“Er… yes. Over there.” He pointed to the rack.
“Oh, right. Only, I was wondering if they’d brought out the story of your life on video. Sounds like it could be a real corker. Bit of a change from all that sex and violence. Know what I mean?”
ELEVEN
Harry trudged homeward along Scrubs Lane in a mood matched by the sullenness of the slow-moving clouds. This, he supposed, was how it ended: in a creeping acceptance of the inevitable. He would go to the hospital tomorrow afternoon and make his peace with Iris. He would let her decide what was best for David and respect her decision. He would let his resentments and his suspicions die with David. And then? Why then, no doubt, he would get very very drunk.
Unfortunately, the small matter of twenty-four hours lay between him and this pragmatic acceptance of other people’s wisdom. Worse still, it was Sunday, which meant the Stonemasons’ was not yet open. So, there was nothing for it but to return to the solitude of his flat and wait for seven o’clock. It was just as well, he reflected as he turned into Foxglove Road, that he did not own a cut-throat razor. Otherwise, lying on his bed while Songs of Praise seeped up through the floorboards to a back-beat of next door’s reggae music might be just what was needed to tip him over the brink.
Songs of Praise had not in fact started when he entered the house. Harry was not sure whether this was good news or bad, but his consideration of the point was soon replaced by puzzlement. A letter was waiting for him on the hall table, where Mrs. Tandy normally left his post. But this was Sunday. How could there be any? He picked it up and squinted at the handwritten address. It was not from his mother. Or from Zohra. Then who? He did not recognize the hand. And the postmark was too smudged to decipher. He looked into the sitting room and flapped the envelope at Mrs. Tandy, who glanced up reluctantly from the Peter James horror novel her niece had sent her for her birthday.
“Where did this come from, Mrs. T?”
“I don’t know, Harry. It arrived just after you left for work. Perhaps a neighbour dropped it round. You know how many wrong deliveries we’ve had since our regular postman retired.”
“Can’t say I’d noticed.”
That’s because you get so little post.”
“You mean I should be grateful for small mercies?”
“Perhaps you should. Now, do you mind? I’m in the middle of a decapitation.”
Reckoning that might mean he would be spared at least a few hymns, Harry started slowly up the stairs, opening the envelope as he went. There was a newspaper cutting inside, folded in three, but no note or letter to indicate who had sent it. Closing the door of his flat behind him, he propped himself against it and unfolded the cutting. It was The Sunday Times of three weeks ago, the top half of an inner page sporting a four-column headline: Forecasting scientists meet with unforeseen accidents. Eagerly, Harry read the article beneath.
The death last Tuesday of Dr. Marvin Kersey, a Canadian biochemist, brings to three the number of scientists formerly employed by Globescope Inc.” the Washington-based forecasting corporation, to have been struck by fatal or near-fatal accidents in recent weeks. The President of Globescope, Byron Lazenby, has dismissed suggestions of a link between the rash of accidents and their victims’ work for his organization as ‘fanciful nonsense’ and so far there is nothing beyond coincidence to connect them.
But the coincidence is nevertheless compelling. On September 13, Dr. David Yenning, an English mathematician, was found in a diabetic coma in his room at the Skyway Hotel, Heathrow Airport. He had apparently taken an overdose of insulin. Nine days later, Gerard Mermillod, a French sociologist, fell in front of a Paris Metro train at Pigalle station and was killed. Witnesses described the nature of his fall as ‘bizarre’. Then, last Tuesday, Dr. Marvin Kersey was found dead at his apartment in Montreal. Police believe he was poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes emanating from a faulty central-heating system. All three had worked for Globescope as members of their specialist scientific staff until April of this year. Mr. Lazenby attributed their simultaneous departure to ‘normal turnaround’. Dr. Kersey had subsequently returned to a lectureship at McGill University, Montreal, from which he had originally been seconded to Globescope, while M. Mermillod had taken up a post at L’lnstitut des Hautes fitudes Scientifiques in Paris. Dr. Yenning held no academic position at the time of his illness.
Staff at Globescope have been instructed to say nothing about their former colleagues. One employee who was prepared to talk off the record said everyone hoped these events really were coincidental. The thought that they might not be, he admitted, ‘makes you kind of jumpy’. No plausible motives for suicide have been put forward so far and neither the Paris nor the Montreal police are thought to regard the circumstances of the deaths as suspicious. Dr. Yenning remains in a coma at the National Neurological Hospital in London. His condition is described as ‘grave but stable’. At Globescope, meanwhile, the task of predicting the future is beginning to look a whole lot simpler than interpreting the present.
