‘What about Kevin?’
‘He’s not here. Personal time, he said. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.’
‘We’ll just have to-’
‘I’ll take Sam with me,’ Paula said. ‘Talk to you later.’
Tony leaned back on the cushions. And for the second time that morning, everything drifted away.
Kevin stood at the window, admiring the view across the rooftops of Temple Fields. He wasn’t accustomed to this perspective on an area he knew so well. It looked remarkably innocent from this height, he thought. Impossible to see what misdemeanours the matchstick figures below were up to. He’d known the top ten floors of the Hart Tower were residential, but this was the first time he’d had the chance to experience the panorama. He turned back to his host. ‘You’re lucky, living with a view like this,’ he said.
Justin Adams pushed his dark-framed glasses up his nose and swept the fringe of his long dark hair across his forehead. ‘It’s not actually mine,’ he said. ‘It belongs to a photographer I do quite a bit of work with. He lets me use it when I’m working up here. My base is in London.’ He grinned, smile white against a couple of days’ stubble. ‘Nothing like as grand as this.’ He walked across the room towards the kitchen area. ‘I can, however, offer you something to drink. We’ve got beer, vodka, gin, wine…’ He raised his eyebrows in a query.
‘Thanks, but I’m due in at work later. I don’t want to walk in smelling of drink.’ Kevin settled himself in a squashy tweed armchair the colour of winter bracken.
‘Yeah, I suppose that doesn’t go down too well in your line of work. What about a soft drink? I’m having an orange juice.’ He took a carton out of the fridge and ripped the plastic seal free. ‘You fancy a glass?’
Sealed, and he’s drinking it too, Kevin thought, then mentally called himself a paranoid wuss. This interview had been arranged long before the poisoner had taken a victim. He’d seen Justin Adams’s byline in motoring magazines for years. ‘Yeah, go on,’ he said, watching as Adams poured two tall glasses, adding a couple of cubes of ice from a tray he took from the freezer. Both glasses were in clear sight the whole time, from pour to delivery. Kevin waited till Adams had taken a hearty swig, then he swallowed a couple of mouthfuls. It was delicious; sweet, tangy and bright.
Adams placed a small recording device on the coffee table that stretched between them. ‘You don’t mind if I record this, do you?’
Kevin waved an expansive hand in the direction of the machine. ‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘It’ll be funny doing a recording that doesn’t begin with the date and time and a list of who’s in the room.’
Adams’s smile barely made it across his mouth. ‘Not the kind of recording I expect I’ll ever make,’ he said.
Kevin laughed. ‘Depends how fast you drive those cars you write about.’
Adams leaned forward and pressed a silver button. ‘Tell me about the first time you remember seeing a Ferrari.’
Pannal Castle had stood on its present site since the Wars of the Roses. A ruin by the mid-nineteenth century, it had been rebuilt by the 14th Baron. Although from the outside it looked like a substantial medieval pile, indoors it had central heating and modern plumbing, as well as a layout that conformed to modern rather than ancient needs.
Probably the best thing about it was its range of astonishing views, a gift appreciated only by the few, since Pannal Castle remained resolutely closed to the public. Wool, coal mining and, more recently, the Red Rose Fine Arts and Craft Village had allowed successive lords Pannal to hang on to their castle and lands without having to resort to day-trippers.
Lord Pannal himself had actually worked for a living. For a dozen years, he’d been a relatively undistinguished documentary film maker, which now fitted him to be a member of all sorts of boards and committees. He was, as far as Carol knew, a decent enough bloke in spite of having once had Tony Blair up to Pannal to open the new gallery at the craft village.
As they drove up the gentle rise of the private road that led to the castle, Chris looked around. ‘This must have been spot on as a defensive position way back when,’ she commented. ‘You’d have a hard job creeping up on them.’
‘I expect that’s why it’s still here,’ Carol said.
‘That and the poison garden, eh? If you don’t get them with the cannonballs, get them with the soup.’
‘No wonder English food got such a bad name.’
‘So what’s actually here?’
‘Lord Pannal got interested in poison gardens when he was making a documentary about the Medicis a dozen years ago, so he decided to make one of his own.’
