‘He did tell me that.’ Her voice sounded numb, as if she had only now abandoned the hope that her employer was more misjudged than misguided.
‘His phone calls to you may not even have been made from Geneva.’
‘They may not.’
‘He could have remained on Rhodes until the eleventh. He could have met Heather on Profitis Ilias – by agreement or by surprise.’
‘He could have, yes.’
‘That could have been the meeting she foresaw – or expected. The meeting whose dangers she tried to reason away by recourse to Freud.’
‘As you say, Harry – it could well have been.’ She nodded faintly, passed a nervous tongue along her lips, then looked at him intently. ‘But there’s not a shred of proof, is there?’
‘None,’ he responded bleakly.
Another heavy sigh, this time of courage being summoned. ‘I may be able to obtain some proof. What then?’
‘What proof did you have in mind?’
‘I know several members of staff at the Versorelli Institute quite well. My opposite numbers, you understand. I could ask them for details of Dr Kingdom’s visit in November. I could say he had lost some documents, needed the dates and times of his attendance – patients visited, doctors consulted and so forth – to complete his records. There’s no reason why they should think such a request odd – or even unusual.’ She frowned in anticipation of what would be entailed. ‘They wouldn’t check with him, I’m sure. They’d treat my questions as entirely innocent and provide the answers without the slightest difficulty.’
‘You’d be prepared to do that?’
‘lf there’s no other way, yes.’
And there was no other way. The glance they exchanged acknowledged as much. ‘How long do you think it would take?’
‘I don’t know. A few days. It’s a question of the right opportunity presenting itself.’
A small silence was filled by mutual contemplation of the step they were about to take. Both knew it would not end with tricking information out of the Versorelli Institute. ‘It’ll be risky,’ said Harry, noticing as he did so how his choice of tense had changed from the conditional to the future. ‘If Kingdom finds out—’
There was nobility as well as determination in the gaze with which she cut him short. ‘What choice do I have, Harry? Heather is my friend as well as yours. If Dr Kingdom has done anything to harm her … what choice do I really have?’
29
HARRY WOKE WITH a violent start. His sleep, he knew at once, must have been unusually deep, for he had no clear idea how long it had lasted nor where for that matter he was. For several seconds, his brain refused to function, resisting all his efforts to impose the reassuring certainties of time and place. He felt cold to the point of shivering, weak enough for standing to be out of the question. He raised his trembling hand to his forehead and felt the dampness of sweat against his skin. He tried to swallow, but there was pain waiting deep in his throat to defeat him. And there was noise and motion as well, some rattling, juddering momentum of onward travel. He raised his head cautiously and looked around.
He was in a tube train. Of course he was in a tube train. How could he have forgotten – even momentarily? He was on his way back from Kensal Green to Paddington, on his way back from discovering in Zohra Labrooy at least one friend of Heather’s who was prepared to be an ally of his. As if to convince himself he had not imagined their encounter, he forced his mind to concentrate on what she had agreed to do.
She would elicit from her colleagues at the Versorelli Institute the exact itinerary Kingdom had followed there in November. When he arrived. When he left. When he was absent for as long as a day. And when she had gleaned every detail … why then they would have him, wouldn’t they? All Harry had to do was return to Swindon and await her word. She had undertaken to contact him by the end of next week to report what progress she had made and he did not doubt she would do so, for she was a woman of her word. Or so he thought. But, then, what did he really know of her? Heather had never spoken of her friend Zohra Labrooy, or of any other friend come to that. Yet friendship remained the only star to steer by. Dysart was a friend. So was Heather. Maybe Zohra could become one as well.
The train was beginning to slow for the next station. Suddenly, the hideous possibility occurred to Harry that he had slept past his stop and would have to retrace his route from some remote reach of the Bakerloo line. His weariness rebelled against the prospect and he glanced across at the opposite window in search of some clue as to his whereabouts. But what he saw was something altogether different.
