The Truth (28 page)

To get this far had taken a couple of beers, and it was when Trickett returned with a third that the story took a very different turn.

‘Did the partnership come to anything?’

Trickett wiped a finger across his upper lip before he spoke.

‘Yes. But not exactly as I’d hoped.’

His voice had lost some of its military briskness and for the first time he seemed a touch unsure of himself. The dog wandered in and sniffed the air before collapsing at his master’s feet.

‘I’ve never spoken about this,’ Trickett began, looking up sharply at Mabbut, ‘and your people did promise me that—’

‘My people?’

‘The chap who rang. Said he was working for you.’

For a moment both men looked confused. Trickett made to get up.

‘I wrote the name down somewhere. I can find it for you.’

Mabbut motioned for him to stay in his chair.

‘Anyway, I made it clear to this chap that I didn’t want to be named.’

‘Any special reason?’

‘I’m a very private man, as you can see. I’m not interested in settling any scores. But if a story is to be told then it should be the truth.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you. Hamish and I fell out over a woman. It seems no big thing nowadays but it cost me a lot of money and a great deal of credibility. At the time my wife was also my colleague. She was Yugoslavian, Slovenian. She’d heard about my work on the anginal valves and was doing similar work herself, so we corresponded. I went over to Ljubljana to meet her. We became . . .’

Trickett cleared his throat and his eyes went down to the carpet.

‘. . . we became very fond of each other. Bettina came to London in 1976 and we married the following year. She was a clever woman. And she was beautiful.’

He gave a short, rueful laugh.

‘I didn’t really stand a chance. I had my head down, literally, going over the designs again and again, testing and retesting, to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they would work. Bettina was doing the work alongside me, but she was less . . . single minded than me. She liked to mix work and play.’

The dog let out a sudden high-pitched exhalation and stretched its legs out across the carpet. Trickett did something similar, pulling himself up, bracing his shoulders, and looking Mabbut full in the eye. When he spoke the military precision had returned.

‘To cut a long story short, Melville seduced her, and took from me not only my wife but the money we’d invested in the development of the valves. Three years later, someone else came up with a suspiciously similar technology. I thought of taking legal action but what was the point? Bettina never came back to me. I returned to medical research. Developed a lightweight heart–lung connector. I was given a knighthood in 1989 so I’ve nothing to complain about. But when I was told that Hamish Melville was about to be portrayed as the saviour of mankind, I felt it was time to tell my side of the story.’

There was silence in the room. Mabbut scribbled furiously. His shorthand was rusty, and it took him a while to catch up. By the time he’d finished, Trickett had got to his feet and it was clear that he was not keen on having Mabbut in the house a moment longer. Mabbut noticed that his eyes were misty, owing perhaps to the effort of recall.

‘May I ask you—?’

‘If you don’t mind, Mr Mabbut, I’ve many other demands on my time.’

‘I’m sure. Your long experience must be valuable.’

He waved his hand as if swatting a fly.

‘Yes, there are always people who want to get in touch.’

He shuffled across the hall.

‘Still busy?’ asked Mabbut, following.

‘This and that. Brain like mine can never stop thinking.’

They had come to the front door.

‘Well, thank you for seeing me.’

Mabbut felt in his back pocket and handed Trickett a card, more out of duty than expectation.

‘That’s my number, Sir Victor. If you ever need to call me.’

Trickett took it without a glance, and dropped it into a dusty bowl beside the telephone. Then he drew aside a heavy protective curtain and pulled open the door.

They squeaked across the gravel towards the car.

‘I’ll go ahead. Open the gate for you,’ said Trickett.

‘May I ask you one more thing, Sir Victor?’

Trickett stopped and turned.

Mabbut was aware that he was on delicate ground. He couldn’t just say he thought the man was a confused old fraud.

‘You’ll understand that I need to be very thorough when dealing with accusations such as this. Is there anyone else who can . . . corroborate your story? Your wife, maybe?’

Trickett shook his head.

‘My wife died ten years ago.’

Mabbut closed his notebook and was about to get into his car, when Trickett said, ‘There is someone who knew her.’

Mabbut sighed inwardly and pulled out his notebook again.

‘And who would that be?’

For a moment Trickett stared down at the gravel. Then he looked up, but not at Mabbut, at a point somewhere behind him. He moistened his lips. ‘Her daughter. Ursula’s her name. She’s not in this country. Last thing I heard she was in Czechoslovakia.’

Mabbut wrote this down, and looked back at Trickett.

‘Second name?’

‘Galena.’

‘Ursula Galena,’ he repeated, writing it down. ‘Well, thank you.’

‘Don’t you want the surname?’

‘I’m sorry, I thought that was it.’

Trickett shook his head and his face betrayed the merest glimmer of a smile.

‘Ursula Galena Melville.’

SIX

T
he spa town of Karlovy Vary sat prettily in a steep wooded valley. It had been known as Carlsbad for most of its working life, but was renamed at the end of the Second World War when the Germans who had lived there on and off for five centuries were expelled, and the town became part of Yugoslavia, then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. As Mabbut walked down from the station he had a feeling of unreality, of having walked into a Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale. The houses huddled steeply together; the onion-domed towers, the deep-pitched roofs and pink-washed walls could all have been made of gingerbread. The place reminded Mabbut, quite poignantly, of a holiday he had once enjoyed with Krystyna in the mountain villages of southern Poland. It was the first time they’d left the children since they were born. Out of the context of work and home, it had been a magical week. Krystyna used to say that she never wanted to go back to Poland, because she’d never be as happy there again.

