Borrowed Time (25 page)

“Will you tell him about Howard Marsden?”

“Oh yes. If Rowena’s death has taught me anything, it’s the danger of secrecy.”

“And your father?”

“He may already know. He may always have known. Maybe it’s what was in the note he destroyed.”

“But if not?”

“I’ll leave Bella to solve the problem. Isn’t that what stepmothers are for?”

“Will you let Sophie know we’ve found out?”

“Only if she asks. Which is unlikely, since I don’t intend to seek her company. Or her husband’s.”

“What sort of a man is he?”

“Well, there’s another irony. Cautious and conventional sums him up. Rather dull, I’d always thought. Not at all Mummy’s type. So I’d have said, anyway. But what would I know? More and more, my mother seems like a stranger to me. Or an impostor. Somebody who was never what she came across as. But what she really was . . . I’ve no idea.”

“You’re not saying you believe Naylor may be innocent?”

“Oh no. That’s the worst of this. The very worst. Seymour and his kind will go on pressing for that bastard’s release. And Rowena’s suicide will only help them. They’ll say she had a guilty conscience, won’t they? They’ll say it was her way of avoiding the truth.”

“Surely not.”

“I’m afraid so. The bandwagon’s only just started rolling. There’ll be more books. More programmes. More articles. There’ll be a committee formed before long to coordinate the campaign for his release. Questions will be asked in the House. Pressure will mount for a re-trial. Or a reference to the Appeal Court at the very least. And they’ll never stop. They’ll never be satisfied. Until the day Naylor walks out of the Royal Courts of Justice a free man and is carried away down the Strand in the arms of his adoring supporters.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“You’d better. Because it’ll happen. Eventually. Inevitably. Whether we like it or not. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can only . . .”

“Yes?”

“Lead our lives, Robin. What else?”

There was nothing else. No corner to turn. No redoubt to defend. No stand to take. Sarah would go on with her life. And so would I. When she drove away from Greenhayes that evening, I sensed it was a final parting, whatever the technicalities of time and chance might subsequently dictate. She was heading into her future. And into my past.

I went down to the Cricketers after she’d gone and drank so much I had to be driven the short distance home by the landlord. And though I woke next morning with a thick head, my prospects were clearer in my mind than they’d been for weeks. If Bushranger Sports took over Timariot & Small, I’d quit before they could sack me and return to Brussels at the expiry of my
congé
. I’d turn my back on a disastrous diversion in my career. I’d give up chasing shadows and revert to the pursuit of wealth and leisure. I’d bid Louise Paxton an overdue farewell. I’d walk away. And forget. Even though

Those two words shut a door

Between me and the blessed rain

That was never shut before

And will not open again.

Rowena was buried in Sapperton on Monday the twenty-eighth of June. I stayed in Petersfield, putting in a gingerly half-day at the factory to keep myself occupied. But the media weren’t about to let me off the hook. That night, on the television news, there was a filmed report from outside St. Kenelm’s Church, hymn-singing audible above the commentary.
“As speculation mounts that Rowena Bryant killed herself rather than face the thought that her testimony helped convict an innocent man, a spokesman for West Mercia Police insisted they had no intention of reopening their inquiries into the Kington killings.”
Before the scene switched to the cemetery I could picture so easily, I switched off.

Half an hour later, Sophie rang. I heard her voice purring from the answering machine. But I didn’t pick up the receiver. And I didn’t return her call. She’d made a fool of me once. And that was enough. I didn’t mean to give her the slightest chance of doing so again.

Two days after the funeral, Bella paid me a visit. She and Sir Keith were returning to Biarritz the very next day, so this was in the nature of a goodbye. But not just for that reason.

“It’ll take Keith a long time to recover from the loss he’s suffered, Robin. If he ever does. And it’ll take him a long time to forgive those he holds responsible for that loss.”

“Like me, you mean.”

“Yes. Like you.”

“You never were one to mince your words.”

“Would you want me to?”

“No. I wouldn’t. Sarah told you about Howard Marsden, I suppose?”

“She told me.”

“Mentioned it to Keith, have you?”

“No.”

