Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  ‘I dare …’ Charlie’s voice faltered. His pride would not admit what his conscience acknowledged. ‘I daresay we owe you …’

  An apology? Harry knew better than to expect one. Dysart caught his eye and seemed to smile, as if he had foreseen and exactly concurred with Harry’s every thought. This was an alliance of necessity, nothing more. But necessity could not be gainsaid. Harry’s gaze shifted to the photograph on the coffee-table and saw there Heather’s young, earnest, trusting face. ‘I can’t turn back now, can I?’ She at least would have understood.

  ‘Well, Harry?’

  ‘I’ll phone Miss Labrooy tonight.’

  ‘And if she agrees?’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  Harry and Dysart parted shortly afterwards in the driveway of Sabre Rise. A grey curtain of cloud was slowly closing across the clear sky of morning, a breath of genuine winter rising from the hills and fields about them. Harry could see Marjorie watching him from the lounge window as he opened the car door. He could feel the weight of her tremulous hope bearing down upon him even as his conscience reminded him that it was not for her sake but his own that he was taking this course of action.

  ‘Thanks, Harry,’ said Dysart, laying a hand of gratitude as well as detention on his shoulder.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not throwing Charlie’s lies back in his face. For not evening the score. For not taking revenge.’

  ‘What would have been the point?’

  ‘Revenge seldom has a point. The fact remains, however, that Charlie’s treated you shabbily enough over the years to deserve nothing but your contempt. Even now, even when he knows you could as easily tell him to do his own dirty work, he can’t bring himself to apologize.’

  ‘I didn’t expect him to.’

  ‘Nor did I.’ Dysart smiled. ‘By his lights, Charlie’s not a bad man. As captain of a ship, he earned my respect and admiration. He virtually admitted his fault to you today: loyalty. It’s loyalty to a corrupt son that’s led him astray.’

  ‘Does Roy know what we’re doing?’

  ‘No. Even Charlie agrees that this time he must be kept out of it.’ What had Dysart said to Charlie Mallender? Harry wondered. Had he employed scorn or reason? Whatever the method, he had clearly gained his complete subservience. ‘You’ll let me know if there’s any difficulty with Miss Labrooy?’

  ‘There won’t be.’

  ‘And you’ll make contact as soon as you’ve established that Heather’s at the Institute?’

  ‘Immediately.’

  ‘Then it only remains for me to wish you good luck.’ Dysart shook him firmly by the hand and turned back towards the house.

  As Harry watched him go, he felt his mental defences begin to slip. In a moment, he would be on the road to Swindon, alone at the wheel of a car. It was a long drive, too long for him to blot from his mind throughout it the memory of why now he must do Dysart’s bidding. He could tell himself he would have done so anyway: out of affection for Heather or perhaps out of pity for her mother. He could even have cited a wish to clear his own name, if such a thing were any longer possible. And maybe, all along, this would have sufficed. But now it did not need to. Now there was something else.

  He climbed into the car and started the engine, eased it down the slope into the lane and turned north towards Dorchester. By the look of the sky, he would be lucky to reach Swindon before dusk. He winced at the thought, knowing that only daylight could hold at arm’s length his memory of the previous night. Whilst daylight lasted, he could pretend those events had not occurred. But when it failed, as fail it must, they would return to taunt him. He had uncovered betrayals at every turn. And now he had added his own.

  What woke Harry in the small hours that morning at Strete Barton he did not know. Undismayed by Dysart’s absence, Virginia had taken him to the village pub for supper and there, aided by convivial company and innumerable rounds of drinks, had succeeded in persuading him that Nancy could well have imagined the man in the yard and that crossed lines were only to be expected of rural switchboards. She amused the locals with her account of the incident, talked Harry into playing darts and somehow ensured that he passed his most carefree evening since returning from Rhodes.

  But all that was undone by five minutes’ wide-eyed confrontation of the absolute, inky-black silence that comprised a moonless, windless night. The luminous dial of his watch showed two-forty, bleakest and deadest of times, and by his own alertness he knew sleep lay several anxious hours away. He rose, slipped on a bathrobe and crossed to the window. It was so intensely dark outside he could scarcely distinguish the outline of the stable-block against the sky, so black and empty it was almost possible to believe the world beyond Strete Barton had ceased to exist. He turned back towards the bed. And heard it.

