‘Not another word! Get out of my home.’
Quick to rile and slow to listen: it had been the man’s way as an employer and Harry should have known it would be the same where his family was concerned. Charlie Mallender subscribed to the philosophy of being as scornful of his inferiors as he was sycophantic to his superiors; there was no doubt into which category he had placed Harry.
‘Get out, damn you!’
Harry walked as far as the threshold, then turned to Charlie and said: ‘I might be able to help you find Heather. Doesn’t that interest you at all? It certainly interests your wife.’
‘Heather’s dead and we’re trying to come to terms with that fact. What my wife doesn’t need is false hopes and empty promises – which is all you have to offer.’
‘How can you be sure she’s dead? She might simply have run away.’
‘She had nothing to run away from. She had everything she could possibly want.’
Except, thought Harry, a sympathetic father. ‘There’s something I don’t understand about your family. You and your son in particular. I almost get the impression you’d prefer Heather to be dead than—’
The sharp intake of Charlie’s breath, the sudden widening of his eyes and the speed with which he swept back his right arm as if so lash out struck Harry dumb. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, each contemplating and recoiling from the possibility of violence and what it might signify. Then Charlie Mallender said, in a tone so subdued as to render it more threatening still: ‘I should have handed you over to the police ten years ago, Barnett, rather than just sack you. I blame myself for being too damned reasonable.’
‘Don’t give me that. You must know Roy set me up.’ Old quarrels and ancient grievances: why did they matter more than a straightforward concern for Heather’s safety? Harry did not know, but clearly it was so.
‘Are you leaving?’ said Charlie levelly. ‘Or do I have to phone the police as I should have done then?’
It was inevitable Harry would fare worse if the police became involved. Surrendering to the force of that threat if to no other, he stepped over the threshold. As he turned round to deliver a final goading remark, the door crashed shut in his face, setting the knocker and letterbox rattling.
Slamming doors, averted eyes, unanswered questions: each successive reverse was, in its way, a victory, Harry told himself as he walked away down the drive. Evasion and discouragement greeted him wherever he went, but only reinforced his certainty: he was on truth’s winding trail and his stubborn inquisitive nature would not let him abandon it.
17
HARRY TOOK HIS leave of Ernie Love the following morning and presented himself at the Jubilee Clock twenty minutes early for his rendezvous with Nigel Mossop. The Promenade was empty of people at such an hour on a Sunday. The gulls were in good voice, however, soaring and shrieking overhead in a fickle, shifting breeze, and Harry was surprised how contented if not downright happy he felt, sitting in the shelter nearest the clock and gazing out at the white horses in the bay. His mood was one of puzzlement mixed with hope. Resisted and resented though he had been at every turn, he nonetheless detected a direction to his enquiries that promised to become an unwavering course. Nor was the thought that he alone might hold the key to the mystery the sole component in his strangely elated state. Two nights under the same roof as Ernie Love had, he suspected, sealed his condition, for Ernie represented the squalor and futility to which his own life could so easily have led but for the sense of purpose looking for Heather had brought to it. Though whether purpose was the correct description of his motivation he rather doubted. Something more stubbornly personal, something closer to the rot within him he was determined to stop, lay perhaps rather nearer the mark.
Suddenly, a car horn sounded from close by. When Harry looked round, it was to see that Mossop too was early for their appointment.
‘Didn’t … didn’t sleep very well,’ Mossop confessed, as soon as Harry had climbed into the car. ‘W-Worried.’
‘What about?’
‘Not … sure.’ He smiled nervously. ‘That made it worse.’
On the back seat was a waterproof coat, a sandwich box, an ornithological guidebook and a pair of binoculars. Evidently Mossop had done his best to deceive his mother, though Harry suspected his blinking, stammering parade of insecurity was bound to have betrayed him.
‘Where … where to, then?’
‘Wherever you went on Sunday the twenty-eighth of August, Nige. I’m in your hands.’
As confirmation of the significance Harry had detected in Heather’s photographs, Mossop’s retraced route of three months before could not have made a better start. He had collected Heather from the Portesham turn-off on the Bridport road, not from Sabre Rise itself, which smacked of subterfuge from the very start. They had then returned to Weymouth and diverted to the crematorium, where Heather had left the car just long enough to take a photograph.
