Sight Unseen

by Robert Goddard

  ‘You’ll hold onto the statement for me?’

  ‘If those are your instructions.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Very well, then.’ Burnouf took a roll of Sellotape out of his desk drawer, tore off a strip and stuck it over the flap of the envelope. Then he tore off a couple more strips and stuck them over the envelope’s seams. ‘Sign across the seals, would you, Mr Umber?’ He proffered a pen. Umber obliged. ‘Your receipt.’ Burnouf hastily filled in a form and handed it over. ‘All done.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Umber rose to leave.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Burnouf asked as he saw him out.

  ‘The Pomme d’Or.’

  ‘Nice hotel. Quite a history attached to it, actually. If you go along to the Occupation Museum, you can see film of the crowds gathered outside the Pomme to celebrate the end of German rule, with British troops sitting on the balcony waving—’ Burnouf broke off. ‘Sorry. I’m talking as if you’re a tourist.’

  ‘Jersey’s changed a lot since the War, I imagine,’ said Umber, feeling he had to respond in some way.

  ‘Enormously. And not necessarily for the better, according to my father and quite a few of his generation.’ Burnouf smiled. ‘Tax exiles from the mainland are the problem, apparently. They’ve brought a lot of money to the island. And lucrative employment for the likes of me. But they’ve brought their troubles with them as well.’ He looked Umber in the eye. ‘I have a funny feeling you know that, though.’

  Umber had not enjoyed holding out on Burnouf, but he did not regret it either. He did not know exactly what to allege or who to allege it against. He needed evidence. And only the truth seemed likely to furnish it. But the truth was as elusive as ever. The statement he had lodged with Burnouf proved nothing. Yet it was all he had to show for his and Sharp’s efforts. He had to learn more – and soon.

  The number 15 bus dropped him in the centre of St Aubin, a smart, bustling seaside town clustered round a harbour filled with yachts and motorboats clinking at their moorings in the late-afternoon sun. He asked directions of a passer-by and was pointed along the harbourside boulevard to the first turning.

  Le Quai Bisson was a narrow side-street leading to several old stone warehouses functioning as small business premises. The doors of Rollers Sail & Surf were firmly closed, the small office to the rear locked and unattended. The place had a pre-season look about it, with last year’s tide tables still displayed in the office window.

  A steep flight of steps led up beside the warehouse to a higher road. Halfway up the steps was the entrance to the flat which the roof area of the building had been converted into. Umber could hear the bass output of an amplifier within. He took an optimistic stab at the bell. No response. He tried again, adding a rattle of the letterbox for good measure.

  The door opened suddenly to a gust of heavy metal and a blank stare from a slightly built young woman dressed in black combat trousers and a purple T-shirt. Dark, straggly hair fell either side of her narrow face, in which a vermilion slash of lipstick was the only trace of colour. The shadows beneath her eyes and the pallor of her skin did not suggest sailing and surfing were recreations she often indulged in.

  ‘Hi,’ she said with a lop-sided grin.

  ‘Jeremy in?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘Are you expecting him back soon?’

  ‘Yeah. But that doesn’t mean it’ll happen. Is this … business?’

  ‘Not exactly. He knows me from a long time back. I’m David Umber.’

  ‘Umber? You said Umber?’ She looked genuinely incredulous.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Fuck me. The Shadow Man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never thought you’d show up. Bloody hell. I’m Chantelle, by the way.’ The name went some way, Umber supposed, to explain the hint of a French accent. ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’ He stepped into a narrow hallway. A tiny kitchen and a scarcely bigger bathroom were to the right. To the left was a large lounge-diner-bedroom with dormer windows to either side and a Catherine-wheel window set in the gable at the front of the warehouse, through which there was a sparkling blue glimpse of the harbour between the opposite rooftops.

  ‘Fancy a tea?’ asked Chantelle.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve just made some.’ She stepped into the kitchen to fetch her mug and fill one for him. It was easy to believe, given the state of the bed and the dining table, that the tea had been intended to round off her breakfast. Umber edged his way to the hi-fi tower perched amidst the general chaos and nudged down the volume.

