Secrets After Dark (18 page)

I nod. ‘Is he about?’

‘Downstairs, getting irate with his own filing system. I’ve tried to show him a better way, but he won’t listen.’

‘Thanks.’ I head down the poky stairs and the sound of swearing and muttering leads me to where James is knee-deep in cardboard boxes, looking through piles of yellowing paper. ‘Don’t worry, it will be in the last place you look!’ I announce, smiling, as I go into the tiny storeroom.

James looks up startled, then his face breaks into a smile. ‘Very helpful.’ He puts his hands on his hips and sighs. His glasses are dusty and he has a grey smear over one cheek. ‘Bloody paperwork, how I hate it. Invented by utter shits.’

‘Something important?’

‘Oh, I’ve got to prove the provenance of something or other, and I know I’ve got the documents somewhere. God alone knows exactly where though.’

‘You should stop chucking everything in boxes with the vague idea that you’ll come back later to sort it out. You never do.’

James shoots me a look. ‘Yes, thank you for that. When I need a statement of the bleeding obvious, I’ll know where to come next time. You’re as bad as Salim. But...’ his expression brightens ‘...now you’re here, I can stop and forget about it for five minutes. Has Mark let you off the leash?’

‘Not Mark,’ I say slowly. ‘Actually, I’m currently working for Andrei Dubrovski.’

I enjoy watching the surprise cross his face. He rubs his dusty hands on his trousers as he says, ‘I think this requires coffee. Pronto. Let’s go out.’

Ten minutes later we are in a nearby café, each with a foamy cappuccino in front of us, while I give James a quick rundown of everything that’s happened so far. He blinks at me from behind his little round glasses. His face is thin, with high cheekbones and little hollows beneath, and he looks like a professor or an old-fashioned English literary gent. But I know there is much more to him than appears on the surface – he’s seen a lot and knows a lot and is very hard to shock. Even so, he is amazed by my revelations.

‘You do get yourself in some nice tangles, Beth,’ he says, stirring his coffee. ‘This is a good one, even by your standards. Secret liaisons in Croatian monasteries? A love that dare not speak its name in case your boss takes against either you, or Dominic, or both?’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t wait for the next instalment.’

‘There’s more, if you must know,’ I say, and try not to look guilty. ‘The thing is, I didn’t go home last night.’

James’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘A dirty stop-out? What
have
you been up to? And now I look at you, you do look a bit crumpled and yesterday’s knickers.’ He’s being jocular and silly but suddenly his expression changes. ‘Hold on, Beth. Not... not
Dubrovski
.’ He looks deadly serious now, worry in his gentle grey eyes. ‘Surely not.’

‘Of course not!’ I say, offended.

James breathes out in a low whistle. ‘Thank goodness. I would caution very strongly about getting any nearer to that man than you have to. As you know, I wasn’t all that cheerful about you meeting him at all. Now you’re bloody well working for him! But as long as it’s only for a short while and you keep your distance, you should be all right.’

The colour on my face heightens and I drop my gaze.
I never can keep anything from James. But then, I don’t want to. I need his advice, after all.

He stops stirring his coffee and goes still. ‘Beth,’ he says in a warning tone. ‘What is it? Tell me at once. What’s happened?’

‘It’s all so complicated!’ I burst out. ‘And I don’t know why, I don’t want it to be! Andrei asked me to this party and I only said yes because I thought Dominic was going to be there. I didn’t know it was going to turn into what seemed like a date with Andrei, he’d never spoken to me in that way or treated me like that. But suddenly, there I am, dressed in Dior and rubies, having dinner with him in a hotel and he’s telling me...’ I falter.

‘Yes?’

‘Telling me I’m beautiful—’

James groans. ‘Oh no.’ He puts his hands to his face as if in despair.

‘And that I looked most beautiful of all in Croatia – and I could hardly explain to him that my radiance was down to the fact that I’d been getting well and truly laid by Dominic!’

James takes his glasses off and rubs a hand across his brow. ‘Is there more?’

