Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THE NEXT MORNING I drove down to north Birmingham, to one of the suburbs that were built as wealthy Victorian merchants began to distance themselves from the dark heart of their steel foundries and sought the green pastures of what was then open country. The wide roads and spacious architecture of mansion and church had since been overrun by the mini-community of Chinese takeaway, Laundromat and video store, but if you half-shut your eyes you could still see the outlines of the Palladian refuges that the bearded philanthropists had created for themselves and their families.

  I turned off a busy high-street thronged with rush-hour traffic and was instantly driving down tree-lined avenues sign-posted for golf courses and country walks. The hotel where I was to meet Suzi Hampshire stood back from the road, up a long driveway hobbled with ramps that tested my patience and the suspension of the Corsa. The hotel stood at the end of the drive like a boxy wedding cake, its cream walls and white paintwork standing in relief against the massive oaks and chestnut trees behind it.

  In the lounge, groups of middle-aged men sat together looking at papers or drinking coffee. Businessmen waiting for their morning sessions to begin. The women in the room were mostly in their mid-twenties, were dressed sharply in dark suits with white blouses, and were trying hard to look elegant and business-like. The woman I took to be Suzi Hampshire was alone, sitting in a dark corner and wearing what my mother would have called a powder-blue suit. She looked to be in her late thirties and had the air of no-nonsense efficiency that I associated with go-getting business predators, not the soft-focus warmth I might have expected from a personal coach used to dealing with people in need of help. She radiated hard edges and clean lines, an appearance that was softened only by the sculpted curve of dark hair that was moulded into a tsunami wave falling from one side of her centre parting and coming to a point level with her chin.

  I introduced myself and she moved some papers that she’d been reading so that I could sit. She took some gold half-moon glasses from the end of her nose and folded them carefully into their case. She asked if I wanted coffee and I politely refused.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Tara. I suppose I should choose my words carefully. You will be taking notes, I assume?’

  Wearily I took out my notebook and titled a fresh page.

  ‘Has there been any news?’ she asked.

  I didn’t want to mention the deadline that the kidnapper had set. ‘Not as far as I know. The police don’t keep me up to date with their investigation.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Although I was her executive coach I don’t suppose that’s covered by legal privilege. We had no contract, except an informal one relating to the mechanics of how often we met. I could, of course, refuse to answer your questions and speak only to the police.’

  ‘Have they been in touch?’

  ‘Not yet. I daresay they’ll get round to me. What do they do—investigate Rory’s murder first, then move on to Tara when they’ve solved it?’

  ‘The law moves in mysterious ways. I wouldn’t like to predict its course.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll tell them what I’m about to tell you. Tara was a highly confused young woman. She was impetuous but careful, apparently controlled but emotionally volatile.’

  ‘Was a psychological profile part of the service you offered?’

  Her face, if possible, turned a little stonier. She said, ‘What I say to you is not necessarily what I would have said to her. My role was to offer support and encouragement. I reflected back to Tara what I heard her saying, even though she didn’t always say it overtly.’

  I took in her own carefully controlled demeanour, hands folded across her lap, legs crossed at the ankle, head angled slightly to one side in an expression of authoritative expertise. I said, ‘What exactly does an executive coach do?’

  Despite her air of superiority, she wasn’t immune to the lure of self-advertisement. She leaned back expansively in the leather chair. ‘I help people focus on their real objectives,’ she said. ‘Usually they have to create a well-formed outcome so they know exactly why they’re moving forward. Often people in high-stress jobs lose sight of their real purpose. I can help them articulate what they want out of life and how they’re going to get it.’

  ‘So that involves a lot of talking.’

  ‘I’m qualified in this work, Mr Dyke. I didn’t walk in off the street.’

  ‘How many clients do you have at the moment?’

  ‘Enough to keep me busy. Is this going somewhere, or are you trying to see how far you can push me?’

  ‘I was married to Tara a long time ago, when she was still called Debbie. I can see you didn’t know that. She was a funny, hyperactive girl who wanted a lot out of life and was easily bored. I imagine she enjoyed talking to you and going over all the problems in her life, but she never solved anything by talking about it. Whenever she hit a problem, she did something. As a matter of fact, she usually ran away.’

  ‘Oh my god—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re Daniel’s father.’

  I looked at her but said nothing. She had said something I never expected anyone to say to me. It took a moment to absorb it.

