The High Flyer

by Susan Howatch

We hurtled past the open gates and when Tucker steered me to the left I saw the dirty white Ford parked less than twenty yards away. But my relief was rapidly displaced by fear.

  “Tucker, the Mercedes will bust that heap apart! It’ll be like Jaws closing in on a goldfish!”

  “We’ll hide.” He flung open the passenger door.

  I fell inside and within seconds he was starting the engine. The interior of the car was oven-hot. I wanted to faint but there was no time.

  “Where—”

  “Let’s get out of this road and into the next. Then we’ll keep our eyes peeled for an empty garage.”

  We rocketed away from the kerb and bucketed down the sedate private road like a hot-rod from hell. The tyres screeched as we rounded the corner at the end, but Tucker braked abruptly and we began to peer up the driveways, he looking to the right and I to the left.

  “There!” I shouted.

  He slammed on the brakes, thrust the car into reverse and backed up to take a better look. At the end of a hundred yard stretch of gravel a two-car garage yawned emptily beside another interwar house.

  “Go for it!” I cried, but Tucker already had his foot pressed hard down on the accelerator. Shooting up the drive we reached the garage in seconds.

  “Keep down,” muttered Tucker, slumping in his seat after angling the driver’s mirror to ensure he still had a view of the road.

  We waited, no longer able to talk. I was counting the seconds and had just reached twenty-eight when Tucker said suddenly: “There he goes. We’ve done it.”

  “Thank God,” I whispered, again wanting to faint but again knowing that fainting was an unaffordable luxury, and struggled to focus on the next stage of the ordeal.

  XII

  “He’ll backtrack when he realises he’s failed to catch us,” I said. “Let’s stay right where we are till we see him return.”

  “What makes you so sure he’ll head back after he realises he’s lost us?” demanded Tucker at once. “What would I do if I were Kim Betz? I already know an independent witness has heard me acknowledge I’m a murderer. I must know my marriage is finally washed up. I’m bound to realise in no time that my life in England is no longer viable, so—”

  “He’ll take the rat-run,” I said unsteadily, “just as his father did. He’ll head for Heathrow and take the first plane out to a country where there’s no extradition treaty.”

  “Where’s his passport?”

  “At Harvey Tower—unless he asked his PA to bring it to Oakshott. He was already planning to go abroad.”

  “Not straight away, surely?”

  “After we were reconciled. But if he now plans to take the rat-run, he’ll want more than his passport—he’ll want the crucial papers, and they must still be at the flat among the stuff he kept in his junk-room.”

  “What papers?”

  “The papers relating to his Swiss stash. Tucker, he’s got to go back to Harvey Tower, got to—there’s no way he can vanish into the blue without first going back to the City . . .”

  XIII

  “We need a phone,” said Tucker when we had agreed that my theory was the most plausible possibility on offer, “and something tells me that if we start knocking on doors in this neighbourhood, the paranoid rich will refuse to let us cross their thresholds. Let’s go back to the house.”

  “You’re nuts! If Kim returns—”

  “As soon as he realises he’s lost us he’ll drive on to London.”

  “But you can’t be sure of that!”

  “He doesn’t have the time to come back here, Carter. Every second counts now.” He started the engine and began backing the car out of the garage.

  “But couldn’t we drive into the village and find a payphone?”

  “The house is nearer than the village.” He reversed the Ford into the road and shoved the gear-shift forward. “I’m going to call Nick,” he added. “If we call the local police we’ll be bogged down for hours in long explanations, but Nick knows the top brass in the City police and he should be able to cut through the red tape to ensure Kim’s intercepted at the Barbican . . . Can you save time by writing down the number of the Mercedes for me?”

  My bag was still at the house but in the glove compartment I found both pen and paper. I had just jotted down the number when we reached the gates.

  “Supposing he locked up before he left?” I said worried.

  “He’d have been too distracted.” Tucker swung the car up the drive.

  “But supposing he comes back after all and sees—”

  “He doesn’t know this is my car, and you can keep watch from the hall once we get inside. We can always escape out of the back if we have to.”

  We found the French windows still open. Picking up my bag from the coffee table I moved as if in a dream back to the hall to keep watch while Tucker made the call. I knew Sophie was near even though I could no longer see her. I thought of her as I stared through my unshed tears at the front lawn.

  I heard Tucker explaining the situation succinctly to Nicholas. When the call finished I made no move but continued to stand by the window.

  “I’m all right,” I said to Tucker as he moved to my side, and before he could touch me I repeated fiercely: “I’m all right.”

  He said gently: “Come and sit down for a moment in the living-room.”

  “No, I can’t wait to get out of this house.” I began to heave open the front door but stopped when I remembered Sophie again. “We must lock up,” I said. “She would have wanted her home to be protected from vandals and burglars. It’s something we can do for her.” So we closed and bolted the French windows before we left. I kept whispering: “Sophie!” to myself and wiping the tears from my eyes.

  “Did he kill her?” said Tucker when we finally returned to the car.

