Authors: Minette Walters
A few minutes later Matt resumed his seat and gave
her a map of Swanage with Peterson’s estate agency
marked with a cross. ‘Mr Richards is expecting you at
three o’clock.’ With a lazy flick of his hand he closed
the Clarkes’ file. ‘I trust you will find your dealings
with him as mutually satisfactory as you have found
your dealings with me.’
Roz laughed. ‘And I hope I don’t, or I shall be
considerably poorer by this evening.’
Roz approached the Poacher by the alleyway at the
back and knocked on the kitchen door. ‘You’re early,’
said Hal, opening it.
‘I know, but I have to be in Swanage by three and
if I don’t leave fairly soon I won’t make it. Have you
any customers?’
He gave her a withering smile. ‘I haven’t even
bothered to open up.’
She chose to ignore the sarcasm. ‘Then come with
me,’ she said. ‘Forget this place for a few hours.’
He didn’t exactly jump at the invitation. ‘What’s
in Swanage?’
She handed him the details of Bayview. ‘A “des.
res.” overlooking the sea. I’ve committed myself to
looking at it and I could do with some moral support
or I might end up buying the wretched thing.’
‘Then don’t go.’
‘I have to. It’s by way of a quid pro quo,’ she said
obliquely. ‘Come with me,’ she urged, ‘and say no
whenever I look like saying yes. I’m a sucker for a
soft sell and I’ve always wanted to live on a cliff by
the sea and own a dog and go beachcombing.’
He looked at the price. ‘Can you afford it?’ he
asked curiously.
‘Just about.’
‘Rich lady,’ he said. ‘Writing is obviously very
profitable.’
‘Hardly. That was by way of a pay-off.’
‘Pay-off for what?’ he asked, his eyes veiled.
‘It’s not important.’
‘Nothing ever is in your life.’
She shrugged. ‘So you don’t want to come? Ah,
well, it was only a thought. I’ll go on my own.’ She
looked lonely suddenly.
He glanced behind him towards the restaurant,
then abruptly reached his jacket off the back of the
door. ‘I’ll come,’ he told her, ‘but I’m damned if I’ll
say no. It sounds like paradise, and the second best
piece of advice my mother ever gave me was never
get between a woman and what she wants.’ He pulled
the door to and locked it.
‘And what was the best piece of advice?’
He dropped a casual arm across her shoulders –
could she really be as lonely as she looked? The thought saddened him
– and walked her up the alleyway. ‘That
happiness is no laughing matter.’
She gave a throaty chuckle. ‘What’s that supposed
to mean?’
‘It means, woman, that the pursuit of happiness
deserves weighty consideration. It’s the be-all and
end-all of existence. Where is the sense in living if
you’re not enjoying it?’
‘Earning Brownie points for the great hereafter,
suffering being good for the soul and all that.’
‘If you say so,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Shall we go in
my car? It’ll give you a chance to test out your theory.’
He led her to an ancient Ford Cortina estate and
unlocked the passenger door, pulling it half-open on
screaming hinges.
‘What theory?’ she asked, squeezing inelegantly
through the gap.
He shut the door. ‘You’ll soon find out,’ he
murmured.
They arrived with half an hour to spare. Hal drew
into a parking space on the sea front and rubbed his
hands. ‘Let’s have some fish and chips. We passed a
kiosk about a hundred yards back and I’m ravenous.
It’s the fresh air that does it.’
Roz’s head, tortoise-like, emerged from the collar
of her jacket, slowly easing its frozen jaw and skewering him with gimlet eyes. ‘Has this heap of junk got
an MOT?’ she grated.
‘Of course it’s got an MOT.’ He slapped the steering-wheel. ‘She’s sound as a bell, just lacks a window
or two. You get used to it after a while.’
‘A window or two!’ she spluttered. ‘As far as I can
see it hasn’t got any windows at all except for the
front one. I think I’ve caught pneumonia.’
‘There’s no pleasing some women. You wouldn’t
be whingeing like this if I’d whisked you down to the
seaside on a beautiful sunny day in an open-topped
cabriolet. You’re being snotty-nosed just because it’s
a Cortina.’ He gave an evil chuckle. ‘And what about
suffering being good for the soul? It’s done bugger
all for yours, my girl.’