“So, it’s time to sweep things under the carpet, is it? Time to batten down the hatches?”

“Time to go, Robin. That’s all.”

“Without even a farewell drink?”

And at that she had the decency to smile.

We went out to the Red Lion at Chalton, where she’d taken me in July 1990 to pump me for information about the Kington killings. The three years that had passed since seemed more like ten when I looked at her across our table in the pub garden and saw her eyes drift to the field behind me. A blue drift of linseed, then as now. She too was remembering.

“You said I’d be making a mistake by going back into the company,” I remarked.

“And I was right. Wasn’t I?”

“As it’s turned out, I suppose you were. But you’ve been able to make sure you were right, haven’t you?”

“It’s Adrian’s idea to accept the Bushranger offer. Not mine.”

“But without your support, he can’t force it through, can he?”

“Technically, no. But I haven’t the slightest intention of changing my mind. So don’t waste your breath by—”

“I’m not about to. I’ve learnt my lesson. You see before you a man who isn’t going to swim against the tide any longer. I’ve made a pact with the future. And you should be flattered, Bella, you really should. Because it’s your example I’ll be following.”

“In what sense?”

“I’m going to take the money and run.”

For a moment, I thought she meant to throw her lager in my face. But after staring at me for a few seconds, she merely shook her head and laughed. When all was said and done, she and I understood each other.

Two weeks passed. And the third anniversary of Louise’s death approached. Since it fell on a Saturday, there was nothing to stop me driving up to Kington, as I’d long been tempted to, and walking out once more across Hergest Ridge. It was a day very like its well-remembered counterpart. Yet it could never be the same. And I didn’t want it to be. What I wanted was the stony soil beneath my feet and the gorse-cleansed air in my face to assert the normality of the place. To convince me no magic or mystery was waiting for me there. Nor any perfect stranger. Only turf and sky and sheep. And nature’s placid disregard for mankind’s illusions.

I made my way down into Kington and called at the Swan for a drink, as I had three years before. This time, however, I struck up a conversation with one of the locals, who didn’t seem to mind discussing the murders one little bit. Neither of the victims having been genuine Kingtonians, their memories evidently merited no special protection from outsiders. “More about that to come out, you wait and see. Much more. From what I’ve heard, that Nick Seymour on the telly got it all wrong. Forgery weren’t Oscar Bantock’s game. Oh no. Satanism. That’s what it was. Devil worship. His nephew rents Whistler’s Cot out to holidaymakers, you know. But I wouldn’t spend a night under that roof. Not after everything old Oscar got up to. Not me. No way. ’Course, there’s a lot of it about round here. Black magic, I mean. It’s the Dyke as gets ’em going. Covens. Sacrifices. Black masses. Midnight orgies. You wouldn’t believe the half of it.” And on that last point at least he was absolutely right.

I left the Swan and drove straight out of the town. I’d thought I might take a look at Whistler’s Cot, but, when it came to the point, I no longer needed to. An encounter with some exuberant family on a bargain break delighted to report they hadn’t seen any ghosts would have constituted one dose of reality too many. I’d gone to Kington to close a chapter in my life. And I left confident of having done so.

I could have stopped in Sapperton on the way back to Petersfield and visited Rowena’s grave as well as her mother’s. It would only have been a few miles off my route if I’d gone through Gloucester. As in normal circumstances I would have done. But these weren’t normal circumstances. So I headed south, through Monmouth and the Forest of Dean, joining the motorway at Chepstow. Crossing the Severn Bridge, I knew better than to glance to my left. Just in case I should see a lone figure standing on Sedbury Cliffs at the end—or the beginning—of a journey. Instead, I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead. And didn’t lift my foot from the accelerator.

Most of last summer appears now wholly inconsistent with everything that preceded it and was to follow. At the time, though, my life seemed set on a definite course which, if not ideal, was at least acceptable. Wrangling over small print delayed finalization of the Bushranger deal, but after Adrian and Jennifer had flown to Sydney twice and Harvey McGraw had dragged himself away from a hospitality tent at the Oval Test Match long enough to swagger round the factory with a retinue of financial advisers, the remaining difficulties were ironed out and a definitive set of terms put together. Adrian let it be known that we’d take a formal and final vote on the offer at a board meeting scheduled for the twenty-third of September.