  “No. He just cheated and lied and brutalised her and said afterwards he’d treated her with kindness, generosity and consideration.” Anger helped me to get a grip on the tears. Once I was sitting in the car I found a tissue in my bag and began to mop myself.

  “But he killed the blackmailer,” said Tucker, sliding behind the wheel before adding: “Did provincial police forces really have access to DNA testing back then?”

  “I doubt it. I’m not sure that even today’s scientists can do a DNA test on semen. I think they can only do it on blood.”

  “Then I’m surprised Kim didn’t query your DNA fantasy!”

  “He was out of control, not thinking straight. And maybe he knows even less about new forensic techniques than I do.”

  Tucker said no more but drove to the nearest pit-stop on the A3 where he insisted on buying me coffee and a doughnut. The caffeine gave my brain a boost; the sugar provided some much needed energy. Finally I was able to ask the big question. It was: “How on earth did you manage to be in the right place at the right time?”

  “I always knew he’d grab control and rip up your well-ordered little plan.”

  “When did you give up waiting for us at the hotel on Reigate Hill?”

  “I never went to Reigate. I drove straight to the hospital and followed the Mercedes from the beginning. It was easy at first in the slow-moving traffic, but although I lost you on the A3 I was sure by then you were heading for Oakshott.”

  “How did you find out the address?”

  “As soon as I reached the village I found the church, stormed the Vicarage and asked the vicar’s wife for help—I also used her phone to let Nick know what had happened.”

  “And when you got to the house—”

  “I skulked around in the garden for a time. All those trees provided perfect cover, and since the French windows were open I had a clear view of the two of you in the living-room. I was alarmed when you eventually disappeared, but when the neighbour turned up seconds later I figured you were safe for a while—obviously Kim wasn’t going to harm you as long as she was there. It was when she came out again that I started to worry, but then a very odd thing happened. This woman look
ed across the lawn, saw me standing among the trees and gestured to the French windows as if to say: ‘Do go in!’ but she didn’t call out to ask who I was or what I was doing. She just moved around the side of the house and . . . Hey, what’s the matter? What did I say?”

  I said numbly: “There was no other person in the house.”

  “Of course there was! I saw her go in and I saw her come out! She was wearing a dark red outfit with a straw hat and she was carrying a flat wooden basket, the kind my mother uses when she’s gardening—”

  I finally succeeded in fainting.

  XIV

  After I had recovered consciousness I was offered a free cup of tea by our anxious waitress but I settled for a glass of water. Tucker then insisted on carrying me from the restaurant to the car, so just as I achieved my desire to faint he achieved his desire to sweep me off my feet. Quite what that proved and to whom I was too dazed to decide, but he seemed to find the experience satisfying and I was groggy enough to be glad of the ride, so this excursion into feminist pre-history was not without its rewards. Tucker was wearing a pale green shirt, almost entirely unbuttoned, but instead of the Essex-man medallion which so often accompanies this free-wheeling sartorial style, he wore a small, discreet gold cross. It was made even more discreet by the fact that it was half-buried in the dark red hair which ran in a tapering line from his chest to his navel. He was also wearing blue jeans, the weathered pair which had faded in interesting places, and although my capacity for sexual response was by that time as non-existent as that of a mass-produced doll, I was vaguely aware that in another time and in another place I might have found myself turning tigerish. The trouble was I could neither imagine another time nor picture another place. Pinned to an agonising present I was too pulped to do more than endure the damage I had suffered and wonder if I would ever recover.

  “What a fluff-out!” I muttered as he arranged me on the front seat of the car.

  “Relax—lie back and think of England!” he said kindly, as if I were a Victorian maiden being initiated into an upper-class breeding programme, and proceeded to drive me straight to St. Benet’s. I did manage to tell him he had seen Sophie’s ghost, just as I had, but he only said: “Do you really want me to drive into the back of a truck?” and added that I should avoid all conversation until later in order to rest. At that point I passed out again, this time because I was exhausted, and when I awoke I found the Ford was halting in the cobbled forecourt of the Rectory.

  They all came to meet me. I was vaguely surprised by this mass turnout by the Healing Centre’s senior personnel; I supposed they thought I was some sort of emergency case, but I was feeling better by this time and no longer afraid that I might behave like a water-logged fluffette. Eventually I managed to say to Nicholas: “Did the police get there in time?” and Nicholas answered: “Yes, they did,” but he created a small pause before he added: “It’s all over now, Carter.”

  Then I knew, with emotions almost unbearable in their intensity, that Kim’s final rat-run had turned out to be very different from the one he had always planned.

  XV

  The police were waiting for Kim at Harvey Tower but they allowed him to go up to the flat before they made their presence known. He paused in the podium lobby to pick up the spare keys, which I had long since returned to the porters’ desk, and remained unaware that the plain-clothes man in the basement car park had already alerted the patrol cars to the arrival of the Mercedes.

  He opened the front door when the police rang the bell, and he appeared willing to talk to them, but as soon as they followed him into the living-room he opened the balcony door, supposedly to let some air into the stifling flat, and when he darted outside they were not quick enough to catch him. He ran the length of the wraparound balcony to distance himself from his pursuers, and then outside the bedroom where I had so often loved him so much, he scrambled over the rail without a backward glance and plunged thirty-five floors to the concrete far below.

