‘Who shall I say called?’ Mrs Ford asked.
‘Smith,’ he said unimaginatively. ‘Mr Smith. Goodbye.’
He rang off. He was filled with a cold foreboding. Perhaps Ford had decided to stay in Cumbria of his own volition in order to keep an eye on Naddle Foot, but Jaysmith doubted it. What need then to be so unforthcoming to his wife? Again Jaysmith assured himself that Ford could not be at risk of physical harm. But if Jacob’s men had picked him up, they must be very close and probably close also to action.
He looked in frustration at the pair of bulky envelopes he held in his hand. Threats were useless unless their object knew he was being threatened. He picked up the phone again and tried the old London number. All that sounded was the unobtainable tone.
And then he laughed out loud and said, ‘Idiot!’
There was an obvious and direct line to Jacob under his nose.
He dialled Naddle Foot.
Anya answered.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Listen. Aunt Muriel got through to me. There’s some furniture she thinks I might like to buy only I’ve got to look at it this morning.’
‘Typical,’ said Anya. ‘But it’s probably too good a chance to miss. Mind you, it won’t be cheap. Some of her stuff’s aeons old.’
‘I gather that I’m being offered what’s left over after she’s taken her share, and the family vultures, to wit, brother James and yourself, have picked over the rest, so I’m not anticipating any genuine Chippendale. But I’d like to look, so I’d better excuse myself for lunch and hope to get back this afternoon.’
‘I’ll do my best to survive,’ she said lightly.
‘You do that. Oh, by the way, I seem to have mislaid my billfold. I think I may have left it on the dressing table in my bedroom. Could you check for me?’
‘Hang on.’
He waited till he heard her footsteps running lightly up the stairs, then he said harshly, ‘Tell Jacob I want to talk. Tell him, any action before we talk and he’ll regret it. He’d better believe it! Tell him I’ll be in the bar at the Crag Hotel in Grasmere between twelve-thirty and one. He can ring me there. Tell him to ask for Mr Hutton.’
He heard Anya’s footsteps returning.
‘Jay? Sorry, it’s not there,’ she said anxiously.
‘It’s OK,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve found it. It had slipped down the lining in my jacket somehow. There must be a tear.’
‘You need looking after,’ she answered.
‘Oh yes. I do,’ he said. ‘I really do.’
Chapter 27
As he drove through Grasmere, the threat of deterioration in the weather was fast being realized. The sun still shone in the eastern sky, but its wash of cornflower blue was now smeared by high trails of cloud and over the western fells a creeping barrage of heavy mist was inexorably advancing. The lake’s surface was like an unhealthy grey skin, wrinkled by the chilling wind which at every gasp stripped the remaining leaves from the trees to regild the woodland paths and top up drifts already deep enough to cover half a dozen babes-in-the-wood.
Or one dead drugs salesman.
It was a stupid, morbid thought, he told himself fiercely. There was no reason why any harm should have come to Ford. Or should come to Bryant now. He had posted his packages in Keswick before leaving. At the very least they should give him a breathing space, and in such a space, surely an accommodation could be reached?
But it wouldn’t be easy. Under threat, Jacob might stay his hand, but it would take more than mere threat to persuade him to reverse the target directive. How much actual power did Jacob himself wield? He realized he had very little idea. What he couldn’t believe was that Jacob would have targeted Bryant on the flimsy evidence that he himself had now had a chance to consider. Look at the facts. Bryant hadn’t been anywhere near Poland for a year; his only communication (correction: the only communication he knew of) had been with Urszula via Anton Ford. There might, of course, be some subtle code in those letters, but he found it hard to believe. Why on earth should Urszula send information to him in this way? It was a thousand miles away from the whispered indiscretions of a post-coital bed. The use of codes implied something deliberate, something premeditated. It must mean, to be blunt, that Urszula was a traitor also. And if that were the case, why this circuitous route for the passage of information when all she had to do was make a simple direct contact with an UBEK agent in Krakow?
