Betrayal (18 page)

She was smoothing the bed. ‘I’m sorry about what I said on the phone,’ she announced immediately, and there was a note of rehearsal in her voice. ‘I didn’t mean to be unhelpful.’

‘No . . . I wasn’t too helpful myself.’

‘I just wanted to know what the police thought they were up to, that was all. I was worried.’ She was on the point of saying more but, ducking her eyes, sat down abruptly at her dressing table and began to brush her hair with sharp strokes that made it crackle.

I asked, ‘Do you want to talk about it now?’

She twisted round and said, ‘Please,’ as though we had plucked this subject out of the air.

I sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Well . . . They knew Sylvie had dropped in to see me on the boat a couple of times. This was ages ago, June some time. I’d already told them that. And I’d told them I’d bumped into her by the ferry once. But for some reason – and I’ve no idea what – they came down on me like a ton of bricks. The full treatment.’ I gave a shuddering laugh. ‘They have this way of making you feel they’re not going to believe a word you say. Scary.
Terrifying
. Anyway, they were extremely keen to know where I was when Sylvie was killed. Luckily, I could account for most of that Saturday – David saw me in Dartmouth hunting for food and then you arrived and then David popped in later . . . So, one way and another, there wasn’t time for me to have been anywhere else.’

She absorbed this with stern concentration. ‘And you’ve no idea what it was that made them pick on you?’

I shook my head.

‘But there was
something
?’

‘Possibly – presumably . . .’

‘And they didn’t tell you what?’

‘No.’

She gave an anxious laugh which hid none of her curiosity. ‘But what reason could they have had for dragging you all the way down there again?’

‘Ginny, I don’t know.’

She searched my face for the lie, and I met her gaze as best I could.

She looked away. ‘What else did they want to know?’

‘Oh, you can imagine. How well I knew Sylvie, that sort of thing.’

‘And they were happy with . . . what you said?’

I shrugged. ‘They had to be, didn’t they?’

She drew a ragged breath. ‘How could they do it anyway – drag you off like that? Did they have the right?’

‘I’m not sure, darling. But it would have looked strange if I’d refused, wouldn’t it?’

She considered this. ‘Yes, I suppose it would.’ She twisted the hairbrush in her lap, her delicate features etched with unease. ‘And you don’t know what it was that made them want to see you again?’

‘No.’

She made an attempt to smile. ‘But you must have some idea.’

Here it was again, the inability to let go, the constant chafing. ‘I really don’t know, Ginny. But they must have thought I was having an affair with Sylvie, mustn’t they? If I was meant to have killed her I would hardly have done it without a reason, and that’s the obvious one, isn’t it?’

I could hear the sound of her breathing, the rasping that preceded an attack, and I wondered how long it would be before she reached for the inhaler.

‘And you’ve no idea what made them think . . .?’

It wasn’t a challenge this time, more a craving for reassurance. So I denied it again, because it was far too late to do anything else.

Conflicting emotions passed across Ginny’s face, then with a jerky movement she put the hairbrush back in its place on the dressing table. ‘Well, at least they’ve got it straight at last!’ she said, striking a bright nervy note. ‘We can begin to forget the whole wretched business.’

She was waiting for me to agree; she wanted to hear me say that I was putting everything to do with Sylvie behind me.

‘Let’s hope so.’

She shot me a sharp look.

‘It’s the press,’ I explained. ‘They seem to have heard about my visit to the police. And we all know what they’re like. Given half a chance, they’ll blow it up out of all proportion. That’d be all I need, with the buyout coming together.’

She was blinking rapidly, pulling hard on her lungs. ‘But how did the press hear about it?’

‘Who knows? These things get out, don’t they?’ And for no apparent reason I thought of Howard.

Her forehead wrinkled into a rare frown, and I noticed how strained she was looking, and how dark were the shadows around her eyes. ‘What happened? Did they phone?’

‘They called Tingwall. He seems to think he’s palmed them off all right.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not so easy to palm them off! They have a way of coming back. We should make a plan.’

Ginny’s mother had been a famous beauty who’d led what in charitable terms might be described as an eventful life, with three husbands, numerous lovers, and an unwavering talent for attracting scandal. After a childhood in the spotlight, Ginny had good reason to consider herself something of an expert on the press.

