Walking in Darkness (45 page)

As he turned to go he almost collided with Gowrie, who had been watching Paul and Cathy, his face the colour of melting cheese, a waxy yellow.

He had obviously heard what Steve said to Vladimir. He caught at his sleeve, urgently said, ‘No, wait! Before you ring anyone I have to get out of here. I can’t be here, I can’t get involved with the British police. You mustn’t even tell them I was here. Keep me out of it. Especially . . . especially the past . . . Don’t tell the police anything about me. Now she’s dead there’s no story. You see that, don’t you? No point in telling anyone all that stuff from thirty years ago. What’s the point of raking up history? It’s all over now. This draws a line under it.’ He gave Sophie a glance, flinched from the bitter contempt in her face, then said hurriedly to Steve, ‘My helicopter’s waiting to get me away. I told them I was leaving shortly. Don’t forget, we have a deal, Colbourne? You won’t regret it.’

Paul made a sound deep in his throat, a fierce snarl of fury. He laid Cathy gently down on the couch and stood up, glaring at Gowrie, his eyes those of a wild animal in bloodlust, the whites red-flecked, the pupils huge, glittering.

‘You aren’t getting out of anything, you bastard – you did this to her! If you hadn’t passed her off as your daughter I’d never have met her and married her. You ruined our lives. This was all your fault, and you aren’t getting away scot-free, so don’t think it. You needn’t start planning how to do some damage-limitation – your political career is finished. And so are you.’

Gowrie was afraid of him, but he had some sort of animal courage, or was desperate enough to outface Paul. He backed, his lip curling in an answering snarl.

‘Do you think I don’t feel responsible? Of course I do, for God’s sake, man! I have feelings, too. Do you think you’re the only one who loved her? She may have been adopted, but I loved her as my daughter for most of her life. This has shattered me. I can’t believe she meant to do it, she wasn’t the suicide type, she was so full of life, this was just a tragic accident. I’ll never get over it, and God knows how I’m going to break the news to my wife and her father – this has been the worst day of my life. But if I stayed, what good would it do? I’d just get embroiled in a big scandal, the newspapers are going to have a field-day over this – God knows what they’ll invent, or guess. I can’t be here when the shit hits the fan. Where would be the point of chucking away my own future, my own life? That won’t bring her back, will it? And I’m sure Cathy wouldn’t want that. She was always right behind me. I can do so much good, don’t you see? If I get elected I could do so much good.’

Paul took him by the throat and shook him like a dog, glaring into his face.

‘You lying bastard – all you’re thinking about, all you’ve ever thought about, is yourself! You don’t care about Cathy, you never have. I’m going to kill you.’

‘Please don’t!’ Sophie cried out. She hated Gowrie too, she would like to kill him herself, but Cathy’s death had used up all her emotions. She wanted no more death, no more grief, no more violence.

Paul looked at her for a long moment in silence, then said gently, ‘Sophie, we never got a chance to know each other, and I think I would have loved you very much . . . you look just like my mother when I was a little boy . . . He destroyed that chance too. It’s all too late, time just ran out. And why should he get away with that? She’s dead. He ought to die.’

‘He doesn’t deserve that much luck,’ Steve said very quietly, and Paul’s head swung his way, staring into his eyes. Steve smiled ironically. ‘Leave him to me. I’ll make sure Cathy gets justice. When I’ve finished telling the world the whole story, Gowrie will be finished, believe me.’

‘You’ll break the story?’ Paul asked, and Steve nodded.

Gowrie went white. ‘You can’t do that. You made a deal with me. Are you crazy? You don’t think the network will let you put this out? Have you forgotten how much influence I have? My friends won’t let you do it.’

‘What friends? What influence?’ Steve mocked him. ‘Now Cathy is dead, so are you, Gowrie. Your wife’s father will be the first to hear the whole story, and after that you’re finished. Nobody will lift a finger to save you once the Ramsey family turn against you.’

Desperately, Gowrie caught at his arm, gabbling. ‘Listen, Steve, don’t be a fool, I can do a lot for you, name your price, the sky’s the limit, you can’t do this –’

‘Watch me. You’re a dead man, Gowrie,’ Steve said, shaking him off.

‘Why don’t I just shoot him?’ suggested Paul. ‘It would be easier. It would make me feel better, too.’