‘He said... he said...’ I almost can’t bring myself to say it so it all comes out in a rush. ‘He said that he thought we would make love together one day and that I would want it.’

‘Oh, Beth.’ James is looking at me with concern all over his face. ‘This is bad. What did you say to that?’

‘I said no, of course!’ I reply, indignant that he could think I’d have said anything else. ‘I told him our relationship could only be strictly professional. And that I have a boyfriend.’

‘Oh, I expect he’ll abide by that then,’ James says with airy sarcasm. ‘Yes, that should deal with him all right. That’s what got Dubrovski where he is today you know, backing down at the first obstacle, not pursuing what he wants with dogged single-mindedness. So how come you ended up staying out?’

I tell him about the party and my descriptions of the orgy make him groan even more, but when I tell him, without too much detail, about my liaisons with Dominic and the revelation that Andrei and Anna are sleeping together, he looks a little happier.

‘That’s something, I suppose.’ He frowns. ‘But you remember nothing between meeting Dominic in that passageway and waking up the next morning?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s a complete blank. Anna says Andrei carried me up out of the catacombs, unconscious.’

‘Run me through what you had to drink again...’

When I do, he looks even more puzzled. ‘That might make you drunk. It might even make you ill or extremely sleepy. But it won’t make you comatose – at least, I don’t think so. What was that last drink you had?’

‘I don’t know. Andrei ordered it. The house special. It was a cocktail, pale pink and fruity and very sweet.’

‘Oh, dear.’ James looks more serious than I’ve ever seen him. In fact, he’s gone a little pale. ‘And you felt strange immediately afterwards?’

I think back and remember sipping the pink liquid and how I soon began to feel different. I remember Andrei and me standing together, then Anna, her arm around me, her head thrown back in laughter, and her muddy shoes; and then, a while later, everything changing. I’d thought it was the lights and the music that were making me feel so spacy and strange, and causing time to speed up, slow down and sometimes vanish altogether. That was when Andrei simply disappeared and when I began to wander vaguely, unable to find my way properly. ‘Yes,’ I say slowly. ‘Well, quite soon afterwards.’

James puts his glasses on and thinks hard for a moment, staring down at his coffee. Then he looks up at me, staring me straight in the eye, and says, ‘Beth, I think your drink was spiked.’

I stare back, speechless.

‘Drugged. God knows what with. Speed? Something that like, I expect.’

I try to process this. ‘You think Andrei drugged me?’ I ask, appalled.

‘I wouldn’t leap to that conclusion. It was the house special, you said. I have a feeling that most party-goers would know that the house special contains a hallucinogenic, or they would be given the nod by the barman if they appeared not to.’

‘So... Andrei must have known that he was giving me a spiked drink?’ A cold horror is draining through me, feeling as though it is taking all my blood with it.

‘Let’s be charitable and say he didn’t but he looked such a sophisticate that the barman assumed he must know the routine. But it’s a possibility that he did.’

‘Why would he do such a thing?’ I feel awful, knowing that I took drugs like that without realising. I’ve never touched them and never wanted to. There was a small gang at school who boasted about taking drugs, and some spaced-out boys who smoked a lot of weed, just as there was a racy, party-loving crowd at uni who knew how to get cocaine, ecstasy and all the rest, and didn’t consider it a night out unless they’d snorted, smoked or swallowed something contraband. But I never wanted to. I liked the high that came from drinking too many beers and dancing the night away, but not that often and never to excess. Hangovers were too miserable as far as I was concerned. And I never considered drugs anything other than a dead end: if they made you happier than you could be without them, why would you ever want to give them up? Better never to start.

‘Perhaps he thought you’d be more in the party mood if you had something to liven you up,’ James says. He gazes at me and neither of us say what is going through our heads – that he thought I’d surrender to him more easily if I were high.

‘But it didn’t happen,’ I say. ‘I didn’t see him again that night – not as far as I remember anyway.’