  What was it? A movement? An impact? A stirring within the fabric of the house? Whatever it was, it could not be ignored. Somewhere below him, something had made a noise. Urging himself to act before fear had a chance to blossom, he eased open the door and looked out along the landing. There was nothing. No light to suggest Virginia was awake. No second noise to confirm the first. He headed for the stairs.

  His eyes had adjusted to the darkness now and as he prowled each of the downstairs rooms in turn he began to suspect that his senses had deceived him. Every old house had its share of creaks and groans. It was to be expected. He should pull himself together. Concluding his tour in the study, he reckoned a healthy slug of Dysart’s malt might settle his nerves and enable him to sleep. He turned on a lamp to guide him, but before he saw the whisky bottle, saw something else instead.

  The Reign of William Rufus still lay by the telephone. Cursing his carelessness for leaving it there, he carried it quickly back to the bookcase. As he slid it into the waiting gap, the familiarity of the act struck home. Surely he had replaced it before leaving the study that afternoon. A flush of alarm engulfed him. Surely he had. Surely to God.

  The room was hot. At all events, he felt hot, his limbs prickling, his breath quickening. And there was someone in the room behind him, someone close at hand. Someone he knew. The door must be open, for there was a draught where previously all had been still and stifling. And brought to him on it was the faint but recognizable scent of gardenias. Did he mean scent? Or perfume?

  He whirled round. Virginia Dysart was standing no more than six feet away, her eyes fixed intently upon him. She wore a silken dressing gown of some pastel shade. Her hair fell freely about her shoulders. She was breathing rapidly, panting almost as she stared at him, as if she too had been disturbed and had feared an intruder.

  Why could he not speak? Why could he not break the spell that seemed abruptly to have been cast between them? There was a tension, a charge almost of the air about them, a sensation of imminent passion, like heat rushing from a sudden blaze. She stepped towards him. He struggled to find some words with which to fend off the impulse of the moment. But she pressed her fingers to his mouth to silence him.

  ‘You were Heather’s Silenus, weren’t you, Harry?’ Her voice was thick with something. Desire or deliberation. He could not say which. Her hand traced a line down to the point of his chin, then fell to his chest. ‘What will you be for me?’

  She had to stop. In a moment – a second it seemed – it would be too late. He had never known, never experienced, such intensity before. The phrase was like a trigger. ‘You were Heather’s Silenus, weren’t you?’ No. He had not been. The image was a travesty. It had never been like that at all. Yet why could he not put Heather’s likeness out of his mind? Heather as he had never seen her. Heather as he could not now refrain from imagining her.

  Virginia’s hand ran down to the cord of his bathrobe and released it. He squeezed his eyes shut as the robe fell open, knowing what she would see, knowing the lie it would give to any attempt by him to deny what he felt. She touched him, caressed him, moved her hand once, twice, then drew away.

  ‘Did she do this for you, Harry?’ She
pushed the bathrobe from his shoulders. He heard it fall at his feet. There was silence for an instant. Then he opened his eyes. She was three feet away, waiting with her calm and arrogant expression to meet his gaze, waiting with eyebrows faintly raised, head tossed back, one corner of her broad mouth curling, waiting with one hand raised on the knot that fastened the sash about her waist, ‘You were Heather’s Silenus, Harry. Won’t you be mine?’

  With one tug, the sash fell away. Then she shook the gown from her shoulders. Harry heard it slither to the floor. She held his eyes with her own for one further moment, then looked down. Tall, taller than he was, more muscular than he would have expected even from that one glimpse in Minter’s bath-towel, there was something of the Amazon about her, something of the warrior as well as the wanton.