No, it made no sense. It seemed much more likely that someone had blundered and, like many blunders in political and private life alike, the easiest way of concealing it had been to carry it through.
‘Sic probo,’ he proclaimed aloud, but even as he spoke he knew he had proven nothing. God knew what as yet unrevealed and far weightier evidence of Bryant’s guilt Jacob had at his disposal. And no one knew better than himself just how ruthlessly Bryant was capable of acting if he thought that those he loved were being threatened. Thank God Jacob could have no suspicion of that, at least!
His recent optimism was vanishing as rapidly as the sky. It was the pathetic fallacy at work in reverse. His mind was adjusting to the falling leaves and the dismal lake. What was the point of parleying with Jacob? He had nothing but a threat that might be regarded as feeble, and logic fragile as a bridge of snow. Proving a negative was never easy, not unless you had a positive to balance it out. And what did he have to offer? Nothing!
Filled with frustration, he took a corner far too quickly, drifted into the centre of the road, and found himself on a collision course with an oncoming truck. Both drivers hit their brakes and put their vehicles into gentle skids. They ended up as close as they possibly could without actually hitting and Jaysmith found himself looking at the bonnet of the other vehicle at point-blank distance. The truck driver wound down his window and began to swear. But Jaysmith ignored him. All he could see was the name of the other vehicle’s manufacturer, large in his eyes like a message from heaven.
Ford.
He mouthed an apology and slowly drove on, letting his mind do the speeding now.
Ford!
If Bryant was pressurable by threats to Urszula, then so was Ford.
If Urszula was going to talk freely of her work with Solidarity to Bryant, then why not to Ford?
And who was it that had still been visiting Poland, still seeing Urszula, while Bryant was self-denyingly in England, guiding his daughter out of the despair into which first her marriage, then her widowing, had plunged her?
Ford. Ford whose concern for Bryant might seem exaggerated unless you saw it as a reaction to what must have been a devastating onslaught of guilt as he realized that the sister he was protecting by his acts of treachery was indirectly going to have her life destroyed by them. And where was Ford now? So frightened, perhaps, by his certainty that he himself was going to be discovered after his encounter with Jaysmith yesterday that he had decided to make a run for it?
Or better still, already in the hands of Jacob’s interrogators who were at last beginning to put two and two together.
It made such sense that he could not see how he had missed it till now, but he was glad he had, for that made it more believable that Jacob and his men had missed it too!
Buoyant once more, he turned into the driveway of Rigg Cottage and, stepping out of his car, stretched his arms and turned his face upwards as though the watery glow in the greying east were the full hot orb of the Mediterranean sun.
‘It’s a bit late to be looking for broken tiles,’ said Miss Wilson sharply from the entrance porch. ‘Come you in, before I catch my death.’
He entered and felt at once that sense of comfortable home-coming he had experienced from the start of his acquaintance with the building. Naddle Foot was more spacious, its gardens more elegant, its architecture more distinguished; but Rigg Cottage was a house for living in. At least that was his feeling. But how strong would its associations with her late husband be to Anya? he wondered once more.
Despite her businesslike approach, the old lady di
d not ignore the social niceties and there was a pot of tea to be drunk and some freshly baked shortbread to be eaten before the sales inspection began. During this interval she questioned him about Bryant’s health, receiving the news of the hospital’s optimistic prognosis with mild scepticism.
‘Well, they’re not going to tell him he’s dying, are they? Especially as I daresay he’s private; no National Health for that one!’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Jaysmith, whose own vagueness of official identity made him by need as well as for speed a private patient on the rare occasions he consulted a doctor.
‘Me, I’ve stayed National Health,’ declared Miss Wilson. ‘Me brother’s always said I should take out some of this insurance, but I never have, and as I’ve never ailed more than a cold in the head or a bit of belly ache after someone else’s bad cooking these fifty years and more, I must have saved meself a pretty penny.’
She spoke with triumphal emphasis. Jaysmith nodded his approval and drank some more tea. Then the tour began.