She thrust the screeching door open as far as it
would go and crawled out. ‘For your information,
Hawksley, it is
not
a beautiful sunny day’ – she giggled
– ‘in fact it will probably turn out to be the coldest
May day this century. And
had
this been a convertible,
we could have stopped to put the top up. In any case,
why aren’t there any windows?’
He tucked her into the crook of his arm and set
off towards the fish and chip kiosk. ‘Someone smashed
them,’ he said matter of factly. ‘I haven’t bothered to
replace them because there’s a good chance it will
happen again.’
She rubbed the end of her nose to restore the
circulation. ‘I suppose you’re in hock to loan sharks.’
‘And if I am?’
She thought of her money on deposit, untouched,
going nowhere. ‘I might be able to broker you out
of your difficulties,’ she suggested tentatively.
He frowned. ‘Is this charity, Roz, or an offer to
negotiate?’
‘It’s not charity,’ she assured him. ‘My accountant
would have a fit if I offered charity.’
He dropped his arm abruptly. ‘Why would you
want to negotiate on my behalf? You don’t know a
damn thing about me.’ He sounded angry.
She shrugged. ‘I know you’re in deep shit,
Hawksley. I’m offering to help you out of it. Is that
so terrible?’ She walked on.
Hal, a step or two behind, cursed himself roundly.
What sort of fool lowered his defences just because a
woman looked lonely? But loneliness, of course, was
the one thing guaranteed to strike a chord. There
must have been times when he hadn’t been lonely but
he was damned, at the moment, if he could remember
them.
Roz’s delight in the cottage, masked by an unconvincing
smile of bored indifference, announced itself
loudly as she stared wide-eyed at the views from the
windows, noted the double-glazing, admitted grudgingly
that, yes, she had always liked open fireplaces,
and, yes, she was quite surprised by the size of the rooms. She
had
expected them to be smaller. She
poked for several minutes round the patioed garden,
said it was a pity there wasn’t a greenhouse, then,
rather belatedly, obscured her enthusiasm behind a
pair of dark glasses to examine a small rose-covered
outhouse which was used by the present owners as a
third bedroom, but which might, she supposed, at
a pinch, serve as a sort of study–library.
Hal and Mr Richards sat on cast-iron chairs in front
of the french windows, talking idly about very little
and watching her. Mr Richards, thoroughly intimidated
by Hal’s brusque one-word answers, scented a
sale but contained his excitement rather better than
Roz.
He stood up when Roz had finished her inspection
and, with a disarming smile, offered her his chair. ‘I
should perhaps have mentioned, Miss Leigh, that the
present owners will consider selling the furniture with
the house assuming, of course, a satisfactory price can
be arranged. I understand none of it is more than
four years old and the wear and tear has been minimal
with weekend occupation only.’ He glanced at his
watch. ‘Why don’t I give you fifteen minutes to talk
it over? I’ll go for a stroll along the cliff path.’ He
vanished tactfully through the french windows and a
moment later they heard the front door close.
Roz took off her glasses and looked at Hal. Her
eyes were childlike in their enthusiasm. ‘What do you
think? Furniture, too. Isn’t it fabulous?’
His lips twitched involuntarily.
Could this be acting?
It was damn good if it was. ‘It depends what you
want it for.’
‘To live in,’ she said. ‘It would be so easy to work
here.’ She looked towards the sea. ‘I’ve always loved
the sound of waves.’ She turned to him. ‘What do
you think? Should I buy it?’
He was curious. ‘Will my opinion make a difference?’
‘Probably.’
‘Why?’
‘Because common sense tells me it would be a mad
thing to do. It’s miles from everyone I know, and it’s
expensive for what it is, a pokey little two up, two
down. There must be better ways of investing my
money.’ She studied his set face and wondered why
her earlier offer to help had made him so hostile. He
was a strange man, she thought. So very approachable
as long as she steered clear of talking about the
Poacher.
He looked past her towards the cliff-top where Mr
Richards was just visible, sitting on a rock and having
a quiet smoke. ‘Buy it,’ he said. ‘You can afford it.’
His dark face broke into a smile. ‘Live dangerously.
Do what you’ve always wanted to do. How did John
Masefield put it? “I must down to the seas again, for
the call of the running tide/Is a wild call and a clear
call that may not be denied.” So, live on your cliff by the sea and go beachcombing with your dog. As I
said, it sounds like paradise.’
