Dying to Tell (35 page)

"What was that?" said Yamazawa, his voice slurred with shock.

"It sounded like a bomb."

To me also."

I ran towards the fence, Yamazawa following. Once through the gap, I had a clear view down the alley beside the warehouse Ledgister and I had driven along a few minutes earlier. It was also the route he and Carl had driven away by.

There wasn't much left of the car beyond its wheels. The rest was twisted metal, shattered glass and black smoke fed by hungry flames. A second explosion of the petrol tank, I guessed went off as we watched. The fire roared more angrily than ever. Somewhere close to the heart of it I could see two dark shapes that might have been the driver and his passenger. Might once have been, anyway. They were just melting flesh and charring bone now. And the letter in Ledgister's pocket .. . was ash on the breeze.

Townley," I shouted. "Where are you? Show yourself."

"What are you saying, Lance?" Yamazawa stared at me, clearly in some doubt about my sanity.

"Isn't it obvious? We've been driving around all morning with a bomb on board. Townley must have followed us from Canning Town somehow and waited until he could get Gordon and Carl in one hit before setting it off. Which means he must be close by. "Townley," I shouted again. "Come out here where I can see you."

I watched and waited. The gulls wheeled and swooped above us. The wreck of the car blazed on. But Townley didn't step obligingly into view. Maybe, I thought, he was already making his escape. Or maybe he was preparing his move against us. But no. He didn't need to take any more risks. Ledgister was dead and the letter destroyed. Townley had finished the job. And now he'd slipped back into the shadows Rupe had stupidly tried to flush him out of.

"If we stay here, Lance," said Yamazawa, 'the police will find us. Other people will have heard the explosion. They will come soon, I think."

He was right. We couldn't afford to linger. We had to go.

We could already hear the wail of approaching sirens away to the east when we reached the riverside path and struck south towards Greenwich. The Naval College and the park behind it were visible ahead of us. I tried to give Yamazawa a coherent account of what had happened, holding nothing back except the chilling suspicion I couldn't rid myself of about the author of the letter I'd had so briefly in my possession. He didn't need to know that. What use was the suspicion, anyway, now the letter was gone for ever? What use, come to that, was my agreement with Townley, now he'd wreaked a sharper and swifter vengeance on Ledgister than setting him up on three murder charges would have amounted to? The answer, in both cases, was none at all.

"According to the radio," the barman of the first pub we came to in Greenwich helpfully informed us, 'a bomb's gone off near the Dome."

That a fact?"

"It'll be that IRA splinter group, I guess."

"Probably."

"Well, let's face it, mate, who else could it be?"

Who else indeed? Yamazawa and I shambled wearily away to a quiet table by the window and drank in silence for several soothing minutes. Then Yamazawa went up to the bar and bought another round. When he came back, he said simply, "What happens now, Lance?"

"I was afraid you'd ask me that."

"Is it over?"

"For Townley it is. He's neatly disposed of a treacherous son-in-law and an incriminating letter. He's in the clear. Which means Mayumi and Haruko are in the clear too. He won't go after them now."

"What about you?"

"I'd rather not think about that subject, if it's all the same to you."

"But you must think."

"Yeh. Just not yet, though."

We caught a bus heading for Russell Square and sat in the front seat on the top deck as it trundled west through Deptford and Rotherhithe beneath leaden, spitting skies. Yamazawa recounted how he'd been abducted grabbed and bundled into the boot of a car by two men he now knew to be Gordon Ledgister and Carl Madron as he wandered down Kingsway late on Sunday morning, bound for Waterloo and his afternoon at Hampton Court. They'd kept him chained to a pillar in a derelict warehouse he now knew was in North Greenwich. After the phone call they'd forced him to make to the Arundel, he'd been gagged most of the time and convinced that they meant to kill him.

"It was strangely calming, Lance, to know that, if it was going to happen, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. But not knowing why that I did not like. I asked them, when the gag was off, but they told me nothing. One time I listened to them talking, though, when they were outside, by the car. They must have thought I would not be able to hear. I remember Carl said, "You promise me this letter is the key to everything?" And Ledgister replied, "The key to more than you can possibly imagine." Do you know what he meant by that, Lance?"

