The Stone Wife

14

On the rear seat of Nathan’s limo, wedged between the crime baron and one of his bodyguards, her wrists tied behind her back, Ingeborg cursed herself for making such a disastrous start to her so-called undercover assignment. If Diamond or any of the others in CID could see her now she’d be mortified. She’d made the wrong call over and over. Her cover story of the photo-journalism was looking like a non-starter. Lee Li clearly wasn’t the single-minded wannabe she’d taken her for. There was a strong possibility she had been using Ingeborg as a distraction device rather than the other way round. Lee’s getaway down the rope ladder had fooled everyone. Yet it was Nathan who had been quickest to work out what was happening and ambush Ingeborg when she’d wrongly supposed he was still aboard ship with his two henchmen.

Humiliating.

However…

There was one thing on the plus side, even though she couldn’t take much credit for it: her objective had been to gain entry to Nathan’s house and it looked likely to happen. They were definitely driving in the direction of Leigh Woods. They had crossed the Avon on Brunel Way and looped northwards on the west side of the gorge, cruising at speed along deserted roads into millionaire country.

‘Technically, this is abduction,’ she said in as calm a voice as she could raise.

The minder on her right said, ‘Shut it.’

Nathan told her without a glance in her direction, ‘You don’t seriously expect to throw shit at me and walk away?’

‘I’ve done nothing. I only met you an hour ago.’

‘Don’t give me that. You and Lily pulled this off together.’

‘If you’re talking about Lee Li, I only met her for the first time tonight.’

Nathan didn’t answer. But the reason Ingeborg was his prisoner was made clear. He now believed she and Lee had conspired against him. Lee had chosen this night to cut loose and because Ingeborg had used the same escape route, it was taken to be a joint arrangement.

She, too, lapsed into silence.

The hanging woods towering over the river on the Somerset side of the gorge rank high among the glories of the British landscape, making even Brunel’s suspension bridge look a modest structure. By night the blue-grey gap between plunging masses of black is decorated by the necklace-like lights of the bridge. From Rownham Hill the glow of the city on the opposite side confirmed to Ingeborg that she had correctly predicted the route. She was urging herself to be positive. Her earlier mistakes shouldn’t matter now she was being driven in style to Nathan’s mansion — even though her wrists were bound.

Near the top they took a right. The road map in her brain told her they were now heading towards North Road, a haven of affluence in an area known as Nightingale Valley, where many of the major properties were sited.

Sure enough, they reached a T-junction, turned left and travelled a short distance before braking in front of a substantial entrance between high stone walls. The driver pressed a remote. In silence the steel gate rolled aside.

A dog was barking nearby. Escaping from here wouldn’t be a breeze, Ingeborg noted as they started up a long drive. It wasn’t surprising Lee had chosen to decamp from the ship, rather than this penned-up place. Exactly what had prompted the escape bid was less certain. Things must have gone badly wrong for her to cut loose at this point. Nathan’s support of her career in pop had seemed to underwrite the relationship.

Well, he wasn’t Prince Charming, for sure.

Security lights blazed as they approached a tall, coal-black building with gothic features any director of horror movies would have sold his birthright to acquire.

Someone was awake at this hour of the morning and stepped forward to open the car door. He looked a clone for the other bodyguards.

Nathan stepped out without a word and made a gesture for Ingeborg to follow. She felt a cautionary hand on her shoulder from the heavy who had shared the back seat.

They passed through an arched doorway into a tiled entrance hall the size of a barn, with suits of armour displayed on the walls, along with shields, swords and lances. What message was that supposed to give out? An owner with delusions of grandeur? An interest in medieval history? Or a need to divert suspicion?

The collection of modern weapons would be stored somewhere less obvious, Ingeborg decided.

The doorman helped Nathan out of his coat. The pinstripe three-piece underneath definitely hadn’t been bought off the peg.

‘Will the lady be in the guest room, sir?’ the doorman enquired. Perhaps, on consideration, he was a butler.

