Vivien Armstrong - The Honey Trap

Simon returned her insouciance with wry disbelief. The Olympic proportions were undeniable but her swimming hadn’t seemed much in evidence when he had been struggling against the undertow. There was her blasted winding sheet of a dress, of course, and being drunk couldn’t have helped. Or perhaps it did?

He shrugged. ‘Well, if you’re satisfied it was some sort of joke …’

Frederick stared from one to the other, nonplussed.

She cleared the plates and was moving towards the sink as the telephone rang.

Simon took it, standing at his desk, his back to the clumsy efforts of Frederick to withdraw out of earshot. The old man shambled across the saloon, passing plates to Rowan now rapidly disposing of the breakfast wreckage. The receiver was replaced with a click.

Simon said, ‘Frederick, old chap. Something’s cropped up. That was my publisher. There’s some sort of foul-up at the printers’. They’re in the process of completely buggering up the layout. I’m afraid there’s no alternative. I’ve got to fly out to Amsterdam today and sort it out.’

Frederick airily waved his hand, the picture of unconcern.

‘My dear boy, don’t give it a thought. I’ll get a taxi.’

‘It’s not just your clinic appointment, Frederick. I promised to drive you home. You can’t go on the train.’ This bald affirmation of Frederick’s incapacity for public transport hung in the air.

‘Could you stay on here?’ Simon parried. ‘For a few days?’

Frederick looked confused, the possibility of changing plans seeming unsurmountable. Simon’s clock ticked fussily in the silence.

The girl broke in. ‘I’ll drive.’

The two turned abruptly towards her, now busily drying her hands. She smiled. ‘It’s the least I could do. Fishing me out and all. I’ve presumably lost my job after getting sozzled last night, anyway.’

‘It would help,’ Simon conceded, his mind already fizzing with the total cock-up the Dutch were likely to make of his considered presentation. He checked his watch.

‘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

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.