‘No.’
‘Does my father know yet?’
‘Not from me.’
‘Will you wait for me outside, please?’
She presses a button on her desk for the next patient.
*
As they walked, they kept consciously apart, like two people who have quarrelled and are waiting to make up. When she needed to speak, she did so angrily:
‘Is his death national news? In the press, on TV, and so on?’
‘Only the local paper and the Evening Standard, as far as I know.’
‘But it could go wider at any moment?’
‘I assume so.’
‘Kit takes The Times.’ And as an abrupt afterthought: ‘And Mum listens to the radio.’
A gateway that should have been locked but wasn’t led across a scruffy patch of public park. A group of kids with dogs sat under a tree smoking marijuana. On a traffic island stood a long, single-storey complex. A sign said HEALTH CENTRE. Emily needed to walk the length of it, checking for broken windows while Toby trailed after her.
‘The kids think we keep drugs here,’ she said. ‘We tell them we don’t, but they won’t believe us.’
They had entered the brick lowlands of Victorian London. Under a starry, unobstructed sky ran rows of cottages in pairs, each with its oversized chimney pot, each with a front garden split down the middle. She opened a front gate. An outside staircase led up to a first-floor porch. She climbed. He followed her. By the porch light he saw an ugly grey cat with one forepaw missing rubbing itself against her foot. She unlocked the door and the cat shot past her. She stepped in after it, then waited for him.
‘Food in the fridge if you’re hungry,’ she said, disappearing into what he took to be her bedroom. And as the door closed: ‘The bloody cat thinks I’m a vet.’
*
She is sitting, head in hands, staring at the uneaten food on the table before her. The living room is sparse to the point of self-denial: minimal kitchen one end, a couple of old pine chairs, a lumpy sofa and the pine table that is also her workspace. A few medical books, a stack of African magazines. And on the wall, a photograph of Kit in full diplomatic rig presenting his letter of credentials to an abundant female Caribbean head of state while Suzanna in a big white hat looks on.
‘Did you take that?’ he asked.
‘God, no. There was a court photographer.’
From the refrigerator he has rustled up a piece of Dutch cheese, a few tomatoes, and from the freezer sliced bread which he has toasted. And three quarters of a bottle of stale Rioja which with her permission he has poured into two green tumblers. She has put on a shapeless housecoat and flat slippers, but kept her hair bundled. The housecoat is buttoned to her ankles. He’s surprised by how tall she is despite the flat shoes. And how stately her walk is. And how her gestures appear at first glance gauche, when actually, when you think about them, they’re elegant.
‘And that woman doctor who isn’t one?’ she asks. ‘Calling Kit to say Jeb’s alive when he isn’t? That wouldn’t impress the police?’
‘Not in their present mood. No.’
‘Is Kit at risk of suicide too?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he retorts firmly, having asked himself the same question ever since leaving Brigid’s house.
‘Why not?’
‘Because as long as he believes the fake doctor’s story he doesn’t present any threat. That was the purpose of the phoney doctor’s call. So for God’s sake let them think they’ve achieved it, they, whoever they are.’
‘But Kit doesn’t believe it.’
This is old ground, but he goes over it nonetheless, for her sake:
‘And has said so very loudly, mercifully only to his nearest and dearest, and me. But he pretended to believe it on the phone, and he must keep pretending now. It’s only about buying time. Keeping his head down for a few days.’
‘Until what?’
‘I’m putting together a case,’ Toby says, more boldly than he feels. ‘I’ve got bits of the puzzle, I need more. Jeb’s widow has photographs that may be useful. I’ve taken copies. She also gave me the name of someone who may be able to help. I’ve arranged to see him. Someone who was part of the original problem.’
‘Are you part of the original problem?’
‘No. Just a guilty bystander.’
‘And when you’ve put your case together, what will you be then?’
‘Out of a job, most likely,’ he says, and in an effort at light relief reaches out for the cat, which has been sitting all this while at her feet, but it ignores him.
‘What time does your father get up in the morning?’ he asks.