The man in the seat opposite was thin, sallow-faced and raincoated. His black hair, streaked with grey, was plastered across a bald scalp. He was so ordinary as to be extraordinary, so obscure that only stealth could be his calling. And his two small eyes, twinkling like a rodent’s, were fixed on Harry. Surely he could not be, but surely he was … The man on the train at Reading. In his hand, as final confirmation, was the same paperback book, on its cover a girl in black underwear, slumped dead across a couch, strangled with a scarf.
The train was braking hard now, but Harry could not think fast enough. What was the probability – the unvarnished statistical likelihood – of such a coincidence? Next to nothing, surely. Surely to God. With a sudden pang of remorse, he reproached himself for not telling Zohra about the warnings he had received, if warnings they were, about the messages he had decided to ignore, on her behalf as well as his own.
They were in the station now, reaching and passing the moment when deceleration made the blurred nameboards legible. It was Warwick Avenue, the last stop before Paddington. At least, thank God, they had not overshot. What should he do? Get off here? Or remain to stare down the reflection of his own fear? Even as he sensed his incapacity to make such a choice, it was made for him. Incredibly, the man was leaving. As Harry watched, he slipped the book into his pocket, rose and moved towards the door.
The speed at which the station lights flashed by was diminishing fast, like some faltering heliograph whose meaning Harry could not discern. The man was standing by his left shoulder, waiting for the train to stop. Harry had only to reach out his hand to restrain him, but movement seemed suddenly to have deserted him. He remembered a newspaper article he had read about people waking on the operating table, paralysed by the anaesthetic, but aware of everything that was happening, conscious of pain but incapable of protest. The train had nearly stopped, but only one thought filled his mind: how many warnings was he to be allowed? How many chances did he have left?
The train squealed to halt. The doors slid open. But the man did not move. It was as if he were timing something, judging to a nicety some effect he wished to produce. He looked down at Harry. And spoke.
‘Kalinichta, kirie Barnett.’
Then he was gone. Through the doors even as they began to close. A lithe step out onto the platform, a turn of the heel and away. Harry, galvanized by the words, sprang from his seat and lunged towards the door, but too late: an impenetrable barrier of glass and metal separated him from his quarry. The train jolted into motion, throwing him against a steel upright. He clung to it for support, crouched for a view, glimpsed a retreating figure on the dwindling platform, then was swallowed in the soot-plumed tunnel.
‘Goodnight, Mr Barnett.’
30
‘INFLUENZA, MRS BARNETT. Classic case. Lot of it about.’ Doc Allsop’s professional grin, broad and crumpled as a crushed melon, was much the same whether he were offering congratulations or consolations. That much Harry remembered. ‘It’s the mild weather, you know. Makes the viruses breed like rabbits. And vice versa, no doubt.’ The cheese-grater laugh was also dolefully familiar. ‘Resistance probably undermined by this hot climate you tell me he’s been living in. And the over-indulgence that generally goes with it.’ Overindulgence? If he did not feel so dreadful, Harry would tell the fellow just what he could do with his bedside wit. What on earth, come to that, was the old fool sti
ll doing in general practice? It was he who had inflicted an appendectomy of doubtful necessity on Harry forty-two years ago. Good God, the man must be seventy if he was a day. ‘Rest. Aspirin. Whisky. Lots of all three. Should do the trick, eh?’ Doc Allsop lumbered towards the door, with Harry’s mother close behind.
Good riddance, thought Harry. Illnesses did not require names in his scheme of things: they were merely misfortunes to be endured. Like irony, if it came to the point, of which there seemed at present a good deal to be borne. His old bedroom, preserved as in a museum. The wallpaper, the chair, the tiny desk, the narrow bed: all were exactly as they had always been. Even the Commonweal School group photograph on the wall: September 1948, with Harry featured twice, having sprinted along the back while the camera tracked round, thus appearing with smile and combed hair at the extreme left and with smile and tousled hair at the extreme right. Not very funny, then or now. Strange to think, though, that time had passed even while the moving lens recorded that carefully assembled multitude. Photographs usually sustained the illusion that time could briefly be halted, but in this case …
The front door slammed. Allsop was gone, taking his tired homilies and pink placebos with him. Harry propped himself up on one elbow and pulled open the top drawer of the bedside cabinet. They were still there: the wallet of photographs and the envelope containing three postcards. They, at least, he had not imagined. And his pocket diary. He picked it up and turned to the address section at the back. Zohra Labrooy, 78 Foxglove Road, Kensal Green. 01-986-4316. After 6 p.m. Some things, then, were more reliable than his own twin likenesses in the school photograph. He dropped the diary into the drawer, closed it and fell back on the pillows. She would be in touch. She would prove him right. But the man on the train? Would he be in touch? Perhaps he had been an illusion. Perhaps Doc Allsop would have confirmed as much if Harry had asked him. ‘Hallucinations? Entirely consistent with influenza, old chap. Only to be expected. Take two or three of these before meals and let me know if the symptoms don’t clear up.’