He reached the fast-running river that twisted along culverts through the town and walked across a bridge to a picturesque riverside strip filled with tourists. Some were shopping for glass and trinkets, others were being carried round in coaches drawn by ponies with red caps on their ears. Portly waitresses in big skirts brought trays of coffee and chocolate to those who were taking late lunches or early teas outside on the café terraces. Beneath a long classical colonnade, groups of the elderly were waiting in line to take the famous healing waters.

Mabbut found a table and ordered a coffee. He still had Krystyna on his mind, so he took out his notebook and flipped through the last few pages, trying to concentrate on the job in hand.

It was twenty-four hours since he’d seen Trickett. It was a visit he’d found disturbing, for many reasons. That the man had failed to show up on his radar was clearly an omission on his part. On the other hand there had been something odd about it all. Why had this highly confidential, and potentially explosive, information surfaced only now? He’d missed it, but then so, at first, had Latham’s team of researchers, who’d supposedly been working on the Melville file for six months.

The coffee arrived, a plume of milk still vibrating gently on its surface.

Mabbut had never met any of Latham’s researchers. He’d been told they were interns, young graduates hoping for a permanent foothold in the publishing business. On the odd occasions when he’d wanted information from them, he’d had to go through Latham. And then there was Trickett himself. Hardly the most convincing witness. A sad, bitter old man who didn’t want his name to be mentioned. Mabbut’s hunch was that there was some chicanery here, something that fitted uncomfortably well with Latham’s determination to change the tone of the book. Mabbut felt he had to catch up, to try to win back the initiative before it all got out of hand. He had to check out the credibility of Trickett. And he had to check out the existence of this Ursula Melville before anyone else got to her.

There had not been much to go on. A name and a country. Apart from an eighty-five-year-old radio actress called Ursula Melville, Mabbut had drawn a complete blank. He’d been about to give up when, after tapping in her full name, Google had asked whether he’d meant ‘Galena Health Products’. Mabbut had idly clicked again, and this time he sat up. Galena Health Products were produced at a clinic in the Czech Republic. The address was Stara Louka, Karlovy Vary. No telephone or email was given. It was a wild card, a hunch, but he hadn’t been able to let it go.

Mabbut finished his coffee, left the money beneath the saucer and walked across the plaza to a quiet street of boutiques in tall nineteenth-century houses painted in vibrant shades of green, red, pink and blue. It wasn’t a long street and at number 19 Mabbut
found the nameplate he was looking for. ‘Galena Centre for Health and Beauty’. It was in English. He buzzed and was admitted.

Inside everything was cool, white and minimalist. He’d heard about these private sanatoriums. Largely catering to wealthy Russians, they capitalised on the publicly available mineral waters to offer highly private therapy: expensive, exclusive, exhaustive and dedicated to making the rich feel better. Stairs led up to a first-floor reception area.

Mabbut found himself in a long bright room with tan leather sofas and walls hung with framed photos of bodies beautiful. It was an anaesthetised, strangely depersonalised environment which could hardly be more different from anything one would associate with Hamish Melville.

Through force of habit, or perhaps just to make it quite clear that he was not here for a beauty treatment, Mabbut reached into his pocket and took out his notepad. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the tinted mirror behind the reception desk, looking old and furtive, like some elderly detective on his last job. The receptionist was impeccably complexioned, with the pale, immaculate face of a doll. She smiled as best she could.

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning. I’m looking for a Ms Melville.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Ms Melville. Ursula Melville?’

‘We don’t have anyone of that name here.’

‘This
is
the Galena Clinic?’

‘Centre. Yes.’

‘I was told that Ursula Melville worked here.’

She looked puzzled.

‘I don’t think so, no.’

Mabbut was treading water now, about to kick himself for the whole absurd adventure, when the receptionist’s face showed a glimmer of recognition.

‘There is an Ursula
Weitz
.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Who shall I say is calling?’

Mabbut was about to reply when he experienced an almost
out-of-body experience. The door behind the receptionist swung open and he found himself face to face with a tall, imposing woman with a head of golden hair. Instantly he knew who it was. The shrewdness of the eye, the briskness of the glance, the effortless composure. It was as if Hamish himself stood there, albeit white gowned, full bosomed and forty years younger. So when the woman spoke in a soft German accent he was momentarily confused.

‘Yes, sir, how can I help?’

The receptionist gestured redundantly. ‘This is Ms Weitz.’

‘It’s pine extract with the zest of lemon, Mr . . . what was the name again?’

‘Mabbut. Keith Mabbut.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Very nice,’ Mabbut lied, as he took the first sip of the tea. They were sitting together in Ursula Weitz’s office. The walls were lined with photographs of those who had been treated there or, rather, those who had been treated and were happy to have their photographs taken. Mabbut recognised one or two world leaders, and others he was less sure about: actors, sportsmen and women, television celebrities. All wearing the same impenetrable smiles. Smiles like masks, concealing the anxieties that had brought them to the clinic in the first place. Loss of looks, loss of attraction, loss of the power to seduce and beguile.

The awkward initial introductions were over and despite the fact that her existence was a potentially lethal discovery for his book, there was something about Ursula Weitz that gave Mabbut hope. An openness, perhaps. A lack of Trickett’s bitterness.

‘I know who my father is, but I don’t have any contact with him. I must have met him when I was a baby, but I don’t remember anything. My mother, Bettina, she married my stepfather, Felix—’

‘Felix Weitz?’

She nodded.