Betrayal (9 page)

‘I saw her by the river once. We chatted for a minute.’

‘And that was all? You saw her just the three times?’

‘To talk to, yes.’ And saying this I felt a sudden heat, a prickle of sweat against my shirt, and thought what a poor liar I would make if I had to do it on a grand scale.

‘Did you know who she mixed with? Who her friends were?’

‘No,’ I said a little too hastily. Then, more matter-of-factly: ‘The only time I saw her with anyone was when she was on the boat with that group. And once I saw her walking with someone. Well, I
think
it was Sylvie. She was a long way off.’ How these tiny untruths seemed to slip effortlessly off my tongue. Yet I could hardly admit that I had watched her covertly through binoculars, like some pathetic Peeping Tom.

‘It was a man she was with?’

‘It looked like it, yes. Though he had long hair. Noticeably long, onto his shoulders or even longer.’

‘And she didn’t mention the names of any friends when she was in conversation with you?’

‘No.’

Reith shuffled a piece of paper. ‘Now, Mr Wellesley, where were you between noon on Saturday last, the thirtieth of September, and noon on Sunday, the following day?’

I thought I had maintained my expression but perhaps he caught a hint of alarm in my eyes because he added coolly, ‘A standard question, Mr Wellesley.’

As I met his unwavering gaze he suddenly didn’t seem so young any more. ‘Of course . . .’ I cleared my throat. ‘On Saturday I worked in my office in Hammersmith until mid-afternoon. I left at . . . it must have been about three. Then I drove straight down to Dittisham. I arrived at dusk – so, about seven-thirty, I suppose. I opened up the house—’

‘What house are we talking about, sir?’ He was making detailed notes now.

‘My late father’s house – Dittisham House. And then . . . I drove into Dartmouth to buy some food—’

A pause while he got it down. ‘So, what time would that have been?’

I really had to get this right. ‘Oh . . . eight-fifteen? Maybe a little after. Yes, about eight-thirty.’

‘And where did you shop, sir?’

‘Well, I went to the Co-op first, but it was closed, so I went to the Spar shop by the church. It was the only place I could find. That was open, I mean.’

‘Which church is that, sir?’

‘Which church?’ I repeated, momentarily confounded by the pedantry of the question. ‘I’ve no idea what it’s called, if that’s what you mean. But the one right down in the town, near the quay.’

I wondered if he was writing so slowly out of an overdeveloped sense of clerical diligence, or a perverse wish to delay me even longer. ‘Then?’ he asked at last.

‘I went back to the house. My wife arrived shortly afterwards.’

‘Your wife? And her name is—?’

‘Virginia Wellesley.’

‘Mrs Virginia Wellesley.’ I watched him record it in block capitals. ‘And she is of the same address?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘London. She lives with you at—’ He peered at his notes. ‘Glebe Place?’

‘Yes.’

The conversation had taken on a fantastic quality, both predictable and bizarre. The leisurely nature of the proceedings, the meandering questions, seemed grotesquely inappropriate to the terrible event that had brought us here.

‘So at what time did you get back to the house and see your wife?’

I went through the motions of dredging my memory again. ‘Well – nine or so.’

‘And then?’

‘We had some supper and went to bed.’

‘And the next day?’

‘Oh, wait a minute, I forgot . . . That evening my brother called in briefly, at about ten.’

‘Your brother being?’

‘David Wellesley. Dr Wellesley. He practises in Dartmouth.’

Reith held his pen awkwardly, knuckles bent like a child, and the nib laboured ever more slowly across the page. ‘And the next day?’

‘Help . . .’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘We must have got up at about eight and then we worked on the house and the boat. Clearing out cupboards and attics, that sort of thing.’ Yet again I waited for his pen to catch up. ‘Then in the evening we went back to London.’

‘What time would that be, sir?’

‘When we left? Oh – nine. Just after.’

He read laboriously through what he had written, then looked up and smiled his bleak professional smile. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Even then I wasn’t sure he had finished until he closed his notebook and got to his feet. I rose and shook his hand. ‘I hope you find whoever did it,’ I said. ‘She was . . .’ What was I trying to say? Why had I even started? ‘. . . a lovely person.’