Gowrie gave him a wild look, then turned and began to run. Over his shoulder he screamed, ‘Don’t even think about telling anyone, Colbourne, or I’ll see you get yours!’

They heard the slam of the front door, his running feet on the gravel.

Paul began to laugh. ‘Well, I’ll leave him to you, then, Steve.’ He held out his hand and with a surprised look Steve slowly took it. ‘Sorry I didn’t get to know you better,’ Paul said with a friendly look. ‘Too late now, but thanks. Crucify the bastard, for Cathy’s sake.’

He walked back to the couch and picked up Cathy again, before moving towards the door at an unhurried pace. The others all stood and watched. Sophie put a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. She had never had a real chance to get to know her sister. Now she never would.

‘Give me ten minutes alone with her,’ Paul said as he walked out of the room. ‘Then ring the police.’

Nobody moved or spoke as he went out into the hall, up the stairs. In the silence the creak of the floorboards upstairs sounded as loud as a shot.

Sophie jumped, opening her mouth to scream. Nothing came out. She felt as if her head was exploding. Nothing seemed real any more.

At last she managed to whisper, ‘We ought to go with him. He’s desperate, he might . . . do anything.’

‘He’s old enough to make his own decisions,’ Steve said gently, looking with compassion at her white, drawn face.

Vladimir said, ‘I need a stiff drink, I don’t know about you.’

‘I think we could all do with one this time,’ Steve grimaced.

Looking at Sophie intently, Steve said, ‘You’re not going to faint again, are you?’

She couldn’t even answer. He pushed her down on to a chair and held a glass of brandy to her white lips.

She pushed it away, shaking her head, but he put it up to her mouth again. ‘Drink some. No argument, Sophie. You need it.’

She reluctantly parted her lips and took a swallow. The spirits made her cough, her throat growing hot as the brandy went down.

Steve made her take another couple of swallows, then he sipped at his own glass. She saw from his face that he was as shocked as she was; he needed the brandy.

‘This isn’t really happening. I’m having a nightmare,’ Sophie murmured to herself.

‘I wish to God you were,’ said Steve heavily.

‘I wish I was, too,’ she whispered.

They heard the shot upstairs a moment later.

Eighteen months later, on a fine May morning, Sophie pushed open the gate of Arbory’s medieval church and paused to look across the grass which lapped the graves in a green sea, looking for the grave which, last time she saw it, had been a raw, weeping wound in the earth, without a headstone to mark it.

It had rained the day they were buried. The gargoyles on the ancient grey stone walls had spouted water from their mouths, rain dripped from holly and yew, the very paths became small streams running downhill towards the gate.

Today the weather was very different. Sunlight gilded the stained-glass windows along the sides of the church, making the haloes of medieval saints glitter, robins and blackbirds were busy feeding their young in the ivy which curtained the wall around the churchyard, carrying caterpillars and moths to stuff into the gaping mouths waiting for them. The trees were all in full, green, glorious leaf, rustling and sighing around the churchyard. The whole world was full of promise.

‘There it is, Anya, at the back,’ she said, looking down at the baby she was carrying in a wicker carrycot, and as if in answer the pink starfish hands waved back at her.

The grave lay in a pool of dense shadow cast by a great, spreading yew. Sophie walked slowly along the path to it and put her free hand on the scaly bark, looking back across the years, remembering another churchyard, another yew tree far away, and another grave.

She had been back to the Czech Republic a few months ago to put flowers on her mother’s grave. Johanna had died without ever knowing what had happened to Cathy. The joy of talking to her long-lost daughter on the phone had been too much for her. She had had a stroke a few hours later and been taken to hospital, where she lingered in a coma for several weeks before dying. To Sophie at that time it had seemed that death was all around her, she could not escape it wherever she went. It was months before she came out of that grim mood.

When she had visited her home again she wandered over to look at the grave which for so long had claimed to be the last resting place of Pavel and Anya Narodni. The stone had been removed, and so had the remains of little Cathy Gowrie. Her grandfather had had his only grandchild brought home to lie in the graveyard at Easton. The real Paul Brougham was still buried where he had lain since 1968, but no headstone proclaimed his identity. Sophie had knelt beside his grave and said a prayer for his soul, wondering if he would want to be moved. The little village was a peaceful place to sleep until eternity.