  ‘There you go.’ She was waiting with his mug as he turned round. He took it from her with a sheepish grin. ‘Sorry the place is such a mess.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  She cleared a drift of magazines and CDs from the couch so that he could sit down, then folded a blanket back over the unmade bed and plonked herself on the end of it, mug cradled in both hands as she looked at him with almost comic intensity.

  ‘What’s this about Shadow Man?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s what Jem calls you. On account of your name. Umber. From the Latin for shadow, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It is. But I’m surprised … Jem … talks about me at all.’

  ‘Are you really surprised? I mean, it was quite a thing, what happened to his sisters. It stays with him. He likes to talk about it sometimes. Can’t stop himself, to tell the truth. Not that I want him to.’

  ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘About six months.’ She smiled. ‘Best six months of my life.’

  ‘That’s nice to hear.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She looked bashful, then said, ‘So, what’s brought you here?’

  ‘It’s, er, complicated. No offence intended, but it’d be best if I spoke to Jem about it.’

  ‘Understood. But you could tell me about yourself, I suppose.’ She grinned. ‘Unless that’s classified information.’

  Umber chuckled. ‘Boring, but not classified.’

  ‘Great. So—’ She broke off as the throaty roar of a motorbike engine half-drowned the music. ‘Hold on. That sounds like him now.’ She leaned across the bed for a view through the nearest window. ‘Yeah. Thought so.’

  A few moments later the front door opened and a tall, broad-shouldered man entered at a slight stoop, then froze in mid-stride at the sight of Umber.

  Jeremy Hall was barely recognizable as the small boy Umber had first seen at Avebury twenty-three years previously. He was in his early thirties now, a tanned and muscular figure in red and black motorcycling leathers, his fair hair curlier than in childhood, his eyes a greyer shade of blue. There was certainty in his steely gaze. He knew who Umber was. Alarmingly, there was also a simmer of anger. He knew – and he was far from pleased.

  ‘Guess who,’ chirruped Chantelle.

  Jeremy set down his crash helmet and gauntlets on the hall table, then stepped slowly into the room.

  Umber rose cautiously from the couch. ‘I’m sorry not to have phoned ahead,’ he ventured. ‘This must be a bit of a shock for you.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to say hello, Jemmy?’ put in Chantelle, her smile stiffening. ‘It’s the—’

  ‘Shadow Man.’ Jeremy’s voice was cold and hard. ‘I know. David Umber.’ He nodded. ‘I’ve been expecting him.’

  Chantelle blinked in surprise. ‘Expecting him? You never said.’

  ‘Do me a favour, sugar.’ Jeremy took a coin out of his pocket and flicked it onto the bed. ‘Pop down to the shop and buy an Evening Post.’

  ‘My tea will get cold.’

  ‘Just go.’

  Chantelle flinched at the harshness of his tone and blushed slightly. She leaned forward and picked up the coin. Then, without looking once at Umber, she put down her mug, stood up and walked out of the room. She glanced at Jeremy as she passed him and laid a hand gently on his arm, but he only jerked his head towards the door.

  A
second later it had closed behind Chantelle, leaving the two men alone together.

  ‘I had a call from the old man,’ Jeremy cut in before Umber could say a word. ‘Warned me you might pull something like this.’

  ‘I only want to—’

  ‘Dig up a load of stuff that’s best forgotten. I know what you only want.’

  ‘It’s far from forgotten by you – according to Chantelle.’

  ‘Leave her out of it.’

  ‘Suits me.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can tell you about Sally.’

  ‘Who said I meant to ask you about Sally?’

  ‘What, then? No.’ Jeremy shook his head. ‘I’m not getting into this. Not here. Not now.’

  ‘I don’t know what your father said, but—’

  ‘Here’s the deal. The only deal you’ll get from me. You’re staying in St Helier?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there tomorrow afternoon at La Frégate. It’s a café on the seafront, shaped like a capsized boat. You can’t miss it. Be there at four.’

