Loose Ends

by Susan Moody

  He realized glumly that he would never marry Kate, never even get to first base, because even if he asked her out again, she would assume he was only doing so out of pity, and she would reject him with contempt. She was, he knew instinctively, that kind of girl. How many years would he have to serve before she accepted that pity didn’t come into it? Jacob served seven years for Rachel, didn’t he, plus one week, according to the chaplain at his college, but by the time he, Jefferson, had waited seven years, with or without the odd week, he’d be pushing forty and Kate might be quite old to have a first child, even with the miracle of modern science, even if she could be persuaded of his love. He sipped his champagne and thought that if, by some lucky chance, he were ever to get Kate to agree to marry him, and if by the time he’d won her trust she wasn’t too old to want kids, he would definitely not name his child after an American president. Come on, guys, five generations was enough for one family, especially with Monroe and Madison already named; why should he continue someone else’s tradition, anyway?

  Later, when the evening was cooler, he went out into the streets again to find a restaurant where he could eat dinner. There was one in the hotel, but he suspected the waiters would be fawning all over him, constantly refilling his glass, being over-attentive, just because he was a connection of Gordon’s. Several streets away, he found somewhere which looked clean and friendly and went in. There were two rooms, linked by a wide archway, and furnished with wooden tables and chairs. He would be leaving tomorrow afternoon for Guayaquil, more sightseeing and the flight to Santa Cruz island, so intended to make the most of his time here. He’d already done countless churches and cathedrals, taken a tour to see a monument purporting to mark the middle of the world, walked through the Old Town and was, quite frankly, exhausted. He ordered a soup of cheese and potatoes and, after consulting his pocket dictionary and realizing that one of the meat dishes on offer was roasted guinea pig, he opted for the fish with peanuts. (Guinea pig? They’d had a guinea pig in a cage at his primary school, a soft brown thing with small sleepy eyes, which they were allowed to take out of its cage and stroke. He could still remember the feel of the warm furry body against his grey school sweater . . . how could he possibly eat a guinea pig?) As he called for the bill he saw, through the archway leading to the second room, three men, two slim Latin-Americans in sharp-shouldered suits, one a plump and unmistakable Englishman, flushed face, big belly, crumpled linen jacket, of the same general type as Gordon, which was probably why he seemed familiar, though this guy was dark where Gordon was ginger, wearing a beard so big and bushy that it looked false. For a moment, Jefferson debated approaching the guy, finding out if he did indeed know him but asked himself if he’d want to be approached by a complete stranger when he was on vacation. Much as the English loved to herd together when they were abroad, it negated the whole idea of a holiday, the getting-away-from-it-all feeling of freedom from routine. So he left the restaurant without speaking to the man, pausing only to peer cautiously through the window on to the street. Yes, he had definitely met the bloke, he was quite sure of that, though he had no recollection of where or when. Not that it mattered.

  He nursed a glass of wine and, staring out of the big windows of his warehouse loft, watching the sun descend behind a cityscape of silhouetted black roofs, television aerials, chimney pots and, further back, the gaunt scarecrows of cranes. He’d been back from the Galápagos a week and was still uncertain as to what he should do next.

  ‘Definitely we thought it strange,’ the man from the Research Institute on Santa Cruz had said. Dr Jens Bork, who had hair of a yellow so pale as to appear almost transparent, and very light blue eyes, was a marine biologist who had agreed to see him when he came to Santa Cruz. He sat turning in his hands what appeared to be the skeleton of a small marine animal and probably was. On one side of his desk, next to a photograph of a blonde woman in jeans with her arms round two white-haired children, stood a miniature wooden flagpole flying a small red flag with a white cross on it, which made Jefferson, who had once learned the flags of all nations for a Boy Scout badge, fairly confident that Dr Bork was from Denmark. On the wall hung a portrait of what was probably the Danish queen and her husband, flanked by what might have been her son and his wife, but could equally have been her daughter and her son-in-law (Jefferson, a staunch republican, knew little about royalty and cared even less, especially the Scandinavian kind).