‘The tower room,’ Nathan said.

‘I need a bathroom first,’ Ingeborg said.

‘It’s en suite, madame,’ Nathan said with mock servility. ‘Tonight you’re my guest.’

‘Your prisoner, you mean.’

‘Have it your way.’ He turned to the bodyguard. ‘Search her. She’s got a phone in her pocket. I need that.’

It wasn’t pleasant being frisked, but the handling was workmanlike. The man didn’t make it an excuse for a grope.

Nathan was handed her iPhone. He pocketed it. ‘I’m going to get some sleep. We’ll talk later. You will, anyway.’

The hand on her shoulder tightened. She was steered across the hall and through a door. A stone staircase spiralled upwards. They were in the tower already.

‘Move it,’ the minder said.

‘It would be easier if you untied my hands. I’m not going to take you on.’

The suggestion was ignored. She climbed two floors and waited while a door was unlocked and a dim light switched on.

‘The penthouse suite?’ she said, stepping inside. Her wit was lost on the bodyguard.

In this house they must have been used to unwelcome guests. The light was mounted on the wall in thick glass behind a steel grille. The furniture consisted of a wooden camp bed that looked a relic from the 1950s, with two thin brown blankets lying across the canvas slats. The en suite was a bucket with a lid and no other comforts. A cat might have squeezed through the narrow lancet windows, but no human would.

‘Now do I get my hands untied?’

This small mercy was conceded without comment. The door slammed behind her and she heard it locked. At four thirty in the morning you don’t spend long fretting over accommodation, especially when there’s nobody to listen. In under ten minutes Ingeborg was out to the world.

When she woke, she didn’t need long to recall where she was. Judging the time of day was more difficult. Although it still seemed early she looked out of one of those niggardly windows and saw that the sun was high. It could have been noon already. Lack of illumination was why she was disorientated.

The camp bed had not been comfortable, but she’d had enough sleep to get her thoughts straight and ponder what might happen next. Nathan had said they would talk later, as if he expected to find out things. She hoped his questioning would be confined to Lee’s disappearance. She could handle a grilling about that. The danger was that he might suspect she wasn’t after all a journalist. From there it was a short step to discovering she was more interested in him than in Lee — in which case she would be exposed as either from the police or a rival gang.

The next hours would be a minefield.

She heard steps on the stairs not long after, and the door was unlocked and opened inch by inch. Greatly to Ingeborg’s surprise, a woman was standing there in a pink sweater and jeans. She looked about fifty, short and a bit overweight. She said in the Bristol accent, ‘I’m not alone, so please do exactly as I say. My name is Stella and I’m Mr. Hazael’s housekeeper. Follow me and you’ll get a chance to shower and freshen up. Then you’ll get coffee and whatever you want for lunch.’

Good call. Things could only get better now.

The same bodyguard from last night was standing to the right of the door, looking as meek as a muscleman can. Starting a fight didn’t feature at all in Ingeborg’s thoughts. A shower would be bliss.

At the bottom of the stairs they emerged from the tower, crossed the hall and entered a more furnished section of the house, a corridor carpeted in red, with wood panelling hung with ancient jousting shields. Nathan clearly had pretensions of grandeur, with his interest in weaponry extended to this archaic décor.

The bodyguard remained in tow as Stella the housekeeper led them into a lift at the end.

The doors parted a level higher in what was clearly a woman’s dressing room, with a wardrobe, dressing table and shower cabinet. A disquieting probability was put to rest when Stella instructed the bodyguard to go through to the bedroom and wait behind a screen. ‘I’ll tell you when to come out.’

To Ingeborg, she said, ‘Take your time. He’ll behave himself. You can wash your hair if you want. Everything you need is in there.’

The glass sides of the shower were part-frosted, but Ingeborg had no inhibitions about stripping. She was confident from Stella’s superior manner that she outranked the bodyguard in this household and God help him if he stepped out of line.

