As Harry squeezed through the ruck to order another pint, he could not suppress a private smile at Minter’s expense. For all his zeal and determination, for all the trained wiles of the investigative journalist, he was wide of the mark. The truth lay elsewhere. And Harry knew where.
27
CONFIDENCE, THAT MOST fickle of emotions, had deserted Harry. He did not know why and, in the absence of an obvious explanation, attributed it to his first ever professional encounter with a psychiatrist. There was no archetypal couch in Dr Kingdom’s consulting room, although a chair by the window looked as if it could be converted for the purpose. But for the titles of the books on the shelves, however, Harry felt it would have served for the conduct of almost any other business than that of healing troubled minds. Nevertheless, the chair he was sitting in was soft enough and the recorded harpsichord music sufficiently soporific to calm the anxieties and lower the defences of most people. But not of Harry.
Was Kingdom himself, perhaps, the source of his unease? This snappily dressed, half-smiling man with something of the looks of the young Cary Grant about him did not approximate to his vision of a psychiatrist. Glancing through a file (which Harry took to be Heather’s) with the pursed lips and darting eyes of an auditor perusing an unsatisfactory set of accounts, he conveyed none of the warmth or insight which Harry supposed successful psychoanalysis to require. To make matters worse, there was a cast to his expression and a pitch to his voice which Harry found strangely familiar, as if, inconceivable though he knew it to be, they had met before.
A steadily worsening headache and a dry throat that was rapidly becoming sore compounded Harry’s discomfort. Perhaps he had drunk too much at the Grapes. Perhaps he was sickening a cold. Either way, concentration seemed to require an enormous effort and forceful argument a better assembled set of thoughts than he currently possessed. He had intended to sweep aside any reservations Kingdom might have about revealing a patient’s secrets by pointing out the overriding importance of finding Heather, but, instead, he had become meek and subdued, as if content to accept Kingdom’s judgement unreservedly on how much or how little he could divulge.
‘I’d like to help you, Mr Barnett,’ Kingdom said after a lengthy silence, ‘but I can’t. Naturally, I hope Heather is alive, but, if she is, she has every right to expect that I will observe absolute confidentiality where her medical history is concerned. My hands are tied.’
‘All I want to know—’
‘All you want to know is what I cannot tell you: whether her recent illness might in some way explain her disappearance. To bare one’s soul to a member of my profession, Mr Barnett, is no small hurdle to surmount. If there was the slightest risk of what one revealed in the process becoming known to others … Well, I trust you appreciate my position.’
‘Could I at least ask a few questions?’
‘Ask by all means, so long as you understand how limited my freedom may be to answer.’
Harry took a deep breath and struggled to shape some propositions that would not offend the doctor’s code of ethics. ‘Heather had a breakdown last year, didn’t she, following the death of her sister?’
This at least seemed to pass the test. ‘Yes,’ Kingdom replied cautiously.
‘And spent some time in an institution?’
‘She was a voluntary resident at one of the hospitals where I act as a consultant.’
‘She’s been your patient since then?’
‘Yes.’
‘The circumstances of her sister’s death must have been very upsetting, but was there anything else which—’
Kingdom held up his hand. ‘No good, Mr Barnett. Facts I can supply. Clinical details I cannot.’
Harry leaned back in the chair. His headache was perceptibly worse. ‘There wasn’t much point in agreeing to see me, was there?’ he said wearily.
‘I wouldn’t say that. I was grateful for the information you conveyed regarding Heather’s reading matter on Rhodes. I wanted to thank you. It may be highly significant.’
‘But you can’t tell me how?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Nor whether it might indicate she’d met somebody on Rhodes she was frightened of?’
‘The same objection applies.’
‘Then I’m wasting my breath.’
‘Not necessarily.’ The tone of Kingdom’s voice had altered. Harry was no longer looking at him, but felt sure he had leaned forward across his desk, as if their discussion were only now taking the desired direction. ‘After all, I am very worried about Heather. And you were the last person to see her. The Hippocratic oath doesn’t apply to you, Mr Barnett. You could be as frank as you wanted with me.’
‘Frank? What about?’
‘Oh, your feelings about Heather. Your assessment of her character. What you hoped for from your friendship with her.’
‘Would that help?’
‘It might.’ When you did not see the scrupulous, disinterested face of Dr Peter Kinhdom, his words had a soothing, almost seductive quality. Was this, Harry wondered, the key to psychoanalysis: not so much interrogation as mental massage?
‘It was obvious Heather had been unwell, but she seemed almost completely better. Perhaps that was the effect of Rhodes as much as anything else. I liked her from the start.’
‘In what way did you like her?’
How to answer? Harry stared up at the ceiling and followed with his eye the pattern of the coving.
‘We just hit it off together,’ he replied lamely. ‘Allowing for the generation gap, we found we had a surprising amount in common. Both of us are misfits, really, aren’t we?’
‘Are you?’
‘Oh yes. Coming home’s taught me that. I’ve no family apart from my mother, no job, no money, no property, no prospects. As far as I can see, England doesn’t welcome a prodigal son like me.’
