The Image in the Water (20 page)

She wondered whether to order another
citron,
weighing the pleasure against the effort. She wondered whether to spin
out the latest Joanna Trollope novel which lay on the sand beside her, or whether it would be better to gallop through it and hope to find another in the hotel news-stand.

A tall African figure picked his way towards her, shining in white and gold robes. Across his shoulder he carried a light wooden yoke from which descended a glistening mass of jewellery – watches, sunglasses with sparkling frames, bracelets, rings threaded on silver cord, necklaces tangled in bright confusion. This cascade created the impression that the noble African was wearing a fantastic extra garment outside his robes. Despite herself Julia had picked up something from her mother, some knowledge of such matters. She saw to her surprise that the display was not rubbish. There were no price labels. The African, acknowledging her interest, came close to her deck-chair. With dignity he raised the yoke from his shoulders and held it before her. Forgetting the dilemma over the
citron
and Joanna Trollope, Julia spent ten minutes on a pleasure rare in her life. She supposed that when young her mother had enjoyed shopping, but by the time her own recollection began that phase had ended. Her father Simon Russell had always dressed decently. He bought about five books a year, and solid unimaginative presents for his wife and daughter at Christmas and when he remembered their birthdays. Louise herself spent a morning choosing clothes twice a year, and bought a picture occasionally from a small gallery in Highgate. Louise had left No. 10 Downing Street on memorable expeditions: when Simon died and, much more recently, when Peter Makewell lost the last election. Each time she had descended on Harrods and Peter Jones and, in a hurry, bought the furniture, carpets and curtains needed for the next chapter of her life. Julia had heard of these expeditions, which had been
packed into two or three days, but had not been invited to take part. There had been no family tradition of enjoyable shopping. Her parents were not mean, but by the time she knew them well they had too many other things in their minds and diaries.

David, though, was mean by nature. Until recently he could reasonably defend meanness as necessary prudence. She had not forced the pace: she had simply noted that this was another underlying difference between them, a mine that might one day explode. Now, David was earning well from articles and speeches on top of his salary as Leader of the Opposition. Things were going better for him, though not to the point where he would go out and buy something useless and pretty for her. A fortnight ago he had forgotten their first wedding anniversary and had been ashamed for a minute. This was not a bad moment, Julia thought, to test the ground for a small move forward.

‘C'
est trois mille, Madame
.'

The man spoke politely but with a firmness that, combined with his princely appearance, excluded bargaining. From his tone and the quality of his goods, Julia judged that he had some arrangement with the Carlton and its neighbours, allowing him to importune publicly the clientele of the main hotels of Cannes on their adjoining stretches of well-swept beach.

Julia still thought in pounds. She knew that almost all of her generation led their lives in euros, although David translated prices back into sterling for political reasons. She found herself doing the same, even though she thought his dislike of the euro absurd. And futile too, since even he did not believe that the Tories could bring back the pound. Once at Chequers she had pointed out this incongruity in a clever
teenage way to her father. Simon Russell had said, ‘It's quite normal, Julia. Scotland, and England too, are full of pine trees planted by sentimental Jacobites long after they were peaceful subjects of King George. They loved to drink to the King over the water and throw the glass to shatter in the fireplace. A cause lingers on in men's minds well after they have stopped doing anything about it. Women are less sentimental. Most men have a soft place somewhere.'

Julia still did not know if this was true of David. But she must decide quickly about the pearl and glass necklace, the coils of which were now frothing in her hand.

‘
Permettez, Madame
.'

The African deftly loosened the clasp and fastened it round her neck, taking care that his long bony hands did not touch her warm flesh. He found a small mirror somewhere in his robes and held it to her.

It was pretty, at least out there in the open against her tanned skin. And, at just over a thousand pounds, more or less within the range that David in his present benign mood might tolerate. She had no intention of paying for it herself. He owed her something for Simon.

‘
Les perles sont bonnes
?'