After such a wretched night, the soft spray on her skin couldn’t be bettered as a restorative. Expensive gels and hair treatments were ranged along a glass shelf. She showered and shampooed and used the thick white towels from the heated rail outside.

‘Help yourself to a change of underwear,’ Stella told her. ‘It’s brand-new and top quality. I know, because I do the shopping for him. There’s a range of casual clothes in the wardrobe if you want. He likes his lady guests to feel pampered.’

Pampered? It was tempting to comment that a night in the tower room wasn’t pampering, but why complain to Stella, who was being helpful? White jeans and a black cashmere sweater were a comfortable fit. Feeling infinitely better outside and in, Ingeborg used the range of make-up at the dressing table and then declared herself ready to eat.

‘Good. We’ll go down to the dining room.’ Stella put her head round the door and told the henchman they were ready. He followed them tamely to the lift.

The dining room had a panoramic view across sunlit lawns to Leigh Valley woods. ‘Take a seat and don’t hesitate to tell them what you want and how it should be cooked,’ Stella told her. ‘I must get to my other duties now. Enjoy your meal. If you want a tip from me, the savoury crêpes are to die for.’

‘You’ve been kind.’

‘It’s my job. I expect he’ll join you shortly.’ The first unwelcome thing she’d heard this morning.

Places for two had been set at one end of a long polished wood table, so she did as she was asked and a waitress arrived at once to take her order. Nathan might be a barbarian, but he knew how to live.

Coffee and freshly made crêpes were served. A variety of fillings made the meal a delicious guessing game. She recognised spinach and ricotta and red pepper and tomato, and there were other combinations with shrimps and mushrooms that were harder to identify.

Then a less welcome side-dish appeared. ‘Are they looking after you?’ Nathan’s voice came from somewhere behind her. A whiff of aftershave had crept in with him.

‘I can’t fault the cooking,’ she said evenly as he took the seat opposite. He was in a black silk robe decorated with dragons. This guy didn’t underrate himself. ‘Is this the softening up process after the tower room treatment?’

‘That was a security measure,’ he said, eyeing her with that penetrating stare that recalled the mugshot. ‘The alternative was to put you in a guest room with a minder for company and you might not have appreciated that.’

‘I don’t know why you want to put a guard on me. I’m not likely to run away.’

‘Lily did, so why not you?’ He raised a hand to stop her from answering. The waitress had appeared from the kitchen. ‘My usual,’ he told her without making eye contact, ‘with a slice of liver.’

When they were alone again, he made a performance of offering Ingeborg more coffee. ‘So what do you think of my house?’

‘I haven’t seen much of it,’ she said.

‘I’ll show you some more soon. I think you’ll be impressed. I’ve made a lot of changes since I bought the place. I’m modernising.’

‘The bits I’ve seen don’t look modern.’

‘It was owned by a baronet. Been in his family for centuries. He was the last of the line, saw out his days here and died a few weeks before his hundredth birthday. They put it up for sale full of all the crap he’d collected. It’s a good location and there’s plenty of ground with it, so I made an offer and bought it, house and effects. This was three years back. We had a massive auction on the lawn outside to get shot of the bloody effects. Two days it took. Marquee, dealers from all over. A lot of the stuff was antique and I came out of it pretty well.’

‘Who did you use as auctioneers?’

‘I don’t know. A Bristol firm, out of the yellow pages. Why do you ask?’

‘I met an auctioneer recently called Doggart, but he was doing his stuff in Bath. They get about, don’t they?’

‘I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, I decided to hold on to the armour on the walls until I redecorated, so that didn’t go into the sale. You know how it is. You plan to make changes and the years go by and you don’t. I’m getting round to it now, having it valued, and it turns out that some of the armour is very old. The trouble is, who wants to buy bloody suits of armour these days?’

‘Can’t help you there,’ Ingeborg said.

