Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Is that … er, Jonathan Minter?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Ah … It’s, er, Harry Barnett here.’

  ‘Hi, Harry Barnett there. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, er, you said when we met on Rhodes—’

  ‘That where you are now?’ (So: Minter did not even know he had left Rhodes, far less all he had discovered since then – notably about Minter himself.)

  ‘No. That is … I’m in London.’

  ‘Really? How long have you been here?’ (His curiosity on the point was transparent: he wanted to know if Harry was likely to have seen the article in which Minter had traduced him.)

  ‘Oh, only a few days.’

  ‘And you’ve got something for me?’

  ‘I might have.’ (Pause long enough to whet his appetite, Harry instructed himself, then resume – hesitantly.) ‘Er, that, um, link in the chain … you mentioned.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ (Minter’s voice was suddenly more alert.)

  ‘Concerning Alan Dy—’

  ‘No need to spell it out over the phone, Harry. Why don’t we meet and talk about it?’ (He was nervous now, as well as interested.)

  ‘OK. But … where?’

  ‘Can you get out here?’

  ‘Yes, I should think so.’

  ‘Great. Let’s say noon. At the Grapes. It’s that pub in Limehouse, down by the river. Think you can find it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’ll meet you there. Don’t be late.’

  ‘I won’t be.’

  Next, Harry phoned Dr Kingdom’s consulting rooms in Marylebone. Quite apart from the fact that Heather’s psychiatrist might know more of what was in her mind than anyone, Kingdom had accompanied Heather to the Skein of Geese on 10 September. Was that, Harry had begun to wonder, a purely professional act?

  ‘Dr Kingdom’s surgery. May I help you?’ (The secretary’s faintly accented voice was instantly recognizable.)

  ‘Miss Labrooy, this is Harry Barnett. I called—’

  ‘Ah, Mr Barnett! I remember your visit.’

  ‘I was wondering—’

  ‘Dr Kingdom returned on Monday and I explained the nature of your enquiry. In view of the exceptional circumstances, he is prepared to see you.’ (Miss Labrooy had obviously pleaded eloquently on Harry’s behalf.)

  ‘That’s great. When could—’

  ‘He is fully committed for several weeks ahead, but he could spare you a few minutes at the end of his list one day.’

  ‘What about today?’

  ‘A moment please.’ (There was a rustling of an appointments book.) ‘His last patient is at four o’clock. If you called at five—’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ (Minter and Kingdom within hours of each other: at last Harry was making progress.)

  * * *

  A little over an hour later, Harry felt more in control of events than he had at any time since Heather’s disappearance. He and Minter were huddled at a table in the narrow bay window of the Grapes public bar, overlooked and unattended as the lunchtime rush gathered pace and noise, cocooned from the gossip and laughter that swirled about them. Twenty minutes before, Minter had arrived full of a swaggering blend of confidence and contempt. Now, as he eyed Harry warily and started his third cigarette, he had more the look of a hound on whom the fox had turned.

  ‘If you’ve nothing for me, why the hell did you imply you had? This is just a waste of time. If you think you’re going to persuade me to retract what I said in that article, you’re a bigger—’

  ‘I’m not asking you to retract anything.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘All I want to know is what you did with the information Nadine sold you.’

  ‘Nothing. It wasn’t worth anything.’

  ‘Supposing that’s the case, what led you to the Skein of Geese in the first place?’

  ‘Intuition.’ Minter tossed the word back like a dart.

  ‘And what took you back there after your visit to Rhodes?’

  ‘I liked the menu.’ The young man glared at Harry with something close to resentment. The role of the biter bit was clearly not one he cared for. He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. ‘Listen to me, Barnett. If you really are the Mr Persil in all this, that’s fine by me. I took you for a bit of a rogue, but maybe you’re just a fool. Either way, I buy information, but I don’t sell it.’

  ‘I’m not offering to pay you for it.’

  ‘Or give it away.’

  Harry was beginning to enjoy himself. There was genuine pleasure to be had from pinning Minter to the ropes. He too lowered his voice. ‘An exchange is more what I had in mind. Your answers to a few questions – in exchange for my silence.’

