‘Nothing,’ he said to the window as he straightened up. ‘All this and not a damn thing. Two weeks now since he went to ground. And nothing.’
Sumner remained silent.
‘Where the hell is he?’ Gaunt sipped the tea, pulled a face and tipped the brew into the sink. He watched its brown swirls for a moment before turning back to the kitchen.
‘Are those his?’ He nodded towards an untidy stack of newspapers piled on the work surface by the fridge.
‘He has them delivered daily,’ Sumner said. ‘We haven’t cancelled them, for obvious reasons.’
‘What did he take?’ Gaunt picked the top one off the pile. ‘The Times. Not what it used to be.’
He spread the newspaper open on the table, pushing aside the various pieces of electronic gadgetry that one of the search technicians had left there.
‘How did he pay his bill?’
‘Monthly. We found some invoices. He paid the last one a fortnight before he vanished. So he’s about due again. We’ll have to say something to the newsagent soon.’
Gaunt turned the pages slowly.
‘He had a ladyfriend,’ he said pensively.
Sumner shrugged. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘He slept at her place often. That meant he wasn’t home every day.’
Sumner listened, not yet understanding.
‘He wasn’t always home, but he let his newspaper order stand. Yet there must have been occasions when he didn’t catch up with the paper for days at a time. Now why would he do that?’
‘I suppose he liked to keep up to date.’
‘There’s TV and radio. He was reading out-of-date papers. Why did he bother?’
Sumner looked baffled.
Gaunt sighed, just as puzzled, and returned the newspaper to the pile, then turned to sifting through the stack of opened mail beside it. After a time he pulled on his gloves again and looked out at the weather. The rain had eased; the surface of the puddles had become smooth.
‘Let me know at once if anything turns up.’
In the hallway they encountered a clutter of upended chairs and picked their way gingerly past them. That brought them to the open door of the study, where Gaunt paused to look inside. A technician was moving a cone-shaped gadget over the bare walls. He wore headphones and was watching the needle of a device like a Geiger counter that he held in his other hand. Gaunt stood there for a minute, watching. The room had been cleared of its desk and other furniture. Knight’s combined telephone and answering machine had been left on the windowsill.
Gaunt turned to Sumner. ‘I want to know if you come across any tapes for that thing.’
‘Yes, Sir Horace.’
The respite from the rain had been only temporary. It was starting again, and heavily, as Gaunt stood alone on the doorstep and waved impatiently for his driver to bring the car closer.
‘Bloody fool,’ he muttered to himself, as the man manoeuvred away from some shrubs against which he’d parked too tightly. ‘They’re all bloody fools.’ Then he added, ‘Except you, Edmund. You’ve been bloody clever.’
*
Eva recognised the memo’s wording as the standard formula provided in the Personnel manual.
… it is policy for all staff to have the benefit of regular medical examinations … records indicate that it is just over a year since your last examination … appointment has therefore been made on your behalf with the consultant named below at the Middlesex Hospital … advise the clinic direct if you cannot attend on the date given and arrange an alternative …
She glanced at her diary, saw that the date in question suited her, and made a note of the appointment.
*
A tramp, Knight reflected, could hardly march into a newsagent’s and buy a copy of The Times. In any event there was also the chance that the newsagent, the only one in the village, might recognise him. Besides, Gaunt’s people would be crawling all over by now. They’d have prepared a Retrospective on his movements, his habits, people with whom he associated. They’d be talking to locals and tradespeople. Any of them might spot him on the roads or at the shops; as might any of the people they interviewed. His venture out on Sunday night under cover of darkness was one thing; but moving about in broad daylight was asking for trouble.
It was a week since the classified advertisement had appeared. If it was genuine, rather than some unnerving coincidence, then today was when it would be repeated. He’d failed to respond to it the first time and the rule was that there had to be a fallback.
He didn’t want it to reappear. And if it did, he didn’t want to act on it. He was finished; now more than ever. He remembered the morning he had said so to Eva. Maybe by now she had some idea of how much it was that he had finished with.
Eva. Thinking about her had become an occupational hazard of his solitariness in the retreat house. But there was nothing he could do. God alone knew what her view of him was now.
The newspaper: that was the immediate issue. He couldn’t risk leaving the retreat house in daylight. He had no choice but to wait until evening, when the girls were at dinner, and go back to the reading room.
So he sat, and walked from room to room, and pretended to read, and put food on his plate which he didn’t eat, and listened to the noises that ticked away the hours, and watched from the library window as the light faded on the fields. And he tried not to think about Eva or Moscow or Gaunt or any of it. And when at last it was time, he sighed with relief that at last it was, put on the mackintosh again and hurried through the night to the convent block.
A small corner of his mind, hidden but insistent, had been convinced that the advertisement wouldn’t be there. It was wrong. There the thing was.
Waiting for him as he had waited for it since Sunday. No; since twenty years ago. Cold and simple on the page, its words as hollow as an obituary. And just as final and unarguable.