‘The thing is . . .’ she murmured, thinking her way through it. ‘You must be sure to speak to them if they call. Be completely open. Utterly polite and terribly nice. Even jokey. Mummy always said that you could get away with murder if you made the press laugh.’ She looked at me with her great fluid eyes, the irony of what she had said completely lost on her, or calmly unacknowledged.

‘I’m not sure I’m quite up to cracking jokes, Ginny.’

‘Be jolly, then. Carefree. If they catch the slightest hint of panic around you, they’ll be back for more, like jackals.’

This was what I always forgot, her astuteness, her talent for reading situations.

‘It’s terribly important to appear friendly,’ she stressed. ‘You can be rather cool, you know. I’ve heard you with journalists. You can sound rather offhand.’

‘Can I? I hadn’t realised. Well, I’ll do my best.’ I picked up her inhaler from the bedside table and took it across to her.

‘Tone makes all the difference . . .’ But she could hardly say it, she was so short of breath.

She took the inhaler from my hand, drew on it greedily and gave two or three harsh coughs. From the gardens below came the sound of children playing and the wail of an electric lawn mower. I kept forgetting it was Saturday.

After a while I asked, ‘All right?’

She nodded impatiently. She never liked to talk about her asthma. ‘Oh, Julia came by with a stack of papers for you. I put them in the study.’

‘Thanks.’

She twisted round on the stool and examined her face in the mirror. ‘Will you have time for dinner?’ Above the breathlessness her voice was still taut.

‘Of course. I’ll make time.’

‘I thought we’d have something silly, like eggs and baked beans.’ She reached for her face cream and I saw that her hand was trembling.

I felt a surge of remorse. ‘Ginny—’

‘It’s all right!@’ she declared, smearing the cream fiercely over her cheeks, ‘I’m not going to ask if you had an affair! I assure you – I don’t want to know!’ Abandoning her face abruptly, she clamped her hands together on the surface of the table and stared down at them. She whispered, ‘But I would like to know if you loved her.’

I stared at her dumbly in the glass.

‘And don’t lie, please,’ she added, her voice rising sharply. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

‘I didn’t love her,’ I said.

She looked up and our eyes met in the mirror. I saw hope in her face, and wretchedness.

‘I didn’t love her,’ I repeated.

She searched my expression, then, gasping, looked down and nodded rapidly.

‘It was—’

‘No! Don’t say any more!’ She fumbled for the cream again. ‘Don’t!’

I felt a familiar gust of helplessness and uncertainty. Did she mean it? Sometimes her most effusive denials turned out to be cries for reassurance which, despite the absence of firm clues, I was meant to decipher and assuage. I was still searching for the right thing to say when she glanced up and said briskly, ‘I’ll see you later then. You really don’t mind eggs and baked beans?’

Relief made me smile stupidly. ‘Can’t think of anything better.’

She nodded again, and returned to her makeup.

I leant down and kissed the top of her head. When I looked up again she had averted her eyes.

With the paperwork was a note from Julia. ‘I can’t find that petrol receipt,’ she wrote. ‘I don’t think you ever gave it to me. It’s no great problem. I can get the details from MasterCard and/or the service station, but I just thought I’d mention it, in case you had it lying around.’

I looked in the compartment of my wallet where I usually put receipts and credit card counterfoils before handing them over to Julia at the end of each week. The petrol receipt wasn’t there, nor the credit card voucher. I remembered handing my card to the cashier at the service station, I remembered signing the slip, but the rest of the exchange, like the drive itself, was a blur. I had spent the journey trying not to think about Sylvie but thinking, in the end, of little else. All sorts of fantasies had crowded my brain: I imagined her waiting for me at Dittisham, I heard the phone ringing as I walked in, or if these were too much to hope for, I saw myself finding a note, telling me where to find her. They were desperate impossible fantasies, born of obsession. I knew full well that there would be no sign of her, that as usual she would be doing her best to avoid me, and that if I was to have any chance of seeing her I would have to go and search for her myself.