‘The buyers take some finding, I can tell you, and it’s slow progress. I want a fair price. I’m not giving the stuff away. So that’s why the place hasn’t been given a makeover.’

Nathan’s eyes slid to the right, waiting for the waitress to leave the room. Then he stopped talking like a TV presenter on one of those house transformation shows and got round to more personal matters. ‘We can sort this out in a civilised way. I won’t deny Lily and I have the occasional spat, but I’ve never roughed her up. We always kiss and make up. Always. That’s what couples do, isn’t it?’

Unsure how to deal with this soul-baring, she watched him top up his cup. An insight into Nathan’s private life might be of use, but it wouldn’t be smart to put herself into a position where he felt he’d said too much and was getting nothing in return. She said, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what’s on Lee’s mind.’

‘Don’t give me that crap,’ he said, dropping the civility straight away. ‘You’re close, you two. You must be.’

‘I only met her yesterday.’

He brushed that aside. ‘Who supplied the rope ladder?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘She didn’t bring it with her. I drove her to the ship for the shoot. I know a woman can stuff a lot in her bag, but I’m bloody sure there wasn’t a ladder in there.’

‘I can’t help you with this,’ Ingeborg said, doing her best to sound cool.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ingeborg Smith.’

His lip curled.

She had a response she’d used a hundred times before. ‘I can’t help being called Smith, if that’s what bothers you. There are seven hundred thousand Smiths in Britain and I happen to be one of them.’

‘You’re a writer. Get a pen-name.’

She took this as humour and smiled. ‘It’s what I’m known as. Why change it now?’ On an inspiration, she added, ‘Wilbur Smith is one of the most famous writers in the world and he doesn’t find it a handicap.’

Nathan was unimpressed. He didn’t look like a book-lover. ‘If you didn’t know about the rope-ladder,’ he doggedly returned to his main line of enquiry, ‘how come you used it to get off the ship?’

‘It was hanging over the side when I ran along the deck. I was being chased. Your men were shining flashlights at me. What would you have done?’

Nathan wasn’t interested in replying.

‘They could have been armed,’ she added, becoming more confident. ‘Someone comes after me in the dark, I don’t hang about.’

Another temporary halt was called for the arrival of Nathan’s lunch, a plate piled high that made her think fleetingly of Peter Diamond. In this situation Diamond, like Nathan, wouldn’t have ordered the crêpes. But he might have approved of the way she was coping with the interrogation.

‘What was that about my men being armed?’ Nathan asked when the waitress was gone.

‘You’re a major player,’ she said. ‘I expect you need to defend yourself.’

He didn’t deny it. ‘Tell me what you know. Is Lily playing silly games or has she really jumped ship?’

‘I can’t answer that. I keep telling you we aren’t friends. My dealings with her are professional. She’s someone I arranged to interview, that’s all.’

He used his knife on the fried liver, served so rare that blood oozed from it. ‘I don’t like being pissed about. I invested a fortune in that girl. I treated her well.’ He looked up from his plate. ‘Did she say something was bugging her?’

‘Not to me. We hardly talked at all.’

‘After the shoot finished, did you speak?’

Ingeborg shook her head. ‘I went to the dressing room and they told me she’d already left.’

‘How soon was that?’

‘Not long after the wrap.’

‘Was she with anyone?’

‘They didn’t say so.’

Nathan used his blood-stained knife to stress what he said next. ‘She wasn’t acting alone. Some toe-rag supplied the ladder and fixed it to the side of the ship. She knew where to go, and she had wheels to get away. It was all arranged.’

Ingeborg had worked this out for herself. It didn’t require great deductive powers. She sipped her coffee and said nothing.

‘Am I reading it right?’ Nathan asked.

Difficult. Neutrality was her preferred stance. ‘I’m not in a position to say.’

‘Come on, I’ve checked your phone. You took pictures of her. You were with her.’

‘On and off.’

‘Was she nervous? Excitable? Angry?’

‘How would I know? We’d only just met.’

