Out of the Sun (7 page)

The driver's door slammed. A tall thick-set man in tweed jacket and cavalry twills rounded the bonnet and strode towards the shop. He had low-peaked dark hair slicked down in an old-fashioned style. His face was set and flushed, cheeks quivering with the force of his tread. His eyes were small and intent, swivelling to meet Harry's as he walked. He was everything Harry had feared Ken Hewitt would be: tough, remorseless and accustomed to getting his own way. Harry had met his type before, all too often. More often, he sometimes thought, than he deserved. It was already certain that this encounter would not go well.

"Harry Barnett?" The words were out of Hewitt's mouth before the door had clunked shut behind him.

"Yes. You must be Ken Hewitt."

That's right." He marched up to the counter, seemingly in doubt until the last moment whether to haul Harry out from behind it. But both of them could feel the weight of Iris's attention through the glass. The only force they could afford to use was that of personality. In which department Harry was heavily outgunned. "I've decided to put a stop to your meddling in my wife's affairs."

"I'm not meddling."

"Hope told us about your visit. Don't you call impersonating a non-existent relative meddling?"

"I am a relative."

"Not in law. Not in practice. And not in my opinion."

"An opinion you plan to impose on Iris, no doubt."

"You're the one imposing, Barnett. And it's got to stop."

"I don't think that's for you to say. If you were Claude, it might be different. But Claude's dead. I reckon that leaves me the closest to a father David has."

"You reckon? I'll tell you what I reckon He broke off as the man from the pick-up came in and sauntered over to the magazine rack. Hewitt lowered his voice and leant across the counter. "I love Iris. I respect her. I don't think you've ever done either. Otherwise she wouldn't have kept you at arm's length. Leave her alone'

"All I'm trying to do is '

"Make yourself seem important. Make Iris think you matter. But you don't. You never have and you never will. You're just a mistake she made too long ago to be worth remembering."

"Where does that leave David?"

"Where he's been for the past month. Beyond help. Especially yours."

"Does Iris think the same?"

"She was just coming round to thinking it when you crawled out from under a stone."

Harry smiled grimly. "Sorry about that."

"You will be. If you don't crawl back there."

That's a threat, right?"

"I'll get a court order if necessary, Barnett. I'll stop you interfering. One way or the other."

Harry sighed. "What did she ever see in you?"

"What do you think? Look in the mirror and work it out."

"You want him switched off, don't you?"

"I want him put out of his misery. I want Iris to stop hoping for what can never happen and to start mourning her son. You're an obstacle to that process. One I intend to remove."

"Why do you think he took the overdose?"

"Stay out of it."

"Or did someone .. . make him take it?"

"Don't try to put crazy thoughts like that into Iris's head, Barnett. I'm serious. Don't'

"This lot and twenty Rothmans king size," said the man from the pick-up, dumping a four-pack of cokes, two sausage rolls, a Mars bar and a girlie magazine between them. "Plus ten quids' worth of four star." He glanced warily at Hewitt. "Not interrupting, am I?"

"No," said Hewitt levelly. "We've finished."

Harry watched him leave, then turned to look out at the car. But Iris was staring straight ahead at the list of recommended tyre pressures hanging on the boundary wall of the forecourt. And she went on staring at it as Hewitt climbed into the driver's seat and started away. They exchanged neither word nor glance. For Harry it was a fleeting victory to set against looming defeat.

"Do you rent out videos, mate?" asked the man Harry was supposed to be serving.

"Er .. . yes. Over there." He pointed to the rack.

"Oh, right. Only, I was wondering if they'd brought out the story of your life on video. Sounds like it could be a real corker. Bit of a change from all that sex and violence. Know what I mean?"

ELEVEN

Harry trudged homeward along Scrubs Lane in a mood matched by the sullenness of the slow-moving clouds. This, he supposed, was how it ended: in a creeping acceptance of the inevitable. He would go to the hospital tomorrow afternoon and make his peace with Iris. He would let her decide what was best for David and respect her decision. He would let his resentments and his suspicions die with David. And then? Why then, no doubt, he would get very very drunk.