  ‘Your silence about what?’

  ‘The relationship between you and Virginia Dysart.’

  For a fraction of a second, Minter’s eyes widened. Then he drew on his cigarette in an attempt to mask what Harry had already glimpsed: the shock of one who perceives a threat too late to evade it. ‘You were the man she answered the door to,’ he said glumly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove a thing, of course.’

  ‘It doesn’t need to. Alan Dysart trusts me. If I told him what I suspect and why, do you think he’d ask for proof?’

  ‘No. He probably wouldn’t.’ Minter smiled faintly, as if the irony of the situation had suddenly struck him. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything you’ve found out.’

  ‘If I tell you, what guarantee do I have you won’t blow the gaff to Dysart anyway?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  The smile broadened. ‘Is that meant to reassure me?’ Minter leaned back in his chair for a moment, regarding Harry as if he were a specimen of endangered wildlife. Then his expression altered to something less decipherable. ‘Well, maybe some home truths about Alan Dysart, public servant and national hero, will make you reckon he deserves the marriage he’s got. I surrender. Ask away.’

  ‘You and Clare Mallender were contemporaries at Oxford?’

  ‘Yes. She was at Breakspear, I was at Queen’s. We studied the same subject.’

  ‘And became lovers?’

  ‘I loved her. Clare, as I recall, was rather more indiscriminate with her affections.’

  ‘But you did become engaged?’

  ‘At my insistence, yes. But I knew it wouldn’t last. She had her eyes set on a bigger catch than me.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘A politician. Nobody specific, you understand. Anybody sufficiently powerful and influential would have done. She was a single-minded girl, our Clare. She thought an MP’s bed was the quickest route into politics for a woman. She was probably right. Dysart just happened to be the one she chose. She already knew him, of course, as a friend of her father. It was he who recommended her to apply to Breakspear College when it started admitting women. When he left the Navy with a suitably heroic reputation, she must have reckoned he was her dream come true.’

  ‘You’re implying she became his mistress?’

  ’What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re wrong.’

  ‘Only a man who offers his word as a guarantee could be so naïve. All right, Clare never admitted it and I can’t prove it, but it still seems a betting certainty.’

  ‘Is that what prompted you to enquire into Dysart’s past – jealousy?’

  ‘No. If it had been, I’d have started digging for dirt before Clare died, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Then what did?’

  ‘Clare herself, strangely enough. Two days before she was killed, she phoned me out of the blue. We hadn’t spoken in months. She asked if we could meet. I was surprised she could spare the time in the middle of an election campaign and concluded it was genuinely urgent. We met that evening and she asked me straight out if I’d be interested in an exlusive story: a scandal affecting a government minister. With the election less than a fortnight away, I could hardly believe my luck. Clare w
ouldn’t name names there and then. She wanted me to clear her fee with my editor. She was asking a quarter of a million. It may seem a lot to you, but for a cast-iron story that might bring down a government, it’s cheap at the price, believe me. We arranged to meet again three days later and agree terms. I don’t deny I hoped it was Dysart she was planning to ruin – I wondered if there’d been a lovers’ tiff – but she let nothing slip. Chapter and verse were to be forthcoming when the deal was settled. Well, I scurried off and did my bit, but, the day before we were to meet again, she was killed – and the story with her.’

  Minter fell silent, letting his next, unspoken implication declare itself. ‘You’re not suggesting,’ said Harry, ‘that Clare was murdered to stop her selling you this story?’

  ‘The possibility crossed my mind, yes.’ He smiled at Harry’s confusion. ‘But the facts rule it out. The bombing of the yacht was definitely the work of the IRA. Dysart was an obvious target: ex-Navy, Ministry of Defence, outspoken in support of the Union. And the eve of the election was an obvious time to strike. Much as I was inclined to suspect otherwise, Clare was simply the victim of bad luck.’ He leaned still further across the table, his shoulders hunched, his voice scarcely rising above a whisper. ‘But I didn’t leave it there, because Dysart had had one lucky escape too many for my liking. You could argue it wasn’t his fault that Clare was killed – or that she didn’t love me as much as I loved her – and I’d have to agree. What I’m not prepared to accept is that he’s entitled to lead a charmed life while others struggle and falter and fail. Partly for Clare’s sake, but mostly for my own satisfaction, I decided to do my level best to break that man. I reckoned he was the minister Clare was planning to denounce and I set about trying to discover his secret for myself.’