NASSAU, BAHAMAS
Substantial investor/partner required
for 22–24 apartment development in prime location.
Exceptional profit potential.
Please call our UK offices:
Boyar Properties
01-862-1399
Strangely, now that he had it before him and the worst had happened, he felt nothing. It was as if his heart, like the one in the pious pictures of Jesus, had drained itself empty.
His hands were steady as he scored a line with his thumbnail, tore the small rectangle out and folded it away in his pocket along with its earlier version.
He had two days in which to make up his mind; two days to reach his decision.
He had closed the newspaper and was returning it to the rack when a small headline in the news summary column on the front page caught his eye.
Memorial service to be held for Rt Hon. William Clarke
He glanced through the paragraph underneath; it gave the date when the service would be held but not its location, saying only that it would be in Clarke’s parish church. Knight knew where that was. For a moment he pictured it: the same church where he had seen Clarke and Marion married.
Then his thoughts returned to the message contained in the classified advertisement.
As he trudged back over the fields, the same question still nagged him as before. Why were they sending for him now?
*
It was eight fifteen by the time Eva left the office and almost nine when she arrived at Turnham Green. It wasn’t so much that her workload that day had been particularly demanding; more the fact that she tended to take refuge in work these days. The alternative was long evenings filled with remorse and waiting for a call from Knight that she knew could never come.
She was exhausted. It was the best way to be; she might sleep tonight. She was also hungry. As she set off from the station on the quarter-mile walk home, she tried to decide what should come first when she got there: supper or a hot bath. She passed a restaurant and a rich aroma filled her nostrils; the balance tipped in favour of supper.
&nbs
p; There weren’t many people on the streets; it was the dead hour when most people had long since arrived home from work, the pubs and restaurants hadn’t yet discharged their patrons back onto the streets, and the theatregoers were still enjoying the West End shows.
The two men were waiting at the end of her street. She first looked up and saw them when she was about thirty yards away. Somewhere inside her the voice stirred that spoke to everyone who saw strangers ahead in an empty road at night. She herself had heard it many times before; and as before, she told it to be quiet and pressed on.
As she drew closer she saw that they were youths rather than men, in their late teens or early twenties. One was black, one white. They wore jeans and, despite the cold night air, lightweight jackets and open shirts.
The white boy was sitting on the broken bit of low wall at the end of the alleyway between the launderette and the Mini-Market. His hands dangled between his spread knees and he was clapping them gently together from time to time. The other boy was at the edge of the pavement, facing him. He was doing some sort of shuffling dance step. When she came within earshot she realised that they were singing a tune together, very quietly. It was in time to this that the white boy was clapping his hands and the black boy was jiving.
‘Cold night,
Moonlight,
See how the stars are all
Shining bright –’
When she was about ten yards away both of them became completely silent. That she didn’t like. Their performance, however, continued in mime: the soft claps, the scrape of the black boy’s shoes on the paving slabs. It created an unnatural effect that added to her sense of threat.
They didn’t look at her, just kept their eyes on each other. She noticed that they were still smiling. She glanced quickly ahead but there wasn’t another soul in sight, only passing cars. It was the same when she looked behind her.
‘Hello there, luscious!’
She looked ahead of her again and saw that the black boy had suddenly spun around and planted himself in front of her, feet well apart as if the leap that had brought him there was all part of the dance. In fact, his hips were still swaying to the silent music. He clicked his fingers as his arms made small circles by his sides.
She halted.
‘Lusc-ious!’ he repeated. He looked her up and down.
‘Please move out of my way.’
She was surprised at how calm she sounded, for she felt light-headed with terror. She had been pestered before but something in the boy’s demeanour told her that he didn’t intend to let her pass. She tried to remember what it was that a woman was supposed to do when she was attacked: kick her assailant in the groin? scream? give in? They all seemed fraught with risks. Meanwhile she became dimly aware that the white boy was rising to his feet, and that alarmed her further.
Frightened of escalating what might still only be horseplay into something more dangerous, she settled for restating her request. Politely.
‘Let me past, please.’
‘Don’t be like that, girl – I just want to be friends. Let’s be friends. Friends, huh?’
He stretched out his right hand as if seeking a handshake. When she drew back he smacked its fingers with the other hand, thrust it forward again and grinned.
‘Lusc-ious! Lusc-ious!’ he chanted slowly.
Still watching her, he resumed his jiving motion and circled back to the edge of the pavement. His hand stretched towards her again; this time lower than before, at the level of her crotch. The fingers crooked upwards in a lewd little movement. He grinned even more broadly than before. She recoiled again.
‘Awww,’ he moaned, ‘that’s not very friendly.’ His eyes were full of hurt. ‘Come to Daddy. Come and see what big black Daddy’s got for you. You’ll like it. Oh my – you’ll love it.’
As he moved towards her she fell back a step. She opened her mouth to call out but at that moment the white boy’s hand closed over it. That was when she knew that it was something more serious than horseplay.