Unfortunately, the small matter of twenty-four hours lay between him and this pragmatic acceptance of other people's wisdom. Worse still, it was Sunday, which meant the Stonemasons' was not yet open. So, there was nothing for it but to return to the solitude of his flat and wait for seven o'clock. It was just as well, he reflected as he turned into Foxglove Road, that he did not own a cut-throat razor. Otherwise, lying on his bed while Songs of Praise seeped up through the floorboards to a back-beat of next door's reggae music might be just what was needed to tip him over the brink.

Songs of Praise had not in fact started when he entered the house. Harry was not sure whether this was good news or bad, but his consideration of the point was soon replaced by puzzlement. A letter was waiting for him on the hall table, where Mrs. Tandy normally left his post. But this was Sunday. How could there be any? He picked it up and squinted at the handwritten address. It was not from his mother. Or from Zohra. Then who? He did not recognize the hand. And the postmark was too smudged to decipher. He looked into the sitting room and flapped the envelope at Mrs. Tandy, who glanced up reluctantly from the Peter James horror novel her niece had sent her for her birthday.

"Where did this come from, Mrs. T?"

"I don't know, Harry. It arrived just after you left for work. Perhaps a neighbour dropped it round. You know how many wrong deliveries we've had since our regular postman retired."

"Can't say I'd noticed."

That's because you get so little post."

"You mean I should be grateful for small mercies?"

"Perhaps you should. Now, do you mind? I'm in the middle of a decapitation."

Reckoning that might mean he would be spared at least a few hymns, Harry started slowly up the stairs, opening the envelope as he went. There was a newspaper cutting inside, folded in three, but no note or letter to indicate who had sent it. Closing the door of his flat behind him, he propped himself against it and unfolded the cutting. It was The Sunday Times of three weeks ago, the top half of an inner page sporting a four-column headline: Forecasting scientists meet with unforeseen accidents. Eagerly, Harry read the article beneath.

The death last Tuesday of Dr. Marvin Kersey, a Canadian biochemist, brings to three the number of scientists formerly employed by Globescope Inc." the Washington-based forecasting corporation, to have been struck by fatal or near-fatal accidents in recent weeks. The President of Globescope, Byron Lazenby, has dismissed suggestions of a link between the rash of accidents and their victims' work for his organization as 'fanciful nonsense' and so far there is nothing beyond coincidence to connect them.

But the coincidence is nevertheless compelling. On September 13, Dr. David Yenning, an English mathematician, was found in a diabetic coma in his room at the Skyway Hotel, Heathrow Airport. He had apparently taken an overdose of insulin. Nine days later, Gerard Mermillod, a French sociologist, fell in front of a Paris Metro train at Pigalle station and was killed. Witnesses described the nature of his fall as 'bizarre'. Then, last Tuesday, Dr. Marvin Kersey was found dead at his apartment in Montreal. Police believe he was poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes emanating from a faulty central-heating system. All three had worked for Globescope as members of their specialist scientific staff until April of this year. Mr. Lazenby attributed their simultaneous departure to 'normal turnaround'. Dr. Kersey had subsequently returned to a lectureship at McGill University, Montreal, from which he had originally been seconded to Globescope, while M. Mermillod had taken up a post at L'lnstitut des Hautes fitudes Scientifiques in Paris. Dr. Yenning held no academic position at the time of his illness.

Staff at Globescope have been instructed to say nothing about their former colleagues. One employee who was prepared to talk off the record said everyone hoped these events really were coincidental. The thought that they might not be, he admitted, 'makes you kind of jumpy'. No plausible motives for suicide have been put forward so far and neither the Paris nor the Montreal police are thought to regard the circumstances of the deaths as suspicious. Dr. Yenning remains in a coma at the National Neurological Hospital in London. His condition is described as 'grave but stable'. At Globescope, meanwhile, the task of predicting the future is beginning to look a whole lot simpler than interpreting the present.