‘Kit does early. Mum lies in.’
‘Early being what?’
‘Sixish.’
‘And the Marlows, how about them?’
‘Oh, they’re up at crack of dawn. Jack milks for Farmer Phillips.’
‘And how far from the Manor is the Marlows’ house?’
‘No distance. It’s the old Manor cottage. Why?’
‘I think Kit should be told about Jeb’s death as soon as possible.’
‘Before he gets it from anyone else and blows a gasket?’
‘If you put it like that.’
‘I do.’
‘The problem is, we can’t use the landline to the Manor. Or his cellphone. And certainly not email. That’s very much Kit’s opinion too. He made a point of it when he wrote to me.’
He paused, expecting her to speak, but her gaze remained on him, challenging him to go on.
‘So I’m suggesting you call Mrs Marlow first thing in the morning and ask her to pop over to the Manor and bring Kit to the phone in the cottage. That’s assuming you’d like to break the news to him yourself rather than have me do it.’
‘What lie do I tell her?’
‘There’s a fault on the Manor line. You can’t get through direct. No panic, but there’s something special you need to talk to Kit about. I thought you could use one of these. They’re safer.’
She picks up the black burner and, like someone who’s never seen a cellphone before, turns it speculatively in her long fingers.
‘If it makes it any easier, I can hang around,’ he says, careful to indicate the meagre sofa.
She looks at him, looks at her watch: 2 a.m. She fetches an eiderdown and a pillow from her bedroom.
‘Now you’ll be too cold,’ he objects.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she replies.
6
A stubborn Cornish mist had settled itself in the valley. For two days now no westerly had managed to drive it away. The arched brick windows of the stable that Kit had made his office should by rights have been full of budding leaves. Instead they were blanked out with the deadly whiteness of a shroud: or so it seemed to him as he quartered the harness room in his agitation, much as three years ago he had pounded his hated prison bedroom in Gibraltar waiting for the call to arms.
It was half past six in the morning and he was still wearing the wellingtons he’d put on to hurry across the orchard at Mrs Marlow’s urging to take the phone call from Emily on the spurious grounds that she couldn’t get through on the Manor line. Their conversation, if you could call it that, was with him now, albeit out of sequence: part information, part exhortation, and all of it a knife thrust through the gut.
And just as in Gibraltar, so here in the stables he was muttering and cursing at himself, half aloud: Jeb. Jesus Christ, man. Utter bloody nonsense … We were on a roll … Everything to go for – all of this interspersed by imprecations of bastards, bloody murderous bastards and the like.
‘You’ve got to lie low, Dad, for Mum’s sake, not just for yours. And for Jeb’s widow. It’s only for a few days, Dad. Just believe whatever Jeb’s psychiatrist said to you, even if she wasn’t Jeb’s psychiatrist. Dad, I’m going to hand you over to Toby. He can say it better than me.’
Toby? What the hell’s she doing with that sneaky bugger Bell at six in the morning?
<
br /> ‘Kit? It’s me. Toby.’
‘Who shot him, Bell?’
‘Nobody. It was suicide. Official. The coroner’s signed off on it, the police aren’t interested.’
Well, they ought to be bloody interested! But he hadn’t said that. Not at the time. Didn’t feel he’d said anything much at the time, apart from yes, and no, and oh well, yes, right, I see.
‘Kit?’ – Toby again.
‘Yes. What is it?’
‘You told me you’d been putting together a draft document in anticipation of Jeb’s visit to the Manor. Your own account of what happened from your perspective three years back, plus a memorandum of your conversation with him at your club, for him to sign off on. Kit?’
‘What’s wrong with that? Gospel truth, the whole bloody thing,’ Kit retorts.
‘Nothing’s wrong with it, Kit. I’m sure it will be extremely useful when the time comes for a démarche. It’s just: could you please find somewhere clever to put it for a few days? Out of harm’s way. Not in a safe or anywhere obvious. Maybe in the attic of one of the outhouses. Or perhaps Suzanna would have a brainwave. Kit?’