  ‘She never told you,’ she said. ‘But you know, don’t you? It bothered her that she never got in touch, but she didn’t know how to. And I think she felt guilty, too.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me feel any better.’

  ‘In a strange way, I think having had Daniel and then giving him away toughened her up. Can you understand that? In fact, I would almost say that she felt her emotional life was a little stunted afterwards. When she talked of Daniel, she did it with a sense of loss.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’

  ‘You could make it relevant. Maybe she couldn’t feel for people in the same way that she used to. Maybe it coloured the way she behaved towards Rory. It’s possible that the relationship she had with you was the last real relationship she had, although I know it didn’t end well.’

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ I said.

  Our conversation had shifted on to another level. We both looked away and adjusted our attitudes.

  ‘Don’t judge her too harshly,’ she said. ‘She thought it reflected more on her than it did on you that she ran away. She couldn’t deal with the pressure from you or her parents, particularly her father.’

  ‘The Major.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she talk about him at all?’

  ‘I’m an executive coach, Mr Dyke, not a psychoanalyst. My work is based on improving the individual’s performance at work through an understanding of what their real drives and motives are. I don’t touch on the personal.’

  ‘Nevertheless—’

  ‘Of course Tara talked about her family. That’s how I know about Daniel. Let’s put it this way, family was not something that Tara was good at. Tara did self, not family.’

  ‘She had friends.’

  ‘Indeed. But she needed them to persuade her that she was—shall we say—a normal member of the human race. Friends were supposed to be good for you, so she cultivated them.’

  Despite my dislike of this woman, I was beginning to see another aspect of Tara’s life and personality. ‘What did she say about herself?’

  ‘Tara seems to have acted impetuously but she always said it was because she misjudged situations. Her judgement wasn’t much good. If there was a decision to make, she made the wrong one. Then she put on this brave and confident face and brazened it out. It was exactly the same in her business. She said she used intuition and gut-feeling to help her along. In point of fact, she was just sticking a wet finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing. When she made decisions she didn’t have the slightest clue what she was doing. She called it intuition to make herself feel good. Actually it was bad planning, lack of research and no real understanding of business. She wanted to be in business, but she didn’t really understand it. She liked winning, and this was just a forum where
she could appear to win without actually having to compete.’

  ‘In my experience of business this doesn’t make her unusual. Just more honest than most.’

  ‘And then there was Rory.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This was a man who invented the word competition. Tara was fascinated by his unwillingness to let anything go. He had to win—at everything. He must have had such low self-esteem.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  She dismissed this. ‘No. There were opportunities when Eddie was working there, Christmas parties and suchlike, but living so far away made it difficult to timetable things. And now Eddie’s been kicked out—well, shall we say there’s little incentive to visit sunny Waverley.’

  ‘I’ve met Eddie,’ I said. ‘What does he make of all this?’

  ‘He liked Tara,’ she said. ‘Really disliked Rory.’

  ‘He gave the impression that he was able to handle Rory but got fed up with having to deal with him on a daily basis.’

  ‘Eddie likes you to think that he’s in control. He would hate you to believe that he’d let his real feelings get in the way of dealing with Rory.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let his feelings get in the way.’

  Suzi Hampshire folded one hand on top of the other again. She was now speaking very quietly in the gloomy lounge.

  ‘I understand that Rory was difficult to get along with. But Eddie is a big man in all sorts of ways, and he usually gets what he wants. It served him well in the forces. When he doesn’t get his way, it hurts. When Rory was making life difficult for him, I know he was very frustrated. He spoke a lot to Tara about it; she told me.’

  ‘It sounds like an incestuous little group. How did you feel about it?’

  ‘You learn to separate out what’s important from what’s not. I told Eddie to stick to the facts of the matter and not to get angry.’

  ‘Did your advice work?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘But you’re not certain.’

  ‘Eddie and I separated a month ago, Mr Dyke. I can’t be certain about anything any more.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘You needn’t be. Eddie’s an exceptional man with a strength of will that you don’t come across very often.’

  ‘How did he cope in the Regiment?’

  ‘As I understand it, very well.’

  ‘What made a man like him, with that strength of character, join up in the first place?’

  She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. ‘When he was four his father abandoned him and his mother. He felt rootless. He told me he needed a strong masculine presence in his life, at least for a short while.’