  She fell to her knees, glanced up at him once, then reached between his legs, cradling his testicles in her hand as she lowered her mouth towards the jutting head of his penis. Her hair slid forward across her face as she did so. He could feel it brushing against his thighs as her lips moved back and forth. For no more than an instant, his gaze moved to the uncurtained window and saw there, reflected against its blackness, the lamplit reality of what he could not believe was happening. Virginia kneeling naked before him, her flowing hair and raised arm barely concealing her purpose, the horror at what he glimpsed eclipsed only by the arousal he could not halt.

  She drew away, falling back on her haunches and gazing up at what she had made of him. He stooped towards her. She touched him again and pulled his hand down onto her breast. Into his mind flooded a chaos of sensations: her cool, faintly goose-pimpled flesh; the warm, impatient smell of her; the shortness of her breath; the stiffness of her nipple between his fingers; the preposterous beauty of her hair in the lamplight; the accelerating certainty of what was bound to occur.

  They fell onto the floor. A smile formed on her lips as he drew back to survey her pale body turned gold by the lamplight, her hair fanned out across the rug beneath her. He thrust violently into her, his penis swollen in his mind to impossible proportions. Her breath was racing faster than his own, her head arched back, her face flushed with a secret joy. They rolled over. For an instant she was astride him, lunging back and forth as she impaled herself upon him, eyes closed, mouth open, strands of hair falling across her face. He ran his hands down her back and over the twin humps of her parted buttocks, felt with a shock even his own crescendo of sensations could not obsure the furnace-like heat of her body, then heard, between her panting breaths, a cry of triumph that told him at last why he had been chosen, why this place had been selected, how this time had been determined.

  ‘Damn … Damn you … Damn you … Damn you Dysart!’

  They rolled over again. It was too late for the betrayal she had led him into to be averted. In a moment, he knew, he would feel a stab of remorse. But not now. Now they were beyond recall, bodies joined and squirming, the gasping breaths shooting out of Virginia as he pounded into her, the frenzied sawing motions of their limbs: every muscle taut, every sense alive. It was too late, far too late; they were a long way past the point of no return.

  A few seconds, no more. A few paltry seconds as muscles slackened, breaths slowed, limbs unravelled. Detumescence. Then disgust, coursing into his mind, a vile scorching influx of self-loathing. Even as he slid back out of her, the knowledge of what she had made him do closed around him like a noose.

  He rolled onto his back, pulled his discarded bathrobe across his midriff and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Why … why did you do it?’ he murmured.

  ‘You know why.’ Her voice was low, husky with a dreadful satisfaction.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘You’re his best and oldest friend, Harry. You’re his good-luck charm. That’s why. Because doing it here, with you, in this room where he writes his impeccable speeches, is like doing it to his face. Imagine if he’d been sitting there, behind his desk, watching all the time, watching and hearing everything we did.’

  ‘You can’t—’

  ‘Imagine it, Harry! Just imagine. Because that’s what I did. That’s what made it so wonderful.’

  ‘Who told you? Who told you about Silenus?’

  She did not answer. Instead, she sprang to her feet. He saw her above him, stooping to retrieve her gown, saw for the last time the thighs he had lain between, the breasts he had kissed, the buttocks he had clasped, the flesh he had touched. Then the gown was firmly wrapped about her and she was striding towards the door. ‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to bed.’ She paused in the doorway and glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘Join me if you like. Or not. As you please.’ Then she was gone.

  48

  Peter R. Kingdom, MA, PhD, AFBPsS, MNAHP

  7 Lictor Place

  Crawford Street

  LONDON

  W1M 6QU

  30th December 1988

  My Dear Konrad

  This letter is to introduce Mr Harold Barnett, a fellow-countryman who has reason to believe he may be related to one of my patients at the Institute. I would be very grateful if you could give him all the assistance be may need in ascertaining whether this is the case.

  With best wishes,

  Yours as ever

  Peter

  Professor K. V. Bichler

  Director

  Versorelli Institute

  Route Chersoix

  12295 Geneva

  SWITZERLAND

  ‘IT’S PERFECT,’ SAID Harry, folding the letter away into its envelope.

  ‘As near perfect as I can manage,’ Zohra replied with a smile. ‘I never knew I had such a gift for forgery.’