Since there wasn’t any doubt about the outcome, I laid my own plans. I spent a few days in Brussels early in September, treating various former colleagues to lunch. The consensus among them was that the Director-General could be induced to have me back on virtual parity with the post I’d left in 1990. The official line would be that I’d reluctantly done my bit for the family firm following my brother’s death, but it was now back on its feet and I was therefore eager to return to the fold. As admissions of defeat went, mine seemed likely to be virtually painless.

And so no doubt it would have been. But for the intervention of events I could never have foreseen. From a quarter I thought I’d heard the last of. Even though the world hadn’t. Sarah’s predictions were already being borne out in one form or another. The victims of the Kington killings clearly weren’t going to be allowed to rest in peace. An interview here. An article there. A slow dripfeed of curiosity and scepticism to keep the subject stubbornly alive. But not in
my
heart. I’d buried it. Beneath a dead weight of abandoned uncertainty. Yielded ground. Surrendered memory. The past sloughed off. Surely now I was beyond its reach. Safe and secure.

But no. I wasn’t. Not at all. That wet Friday evening, the tenth of September, it stretched out its hand to tap me on the shoulder. I turned to meet it. And in that instant it reclaimed me.

“Paul?”

He was standing behind me, close enough to seem threatening. Yet in his rain-beaded face there was no hint of violence. Only sorrow and anguish. Previously he’d always been smartly turned out. Now his suit was drenched and crumpled. His shirt gaping at the neck, his tie askew. And there was at least two days’ growth of stubble on his chin. His features were familiar yet not completely recognizable, as if he were some less favoured elder brother of the man Rowena had married, stern and prematurely aged, stooped beneath an unendurable burden.

“This is a surprise, I must say.”

We were in the factory yard, only a few yards from the spot where he’d waylaid me in June. The rain and low cloud were hastening the dusk, but it wasn’t yet dark, as it had been then. And Paul’s mood was utterly different. He moved and spoke slowly, as if his brain distrusted his commands and subjected each of them to scrutiny before putting it into effect.

“How are you?”

“As I am,” he mumbled.

“What can I do for you?”

“Listen to me. That’s all. Somebody has to.”

“Well, I . . .”

“Can we go somewhere?”

“Er . . . Yes. Of course. Where would you—”

“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”

“There’s a pub down the road. We could—”

“No. Somewhere we can be alone.”

“All right. But—”

“Just drive me somewhere. Out of town. In the open. Where I can breathe.”

In view of what had happened the last time we met, I should have felt nervous about being alone with him. But his manner somehow overcame all such concerns. He seemed so weary, so utterly drained, that it wasn’t possible to be afraid of him. Quite the reverse. I pitied him, sensing the grief and despair that had dragged him down to this shabby shuffling mockery of the confident young man I’d first encountered in Biarritz. I wanted to help him. And I knew I could trust him.

We drove out through Steep, past Greenhayes and up the zig-zag road to the top of Stoner Hill. Before we reached the summit, I pulled into one of the lay-bys beneath the trees, where the wooded depths of Lutcombe yawned beneath us through the branches. Night had all but fallen now. Only the dregs of daylight hovered above the hangers. Raindrops fell in random percussion on the roof of the car. Headlamps glared and slid across the windscreen as vehicles passed us. I watched Paul wind down his window, put out his hand to wet his palm, then rub the moisture across his face.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I haven’t been
all right
in a long time. Years, I suppose.”

“Surely not years. When Rowena was alive—”

“It started before she died. Don’t you understand?” He broke off, then resumed in a calmer vein. “No. Of course you don’t. That’s why I came here. To make you understand. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I should have hurt myself, not you. But at least it solves the problem of who to tell. It means you deserve to hear it first.”

“To hear what?”

“The truth I’ve been dodging and evading all these years.”

“What do you mean?”

“I killed her, you see.”

“Nobody killed her, Paul. We can debate where the blame rests. But ultimately it was her decision.”