The Legacy (9 page)

‘Hello, Alan,' she said. He didn't answer for a moment; looking at her filled him with a surge of anger. He actually turned his head away.

‘You wanted to see me,' he said abruptly. ‘Sit down. I've a meeting at six-fifteen, so make it brief.'

Christina moved to a chair. She had felt the colour rise at his sheer rudeness, but she didn't falter. She didn't hurry; she settled herself, unbuttoned her jacket and faced him calmly.

‘Why don't you sit down too? I didn't come for a row or a confrontation; and I'm not going to have either. I wanted to try and talk this through with you. Can't we discuss the situation like two rational people, instead of fighting?'

Alan glared at her. ‘There's nothing to discuss,' he said. ‘I'm contesting the will, and I'm going to win.'

She said quietly, ‘I don't think so. Only the lawyers will win if we go to court. You can drag us all through the dirt if you want to, but your father had the best advice and he knew the trust and the will were unbreakable. I've come to make you an offer.' He smiled at her; it was a naked sneer.

‘Oh, have you? Let's hear it then.'

Christina said, ‘I'll give you everything your father left me, which wasn't in the trust: money, his personal portfolio, everything. I can't do more than that. I've nothing else to offer because RussMore is Belinda's.' She leaned towards him suddenly. ‘Alan,' she said, ‘I'm not your enemy; I'd like us to be friends. Why keep all this hatred going? Nothing can bring your mother back, or change the way you and Richard felt about each other; they're dead and it's over, and none of it was my fault. Believe me, now that I know more about it, I'm really sorry for James and for you.'

He leaned back in his chair, as if to distance himself. There was a pause; Christina couldn't read his expression because he refused to look at her. He picked up a folder, opened it, waited while he read something, and then he met her eye to eye. ‘This', he said, making every word distinct, ‘is the report on you from a firm of private investigators in Stockholm; it confirms what I always suspected. You were quite a slag, weren't you … lots of boyfriends. Let me see …' He riffled the pages. ‘Here we are … a Jan Borg was knocking you up before you met my father, wasn't he? He'd only just dumped you when you picked the old man up in a park; and you were pregnant when you married him, weren't you? With Borg's child?'

Christina didn't realize how white she was; she went ashen pale when she was angry, and he misunderstood the signal. ‘You clever bitch,' he went on. ‘You conned the old fool, but you won't get away with it, I'll prove your bastard isn't a Farrington, and that fucks up the will and the trust. The trust says specifically that only a Farrington can inherit RussMore. So, you can stuff your offer; keep the money, you're going to need it; I'm going to take everything else.'

She got up, walked up to the desk and said, ‘Before your father died, he said to me that you had bad blood, inherited from your mother. I didn't know what he meant, but I do now. You would injure a child—Belinda is
his
daughter. I will fight you to the end of the line. You will never, ever have that house, whatever it takes to stop you.'

Then she turned away and walked out of the office, leaving the door wide open. When she was in her car and tried to switch on the ignition, she was shaking with anger so much that, for a minute, she could not turn the car key. Suddenly, without thinking, she lapsed into Swedish. She had forgotten what she had become; she was Christina Nordohl again, and she called him a string of names in her own language. She had felt sorry for him. She had worked up a sense of guilt about what Richard had done, imagining the rebellious, misunderstood boy seeing his mother sink into drugs and die a fuddled death by drowning. She had been genuinely sorry for him, and ready to give up her personal independence to make up for it all. ‘Oh,' she spoke the words out loud, amazing a driver parked alongside at a red light, who couldn't see anyone else in the car. ‘Oh, you damned bloody fool.' English and Swedish were mixed up. ‘You thick-headed idiot. To be sorry for that pig, that filthy bullying pig.' She was hooted into action by the car behind, and she drove on after the lights had changed, so churned up with anger that she went too fast and had to brake too hard. Now there was something else besides outrage. Fear began to creep into the turmoil of emotion, cold fear, cooling the heat of temper. He'd got a dossier on her private life before she married. The insult spat at her,
You were quite a slag … Lots of boyfriends
. He had made the teenage love affairs and the brief involvements of her twenties into something dirty and shameful.
I'll prove your bastard isn't a Farrington.