‘
Les meilleures, de Bahrain
.'

The man did not plead his case, but stood before her patiently. Julia's courage carried her only a certain way.

‘
Je dois les montrer à mon mari
.' A remark he must have heard many times.

‘
Bien sûr, Madame. Je viendrai au Carlton à sept heures exacte. Si ça vous convient
…'

He left her with the necklace, knowing perhaps that his trust would strengthen her will to buy.

But David, when he returned to the hotel at about five, had something else on his mind. ‘Damned nuisance, and all because of those bloody Scots.' But actually he sounded quite pleased.

‘What exactly did the message say?'

‘It was from one of the private secretaries at the Home Office. He just said that after the kidnapping of that man Cameron the Home Secretary had decided that all the politicians prominent in discussing Scotland must have full-time protection forthwith. A team of three are flying out to us from the Met this evening. The French have already been alerted. There's one of their policemen out in the corridor already.'

‘You could refuse.' Julia felt a familiar grey cloud descend on her life. For years as a girl she had been used to protection, to the kindly intrusion of privacy carried out by large, friendly men. You could not possibly complain, even though from time to time you were driven mad by their proximity and the knowledge they had of you and yours. But that had all been to do with Ireland, and Ireland was now quiet. Were the Scots bringing the same cloud back to hang over them for ever?

‘No, I couldn't. The Home Office was very clear. They rate the threat to me as substantial.'

Julia knew that David was not a physical coward. She saw that the thought of protection tickled his vanity, poor fool. He had never lived that life before. He saw only that he was entering a club of really important people.

‘Are they sending a team to Craigarran?'

‘I asked them that,' said David surprisingly. ‘They've already got a sergeant up there looking after your step-father. Of course he'll keep an eye on Simon as well. But they say there's
no threat so far as they can see to wives or children. Just to the principals.'

‘Principals?'

‘That's what the police call the VIPs they're protecting.'

In this self-important mood, David was quite pleased with the necklace, and hardly quibbled about the price. ‘It's quite expensive. But I don't grudge it. It will be something to remember this conference by. It's really gone quite well. Von Blissach was particularly complimentary about my speech.'

‘And Simon.'

‘Simon?'

‘Something to remind us of the summer he was born.'

David looked surprised, then said something which in turn surprised her. ‘We shall remember Simon by bringing him up as a happy, successful child in a good family.' Pompous, of course, but she did not mind because he meant it.

They lay together, fully clothed and peaceful for half an hour on the wide double bed looking out through the skilfully placed windows on to the dancing sea. They watched the quality of the light change and sharpen as the sun began to set. The waves sounded faintly in rare intervals between the noise of cars along the promenade or the roar of a motorbike. From their pillows they could watch the evening breeze begin to agitate the top of the palm tree outside the hotel entrance.

Julia dozed. The telephone rang on her side of the bed. It was her mother, first composed, then, extraordinarily, in tears. Julia said, ‘God, no,' then little else. Having put down the receiver, she shook David awake.

‘It's Simon. He's disappeared. Kidnapped, they think. Mummy was shopping and—'

David sat bolt upright in bed. They gazed at each other as at strangers. Whatever happened from now on would be new for them both.

Having searched her own studio and the other rooms of the cottage by the garden wall, Louise walked up the path to the shed with the marble slab. Here, newly caught salmon spent the first hours of death before being cooked in the house or loaded into a car by grateful departing guests. Just one salmon lay there. Eleven or twelve pounds, she guessed, wearing much the same satisfied smile as Sergeant Fraser, who had caught it, had worn when he and Peter returned an hour ago. The police officer's smile had vanished at the news. Indeed it seemed possible that Sergeant Fraser would never smile again. Not that he could seriously be blamed. He had been sent to Craigarran to protect Peter Makewell, former prime minister and Anglo-Scot, thought to be particularly vulnerable to the new kidnapping campaign by the SLA. Fraser had been given no instruction as regards Lady Makewell or her grandson. He was concerned only with the principal. He had been clearly right to accompany Peter down the burn. It would have been quite wrong to stay in the house. It was less clear that he should have allowed himself to accept the loan of Peter's rod for half an hour. A glorious half-hour, one salmon hooked and lost in the swirl of the water under the falls, then within minutes the second salmon hooked and caught. He knew that Peter would do his best to protect him from any accusation on that score, which indeed seemed trivial compared to the disaster that had befallen while they were away.