Less than an hour later, Harry was striding along the corridor leading to room E318 at the National Neurological Hospital. The visit seemed unlikely to serve much purpose, but his thoughts were now so restless that physical activity, whether purposeful or not, was essential. The phone call and the letter; David's coma and the deaths of two other men; at least five scientists dismissed from Globescope last spring, of whom two were dead and one nearly so: all, surely, part of a pattern. Iris must have realized that. But she had chosen to keep it from him. She had pretended there was no pattern, that David's illness was a tragic but uncomplicated misfortune. What had she said? "I'm not going to let you invade his life." It had seemed fair enough at the time, but now .. . Everyone was so very eager to let David die, yet so very reluctant to understand what had happened to him. Their unanimity made Harry's blood boil. Where were they when he needed them? If Harry himself had only known he had a son, he would have He pulled up sharply, barely avoiding a collision with a man leaving the room just s he was about to enter it. Approximately Harry's height and weight, with more muscle and less fat, he had a handsome if slightly battered face, large blue eyes and short spiky blond hair. He could have passed for a night-club bouncer but for the dark Savile Row suit and red silk tie. He cocked one eyebrow and ran a glance of fleeting scrutiny over Harry, then brushed past and strode away.

Harry stepped into the room and glanced across at David. There was no change in his blank and peaceful expression, no hint of awareness, however slight. He could not hear, he could not see, he could not respond. He remained dead to the world. But maybe, deep inside, not quite dead to his own father. Harry sat down beside the bed, reached out and laid his hand over David's where it was resting on the blanket. "I'll try, son," he murmured. "I truly will. I'll see your mother tomorrow. And your doctor if possible. It's time I found out exactly '

David's doctor. Of course. The man he had nearly bumped into had the right authoritarian air to be a consultant. And Harry had let the opportunity slip through his fingers. Swearing under his breath, he jumped up and rushed into the corridor. But the fellow was nowhere to be seen. A nurse was bustling about behind the previously empty counter further along, though, Harry waved and hurried down to speak to her. He was known to the staff now and she gave him a welcoming smile.

"Hello, Mr. Barnett. You're in late."

"Not the only one. Was that David's specialist I just met leaving his room?"

"No. Mr. Baxendale won't be in again till tomorrow. That was just another visitor. David's been very popular today."

"Who was he?"

"He didn't give a name. A colleague, I think he said."

"A colleague of David's?"

"Yes."

"From Globescope?"

"Globescope? What's that?"

The nurse's uncertainty made no difference. If the man was a colleague of David's, he had to be from Globescope. And if so .. . But a jog as far as the main entrance yielded only severe breathlessness and dismal news from the receptionist, who vaguely recalled a man matching the description Harry panted out leaving a few minutes earlier. Outside, in the drizzly London night, there was naturally no sign of him.

Harry lit a cigarette to ease his frustration and stood smoking it in the shelter of a pillared porch looking out across Queen Square. A missed chance to speak to somebody with inside knowledge of Globescope was bad enough. But a more tantalizing possibility was already worming its way into his thoughts. Could David's unidentified colleague also be responsible for the letter and the telephone call? Could he be the nameless messenger who seemed to know more about Harry's past than Harry did himself?

,

TWELVE

"We'll see what your mother has to say about this, shall we, David? I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, you know. Ken could be the real problem. I realize that. I expect you do too. Is he pressurizing her, do you think? Only he's certainly trying to pressurize me. But don't worry. In my case, it isn't going to work." Harry smiled in acknowledgement of his own stubbornness. It was stubbornness, after all, that had kept him at the hospital since mid-morning, awaiting the maternal visit David was bound to receive, a visit that would give Harry the chance to put to Iris some of the questions that were troubling him. He could have telephoned her, of course. But she might have refused to speak to him. He could have gone out to Chorleywood to see her. But she might have slammed the door in his face. Ken certainly would have. Except Harry was hoping Ken had gone back up to Manchester to captain his segment of industry. All of which left David's hospital room as the most certain ground on which to confront Iris.

Spending most of Monday there had already enabled Harry to squeeze some information out of David's specialist. But Mr. Baxendale, a kindly if cautious man, had only confirmed his worst fears. "There is no realistic prospect of a recovery from such a profound coma, Mr. Barnett. Sooner or later, Mrs. Hewitt is going to have to decide how to deal with that fact." As for the alleged neuro biological expertise of Donna Trangam, Baxendale was politely dismissive. "She visited David once, shortly after his admission, and offered me her fairly radical opinion on coma treatment. But she had absolutely no clinical experience. Besides, she returned to the United States almost immediately thereafter and I haven't heard from her since."