I said nothing to Michaela about the call. I felt sure she’d refuse to let me go alone if I did, but this was a problem of my making and I wanted her and Nicky a long way away when I tried to solve it, fully and finally. Simone’s timing had given me the chance to ensure that was the case and it was a chance I wasn’t about to pass up.
I drove Michaela and Nicky to Heathrow early this morning, letting them believe I’d be heading for Dover as soon as I’d seen them off. But my destination lay west, not south. A long fast run down the well remembered road through Wessex got me to Cornwall by midday. I reached Truro in the early afternoon, booked into the Tredower House Hotel for the night and set off for the cemetery on foot, in ample time for my appointment. I still didn’t know what to do. But soon the past and the present would meet to become the future. And then I would know.
TOMORROW
I woke early this morning, while dawn was still only a faint grizzling of the night. For a fraction of a second, I thought Michaela was lying asleep beside me. Then I remembered where I was and why. The needs of the present rushed into my mind before the past could throw off the last trappings of a dream. I was alert and fully awake and as ready for the day ahead as I would ever be.
I left Tredower House in strengthening grey light as rabbits preened and nibbled on the lawn and a squirrel leapt from branch to branch of the horse chestnut tree. The air was cool and vernally new, the city as serene and empty as a closed museum. Unconscious almost of what I was doing, I retraced the route I walked with Uncle Joshua that last afternoon of his life nearly fifty years ago, down the hill and round by Old Bridge Street to the cathedral, where we parted.
But this morning there was to be no parting. I followed his unseen fast-striding figure along Cathedral Lane, across Boscawen Street and up the broadly curving slope of Lemon Street towards the beckoning dawn-blurred finger of the Lander Monument.
And now, as I near the top of the hill, I see I’m not the only one to have woken early and found their footsteps leading in this direction. A figure appears from the far side of the monument as I approach. Our eyes meet, and in the instant of mutual recognition I feel suddenly and immensely relieved. There’s no need to wait until this afternoon. She can have her answer here and now.
I thought it all through last night. I didn’t hurry. I didn’t ignore any of the ramifications of what it meant. I let the certainty grow on me in the encroaching darkness until I was sure beyond question. To drag it all into the open now, to exhume so much more than a long-buried body in Bishop’s Wood, carries more risks for Simone than me. We’re both guilty of perjury, but she stands to forfeit her parole on a life sentence for murder, whereas Edmund Tully’s murderer is out of her reach as well as the law’s. Her advantage her incentive is her determination to get the better of me. Yet anything less than total victory will taste like defeat to her. She wants the money. Of course she does. But she wants the pleasure of extracting it from me even more. She wants to win where Edmund Tully lost.
And I’d let her, I really think I would, but for the fact that it isn’t me who’d be giving it up. The money is only technically mine. Morally it’s Michaela’s. And Uncle Joshua’s, of course. He hewed it out of the Alaskan wilderness ninety years ago and died for the considerable satisfaction of denying a blackmailer so much as a penny of it. As I grow older, I feel closer to him and ever more reluctant to let him down.
In the final analysis, however, the choice wasn’t mine to make. The decision, like the money, was Michaela’s. I telephoned her at the chalet as soon as I judged it late enough for Nicky to be asleep in bed and broke the news. At first she was angry with me for holding out on her. But her anger didn’t last long. She knew who I’d been trying to protect, and she knew, as I did, that there was only one way to do it.
“What are you doing here?” Simone demands as we confront each other from adjacent corners of the plinth at the foot of the monument. She seems almost to resent my presence to regard me as an intruder on her property. “Trouble sleeping?”
“Trouble waiting.”
“Then don’t wait any longer. Accept my offer now and we needn’t meet this afternoon or ever again.”
“If only I could believe that.”
“You can.”
“No. If I pay up this time, there’ll be another time, and another after that. You’ll always come back for more. You can’t help yourself.”
She smiles, as if I’ve paid her a compliment. “You’ll just have to take that risk.”
“I’m afraid I’m not prepared to. You’re right. We needn’t meet this afternoon or ever again. But only because I’m not going to let you blackmail me. Now or in the future.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s no deal. You’re not going to get half a million pounds from me. You’re not going to get the loose change from my pocket.”
“You refuse?”
“Absolutely and irrevocably.”
She stares at me disbelievingly. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“I can bring your cosy world crashing down around your head. Have you forgotten that?”
“No.”
“Then you must accept.”
“But I choose not to. You see, I think you’re bluffing. You can hurt me, it’s true, but only by crippling yourself in the process. And you’re too sensible to throw away what you’ve got.”
“What have I got?”
“Freedom. At a price.”
She moves closer. Her gaze narrows. “You’re wrong. I’ll go through with it. And I’ll drag you down with me. It’ll be worth it. For the money. For the thrill of seeing whether I can get away with it. And for the satisfaction of seeing my father properly buried.”
“You’ll never achieve that.”
“Won’t I? Trevor Rutherford could show the police where to dig. And I reckon he’ll be forced to when I’ve said my piece.”