  Who’s the Daddy now, I thought. I said, ‘That shows a lot of self-awareness.’

  She nodded. ‘Have you heard the story about the Rolls-Royce?’ I shook my head. ‘When he was young and in the Army, before he joined the Regiment, he saw a man in his twenties parking a gold Rolls-Royce Camargue outside a house in Twickenham. He had no idea who this man was, but Eddie was struck by the fact that someone so young could have the money or the success to own a car like that. So Eddie decided he was going to have one. He started putting money aside and ten years later, when he hit thirty, he bought his own Rolls-Royce. Not new, of course. He took me to see it once. It’s in a lock-up garage in Welwyn Garden City. He takes it out for a spin once a month, if he can.’

  ‘Impressive.’

  ‘That’s what I mean by will-power. He sets his mind to something, he gets it.’

  She hesitated as if about to say more, but caught herself and looked away.

  ‘What else is there?’ I asked quietly.

  Now she looked directly at me, and for the first time her face had softened. Her monumental wave of hair showed hints of grey at its roots and I realised she was probably ten years older than I’d first thought. As she was tiring her real age was beginning to show.

  ‘You didn’t ask why we’d split up,’ she said. ‘Very noble of you, though I daresay you were interested, in the current circumstances.’

  ‘I thought you’d tell me if it were any of my business, or if it were relevant.’

  She sighed. ‘It’s relevant. I think Eddie was seeing Tara. Even if he wasn’t, he was interested in her. Ever since Rory married her and brought her into the company, Eddie was interested. It got quite embarrassing. He talked about her all the time, made any number of excuses to go up to Waverley and see her.’

  ‘Did she return his interest?’

  ‘I have no idea and quite frankly I don’t care. I know that probably sounds odd, but I was married to Eddie, not to her. I was more interested in what he was up to. If it wasn’t her it would have been someone else.’

  ‘Things were that bad between you?’

  ‘I guess so. If I think about it. And when things are that bad you tend not to think about it. What’s your view?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, I’m a beginner in these things. You’re the executive coach.’

  She smiled wanly. It broke a mood.

  I said, ‘Do you think Eddie would have had anything to do with Rory’s murder or Tara’s disappearance?’

  ‘Mr Dyke, Eddie could kill almost anyone with a flick of his eyebrow. Paradoxically, it gives him enormous self-control. If he felt that badly towards someone he’d be more likely to laugh in their faces while making them realise at the same time that he could inflict enormous pain or damage on them. He wouldn’t actually have to do it. Besides, as I’m sure you know, he was in London when Rory was murdered.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I told you, we separated a month ago.’

  ‘But you’re still in business together.’

  Her expression didn’t change but she knew she was caught in a bluff. Without moving her eyes from my face, she said: ‘Somewhere in the Lake District. He’s running a team training course. You’ll have to phone the client to find out where they are.’

  She gave me the name of a well-known oil company and the location of their head office in the UK. ‘Or you could ring his mobile,’ she added. ‘Though he probably won’t answer if he’s working.’

  The hotel lounge was now completely empty except for Suzi Hampshire and myself. Course delegates had gone to their training rooms for the morning sessions, breakfast meetings had ended, visitors had emptied their cafetières and moved on.

  ‘You mentioned that you’ve separated,’ I said. ‘Who moved out—you or Eddie?’

  ‘Me. It was my decision. Why?’

  I hesitated. ‘Do you still have a key?’

  For once she looked shocked. ‘Do you think I’d give it to you?’

  ‘Mrs Hampshire, one person’s been killed and another is missing. I can break and enter, if necessary. But I’d rather go in quietly.’

  ‘You don’t even know where the house is.’

  ‘I will when you tell me.’

  She let out a short bark that was evidently her version of a laugh. She stared at me for a moment, then reached down for her bag and took out a key ring. She detached a Yale key and handed it to me, giving the address of the house as she did so.

  I stood up and thanked her for her time.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked. Her hard edge had vanished and she seemed older and more vulnerable than the professional sceptic I’d first met.

  ‘It’s better that you don’t know,’ I said.

  She nodded, then looked me in the eye with an expression of sincere concern. ‘Have you talked to Daniel?’ she asked.

  ‘I only found out about him a few days ago. At the moment I don’t know what I’d say.’

  ‘I could probably get an address for you.’

  ‘That would be kind.’

  She looked at me oddly. ‘Do you think so?’