The old lady had been meticulous in her preparation for her imminent move. Every article was labelled. Those she was taking with her all had her new address on them plus the room into which they were to go. Of the rest, some pieces were labelled James, and Annie, and the remainder had blank labels attached. Miss Wilson also provided a check sheet on which the saleroom valuer had indicated his estimate of the likely fetching price of each item.
‘It’ll be low,’ she averred. ‘They’ll not raise a body’s expectations, and likely they’ll have some of their own contacts looking to buy up cheap to sell dear. But we’ll take it as read, seeing as you’ve got your feet under the family table, so to speak.’
She said this too neutrally for Jaysmith to be able to gauge an attitude.
His task was easy. He had no furniture of his own and everything in Rigg Cottage looked so much in place that he found himself agreeing to take practically all that was on offer. Miss Wilson ticked off the list and carefully wrote To Stay on the blank labels in a still strong, round hand. In the room which had been occupied by Edward Wilson in his youth, he noted that the mountaineering pictures had James Wilson’s name on them.
As though to a spoken question, the old lady said, ‘I thought they’d bring a bit too much back to Annie, and James is keen to have them. He’ll see they get to young Jimmy in the end.’
It was, he thought, a worthwhile acknowledgement of his right to know.
Returning downstairs he said, ‘Will you get your solicitor to send me a bill?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘I’m not giving him owt else to charge me for. You add it up now and give me a cheque.’
Smiling, he did so.
She folded up the cheque without looking at it and said, ‘Will you stay and have a bite of lunch? I got an extra chop, but then James said he wouldn’t be in.’
‘Your brother’s here, is he?’
‘I told him he’d best get up quick if he wanted to see the place before it was sold,’ said Miss Wilson. ‘So, you’ll stay then?’
Jaysmith glanced at his watch. It was twelve-twenty.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’d love to but …’
‘No? Well, no doubt you’re a busy man,’ she said reproachfully.
He rose to leave and she accompanied him to the front door, then she said, ‘Hold on a minute. If you’re not staying, I won’t waste the chops. I’ll come down into the village with you, bank this cheque and call in at my new house. I’ve got one or two things to do there, and Betty Blacklock next door’ll be having some Scotch broth as it’s Tuesday and she always makes plenty, even if it does turn out a bit thin.’
She was ready in a minute, leaving her front door key under a stone in the porch, ‘in case James comes back,’ she announced. Jaysmith wondered if he would ever reach such a level of simple trust in his fellow men when he owned the house. He doubted it.
He dropped her outside the bank.
‘You going far?’ she said through the car window.
‘I thought I’d call in at the Crag and say hello to Mr Parker. Then I’m meeting a friend,’ he added hastily in case she should be offended at the thought that he simply preferred a bar-snack to her chop. ‘If I see you later, perhaps I can give you a lift back up the hill.’
‘No need,’ she retorted. ‘I’m not quite broken down yet and I reckon I can manage the haul a couple more times. Good day to you!’
It was just on twelve-thirty when he reached the Crag. Doris Parker was busy in the dining room organizing lunch while Phil was in the almost empty bar.
‘Mr Hutton!’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you. What’ll it be?’
‘Whisky, please. How are things?’
‘Still pretty busy, thank God. Not in here, but there’s a party having lunch. I’ve got to take these drinks through. If anyone comes in, tell ‘em to ring.’
‘O K,’ said Jaysmith. ‘By the way, I’m expecting a telephone call, so if it rings, don’t rush. I’ll yell if it’s not for me.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Parker and left.
The bar was empty except for a young couple by the fire. After a while they got up and headed for the dining room and Jay took their place by the welcome flames. You probably needed a fire up here even in the middle of summer. He didn’t mind the thought of that. There was something sacramental about the business of laying, lighting and enjoying a fire. It sealed a bond between a man and the place he was in. He stretched out his hands and warmed the whisky glass, then slowly drank the golden liquid as if he were drinking the flames themselves. It was a moment of pure tranquillity unsullied by plans or fears or even thought itself.
Then a voice spoke behind him.