"Maybe."

Yamazawa waited for me to continue, then realized I wasn't about to. "What, then?"

"Are you sure you want me to tell you?"

"Of course."

"OK." I leaned towards him and whispered into his ear. "The Kennedy assassination."

His eyes widened. He turned in the seat and stared at me. Truly?"

"I think so, yeh." I looked ahead. "For what that's worth now."

"Do me a favour when you get back to the Arundel, Toshi, will you?" I asked as the bus started across Waterloo Bridge.

"Sure. What is it?"

"Phone your brother. Ask him to tell Mayumi the letter's been destroyed and everything's all right. She and Haruko are safe. They can go back to Tokyo and live in peace."

"And maybe take on a redundant shipping executive as a washer-up at the Golden Rickshaw?"

"They could do worse."

"What should Shintaro tell them about you?"

"Tell him to say I'm fine."

"Fine?

"Yeh."

That is not exactly true, is it, Lance?"

"No." I shrugged. "But there's no sense them worrying about it, is there?"

We parted at the bus stop in Russell Square. Yamazawa was planning to head straight for the Arundel and entertain Gus with a convoluted tale of misadventure based on falling into bad company in a pub in Thames Ditton. He reckoned Gus for one would be highly entertained by it.

"When will you go back to Japan?"

"Soon, I think."

"I probably won't see you again before you leave."

"I still do not know what you are going to do, Lance."

"Maybe that's because I don't know either."

"Would it help if I wished you luck?"

"It wouldn't do any harm."

"Good luck then, my friend."

Another bus took me from Russell Square to the Polaris, where I devoted all of five minutes to packing and checking out, then walked across to Paddington station. On the way, I passed a newspaper stall and couldn't help noticing the headline on the late edition of the Evening Standard: CAR BOMB NEAR DOME KILLS TWO. Adhering to the principle that newspaper reports of an incident always seem inaccurate to those with personal experience of it, I decided against buying a copy. I got to the station just in time to catch a train for the West Country. Flooding on Sedgemoor meant it wouldn't be going via Castle Gary. I'd have to take a bus from Taunton to finish my journey. It might be late it might be very late when I got where I was going. Not that it really mattered. Because, in so many other ways, it was already far too late.

SOMERSET

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It wasn't, as it turned out, that late when I reached Street. But a wet Monday night in November isn't exactly carnival time, especially in a town with Quaker traditions. The streets were deserted.

The Two Brewers pub in Leigh Road wasn't doing a roaring trade either. Just as well it was the drink I popped in for, not the company. Although a ghostly kind of company was waiting for me. Rupe and I had quaffed our first under-age pints of cider there, back when it was called the Albert. A lot more than the name had changed since. Even so, I'd have happily lingered at the bar but for the knowledge that coming to Street made no sense unless I did what I'd come there to do.

It might as well have been midnight as the middle of the evening in Hopper Lane. A few glimmering lights were the only signs of life housebound life, at that. I groped my way through the dripping rhododendrons to the door of Penfrith and spotted Howard through the sitting-room window, slumped in a chair staring vacantly at the television. Win and Mil were nowhere to be seen. It was less than three weeks since I'd last stood there and I felt about three decades older. A quiet life, I reckoned, was definitely underrated. Howard's response to the knocker was to jump like a startled rabbit and run for cover. When the door was opened by Win I could see him behind her, peering out into the hall from the sitting room. Then I looked at Win and said, "I'm back." And she looked at me with her no-nonsense gaze and took her instant, unspoken measure of me.

"Best come in out of the rain, Lancelot."

"Hello, Howard," I said as I stepped inside. I got some grinning and hissing in return by way of a greeting and the opportunity to notice that his clothes grey cardigan, Durham University sweatshirt, pyjama bottoms and Rupert Bear slippers were exactly the same as he'd been wearing on my previous visit. A sour smell hanging in the hallway suggested there hadn't been a lot of wash days since.

"Go back to your programme, Howard," said Win. "We'll be in the kitchen."

Howard rotated his head several times, as if testing the mobility of his neck, then slowly turned and did as he'd been told.