The site of the second photograph on the film was thus their first port of call. Leaving Mossop sitting in his car, Harry took a slow, considered circuit of the red-brick chapel set amidst tended lawns and flowerbeds on a summit above the town. Hereabouts, Beryl Love’s ashes must have been scattered beneath a rose bush, though he knew better than to think Ernie might have invested in a memorial plaque. Clare Mallender’s commemoration was, however, a different story. Down the third row of stones he tried in the garden of remembrance, he found the spot where Heather had raised the camera to her eye and captured the second image in the sequence he was seeking to follow. CLARE THOMASINA MALLENDER, 1959–1987. It was a natural subject for a grieving sister, a fitting start to her journey – and for Harry’s.
Back on the road, they headed east in silence, Harry’s mind registering with calm intensity every mile and vista of their route, as if this process alone would bring him closer to what Heather had been thinking. It was noon by the time they reached Beaulieu, a smug little New Forest village at the head of the Beaulieu estuary, but Harry was too eager for progress to permit the halt for lunch that Mossop had enjoyed with Heather. Instead, they drove south, down the western side of the estuary, to a pull-in at the end of a lane, whence Mossop and Heather had walked down to the river’s edge and taken the third photograph.
The scene had been altered only by the season. The trees were bare now, the reeds forlorn, the sky a disgruntled grey. Otherwise, with Mossop standing by the river’s edge, ill-at-ease and chattering furiously, Harry could envisage the previous occasion without difficulty. Tyler’s Hard stood out even more clearly on the opposite bank now the trees were no longer in leaf: the jetty, the lane-end, the white-walled cottage where Dysart spent his constituency weekends. Heather had borrowed his binoculars, Mossop said, and studied the cottage through them for some time. Perhaps, Harry thought, she had been checking to see if Dysart were in residence, looking for his car or some such sign of his presence. Presumably she had seen nothing to deter her from taking a closer look.
But she had not, Mossop revealed, gone straight to Tyler’s Hard. Instead, they had driven on eastwards, beyond the last heath of the New Forest as far as the housing estates fringing Fawley Oil Refinery, on one of which lived Molly Diamond, Dysart’s cleaning lady.
Mossop could not remember the address and it required several false starts and wrong turnings before they located the right house, one grey-dashed end-of-terrace dwelling among the featureless many that spread like silt round the fenced-off acres of pipelines and flares. Mossop, faithful both to preference and history, remained in the car whilst Harry walked up the front path, trying to ignore the ravenous alsatian growling and tearing at the neighbour’s fence.
A grease-smeared youth answered the door, accompanied by a gust of rock music and an aroma of gravy. When Harry asked if ‘Mrs Molly Diamond’ was at home, the youth slouched back along the passage, shouted ‘Ma’ once at the top of his voice, then carried on without change of pace towards a dismantled motorcycle Harry could see beyond the ba
ck door.
In response to the call, an aproned figure peered at Harry from the kitchen, then bustled towards him, wiping her hands in a towel as she came. She looked like a once proud young woman waging an unequal struggle against slatternly middle age, her hands red from labour and her face grey with exhaustion, but her eyes preserving some yet-to-be extinguished sparkle of ambition. She seemed inclined to give Harry short shrift, but at his mention of Heather’s name, she relented and showed him into the front room, where a meagre measure of calm and quiet prevailed.
‘I read about ’er disappearance, o’course,’ she began. ‘It proper upset me, I can tell you, when they said she was probably dead. Such a nice, polite, well-bred young woman. Are you related?’
‘Er, no. A friend. The name’s Barn—’ Harry hesitated, then decided to risk a lie. ‘Barnes. Horace Barnes.’
‘What can I do for you, Mr Barnes?’
‘Well, all Heather’s friends and relatives have racked their brains for clues as to what might have become of her, as you can imagine, and I remembered her mentioning visiting you here a few months ago.’
‘She told you ‘bout that?’ A doubtful look crossed Mrs Diamond’s face.