  ‘Did you conduct any kind of enquiry?’ he’d asked.

  ‘We could not do so. We had no sort of authority. Besides, the police seemed to be very convinced that they knew exactly what had happened. A simple road accident, as far as they were concerned. And then the whole thing was disposed of so quickly, really before we had time to assimilate what had happened.’

  ‘The . . . uh . . . cremation, you mean?’

  ‘Precisely. Almost before we were aware there’d been an accident in the first place, the . . . uh . . . remains were gone, cremated, as you say. We attended the funeral, there was a small gathering of colleagues and friends, and that, most regrettably, seemed to be that. It was only afterwards that we began to ask ourselves whether it was something quite different from what it appeared to be.’

  The man spoke far better English than Jefferson did himself. ‘And what exactly did you think was strange about it?’ he asked.

  ‘For a start, there was the character of Professor Lennox himself. A charming man, but also a most careful one, checking and rechecking everything, driving always as though there might be danger round the next corner. I will be frank with you, Mr Andrewes, sometimes . . .’ Bork paused, looking dubious.

  ‘It’s all right, I didn’t know him.’ Hastily Jefferson waved away the assumption that he might be insulted by what the other man was about to say.

  ‘Sometimes we who worked with him found this irritating, the over-methodical way in which he approached each problem as it arose. Looking back, it seemed quite honestly inconceivable that he would have driven off the road, unless forced in some way. And then there was this extraordinary talk of gunfire . . . you have heard of this also?’

  Jefferson nodded. The testimony, though inconclusive, had been among his father’s papers. ‘A small boy spoke of it, didn’t he?’

  ‘A small boy who later disappeared.’ Bork breathed deeply through his nose and relinquished the skeleton, picking up instead a ridged shell which had been lying beside a china mug commemorating the recent marriage of some Scandinavian royal couple, possibly the same crown prince or princess who featured in the photograph on the wall.

  ‘Yes, the report I was given mentioned gunshots . . .’ Jefferson nodded at the file which lay in front of the scientist. Luckily, before leaving England, he had taken the precaution of secreting a copy of everything inside the lining of his suitcase and had subsequently found a copy-shop which had Xeroxed the pages again so that both he and Bork were working from the same papers as those in the file which had been stolen.

  ‘My colleague, Dr Chambers,’ Bork said, ‘who had worked closely with Professor Lennox, and was a particular friend of his, actually took the trouble to drive up to the place in the hills where the accident occurred. He said it was inexplicable; there was no bend in the road, and no signs of a recent landslide. Most of the people he questioned denied that the incident had even taken place, but there was one family who lived on the very outskirts of the village . . . after some persuasion, they spoke of hearing two shots just before the car went over the edge of the ravine. But they refused to say anything more.’

  Jefferson, too, had driven up to the same village with even fewer results. If the family was still there, they did not come out to greet the gringo. His trip into the hills had begun in hazy sunshine but by the time he reached his destination, the area was shrouded in low-lying cloud which hovered wetly between mist and rain. As the fog descended further, muffling sound and reducing sight to a minimum, he was taken back to a similar afternoon somewhere in the Lake District, unseen sheep baa-in
g, a bird cawing sharply every now and then, the feeling that he and his father had been transported to another planet (‘Beam me up, Scotty’) where the sun never rose because of some galactic transgression by Earthmen, a war of the worlds about to commence. The coldly astringent scent of the fog invaded his nostrils, his face was webbed with it, and every now and then, a small clearing of the air enabled them to glimpse a group of people who might as well have been aliens, bulkily clad in wet Barbours and Wellingtons, protesting against the erection (or possibly the demolition) of a silo or maybe a nuclear reactor, neither he nor his father was quite clear. Companionably silent, the two of them ate soggy sandwiches made of some indeterminate meat paste, and drank Ribena from little boxes pierced by a sharp-ended plastic straw, which collapsed as they sucked the juice and air from them. Jefferson’s spirits had soared from his usual guarded contentment into pure happiness as he stared about him at the waterlogged fields, the dripping bracken, the bird (‘A lapwing,’ his father explained. ‘Also known as the green plover, or the peewit, because of its call.’) standing on one leg below a hand-built drystone wall, green back feathers glistening with damp, one beady eye kept on Jefferson and his father, ready to go into its broken wing routine if either of them made any kind of move in the direction of the nest which lay invisibly somewhere among the clumps of wet grass.

