‘Not exactly priceless,’ Kaz corrected. ‘But worth quite a bit. I have a stack of exercise books. Oliver did them for me, when I was a kid. I was supposed to copy them.’ She flinched. ‘I’ve had one or two of them mounted. They’ve come in handy.’
‘Why did you bring it with you today?’
‘Instinct? We knew he might have information. From what I remembered of him, it seemed the sketch might be what would
shake it free. It worked.’ She gave him a wry look. ‘Sorry if I stole your thunder.’ Devlin made a doesn’t-matter gesture.
What mattered more was the shade of warmth creeping back
into her face. There was a tiny, beautiful frown between her eyebrows. ‘What did you mean, that Pugh was lucky?’
‘He’s still breathing.’ He watched her eyes go big, eyelids fluttering. Those long lashes got him, every time.
‘Should we have warned him?’
‘Maybe.’ He wasn’t going to lie, but he wasn’t that troubled over Pugh. ‘I don’t think he’s much at risk now. If he’d been seen as a threat he would already be dead. Luce is gone and it’s only us that can put any kind of story together that would incriminate your father. Oliver either forgot that he told him, or banked on the connection being too slim to worry about.’
‘Didn’t bargain on you, did he?’
‘Few people do,’ Devlin agreed dryly. ‘It’s your call, Kaz. We
can
let this go.’
‘No.’ Her voice was very soft. ‘And it isn’t vengeance. At least, I don’t think so. Well, maybe a little.’ She gave him another hesitant smile, holding up her finger and thumb to indicate a small amount. ‘It’s
… retribution? Oliver did all this and he still lost Jamie. I want to see his face. See that knowledge. How must it have felt? I want to
see
it.’
‘Looks like first we have to find him.’
‘You can do that.’ Her utter confidence stole his breath, and chilled his gut. Dark side of the moon.
‘Suzanne will help. That’s why we have to tell her everything.’
Kaz washed her hands in the tiny bowl, swaying with the movement of the train. She looked at herself critically in the mirror over the sink, then got out her blusher and glided a healthy dab over her cheeks. Better.
She stood for a moment, staring. Her father had never been big in her life – as a great man, yes, but not in the way a
father
should be. Now she didn’t even have that. But now she didn’t have to struggle either, to try to reach him. To
earn
his love. The relief was small, crowded with pain, but it would grow.
He’d wanted Jamie, but her mother had simply been a cipher, easily blanked off the canvas. No more than a vessel for the Kessel gift. Did that hurt more than the missed birthday parties and the inappropriate gifts of her childhood?
She shook out her hair, and stared herself down in the mirror. None of it mattered now. She would live with the hurt and learn to cope; that was what living was all about.
But first she would look in her father’s face and tell him that she
knew
. Knew what he had done. Then she would walk away, for the last time.
Closure.
And the beginning of the rest of her life?
Chapter Forty-Two
It wasn’t just the need for Suzanne’s help, Devlin realised, as he listened to Kaz laying out the evidence for her mother. It was something else there, too. A kind of hunger. For confirmation?
The man who fathered me is this much of a monster?
At some time during the train journey he’d picked up a sense of peace in Kaz, and been grateful for it. But a whole lifetime’s mind set wasn’t going to change that fast. Kaz still had a way to go.
Suzanne stayed quiet through Kaz’s careful explanation. So quiet that Devlin wasn’t sure that she was taking any of it in. When her daughter ended, with that morning’s visit to Pugh, there was a complete, pithy silence. Outside in the street a car stopped. Doors slammed, people called their goodbyes. Devlin could almost feel Kaz holding her breath.
‘Oh, darling.’ Suzanne spoke at last. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She stood, opening her arms, and Kaz went into them.
Devlin looked away, an unfamiliar weight in his chest. His arm, and all the other bruises, were aching. He’d been hit a lot harder than this, but his body didn’t cope so well any more. Not just his body. His bloody soul, too. Assuming he had one. Couldn’t take the punishment.