  ‘But you’ve failed?’

  ‘Only as far as proof goes. I’m on to him, take it from me.’ Envy was written clearly on Minter’s face: envy of another man’s success. It was not a pleasant emotion, but it was a powerful enough one to have sustained him in the search when evidence was lacking. ‘How much do you know about Alan Dysart, Harry?’

  ‘As much as you, I expect.’

  ‘That I doubt. I’ve made a special study of him, you see. I’ve assembled his biography brick by brick, just so I can have the pleasure of taking it apart. He was born in Birmingham forty-one years ago. His father had migrated from Scotland and set up business there. Dysart Engineering was one of the success stories of West Midlands industry after the Depression and, as Gordon Dysart’s only son, young Alan was a dozen rungs above the likes of you and me on the ladder of life before he’d so much as lost his milk teeth. Off he went to Oundle, destined already for Oxford and probable greatness. By then the Dysarts had moved into the countryside. The old man had a house built for him in a pretty little Warwickshire village a few miles from Stratford, with the Avon flowing through the garden. Not a good move, as it turned out, because Mrs Dysart drowned in that stretch of river in 1963 and Gordon, never the same man again, died two years later, during Alan’s first year at Oxford, making him a wealthy man overnight. Strangely enough, though, when he left Oxford he wound up the business and joined the Navy, despite the fact that he could have lived handsomely off his investments. Perhaps he thought a Naval commission was the right way to start his career. I’ve certainly always had the impression that he planned every detail of his life. It’s like a glowing curriculum vitae was the first thing he produced when he learned how to write. Anyway, at Dartmouth he met Virginia …’

  ‘I wondered when we’d come to her,’ Harry put in. ‘Was it she who told you all this?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact it wasn’t. Dysart reveals little about himself, even to those close to him. What I’ve learned, I’ve learned the hard way.’

  ‘Seducing the man’s wife was the hard way, was it?’

  Minter smiled. ‘It was more a case of her seducing me. Dysart’s no fun to be married to, you know. He’s been looking elsewhere for years.’

  ‘You know that for a fact, do you?’

  ‘Virginia does. According to her it’s not unusual in Naval marriages. The husbands become used to male company. They think of women in one light only. So, what’s sauce for the goose … You know how it is.’

  ‘Do I?’ The truth was that Harry understood Minter better than he cared to admit. But for the generosity Dysart had shown him over the years, he might even have approved of his actions. Yet he had no intention of revealing as much. What he most disliked in Minter – a suspicious temperament channelled into a grudge against the world – was what he most disliked in himself.

  ‘Listen to me, Barnett,’ said Minter, anger seeping into his voice. ‘It’s only because it might hamper my investigations that I don’t invite you to tell Dysart about his wife’s infidelity tomorrow. Don’t think the morality of it troubles me for an instant. Now, have you heard all you want to hear?’

  ‘Not quite. Why did you contact the Cunninghams last year?’

  ‘Because Clare had mentioned dining at the Skein of Geese and Cunningham’s an Old Brakspearean. He seemed a useful source where Dysart’s Oxford days were concerned. But it was a waste of time. The man’s too bowled over by Dysart’s politics to be of the slightest—’

  ‘Yet you went back there recently.’

  ‘Yes, and got what he’d refused to tell me from his wife. Lurid nonsense about somebody being pushed out of a window twenty years ago. I only paid her five hundred in the hope she’d come up with something better.’

  ‘But why did you go back?’

