Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

This begins to frighten him. It reminds him of the infantile era of childhood, when beset by some now-unrecollected dream, he roused shouting or in tears. Even, sometimes, in fits of hysterical laughter.

Claudia had occasionally come to comfort him. But she was not always in the house. There had been a procession of nanny-type women, most of them all right. Once Serena had come in - he had been about six, so Serena about twelve or thirteen. She had scooped him up from the pillows and cuddled him. But he had pushed her away, because Serena as a rule only ever mocked or bullied him, aping Laurence. And when Nick thrust her off she slapped him.

Now there is no one to help or hinder.

Nick gets up, pads downstairs, makes a cup of tea, switches on the TV. Some foreign horror movie with horned masks. He falls asleep again in front of it, and wakes just before eight, (first light) tea undrunk, TV blaring. But dry-eyed.

Pond - at the onslaught had he forgotten Pond? - had behaved surprisingly. He must have crossed to the bathroom and found a box of tissues, which, returning, he placed ready on the table before Nick, like a psychotherapist. Unlike that, he added a stiff glass of vodka.

He put his hand, briefly, on Nick’s shoulder.

“You take your time,” said Pond, in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.

And he had strolled off along the room, and begun to study some Doig prints on the wall.

The tears, the crying, stopped as suddenly as they had started. It was like a cloudburst. It had seemed at the time as if that was all that could be shed.

Nick was not embarrassed. It would be natural to cry, would it not, just after your brother’s unforeseen, shocking death? No, rather Nick had felt ashamed as if he had put on a performance. Acted it. And acted it very well. But if so, for who? Not Pond, surely.

Was it then for her - for Claudia? (Look, I can cry. I do cry. For you. Not for him. Not Laurence. It can’t be for him.)

In a while Pond had come back and sat down, and said something about the Doig prints. He had particularly liked one called Milky Way.

Nick said, perfunctorily, not meaning it nor sounding as if he did, “I’m sorry about the emotion.”

“Don’t worry, Mr Lewis. We all do it. Like all the other things we do. Part of life.”

“Yes.”

They drank vodka. (Pond seemed to have refilled his own glass, or maybe there had still been a lot left) and Nick found himself very business-like, quite prepared after all to tell Pond not only about the break-in, but Kit. Nor did Nick make any bones about how he had met her.

“I’m a male escort. What used to be called a gigolo.” Pond nodded. That was all. “The woman you describe, the one with Laurence in Wimbledon, I’ve slept with her too. As my client. Only once. I’ve only met her once. She called me on that Monday after the first Monday - I mean a week after you say Laurence left her. I knew nothing about her. Nothing about Laurence and her. I did know of course Laurence was supposed to be missing, but I thought he’d turn up. We’d already met, Mr Pond, you and I. I thought you thought Laurence would turn up.”

“It seemed then, going on the evidence, not unlikely, Mr Lewis.”

“There was no way I’d make a connection between her - this Kit, or Kitty - and my brother anyway. And she certainly didn’t mention it.” Nick briefly, and without unnecessary detail, related their evening, the drinks, meal, flat behind Harley Street, payment for services, his return home to find someone had got in during his absence. “I thought then there might be a tie-up between the break-in and the girl. I don’t know if I think that now.” He proceeded to tell Pond about the drawer-man, about how he, Nick, had nicked the drawer, and how everything from it had in fact been burgled - if you could call it that - back, apart from the notebook with his short story in it, and the piece of possible ivory Laurence himself had pocketed. (Nick forgets his moment of doubt the ivory had come from the drawer. It must have done.) “Laurence seemed to think it was a counter from some 18th century Ivory Coast board game. But that was because I’d spun him some yarn.”

“I recollect you mentioned ivory before, sir. That your brother wanted to talk to you about ivory.”

“I’m sorry. That was a lie. I thought you might be the police. I was trying to protect Laurence - or rather Angela. What Laurence had actually wanted to talk about was wanting to have sex with some TV producer woman. I assume Kit. Though she may not be a producer. Someone I know thinks she knew Kit slightly about a year ago, and said she was in commercials, but as a dogsbody. That is, if they’re the same woman. The dogsbody-girl had another name, Kitty Andrew, not Kit Price. My friend wasn’t sure they were the same girl. Neither am I.”

“Can I conclude this friend is female?”

“One of the women I see professionally on a regular basis.”

“Ah.”

“Kit, when she called me, claimed this same friend had recommended me, given my name and so on. The friend swears she didn’t. It would be a breach of confidentiality, both hers and mine, and also of a kind of etiquette, if you see what I mean. Of course I have made contacts through other clients, but they always check with me before anything is said.”

“Yes, I can see that, Mr Lewis.”

“On the other hand, Kit described my friend, and her place of work. She knew my friend’s name.”

Nick then told Pond about going back to the Marylebone flat after the break-in.

“Most enterprising. What happened?”

“I thought someone was there. They wouldn’t let me in. The name