“Frightened she might come after you, are you?”
“What d’you think?”
“I think I might be frightened. In your shoes.”
“Yeah?” Spargo sat up, slid a cigarette out of the open pack lying on the flimsy bedside table and lit it. There was a volley of coughs. Then he said, “Look, Mr. H, I’m sorry I messed you about. It was all Hayley’s idea. I just… did what she told me. And she really did skip town owing me a grand. Scheming little bitch. So, I’m out of pocket and you’re… out of luck. Let’s call it quits.”
“I want to know who stole the ring.”
“For Christ’s sake, why? The ring’s Tozer business. And that dies with Barney, the way I see it.”
“Not the way I see it. Who took the ring?”
Spargo coughed out a lungful of smoke. “You really sure about this?”
“Never more so.”
“OK. The offer stands. Slip me the dosh and I’ll slip you the name.”
“I’m not going to pay you a penny.”
“Fine. Don’t. You can show yourself out, can’t you? Put the kettle on on your way, will you? I’m dying for a cuppa.”
“I’m willing to do a deal, Darren. But it doesn’t involve money.”
“Not my kind of deal, then. Since I got burned by Hayley I’ve decided to do nothing without cash up front.”
Harding took a step forward and propped one foot on an exposed edge of the mattress. Spargo looked gratifyingly nervous. “Nathan Gashry, the man who passed on Hayley’s message to Barney, setting up the rendezvous, died yesterday.”
“Never.”
“It’s true. You’ll probably be able to read about it in today’s paper. They’ll say it was suicide, but it’s the old ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ problem. Either way, he’s dead.”
“Fucking hell.” Spargo had now abandoned all attempts to disguise his anxiety. “What’s going on? What has that bitch got me into?”
“A whole lot of trouble. The fatal kind, potentially. As it is, I’m the only one who knows you helped Hayley Where did the helping stop? That’s the question: the question the police will ask-if they’re pointed in your direction.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I won’t mention your part in all this to them if you tell me who stole the ring. Provided you genuinely know, of course. Provided what you tell me is the truth. If I check, as I will, and it turns out you’ve pulled a fast one, the deal’s off. You see, conning Barney out of a thousand quid with some duff gen might have been a smart move. But buying my silence with it wouldn’t be. Because you need me to keep my mouth shut about your role in Hayley’s activities, you really do. Otherwise, who knows what might happen to you? The police wouldn’t be your only problem, just like they weren’t Nathan Gashry’s only problem. So, I hope you know what you claim to know. For your sake.”
“Did Hayley kill this guy Gashry?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then…”
“Who? Exactly. Who? And why?”
Spargo shook his head. “It’s not the party who nicked the ring. I can tell you that for nothing.”
“Just tell me who it was.”
“If we’re going to get smart, I’d better straighten one thing out. I went round to see Hayley that night-the Sunday before the auction. I was beginning to get the feeling I had a trickier job on my hands than she’d let on. Thought you might give me some serious aggro. I, er, wanted more money up front, like. She talked me out of it with a promise of more later. Only had to open those big wide eyes of hers and you’d agree to any crazy fucking thing. Y’know? Anyhow, she told me to give you your phone back and hang loose till we made our next move. It was supposed to be all about blackmailing you. But I was starting to see there was more to it than that. When I left, I, er, hung about outside. She’d been that keen to get rid of me I thought she was expecting someone she didn’t want me to see. So, I, er, kept watch on the place for a while. Just in case, like. Then, all of a sudden, the alarm went off. And I saw this bloke slip round from the back and hustle off down the road. What I’m saying is I can’t swear for a fact he took the ring, ’cos I never saw it, but he’s your man, sure enough. No doubt about it.”
“And who is he?”
“You don’t want to know, Mr. H, believe me. Best leave it, hey? If folks are getting themselves killed… the likes of you and me should leave well alone.”
“There are no likes of you and me, Darren. We’re completely unlike. So, just tell me, OK? Who is he?”
Spargo took a long pull on his cigarette and looked Harding in the eye. “Have it your way,” he said with a shrug.
FORTY-TWO
Good morning,” said Harding, stepping into view as Humphrey Tozer approached the stairway that led to his flat.
Tozer was dressed in a shabby mac and flat cap. He was clutching a bulging Tesco carrier-bag in either hand and had obviously just returned from a shopping expedition. For necessities only, it went without saying. He was not a man surrounded by an aura of self-indulgence. He frowned at Harding suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”
“Why don’t we go inside and I’ll explain?”
“I’m not travelling to Monte Carlo to attend my brother’s funeral. I made that clear to Carol. So, if you’ve-”
“It’s nothing to do with the funeral. Carol doesn’t even know I’m here.”
Tozer grunted. “What d’you want, then?”
“I have an idea you’d prefer to discuss it in private.”
Another grunt was followed by a long moment of deliberation. “All right.”
Harding tailed Tozer up the steps and into the flat. Tozer set the shopping down in the hall, hung up his cap and led the way into the lounge. Harding had forgotten just how stark and cheerless the man’s domestic environment was. As before, the current issue of The Cornishman, already well thumbed, lay on the table. Penzance-Born Tycoon Murdered blared the headline, above a photograph of Barney Tozer, smiling, wineglass in hand, at some local function several years previously.
