”
“I’m too little,” Leo said.
“Don’t be absurd. You’re nearly twice the size of other boys your age, and by the time you get there in the autumn, you’ll be six inches taller than anyone else in your year. What is it you’re afraid of? Being bullied? Is that it?”
“I’m too little,” Leo insisted. He slumped in his chair and stared at the knife-and-fork sculpture he’d made.
“Leo, I’ve already pointed out that your size—”
“I’m only eight years old,” he said flatly. And he looked at his father with those highland-sky eyes of his—damn if he didn’t have Fiona’s eyes as well—brimming with tears.
“For God’s sake, don’t cry about it,” Luxford said. Which, of course, caused the floodgates to open. “Leo!” Luxford said his name in a tightened-jaw command. “For God’s sake. Leo!”
The boy lowered his head to the table. His shoulders shook.
“Stop it,” Luxford hissed. “Sit up. Right now.”
Leo tried to control himself but only ended up sobbing, “C…c…can’t. Daddy, c…can’t.”
The waitress chose this moment to arrive with their food. She said, “Should I…would you…is he…” and stood a hesitant three steps from the table with a plate in each hand and her face dissolving into an expression of sympathy. “Oh, the poor dear little one,” she said in a voice one would use to coo to a bird. “Can I get him something special?”
Some backbone, Luxford thought, which I doubt is on the menu. He said, “He’s all right. Leo, your lunch is here. Sit up.”
Leo raised his head. His face looked mottled like strawberry skin. His nose had begun to dribble. He heaved a breath. Luxford fished out his handkerchief and handed it to him. “Wipe,” he said. “And then eat.”
“Perhaps he’d like a nice sweet,” the waitress said. “Would you like that, luv?” And to Luxford in a lower voice, “What a beautiful face on him! He looks like one of them painted angels.”
“Thank you,” Luxford said, “but he has all he needs at the moment.”
But beyond the moment? Luxford didn’t know. He picked up his knife and fork and cut into the veal. Leo drew disconsolate squiggles of brown sauce across his network of chips. He set the bottle down and looked at his plate, his lips quivering. More tears were forecast.
Luxford said past the veal, which to his surprise was succulently cooked and absolutely delicious, innocent baby cow or not, “Eat your lunch, Leo.”
“Not hungry. My mouth feels peculiar.”
“Leo, I said eat.”
Leo snuffled and picked up a single chip from which he took a chipmunk-size bite that he proceeded to chew between his front teeth. Luxford forked up more veal, and he eyed his son. Leo took a second tiny bite from the chip and then a third that was even smaller. He had always been an artist at telegraphing defiance through an act of ostensible obedience. Luxford knew he could bully him into eating properly, but he didn’t want another round of public tears.
He said, “Leo.”
“I’m eating.” Leo picked up half of the sandwich and held it in such a way that a third of its cottage cheese and pineapple slid from between the slices of bread onto the tabletop. “Yuck,” he said.
“You’re behaving like a…” Luxford sought another word as he heard his wife’s reasonable voice say, “He’s behaving like a child because he is a child, Dennis. Why do you expect him to be what he can’t possibly be when he’s only eight years old? He certainly has no unreasonable expectations of you.”
With his fingers, Leo scooped up the cottage cheese and pineapple and let it plop onto the top of his chips. He took more brown sauce and poured it onto the mess. He stirred it with his index finger. He was trying to push his father, and Luxford knew it. He didn’t need a session with one of Fiona’s psychology books to tell him that. He also didn’t intend to be pushed.
He said, “I know you’re frightened about going away.” And when the lips began to quiver again, he went hastily on. “That’s normal, Leo. But it’s not as if Baverstock is that far away. You’ll be only eighty miles from home.” But he could see from the boy’s face that only eighty miles translated into the distance from the earth to Mars, with his mother on one planet and himself on another. Luxford knew that nothing he could possibly say was going to change the fact that when Leo went to Baverstock, Fiona wouldn’t be going with him. So he said in finality, “You’re going to have to trust me, son. Some things are for the best, and believe me this is one of them. Now eat your lunch.”
He gave his attention fully to his own lunch, his actions implying that their discussion was over. But it hadn’t gone as he’d intended and the single tear trailing down Leo’s cheek told him he’d made a botch of their encounter. He’d be hearing as much from Fiona tonight.
He sighed. His shoulders ached, a physical manifestation of everything he seemed to be carrying round at the moment. He had too much on his mind. He couldn’t deal simultaneously with Leo, with Fiona, with Sinclair Larnsey’s peripatetic roguery, with Eve, with whatever Rod Aronson was up to at work, with anonymous letters, with threatening phone calls, and most of all with what had happened to Charlotte.
He’d tried to dismiss the little girl from his mind and he’d succeeded in doing so for most of the morning, telling himself that it was upon Evelyn’s head that the sin of inaction would lie should anything happen to Charlotte. He was no part of her life—at the wish of her mother—and nothing he could do would make himself part of her life now. He was not responsible for what happened to the child. Except that he was. In the single but most profound manner, he was utterly responsible for Charlotte, and he knew it.
Last night he’d sat at his desk with his gaze on the telephone, saying, “Come on, Evelyn. Phone me. Come on,” until he could hold up the presses no longer. He had the story written. The names, the dates, and the places were there. All he needed was a phone call from her and the story would run on page one where her abductor wanted it and Charlotte would be released and returned to her home. But the phone call hadn’t come. The paper had run with the rent boy story on the front page. And now Luxford waited for the sky to fall in whatever way it might.
He tried to tell himself that the kidnapper would merely take the story to another paper, the Globe being the most logical choice. But the moment he had himself nea
rly convinced that it was only publicity the kidnapper wanted, publicity that could come from any source, he heard the voice at the other end of the telephone again. “I’ll kill her if you don’t run that story.” And he did not know which part of the message took precedence in the kidnapper’s mind: the threat to kill, the demand for the story itself, or the requirement that the story run in Luxford’s own paper.
In not running the story, he was calling a bluff that he had no right to call in the first place. The fact that Evelyn was doing the same did nothing to alleviate his anxiety. She’d made it clear at Harrods that she believed he was behind Charlotte’s disappearance and thinking that, she would call what she thought was his bluff indefinitely, secure in the knowledge that he’d never lift a hand to harm his own child.
There was only one solution that he could see. He had to alter Evelyn’s belief. He had to do battle with her entire pattern of thinking. He had to make her understand that he wasn’t the man she thought he was.
He hadn’t the vaguest idea how to go about it.
9
HELEN CLYDE COULDN’T RECALL where she had first heard the expression “pay dirt.” It had probably been part of the dialogue in one of the American detective programmes that she used to watch with her father during her formative years. Her father was nothing if not a devotee of the hardest of hard-boiled gumshoes. When he wasn’t engaged in one sort of financial wizardry or another, he was reading Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett to tide him over until the next Humphrey Bogart film was shown for the thousandth time on television. He preferred Humphrey Bogart to everyone else if he could get him. And on the desperate occasions when Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe were on assignment elsewhere from the BBC, Helen’s father made do with the pale counterfeits of more recent years. This is where “pay dirt” must have come from, a seed from the dialogue, planted in her mind during hours in front of those shifting images from the cathode-ray tube. The seed sprang to full flower during her morning’s efforts in the environs of Cross Keys Close in Marylebone. And pay dirt was what she triumphantly hit when she interviewed the inhabitant of Number 4.