The police had agreed to split into two teams, each team in turn searching every possible nook and hiding place in
the home and garden, so that each possibility was examined twice.

Peter, the superintendent newly arrived from Perth and anxious Sergeant Fraser were now searching the main house. Louise and the two constables had already combed the garden and cottage. It was surprising how many small unnoticed spaces there were on the premises in which a baby might conceivably be hidden.

Louise could see that this was all nonsense. Simon was far too young to have crawled into any of them. He was a baby in a cot. It seemed certain that he had been taken away with Mrs Mackintosh or by Mrs Mackintosh, in her small Renault car. ‘With' or ‘by', that was the question. She fervently hoped that Mrs Mackintosh was a fellow victim with Simon of a kidnap organised by others. Over the years she had come to like and trust her housekeeper.

Dwarfing every other feeling was Louise's sense of shame and guilt. She could not prevent her clear mind from analysing this. A tiny grandson had moved into the centre of her life. She loved the little sprat for himself, but also because he was the future for Julia, whom she loved the more because of the years they had spent griping and squabbling with each other.

It had been perfectly reasonable to go shopping in Pitlochry, leaving Simon in the care of a trusted housekeeper. But it had turned out a disaster, for which somebody must be responsible, and that somebody could only be herself.

In the garden tool-shed, forks, hoes and spades of different sizes hung as they had always hung, each neatly in an appointed place, cleared of mud, witnesses of an order that human beings could impose on everything except their own
lives. Louise thought about her telephone conversation with Julia. David had evidently been in the room. How would the disaster affect that shaky marriage? Not at all, if Simon were found quickly. But if not, if it dragged on …? Louise knew that David was cold and selfish. She was not sure whether under the surface he would be genuinely moved by Simon's disappearance. She hoped so, for Julia's sake. But whether he was moved or not, he would certainly regard it as a public-relations event, to be handled like other such events, professionally and with care. How Julia would react to this her mother could not guess.

The two constables, she could see, would go on searching the sheds and cottages over and over again, even though this was useless. Men, particularly men in uniform, fell back on routine when baffled, which put their minds into neutral gear. It was up to her to call a halt. ‘There's nothing here,' she said. ‘Back into the house.'

Both teams conferred in the ancient, somewhat grimy kitchen. There was nothing useful to be said. If Mrs Mackintosh had been there she would have made tea, with a clatter of friendly comment. Louise boiled a kettle on the Aga without speaking. Peter Makewell sat silent in a comer, exhausted.

The superintendent spoke to Sergeant Fraser and the constables. He at least had been thinking ahead. ‘Next I'll get Forensics from Perth. They'll crawl inch by inch over the forecourt and the drive up from the road. There are places where the tarmac has broken up. After last night's rain the earth will have taken tyre marks. They'll want impressions from the vehicles we know have used the drive – the Range Rover Lady Makewell used for shopping, your car, Sergeant Fraser, the police car we came in, and—'

‘Mrs Makewell's Renault,' said Louise.

‘Yes. It's disappeared, but they'll know roughly what it would be like. Do you happen to know if the tyres were new?'

‘She had two new tyres last year,' said Peter, from his corner. ‘Can't remember whether they went on the front or back. The car was six or seven years old.' Mrs Mackintosh had not asked for a rise to meet the expense of the new tyres but, prompted by Louise, he had offered one.

‘That's very helpful, sir. The real question is whether there is evidence of a fifth car using the drive since last night's rain.'