My quarry has changed, I remembered. I am no longer searching fearfully for signs of Larry’s life or death. I am looking for both of them alive. For their conspiracy. For the reason why.
I hastened in and out of light cones, down side streets, under spiky overhanging trees. The muffled shapes of refugees flitted past me. I pulled on my raincoat. I found a flat cap in the pocket and pulled that on too. I have changed my profile. I am invisible. Three dogs were padding round each other in a melancholy changing of the guard. I stopped again, listening to nothing. I walked back a distance. My watchers have departed.
After ten years, the house still scared me. Though I had escaped from it, I haunted it. Behind its grey walls, clad in the mauve half-mourning of wisteria, lay the remains of my dreams of lifelong happiness. When I had first removed myself to a humble flat further out of town, I would take detours on my journey to the Office rather than go past its door. And if necessity led me in its direction, I would fantasise about being hauled back inside to serve another sentence.
But after a time my revulsion gave way to a furtive curiosity, and the house attracted me despite myself. I would leave the tube a stop early and scurry across the Heath just to peer into its lighted windows. How do they live? What do they talk about, apart from me? Who was I when I lived there? That Diana had left the Office I knew only too well, for she had written Merriman one of her letters.
“Your darling ex has decided we’re the Gestapo,” he announces, seething with outrage. “And she’s been bloody rude with it. Unconstitutional, incompetent, and unaccountable, that’s us. Did you know you were nursing a viper to your breast?”
“That’s just Diana. She lets fly.”
“Well, what’s she going to do about it? Wash her conscience in public, I suppose. Splash us all over the Guardian. Do you have any influence over her?”
“Do you?”
She’s studying to become a psychotherapist, I hear on the grapevine. She’s a marriage counsellor. She’s lost weight. She attends yoga classes in Kentish Town. Edgar’s an academic publisher.
I rang the bell. She opened the door at once.
“I thought you were Sebastian,” she said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to apologise for being the wrong person.
We perched in the drawing room. I had forgotten how low the ceilings were. Perhaps Honeybrook had spoiled me. She was wearing jeans and a Cornish fisherman’s top from our holidays at Padstow. It was faded blue and suited her. Her face was lighter than I remembered it and wider. Her complexion creamier. Her eyes less shaded. Edgar’s books went from floor to ceiling. Most were on subjects I’d never heard of.
“He’s on a seminar in Ravenna,” she said.
“Oh, right. Great. Jolly nice.” I had no natural voice in which to speak to her. No ease. I never had. “Ravenna,” I repeated.
“I’ve got a patient coming in about half a minute, and I don’t keep patients waiting,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Larry’s disappeared. They’re looking for him.”
“Who is?”
“Everyone. The Office, the police. Separately. The police can’t be told of the Office connection.”
Her face hardened, and I feared she was about to give me one of her diatribes on the need for us all to tell each other everything straight out, and how secrecy was not a symptom but a disease.
“Why?” she said.
“You mean why can’t they be told or why’s he disappeared?”
“Both.”
Where did she get this power over me? Why do I stammer and placate her? Because she knows me too well—or never knew me at all?
“He’s supposed to have stolen money,” I said. “Scads of it. The police suspect me of being his accomplice. So does the Office.”
“But you’re not.”
“Of course I’m not.”
“So why’ve you come to me?”
She was sitting on the arm of a chair, back straight, hands folded on her lap. She had the professional listener’s mirthless smile. There was drink on the sideboard, but she didn’t offer me any.
“Because he’s fond of you. You’re one of the few women he admires and hasn’t been to bed with.”
“You know that, do you?”
“No. I assume it. It also happens to be the way he describes you.”
She gave a superior smile. “Does it really? And you’re prepared to take his word for it, are you? You’re very trusting, Tim. Don’t say you’re getting soft in your old age.”
I nearly flew at her. I was proposing to tell her I had always been soft, and she was the only one who hadn’t noticed it; and I’d half a mind to add that I didn’t give a brass farthing whether she slept with Larry or a two-toed sloth; and that the only reason Larry had taken the remotest interest in her was in order to get at me. Fortunately she came in ahead of me with another barb of her own:
“Who sent you, Tim?”
“No one. I’m flying solo.”
“How did you come here?”
“Walked. Alone.”
“I just have this picture of Jake Merriman waiting for you in a car down the road, you see.”
“He isn’t. If he knew I was here, he’d set the dogs on me. I’m practically on the run myself.” The doorbell was ringing. “Diana. If you know anything about him—if he’s been in touch—phoned, written, dropped by—if you know how to get hold of him—please tell me. I’m desperate.”
“It’s Sebastian,” she said, and went to the hall.
I heard voices, and the sound of young feet going down the basement stairs. I realised in a fit of anachronistic indignation that she must have commandeered my old study and put her consulting room in it. She returned to her chair and sat on the arm exactly as before. I thought she was going to tell me to leave, for her face was firmly set. Then I realised she had reached one of her decisions and was about to communicate it.
“He’s found what he was looking for. That’s all I know.”
“So what’s he looking for?”