He rose, looking around Suzanne’s compact, cosy sitting room. There were books and papers, ornaments and pictures. Home, family, all that stuff. Over the mantle three small frames hung in a row. An exquisite series of studies of a child’s hand. Olivier Kessel’s work. And his daughter the model? The sight griped Devlin’s stomach. He was never going to be able to look at a Kessel canvas again without seeing blood.
A movement behind him made him turn.
‘This man, Luce, he murdered my brother?’ Suzanne’s grey eyes quizzed him. Her face was much thinner. She looked fine-boned and bleak, like a woman staring at a field of ice. She was waiting for his answer. He swallowed.
‘Yes, he did.’
She considered for a moment. ‘Then I believe I owe you a debt.’ She raised her hand to stop him speaking. He hadn’t been about to. Didn’t know what he could say. He’d never had a woman thanking him for
… doing what he did. The whole world was coming apart at the fucking seams and his chest was tighter than ever. Suzanne inclined her head, like a queen accepting some sort of unspoken acknowledgement. Some of the pressure in his chest eased. She moved her gaze over to her daughter. ‘You want to know whether Oliver is capable of this?’ She cut to the heart of it. Unerringly. He watched Kaz’s mouth tremble as she nodded.
Suzanne’s face didn’t alter. ‘I’m afraid the answer is yes. Perfectly capable. There were incidents
…
’ She stroked Kaz’s hair ‘I did my best to keep them from you, darling. Your father
…’ She shook her head, swallowing. ‘What do you need from me?’
Devlin moved over and hooked Kaz into his good arm. Sooner he got rid of the cast, the happier he was going to be. But a lot of other stuff would be happening before then. Suzanne was looking at him, with what he hoped was approval, as he backed her daughter over to the couch, to sit beside him.
‘We need to know where we might find him.’
‘At the château. If he’s not there, then I don’t know where. The last time I spoke to him was August last year. He was here in London, at his lawyer’s office.’ Suzanne’s mouth curved. There wasn’t a lot of humour in it. ‘He was a tad annoyed with me, because I’d sold a small oil. It still irritates him when I dispose of his work without telling him first.’ She looked speculatively at the pictures over the mantle. ‘Maybe I’ll just burn the lot. When you find him, you can give him the ashes.’
‘Mum!’ Kaz stirred against Devlin shoulder.
‘It would be fitting. All Oliver has ever respected is his work. Respect is the wrong word,’ Suzanne corrected herself. ‘The work is his obsession. Everything else
–’ She made an abrupt, expressive gesture.
Devlin was calculating. ‘If he was here last August, then he hadn’t dropped out of sight totally. Would you be able to get anything from the lawyer?’
‘Doubt it, but I will try. Kaz, darling.’ Suzanne reached out and touched her daughter’s hand. Devlin looked down at her strained face, and felt his bones constrict. He should have known, but he hadn’t got the hang of this emotional stuff yet. Kaz’s whole world view was shifting. She was
composed on the outside, but underneath? What did he know?
All he was thinking of was how to find her father.
But then that’s what you do. She wants that, and you want to give it to her. You hunt, you bring back the kill, you lay it at her feet. Job done. Just like men have been doing for centuries. But there’s other stuff. Stuff
you
have to
learn
. Shit.
He eased round, adjusting his hold. Kaz’s attention was on her mother. She was the one with the information. His job here was physical comfort. Relief flickered through him. That he could do. Kaz’s arm was across his lap, hand clenched over the cast. From the look of her grip, if his wrist hadn’t already been broken she was having a damn good try at it. Anything of his she wanted to squeeze, it was fine by him.
We live to serve.
He shook himself away from inappropriate thoughts and back to what was going on in the room. Kaz’s muscles were taut, to the point of quivering. He ran his hand up her spine, rubbed. Felt the tension give a little.