‘Have they buried him?’
‘Cremated.’
‘That’s a bit bloody quick, isn’t it? Who put them up to that? More jiggery-pokery, by the sound of it. Christ Almighty.’
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, Em. Still here. What is it?’
‘Dad? Just do what Toby says. Please. Don’t ask any more questions. Just do nothing, find somewhere safe for your opus, and take care of Mum. And leave Toby to do whatever he’s got to do up here, because he’s really working on this from every angle.’
I’ll bet he is, sneaky bastard – but he manages not to say that, which is surprising given that, with the devious Bell telling him what he should or shouldn’t be doing, and Emily backing him to the hilt, and Mrs Marlow with her ear to the parlour door, and poor Jeb dead with a bullet through his head, he might have said any bloody thing.
*
Wrestling for sanity, he goes back to the beginning yet again.
He’s standing in Mrs Marlow’s kitchen in his wellingtons and the washing machine’s going, and he’s told her to switch the bloody thing off or he won’t be able to hear a word.
Dad, this is Emily.
I know it’s Emily, for God’s sake! Are you all right? What’s going on? Where are you?
Dad, I’ve got really sad news for you. Jeb’s dead. Are you listening, Dad? Dad?
Holy God.
Dad? It was suicide, Dad. Jeb shot himself. With his own handgun. In his van.
No, he didn’t. Bloody nonsense. He was on his way here. When?
On Tuesday night. A week ago.
Where?
In Somerset.
He can’t have done. Are you telling me he killed himself that night? That bogus doctor woman called me on Friday.
Afraid so, Dad.
Has he been identified?
Yes.
Who by? Not that bogus bloody doctor, I trust?
His wife.
Christ Almighty.
*
Sheba was whimpering. Stooping to her, Kit gave her a consoling pat then glowered into the distance while he listened to Jeb’s parting words murmured to him on the club landing at first light:
You get to think you’re abandoned, sometimes. Cast out, like. Plus the child and her mother, lying there in your head. You feel responsible, like. Well, I don’t feel that any more, do I? So if you don’t mind, Sir Christopher, I’ll give your hand a shake.
Offering me the hand he’s supposed to have shot himself with. A good firm shake, along with a See you first thing Wednesday at the Manor then, and me promising to be short-order chef and run him up scrambled eggs for his breakfast, which he said was his favourite.
And wouldn’t call me Kit although I told him to. Didn’t think it was respectful, not to Sir Christopher. And me saying I never deserved a bloody knighthood in the first place. And him blaming himself for horrors he never committed. And now he’s being blamed for another horror he didn’t bloody commit: to wit, killing himself.
And what am I being asked to do about it? Sweet Fanny Adams. Go and hide the draft document in some hayloft, leave everything to the devious Bell and keep my stupid mouth shut.
Well, maybe I’ve kept it shut a bit too bloody much.
Maybe that’s what was wrong with me. Too willing to blast off about things that don’t matter a fart, and not quite willing enough to ask a few awkward questions like: what actually happened down there on the rocks behind the houses? Or: why am I being handed a cushy retirement posting in the Caribbean when there are half a dozen chaps above me who deserve it a bloody sight more than I do?
Worst of all, it was his own daughter telling him to keep his mouth shut, led on by young Bell, who seemed to have a knack of wearing two hats at once and getting away with it and – the rage rising in him again – getting away with old Em too, and persuading her, totally against her better judgement by the sound of her, to poke her nose into matters she doesn’t know the first bloody thing about, except what she’s overheard or picked up from her mother and shouldn’t have done.
And just for the record: if anybody was going to dish old Em the dirt about Operation Wildlife and related matters, it wasn’t going to be the devious Bell, whose sole qualification appeared to be spying on his minister, and it wasn’t going to be Suzanna. It was going to be her own bloody father, in his own time and in his own way.
And with these uncoordinated thoughts resounding furiously in his head he strode back across the fog-ridden courtyard to the house.