‘Was she, sir?’ And his eyes slid away knowingly.

I drove fast again, often touching a hundred, sometimes exceeding it, stopping only to buy petrol and a mineral water. Julia called me on the car phone and gave me the messages in her cool staccato. The Chartered Bank had brought forward our next meeting to the following day at eleven-thirty, which I took as a wholly encouraging sign, but my satisfaction evaporated with the next message. Graham Moncrieff, the leader of our legal team, had called to say that he’d hit a problem with the Cumberland lawyers. It seemed Cumberland were backing out of their agreement to lease us the Hartford properties, and were suddenly insisting we buy the factory and warehousing outright.

For the second time that day I almost had an accident, straying out of my lane to earn a prolonged blast from a Range Rover.

Containing my anger and disbelief only with difficulty, slowing down to a sedate sixty, I told Julia to fix a meeting with Howard for some time the next day.

‘You don’t have any slots left.’

‘Breakfast. Evening. Midnight, if necessary.But some time tomorrow, Julia.’

I asked her to save the rest of the messages and rang off. I needed time to calm down; I needed time to absorb the full implications of Cumberland’s about-turn. If they forced this issue, if they made us purchase the factory, we would have to raise more money, another million at the very least. Just when we’d presented our final figures to the banks; just when we had the last of the money almost within our grasp. Cumberland weren’t just moving the goalposts, they were taking them away altogether. Finding another million would be hard: we had tapped every source, we had called in every debt, we had milked every contact.

If this manoeuvre was designed to defeat us then it registered high on the scale of dirty tricks. But was it a manoeuvre? Did Cumberland want us to lose, or did they simply want to squeeze more cash out of us? Howard would know. Though whether he would be prepared to tell me was another matter.

This was the aspect of business I had always disliked and tried my best to avoid, the backbiting and chicanery, the breaking of trust, the pressing of every last advantage until your opponent bled. Howard regarded my scruples as a quaint but fatal flaw. He thought I was soft, and he was probably right. But I quite liked the idea of leaving the dignity of my opponents intact; if it was a flaw to dislike making enemies, then I possessed it in good measure.

I was going to be late. I almost called Julia to ask her to let Ginny know, but in recent weeks such second-hand messages had resulted in ruffled feelings. Ginny had accused me of finding excuses to avoid calling her. Realising that there was a small but undeniable grain of truth in this, feeling ashamed of it, I determined to call her myself.

‘I’ve been held up,’ I said as soon as she answered. I could hear voices in the background.

‘Will you be very late?’

‘Seven, I hope. Seven-thirty at the latest. If you don’t mind me unwashed.’

‘I don’t mind if you don’t.’

She sounded so subdued that I asked, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Feeling a bit rough. A touch of flu, I think.’

One of the voices in the background was male, a caterer or maintenance man. In the old days we would have joked about Ginny having a secret lover, but we didn’t joke about that sort of thing any more.

I said, ‘I’m sorry not to be there to help.’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘You’re sure you don’t need a doctor?’

‘No, no. I’ll just go to bed as soon as everyone’s gone.’

It was a quarter to eight by the time I finally turned into Glebe Place. The party was larger than I’d imagined. After a long hunt for a parking place – the garage was blocked, the adjacent streets tightly packed – I followed some guests into the house to find a wall of backs in every doorway and people spilling out of the drawing room into the conservatory.

A woman loomed up. ‘Hello, Hugh! What a super party! You always give such super parties!’

Mouthing greetings, wearing my best smile, I moved through the room in search of Ginny. I finally spotted her by the fireplace, her back to me. She had done her hair a new way, or perhaps it was an old way that I’d forgotten, pulled severely back and held at her neck in a thick band, though this did nothing to diminish the brilliance of her hair, which was auburn and exceptionally glossy. She was wearing a plain black dress and when she turned I noticed that, apart from pearl earrings, she wore no jewellery. This didn’t prevent her from looking exquisite; nothing could ever do that. She had a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones, a fine nose, and winged eyebrows that gave her an elfin quality.

She was smiling at someone. It was a smile I recognised, brittle and nervous.

‘I’m here,’ I announced unnecessarily. ‘Everything okay?’

‘The caterers got the food wrong.’