‘You
… when I was growing up, after you’d left him
… you never stopped him from seeing me, when he wanted to.’ The tension spasmed again. ‘You didn’t come between us. We were father and daughter, as much as Oliver was capable of that. I accepted what he was prepared to give. He was
… is
… a great man.’ There was the tiniest shade of accusation in her voice, but mostly she sounded
… lost. ‘I think you need to tell me. Why did you leave him? It wasn’t about the Russian countess, was it?’
‘No.’ Suzanne sighed the word. ‘She came later. After I’d left. I used her as an excuse. I didn’t want to tell you the real reason.’ Suzanne shifted her position in the high-backed chair.
Another woman protecting Oliver Kessel’s sodding reputation, Devlin thought, as he watched.
‘I’d been getting bored and restless for a while, unhappy with the way Oliver lived. The château – most of the time it was like a zoo.’ Suzanne smiled again, reminiscently. ‘I had what I suppose you’d call an epiphany. Standing at the foot of your father’s bed.’
Chapter Forty-Three
‘He was in it at the time, along with a gallery owner from Paris. And her husband. When he invited me to join them, I suppose you might say scales fell from my eyes.’ Suzanne gave a shaky laugh. ‘For one thing they looked so stupid, sprawled all over that enormous four-poster. You remember it? It was supposed to have belonged to Eleanor of Aquitaine or someone. Oliver loved that kind of stuff. Anyhow, he and Pierre or Marcel or whoever he was – they were both stoned and giggling like a pair of schoolgirls. The woman was crawling about, looking for something to cover herself with. I remember, she had the most enormous boobs. They were flopping up and down, while she tried to grab one of the sheets. I suddenly had one of those
what the hell are you doing here
moments. I was the mother of a twelve-year-old girl. It was time to grow up. Take some responsibility. Oliver was never going to change
… And what he was
…
‘I’d packed our stuff and we were out of there in an hour. Oliver laughed when he saw the cases, and called me an uptight, narrow-minded bourgeoisie. He always expected me to go back to him.’ Suzanne’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was right on one thing. I was sufficiently bourgeois to have stored away all the paintings and sketches he’d given me, over the years. Two of them were enough to keep us going until the tenants left this house and I got the business started. We lived at the Ritz for three months. Do you remember, darling?’ she queried Kaz.
Devlin felt Kaz nod. Suzanne’s face had become dreamy with reminiscence. ‘You know how Oliver grumbles when I sell anything, but he’s never asked for any of it back. That was the one thing that stopped me from telling you what your father was really like. There was enough guilt in him to leave me the means to keep us both.’
And enough love or passion left, both ways, to keep that tie alive, Devlin saw, with a sudden flash of instinctive knowledge. A pile of canvases kept them together. While Suzanne still had the work, she still had Oliver, but when she sold a piece, a small part of that connection crumbled away. And maybe neither of them realised it. It all came back to the work.
Suzanne rubbed her eyes. ‘I should have left him a long time before I did. There were incidents
… Flares of temper that went deeper than artistic tantrums. One of the girls – there were always girls – had a dog. It used to bark incessantly. It drove us all nuts, not just Oliver. Someone from the village found it, in a ditch, with its head bashed in. It could have been run over, but it wasn’t a very busy road. There were fights, sometimes fires.’ She put her hand to the back of her neck. ‘Once everyone but Oliver had the most awful bout of food poisoning, that was never properly explained. He was punishing us for something. I’m not sure what. And I think
…’ She was looking way into the past now, eyes a very deep grey. Devlin knew that look – a woman facing something she’d never faced, looking back at something horrible.
Kaz’s hand slid up Devlin’s arm. He kept her close, wanting the scent of her.
‘I think that when Jed drank that bleach, or whatever it was
…’ Suzanne paused. ‘I’ve never been sure that it was an accident.’ Her voice broke. ‘How could I tell you these things? Oliver acknowledged you, when he didn’t need to. He did his best to be a father. I really didn’t think he’d ever hurt
you
.’