He pointed the knife at her. ‘You’re not helping.’

‘I’m being honest.’ And she added something which was not honest at all. ‘If you want to know who’s angry, I am. I’m angry with Lee. She played me for a sucker, letting me think I could get a magazine piece out of this.’

The mean eyes widened a fraction. Maybe she’d made a telling point. ‘Where was this going to appear?’

‘In one of the Sundays, probably.’

‘A national?’

She nodded.

Nathan was clearly interested. He pressed his fingers to his lips and tapped them thoughtfully. ‘It’s not like Lily to turn down the chance of publicity.’

She was content to let him think the matter through in his own time. If he came to the right conclusion this could be helpful.

‘The silly little bitch is bound to come to her senses soon,’ Nathan spoke his thoughts aloud. ‘She’ll find she can’t hack it as a pop star without me backing her every inch of the way. She’d never have got this far without me. She’s not answering my calls. All I get is some recorded message.’ He put down the knife and fork and leaned back in the chair. ‘But I know what to do.’

Ingeborg waited.

‘You can talk some sense into her.’

She shook her head, acting dim. ‘I don’t know how.’

‘Like I just said, she needs to be in the papers all the time, or she’ll find herself at the bottom of the heap. Tell her you still want to write about her, even though she let you down.’

‘But we don’t know where she is.’

‘She’ll have her phone with her. Call her on your mobile.’

‘You took it off me.’

‘Play along and you can have it back. I don’t know why you’re bothered about the phone. There’s fuck all on it.’

‘It’s brand new,’ she said, which was true. ‘I got it especially for this project. It’s supposed to take better pictures than my old one.’ In reality she would have been idiotic to have brought her own phone with all its data. ‘Can I have it back now?’

‘All in good time. You and I are going to strike a deal. She’s not answering my calls, but you can bet your little cotton socks she’ll talk to you. What did Mrs. Thatcher call it? The oxygen of publicity?’

‘Something like that.’ In her wildest dreams she hadn’t expected to hear Margaret Thatcher being quoted by Nathan Hazael.

‘It’s neat,’ he said, leaning back and rubbing his hands. ‘I’ll tell you what to say. We’ll soon find out who she’s shacking up with.’

‘And what do I get out of the deal?’

‘Your ticket of leave. You’ll be free to go after I get her back.’

‘I can’t guarantee she’ll come back.’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Nathan said. ‘When I know where she is, I’ll fetch her.’ A simple statement of intent with a grim subtext. He dipped his hand into a pocket of the robe and produced Ingeborg’s phone and held it out. ‘Call her now.’

She took the phone and let it rest in her palm as if she’d never seen it before.

Put on the spot like this, she felt her veins ice up. She hated the idea that Lee would be tricked into revealing where she was and brought back by force. But if Nathan didn’t get his way, the ferocity would swing in another direction. He was in charge here.

Crunch time.

The bigger picture was that she couldn’t allow herself to fall out with Nathan. Her reason for being here was to get the truth about the hold-up at the auction and the fatal shooting. She needed to stay on speaking terms with the man. She felt a strong empathy with Lee, but it wasn’t a case of Lee being totally ignorant about Nathan’s intentions. The singer would be expecting him to come after her. She’d lived with him and she knew he wouldn’t be dumped without a fight.

Lee had the intelligence to work out what was going on.

The bigger picture had to win.

‘If I get through, do you want to speak to her?’

He shook his head. ‘She’d cut me off. Besides, we don’t want her knowing you’re with me. You’re calling for yourself, got it?’

Lee’s number was one of the few she had stored. She called it.

There was still a chance of getting a recorded message.

But Lee’s voice came through. ‘Hi. Is this Ingeborg?’ As chipper and friendly as if nothing had gone wrong.

‘How are you? We seem to have lost contact.’

Across the table, Nathan made a fist and held it up in triumph.

Into the minefield.