  ‘All right. But why can’t we—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Jeremy levelled a threatening finger at Umber. ‘We’re playing to my rules, not yours, OK? It’s tomorrow or nothing.’

  ‘OK.’ Umber tried to sound calmer than he felt. Why his unannounced visit had so enraged Jeremy he did not understand. But he could imagine that rage tipping over into violence all too easily. And his experiences of Monday night had left him with a strong sense of his physical vulnerability. He had not realized how acute that sense was until this moment. ‘Tomorrow afternoon it is.’

  ‘Now …’ Jeremy moved to the front door and yanked it open. ‘Get out.’

  Umber noticed a tremor in his hands as he walked past Jeremy’s motorbike and out beside the warehouse towards the harbour. The encounter had affected him more than he would have expected. He would have to pull himself together before he met Jeremy again. Seizing the initiative from the younger man would otherwise be beyond him.

  He turned onto the Boulevard and made for the bus stop. It lay just beyond the road junction in the centre of the town. As he neared the junction, he spotted Chantelle making her way across it, a newspaper clutched in her hand. In the same instant, she spotted him and pulled up abruptly, then swivelled on her heel and headed for the higher road that would take her to the top of the steps above the flat.

  By the time Umber reached the junction, she had vanished from sight.

  SEVENTEEN

  BACK IN ST Helier, Umber was forced to admit to himself that he could not brush off his tangle with Walsh and baseball-bat man as readily as he had supposed. His nerves were fragile, his physical resources diminished. He could only hope a good dinner and an early night would hasten their recovery.

  When he woke the next morning, he felt, if not quite his old self, then at least a closer approach to it. He had slept for ten solid hours and was momentarily uncertain where he was, until a distant shriek of gulls in the harbour told him that, yes, he really had come to Jersey.

  He stumbled into the bathroom, emerging half an hour later showered, shaved and reassuringly alert. There was not even the trace of a headache, although the stitches in his wound tugged at his scalp occasionally to remind him of what had happened sixty hours or so ago.

  He pulled back the curtains to confront a wide blue sky across which a strong wind was blowing fluffy bundles of cloud. Only then, with sunlight filling the room, did he notice, as he turned away from the window, the envelope that had been slid beneath his door.

  The envelope was blank. Inside was a slim mail-order catalogue, advertising the pick of the stock of ‘Jersey’s premier antiquarian and second-hand-books dealer’ – folded open at the page devoted to the eighteenth century.

  Quires, of Halkett Place, St Helier (established 1975, proprietor Vernon Garrard), was clearly the place of first resort for Jersey bibliophiles: a multi-roomed glory-hole of Punch, Wisden, Whitaker’s, Dickens, Scott, Austen, Defoe, Pepys, Shakespeare et al. When Umber arrived mid-morning, there were only a couple of other customers, none of them in the main room, where Garrard was conducting a telephone conversation at the cluttered cash desk in the corner.

  The scene was about as safe and humdrum as could be imagined, but it did not appear so to Umber. The sense of being manipulated was not so very different from the feeling of being watched. He had no idea who might have slipped Garrard’s catalogue under his door, but he knew what he had been supposed to infer. There were no editions of the Letters of Junius listed, but Junius was why he had been sent to Quires. There could be no other reason. Just as, for all his doubts and reservations, there could be no question of ignoring the clue he had been supplied with.

  The eighteenth-century shelf in the antiquarian section, which lay within close view of the desk, was an unremarkable if well-bound selection of Pope, Swift, Hume, Goldsmith and Dr Johnson. Umber fingered his way slowly along the spines, wondering if he would chance on an uncatalogued Junius. But, no, he did not. Then he heard the telephone go down behind him and the sound of a chair being pushed back. He turned to find Garrard bearing soft-footedly down on him.

  A balding, round-shouldered man of sixty or so, Garrard wore the dusty tweed and corduroy uniform of his trade and the resigned expression of one well aware that browsers outnumber serious customers in the second-hand-books world by a depressing margin. ‘Can I help you?’ he lethargically enquired.