Plodding footsteps on the stairs. His mother was about to reappear. He suspected she could have wished for nothing better than to have him confined to bed and reliant on her care. It would only be for a few days, of course. Then he would be up and about, able to apply himself to unfinished business. He tugged at the sheet and closed his eyes, hoping she might think he was asleep. But he hoped in vain.
‘Well, Harold? You heard what Dr Allsop said.’
‘Yes, Mother. Rest, aspirin, whisky. Sounds like a good idea – apart from the aspirin.’
‘Rubbish. The old fool doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘Then why did you call him in?’
‘To confirm my diagnosis. There’s only one way to treat influenza – and strong drink isn’t it.’
Her father had been a strict Baptist. Harry thought he had a good deal to answer for. ‘What is?’
‘Why, beef-tea, of course. I shall go down to Mr Sturch’s straightaway.’ Sturch had been in butchery about as long as Allsop had been in medicine, insofar, it occurred to Harry’s mind, as there was any real difference between the trades.
‘But Mother—’
‘It’s for your own good, Harold!’
He was too tired to argue. ‘Yes, Mother.’ At least he could sleep while she was away.
On the third day of his illness, Harry received his first visitor: Alan Dysart. Harry’s mother reacted to his arrival as if the Prince of Wales had called by unexpectedly. If she remembered he was the same man whom her son had once employed, there was no way of telling from the awed reception she gave him. Harry decided that the embarrassment this caused him was a sign he was getting better. As for Dysart, he simply pretended not to notice.
‘Laid up again, Harry? You seem to be making a habit of it.’ He looked exactly as he had on the day of their last meeting, the day of his departure to the United States: calm yet concerned, sensitive yet restrained, the perfect model of the thinking politician. Why Harry felt sorry for him he did not know. It could have been the comfortless chair he was sitting in. More likely it was the knowledge that, for all Dysart’s manifest charm and proven ability, he had a wife who was at best an adultress, at worst a traitor; either Minter’s dupe or his co-conspirator.
‘How did you hear I was ill?’
‘I didn’t. I got back from Washington on Friday. This was my first opportunity to find out what progress you’d made.’
‘In looking for Heather, you mean?
‘Unless you’ve given it up.’
‘No. I haven’t given it up.’
How much to tell? Dysart had been, over the years, as loyal a friend as any man could ask for. The least he deserved in return was that Harry should tell him all he knew. Besides, if he had been to Tyler’s Hard, he would doubtless have recognized Harry from Morpurgo’s account of a strange visitor the previous Saturday.
‘I’ve tried to retrace some of her movements. She went to Tyler’s Hard with Nigel Mossop, a colleague at Mallender Marine, on the twenty-eighth of August. I went there myself last Sunday. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’ Dysart smiled. ‘Willy did mention it. I was puzzled, I’ll admit, but now I understand. How did you know Heather had been there?’
The photopaphs were one secret Harry would not share. ‘She spoke of Mossop as a friend. I knew him as well, of course, so I contacted him and he told me about the trip.’
‘I see.’ Dysart nodded, but how much he saw was not clear. Nor did he ask the obvious questions which Harry would have found so difficult to answer. Why had Mossop been so cooperative? Why had Heather chosen him as a companion? ‘Did you speak to Mrs Diamond, Harry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me what you made of her.’