  ‘Because, three months ago, Heather telephoned me and asked if I’d taken Clare to the Skein of Geese a couple of weeks before her death. I couldn’t work out why she should be so interested, but the answer was no: I’d never taken her there. According to the pneumatic Nadine, Dysart was Clare’s escort on that occasion, which was no surprise to me. When Heather disappeared, I thought it was a lead worth following, but it led nowhere. The Tyrrell Society and all that pining after defunct Oxford cabals – it’s irrelevant, Harry, don’t you see? Dysart’s secret – the chink in his armour – is rooted in the here and now, not the lost and gone. It was Virginia who gave me the clue. Naval husbands, she said, were loyal to their shipmates ahead of kith, kin or country. And Charlie Mallender is exactly that: an old shipmate. Dysart’s commanding officer on his very first ship to be precise. So I started enquiring into Mallender’s little business enterprise – and guess what I found?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Mallender Marine sailed into troubled waters in the early eighties: failure to win orders, bad debts, profits turning into losses. Their recovery since then stems from winning several lucrative long-term Defence contracts. And it coincides almost exactly with Dysart’s appointment to the Ministry of Defence three years ago. I’ll tell you what I think, shall I? I think Dysart is feeding commercial secrets to his old skipper, Charlie Mallender, and that Clare found out about it. As Dysart’s employee and Mallender’s daughter, who could be better placed to smell a rat?’

  Harry leaned back from the table and considered Minter’s theory. It seemed to him quite possible that Dysart should exploit his official position to save an old friend from bankruptcy. All it confirmed was the value he placed on friendship, which Harry well knew already. The world would denounce him for it unmercifully. No mitigation would be allowed for the fact that loyalty, not financial gain, was his motive. But Harry could not bring himself to condemn him. He doubted if Dysart deserved to be ruined by the ruthless young woman Clare Mallender seemed to have been, any more than he deserved to be hounded by the unscrupulous journalist Jonathan Minter undoubtedly was. Besides, as Minter was in the process of admitting, he had so far assembled not a shred of evidence to support his claim.

  ‘When I found out you’d been sacked by Mallender Marine, I thought you might be able to supply the proof I need. If you do know anything, my offer’s still open, you know. I should think you could use some money just now. Am I right?
’

  Minter, had he but known it, was right as well as wrong: right that Harry was running short of cash, wrong if he believed that currently mattered to him a jot. ‘I can’t help you,’ he replied. And it was true. Even if there was a case for Dysart to answer, it was not relevant to Heather’s disappearance. She had been following a trail Minter had turned his back on, but Harry had the photographs to keep him on course.

  ‘Please yourself.’

  ‘I will. You see, I’ve no intention of helping you ruin a man I admire.’

  ‘Then why all these questions?’

  ‘I hoped you might tell me something that would lead me to Heather.’

  Minter snorted derisively. ‘My answer’s the same as yours. I can’t help you. I don’t know where she is – if she’s alive at all – and I don’t much care. She was always just Clare’s plain, timid little sister to me: inferior, inadequate and inconsequential. She means nothing to me and nothing to Dysart either. Neurotic enough to have vanished of her own accord – or even to have got herself murdered. What difference does it make? After drawing a blank on Rhodes, I had to write something that justified my travelling expenses, so I made you the villain of the piece. Besides, I thought it might sting you into giving me something on the Mallenders. You did work for them, after all.’

  ‘Ten years ago. Nothing from that period supports your theory.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’ Minter glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go. I take it you’ve heard enough?’

  ‘Yes. I think I have.’

  ‘Then hear one last thing. If you should decide to tell Dysart about me and Virginia, bear in mind The Courier could make your life here in England very unpleasant for you. Heather Mallender’s murderer walks free – that sort of thing. You get my drift?’

  Harry did not reply. When the door of the pub slammed shut behind Minter a few moments later, he sighed with relief and took a lengthy gulp at his beer. It was at least gratifying to know that his initial dislike of the young man had been justified. He doubted if his hatred of Dysart could even be honoured with the description of revenge. His claim to have loved Clare Mallender and to have had her stolen from him somehow lacked conviction and, anyway, his conquest of Virginia Dysart could be said to have evened the score. No, Minter was motivated more by the unreasoning malice which individual achievement seemed often to inspire in others. The irony was that, by dismissing as irrelevant all talk of the Tyrrell Society, he had closed his eyes to the vital clue Rex Cunningham could have given him: the identity of the man whose photograph Clare Mallender had carried about with her. Armed with that information, he might have re-directed his enquiries long ago.