The Age of Treachery (11 page)

Neither came. Forrester stood there, feeling the rough bark under his palms, letting his eyes become accustomed to the semi-darkness. He tuned out the distant rumble of the buses on the Abingdon Road, the shouts of the barge men and women by the moorings near the pub, the noise of dogs barking; he finally eliminated the noise of his own breath, poised to hear the breathing of the other.

Because he was certain there was another presence, and a hostile one. It was absurd, in one way: he was just a few hundred yards away from a road busy with traffic, and a towpath used by dozens of people. And yet, a sudden rush, the swift downward trajectory of a blade, and his body could be sliding down the bank into the dark waters of the river, drifting away with the current.

The bushes crackled suddenly to his right, and as he’d been taught he launched himself in that direction because any assailant would assume he’d dive away and the blow, if it was coming, would be ill-directed. And then he was slipping sideways in a patch of mud, all balance gone, and as he hit the ground an electric bolt of pain shot up his arm from the elbow and he knew that this was the moment when he would know who had killed David Lyall – immediately before he too met the same fate. Unless…

He rolled sideways out of the trees, rising in one swift movement to face his attacker – and seeing nothing except the shadow of someone crashing through the undergrowth in the opposite direction. He hurled himself to the end of the path that led around the trees but by the time he got to Christ Church Meadow its only occupant was an elderly woman walking her dog.

For a moment he stood, panting, looking this way and that, adrenalin coursing through him; and then retraced his steps to the Head of the River.

* * *

Half an hour later he was in the Eagle and Child pub, where he had arranged to meet Harrison. When he got there the younger man was already surrounded by an excited crowd of Scandinavians, arguing furiously. He was clearly in his element, enjoying the beer, enjoying the company; Forrester could see why he had survived the German POW camps so well and knew he was damn lucky to have Harrison on his side.

As he approached the bar, Harrison jerked his head, indicating a quiet corner on the far side of the room where they could talk later. Forrester ordered a pint of Burton and slid into a dark wooden settle on the far side of the fire, disturbing a slight man with greying hair dozing in the shadows.

“Sorry,” said Forrester, and then recognised him. “Professor Tolkien?”

Tolkien nodded warily and Forrester introduced himself. “I had expected to see you at the saga reading at Barnard the other evening.”

“Ah, yes,” said Tolkien. “I would have been there, but I’d mislaid Rohan.”

“Rohan?”

“Not a real place. Part of something I’m writing. But I found it in the end. Dreadful business. What happened that night, I mean, not my manuscript. I’m always muddling them.”

“Listen, Professor, could I talk to you about that? I’m a friend of Gordon Clark. I believe he’s innocent and I’m trying to find out what really happened.”

“Well if ever someone needed someone who believed in him, it’s Dr. Clark. But I’m not sure how
I
can help.”

“It’s about Arne Haraldson,” said Forrester. “You know about his visit?”

“Yes, Bitteridge told me.”

“Well, he’s gone back to Norway now, but before he did he told me that Lyall had promised to show him some kind of manuscript, possibly a Norse saga.” Tolkien sat up straighter. “I was wondering,” Forrester went on, “if Lyall ever mentioned to you that he had such a manuscript?” Tolkien’s piercing blue eyes glinted with the sort of enthusiasm his fictional dwarves showed for gold.

“He did not,” he said. “Needless to say I would have been very interested to hear about such a thing. Do you know which saga it was?”

“No, I’m not even sure it
was
a saga – that’s just a guess. But perhaps you could tell me – are there certain Norse works that are particularly sought after?”

Tolkien smiled gently. “We are talking about a violent and bloodthirsty people,” he said. “Unfortunate things often happened to their literary productions. For example, we would love to get our hands on the
Færeyinga
sagas, the story of the conquest of the Faroe Islands, which dates from about 1200; we know of the manuscript’s existence only from references in other sagas. We’d also love to find the original version of the
Karlamagnús
saga. And during the thirties your own Master made his name with his brilliant reconstruction of the lost books of the
Heimskringla
– the volumes referred to by Snorri Sturluson.”

“The
Heimskringla
?”

“Stories of the Norwegian kings. There’s a particularly dramatic passage about the sacking of Konungahella, which has survived. I often recite it to my students.”