‘Yes. Thank goodness for that.’ There’s another pause and then James says, ‘It definitely was Dominic in the cave with you, wasn’t it?’

I have a vivid flashback of the dark outline of him against the dim light of the passageway. I remember his touch, and what he said to me. His voice – well, it was a whisper, hard to identify, but what he said all made sense. It was Dominic. ‘Yes,’ I say firmly. ‘It definitely was.’

‘Good.’ James’s relief is obvious. ‘But it would appear that Andrei is not quite the harmless little lamb you believed. Let’s just be glad that nothing worse happened than a bit of confusion and a headache in the morning. And thank goodness Dominic was there too, or I dread to think... So now will you listen to me and keep your distance?’

I nod. I feel a deep cold anger towards Andrei. And to think that last night I almost felt sorry for him. He’d convinced me to stay at the party with his sob story of how he never gets the chance to relax, just so he could slip me a spiked drink and try his luck. Thank goodness it hadn’t worked. ‘Yes. You’re completely right and I’ve been all wrong about him. But I’m clued up now and you know what they say – knowledge is power. I’ll be on my guard from now on.’

‘I think you should walk away from this job right now,’ declares James fervently. ‘Just get out of there, as soon as you can.’

‘No,’ I say slowly, ‘I can’t do that. From what Dominic’s said, that’s the wrong way to handle Dubrovski. You have to be cunning or he’ll decide to crush you. I’m not afraid for myself but I would hate for Mark or Dominic to suffer because he suddenly takes against me. I’ll be all right – it’s not for much longer and then I’ll be done with this private commission, and his deal will be over and he’ll probably leave London and forget about me. And Dominic won’t be working for him any more either so we’ll both be free and able to be honest about our relationship.’

‘Just promise me you’ll be careful,’ James says.

‘Of course I will,’ I say with a bright smile, though inside I’m feeling less confident than I look.
This is going to be like trying to get out of the lion’s den without him noticing you’re even there. Tricky.

I have to wait to charge up my phone until I get home that afternoon, but when I do, there’s a backlog of messages and texts from Dominic, asking where I am and what I’m doing. I didn’t receive them and perhaps our phones wouldn’t have worked underground even if I had. The messages seem to end around 2 a.m., which must have been when he came looking for me and found me, but I don’t trust the time stamps on messages anyway, not when they haven’t been received in real time.

There is a message from Dominic sent today from his work account. It says simply:

Hello Beth

It was very nice to see you last night, I hope you enjoyed the party and you’re feeling better today. It’s great to have you on the Dubrovski team!

See you soon,

Dominic.

I read it a few times, wondering if there is some kind of message hidden within the blandness, but I can’t see one. I’m just beginning to feel frustrated when another message pops up, this one sent from an email account I don’t recognise.

Hi gorgeous

Now I’m back here, I’ve been able to get on to a laptop that isn’t monitored by work. God, I can’t wait until we’re both free of Dubrovski, I feel like we’re being watched all the time. It was marvellous to see you at the party last night even if circumstances were less than ideal. We could have had a much more enjoyable time if it’d been just the two of us... I can’t wait to see you again. How about tonight? In the boudoir?

Love

Dx

I smile as I read it. At last, this is what I’ve been longing for. Communication – real and loving, like any girl might expect from her boyfriend. My fears and jealousies melt away. I quickly type back a reply.

Thank you for your lovely message, sweetie, and I can’t think of anything better than us being in the boudoir again. But the truth is, I’m totally wiped out from last night and I need an early night if I’m going to be any use at all tomorrow. I have to get back to work, all the sooner to get this job done. Can I see you tomorrow night instead? The boudoir sounds amazing. Yes please.

B x x x

The answer comes back almost at once.

Understood. I’m tired myself after that late night. Are you okay, though? I was worried about you last night. When I left you with Andrei, you seemed all right but you were obviously out cold later on. Tell me all about it when I see you tomorrow. Sweet dreams and sleep well tonight, gorgeous. Let’s arrange our rendezvous in the morning.