Less than an hour later, Harry was striding along the corridor leading to room E318 at the National Neurological Hospital. The visit seemed unlikely to serve much purpose, but his thoughts were now so restless that physical activity, whether purposeful or not, was essential. The phone call and the letter; David’s coma and the deaths of two other men; at least five scientists dismissed from Globescope last spring, of whom two were dead and one nearly so: all, surely, part of a pattern. Iris must have realized that. But she had chosen to keep it from him. She had pretended there was no pattern, that David’s illness was a tragic but uncomplicated misfortune. What had she said? “I’m not going to let you invade his life.” It had seemed fair enough at the time, but now… Everyone was so very eager to let David die, yet so very reluctant to understand what had happened to him. Their unanimity made Harry’s blood boil. Where were they when he needed them? If Harry himself had only known he had a son, he would have He pulled up sharply, barely avoiding a collision with a man leaving the room just s he was about to enter it. Approximately Harry’s height and weight, with more muscle and less fat, he had a handsome if slightly battered face, large blue eyes and short spiky blond hair. He could have passed for a night-club bouncer but for the dark Savile Row suit and red silk tie. He cocked one eyebrow and ran a glance of fleeting scrutiny over Harry, then brushed past and strode away.
Harry stepped into the room and glanced across at David. There was no change in his blank and peaceful expression, no hint of awareness, however slight. He could not hear, he could not see, he could not respond. He remained dead to the world. But maybe, deep inside, not quite dead to his own father. Harry sat down beside the bed, reached out and laid his hand over David’s where it was resting on the blanket. “I’ll try, son,” he murmured. “I truly will. I’ll see your mother tomorrow. And your doctor if possible. It’s time I found out exactly ‘
David’s doctor. Of course. The man he had nearly bumped into had the right authoritarian air to be a consultant. And Harry had let the opportunity slip through his fingers. Swearing under his breath, he jumped up and rushed into the corridor. But the fellow was nowhere to be seen. A nurse was bustling about behind the previously empty counter further along, though, Harry waved and hurried down to speak to her. He was known to the staff now and she gave him a welcoming smile.
“Hello, Mr. Barnett. You’re in late.”
“Not the only one. Was that David’s specialist I just met leaving his room?”
“No. Mr. Baxendale won’t be in again till tomorrow. That was just another visitor. David’s been very popular today.”
“Who was he?”
“He didn’t give a name. A colleague, I think he said.”
“A colleague of David’s?”
“Yes.”
“From Globescope?”
“Globescope? What’s that?”
The nurse’s uncertainty made no difference. If the man was a colleague of David’s, he had to be from Globescope. And i
f so… But a jog as far as the main entrance yielded only severe breathlessness and dismal news from the receptionist, who vaguely recalled a man matching the description Harry panted out leaving a few minutes earlier. Outside, in the drizzly London night, there was naturally no sign of him.
Harry lit a cigarette to ease his frustration and stood smoking it in the shelter of a pillared porch looking out across Queen Square. A missed chance to speak to somebody with inside knowledge of Globescope was bad enough. But a more tantalizing possibility was already worming its way into his thoughts. Could David’s unidentified colleague also be responsible for the letter and the telephone call? Could he be the nameless messenger who seemed to know more about Harry’s past than Harry did himself?
,
TWELVE
“We’ll see what your mother has to say about this, shall we, David? I’m prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, you know. Ken could be the real problem. I realize that. I expect you do too. Is he pressurizing her, do you think? Only he’s certainly trying to pressurize me. But don’t worry. In my case, it isn’t going to work.” Harry smiled in acknowledgement of his own stubbornness. It was stubbornness, after all, that had kept him at the hospital since mid-morning, awaiting the maternal visit David was bound to receive, a visit that would give Harry the chance to put to Iris some of the questions that were troubling him. He could have telephoned her, of course. But she might have refused to speak to him. He could have gone out to Chorleywood to see her. But she might have slammed the door in his face. Ken certainly would have. Except Harry was hoping Ken had gone back up to Manchester to captain his segment of industry. All of which left David’s hospital room as the most certain ground on which to confront Iris.
Spending most of Monday there had already enabled Harry to squeeze some information out of David’s specialist. But Mr. Baxendale, a kindly if cautious man, had only confirmed his worst fears. “There is no realistic prospect of a recovery from such a profound coma, Mr. Barnett. Sooner or later, Mrs. Hewitt is going to have to decide how to deal with that fact.” As for the alleged neuro biological expertise of Donna Trangam, Baxendale was politely dismissive. “She visited David once, shortly after his admission, and offered me her fairly radical opinion on coma treatment. But she had absolutely no clinical experience. Besides, she returned to the United States almost immediately thereafter and I haven’t heard from her since.”
“When was this?” Harry had asked. “I mean, exactly.”
“Hard to say. David was transferred here from Charing Cross on the fifteenth of September. A few days after that, I suppose.”
“And another few days before she left?”
“Probably.”
Unlike his son, Harry was no mathematician. But simple arithmetic was not beyond him. Donna Trangam’s sudden departure for the States coincided more or less with Gerard Mermillod’s death in Paris on 22 September. Of course, her destination was an assumption on Baxendale’s part. She might actually have gone to Paris. Or via Paris. Either way, it did not sound like the workings of chance. Not much did to Harry any more. Conspiracy. Concealment. Confusion. They were the prevailing echoes.