‘I’m good,’ Lee said. ‘Hey, I don’t know what to say about last night, leaving so suddenly. But at least we met.’

‘Where are you?’ Ingeborg asked, and saw Nathan’s nod of satisfaction at the question.

‘Right now? With a friend.’

‘In Bristol?’

‘I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind. Change in my personal arrangements. I’m not at Nathan’s place any more.’

‘The thing is… are you still up for the photo shoot?’

After a pause, Lee said, ‘Sure. We can do it, only it won’t be exactly as we planned, and we may have to wait a few days.’

‘Sorry, but I can’t wait that long,’ Ingeborg said and improvised: ‘I pitched the idea to the Sunday Times and the magazine editor is keen to use it. I promised to deliver by the end of the week.’

‘The Sunday Times? Diggety dog, that’s cool.’ The excitement was so clear in Lee’s voice that Ingeborg felt a stab of conscience. It was one thing telling lies to Nathan, but this young woman wasn’t remotely evil.

‘I can’t mess them about,’ Ingeborg felt compelled to say. ‘I was counting on doing most of it today.’

‘Aw, shoot. That’s so difficult. I can’t tell anyone where I am, not even you. Ask no questions and hear no lies. Well, I’d better say this much: I’ve split with Nathan. My life was getting impossible for all sorts of reasons I won’t go into. So, you see, we can’t do the photo shoot at his house like we said we would.’

‘That is a problem,’ Ingeborg said, her brain in overdrive, conscious that Nathan was hanging on every word she spoke. ‘It’s supposed to be a typical day in your life.’

‘Can’t you change the format?’

‘Not at this late stage. Really it doesn’t matter where we do it, as long as it’s about you from morning till night. I took those shots on the ship last night. They’ll go in nicely and show you at work. Great publicity for the video, too.’

‘You’re right. Oh, God, this is difficult. I’m really up for it, only I don’t see how it’s possible.’

The conflict in Lee’s voice was painful to hear and Ingeborg felt desperately mean, but she couldn’t allow this call to end yet. ‘There must be a way round this. Can we meet somewhere and talk it through?’

Nathan raised both thumbs.

The pull of publicity was too much for Lee to resist. ‘Righty. I’ll meet you. Only it has to be somewhere I can feel safe. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve. Let me think.’

Ingeborg was tempted to tell her she’d think better if she stopped trotting out these stupid proverbs.

‘Do you know Queen Square?’ Lee asked.

‘I do, but where in Queen Square? It’s huge.’

‘The middle, where I can see in every direction.’

‘Where the statue is? Okay, what time?’

‘What is it now? Half-twelve? I can be there by two, just to meet, right, and work out what we do?’

‘Two it is.’

Nathan had a smile like sunrise over the Bristol Channel when the call ended. He didn’t ask for the phone back. ‘I heard your side of it. Queen Square. Did she say where she is now?’

‘No. She was being careful.’

‘She can’t be far off if she’s meeting you at two.’

‘True.’

‘Not long until I get her back.’

‘That isn’t what she’s expecting.’

He chuckled. ‘Women like surprises.’

‘Do you need me there, or can I go now?’ Ingeborg asked, already guessing what he would say.

‘You’ve got to be there.’

‘I feel like Judas.’

‘Relax. She’ll come to her senses when she knows how much I care about her.’ And his eager voice suggested he really did care. ‘Have you seen the sound studio I built for her? Come on, I’ll show you.’

Recording studios held no particular interest for Ingeborg, but the chance to see more of the house was unmissable. She followed Nathan from the room and through a spacious sitting room equipped with a plasma TV, on the lookout all the time for anything resembling an armoury. But this was a place to relax, more modern in style than the other living rooms she’d seen, with deep armchairs, sofas and subdued lighting.

‘We’re entering her private quarters now,’ Nathan said, pushing open another door. ‘I don’t often come in here. Had it built for her only three months ago. You can still smell the paint. There’s also a small gym. She’s quite an athlete, as you saw on the ship.’