*
Deploying all available stealth lest he rouse Suzanna from her morning sleep, Kit shaved and put on a dark town suit, as opposed to the country effort he had mistakenly worn for that shit Crispin, whose role in this affair he would drag into the daylight if it cost him his pension and his knighthood.
Surveying himself in the wardrobe mirror, he pondered whether to add a black tie out of respect for Jeb and decided: too demonstrative, sends the wrong message. With an antique key that he had recently added to his key-ring, he unlocked a drawer of the commander’s desk and extracted the envelope to which he had consigned Jeb’s flimsy receipt and, from beneath it, a folder marked DRAFT containing his handwritten document.
Pausing for a moment, he discovered almost to his relief that he was weeping hot tears of grief and anger. A quick glance at the title of his document, however, restored his spirits and determination:
‘Operation Wildlife, Part I: Eyewitness account by HM Minister’s Acting Representative in Gibraltar, in the light of additional information supplied by Field Commander, UK Special Force’.
Part II, subtitled ‘Field Commander’s Eyewitness Account’ would remain forever pending, so Part I would have to do double duty.
Progressing softly over dust sheets to the bedroom, he gazed in shame and marvel at his sleeping wife, but took good care not to wake her. Gaining the kitchen – and the one telephone in the house from which it was possible to speak without being overheard in the bedroom – he went to work with a precision worthy of the devious Bell.
Call Mrs Marlow.
He does, keeping his voice down; and yes, of course, she will be more than happy to spend the night at the Manor, just as long as it’s what Suzanna wants, because that’s the main thing, isn’t it? – and is the Manor telephone working again, because it sounds perfectly all right to her?
Call Walter and Anna, dull but sweet friends.
He does, and wakes Walter up, but nothing’s too much trouble for Walter. Yes, of course he and Anna will be happy to drop by this evening and make sure Suzanna isn’t feeling neglected if Kit can’t make it back from his business appointment till tomorrow, and is Suzanna watching Sneakers on Sky, because they are?
Take deep breath, sit down at kitchen table, write non-stop as follows, no self-editing, crossings-out, marginal notes, et cetera:
Darling S
uki,
A lot has come up regarding our soldier friend while you were asleep, and the net result is, I’ve got to trolley up to London as a matter of urgency. With luck the whole thing will be thrashed out in time for me to catch the five o’clock back, but if not I’ll take the night sleeper even if I can’t get a berth.
Then his pen started running away with him, and he let it:
Dearest You, I love you terribly, but the time has come for me to stand up and be counted, and if you were able to know the circumstances you would agree wholeheartedly. In fact you’d do the job a sight better than I ever could, but it’s time I rose to your standards of courage instead of dodging bullets.
And if the last line on inspection read more starkly to him than the rest, there was no time for a second draft if he was going to make the eight forty-two.
Taking the letter upstairs, he laid it on the dust sheets in front of their bedroom door and weighted it with a chisel from his faded canvas tool-bag.
Delving in the library, he found an unused A4 On Her Majesty’s Service envelope from his last posting, inserted his draft document and sealed it with liberal quantities of Sellotape, much in the manner that he had sealed his letter to young Bell last week.
Driving over the windswept moonscape of Bodmin Moor, he enjoyed symptoms of release and levitation. Alone on the station platform among unfamiliar faces, however, he was seized with an impulse to hurry home while there was time, grab back the letter, get into his old clothes and tell Walter, Anna and Mrs Marlow not to bother after all. But with the arrival of the express train to Paddington, this mood, too, passed, and soon he was treating himself to the full English breakfast ‘at seat’, but tea not coffee, because Suzanna worried about his heart.
*
While Kit was speeding on his way to London, Toby Bell sat rigidly at his desk in his new office, addressing the latest crisis in Libya. His lower back was in near-terminal spasm, for which he had to thank Emily’s sofa, and he was keeping himself going on a diet of Nurofen, the remains of a bottle of sparkling water, and disjointed memories of their last couple of hours together in her flat.
A Delicate Truth Page 24