‘Is it serious?’

‘It’s all doughy stuff. And spiced chicken. They forgot the smoked salmon parcels and the roulades!’ She exhaled with a tiny shudder. ‘Well, it’s too late now, I suppose.’ Her eyes, bright with illness or anxiety or both, darted constantly around the room. For a moment we stood silently amid the cacophonous swell, two castaways in a storm of our own making, then Ginny drifted away and I found myself talking to a City man about interest rates.

Slowly I succumbed to the rhythm of the party: enquiring after health and business, deflecting questions, spinning thin jokes, talking but not listening too well. The champagne made me tired and slow-witted, and I soon abandoned it for mineral water. Later someone made a speech about the premature baby unit and the need for funds and we all applauded.

A voice sighed at my elbow. ‘Hello, you.’ It was Caroline Adam, a friend of Ginny’s and something high-powered in PR. She had wide red lips and tousled silvery blonde hair and was tall enough to look me straight in the eye. ‘The man of the moment,’ she declared.

‘I am?’

‘I call you two the golden couple. So beautiful, so clever, so –
everything
.’

I couldn’t begin to respond to that, and didn’t try.

‘How are you in fact?’ There was a slyness in her manner.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘And Ginny? She’s looking a bit pale. I noticed straight away.’

‘She thinks she might have flu.’

‘Ah,’ Caroline breathed, her heavy-lashed eyes fixed on mine. ‘But you guys are okay?’ Her smile did nothing to take the edge off the question.

A sickening thought struck me: that Ginny had confided in this woman, had spilled out the most painful details of our unhappiness. And fast on this thought came the idea that Ginny had talked about my visits to Dittisham, had even – a sinking thought – read something suspicious into them.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ I said with terrible joviality.

Caroline searched my face, and I had the feeling that little escaped her voracious eyes. ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said at last. ‘So many people falling by the wayside. Owing their last bootlace to Lloyd’s. Jobless at fifty. Reduced to selling herbal remedies from their dining rooms. No wonder marriages creak under the strain. And we’re all meant to be more caring!’

Had Ginny suspected something all this time? Had she thought I was having an affair? As the idea took hold, my spirits shrank at the prospect of the confrontations ahead.

‘Though when it comes to caring,’ Caroline was saying with a provocative smile, ‘I think you poor beleaguered men have had a raw deal. I think us beastly women have pushed you too far, and you all need spoiling and cosseting again, just like in the bad old days.’ She gave me a look that wasn’t entirely frivolous.

The noise seemed to rise up around me, the drink sang in my brain, I had reached some limit that I barely recognised. With an indeterminate salute, I moved rapidly away and escaped into the garden. I knew I shouldn’t let the Carolines of this world get to me. Mischief-making was a compulsion with her and if it hadn’t been such a very long day I would have remembered that sooner. I would also have remembered that, whatever else Ginny had reproached me for, she had never hinted at infidelity. Besides, our unhappiness had set in long before the summer, at some point in the long years since love had given way to bewilderment.

Standing there in the sulphurous darkness of the London night, the party a distant murmur, I tried to picture a time when things might be different, when the business would be back on its feet, when Ginny and I would be happy again, when in some miraculous way I would be free of worry and guilt. But the idea wouldn’t form, it seemed too remote, and, taking a last breath of damp leafy air, I trudged back towards the house.

A few guests lingered remorselessly until nine-thirty, and we didn’t close the door on the caterers until after ten.

‘You go to bed,’ I told Ginny. ‘I’ll finish down here.’

‘I’m all right.’ She sat on the edge of a chair by the fireplace. ‘I don’t think it’s flu after all.’

‘Are you sure?’

She gave a faint nod, her eyes doggedly on mine, and I realised she wanted to talk.

I poured myself a brandy, almost certainly the last thing I needed, and sat in the chair opposite. ‘Well, that seemed to go all right, didn’t it?’ I said with forced brightness. ‘I don’t think anyone noticed the food.’

She sat like a governess, her arms held into her sides, her shoulders braced, austere and unyielding. ‘How was your day?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you know . . .’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’ And she fixed me with a look of strange intensity.

‘Well . . . I told the Hartford staff what was happening. I saw David and Mary for lunch.’