“What happened to you, David?” he asked, crouching forward in his chair and gazing into his son’s softly closed eyes. “Did you inject the insulin into your bloodstream? Or did somebody else? The same somebody who pushed Mermillod from the Metro platform and tampered with the heating system at Kersey’s apartment? The same somebody who could be hunting down your other friends while you lie there and I sit here, while they run and we wait? Is that what ‘
He looked up and saw Iris standing in the doorway, fresh flowers cradled like a child in her arms, a smile frozen on her face. She had heard what he was saying, but seemed not to know how to respond. They stared at each other for a long silent moment. Then she lay the flowers gently down on a table, their cellophane wrapper squeaking above the respiration of the ventilator, and drew up a chair facing Harry across the bed.
“Hello, Iris. Surprised to see me?”
“A little.”
“Ken confident he’d seen me off, was he?”
“He thought he’d made you understand, yes.”
“But he never mentioned this.” Harry took the newspaper cutting from his pocket and passed it across to her. “Nor did you.” He saw her swallow hard as she scanned it. “Why was that?”
“How did you find out?”
That doesn’t matter. What matters is what it means.”
“Nothing. It means nothing.”
“Come on, Iris. What was David doing at Globescope? What were all these people doing?”
“I don’t know. I’ve absolutely no idea.”
“Haven’t you even wondered?”
“Globescope predict the future. Companies even some governments pay them to forecast economic developments. David worked on something called predictive modelling. What else is there to say?”
“Did he work with Kersey and Mermillod?”
“He may have done. He never mentioned their names to me. Why should he? I wasn’t that interested.”
“Aren’t you interested now?”
“I’m interested in doing what’s best for David.”
“So am I.”
“Then do as Ken asked. Leave us alone.”
“How can I when you seem so reluctant to find out the truth?”
“The truth is that David took an overdose of insulin, probably accidentally. If somebody had … if somebody had done what you obviously suspect… there’d have been signs of a struggle in his hotel room. But there weren’t any. He’d have had ample time to get medical help in those circumstances anyway. Unless you’re suggesting he was bound and gagged till the insulin took effect to stop him raising the alarm. Again, there’d have been signs. But there weren’t. There wasn’t a mark on him. Not one. He was alone when it happened, Harry. Don’t you see? This journalist is just cobbling together a story to fill a space. There’s nothing to it.”
“So you think these two deaths are… purely coincidental?”
“What else can they be?”
“Why was David sacked by Globescope?”
“He wasn’t, as far as I know. He told me he’d resigned, in order to concentrate on ‘
“Higher dimensions? A talking point at his dinner with Adam Slade, no doubt. Something else you omitted to mention.”
“Because of how you might react, Harry. Because of how you are reacting. Mr. Slade was actually most solicitous. And as helpful as he could be. Whether he really does have these powers he claims I rather doubt. But there’s nothing sinister in his meeting David to discuss them.”
“What about Donna Trangam’s flying visit? Don’t you see anything sinister in her sudden departure?”
“Not at all. She had a teaching post at Berkeley to return to. Once she’d satisfied herself there was nothing she could contribute to David’s treatment, she and Mr. Hammelgaard ‘
The Dane was here too?”
“Briefly. Then he went back to Princeton. What’s so strange in that? They’re friends of David. They wanted to help him. But they realized they couldn’t.”
They told you that, did they?”
“Not in so many words. I only met them once. Here, a few days after David’s admission. I wasn’t in a state to take much in, but it seemed obvious She broke off and pressed two fingers to her forehead, then said in a calmer voice: They simply went their separate ways, Harry. People do.”
“When? When did they go?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t notify me. Why should they?”
“But they arrived within a week of David being taken ill and left again a few days later?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. But what ‘
“Have you heard from them since?”
“No.”
“Are they still all right, do you think?”
“All right? Well, of course. Why shouldn’t they be?”
“For the same reason Kersey and Mermillod
aren’t, I should have thought.”
That’s nonsense. Kersey’s death was accidental. Carbon monoxide poisoning kills hundreds of people every year. Probably thousands worldwide.”
“And throwing yourself under a train is a common method of suicide.”
“Well, so it is.”
“But within a fortnight of each other? Among a small group of scientists sacked from the same company at the same time for ‘
“David wasn’t sacked!” Iris glanced round at her son, as if afraid she might have disturbed him. But she need not have worried. His rest was impenetrable. “He resigned. Of his own accord.”
That’s not how Hope tells it.”
“What would she know? They were divorced by then.”
“She implied there could have been something between David and Donna Trangam.”
“Well, what if there was? They’re both adults.”
“You agree there may have been, then?”
“I suppose it’s possible. They’re both attractive people. They have a lot in common. It would certainly explain why he telephoned her that night.” She tensed. That is … I mean…”
“He telephoned her from the Skyway Hotel?”
Iris looked solemnly across at Harry. “Yes. He did.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the hotel had the effrontery to send me David’s bill for settlement. It showed a phone call he made just after eleven o’clock that night. I dialled the number and it turned out to be the university switchboard at Berkeley. San Francisco’s eight hours behind us, so ‘
“What did Donna say when you asked her about it?”
“I never had the chance to ask. She’d gone by the time the bill came through.”
“But you must have spoken to her since.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because she isn’t there any more.”
“Not there? What do you mean?”
“She’s not been seen at Berkeley since taking leave on the fifteenth of September. That must have been when she heard about David.”
Out of the Sun Page 6