‘Er, yes. Yes, she did.’
‘You do surprise me.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘I got the impression she’d not ’ave wanted anyone to know about it. She told me …’ Hesitation slowly became determined silence; the line of her mouth tightened.
‘Told you what?’
‘I don’t know as I can say.’
Harry tried to assume an appealing expression. ‘Your discretion does you credit, Mrs Diamond. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t ask you to break a confidence. But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they?’
A moment of frowning consideration preceded the grudging reply. ‘Reckon they’re not, no.’
‘And doesn’t it reassure you to know she told me about coming here when she kept it from her family?’
By now, however, Mrs Diamond was ready with a challenge of her own. ‘What did she tell you, then? Why did she say she came ’ere?’
‘To see where her sister had died and to speak to those who’d witnessed her death.’
‘And that’s all she said?’
‘Yes. Do you mean there was some other reason?’
‘No …’
A little encouragement seemed in order. ‘If it helps you make up your mind, Mrs Diamond, I should tell you that I’m a friend of Heather’s rather than a friend of her family … if you see what I mean.’
‘It’s not them I’m—’ She broke off, stared at him intently for a moment, then said: ‘What do you know about me, Mr … Mr Barnes?’
‘Nothing, beyond the fact that you do some housekeeping for Alan Dysart at Tyler’s—’
‘Did some ’ousekeeping. I don’t anymore.’
‘Oh, I didn’t realize. Why, er …?’
‘Not since June of last year.’
‘You mean not since Clare Mallender’s death?’
She nodded in confirmation, but showed no inclination to expand on the fact.
‘It was very upsetting, I suppose.’
‘That weren’t the reason,’ she snapped.
All of this, it seemed to Harry, was beside the point. He was about to make an attempt to steer the conversation back to Heather’s visit in August when, in a sudden rush, Mrs Diamond reached the limit of her reticence and revealed what he did not doubt she had also revealed to Heather.
‘Mr Dysart paid over the odds for charring, and my Wilfrid thought I was mad to give it up, but I was glad to go, believe you me, glad to be out of that house for good and all. What ’appened there on the first of June last year weren’t just a tragedy, oh no. It were also wrong, plain wrong. It weren’t the way everyone said an’ thought it was, you see, not by a long chalk. An’ I should know, ’cos I was there. D’you remember what the papers and TV said about it, Mr Barnes?’
‘Well, not exactly. I understood—’
‘Beautiful Miss Clare Mallender blown up by the IRA in mistake for Mr Dysart. ’ighly thought of. Much admired. The model secretary. Well, that’s not ’ow I remember ’er. ’ard little bitch she was, take my word for it. ’ard as nails an’ cunning as a vixen. As for Mr Dysart finding ’er indispensible, well that’s not my recollection. They ’ated each other: I could see it in their eyes. And they fought like cat and dog at times. Even that last morning. There was a terrible row between ’em just before she went out to the boat an’ got blown up, God rest ’er soul. But did any of that come out at the inquest? No, it did not. Was I called as a witness? No, I was not. So, what do you make of that, Mr Barnes, eh? What do you make of that?’
‘I don’t know, Mrs Diamond. I suppose nobody wants to speak ill of the dead.’
‘Huh! That’s all you know. That Morpurgo, for one, ’e never did anything else.’
‘Morpurgo?’
‘Mr Dysart’s caretaker, ’andyman, call ’im what you like. Lives in a room over the garage at Tyler’s ’ard. ’as the place to ’imself when Mr Dysart’s not there, o’ course, which is most o’ the time.’
Harry had never heard of the man, but his status and circumstances sounded disturbingly similar to his own. ‘Was Morpurgo present when Clare Mallender was killed?’