  Harry tried to smile back, but his lips resisted the order. Instead, his face set in anxious immobility. ‘The ends justify the means,’ he muttered solemnly.

  ‘Of course. I only meant …’ Zohra looked crestfallen and Harry felt instantly sorry for her; she too, after all, was taking a risk. ‘When’s your flight?’

  ‘Three-thirty tomorrow. I want Monday to see how the land lies. Then I’ll call at the Institute mid-morning on Tuesday.’

  ‘I’ll be ready if they phone Dr Kingdom. There shouldn’t be any problem: he’s fully booked all morning.’

  ‘Good. I’m relying on you.’

  ‘And I on you. Be careful.’

  ‘I will be.’ He rose to leave. Her hand on his elbow detained him for an instant.

  ‘Are you all right, Harry?’ Her eyes were wide with genuine concern. ‘You seem strained, withdrawn, weighed down in some way.’

  He attempted a grin. ‘Just nerves, I expect. I’m not used to subterfuge.’

  ‘Neither am I.’ She smiled again. It transformed her more than a smile did most people, Harry noticed, as if a gold-shaded lamp had shed its light into a dark recess where beauty hid, as if … But no. Such thoughts were foolishness.

  ‘I must go.’

  Suddenly, she leaned up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Remember what I said,’ she murmured, her lips still close to him. ‘Be careful. Be very careful.’

  Poor Zohra. Harry saw her watching him from Mrs Tandy’s narrow and dimly lit passage as he started the car. Unsmiling now, those large eyes seeming to reach out to him across the darkness, she was of all Heather’s friends he had met the one for whom he preserved an undiminished respect. A young Asian woman, alone in a city that begrudged her, she was prepared to endanger her very livelihood for Heather’s sake. The others, himself included, had been compelled to act, prodded by guilty conscience, goaded by force of circumstance. Only Zohra had been free to stay her hand – and yet had not. He wished he had waved goodbye. He wished … But what was the use of wishing?

  He aimed the car towards Acton and the M4, driving slowly through strangely empty streets. London’s amber-leeched blackness closed about him, as if the ailing Vauxhall had become a capsule isolated from the future he was travelling towards as well as the past he was fleeing from. Wishing and regretting: what was the use
of either? But how else could one live? He thought of Zohra’s good-luck kiss and wondered if she had noticed him flinch as her lips touched his cheek. Even if she had, she could not have guessed the reason. He raised a hand to his face and ran it round the rough, unshaven jaw. Poor Zohra. In all this she was still what he had ceased to be: an innocent.

  He had not seen Virginia again during the few hours he had remained at Strete Barton. Whisky. And water. Hot, healing water. These had seen him through till dawn. Then he had packed his bag, taken it to the car and driven away without daring to look back in case she should be watching from an upper window, watching to remind him of what he could not forget.

  Breakfast in a Happy Eater near Exeter. Strong coffee, poached eggs, steamed-up glass, a steady buzz of traffic on a perversely spring-like morning. Regret, corroding his will like acid. Remorse, burning in his throat like bile. It had not mattered then where he went or what he did. Time and distance were all he could put between himself and a welter of vivid recollections. White bodies, his and hers, writhing in the darkness. Sights and sounds he could not bear. He had headed on. He had convinced himself he could outrun them.

  He was driving faster now, south past the dark and empty reaches of Gunnersbury Park. Ahead, the lights of the M4 threw up their amber halo. In a few hours, the old year would fade imperceptibly into the new. A few hours after that, his journey to Geneva would begin. And he would be glad when it did, for Geneva, after all, might just be far enough to outpace whatever was following him. His conscience, for one thing. And for another?

  This morning, lying on the kerb beside his car in Falmouth Street, lying by the driver’s door where it could not be overlooked: a crushed and empty cigarette packet, the red white and gold design at once familiar to his eye, The Greek brand-name instantly legible. KAPEΛIA ΣEPTIKA. The brand he had smoked on Profitis Ilias but never since. Kerelia Sertika. The brand he had favoured on Rhodes but had never seen for sale in England. Karelia Sertika. The final warning.