“He didn’t say. And if he had said, I probably wouldn’t tell you. Don’t interrogate me, Tim; I won’t have it. You dragged me into the Office for seven years, and that was bad enough. I don’t subscribe to the ethic, and I don’t accept the imperatives.”
“I’m not interrogating you, Diana. I am asking you a question: What is he looking for?”
“His perfect note. That was his dream always, he said. To play one perfect note. He was always graphic; that’s his nature. He telephoned. He’d found it. The note.”
“When?”
“A month ago. I had the impression he was leaving for somewhere and saying his goodbyes.”
“Did he say where?”
“No.”
“Did he suggest where?”
“No.”
“Was it abroad? Was it Russia? Was it somewhere exciting? New?”
“He gave absolutely no clue. He was emotional.”
“You mean drunk?”
“I mean emotional, Tim. Just because you brought out the worst in Larry doesn’t mean you have rights of ownership to him. He was emotional, it was late at night, and Edgar was here. ‘Diana, I love you, I’ve found it. I’ve found the perfect note.’ Everything was in place for him. He was together. He wished me to know that. I congratulated him.”
“Did he tell you her name?”
“No, Tim, he wasn’t talking about a woman. Larry’s too mature to suppose we’re the answer to everything. He was talking about self-discovery and being who he is. It’s time you learned to live without him.”
I had not expected to shout at her, and I had gone to some lengths till now to avoid doing so. But since she had appointed herself the high priestess of self-expression, there seemed no reason to restrain myself. “I’d adore to live without him, Diana! I’d give my entire bloody fortune to be rid of Larry and his works for the rest of my natural life. Unfortunately, we are inextricably involved with each other, and I have to find
him for my own salvation and probably for his.”
She had turned her smile to the floor, which I suspected was what she did when patients ranted at her. Her voice took on an extra sweetness.
“And how’s Emma?” she enquired. “As young and beautiful as ever?”
“Thank you, she is well. Why do you ask? Did he talk about her too?”
“No. But you didn’t either. I wondered why not.”
I was climbing. In Hampstead if you are climbing you are exploring, and if you are descending you are going back to hell. Thinner air, thicker fog, pieces of brick mansion and Georgian façade. I entered a pub and drank a large Scotch and then another, then several more, remembering the night I returned to Honeybrook with the black light glowing in my head. If there were people in the pub I didn’t see them. I walked again, feeling no different.
I entered an alley. To one side, a high brick wall. To the other, iron railings like spears. And at the further end a white wood church, its spire severed at the neck by fog.
I began cursing.
I cursed the goad of Englishness that had held me back and spurred me forward all my life.
I cursed Diana for stealing my childhood, and despising me while she did it.
I remembered all my agonising lurches for connection, the mismatches, and the return, time and again, to burning alone.
And after I had cursed the England that had made me, I cursed the Office for being its secret seminary, and Emma for luring me from my comfortable captivity.
And then I cursed Larry for shining a lamp into the cavernous emptiness of what he called my dull rectangular mind and dragging me beyond the limits of my precious self-mastery.
Above all I cursed myself.
I was suddenly desperate to sleep. The weight of my head was too great for me to carry. My legs were giving up on me. I thought of lying down on the pavement, but by good fortune a cab appeared, so instead I returned to my club, where Charlie the porter handed me a telephone message. It was from Detective Inspector Bryant, asking me to be so good as to call the following number at my earliest convenience.
No one sleeps in clubs. You smell the male sweat and cabbage, you listen to the snuffles of fellow inmates, and you remember school.
It is the night after Sixes Match, the annual festival of Winchester Football, a game so arcane that even experienced players may not know all the rules. The House has won. To be immodest, I have won, for it is Cranmer, the team captain and hero of the match, who has led the extraordinarily savage charge. Now, by tradition, the victorious six are feasting themselves in House Library while the New Boys stand on the table and regale them with songs and entertainment. Some New Boys sing badly and must have books buzzed at them to improve their voices. Others sing too well and must be cut down to size with gibes and flying bread. And one New Boy refuses to sing at all and must in the fullness of time be beaten; and that is Pettifer.
“Why didn’t you sing?” I ask him later that night as he bends over the same table.
“It’s against my religion. I’m a Jew.”
“No you’re not. Your father’s in the Church.”
“I’ve converted.”
“I’ll give you one chance,” I say expansively. “What is the Notion for Winchester football?” It is the easiest test I can think of in the entire school vernacular, a gift.
“Jew baiting,” he replies.
So I have no alternative but to beat him, when all he needed to say was Our Game.
8
The window was too small to jump from, and too high to see from unless you had a yen for orange cranetips and banks of rain-soaked Bristol cloud. There were three chairs, and like the table they were bolted to the floor. A mirror was screwed to the wall. I assumed a one-way glass. The air was old, foul, and beery. A curled notice warning me of my rights trembled to the traffic five floors down.