"Sorry to er... call so late," I said as he vanished from view.

"We've been worried about you." Win didn't look worried, but then her basic expression stern and practical had never encompassed a wide range of emotions, any more than her dress sense had tended to the exotic. She was wearing her usual drab outfit of shapeless sweater (brown) and frayed three-quarter-length skirt (darker brown), enlivened this evening by a pair of doubtless home-knitted mittens (darkest brown of all).

"There have been problems, Win. Keeping in touch .. . just wasn't possible."

"Have you got any news of Rupert?"

"Yes. I have."

"Come through to the kitchen. We'll talk there."

"Where's Mil?"

"Behind you."

I started nearly as violently as Howard had a few minutes earlier when I realized that Mil was indeed standing directly behind me, having presumably come down the stairs without my noticing. She was sporting a different colour way of Win's ensemble (more mushroom than chocolate, sans mittens) and an apprehensive expression that suggested she'd already decided my news was bad. "Lance," she said simply, with an emphatic nod.

"Hello, Mil."

"Let's get out of the hall," said Win. "It'll be warmer in the kitchen."

This much was undeniably true, thanks to the range, although that was the full extent of the room's attractions. Washing-up was piled in the sink, the tap dripping per-cussively into a soiled saucepan, out of time with the faster drip of a leak in the scullery roof, beneath which a bucket was nearing the half-full stage. Someone Win, I assumed had been cleaning the silver cutlery. Knives, forks and spoons, some gleaming, some dull, were lined up alongside a cloth and tin of Goddard's polish on a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen table. Why the ancestral silver had struck her as more urgently in need of attention than the washing-up was a mystery beyond plumbing, but of such mysteries the Alder household wasn't short.

"Will you have some tea, Lancelot?"

"Yeh. Thanks. Why not?"

"See to that, Mil."

"Before you do, there's something I've got to tell you. Perhaps you should sit down."

Both sisters stared at me in a taut moment of silent scrutiny, while the tap and the leaking roof dripped and the television blared on in the sitting room, muffled by the thick walls between. Then Win said, "Have you found him?"

"Sit down. Please."

I took a chair on one side of the table. Win first, then Mil, sat opposite me. Win carefully folded the cloth over the cutlery, then looked at me and said, "What have you to tell us, Lancelot?"

"Rupe's dead."

At first, there seemed to be no reaction. They went on staring at me. Then Mil stifled a sob. Tears filled her eyes. Win swallowed hard. For her, tears apparently weren't an option. "You're sure?"

"Oh yes."

"How did it happen?"

"He was murdered. In San Francisco."

There was another sob from Mil. To my surprise, Win crossed herself and whispered something in Latin under her breath, then said simply, "When?"

Twenty-first of September."

The twenty-first of September?"

"Yeh."

"Not the twenty-second?"

"No."

"Strange. It was the morning of the twenty-second when I ... sensed it."

It was stranger than she knew. I suddenly remembered the time difference. The night of the twenty-first in California would have been the morning of the twenty-second in Somerset. "What did you sense, Win?"

"Loss." She turned to her sister. "Make the tea, dear." Calling Mil dear was, I reckoned, as much as she could manage by way of sisterly consolation.

Mil got up, scraping her chair on the floor, and moved mechanically to the range.

"You never told me about this sensation before," I said to Win.

"I hoped it meant nothing." She nodded to herself. "I hoped in vain."

"I'm sorry."

Thank you." She seemed to remember something important. "He was your friend as well."

"He was."

"Who murdered him?"

"A man called ... Townley."

Mil gasped and grabbed the rail of the range. Win looked round sharply at her, then back at me. Townley?"

"Stephen Townley. Recognize the name?"

"No."

"Come on, Win. It's pretty obvious Mil does, even if you don't."

"Mil knows nothing."

"Nothing? The word came out of Mil's mouth almost as a wail. There was horror as well as grief on her face as she stared at her sister. "How can you say that?"

"Keep your voice down. Do you want Howard in here?"

"I'll keep my voice down," I said levelly. "You sent me to find your brother. That's what I did."