‘That sounds rather like self-pity.’
‘It is, I suppose. But when nobody else feels sorry for you, you tend to feel sorry for yourself, don’t you?’
‘Excluded from society, you mean? Passed over by change? Starved of sympathy?’
The diagnosis was all too succinct. ‘Yes,’ Harry murmured.
‘Do you think Heather felt the same way?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
The upper branches of a plane tree were visible through the window, swaying faintly in a gentle breeze. They looked proud and mournful to Harry’s eye, burdened with too much memory. He wondered if Heather, sitting in the same chair and gazing at the same view, had somehow bequeathed to him this reaction, or if it were entirely his own, a product of the self-pity Kingdom bad identified. In the end, however, the sensation that Heather had been and felt this way before him was overriding. When he spoke, it was almost as if she had put the words in his mouth. ‘It seemed to me she’d been worn down by leading a life she wasn’t fitted for. She’d been required to be beautiful and talented and independent, but she hadn’t wanted to be any of those things. The result was a family who didn’t understand her, a career that didn’t satisfy her and a generation that didn’t accept her.’
‘But you did?’
‘I think so, yes. At least, I tried to.’
‘And did she let you?’
This was one question which Harry could not hope to answer truthfully. His insights into Heather’s character had followed, not preceded, her disappearance. To admit as much would be to admit he had been as negligent of her difficulties as anyone else. Therefore he lied. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Then let us approach the subject from a different direction. Heather was due to return to this country within days of your visit to Profitis Ilias, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was she looking forward to leaving Rhodes?’
‘No, I don’t think she was.’
‘Then why was she going to leave?’
‘All holidays have to end, don’t they? Besides, it
was expected of her.’
‘By her unsympathetic family and friends in England, you mean?’
The drift of their exchanges had begun to disturb Harry. He did not know where they were heading, but already it was clear the destination would not be of his choosing. ‘Er … yes,’ he replied hesitantly.
‘Did you want her to leave?’
‘No, certainly not.’
‘In fact, you wanted her to remain?’
‘Well … yes, of course.’
‘You both wanted her to stay on Rhodes, but neither of you felt able to admit it: is that what you’re saying?’
It would have been more accurate to say he preferred that version of events to any other, but one lie had committed him now to several distortions. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘So, by preventing Heather from leaving, you would have been acting in her best interests as well as yours?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘And the trip to Profitis Ilias was your last chance to make her see reason, wasn’t it?’
Heather’s receding figure, dwindling as it climbed the pine-bound slope, twitched once more on the invisible line that trailed between them. Harry felt stiflingly hot, choking almost, as he loosened his collar. He knew he had done nothing, knew beyond sugestion’s reach that he had been innocent of action as well as intention. And yet, and yet … Ever since his dream of Heather that last night in Lindos, ever since those images of Aphrodite and Silenus had been planted in his mind, knowledge, even certainty, had not been enough.
‘What went wrong, Harry? Was there a misunderstanding? A struggle? A panic?’
Turn and look. You cannot run yet. Where she has fallen. Face averted, thank God, flaxen hair blown across the glimpse you might have had of her frozen expression. Her white, goose-pimpled body. Left leg straight, foot still braced against the ground, heel raised, toes gouged into the litter of leaves as if scrabbling for a hold. Right leg bent double, knee red from impact, a scatter of dark soil across her calf, as if she had been trying to run even as she fell. The image held, precise and petrified: the mound of her hip, the curve of her stomach, the arm resting, its unavailing fist closed around a handful of cold, cloying earth. Harry could not move, could not speak, could not judge for this suspended moment whether what he saw was recollected or imagined.
‘What happened, Harry? You can tell me.’
Kingdom’s words were like harsh daylight flooding into a photographer’s dark-room. The picture that had so nearly secured its hold faded from the refracting blankness in the instant it took Harry to realize what it was that Kingdom wanted from him. Something most of his patients gave willingly: a confession. But, in this case, a confession to murder. ‘You think I killed her?’ he said numbly.
‘Well, if you did—’
‘It won’t go any further, is that it?’ Suddenly, Harry was angry. How dare this wheedling, simpering doctor set out to trap him? ‘If you think I came here to ease my conscience, you’re wrong.’
‘Am I? Why did you come, then?’
‘I told you: I’m trying to find Heather. And all everybody else seems to be doing is trying to stop me.’
‘I’m not trying to stop you.’
‘Aren’t you? Your professional reticence is a pretty effective obstacle, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve explained to you—’
‘Or is it your conscience that needs easing?’ Stung by his susceptibility to Kingdom’s line of questioning, Harry fought back with the only weapon at his disposal: knowledge the other man could not be aware he possessed. ‘You took Heather to dinner at the Skein of Geese in Haslemere on the tenth of September, didn’t you, Doctor?’
‘How did you—’
‘Were there any other candlelit evenings? Any other discreet little out-of-town excursions? You asked me in what way I liked her. Well in what way did you like her, Doctor?’
