Chapter 7 #2
Oh, well. The only way to know for certain was to try. Kenny sat in the back seat and wagged his tail. “Please, stay. Please. Please,” I said, begging. “There’s your blanket on the seat. Just curl up and go to sleep, be a good boy. Please?”
Kenny gave me his happiest, stupidest, tongue lolling-out-est look. “Okay, well, as long as you are stationary.”
He had been in the car a few times, but never very far.
We had tried the boot, which was attached to the main part of the car and had no top to separate it.
He could stick his head out and look into the front of the car.
He could even jump over the seats. Instead, he had howled and cried like I was murdering him the entire way back from the pound on the day I brought him to Lilbury.
“Okay, okay,” I’d yelled halfway home as I pulled over and let him out. “Not the boot, I get it.”
We pulled out of the drive, and I had managed to get almost half a mile before the whining started.
“Kenny,” I said plaintively. I needed to concentrate. My mind was racing, and I was upset and not a great driver of long distances at the best of times.
Silence.
More whining.
“Keeeeeenny,” I begged.
There was a rustling, and then the car jolted.
“Kenny!”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the back seat was empty. I felt a pressure on my hand and looked down. Kenny was sitting in the passenger seat, curled up in a ball. His head resting on my left hand, where I was holding the gearstick.
He sat perfectly still and looked up at me with his huge brown eyes. His tail gave some furtive wags.
“Good boy,” I said softly.
He stayed still after that. Every so often, I fed him one of the treats from the bag I had hidden in the glove compartment. Thankfully, he was well-behaved enough for once to not obsessively whine and scratch for them.
As I drove through the rapidly approaching darkness, heading east, I began to think. Who could have sent that email? Why would someone do that to Guy? Was it because they had wanted whichever Tory candidate was in the running to lose, or was it about him specifically?
The Conservative Party had been in power for several years and hadn’t exactly gone out of their way to rake up support from outside their core backers.
From austerity to anti-immigration stances, to the Scottish referendum to Brexit, there were a lot of people – including myself, if I was honest – who wouldn’t have pissed on the cabinet if they’d been on fire.
Was it homophobia? Guy had been out in his private life for years, but if his business associates in London had known he was gay, I couldn’t have told you.
He was somewhat well-known before the Arabella murder.
His family lineage and wealth had made him a prized member of the society set.
And then there was his rapid fortune-building a couple of years ago, when he had earned a massive windfall that enabled him to leave the financial world at thirty-five.
It probably had been in a trade mag interview somewhere – a casual mention that he was unmarried and supported a certain charity.
People could have put two and two together.
However, in the early days of his campaign (I’d done some reading up on his media coverage over the past two days) he mentioned it often in interviews.
Using his preferences to bridge the gap between the metropolitan images of a thirty-something out and proud man – which the Tory HQ probably wanted – and trying to toe the line in a constituency where the average voter was in their mid-sixties.
As I approached the intersection to join the A303, which would take me past Stonehenge and onto the M3 eventually and into Surrey, my mind raced.
A horrible thing to happen. Targeted. Awful. A smear campaign. And on top of the issue with Jed. At his vigil no less…
At his vigil…which might not have been a coincidence.
I had a thought that made my hand jerk the wheel to the side it hit me with such ferocity. What if the attack on Jed and the photos were linked? I almost pulled over to the side of the road.
Christ, could they possibly be related? No, they couldn’t be. The photos had come through to countless people in the village who knew Guy personally, and to members of the press at the same time.
But the thought stayed with me. It made me feel sick.
I much preferred assuming it was a political rival. Maybe an attack from a foreign power trying to destabilise British democracy. Yeah, the Russians. Must be the Russians.
The road lay out ahead of me and I drove on.
Eventually, the gnawing in my stomach got too much, and I stopped at a service centre to grab a greasy McDonald’s.
Maybe I’d even manage to eat some of it before I got back to the car and had to give the rest to Kenny.
As I returned, paper bags in hand, I heard a howling.
Oh, no. A woman passing by my car turned to her companion and tutted.
“Imagine leaving that poor animal in a car. Probably been in there for hours.”
“He’s been in there twelve minutes!” I muttered angrily as I sped up to a run.
“You are such a shit,” I snapped at Kenny as I opened the door, and the howling ceased immediately. “Fucking drama queen.”
He gave me a look. “Yes, I got you a burger too.” I pulled out a Big Mac and watched in disgust as he ate it in three bites, but somehow managed to make a mess all over the car.
I sighed. “Right, everyone ready? Let’s go. Aunty Vee is waiting.”
Forty minutes later, I crept into the grounds of the racecourse in deepest, darkest suburban Surrey, where Verity and her husband’s country folly was located.
The house they had bought was in the middle of the track.
It had been owned by a stable manager or something before falling into rack and ruin decades earlier.
They had found it at an auction and, after years of jumping through endless bureaucratic hoops, had their plans approved for purchase and remodelling. All they had to do was run an equine-related business on its vast grounds.
