The Professor of Truth (20 page)

I just managed to stop myself asking what the victim had been wearing, what he looked like. It was perfectly possible that Brian had extracted this information from the police, but I wanted to keep my distance.

“I expect they’ll track him down. Dental records or something. Or someone will report a missing person.”

“You’re probably right,” Brian said. “But that’s assuming he’s local. Poor beggar. Must have just got caught out.”

I changed the subject. “I should get my shovel and give you a hand,” I said. “All that work we put in yesterday was a bit of a waste of time, wasn’t it?”

“We weren’t to know that,” Brian said. “Appreciate your effort, by the way.” He pointed at my grey bin, which had a perfect cube of snow on its lid. “Don’t think we’ll be seeing
those
idlers today. Don’t you bother yourself. I’ll clear your bit of pavement too. I’m enjoying the exercise.” He made a little show of expanding his chest. “Good for the heart. Isn’t that your phone?”

I excused myself and went back in. I made it on the seventh ring.

It was Carol. We hadn’t spoken for weeks, but she didn’t
mess about with preliminaries. She wanted to know if I was all right.

“I’m fine.”

“I just heard a report on the local radio. It said they found a body in the snow over your way.”

“So I gather,” I said.

“They said a middle-aged man. I thought I’d check it wasn’t you.”

“Why would it be me?”

“I don’t know, Alan, but it might have been.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“I was worried, that’s all.”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Carol.”

“Well, I do. I’d like to see you. Can I come over?”

“Not going to work?”

“Campus is closed,” she said. “But the roads aren’t too bad around here, so I can get the car out. What are they like with you?”

I was about to put her off, but changed my mind. I needed to tell someone I trusted about Nilsen. I trusted Carol.

“Driveable, according to Brian next door,” I said. “But don’t try coming into the street or you might not get back out.”

“I’ll be over in a while,” she said. “Do you want me to pick anything up for you?”

“No, thanks. It’ll be nice to see you.”

While I waited for her I wondered what I should do. Should I contact the police, go to the hospital, identify Nilsen’s body? (Of course, it might not be his, but I had little
doubt that it was.) But how
could
I identify him? All I had was a name, which was probably not his real name, and a nationality based on his accent. And how would I even begin to explain our relationship? I could see myself being dragged into a long and tedious process, in which I would have to divulge information I had no wish to divulge to anybody, least of all to the police. Nothing was to be gained from it.

There was an odd irony about the situation. I had never been able to identify Emily and Alice because nothing of them was left to be identified. Nilsen had left his physical shell, but I—the last person, presumably, to see him alive—could not and would not identify him. I wondered if he’d meant to die in the snow, if it was by accident or by choice that he’d been overwhelmed. He came, he delivered what he had to deliver, he left, he died anonymously. Perhaps it was all part of his journey plan.

I chided myself. A man is dead. Where is your sense of humanity, whoever he was and whatever he did?

But I did not feel very charitable towards Ted Nilsen.

Sooner or later, they would discover who he was. And once they had, they would inform the American Consulate in Edinburgh, and wheels would start to turn. They would know or work out who Nilsen really was, and then they would know or work out why he had been where he was and that he must have been on his way to or from me, the troublesome Dr Tealing. Why would he have wanted to see me? Might he have given me sensitive information such as the whereabouts of a protected witness? Whoever had given Nilsen Parroulet’s address would realise that he might have
passed it on. They would try to stop me reaching Parroulet, or warn him or the Australian authorities that I was on my way. At this moment, though—if I could believe Nilsen—nobody knew that I had the address. Nobody
would
know so long as the body remained unidentified. I had this window, perhaps several days, perhaps even a week or two. If I was going to go I had to go now.

By the time Carol arrived I had made up my mind. I told her everything. I told her about Nilsen and what he had given me and what I intended to do. I thought she would try to dissuade me, tell me I was embarking on yet another voyage to disappointment. But she didn’t. “You have to go,” she said. “He’s handed you this thing, whatever it is, and you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s like he’s pointed at a stone and told you to lift it. Of course you must lift it.”

“Even if there’s nothing underneath?”

“Even if. You can afford to go, can’t you?”

I think if I had said no she would have offered to help. “I can’t afford not to,” I said.

We switched on the computer. Finding and booking a flight took twenty minutes. Applying for an electronic visa took another twenty. There was some disruption at the Scottish airports because of the weather but delays were expected to be only temporary. London was clear. Carol said she would drive me to Edinburgh. I could be in Australia in two days’ time.

“I’ll keep an eye on the house while you’re away,” Carol said.

I had visions of men turning up to look for me, getting
into the house, finding Carol here alone. “No, stay away. And let’s go back to yours tonight.”

I packed the small pilot’s case I used for short trips. I didn’t take much in the way of clothes. What I didn’t have I could buy when I arrived.

I closed down the computer, took a last look round the Case. “There’s stuff here I might need,” I said.

“You don’t need any of it,” Carol replied. “All you need is to find him.”

