The Honey Trap

‘I would rather go back today, Simon,’ Frederick ventured. ‘Perhaps I could get a hire car all the way?’ The two men regarded each other in mute confusion, the girl pensive. Simon assessed her English rose complexion, dark hair now lying in a smooth pigtail across the shoulder of his immaculate shirt. He agonized. I don’t even know the kid, but she looks OK, speaks like a lady and at worse can only make off with the Volvo. He capitulated.

‘You’re on.’

Like a clockwork roundabout, the three suddenly jerked into motion, Frederick striding to the stairs before Simon changed his mind, the girl swiftly restoring the saloon to its usual uncluttered formality and Simon turning back to his desk to fill his briefcase.

Later, below decks, Simon reiterated the arrangements with Frederick while he stowed his overnight bag under the bunk ready for a swift take-off.

‘You’re quite happy with this, aren’t you, Frederick? If you would rather not be driven by this female, do say. I can easily,’ he lied, ‘get someone else to drive you.’

‘Not at all, my boy. Delightful girl.’ He expanded in confidence. ‘Old-fashioned figure, just like women used to be.’

‘You’ll have to push off pretty soon, leave plenty of time to get to the clinic. Your suitcase ready?’ Simon persisted. ‘We could put it in the boot with—’ he indicated the pile of canvases and carrier bags stacked behind the door—‘your shopping. I’ll lock up when I go to the airport. The girl can drop off the car keys at the office tonight when she returns the car. There’s always someone on duty at night.’

‘Where do you want her to park it?’

‘Anywhere round here as long as it’s on a residents’ spot. She’ll know. She can leave a message with the boy in the office, Wayne I think he’s called, and if there’s a problem he can repark it early tomorrow morning. Is that clear?’

Simon’s confidence in the old man’s concentration had been dampened since this last little visit. Frederick’s faculties were fuzzy at the edges these days. The girl reminded them of the time, calling over the rail with smooth assurance.

Simon followed his uncle up on deck, passing the suitcase to Rowan together with most of the parcels.

They paused by the Volvo parked near the quay. A beady-eyed onlooker joined them from the boatyard office as Simon stowed the luggage in the boot and settled the old man in the passenger seat.

Simon handed the keys to the girl. ‘See Frederick safely inside the reception area even if you have to double park and get booked.’ He slipped a handful of notes to her and elaborated on the arrangements. ‘He can’t travel far without a stop but hates to admit it,’ he confided. ‘The drive to Mayerton is pretty straightforward. Take the Oxford road and when you get back here tonight drop off the keys at the office with Wayne.’ He introduced the sharp-featured watcher from the boathouse and Rowan grinned and said, ‘I’m Rowan,’ with an ice-breaking warmth to melt even Wayne’s suspicious nature.

‘I’ll telephone Frederick at home tonight when I get to my hotel so there should be no problem.’ Simon grudgingly smiled at the girl, her soft mouth level with his own twitching with amusement.

‘There’s a full tank,’ he assured her sternly. ‘And—thanks.’

‘Lucky I swam by,’ she replied, laughing. ‘I’ll post on your stuff.’

He shrugged in a gesture of insincere generosity made awkward by his conviction of the inevitable end of his Ralph Lauren shirt. Simon was never one to look on the bright side. He dropped his gaze to the canvas espadrilles. She’s welcome to those, he thought, mustering enough grace to smile at his own perfidy.

He waved them off, checking the time as he ran back down the gangplank to finish packing.

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_c4a9391a-01df-5d32-a366-1052402cbeb1)

Frederick’s Civil Service pension allowed few luxuries but one of them was private medical treatment. The Darwin Clinic sat grandly just off the Marylebone Road and he was grateful to Simon for loaning his splendid limousine. It certainly made for a smooth conclusion to a very exciting few days, almost too absorbing to allow him to fret about the proposed tests.

The girl was a better driver, for a start. She handled the car with smooth dexterity and was not the victim of the irascibility which clouded any drive with Simon. Gliding through Hyde Park opulent with the merest touches of autumn gold was a royal progress indeed.

He almost purred.

Drawing up outside the hotel-like entrance of the clinic, the girl leapt out and shepherded him to the reception area, smiling disarmingly at the doorman’s appraisal of her double-yellow parking. Inside, all was soft lighting, easy chairs and lots and lots of pink carnations. Very like a hotel foyer, in fact. He was early, the appointments clerk’s softly-spoken response reassuring. Frederick felt like a famous vintage lovingly passed from hand to hand. Rowan passed him a current copy of Country Life and settled him on a leather sofa before disappearing to park the car.