She saw jubilation on the black boy’s face.
‘Yeah, baby! Yeah!’
Barely conscious, she felt herself half dragged, half carried into the alley.
*
But they didn’t rape her. Afterwards, as she sat there, it took a while for that realisation to sink in.
She picked herself up from the filthy ground and began buttoning and straightening her dishevelled clothing.
Hands had undone her coat and blouse and lifted her skirt. Her pants and tights had come down, her bra was unclasped; she could remember the cold air stinging her exposed flesh. The hands had fondled and squeezed her. Fingers had invaded her. Only fingers. She replayed the scene in her mind, forcing herself to go back over the details. But there was no mistake: she hadn’t been raped.
They hadn’t injured her either. She flexed her body as she dressed in the dank alleyway but nothing felt broken or sprained. It seemed that she had nothing worse than a few aches from being held down firmly. She probably wouldn’t even be bruised, for she’d been too dazed to put up much of a struggle.
They had opened her handbag and stolen some cash from her purse. There hadn’t been much but in the darkness she could feel that the banknotes were gone. Not more than twenty pounds, she estimated. They hadn’t bothered with the loose change. She was thankful that they hadn’t taken the handbag itself or, as far as she could make out, any other of its contents; and mercifully they’d ignored her briefcase.
She made herself decent and struggled out of the alley to cover the remaining couple of hundred yards home. The road was still empty of other pedestrians.
As she entered her own street, thankful at last to be doing so, she weighed the extent of her good fortune. She was shaken and disgusted, but that was all. Things could have been much worse. She yearned for the security and warmth of her own home. It occurred to her that the hot bath, not supper, had become her first priority. That and a stiff drink.
When she reached the little gate in the hedge that fronted her house she began searching in her handbag for her doorkeys. She always reached for them when she got to the gate. Tonight, however, she couldn’t seem to find them. She kept searching as she went up the path, thinking that in the upset they’d probably got buried under everything else.
She was still rummaging when she got to the doorstep. She quickly went through the pockets of her coat, although that was somewhere she just never put keys.
Still no sign of them.
She groaned as she realised that they must have fallen out in the alley. The thought of going back to that place to look for them was unbearable. Although she’d remained dry-eyed throughout her ordeal, tears now began to well in her eyes. In frustration she made a fist and thumped it against the door.
The jangle that followed sent her gaze to the doorlock. There hung the missing keys.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered. A shiver ran over her whole body and she felt the fine hairs on her arms and neck prickle.
She unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway.
*
They had left her intact but they – or someone else while they abused her – had vandalised her home instead. It was as if a tornado had struck. She stumbled from room to room, crying at each fresh scene of desecration. Furniture was upended, drawers and shelves had been emptied on the floor, record albums and books were strewn everywhere. The kitchen was a mess of spilt flour and foodstuffs. Her bedroom was the same, the bedding stripped into a heap, the air thick with talcum powder and the odours of her perfumes.
But it was the bathroom that was worst. In their choice of a final obscenity it was as if they had read her mind. She would have no bath that night.
*
The policeman and policewoman had been with her about half an hour before she came to her senses sufficiently to work out what it was about them that was making her uneasy.
‘Why don’t you let us take you down to the rape centre?’
The WPC was a fres
h-faced girl with short, practical fingernails. She leant forward sympathetically across the settee and handed Eva a mug of tea. She had recommended against alcohol, instead ploughing through the mess in the kitchen to make tea for all of them.
‘I haven’t been raped.’
The policeman, who seemed to be the note-taker, stared down at his pad where he’d written down her report of the incident.
‘Strange that,’ he mumbled.
‘What?’
‘Not being raped after all that,’ he explained, then dried up.
The WPC took his point on. ‘You say you don’t think they were disturbed by a passer-by?’
‘I wish to God they had been. I never saw a soul.’
‘And you don’t think you fought them off?’
‘You’re joking. I turned to jelly.’
‘Wonder why they didn’t go through with it then?’
‘God knows.’
‘Are you sure you weren’t unconscious at some point?’
‘Positive. I was dazed but I didn’t black out.’
Now it was the policeman again.
‘After they left you, how long did it take you to get back here?’
‘I don’t know for sure. Ten minutes maybe. Not more than fifteen. I wasn’t counting, but I wasn’t hanging about either. I told you where it happened – it wasn’t far.’
The policeman looked around the devastated room. When he and the WPC had first arrived, he’d had to right the chairs they were sitting on.
‘They did an awful lot of damage in ten minutes. And there’s upstairs.’
‘I think they had help.’
‘Don’t follow.’
‘I think someone else did this while they … kept me in the alley. They’d have had half an hour altogether.’
‘But nothing’s stolen.’
‘No.’
The policeman chewed his pencil. ‘Wonder how they found out where you lived. Maybe one of them read your address in your purse or something in the alleyway. But then, it’d be pitch black in there.’
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