I picked up the external hard drive, asked if she would keep it for me. “Of course.” I locked the house, set the alarm. We set off for her car, parked on a road that had been cleared, a few hundred yards away. As we trudged I thanked her. I said thank you to her so many times in the course of the next few hours that she told me to stop. I said she might be questioned by the police, by the Americans. They would want to know where I had gone. “I won’t tell them anything,” she said. “It might hold things up for a day or two. What are they going to do, torture me?”

“I don’t think it will come to that,” I said.

In the end, it wasn’t about chance. It wasn’t even about choice. I went because if I didn’t … But I had no idea what would or wouldn’t happen if I didn’t. The same fear or hope that drove me always to pick up the phone when I was at home would make me get on the plane to Australia. I knew it would. Nilsen knew it would. That was why he had come to me.

As the years after the bombing had passed without a trial, and then after the trial more years had passed without Khalil Khazar’s conviction being overturned, I had begun to think the unthinkable: that I might die before the truth was known about who had killed Emily and Alice. I hadn’t ever doubted that the truth would come out eventually, but if it came out when I was dead what use would it be to me? Or if it came out long after all of us—all the fathers and mothers and sisters and lovers of the dead—were gone? By then, it wouldn’t really be the truth at all. It would be information, of historical interest only, provided to people untouched by the event. It would be like news of some atrocity in a foreign, distant land, unreal and therefore, in a way, untrue. They would want to feel it, those people, but they wouldn’t be able to, or the feeling would not be sustainable. Human sympathy can only travel so far.

Powerful forces—of governments and other organisations and some individuals—were ranged against the truth being revealed. They would not want the accepted narrative found to be in tatters. This much I did know. But it might still be possible to prove that Khazar had not planted the bomb. And if that could be proved—
only
if that could be proved—then Nilsen’s precious narrative
would
be destroyed and they would have to build another to put in its place. Would that be the true narrative? I could not know, but it could not be more unacceptable to me than the present one.

But Nilsen had said it was good enough, believable enough, for others. It satisfied, insofar as anything could, their need to believe. If I destroyed the present narrative,
what would that do to those people? My mother’s words came back to me: “You’ve become selfish.” Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Karen was right: I thought too much. Perhaps I had made more of it than I should have. Perhaps none of it mattered. I was certain—as certain as I could be—that there was no God. Perhaps George Braithwaite was right and there was also no unblemished truth, no untainted justice. And if these things did not exist, pure and whole, then neither could there be an end to my search for them. And if there could be no end, then let there be an end to it. Let me live the rest of my life without this ceaseless search for something unattainable. Let me not waste what was left to me.

That was what my mother, my sister, Emily’s parents, argued. Yet it could not be done.
I
could not do it. I had to go looking for Martin Parroulet. It was beyond who I was
not
to do this. Nilsen had given me a key and I had to see if there was a lock it would turn.

At the airport check-in desk, after Carol and I had embraced and said our goodbyes, a woman in a blue uniform took my passport and scanned it, took the ticket printout and tapped the details into her computer. She said, “Is it just hand luggage?” “Yes,” I said, and she remarked that I was travelling light for such a long journey. “Yes,” I said again. “Did you pack the bag yourself?” she asked. “Yes.” “Could anyone have interfered with it at any time?” “No.” “Does it contain any sharp objects, any liquids? You won’t be able to take them through security.” “Yes, I know. Nothing like that.” On
the wall behind her was a poster displaying representations of guns, knives, gas canisters and other dangerous objects. I said, “Does anyone ever admit to having any of that stuff in their luggage?” The woman swivelled in her chair, swivelled back, looked at me more intently, as if suspicious of the purpose of my question. “You’d be surprised,” she said. She handed me my boarding pass. “Have a nice trip.” I thanked her and made my way to the barrier where it said
PASSENGERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT
, and joined the queue of people waiting to take off their coats, empty their pockets of coins and keys, remove their belts and subject themselves to the inspection of men and women who were trained to believe that everyone was a possible terrorist, and that none of us was safe.

HE HOTEL ROOM WOULD HAVE BEEN UNBEARABLE
without air conditioning. It was small and comfortless, the en-suite shower needed to be ripped out and replaced, the tiles were cracked and the paintwork scuffed. The air-conditioning unit rattled and roared but the cool air it pumped round the room was merciful. I lay in the centre of the double bed in my underwear, head propped on two inadequate foam pillows, and flicked through the TV channels. I had the volume up loud to contend with the air conditioning and with the bass notes of some live band playing a street or two away. It was ten in the evening. Any minute I expected someone to bang on the door and complain, but no one did. I was on the far side of the world, my body was jumping with exhaustion, but I hoped that if I could force myself to stay awake just a little longer I might sleep right through till morning, oblivious to all noise.

The journey had passed without incident. The flight from London to Singapore and on to Sydney had been tedious but uneventful, and no difficulties had arisen at immigration or passport control—which meant, I presumed, either that Nilsen’s body hadn’t yet been identified or that it wasn’t Nilsen’s or that Parroulet wasn’t here or that nobody cared
that I had touched down. Once or twice I’d looked over my shoulder. I had not seen anyone remotely suspicious, but that of course meant nothing.