  ‘Not sure,’ Umber replied. ‘I was wondering if you had any editions of the Letters of Junius.’

  ‘Junius? No. I’m afraid not. He doesn’t crop up very often.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Well …’ Garrard scratched his cheek. ‘Now and then. I had a nice Junius in a few months back, as a matter of fact.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Snapped up, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Was that a first edition?’

  ‘Er, no. Second, as I recall.’

  ‘The 1773, you mean?’

  ‘Do I? Probably. It sounds as if you’d know better than I would.’

  ‘A two-volume set?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How was it bound?’

  ‘Handsomely, if … slightly unusually. Most Juniuses you see are in calfskin, but this was—’

  ‘Vellum.’

  ‘Yes.’ Garrard frowned at Umber. ‘So it was.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking, how did you come by it?’

  ‘Rather oddly, as it happens. I never even knew I had it until a customer took it down from the shelf and asked to buy it. My brother Bernard sometimes minds the shop for me. He must have taken it into stock. We have sellers as well as buyers who call in. Bernard can be infuriatingly neglectful of record-keeping, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So, its origin is … a mystery.’

  ‘You could say so, yes.’

  ‘And the person who bought it?’

  Garrard smiled. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Well, their name and address, if you have the information.’

  Unaccountably, Garrard loosed a dry but hearty laugh. His eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Here we go again.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your name would be Umber, I assume.’

  ‘What?’ Umber stared at the bookseller in frank astonishment. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I’ve been down the Junius road with someone else only last week.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A Mr Wisby.’

  ‘Wisby?’

  ‘Yes. He phoned me this morning and said you might call round. This is an entertaining charade, though a baffling one from my point of view. I’m sure you both know what you’re about. Still, I’ve no wish to go on acting as go-between. If I give you his number, I trust that’ll be the last I hear of the matter.’

  * * *

  Umber rang Wisby from the first call-box he came to after leaving Quires. The promptness of Wisby’s answer suggested he had been waiting for the call.


  ‘Mr Umber.’ The susurrous voice was unmistakable, even after more than twenty years.

  ‘Mr Wisby.’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t trust phones.’

  ‘Needs must. Besides, communicating with you by letter didn’t turn out very satisfactorily, did it?’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Not a hundred per cent certain. But I probably know more than you do. If you want to talk about it, join me in Royal Square in ten minutes.’

  It took Umber less than ten minutes to thread his way through the pedestrianized part of the town centre to his destination: a sedate, flagstoned piazza overlooked by the handsome nineteenth-century buildings housing Jersey’s parliament and principal court, with a gilded statue of George II tricked out as Caesar presiding at one end.

  In the centre of the square, seated on a bench and reading a newspaper, was a lean, round-shouldered man in a brown raincoat and navy-blue trousers. He was smoking a cigarette – and Alan Wisby he had to be.

  He looked much as Umber remembered, though greyer, in skin as well as hair, and perhaps even thinner. There was a grizzled moustache too which he might or might not have previously sported, but then he had always possessed a strangely insubstantial quality. He was someone easily forgotten, someone who had refined the art of not being noticed and applied it to his professional purposes. He looked up as Umber approached and nodded an unsmiling greeting. Umber sat down beside him.

  ‘Have you read yesterday’s Jersey Evening Post, Mr Umber?’ Wisby asked, holding up the newspaper.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tiny article on page five took my eye. Drug smuggler caught coming off the ferry from Portsmouth Monday night was up before the beak. Name of Sharp. George Sharp.’

  ‘I’m not here to play games, Mr Wisby.’

  ‘Good. Though it’s strange you should say that, actually. I’m told someone’s been playing games with Monica. My narrowboat, I mean. She was set loose from her mooring on the Kennet and Avon Canal Monday night. Safe in the boatyard at Newbury now, you’ll be glad to know. Busy old night, Monday, it seems.’

  ‘I went down to Kintbury at your invitation. You weren’t on the boat. Two people were waiting for you, though. Worse luck for me.’