‘ ’Course ’e was. Never stirred far from Tyler’s ’ard in my experience. Me and Mr Dysart were in the kitchen and Morpurgo was in the garden when it ’appened. I’d seen Miss Mallender walking out along the pontoon to the boat and I’d turned away from the window over the sink to ’and Mr Dysart ’is coffee when there was this great whoomph outside. All the windows that side o’ the ’ouse shattered and then there was just silence for ’alf a minute or so. Next thing you could ’ear bits of wood and such – bits of the boats like – falling into the river. An’ a crackling of flames ’cos the pontoon ’ad caught fire and some o’ the wreckage was ablaze as well. An’ I looked at Mr Dysart an’ ’e looked at me and we both knew what ’ad ’appened without going to see. A bit o’ glass ’ad caught him on the fore’ead, but otherwise we ’adn’t a scratch to show for it between us. Yet we knew, right enough – knew by instinct, I s’pose – that Miss Mallender was dead.’
‘It must have been dreadful,’ Harry said lamely. ‘But what has this to do with—’
‘We ran out there, o’ course, but it was obvious she was beyond ’elp. There was nothing left of the boat, let alone Miss Mallender – which was a mercy in its way, I s’pose. Still, Mr Dysart went to see what ’e could do, while I went back to phone for the police. I passed Morpurgo on the way. ’E’d come running from the back garden and we nearly bumped into each other coming round the corner of the ’ouse. That’s ’ow I can be so sure, you see. That’s ’ow I can be so certain about the expression on ’is face. ’e was smiling, Mr Barnes, smiling like a cat who’s got the cream, smiling like ’e was pleased by what ’ad ’appened. That shook me, I can tell you. That chilled me in a way I can’t properly describe. I ’aven’t been back to Tyler’s ’ard from that day to this – I couldn’t bear to. It’s not because of the explosion: it’s not delayed shock, or anything like that. It’s because the whole thing was off kilter in some way, not what it seemed, not what people thought it was, … well, just not right.’
Quite what Mrs Diamond meant to convey by the phrase ‘not right’ was as impenetrable as it was incontrovertible. Harry would have felt inclined to dismiss it as the invention of a hysterical mind but for the fact that Mrs Diamond’s mind was clearly anything but hysterical. She was neither rich enough nor impressionable enough to have walked out on a well-paid job simply in order to indulge a vapourish mood. Even to Harry, then, her reaction to Clare Mallender’s death seemed too sincere to be ignored. As to its effect on Heather, struggling to shake off nervous depression and come to terms with her sister’s loss, that could only be imagined.
‘I said a few words to Miss Mallender – Miss Heather Mallender, that is – at he
r sister’s funeral, last year. I thought at the time she made nought of it, but back last summer, like you say, round August bank ’oliday, she came to see me and asked me to tell ’er everything I remembered ’bout the day of the explosion. Surprised me, it did, ’ow little I’d forgotten. It was all still lodged there, every moment of it, in me mind. The noise the bomb made. That ’ollow, sickening whoomph. And the flames all round the pontoon. And, later, the wailing of the police sirens, the flashing of their blue lights, the crackle of their radios. But all that’s nothing, really, compared with Morpurgo’s smile.’
‘Why do you think he was smiling?’
‘Why? Well, if I knew that, Mr Bames, I’d know what it was that wasn’t right that day, wouldn’t I?’
‘Couldn’t you just have asked him?’
‘I see you don’t know the man. Well, as it ’appens, I did ask ’im, in a roundabout way, later that day.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘He just smiled, Mr Barnes. Smiled like ’e did before, like ’e was pleased as punch about something. That’s what got to me: Miss Mallender only a few hours dead – and Morpurgo smiling.’
There was no need to ask Mossop where he and Heather had gone after leaving Fawley. She must have been seized, thought Harry, by the same curiosity that gripped him now. Who was Morpurgo? Why had he smiled? What had not been right that day? They drove cautiously, navigating from Mossop’s memory, down the narrow lanes towards the Beaulieu estuary, past fringes of forest, paddocks, pasture and mellow creamy-red cottages.
‘You’re very q-quiet,’ Mossop said after they had driven in silence for a mile or so.
Harry did not reply. He hoped the young man would relapse into muteness and leave him to read the privilege and privacy imbedded in this landscape, to note the pampered thoroughbreds grazing beyond the fences and glimpse their owners’ residences tucked down driveways discreetly screened by firs. There was something in the train of his thoughts, he sensed, that pointed to the answer he sought.
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