Tolkien’s eyes were sparkling now; it was almost as if he could see the flashing swords and the burning timbers as he spoke and Forrester knew that given half a chance the scholar would launch into a recitation. Indeed, in other circumstances he’d have delighted in the experience, but now came the most delicate area.

“One odd thing Haraldson told me was that Lyall had claimed there was some supernatural significance to the manuscript.”

“In that it dealt with gods and monsters?”

“No,” said Forrester. “In that it contained satanic incantations. Does that sound probable?” A shadow crossed Tolkien’s face.

“Foolish people have sometimes tried to pervert the beliefs of the Nordic peoples. It was a fad in the thirties among certain fanatics, not just in Germany but also in Scandinavia itself.”

“You mean the Nazis?”

“And their like, yes.”

“But if Lyall had come across such a manuscript, perhaps while he was in Scandinavia during the war, you’d have been a natural person for him to have discussed it with?”

“Either myself or Winters, of course.”

“The Master didn’t mention it, so I assume he didn’t ask him. Which is strange, because Norse literature wasn’t Lyall’s field, so he’d have had to consult somebody.”

“Perhaps he wanted to keep the discovery to himself?”

“Then why tell Haraldson about it?”

“True enough. But Haraldson never saw it?”

“No. He searched Lyall’s rooms and was attacked before he found anything.”

“What a pity. So the manuscript has gone missing.”

“And the question is,” said Forrester, “who took it?”

“Missing Norse manuscript?” said a voice. “I’d search Tollers’ pockets first. He’s probably copying it wholesale into the saga of Bingo Baggins.”

A large, plump, cheerful man wreathed in pipe smoke squeezed onto the settle with two pints and thrust one at Tolkien. “After all, he has to find some way to finish it.”

“Thank you, Jack,” said Tolkien. “It’s always stimulating to be accused of plagiarism.” But he spoke without heat and clinked his mug against the other man’s. “And it’s not Bingo now, it’s Frodo. More heroic.”

“Much more,” said Clive Lewis. “Is the end in sight?”

“Not even a glimmer,” said Tolkien sadly. “You pushed me so hard in 1944 I got the hobbits right into Mordor; but as a result I was so exhausted everything ground to a halt, where it remains. Perhaps I’ll go back to the beginning and start afresh.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Lewis vehemently. “You’ve done it far too often and all you get is another half-finished draft.”

“Not all of us write as easily as you do,” said Tolkien without rancour.

“Ease of composition is not your problem, Tollers,” said Lewis. “Your problem is thinking you have to get every detail right before you can go on. But you don’t have to do that – you should just fix the details up when the book’s finished. Stop wasting time on all those maps and charts and phases of the moon.” He turned to Forrester. “I’ve caught him spending an entire morning calculating what direction the wind ought to be blowing during a battle!”

“I want people to believe it,” said Tolkien, “and that means it’s got to be real.”

“It’s not real,” said Lewis, “it’s a story. And nobody will either believe or disbelieve it if they never get to read it. So do Bingo or Frodo or whoever he is a favour and finish it before I beat you to it with Narnia.”

“Ah, Narnia,” said Tolkien with a hint of reproach, and fell silent. Sensing a sudden tension between the two men, Forrester decided this was the perfect moment to make his excuses, thank him for his help and go across to join Harrison. The Scandinavians had gone.

“Sorry to ask you to wait,” said Harrison, “but I was still working on them.”

“It was a profitable diversion,” said Forrester. “I’ll tell you about it later. But were they any use, your Norsemen? Had any of them met Lyall?”

“Not only had they met him,” said Harrison, “but he’d been asking them to help him translate bits of medieval Norse.”

“How very odd,” said Forrester. “Why?”

“How do you mean, odd?” asked Harrison. “What’s odd about it? They were Norwegians.”

“He was asking
students
about the Norse sagas,” said Forrester, “when he could have consulted J.R.R. Tolkien, sitting right there by the fire. Or Michael Winters, for that matter, in his own college!”

Harrison took a thoughtful pull at his pint.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

“Did any of them report anything in these translations that referred to Satanism?”

“Satanism?”