She smiled back, her dark eyes full of humour. ‘But
the trouble with paradise was that it was boring, which
is why, when the one-eyed trouser-snake appeared,
Eve was so damn keen to bite into the apple of knowledge.’
He was a different man when he laughed. She
caught a glimpse of the Hal Hawksley, hail-fellow-well-met, boon companion, who could, were his
tables ever full, preside with confident conviviality
among them. She threw caution to the winds. ‘I wish
you’d let me help you. I’d be lonely here. And where’s
the sense in paying a fortune to be lonely on a cliff?’
His eyes veiled abruptly. ‘You really are free with
your money, aren’t you? Exactly what are you suggesting?
A buy-out? A partnership? What?’
God, he was prickly! And he had accused her of it
once. ‘Does it matter? I’m offering to bail you out of
whatever mess you’re in.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The only certain thing you
know about me, Roz, is that my restaurant is failing.
Why would an intelligent woman want to throw good
money after bad?’
Why indeed? She would never be able to explain it
to her accountant whose idea of sensible living was
minimum risk-taking, clean balance sheets, and tax
advantageous pension plans. How would she even
begin? ‘There’s this man, Charles, who reduces me to
jelly every time I see him. But he’s a damn good cook and he loves his restaurant and there’s no logical
reason why it should be going down the pan. I keep
trying to lend him money but he throws it back in
my face every time.’ Charles would have her certified.
She swung her bag on to her shoulder. ‘Forget I
mentioned it,’ she said. ‘It’s obviously a sore nerve,
though I can’t imagine why.’
She started to get up but he caught her wrist in a
grip of iron and held her in her seat. ‘Is this another
set-up, Roz?’
She stared at him. ‘You’re hurting me.’ He released
her abruptly. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked,
massaging her wrist.
‘You came back.’ He rubbed his face vigorously
with both hands as if he were in pain. ‘Why the hell
do you keep coming back?’
She was incensed. ‘Because you phoned,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t phoned. God,
you’re arrogant. They come two a penny like you in
London, you know.’
His eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Then offer your
money to them,’ he said, ‘and stop patronizing me.’
Tight-lipped, they took their leave of Mr Richards
with false promises of phoning the next day, and drove
off up the narrow coast road towards Wareham. Hal,
all too conscious of the darkening clouds and the
reduction in speed that wet tarmac would enforce on him, concentrated on his driving. Roz, crushed by his
hostility which, like a tropical storm, had blown out
of nowhere, withdrew into hurt silence. Hal had been
gratuitously cruel, and knew it, but he was gripped
by his own certainty that this trip had been engineered
to get him out of the Poacher. And
God
was Roz
good. She had every damn thing: looks, humour,
intellect, and just enough vulnerability to appeal to
his stupid chivalry. But
he
had phoned
her
.
Fool,
Hawksley!
She would have come back, anyway. Someone
had to offer him the stinking money.
Sh-i-it!
He
slammed his fist against the steering-wheel. ‘Why did
you want me to come with you?’ he demanded into
the silence.
‘You’re a free agent,’ she pointed out caustically.
‘You didn’t have to come.’
It started to rain as they reached Wareham, slanting
stair-rods that drove in through the open windows.
‘Oh, great!’ announced Roz, clutching her jacket
about her throat. ‘The perfect end to a perfect day.
I’ll be soaked. I should have come on my own in my
own car. I could hardly have had less fun, could I?’
‘Why didn’t you then? Why drag me out on a wild-goose
chase?’
‘Believe it or not,’ she said icily, ‘I was trying to
do you a favour. I thought it would be good for you
to escape for a couple of hours. I was wrong. You’re
even more touchy away from the place than you are
in it.’ He took a corner too fast and threw her against the door, grazing her leather jacket against the buckled
chromium window strip. ‘For God’s sake,’ she
snapped crossly. ‘This jacket cost me a fortune.’
He pulled into the kerb with a screech of rubber.
‘OK,’ he snarled, ‘let’s see what we can do to protect
it.’ He reached across her to take a book of road maps
out of the dashboard pocket.
‘What good will that do?’
‘It will tell me where the nearest station is.’ He
thumbed through the pages. ‘There’s one in Wareham
and the line goes to Southampton. You can take a
taxi back to your car at the other end.’ He fished out
his wallet. ‘That should be enough to pay your way.’
He dropped a twenty-pound note into her lap then
swung the car on to the road again. ‘It’s off to the
right at the next roundabout.’