It could destroy Belinda. Christina said, ‘Oh my God,' in English. ‘What am I going to do?' She signalled, pulled into the kerb and stopped the car. She couldn't go back to RussMore without talking to someone. Belinda and her friend would be there. ‘What happened with Alan, Mum?' asked almost as an afterthought. Talk about ponies and competitions.

Your bastard isn't a Farrington.

Christina dialled the number on her car phone. ‘Mr Wallberg, please.' A pause. ‘I'm sorry, he left the office about twenty minutes ago. I'll put you through to his secretary. May I ask who's calling?'

‘Mrs Farrington. Look, it doesn't matter.' But she was put through anyway.

‘He left a number where you can reach him,' the secretary said. ‘He was expecting you to call. He's at the Lancaster Hotel. Can I get him to call you?'

‘No,' Christina decided, ‘I'll call him. He should be there by now. Give me the number.'

‘Alan?' Fay shouted down to him, hearing the front door bang. ‘Alan?'

‘Yeah,' he shouted back, irritated that she was upstairs. ‘I'm home, for Christ's sake. Who d'you think it was?'

‘I'm coming,' Fay called back. She frowned, hearing the bad-tempered answer. It hadn't gone well; he was upset. That bitch, she fumed, closing the nursery door on the children with an abrupt ‘You just be quiet, I'm going to talk to Daddy.'

He was in what she called his den—a term that would have made her dead father-in-law cringe—and he was already downing a very dark whisky.

‘What happened, darling?' She came in and put her arm round his shoulders.

‘She started by saying how sorry she was for me,' he said. ‘All sugary sweet, “I want to be friends,” that kind of crap. I nearly chucked up.'

‘You mean she backed down?' Fay said slowly.

‘Like fuck,' he snarled. ‘She went into a real act. “I'll give you everything your father left me … money, shares … but RussMore belongs to Belinda.”' He mimicked the Swedish accent. Half the whisky went down, but Fay didn't comment.

‘So?' she prompted. ‘You told her what to do with it?'

‘Yeah, I told her. I told her about the dossier; I told her we knew about all the men she'd shacked up with. Then I played my ace: Mr Jan Borg. Just out of bed with him and in with Dad. She had one up the spout when she married him. I wish you'd seen her face; that got to her.' He moved, easing away from her comforting arm. She took the empty glass.

‘I'll get that,' she said quickly. ‘All right,' Alan muttered, ‘but I want a decent drink, none of your gnat's pee.'

‘Here,' she said, handing him the drink, ‘and stop taking it out on me, will you. I'm on your side, remember?'

Alan looked up at her and shook his head. ‘Sorry, sorry,' he said. ‘I didn't mean it. She just got right up my nose, darling. Right up it. All that sympathy and understanding shit. But it didn't last; I told her I'd prove that kid was a bastard and she dropped the act bloody quick.'

‘Alan?' Fay stared at him. ‘Alan, you didn't mention what you did … before the funeral?' She was horrified that his temper might have betrayed him.

‘No, of course I didn't,' he snapped. ‘What sort of a fool do you think I am? Of course I didn't say
that
! That's the trump; the ace in the hole. Right at the door of the bloody court!' He tasted the drink.

‘She didn't back off then,' Fay prompted again. He should have been triumphant, crowing, but he wasn't and she couldn't understand why.

‘No,' he answered emphatically. ‘No, she didn't. She said she'd fight me all the way; after she'd taken a dirty swipe at my mother, saying it came from Dad, of course. It was just as well I had the desk between us or I might just have hit her.'

Fay said quietly, ‘Thank God you didn't.' So that was it: his mother. She had dug into a nerve when she attacked the sacred icon of Josephine Farrington; he had no defence against that. Fay knew him so well; she recognized the terrible unhealed wounds behind the hectoring and the bluster. She was more maternal towards him than towards her own small children.

‘I hate that woman,' she said softly. ‘I think I hate her more than you do. Never mind what she said, she'll lose and she'll be dragged through the dirt in public, with her bloody daughter. Because,' she came to the chair and, bending, kissed him. ‘Because I have a brilliant clever husband. No-one would have thought of doing what you did; I'm proud of you. Now come up and say good night to the kids; they won't go to sleep till they've seen you.'