  PART FIVE

  TOWARDS HEALING

  I hope it has begun to emerge from what I have been saying that faith in God can actually be a liberating thing, a breaker down of barriers, a refusal to accept fragmentation as the last word, a stimulus to look beyond our own relative, partial, blinkered standpoint, an encouragement not to be frightened and overwhelmed by mysteries beyond our understanding, a promise held out to us that truth is one, and truth is great, and will prevail.

  JOHN HABGOOD

  Confessions of a Conservative Liberal

  In our bewildered, painful, often despairing world there is still the presence of one who comes, who calls, who gives life and light and healing, who is revealed to us in the simplicity of childhood and in the awful desolation of suffering. And as of old, those who respond to his call and allow him to expand their own horizons of meaning, discover in experience who he is.

  JOHN HABGOOD

  Making Sense

  TWENTY

  What healing can we hope for in our suffering? The longing is for something magical,the quick fix, the miraculous touch or medicine, the dramatic release. And occasionallythe miracle does happen. But it is clear too that . . . God is not a God of quick fixes and easy, instantaneous solutions.

  DAVID F. FORD

  The Shape of Living

  I

  “She killed him,” I said much later when I was alone with the two priests. “He kept getting these headaches and he said she’d skewered the image of the balcony into his brain. She terminated him.”

  “Of course she did!” agreed Lewis. “Her hold over him was demonic, she’d already caused his personality to disintegrate, and she finally pushed the self-destruct button.”

  I turned to Nicholas who was still silent. “He wasn’t the suicidal type,” I insisted. “He was a survivor. He would have worked out that he was most unlikely to be convicted of the murder of that blackmailer—there was no knockdown forensic evidence, and I doubt if he would have been convicted on Tucker’s testimony of what was said in that hall. Prosecuting counsel would only have had to show that Tucker and I were attracted to each other—a fact amply demonstrated by Tucker’s presence at the scene—and then Tucker’s evidence would have become suspect. Kim would have hired a top QC to ensure an acquittal and then gone on to fight another day in the States. I tell you, if it hadn’t been for that arch-cow he’d be still alive!”

  Nicholas said carefully: “We can’t ignore Mrs. Mayfield’s role in Kim’s tragedy, but this is a complex case and it may be that his decision to kill himself had more than one cause. One has to consider—”

  “I don’t have to consider anything,” I said. “She killed him. Case closed.”

  II

  “She killed him,” I said to the psychologist. “She skewered the image of the balcony into his brain and I’ll bet she also got that bloody society to will him to death!”

  “You’re saying you believe Mrs. Mayfield took a malign line,” said Robin.

  “Damn it, I don’t just ‘believe’—I know she did!”

  “Of course it’s very important, when we feel we’re drowning in chaos, to find certainties which can keep us afloat.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying I’m just proclaiming this fact—repeat, fact—to cheer myself up?”

  “I think there can be little doubt that Mrs. Mayfield had a disastrous effect on Kim.”

  “You concede she willed him to death?”

  “I concede it’s not impossible. But right now I’m more interested in you—your grief, your anguish, your struggle to cope with this tragedy—”

  “All I want is someone to believe me!” I shouted, and stormed out of his consulting-room.

  III

  “She killed him,” I said to the doctor. “She willed him to death, brainwashed him into it. It wasn’t suicide. It was murder.”

  “Well, whichever way you cut the cake it was a tragedy,” said Val, “and tragedies are very distressing for those involved.”
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br />   “No, don’t start talking to me as if I’m unhinged! I’m thinking clearly, rationally and logically, and what I want is some kind of acknowledgement that Kim was finally destroyed by that bloody woman! In my opinion he died of evil!”

  “I have every sympathy for that point of view,” said Val at once, “but since evil isn’t a listing in the medical dictionary I can’t serve it up to you as part of a professional opinion.”

  “Then give me your professional opinion about why Kim should have committed suicide!”

  “Well, Carter, I think we have to take on board the fact that he’d been in a mental hospital for a few weeks, and—”

  “But he wasn’t suicidal in hospital!”

  “No, but that might have been because he never lost hope of achieving a reconciliation with you. That hope was helping him to get better quickly, but when everything went wrong, the fragility of his mental health meant that he didn’t have the resources to—”

  I cut her off and walked out.

  IV

  “He was murdered by that woman Mayfield,” I said to the police. “She willed him to death, programmed him to self-destruct. There have been cases reported in scientific journals. Aborigines can do it. This is murder, not suicide.”

  The two policemen exchanged meaningful glances before the older one said to me kindly: “Of course this is all a big ordeal for you, Mrs. Betz. We can come back later, if you’d prefer.”

  There was a long silence.

  Then I nodded and they went away.

  V

  “How are you doing, Ms. G?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just thought I’d check in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You don’t mind me phoning, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “I don’t think so, thanks.”