It shouldn’t be too difficult. Verity’s husband Gravz grew up on a farm in South Africa and had spent most of his youth bow-legged from riding horses … and whatever else people did in South Africa on farms. I don’t know, hunt hyenas.
I drove around the grounds and found the entrance to their personal driveway.
The house sat off to the side of the track in a copse of trees.
It was dark by the time I made my way up to the buildings.
The lights of the giant home were all on, and in the doorway was the diminutive shape of Verity waiting for me.
Kenny jumped out and made his way around the house, sniffing enthusiastically. “God, you really have turned into some sort of gay Dr Dolittle,” Verity joked as I approached, holding the cats’ carry case.
“We can put them in the adventure room,” Vee said and swept inside.
“Adventure room?” I asked. “If there’s a sex swing in there …”
Verity rolled her eyes and opened the door off the foyer to a tiled room with plain white walls. It was a vast space with nothing in it except a cardboard box with some old paint sheets around it.
“What in serial killer hell is this?”
“This,” she said, “is what happens when childless people buy a six-bedroom house. What the hell am I supposed to put in here? Honestly, I’m asking.
I haven’t got a clue what to use it for.
I could rent it out to a family of four, I suppose.
Anyway, dump the moggies in here. They’ll be safe.
There are the sheets for them to curl up in. ”
I did that. Eisenhower and Roosevelt both growled and prowled at their new abode as Verity went out to the car and collected the rest of their stuff for me. “Oh, shut up,” I told them.
Verity arrived back and upturned the box with their toys and treats onto the floor with little care. “There. They’re sorted. Right, time for wine.”
I followed her out into the kitchen, which was bigger than my house and full of space-age cabinetry and appliances that one had to rub in odd places to open them.
“If you need to open the fridge, be warned, it’s as awkward as a teenage boy trying to find a clitoris.
The memories it brings back,” she said as she deposited a bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of us.
I fidgeted nervously.
She softened as she looked at me. “Babes, I saw. How are you? Apart from more than a tad manic.”
“Oh, you know. It’s currently the most read story on BBC News, The Guardian, and number one trending on Twitter. So, I’ve been better.” At my feet, Kenny whined from his new spot on the kitchen rug.
“That rug was expensive,” Verity told him in case he got ideas. She turned back to me. “Listen, I think your friend Nigella had the best idea. No statements, we keep our noses clean. I’ll reach out to a couple of PR friends I have in the morning to get some proper advice.”
I nodded and got out my phone. Her own pinged on the counter. “I sent you Nigella’s number, you two can see if we can co-ordinate anything. I’ve texted her to tell her to expect your call in the morning.”
She nodded. “Good thinking.” She took a long sip of her wine. “I’ll stay here tonight and drive back in the morning.”
I sighed and put my head in my hands. “God’s sake, I can’t believe this is my life.” Up until a couple of days ago, things had been going swimmingly. And now …
“Christ, the memes on Twitter,” Verity said, looking at her phone.
“Some of them are ingenious.” She cackled away at them with, frankly, no regard for my feelings, then gave me a look.
“On the bright side, I must say, Tarquin actually got better looking with age. He’s packed on the muscle as he’s got older. ”
I glared at her. “What?” she said. “I’m only human.”
Unfortunately, I agreed. “And who knew Guy Frobisher was putting away some serious heat in the underwear department?” I said. I had come this close to being able to take a stab at that. It was very unlikely our date would go ahead. Even Guy’s ‘never good timing’ rule couldn’t compete with this.
Verity nodded. “Right, let’s finish these and try and get a proper night’s sleep. I’m going to leave early to try and do some damage control with Donal and Ffion—”
“Why? What have they said?” Verity’s partners in the agency weren’t my biggest fans.
“The usual. But don’t worry, we’ll never drop you. You make up half the agency’s profits. Your contract is quite safe despite their complaints.”
“They want you to drop me?” My throat suddenly stopped working, and it became hard to swallow. If they took away my career, which let’s be honest, was all I had …
“Only a little, and it’s not happening,” Verity said, meeting my eye with an expression that told me Don’t worry, I got this.
“If you’re certain it’ll be fine.”
“They wouldn’t dare. Appolina and Gracie would eat them alive if they tried some sort of coup,” Verity said, name-checking her finance and operations managers respectively, both of whom had a soft spot for me.
After that, she shooed me up to bed with Kenny following me. “Pick a bedroom,” she told me when we got upstairs.
“Door number three,” I said and opened it. Inside was a massive room painted white with soft furnishings to match (straight out of some showroom) and a gauzy netting over the plush queen-sized bed. “Good God.”
“I know, I know,” Verity said. “The interior decorator turned out to be a basic bitch. But she was efficient.” She turned her nose up at the wall art and shook her head.
“Bathroom is next door. On either side. There are about twenty, so no shortage. My room is at the end of the hall with the double doors that look like Marie Antoinette’s sex grotto. I’ll knock in the morn.”
She departed, leaving me and Kenny. I sat on the bed and tried not to feel lost and alone. Kenny laid his head on my knee and whined. “I agree, mate.”