“Have they got it right?” Humphrey Tozer asked. He had made no move to remove his coat, which somehow did not surprise Harding in view of the deathly chill gripping the flat. “You were there? You saw the Winter girl shoot Barney?”
“You mean Hayley Foxton?” Harding asked, neatly skating round the issue of the murderer’s identity.
“You know who I mean.”
“I was there, all right. But tell me, why won’t you go to Monte Carlo?”
“I don’t travel. Carol knows that. She’s arranged the funeral there to spite me.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true.”
“What would you know about it?”
“Well, I-”
“Barney should be laid to rest in Cornish soil. Like our father and his father before him. Like Uncle Gabriel, come to that. The Tozers belong in Penzance. They belong to Penzance. No good comes of them leaving it. I told Barney so when he moved to Monte Carlo. Tax exile, they call him. Well, exile is right enough. In death as well as in life, if Carol has her way.”
“Look, it’s-”
“Say what you came to say.” Humphrey Tozer’s expression was grim, set and unyielding. “I don’t suppose you’re any keener to be here than I am to have you.”
“Very well. I’ve come about the ring.”
“What about it?”
“You stole it.”
Something flickered in Tozer’s gaze. Surprise, perhaps. Or guilt. Whatever it was he soon mastered it. “I stole it?”
“You were seen leaving Heartsease the night of the theft.”
“Was I?”
“Do you deny it?”
“I don’t have to. If I was seen, this… witness… would have reported me to the police. They haven’t. That says it all.”
“Do you deny stealing the ring?”
“Yes.”
“You may as well admit it. Like you say the witness hasn’t contacted the
police. And he isn’t going to. This is between you and me. I just want to know. Why did you take it?”
“You accused me of stealing it a moment ago. Now it’s take. Which d’you mean?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Oh yes.” Tozer’s mouth twitched in what might have been his version of a sardonic smile. “You can’t steal what’s already yours.”
“So, you did take it.”
“I’m admitting nothing. All I’m saying is this: Uncle Gabriel stole the ring from our father, whose it was by right as the first-born. So, it wasn’t his to sell to the highest bidder, even if that bidder had turned out to be Barney.”
“What would that have mattered once the ring was in your hands? As it would have been straight after the auction.”
“D’you think I was born yesterday?” Tozer took a step towards Harding, who caught a whiff of the strange, bitter smell that clung to the man. The slight tremor of his head had become marginally more pronounced at the same time. “As soon as you turned up here, I knew what Barney’s game was. Buy the ring and keep it for himself. You’d have made off with it, of course. He’d have said you’d stolen it. But you’d have delivered it to him later, in secret. Barney always thought he could outwit me. How wrong he was.”
“That’s ridiculous. Barney didn’t want the ring.”
“How would you know what he did or didn’t want? He devoted his life to taking things other people deserved more than he did. The ring was no exception. I knew how it would be. As soon as I showed an interest in it, he’d take it from me, like he’d taken so many other things in the past. Well, not this time.”
“You’re wrong. He didn’t care about the ring.”
“I know that.” Tozer looked contemptuously at Harding. “Don’t you understand? He never cared about anything. Until somebody else wanted it. Grandfather used to show us the starburst box and very occasionally open it, though we were never allowed to touch the ring. His father had had the box made specially to hold it. He told us the ring had belonged to an ancestor of ours in the eighteenth century conferred on him in recognition of some great service he’d done the nation. It was never to leave the family Grandfather said, or Penzance. How Uncle Gabriel could have thought of letting it be sold to a stranger-perhaps even a foreigner-is beyond me. He wanted it for himself. And then he wanted to put it out of our reach. My reach, that is. I’ve reflected on it since Barney’s death. I’ve begun to see how my black-hearted uncle thought it all through. He knew I was the ring’s rightful keeper as the eldest of the next generation. I respected what it stood for. But he didn’t. He scorned our family name. And he knew I hadn’t the means to buy the ring at auction. So, he gave me a choice. See it bought by some dealer or other, or alert Barney and watch him snatch it from under my nose.”
“The ring was stolen from Sir Clowdisley Shovell’s body on St. Mary’s after the wreck of the Association in 1707. It never rightfully belonged to any ancestor of yours.”
But Tozer’s confidence in his version of history was un-dented. “I’ll take my grandfather’s word for what’s rightful and what isn’t over the word of one of my treacherous younger brother’s errand-boys every time.”
It was too late now, far too late, to weigh the rights and wrongs of sibling rivalry between Humphrey and Barney Tozer. As far as Harding could glean, Humph regarded the ring as a symbol of every advantage Barney had somehow stolen from him. Besides, it was his and his alone, according to an ingrained concept of primogeniture which his uncle had tried to subvert and which his paranoid nature inclined him to believe Barney had also been planning to circumvent. In the end, it hardly mattered. His reasons for stealing the ring were locked within his very particular view of the world. Harding had clung to the hope that those reasons would somehow reveal the greater truth he was still seeking. But his hope was failing fast.