Bryant sat one end of the table, I sat the other, Luck between us in his shirtsleeves. I wondered where his jacket was. On the floor to Luck’s right lay an open briefcase in fake brown leather. In its partitions I spotted four rectangular packages of different sizes, each wrapped in black plastic and labelled. On the labels were references written with a red felt-tipped pen, such as LP Exb 27, which I took to mean Exhibit 27 in the case of Lawrence Pettifer. It was somehow natural to my attenuated state of mind that I found myself worrying less about Exhibit 27 than about the other twenty-six. And if twenty-seven, why only four of them in the briefcase?
There was no preamble. Nobody apologised for hauling me over to Bristol on a Saturday afternoon. Bryant had one elbow on the table and was resting his chin in his clenched fist like a man holding his beard. Luck fished a chipped black cassette recorder from the briefcase and dumped it on the table.
“Mind if we do this?”
Not waiting to hear whether I minded or not, he pressed the start switch, snapped his fingers three times, stopped the tape, and wound it back. So we listened to Luck’s fingers snapping three times. He had acquired a shaving rash since I had last seen him, and bags under his little eyes.
“Does your friend Dr. Pettifer possess a car, Mr. Cranmer?” he demanded morosely. And beckoned at the recorder with his long head: speak to that thing, not to me.
“In London, Pettifer had a stable of cars,” I replied. “They tended to be other people’s.”
“Whose?”
“I never asked. I was not familiar with his acquaintance.”
“How about in Bath?”
“In Bath I have no idea what arrangements he made for his transport.”
I was being dull and literal. I was much older than I had been a week ago.
“When did you last see him in a car?” said Luck.
“I would be pressed to remember.”
Bryant had acquired a new smile. It had something of victory in it. “Oh, we’ll press you if that’s what you want, Mr. Cranmer, sir. Won’t we, Oliver?”
“I understood that you had called me here to identify some property,” I said.
“We did,” Bryant agreed.
“Well, if it’s his car you’re talking about, I’m afraid it’s most unlikely I can help you.”
“Ever see him in a green or black Toyota, model circa 1990?” Luck asked.
“I am no expert in Japanese cars.”
“Mr. Cranmer-sir is no expert in anything,” Bryant explained to Luck. “He don’t know nuffink, Officer. You can tell by all those big foreign books he’s got in his mansion.”
From the briefcase Luck handed me a thumbed police manual of line drawings of cars. As I turned its pages I saw the outlines of a 1989 blue Toyota Carina with the black flashing just like the one Larry had used for his positively last Sunday appearance at Honeybrook. Luck had seen it too.
“How about this one?” he was demanding, holding down the page with his bony finger.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Meaning no?”
“Meaning I do not recall him driving such a car.”
“Then why does Mr. Guppy, your local postman, recall seeing a black or green Toyota driven by someone answering to Pettifer’s description entering your drive just as he was coming out of the village church on a very hot Sunday, he thinks in July?”
I was sickened that they should have questioned John Guppy. “I have no idea why he should recall or not recall any such thing. And since the entrance to my drive is not visible from the church, I am inclined to doubt whether he did.”
“The Toyota passed the church heading in your direction,” Luck retorted. “It disappeared out of sight below the churchyard wall and did not come out the other end. The only turning it could have taken was into your drive.”
“The car could have emerged without Mr. Guppy’s noticing,” I replied. “It could have stopped on the verge.”
While Bryant looked on, Luck again foraged in his briefcase, extracted one of the packages and from it a plastic-covered bankbook from Larry’s bank in London. It was such
an old friend to me I almost smiled. I must have been through hundreds of them in my time, always trying to puzzle out what had happened to Larry’s money, who he had given it to, which cheques he had forgotten to pay in.
“Did Pettifer ever make you a present of any cash, by any chance?” Luck asked.
“No, Mr. Luck, Dr. Pettifer never gave me any money.”
“How about you giving him some?”
“I lent him small sums from time to time.”
“How small?”
“Twenty here. Fifty there.”
“You call that small, do you?”
“I’m sure it would feed a lot of starving children. It didn’t keep Larry going long.”
“Do you wish to change, in any shape or form, your story to the effect that you and Pettifer were never once involved in any type of business transaction?”
“It’s the truth. Therefore I do not wish to change it.”
“Page eight,” he said, and tossed the bankbook at me.
I turned to page eight. It was the statement covering September 1993, which was the month when the Office paid Larry his hard-earned gratuity: £150,000, drawn on the account of Mills & Highborn, Trustees, of St. Helier, Jersey, wiping out an overdraft of £3,728.
“Do you have any idea at all,” Luck demanded, “where, how, or why Dr. Pettifer got hold of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling in September 1993?”
“None. Why not ask the people who made the payment?”
My suggestion annoyed him. “Mills and Highborn, thank you, is one of your old-fashioned, blue-chip, father-to-son Channel Islands law firms. Partners do not like talking to policemen and are not disposed to hand out customer information without a court order effective in the Islands. However—”
Upstaging him, Bryant placed his forearms on the table, squaring himself for combat.
“However,” Luck repeated, “my researches do reveal that the same firm of trustees has also been paying Pettifer an annual salary, apparently on the instructions of certain foreign publishing and film companies registered in funny places like Switzerland. Does that surprise you at all?”