  After his driver had made enquiries, Jefferson was shown the point at which Dr Lennox had driven off the road and plunged down into the undergrowth, but, all these years later, there was nothing to see, no indication of the tragedy which had left four people horribly dead.

  ‘What you’re implying is that this wasn’t an accident,’ he said to Bork.

  Bork had dipped his head at the papers in front of him. ‘Precisely. Quite honestly, I think Dr Lennox was . . . eliminated, if that is the word I want.’

  ‘How about murdered?’

  Bork’s eyebrows lifted. He nodded. ‘That might well be more appropriate.’

  ‘And if it was elimination, murder, whatever . . . do you have any idea who the target was, or why this should have happened?’

  ‘None whatsoever. Nor were we given any satisfaction at the time, the autopsies, if that is the word, being conducted so speedily, followed almost immediately by cremation.’

  ‘So if bullets were involved, you have no idea who might have been aimed at?’

  ‘No. I can only say that Dr Lennox was highly thought of here, as was his wife. As for your mother . . .’ He hesitated.

  ‘It’s all right, please be honest, I know she could be, in fact usually was, a pain in the butt.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. She could be . . . awkward. But not so much that anyone would wish to kill her, even if they might . . .’

  ‘. . . sometimes think of it!’

  A pale and cautious smile lingered for a moment on the Dane’s long face. ‘Besides, she was only here for six weeks, after which she intended to return to England, so she was unlikely to have been the target – if target there was.’

  ‘So you can’t think of anything at all which might have led to a possible attack on someone who was in that car?’

  ‘It was very unlikely indeed that either of the two daughters was involved in anything which might have led to this. Katerina Lennox was here on holiday with her father, and Anna-Margarita was only eight.’

  ‘So it has to be one of the adults, and probably not my mother.’

  ‘That’s what we think.’ The Dane spoke in a guarded fashion, as though he was weighing up every possible consequence of his words.

  ‘Which leaves Dr Lennox or his wife?’

  ‘That is correct.’ Bork set down the shell and straightened the little Danish flag. ‘Though as a scientific thesis, that might be making too big an assumption, in that though unlikely, it could quite easily have been your mother who was the intended victim.’

  Jefferson frowned at the file in front of him. ‘Was there any trouble that you can recall? Any incident?’

  ‘Not really, not that I remember.’

  ‘A former worker dismissed for some reason? I realize this is a scientific foundation, but someone who was causing problems that might lead to – I know it sounds wildly improbable – to revenge of some kind?’

  ‘There was nobody. Many of us have been here for years and are friends. Researchers appear and stay for shorter or longer periods, but people are not dismissed; they leave of their own accord or – as in my case – spend most of their working lives here, these islands providing so many utterly absorbing grounds for scientific research.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Besides, if revenge . . .’ Bork shook his head with an expression of mild amusement. ‘So unlikely . . . but if that was a possible motive, why here, on this island? Professor Lennox lived in Quito most of the year, he held a position at the university, there must have been easier ways to . . . kill him – if indeed that is what happened – than arranging an accident.’

  ‘When I asked if there was any trouble, any kind of incident, you said, “Not really”, what did you mean?’

  Bork produced again his pale smile and leaned back in his chair. Behind him was a vista of grey sea with random outcrops of rock. ‘Do you know anything about sea-cucumbers?’

  If Jefferson had been given an unlimited supply of paper, pens and time, he still doubted if he would have come up with ‘sea-cucumbers’ if asked to guess what Dr Bork was about to ask. As for knowing anything about them . . . ‘No.’

  ‘Sea-cucumbers – I shall spare you a detailed discussion of this creature, but basically, it is highly prized in the Far East, especially in China, because of its supposed aphrodisiac qualities.’