‘Do you have your own gym?’ Ingeborg asked.

He laughed. ‘Christ, no. What do you think I am?’

‘What’s in your section, then — a cocktail bar?’

‘You don’t want to know what I get up to.’

‘But I do. Let me try. Men’s stuff. Snooker and darts?’

‘I’ll own up to that.’ He was leading her along a white-walled corridor into the extension.

‘A gun-room?’

He turned to stare at her. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’re a powerful guy,’ she answered as smoothly as she could. ‘I can see you target shooting and hitting the bull, no problem. Wouldn’t surprise me if you have some kind of shooting gallery as well.’

‘You’d be wrong,’ Nathan said.

‘About the gallery? Then I reckon you have a range somewhere outside. Or do you just shoot squirrels and pigeons?’ She was pressing him harder than she intended because she could see he was practically purring over the macho image she was suggesting for him. ‘As for foxes, I bet they know better than to come visiting your estate.’

‘Did Lily speak to you about me and guns?’ he asked after an uncomfortable pause.

‘No.’

‘What put this in your head, then?’

Stay cool, she thought. He’s not suspicious. He’s trying to be friendly, making conversation.

‘If you remember, I was squeezed between you and one of your employees in the car last night — close enough to feel what was clipped to his belt. And if your men are armed, I’d expect you to know how to handle a weapon.’

Satisfied, apparently, he gave a shrug and moved on. He hadn’t denied a strong connection with guns. He hadn’t denied anything except owning a shooting gallery.

They reached the door at the end of the corridor. ‘The studio.’

She entered a large oval room with chairs and cushions behind a semi-circular console and plenty of light from high windows. ‘You expected it to look like a bunker?’ Nathan said. ‘So did I before we designed this. It’s a myth that a studio has to be totally enclosed. Your musician needs to feel relaxed. Look around you. Everything she needs. She’s had a band in here and made recordings. I don’t clip her wings, whatever she may have said to you.’

‘It’s got a nice feel to it. I would have been happier here last night than in that tower room.’

‘Not so secure,’ he said with a smirk. He stepped behind the console and pressed a couple of switches and a track from Cherry Blossoms came through the speakers, surrounding them.

‘What do you think?’ Nathan shouted, to be heard.

‘Great. I bought the album myself.’

‘The studio acoustics.’

‘Ah — outstanding.’ But the purity of Lee’s voice surrounding them was disturbingly at odds with the duplicity to come.

‘Want to see the gym?’ Leaving the track still playing, Nathan strode towards a door at the end and led her into another well-lit space furnished with enough state-of-the-art exercise machines to train an Olympic team. ‘If she gets stressed in the studio she can step in here and work out any time she wants. Would you walk away from all this?’

‘Not for long. But I’m not a singer or a sports girl. All I need is my laptop and I can work anywhere.’

‘You would have been a cheaper deal.’

She smiled. ‘Is that a compliment?’

‘No offence,’ he said. ‘You can’t budget for love is what I’m saying. You just have to go with it.’

It was bizarre to hear this kind of talk from a hard-nosed criminal. Nathan had convinced himself he was in love with his pop singer and he was starting to convince Ingeborg, too.

‘Seen enough?’ he said. ‘I’m taking you back to the TV room now and one of my staff will sit with you until we leave. I have arrangements to make.’

‘This is all very neat for you,’ she said, ‘but I can’t see my story getting filed. She won’t trust me any more.’

‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Lily will play along, whatever she thinks of you. When it comes to PR, she doesn’t miss a trick.’

‘But you heard what I said on the phone. I have to meet a deadline.’

‘Sure. We’ll bring you back here and you can take as many pictures as you like. You can spend another night here, no problem.’

‘Not in the tower room.’

He slid his brown eyes sideways and fixed them on her. ‘Listen up, Miss Smith. Prove you’re on side when we get to Queen Square and you can have the five-star guest room.’