Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

he would, on that actual Friday night, go almost directly home to the Kensington house and Angela. Angela, obviously, had told Pond that Laurence had called her. He had to see Nick, he said. Laurence had not said he and Nick might ‘make a night of it’. But Laurence had said Nick might ‘delay him’, or traffic might. Nick, it seemed, had asked to see Laurence, but Angela did not credit that. Laurence and Nick had been enemies since adolescence. She suspected instead yet another woman. However, when Pond tailed Laurence from Euston Station and the intervening wine-bar, Nick’s flat was where he ended up.

Pond kept watch. When Laurence came out forty-eight minutes later, so far as Pond could see he set about driving in the right direction for South Ken. There was one other informative detail. Laurence had switched his watch to the one Angela had given him, the one he, she said, detested but wore to keep the peace. As if none of his other exploits could mar it. Angela had told Pond about the watch business. She said she had tried very hard to buy Laurence something he would like, idiotically still attempting to win his approval, and he had made it plain he was not impressed. Then made that worse by always wearing the watch - or dramatically forgetting to. It only amused her now, and sometimes when he ‘forgot’ really amused her. It was reasonable he might have forgotten that night, too, but he had not. The chunky Angela watch was on his wrist, entirely visible to Pond when Laurence pushed off his sleeve to look at it. From this last piece of info Pond felt safe to conclude Laurence meant to go straight home. So Pond called The Man.

The Man would be waiting for Laurence already, a few streets from the house. It was a spot selected from Laurence’s normal homeward route for maximum suitability, privacy.

Pond expected to hear nothing more until the confirming phone call, which would come when it came.

He was surprised therefore when his mobile sang out only an hour later. It seemed too quick. It was.

“Your friend hasn’t turned up,” said The Man.

Pond said levelly, “He should have. Traffic?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Stopped off then for another rest.” The Man would understand Pond meant another bevvy. He had explained Laurence was a heavy, indeed alcoholic drinker, with no respect for the anti-drink driving laws.

“OK,” said The Man.

“He’ll be along,” said Pond. Perturbed, he began to wonder if Laurence would. But The Man and Pond went back a long way. There was no suspicion either would muck the other about.

“OK,” said The Man again.

And it was left at that.

Pond’s relief had been enormous when he received the confirming call at eleven twenty-three that night. He did ponder, however, where Laurence might have gone in the interim. The Man had said nothing more about the delay. In the end the target had appeared and the work was carried out in full. And to The Man maybe, in the end delays did not matter. The Man was or had been, a sort of machine. Time for him perhaps had no meaning, as life did not. Both were disposable.

After the weekend, and Monday, Pond called on Nicolas Lewis.

Pond tended to be thorough with all his commissions. He did not leave many stones unturned. To be taking a reading of Laurence’s (hated/hating) younger brother seemed both advisable and a needful part of the general act.

From Nick, Pond would, on his second visit, gain the bonus of Kit’s note. Though by then it was more a provision than an essential, as no police suspicion had ultimately surrounded Laurence’s ‘natural’ death.

But there were other gains. And one of these involved the probable explanation as to where Laurence had spent that extra time between leaving Nick and encountering The Man in Kensington.

Stewart Pond was struck by Nick’s appearance at once. Although Pond had eventually detected a sort of likeness to the actress Claudia Martin in Laurence’s woman, (whose real name, apparently, was Kitra Andrezou) Nick truly did look like Martin. Pond, having been given Angela’s vivacious assessment, had consequently made a point of watching one of Martin’s old films. He had enjoyed the film (Dizzy); he could recall seeing it too when younger. But personally he had thought any resemblance between Kitra and Martin negligible. Nick however, unlike Laurence, was obviously her son. He could additionally, if technically realigned by CGI with the young Claudia, have passed for her brother - even her male alter-ego.

Despite being charmed by this quite logical familial eccentricity, Pond stored it for future possible reference or use. As he did with most pertinent facts.

His manner meanwhile was the one he now and then presented to those he must, one way or another, interview. Even sometimes to clients. He had been taken for all sorts of official or unofficial policeman. (Only with the police themselves, plainclothes or otherwise, did Pond never attempt to project such an image.)

It made Nick a little uneasy, Pond saw, but that did not necessarily indicate much. Lots of innocent people became nervous around the police, or those adequately passing for them.

The first visit then, from Pond’s view, was simply to suss Nick out somewhat. Pond thought him a slight bit on the fey side, but not the wimp Angela had titled him. Nick was a writer and sometime artist. (Pond had gone to the trouble of looking him up, and had seen reproduced examples of his art, and one short story, both of which Pond thought rather more than fair.) Writers, artists, musicians, actors - they could seem a bit fey. And the rich, too. They definitely could, but usually in a more abrasive way than Nick’s. Pond, did not think Nick was gay, either. Nor even bi. Pond had no real grounds for that, just felt it was the case.

Nick seemed genuinely disturbed by the news that Laurence had ‘disappeared’. He seemed, too, not to have known who