  There must be a great deal of erectile dysfunction in China, Jefferson reflected, since they seem to scarf down almost anything in the search for sexual gratification, powdered rhinoceros horn and tigers’ penises, oysters and shark fins and fresh snake blood. Now sea-cucumbers. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said.

  ‘Not only that, holothuroidea is considered to possess particular medicinal properties, such as assisting in tissue repair and reducing scarring. Today, scientists all over the world are working on this, but even as short a time as ten years ago, only the Chinese seem to have known about this attribute. In short, the sea-cucumber was of considerable value to anyone wanting to make a quick profit. It is different now, of course, and the whole industry has been rationalized – you can buy sea-cucumber in pill or powder form, many countries have legalized the harvesting of the creatures – but back then, although this area had been declared a marine reserve, people – poachers – were stealing the native sea-cucumbers because the area was not properly patrolled, the population was very small, and the sea-cucumbers were in relatively shallow waters, and therefore easier to get at.’

  ‘And Professor Lennox was trying to stop this poaching?’

  ‘We know that he had had more than one brush with one of the known smugglers; he used to complain bitterly about it, he had even threatened the man with police intervention if he did not stop his illegal activities. It probably would not have done much good, since the police felt firstly that they had better things to concern themselves with than sea-cucumbers – you must understand that back then, environmental matters were not generally considered as important as they are today – and secondly, many of them were being paid off by the criminals and for the most part had no interest in putting stop to a trade which enriched themselves as well as the poachers.’

  Jefferson sat up straighter. ‘And you think it might have been this “known smuggler” who was responsible for either killing or causing to be killed Professor Lennox and his family, and, incidentally, my mother.’

  ‘I am saying only that all of us here felt that it was a distinct possibility.’

  ‘Do you have the name of this man?’

  ‘We did, but the police told us shortly after we had voiced our concerns, that the man had been killed in a shoot-out, or evading arrest – as always, the exact details were a litt
le hazy.’

  ‘Did you believe them?’

  Bork shrugged. ‘Whether we did or not, it was clear that we were not going to get any further.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your time.’ Jefferson stood. ‘I’m grateful.’ He hesitated. ‘Is there any point in giving me the name?’

  ‘I doubt it. Even if he was still alive, not dead as we were told, it was almost certainly not his real name or, if it was, he would have changed it long ago. In fact, the chances that he is still in this country are very slight. They tend to move about a lot, these professional crooks.’ Holding the door open for Jefferson, Bork added, ‘Has something come up recently in relation to this accident? There’s been nothing for years and now yours is the second enquiry about the matter that we’ve had in the past couple of months.’

  ‘Really? Who was the other person?’

  ‘It was through a lawyer, so I can’t help you much. The lawyer would certainly not be of any assistance to you. But I could give you the address of Professor Lennox’s son, if you think it might be of use. As a matter of fact the gentleman was in touch with us not long ago, about the same incident. He might have further information which could help you.’

  Was it too much of a coincidence, Jefferson thought now, sipping his wine, that the son lived in the same town as he did himself? It was this which had held him back from contacting Dr Magnus Lennox; he felt he needed to consider things before he did so. Three times he had driven along the street where Lennox lived, slowing down considerably as he passed the address he’d been given by Jens Bork. Unexceptional, a gentrified late-Victorian terrace, a glimpse of an orderly, charming drawing room, and twice a man with a thick thatch of lightish hair wearing a grey cashmere cardigan over a shirt and tie, not a mode of dress to which Jefferson himself was drawn, speaking as it did of bachelordom, anoraks hanging in hall closets, train-spotting, ‘twitching’ and other nerdy pursuits. But the painting over the mantelpiece was fine and so was the jardinière on it – Meissen, if he wasn’t mistaken, and distinctly un-nerdy – and there were some good-looking books on the visible bookshelves, in so far as a book could be considered good-looking, so perhaps the man was simply a scholar, an academic, a little fusty, maybe, nothing the love of a good woman couldn’t cure.