“What great service did your grandfather say your ancestor performed?”
“Honour needs not the naming of the occasion.”
“What?”
“Whenever Barney badgered him with his questions, Grandfather would say, ‘Honour needs not the naming of the occasion.’”
“And how did he answer your questions?”
“I knew better than to ask any.”
Of course. Humph knew better. “Did Kerry Foxton ever discuss your ancestor with you?”
Tozer frowned deeply, his contempt turning to apparently genuine incredulity. “Kerry Foxton?”
“Barney might have told her about him.”
“Why should she be interested even if he did?”
“I don’t know. But I think she may have been.”
“You think what you like. I never exchanged a single word with Kerry Foxton. About anything.”
“Maybe she found out what your ancestor did to get hold of that ring.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. You can make a noose of your maybes and hang yourself with it for all I care.” Anger was simmering in Humphrey Tozer now. He had said as much as he could be induced to say. A wall was coming down between them. “I’m not answering any more of your questions.”
“Where’s the ring? In a safe-deposit box at the bank? Or here?”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’m not answering any more of your questions.”
FORTY-THREE
From the pavement, Heartsease looked as it had prior to the auction. But Harding knew it was now an empty shell. The rooms were no longer filled with Gabriel Tozer’s innumerable possessions, nor with the voices of those sifting through them in search of a bargain-or an overlooked gem. Like the trees lining Polwithen Road that may once have been part of a local farmer’s field boundary, so the house remained, and would remain, long after the going of its latest owner.
The keys had been waiting for Harding at Isbisters’ auction rooms. Clive Isbister, who might well have spent the morning regretting his garrulousness of the night before, had been conspicuous by his absence, although his secretary had emphasized how short-term the loan of them was. “We need them back within the hour.”
That would be no problem. An hour was more than Harding needed. He let himself into Heartsease by the main door, turned off the alarm using the code the secretary had given him and stood in the hall for a moment or two, letting the silence and emptiness of the house declare themselves. There was nothing left. Gabriel Tozer’s home had been stripped in accordance with his wishes, every sign of his years there erased.
The third key Harding tried opened the door beneath the stairs marked PRIVATE. He stepped through and went down to the basement flat. This part of the house was still furnished, of course. Theoretically, its tenant might return at any moment, though the certainty that she would not had somehow altered the atmosphere since Harding’s last visit. He glanced into the kitchen. Virtually everything had been put away. No tea towels hung on the range. No mugs or plates stood on the worktop. It was as if Hayley had known she might never return there-as if she had foreseen all the events that were to follow her departure.
Harding walked into the bedroom. A sheet had been draped over the entire bed. The memory of the night he had spent there with her was hard to conjure up. So much had been lost, so much altered, since then. It was only last week, but it might have been last year. He opened the drawers in the bedside cabinets, seeking a clue without really knowing what one would look like. But the drawers were empty. So was the wardrobe. Her clothes were gone. Perhaps she had never had many to start with. Perhaps she had always travelled light-the better to flee whenever the need arose.
There was a cupboard in the hall, but all it contained were spare sheets, blankets, towels and pillowcases. The flat seemed to have been prepared for a new tenant, rather than the return of the existing one. The tracks of the vacuum cleaner could be seen in the pale carpet in the lounge. Hayley had left everything in pristine condition, as if proclaiming the permanence of her going. That, Harding realized, was the only clue he was likely to find there, her absence a state
ment in itself.
Clive Isbister was pulling in to the staff car park in an enormous Saab estate when Harding returned to the auction rooms with the keys. He stopped and lowered his window.
“I’ll take those if you like,” he said, smiling amiably-if a touch apprehensively. “Everything OK?”
“You could say so,” Harding replied, handing over the keys.
“You remembered to reset the alarm?”
“Oh yes.”
“We don’t want any more burglaries.”
“There’s nothing left to burgle.”
“What did you expect? We pride ourselves on our thoroughness.”
“So does Hayley it seems.”
Isbister frowned in puzzlement at the remark, but did not query it. “How’s Humphrey?”
“Much as usual.”
“Did he mention the ring? The police haven’t made any progress with the case, as far as I can establish.”
“He’s not bothered about it.”
“Really? You surprise me. Still, perhaps his brother’s death has put such things into perspective.”
“Yes.” Harding allowed himself half a smile. “That must be it.”
Harding had nowhere to go now. He had arrived where Shepherd had predicted he would have to before abandoning his search for the truth: the last dead end. He was not ready to give up. But he could not see how to avoid it. Nathan Gashry was dead. Humphrey Tozer was the Heartsease thief. And Hayley had fled, he knew not where.
Wandering south along Chapel Street towards the sea front, he saw the doors of the Turk’s Head being opened for business. He walked in and ordered a double Scotch.
He had nearly finished his drink, and was seriously considering the merits of another, when a second customer appeared at his elbow.
“Fancy meeting you here,” said Ray Trathen, grinning lopsidedly “Having a hard day?”
“Hello, Ray” said Harding, too worn down by recent events to be riled by Trathen’s sarcastic tone. “D’you normally start this early?”
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