Harry had largely forgotten the woman as soon as he had concluded that her complaint about Morpurgo smiling on the day of Clare Mallender’s death was of no significance. Yet Dysart’s expression reminded him of something else she had said: that Dysart and Clare had been arguing immediately before the explosion; that there had been friction between them for some time. ‘Good-hearted, I suppose, but a terrible gossip.’
‘Reliable?’
‘As a witness – not very.’
Dysart smiled. It was what he had wanted to hear. They both knew what Mrs Diamond had said, but neither proposed to give it the status open discussion would confer.
After all, if Dysart had fallen out with Clare, he was not likely to have broadcast the fact after her death. ‘Mrs Diamond never liked Willy, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Some people simply cannot conquer their horror of disability.’
‘Cyril Ockleton told me how Morpurgo came to be disabled.’
‘Did he?’
‘Heather went to see him in Oxford on the third of September. He drove her to Burford and showed her the site of the car crash.’
Dysart frowned. ‘Why should she be interested in that?’
‘I don’t know. I’m still trying to find out.’ Suddenly, Harry was gripped by a sneezing fit which dissolved into painful coughing. At his signal, Dysart poured out a spoonful of linctus (obtained courtesy of the pharmacist, in the teeth of Doc Allsop’s advice) and stood by while he swallowed it. Slowly, the power of speech returned. ‘I really am sorry about this, Alan. You’d better keep your distance.’
‘Don’t worry. Politicians have total immunity. I just hope I’m not tiring you. Your mother would never forgive me if I caused a relapse. Where did you pick up this bug?’
‘I don’t know. I began to feel under the weather on Thursday morning after leaving Haslemere. Heather went there on the tenth of September, you know, to see Rex Cunningham.’
‘What did she want with him?’
‘As far as I can see, she attached some significance to the fact that you, Morpurgo, Ockleton and Cunningham are all former members of the Tyrrell Society. She’d obtained a Skein of Geese matchbook from somewhere. Perhaps from her sister, because she knew you an
d Clare had dined there last year, shortly before …’
‘Shortly before Clare was killed in mistake for me.’ Dysart’s voice sounded unusually grim as he finished Harry’s sentence. ‘I took her there for a last relaxing evening before we threw ourselves into the election campaign. As a matter of fact’ – he frowned in concentration – ’I do recall her putting a matchbook in her handbag at one point and saying she would pass it on to Heather because she collected the things. She made a joke of it, saying she had given Heather all the most exclusive matchbooks in her collection, that it was ironic how she’d become a slave to her sister’s hobby.’ A flicker of recollected pleasure that swiftly turned to the pain of regret crossed his face. ‘But what of it? I see Cyril Ockleton whenever I go back to Breakspear College. He told me Willy was destitute. I was in a position to give the poor fellow employment and accommodation. As for Rex Cunningham, he runs a decent restaurant: where better to take Clare, since she was an Old Breakspearean as well?’ Something seemed suddenly to catch his eye: the Commonweal School group photograph on the wall above the desk. Springing up, he took two steps across to it and peered at the glazed array of schoolboy faces. ‘You’re in this, of course, Harry. How old would you have been in – what does the caption say? – 1948?’
‘Thirteen. ‘
‘Aha. Thirteen. Let me see.’ A minute or so of scrutiny passed, then he said: ‘Got you. Far end. Third row back. Standing.’
‘What does my hair look like?’
‘Your hair? All over the place. Why?’
‘Well, look at the other end.’
A second later, Dysart chuckled in understanding of a forty-year-old schoolboy prank. ‘Very good, Harry. Very good. I recall some of the chaps doing the same at Oundle.’
‘But you didn’t join in?’
‘No.’ He turned away from the photograph. ‘I don’t think I’d have cared to be represented by two images in the same picture. It would have seemed … eerie. Like being tracked by your own ghost. Like being …’ He laughed off the solemnity of the thought and returned to the chair. ‘Anyway, that photograph has as much bearing on our present difficulties as the Tyrell Society. I can’t understand why Heather should have wanted to dig up such stuff. The car crash. The death of Ramsey Everett. Old tragedies best forgotten.’
Into the Blue Page 26