She took the glass of whisky out of his hand; he didn't protest. ‘You can finish that when you come down. I don't want you smelling of Scotch when you kiss them.'

They went upstairs hand in hand.

The elegant blonde smiled at Rolf Wallberg. She never went to his office; when she called a meeting unexpectedly he had to go to the Lancaster. Not without protest. ‘I'm expecting a call from Mrs Farrington.' The answer was swift, delivered with the mixture of authority and smoothness that was her trade mark.

‘So leave this number. I have to see you, I'm flying home on the nine o'clock.'

She attracted attention wherever she went. The gleaming blond hair, the perfect make-up, above all the model figure, with the bonus of a generous bust. Rolf noticed the scrutiny of other men as they sat together. It amused him; he found her a sexually satisfying machine, programmed to please herself and her partner. She was the most unfeminine woman he had ever known.

‘Well, you're making some progress,' she conceded. ‘It's taking time. One thing, Rolf; one question bothers me. Why didn't you search the library when you had the chance?' The suspicion was there, lurking in the very dark eyes. She didn't trust him, but then trust wasn't part of her job, suspicion was.

‘If you saw the library,' he said, ‘you wouldn't ask the question. I'd say there were around two thousand books in the place. Drawer upon drawer of catalogues, references, indexing and cross-indexing. It's not a library for show, Irma; it's for real. I've suggested we look together and she agreed.' He checked his watch. It was well past six, and Christina had not called. Normally he never used the name Irma because she didn't like it. Doing so was a measure of his irritation at this last-minute summons, and the inquisition that followed. He looked at her and let his feelings show.

‘If you think anyone else can do the job faster, then get them and I'll pull out.'

She said, ‘If I thought that, I would. I have to report back, you know. This is costing money, resources and time. Some people think they could be better employed on our other problems. After all, you do have a personal motivation.'

‘I do,' he agreed, ‘and I'm quite ready to see it through without back-up. Take that message home with you.'

Suddenly she relaxed; she picked up the glass and swirled the ice-cubes round the vodka, before taking a delicate swallow.

‘Cool it,' she advised, ‘I'll forget you said that. And I think I see someone coming over; I'd say this is your telephone call.'

He stood up; she was right, a Mrs Farrington was on the line. ‘I'll take it in the booth,' he said.

‘I'll wait here,' the woman promised. ‘Don't be too long; I have to be at Heathrow by seven-thirty.'

‘Rolf?' Christina said. ‘Sorry to disturb you.'

‘You're not,' he interrupted quickly, ‘I've been waiting for your call. What happened? You sound upset.'

‘I am. You were right, I shouldn't have gone. I just need to talk to someone before I go home. Are you busy or can you spare a few minutes?'

‘Where are you?'

‘In my car. I'm parked up by the Guildhall.'

‘Give me the name of the street, I'll come straight there.'

‘No, please, you don't have to do that.'

‘I want to,' he insisted. ‘Where are you parked?'

‘Coleman Street,' she answered, and was surprised at the sense of relief that he was coming.

‘I'll catch a cab,' he promised. ‘Give me fifteen minutes. And don't worry, I'll take you for a drink somewhere and we can talk it through.'

He went back to the bar. She had finished her drink; he didn't waste time. ‘I have to go,' he said. ‘I'm meeting her. Have a good flight. Pay the bill, will you?' Then he was on his way out.

They found a wine bar near the Guildhall. It was small and noisy, crowded with City workers stopping off for a drink on their way home. Rolf looked round, frowning.

‘This is hopeless,' he said. ‘We can't talk here … there's no table free.'

‘Yes, there is,' Christina interrupted. ‘Look, over there, they're just going.'

He didn't waste time; he elbowed his way to the table before anyone else could get there. Christina sat down.

‘What can I get you?'

‘Red wine,' she said. She hadn't noticed the way he moved until then. Nothing deflected him, and however dense the groups, people seemed to give way. He was back very quickly with two glasses.