Set in Stone, page 16
part #10 of Robert Goddard Series
I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to decide whether I should go back to the house or not. There was a danger that if I did it might make things worse. But I only had to think of the state I’d left Matt in to realize the risk was probably worth taking. In the end, there didn’t seem anything for it but to go back.
I started the engine, and was about to pull out into the lane to turn round when I saw Matt’s car in my wing mirror, speeding towards me along the drive. He roared past, braked late and took the bend into the lane virtually on two wheels. Instinctively, I went after him.
He’d turned left, which led to the eastern tip of the peninsula, a mile ahead, with only fields and spinneys between. There were gates across the lane before you got there, to prevent people driving down to the water’s edge. Matt was on a fast run to a dead end. I put my foot down, but he was still pulling away. Then he was out of sight, round the next bend.
As I rounded it myself, I saw him ahead and the gates beyond. I suppose it was then that I realized what he was doing. He hit the gates like a battering ram, aiming at the weakest point, where they were padlocked together. They crashed open, the car bucking and slewing with the impact. Then he was through, skidding the rear tyres as he fought for control and, gaining it, pressed the accelerator to the floor.
I steered through the wreckage of the gates and crested the last rise before the lake. The water was a grey wind-whipped mass, into which the lane plunged abruptly at the edge of the spinney where I’d met Rainbird. Once it had led across the fields to Normanton. I could see the church on the other side, dead ahead. Now it led nowhere. It was a drowned way.
Matt picked up speed as he descended the slope towards the lake. A pontoon for fishermen stretched out into it from the end of the lane. The pontoon was too narrow for the car, but Matt was going so fast when he reached it that momentum carried him out halfway along it, on the offside wheels, before he sheered off and careered into the water, the engine’s roar ending in a hissing gurgle as the bow wave swallowed him.
I kept going as fast as I dared, then jammed on the brakes and came to a halt just short of the water’s edge. Matt’s car was out of sight now, air belching up from below the surface to mark the spot, ten yards or so beyond the end of the pontoon, where it had sunk. I leaped from my car, ran out along the pontoon and dived towards the churning bubbles.
The cold shock of the water hit me an instant after it closed over my head. It was darker and quieter than it seemed possible to be so close to the surface and my hands touched the roof of the car before I even saw it. As I pulled myself round towards the driver’s door, I noticed that the windows were open. Matt had wanted no life-saving pocket of air. He’d wanted to end it quickly. But this also meant I could reach him without a struggle. I glimpsed him, slumped and belted at the wheel, but he didn’t seem to be aware of me. He didn’t seem to be aware of anything. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. He was drowning in front of me. I stretched in through the window to reach the seatbelt release.
Suddenly, his eyes opened. He stared at me. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the car. I tried to cling to the door pillar, but he was too strong for me. My hand slipped and I rolled across the steering wheel. For a long, muffled second, his face was close to mine. He tried to say something. Bubbles streamed from his mouth. I struggled to turn round, but his grip on me tightened. My breath was failing, my lungs straining. I reached towards the passenger door with my free hand, hoping to pull myself loose and escape that way. But my fingers touched solid glass. The windows on that side were closed. I grabbed the passenger headrest and tried to gain some kind of purchase. But it was too late. I couldn’t hold my breath a second longer. I opened my mouth.
And screamed. I was sitting in the drawing room at Other- ways. It was real and true and solid. The evening light was clear and crystalline. The air was cool, almost fragrant as I sucked it in in soothing lungfuls. I looked at the clock. It wasn’t yet seven. And Matt hadn’t yet come home. I’d been dreaming, that was all. Just a dream. Nothing more.
But nothing less, either. And nothing like any dream I’d ever had before, even in that house. Every word, every action, every detail: inscribed on my mind more sharply than any memory, acute and unforgettable. It didn’t feel like a dream. I didn’t even feel as if I’d been asleep. How could I have slept anyway? I’d been anxious and apprehensive, my thoughts ranging over the past and future in search of—
I looked at the clock again. Not yet seven. It had been close to eight when Matt walked through the door. In my dream. If it was a dream. An hour from now. Part of the future. Imagined, or already experienced. It wasn’t possible. It simply couldn’t be. So I’d have said, at another time, in another place. It was madness. A fantasy. And I could prove it easily enough. I had only to wait till Matt returned. Whenever he happened to. And then—
But I wasn’t going to wait. I had to change the rules. I couldn’t tell him there. Not tonight. Not after what I’d seen and heard. The anguish I’d glimpsed on his face was part of me now. Maybe it was all of me, my own creation, the bad dream of a worse conscience. But I couldn’t stay to find out. That was the only thing I knew for certain. I couldn’t stay.
I left in sudden, blinding panic—fear like I’ve never felt before. But it ebbed fast, draining out of me as I drove away down the drive. I slowed and stopped, forcing myself to think hard and rationally. Then I started again, turning left, towards the lake shore, down the nowhere road.
The gates were across the lane, fastened and intact. I left the car there and walked on down to the dead watery end. There was nothing. The pontoon was empty, the vista of lake and sky plain and unremarkable. Waves stirred by the breeze lapped placidly at the tarmac. I stood staring at the spot where I’d seen the bubbles rise from Matt’s submerged car. So vivid, so actual. But not real. Not yet.