“Apparently Lyall tried to increase Haraldson’s interest in the manuscript by hinting it held some kind of clue to communicating with the Devil.”

“Well I never,” said Harrison. “No, none of them mentioned anything about that.”

“Alright, then,” said Forrester, “so let’s concentrate on laying out a timeline.”

“Absolutely,” said Harrison and opened his notepad.

“Lyall goes on a mission to Norway in 1943,” said Forrester as Harrison wrote. “The mission’s betrayed, he goes on the run, eventually escapes with the help of some kind of aristocrat. Did he tell any of the students about that, by the way?”

“None of them mentioned it.”

“Interesting. Perhaps it was a painful memory. Anyway, he gets back home and ultimately returns to Oxford, where he begins talking to people about an Old Norse manuscript he’d picked up.”

“Hang on,” said Harrison. “He didn’t tell any of those Scandinavians that he had a manuscript. He just asked about specific lines of Old Norse. I got the impression they were typewritten.”

“Typewritten?” said Forrester. “So probably not what the actual Norsemen wrote, but let’s assume they were copied from something they did actually leave behind. And the only person he informs about the manuscript is Arne Haraldson in Oslo, to whom he promises to show it when he comes to visit. Now why would he do that? What’s special about Haraldson?”

“Perhaps he wanted to consult him about it before publishing it?”

“In which case why not go to Winters or Tolkien? And anyway, it wasn’t Lyall’s field; publishing it would have done him no academic good whatsoever.”

“Might he have wanted to
sell
the manuscript to Haraldson?” said Harrison. “Because of the occult material it contained?”

“Possibly. I just spoke to Professor Tolkien about that. We know the Nazis were obsessed with Norse mythology and the occult. What I hadn’t realised until he mentioned it was that there were certain people in Scandinavia before the war with the same unhealthy enthusiasm.”

“And Haraldson could have been one of them?”

“That’s what I’m beginning to suspect.”

“Where is he now?”

“On a boat back to Norway, as far as I know,” said Forrester. “Unless…” and suddenly the encounter on the riverbank came vividly back.

“What?”

“Nothing, I was just speculating. And we mustn’t get carried away with Haraldson: there’s another possible motive we mustn’t forget.”

“What’s that?” said Harrison.

“The fact that Lyall was betrayed during that mission,” said Forrester. “Somebody sold him out to the Germans – presumably a Norwegian. And of course, some of those students you were just talking to were Norwegian.”

“Good Lord,” said Harrison, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“What if Lyall had some piece of information that might lead him to identify the chap who informed on him? And that person realised it and did away with him before he could speak out?”

“That’s a pretty powerful motive,” said Harrison. “If it’s true.”

“It’s just speculation,” said Forrester. “But now you’ve got to know these chaps, you might want to keep in touch with them, see if any of them thinks that one of the others has something in his past he wants to keep dark.”

“Will do,” said Harrison.

“But be careful,” said Forrester. “You don’t want to provoke somebody into doing to you what he did to Lyall.”

“No, indeed,” said Harrison with a grin. “I’ll avoid it at all costs. But in the meantime, tell me how you got on with Dr. Norton. Do you still think he’s a possible suspect?”

“He made no bones about being glad Lyall was dead – but he trotted out a pretty good alibi. He’d been working with a student in the lab – somebody called Margaret Roberts. If you get a chance you might check with her whether he’s telling the truth.”

“Consider it done,” said Harrison.

“He also suggested I had a closer look at Dorfmann, because he was suspicious about how he kept his university job without joining the Nazi Party, and Calthrop, because he’s setting up an anti-Soviet spy network.”

“Is he now?”

“And he urged me to consider any number of jealous husbands who might be harbouring grudges.”

“A positive avalanche of suspects.”

“Plus, he directed me to Alice Hayley, one of the long list of women Lyall was taking to bed. Her I’ve spoken to.”

“And do you think she might have done him in?”

“No, not really. But she was the one who told me about the Scandinavian students, which is why I got you to come here.”

Harrison speared a pickled onion from the jar on the counter and looked at it thoughtfully. “Would I be being unduly suspicious if I pointed out that Norton seems to have gone out of his way to provide you with a large number of other people to think about apart from himself?”