‘I won’t be spoken to like this.’ Kingdom jumped to his feet. The mask of professional reserve was down now, revealing the average short-tempered human beneath.
‘Or is that another question you think Heather might not want you to answer?’ Harry too rose from his chair, determined to allow Kingdom no further advantage.
‘I won’t be interrogated by you, Mr Barnett.’ Kingdom brought the flat of his hand down heavily on the desktop. ‘I won’t have it, do you hear?’
That was it. The exact phrase, tied to the same blustering expression, the same explosion of unnecessary anger. It sought and found in Harry’s memory the niggling familiarity he had already sensed. He dragged it to the surface of his thoughts. And brought with it a precise and sharply-etched recollection that required no effort of the imagination to build or bolster. For this was reality, as durable as it was crucial, as incontrovertible as it was incomprehensible.
Lindos: Sunday the sixth of November. High blue skies above a fragment of one of Harry’s last carefree days, when Profitis Ilias and Heather’s disappearance lay in wait but unforeseen, nearly a week in the future. It had been a day of rare pleasure for Harry, climaxed by lunch with Heather at the villa. Now, having passed the late afternoon imbibing gently at the Taverna Silenou, and feeling unusually tolerant of the rash of visitors the sabbath always brought to Lindos, he was picking a dawdling path back along one of the town’s winding cobbled alleys, squinting against the strength of the sun. As he ambled past Papaioannou’s trinket shop, he was amused to hear an English tourist resisting the proprietor’s notoriously persistent sales technique. Glancing in, he saw a tall, flustered figure turning away in disgust from the counter. He was, perhaps, a little too smartly dressed for a holidaymaker, but the point he was making was clear enough.
‘I won’t have it, do you hear?’
He brushed against Harry as he emerged from the shop, but uttered no apology, as if he was too irritated to have noticed. Then he hurried away towards the main square. Harry, for his part, exchanged a knowing smile with Papaioannou, then went on in the direction of the village. Within twenty yards, he had forgotten the incident. Nor would he ever have remembered it, had he not met the man again, a long way from Lindos.
* * *
‘I won’t have it, do you hear?’ Kingdom had said much else besides that, and had concluded by asking Harry to leave the premises at once, but the echoes of one repeated phrase were all that filled Harry’s head as he moved distractedly towards the door. Dr Peter Kingdom was the man who had stormed past Harry out of Papaioannou’s shop in Lindos five days before Heather’s disappearance. Five short days. ‘A meeting at a particular place, which has been expected beforehand, amounts in fact to a rendezvous.’ It was a phrase from the very page she had been reading. A meeting misinterpreted, a warning ignored, a danger defied. He had thought it might be so and now he had the proof. Kingdom on Rhodes, where he had no reason to be, where he had no cause to fear he would be recognized, far less remembered. But Harry had seen him. He had been looking for the omen Heather might have nerved herself to disregard. And now he had found it.
28
TWO TRAINS HAD come and gone on the northbound platform of the Bakerloo line at Marylebone tube station, but Harry had boarded neither. The rush-hour crowds had thinned and he was alone now on the bench, but in no hurry to depart. The black tunnel mouths, the stale warm air, the distant wail of a saxophone: these had become sensations that scarcely penetrated the borders of his awareness. His mind was fixed elsewhere, struggling to piece together the fragments of an event he had participated in but not understood. He knew it was a hopeless task – like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without the picture to serve as a guide – but still he could not abandon it.
The Heather he had known on Rhodes was an uncomplicated and instantly likeable young woman: a little gauche perhaps, a little unsure of herself, but essentially only what she might be expected to be. Now he saw it had all been a sham. Either he had been pitifully unobservant or she had been expertly deceitful. There had been secrets, fears, dangers and delusions filling her every thought. H
er dead sister. Her family. Her psychiatrist. The Tyrrell Society. The bombing of Dysart’s yacht. The past. The present. The future. And the ninth photograph she had taken was of a school. Harry drew the wallet from his pocket and leafed through the pictures until he found it. It was where Jack Cornelius taught. Of that there could be no doubt. It was where she had gone after visiting the Skein of Geese. It was where he would have gone in her shoes. It was the logical next step. But the next step along a road leading where? Profitis Ilias. That was all he knew. If only he had paid more attention when he had had the chance. If only his head did not ache so badly that thought seemed driven out by the throbbing. If only—
‘Mr Barnett!’ trilled a voice next to him. ‘What are you doing here?’
He thrust the photographs back into his pocket and jerked round. Beside him on the bench sat Kingdom’s secretary, clad in raincoat and headscarf. She was smiling brightly, but her eyes retained a solemnity that was strangely intimidating. In the instant before his failure to reply became conspicuous, it occurred to him that he had never met anybody whose natural gaze was so wide-eyed and unblinking, so direct yet unrevealing.
‘You left the surgery nearly an hour ago. I’m surprised you’re not well on your way. Didn’t you say you live in Swindon?’
Into the Blue Page 24