“It won’t make any difference.” I pause, debating even now whether to tell her what her mother never has. Then the cold hard glint in her eye closes the debate. “Edmund Tully wasn’t your father.”
“What?”
“He was just a name for your mother to put on your birth certificate.
He was her husband, but your father in law only. It’s why he left her after coming home from the war. Because she was carrying another man’s child.”
“You’re lying.”
“She told me so herself. Ask her if you don’t believe me.”
“You know I can’t do that.” A spasm of something between grief and hatred crosses her face. “My mother died three months ago.”
“Did she?” I ask, genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
“You must have.”
“No. But it explains why you waited till now, of course. She perjured herself on your account, just as I did. But I’m fair game, whereas she
‘
“It explains why you think you’re free to lie to me.” Her face is flushed with anger, her voice quivering. “That’s all.”
“I’m not lying, Simone. Your mother told me the truth, in strictest confidence. And I’d have respected that confidence if you’d respected our bargain. But you chose not to, so you must accept the consequences, however unwelcome.”
“Who do you claim my real father was?”
“I don’t. Your mother declined to say. A holiday maker A travelling salesman? A neighbour? You’ll never know. She’s taken the secret to her grave.” I take a step towards her and lower my voice. “As for our secret, I suggest you do the same. For your father’s sake.”
“Bastard,” she murmurs. “This changes nothing.”
“I think it does. In you. I think it severs a link that never truly existed.”
She stares at me, hating me more for this single revelation than she ever could for outwitting her in the past or defying her in the present. “I’ll still go through with it. That’s a promise. I’ll do it if only t
o spite you.”
“Spite won’t take you far.”
“Far enough to ruin you.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll deny everything.”
“You won’t be able to. I still have the letters.”
“Fine. Publish them. Raise some doubt about Michael Lanyon’s guilt. I don’t mind. Throw as much mud as you like. It can’t stick to the dead. My father, your mother, Sam Vigus, Miriam Tully: they’re not here to confess to anything. As for me, I’ll take my chances. It’ll be your word against mine. I wonder who’ll be believed. A self confessed liar who’s taken the money and run? Or what was it you called me? - a committed family man. Your mother’s death shortens the odds in my favour. You can sell your story and make everyone who campaigned for your release look ridiculous. You can make life difficult for Michaela and me. But not impossible. That’s the point.
Whatever you do, we’ll survive. And do you know why?”
“Tell me.”
“Because she’s the real thing.”
“And I’m not, I suppose.”
“You said it.”
“What about this, then?” Her hand moves deftly inside her coat, and suddenly I see she’s holding a gun and it’s pointed straight at me. I find myself wondering, with fleeting irrelevance, whether it’s the same gun she pulled on me at Goonhilly all those years ago. It certainly looks the same. “Is this real enough for you, Chris?”
“You’re not going to shoot me, Simone.”
“Aren’t I when it would make such a big story?”
“No-one would pay you for it.”
“No. But they’d listen to me, wouldn’t they? They’d believe me.
They’d have to, because you wouldn’t be around to contradict me.”
“You still won’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because being believed doesn’t matter that much to you. To Edmund Tully’s daughter it might, but not to you.”
“Don’t be so sure. I was famous once. I was a heroine. Now… what am I? Poor, lonely and middle-aged. My mother’s dead. My son neglects me. Nobody pays me any attention. Nobody cares what I do or think. Well, I don’t like that, Chris. I don’t like being ignored.”
In the lines of her face and the dulling of her eyes I glimpse her secret faltering self and realize greed may no longer be the driving force behind her actions. “This way I’d be famous all over again.”
“But not a heroine.”
“Well, I never really liked that role anyway.” She steadies the gun with her other hand, raises it at arm’s length and clicks back the trigger. “This one fits better. Like father, like daughter. Still think I’m bluffing?”
“It’s all over, Simone. Don’t you understand? It’s finished.”
She nods. “For one of us.”
“For both of us, I rather think.” At the very edge of my vision I see a milk float trundling gently towards us along Daniell Road. I sense normality slowly stirring in the city behind and below me. Tomorrow has become today. And yesterday. Compressed into one. “Goodbye.” I swing round slowly and start away down the hill, fixing my gaze on the distant unblinking eye of the City Hall clock I once heard strike the hour of Michael Lanyon’s execution.
“Stop,” Simone cries after me, her voice cracking.
But I don’t stop. I don’t even look back. I walk on at a steady pace, squaring my shoulders and filling my lungs with the clear unhandselled air of as many mornings as I may live to see.
Askews
LIBRARY EDITION
Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire, where he and his wife now live.
He read History at Cambridge and worked as an educational administrator in Devon before becoming a full-time novelist. His previous novels are Past Caring, In Pale Battalions, Painting the Darkness, Into the Blue (winner of the first W. H. Smith “Thumping Good Read’ Award), Take No Farewell, Hand in Glove, Closed Circle, Borrowed Time and Out of the Sun.
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