Cocooned in the gentle ambience, Frederick relaxed, secure in twenty minutes’ respite before the jaws of hell were due to pluck him into one of the stainless consulting rooms. The rasp of someone demanding his missing copy of The Times struck a discordant note. An argument ensued, clearly audible to the waiting patients and hovering relatives all too eager to be distracted from the matter in hand. A large young man in a tentlike kimono, seated in a wheelchair, his leg encased in plaster, harangued the woman behind the counter of the kiosk in the corner. Being seated and well below her line of vision in no way diminished the man’s control of the dispute, which ranged from icy contempt to flashes of childish temper. It seemed a lot of fuss about a newspaper.

Frederick swivelled round, curious, open to live entertainment of any kind. The voice seemed familiar. The doorman was moving in, sternly intent on shifting the chairborne patient who was ruffling the carefully nurtured calm.

Frederick strode to the kiosk.

‘Aran. Aran Hunter, you noisy bugger!’

The young man expertly spun the wheels of his chair, grey eyes skewering the interfering old party. The frown evaporated.

‘Fred! What are you doing in this Valhalla?’

Frederick smoothly manœuvred the wheelchair back to his sofa and the abandoned Country Life and sank back, smiling broadly, ignoring the question. He tapped the plaster cast. ‘Been kicking up the dust, old son?’

‘Fell off some scaffolding in Venice. Trying to photograph some bloody frescoes for assessment. Flew me home, luckily my insurance covered it.’

‘Bad luck. In here long?’

‘Ten interminable days. It was a complicated fracture. But I’m pretty fair now, just pissed off wasting time I could usefully spend in my studio.

‘When are they discharging you?’

‘As soon as I’ve convinced them I’ve got some place to go which doesn’t involve any more monkey tricks.’ His scowl reappeared, furrowing a tanned forehead untidily overhung with hair the texture and colour of Shredded Wheat.

‘Can’t you work from a wheelchair?’

‘Some,’ he replied guardedly. ‘Problem is they’re trying to shunt me to some convalescent palace of varieties in Torquay which they use here.’

‘If you got an au pair or someone you could probably rest at home just as well.’

Frederick had known Aran Hunter for several years, admired his work enormously, but could hardly imagine this dynamo quietly recuperating in a post-operative lay-by until his plaster was removed.

‘Tried that. Got one of my students to agree to live in but it won’t work. You see, I’ve no lift. Four floors up and I couldn’t possibly cope with the stairs.’

The soft announcement of Frederick’s appointment led them to break off, but, anxious to catch up with Hunter’s news, Frederick pressed him to meet after his check-up. They exchanged details of Aran’s room number and Frederick hurried in the wake of a pair of dark stockings leading him towards the row of steel elevators. In contrast to the cosiness of the reception area the streamlined efficiency of the lifts gave the game away: the Darwin Clinic meant business. Like everything else beyond the ground floor, the lift equipment was probably sterilized daily, he decided.

Rowan was waiting in the reception hall when Frederick reappeared, sickly pale but determinedly cheerful.

‘Hope I haven’t kept you waiting, my dear. I bumped into a young friend of mine who’s a patient here. We had a chat in his room after my tests and I persuaded his doctor to let him out to lunch. He’s on parole,’ he confided as she took his arm, ‘so we must return him reasonably sober.’

Frederick’s protégé appeared on cue, now turned out in a kilt of virulent yellow and black tartan and a tweed jacket of such proportions as to involve the cooperation of several alpaca. Wheeling himself between the leather sofas, Aran Hunter, bright-eyed as a schoolboy on half-term release, was greatly impressed by the old man’s driver. Michelangelo would have swooped on this one, all woman indeed, her male get-up lending a tantalizing fillip to this unexpected exeat.

The doorman gladly assisted the unlikely trio into the street, anxious to maintain the reverential hush which distinguished the Darwin from other less classy establishments.

The Volvo was illicitly to hand.

‘Where to?’ she said.

Confused, Frederick began to stutter about the wheelchair. She patted his arm. ‘Now, have you booked, Frederick?’

‘I thought the Chelsea Arts Club.’

‘Oh no.’ Aran’s response was unyielding.