The real Anya and Pavel had been buried here, in England, a week or two after their deaths, once the local coroner had allowed the burial to take place. First there had been an inquest, held in a small hall locally, with a grey, stooped coroner listening to the evidence, asking polite, hushed questions with a sympathetic, appalled, incredulous expression on his wrinkled, tortoise-like face, while a great mob of reporters scribbled, whispered, stared.

They had waited outside to pounce on Sophie, Steve and Vlad when they left. Flashbulbs exploding, photographers jostling, reporters screaming questions. The story was already out in the States. Steve had done his weekly programme from London, via the satellite, and made sure with a few judicious leaks to major newspapers that the media were all watching that night. Next day every daily newspaper in America had carried the story as their lead.

Gowrie had been a front-runner for the Republican nomination. His exposure had been a major scandal. The world press had gone to town on the story: newspapers and television had been awash with photographs of Gowrie; his home; his wife; her father, old Ramsey; distant shots of the Ramsey family estate at Easton; wedding pictures of Cathy and Paul. From Vladimir’s agency they were also supplied with pictures of the Narodni family and their home village.

By the time Steve had finished, Gowrie’s tour of Europe had been cut short and he flew home a disgraced man, with no chance of getting the nomination as presidential candidate and no future in politics. The entourage that had flown out to Europe with him had all drifted away; he flew home alone.

Over the next few months his wife had divorced him quietly, unopposed, through the person of her lawyers. She, herself, was by then living at Easton with her father, and was never seen in public. For not contesting the divorce, old Ramsey agreed to pay him an undisclosed sum, but other than that he was cut off from the Ramsey money. During the same period, Gowrie gave up his seat in the Senate, on grounds of ill health, and went into hiding somewhere in Florida. Steve said Gowrie was quietly drinking himself to death there.

Whether or not there were going to be official proceedings against him only time would tell. The mills of God and the government ground exceeding slow. The Czech Republic had made a lot of angry noise about an American diplomat illegally removing a Czech child without official permission, but it had all happened so long ago that nobody seemed to know what should be done about it now, and the same applied to the American government. There had been rumblings of threats against him for bringing a Czech child into the country on an American child’s passport, and threats of prosecution for fraud over presenting another child as the legal heir to the Ramsey fortune – but nothing had actually happened on either count.

After the funeral of Anya and Pavel Narodni, Sophie and Steve had flown back to the States, Vladimir had returned to Prague and slowly life returned to a familiar pattern again. Steve had been summoned to Easton and had told a frail and desolate Ed Ramsey the same story he had told the British police, the inquest and the press. Ramsey was a tougher audience, harder to convince, his eyes shrewd and cold, yet Steve had sensed that his grief for Cathy, as well as for the little granddaughter who had never come home from Czechoslovakia, had sapped his life already. He wanted to destroy Don Gowrie, he made no secret of that, but once that was done Steve had the feeling the old man would not last much longer. He had told Steve that his estate was now tied up carefully in an involved trust fund administered by a charity. Don Gowrie would never get his hands on a cent of the Ramsey money.

There had been no sign of Gowrie’s wife. A friend of Ed Ramsey had told Steve one day that she had descended completely into senility now.

She didn’t remember her own name or where she was; only occasionally would she ask for her father, never for Gowrie, but sometimes she would start to sob and call out, ‘Cathy . . . where’s Cathy?’

It had taken Sophie a long time to recover; she had made herself concentrate on her work, and had not wanted to see Steve at first. He reminded her of everything that had happened.

He didn’t give up or go away. Lilli grew used to him turning up on their doorstep and usually asked him in, gave him her favourite Czech meal, a beef consommé with dumplings made from liver and garlic, and showed him her latest progress with the wheel of his family which she was creating.

Lilli was not in a hurry, but then neither was Steve. It gave him an excuse to come to the apartment whenever he was in New York. Worn down by his persistence, Sophie let him take her out to dinner in quiet restaurants and then to parties given by old friends of his who lived in Manhattan. Or they saw the latest films, went to opera at the Met, to premieres of new plays. When Lilli finished his family wheel, he persuaded Sophie to come with him to present it to his parents. That was the first time she had met them and she had been shy with them. His father she found easy to talk to, but his mother intimidated her on first sight. Sophie saw that Mrs Colbourne was not happy with the idea of her precious son marrying a foreigner.