‘Mr Hutton, isn’t it? I thought I recognized you. I’ll join you, if I may.’
He looked up, disproportionately aghast. He had not expected this but it was more than a surprise. It felt like an intrusion into the very private places of his soul.
Before him stood Jacob.
Chapter 28
To the casual eye, Jacob was a faintly comic rather than a menacing figure. He was dressed very much as an elderly lover of the Lakes might be expected to dress. He wore an ancient dog-tooth tweed jacket with leather patched elbows, a pair of balding and baggy corduroy trousers, and on his head was a shapeless inverted sauce-boat, also of tweed, which may once have been a deerstalker.
Yet Jaysmith felt menaced.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’
‘Not yet. Later perhaps,’ said Jacob, sitting. ‘It’s a little early still for me, isn’t it? You looked a bit startled, Jay. Why was that?’
‘I didn’t expect to see you in person,’ said Jaysmith.
‘No, I don’t suppose you did. But you can’t trust phones, can you, Jay? I was close enough to get here myself, and I wanted very much to see you face to face, Jay. I don’t think I’m going to believe what you tell me, not unless I hear it from your own lips. What are you playing at, Jay? Tell me. I’d very much like to know.’
He sounded genuinely anxious rather than angry, though Jaysmith acknowledged he had a right to be both. Yet he was determined he was not going to be put on the defensive.
‘I’ve got reason to believe you’ve made a mistake in targeting Bryant,’ he said flatly. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong man.’
‘The wrong man?’ echoed Jacob. ‘It’s not impossible of course. Mistakes do happen, don’t they? I take it Adam was a mistake.’
‘I’m sorry about Adam,’ said Jaysmith, edged off track by the need for self-justification. ‘It wasn’t my idea. He seemed to need to push for it.’
‘Suicide, was it?’ The irony was mild.
‘A desire to prove something,’ said Jaysmith.
‘And prove something he did, didn’t he?’ murmured the older man. ‘He was a great admirer of yours, perhaps you knew that?’
‘I don’t get much fan mail,’ said Jaysmith, tiring of these obliquities. �
�Now, tell me about Bryant.’
‘Oh no. First you must tell me why you want to know, mustn’t you? Turn about; and you first, you do see that? It’s the only way, unless you’re planning to slip a knife between my ribs too, though that would hardly be a solution to your problem, would it?’
‘Depends on what my problem is, doesn’t it?’
‘Indeed it does. Yes, I’m curious, Jay, I admit it. At first I thought you must have been turned, didn’t I? But by what? Money? Perhaps. Conviction? Not likely. In any case, if you’d simply been turned, then you’d simply have warned Bryant and he could have taken off, couldn’t he? So do tell, what’s it really all about?’
His monkey-like features were crushed up into an expression of almost comic bafflement.
Jaysmith went through the motions of draining his almost empty glass before he spoke.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I have become … involved with the Bryant family. It has become important to me that they are not harmed.’
He didn’t care for the note of defiance in his voice, like a schoolboy standing up to a strict and feared teacher.
As if to confirm the relationship, Jacob was frowning at him magisterially.
‘Involved?’ He savoured the word. ‘Involved with the Bryant family? As far as I recall, there are only two others. A grandson. And a daughter.’
Jaysmith said, ‘I met the daughter.’
He stared unblinkingly at the old man, as if defying him to raise his eyebrows, or smile, or register by any means that he found the situation amusingly absurd. Jacob returned the gaze seriously and said, ‘And did your meeting with the daughter pre-date your decision to abort this target?’
‘No!’ said Jaysmith, feeling ludicrously offended. ‘What I told you was the truth. I missed. It was my eyesight. You must have checked with my optician.’
‘Indeed,’ said Jacob. ‘So, you decide to withdraw, to retire, and then you meet this woman, is that it?’
Jaysmith nodded.
‘And then you discover Bryant is her father. And then, naturally, you start to feel you cannot stand by and let him be killed, do I read you correctly?’
The Long Kill Page 25