Nearing Dittisham I persuaded myself that I would be able to exercise some self-control, that I would have the strength of will to maintain some dignity and stay away from her, yet I knew perfectly well that I would go and look for her. I was incapable of stopping myself. The urge to see her was like a craving. I was consumed by the need to know what had gone wrong, why she had so brutally cut me out of her life. I was desperate to retrieve what she had so tantalisingly proffered and so abruptly snatched away; I wanted the euphoria again, the surge of long-forgotten emotions, the sensation of being completely and spectacularly alive. I knew our affair was over, yet I couldn’t accept it. I needed to know if she’d intended to humiliate me, if she’d meant to set me up quite so effortlessly: I needed to know just how thoroughly I’d been deceived.

Approaching Dittisham, I went through a pantomime of normality. I avoided Sylvie’s cottage and drove straight to the house. I forced myself to go inside and turn on the water heater, to pour myself a drink and sit by the window as if I intended to have a quiet evening. I even convinced myself that I would be satisfied by going upstairs to David’s old bedroom and focusing my specially purchased binoculars on the stretch of river just beyond the ferry where the white yacht with the bowsprit lay at her mooring. But the stillness of the scene, the complete absence of life on board were both a torment and a challenge. It was then that I gave up all pretence of self-possession and drove off in search of her.

I had spent an hour on some amended cash flow projections when Ginny buzzed through to say that David was on the line.

‘We’re just on our way out,’ he declared, ever swift to establish that his time was limited. ‘Wanted to let you know what we’ve decided for the buyout. It’ll be fifty thousand. Can’t do more, I’m afraid.’

Overcoming my disappointment, I said, ‘David – thank you.’

‘The thing is, we’ve tied up quite a bit in this trust for the children. And the terms of the trust – you know, we’re simply not allowed to invest in anything risky.’

‘I understand.’

‘Well, there we are.’

‘You won’t regret it.’

‘I should hope not!’ And his tone wasn’t entirely facetious.

‘Thanks again for yesterday.’

‘Mmm?’ he murmured distractedly, and I could hear the sound of turning pages as his attention wandered.

‘For coming to the police station.’

‘Oh, that reminds me,’ he drawled. ‘Mary heard something on the lawyers’ scandal-vine this morning – you know how she is for having her ear to the ground. She was going to call you. She didn’t get a name,’ he said, meandering towards the point, ‘but she heard that someone got hauled in for questioning late last night.’

‘But who? Does she know?’

‘I told you, she didn’t get the details,’ he said in his busy voice, the one he used to presage the end of his conversations. ‘But I told you it would be all right, didn’t I?’ David’s confidence had a certain steamroller quality to it, a momentum that did not allow for dissent.

‘Yes, I suppose—’

‘Got to rush.’

‘David, I can’t thank you enough for putting your faith in the buyout—’

‘Not a bit,’ he cut in and, with a grunt that might have been a goodbye, he rang off.

I brooded for a long time, wondering who Henderson might have hauled in for questioning. The unprepossessing long-haired youth perhaps? The owner of the white cutter? Or another of this tribe of lovers that Sylvie was meant to have had?

She was all over the place
. David’s words still reverberated in my mind. I had always known that Sylvie lived by her own rules, that her addiction to the sensual took her beyond normal limits, but I had pushed the obvious consequences of this thought from my mind. During our affair I had not dared to face the idea that I was sharing her with someone else. I had been too frightened of the emotions that such a suspicion might unleash in me.

The wail of a siren sounded from the direction of the King’s Road. Gazing out into the dark gardens, beyond the tracery of branches to the lights of the neighbouring houses, I felt immensely glad that it was all over, that I had recovered most of my sanity and equilibrium. I had not liked myself very much while I was in thrall to Sylvie, I had not enjoyed being in a state of misery and abject longing; most of all, I had disliked being at the mercy of emotions that were so intense, obsessive and ultimately demeaning.

The siren echoed in the distance. Returning to the present with a sense of relief, I pulled out a sheet of paper and set down the figures that were already written large in my head. A shortfall of a hundred thousand from David; one million more to be found on the total price tag of the company. Against this I might be able to raise five hundred thousand on this house and Zircon might come up with two hundred and fifty thousand. I didn’t need to be an Einstein to see I was still short by three hundred and fifty thousand.