Time passed. I couldn’t have said how much. Then I walked back to the car and started driving along the lane towards Hambleton, passing the entrance to Otherways without a sideways glance. I wasn’t sure where I was going or what I was going to do.
As I slowed for the bend near Hambleton Church, Matt’s car came the other way round it. There he was, face expressionless, eyes trained ahead. Then he was past me and gone. He could have looked across and seen me. A single glance would have done it. But he didn’t.
I pulled in by the church and watched his car in the rearview mirror, shrinking in the glass as it accelerated out of the village towards Otherways. Then I looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was seven minutes to eight.
I made it to Oakham and booked into the Whipper-in for the night. As soon as I got to my room, I picked up the telephone, noticing with a strange, disconnected curiosity the tremor in my hand as I held the receiver. I’d intended to call Lucy, but before I got halfway through the number I stopped and slowly put the phone back down. There was nothing I could say to her that wouldn’t sound either crazy or weak-willed. Later, I could call and say Matt hadn’t shown up and I’d decided to hold off till morning. But not yet. It was too early. I went down to the bar and ordered a drink.
I was waiting for the barman to pour it, when I felt something brush my elbow, and realized Norman Rainbird was standing next to me.
“Good evening, Tony.” He grinned at me. “What a happy coincidence. Though not a pure one. I saw your car outside.”
“What do you want?”
“That’s very civil. I’ll have an orange juice. With just a little tonic.” The barman nodded in acknowledgement and I couldn’t be bothered to correct him. “I’m surprised to see you here, I must say.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you’d be in touch as soon as you returned from Scotland. Unless you just have returned, of course, and were wondering how to contact me. I realize phoning Maydew House isn’t always feasible. I really should have given you my mobile number, but I do so resent the exorbitant tariff, even when someone else is paying.”
The last thing I needed was a dose of Rainbird’s double edged patter. The quickest way to be rid of him that came to mind was to make it clear I had nothing to tell him. But somehow I doubted he’d believe me. “I drew a blank with Strathallan. The whole trip was a waste of time.”
“What kept you, then? You’ve been gone four days.”
“I had to go down to London.”
“And what did that turn up?”
“Nothing.”
“Why don’t you favour me with the chapter and verse? You don’t really look like someone who’s turned up nothing. More than you bargained for would be my bet.”
“Then you’d lose.”
“On the contrary. I always win my bets. Now”—he lowered his voice—“why don’t we adjourn to a corner table and flesh out the details of your little voyage of discovery?”
“I’m fine here.”
“Trust me. There are a few points I want to run over with you that require a degree of…privacy.”
In the end, it didn’t seem worth arguing. We moved to the same table I’d found him sitting at the first time we’d met there. It had an invisible reserved for rainbird sign on it.
Since James Milner’s missing confession had ostensibly been what Rainbird wanted to lay his hands on, I stuck to the facts about that and went no further. Two fruitless meetings at opposite ends of the country—with Strathallan and Fisher were as much as I offered him. Lisbon, and Cristina Pedreira, I kept to myself. Rainbird looked far from satisfied. But satisfying him wasn’t any kind of priority for me. I needed time and solitude in which to try to make sense of what had happened to me at Otherways that evening. Rainbird was just grit in my shoe. Hard to dislodge, maybe, but no worse than that.
“I’m a disappointed man,” he announced when I’d finished.
“I said you would be.”
“Not because you found out so little, you understand, but because you think I’m gullible enough to believe it’s all you did find out.”
“Are you questioning my honesty, Norman?”
“No. Questioning implies doubt. I have none. You simply aren’t playing fair with me.”
“Is that so?” I was too weary and distracted to rise to the bait. I was glad, in a way, that he’d come out and said he distrusted me. That made it easy to end our tête—à—tête. “Well, there’s no more to be said, then, is there?”
I’d got halfway out of my chair when he said, “Sit down,” so softly yet insistently that I found myself obeying. His gaze was cold and steely now, his grin a cicatrice of abandoned geniality. “What you lack, Tony, is an incentive. As it happens, I’m in a position to supply one. When you’ve heard what it is, I think you’ll agree you could wish for none better.”
“I doubt it.”
“Bear with me, please. Mrs Prior is away from home at present, I believe.”
“So?”
“Has there been a falling out with Mr Prior?”
“No. There hasn’t. And, even if there had, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”
“I take a keen interest in the vitality of our national institutions, of which marriage is one. It always distresses me when I hear that any such union is threatened, perhaps the more so because I have never had the good fortune to experience the love and companionship of—”
“Why don’t you just come to the point?”
“Very well.” He dropped into his sotto voce mode. “You and Mrs Prior are engaged in an adulterous relationship.”
“What?”
“You heard. And it is a fact known to us both, so your incredulity, or rather your poor attempt at it, is unnecessary.”
“Now hold on—”
“To the following strand of logic, Tony. It will serve you well in the days and weeks ahead—the days and weeks of our close collaboration.” He allowed himself the briefest pause for effect. “I took the opportunity you somewhat carelessly afforded me of the run of Otherways the weekend before last to secrete listening devices in the principal rooms. One must keep abreast of the latest technology. In the realm of covert surveillance, it seems to know no limits. The recorded material is very high definition. Explicitly so, you might say. Hence my clear understanding of how matters stand between you and Mrs Prior.”
He was wrong about my incredulity. It wasn’t faked. I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Just grit in my shoe? The shoe, it seemed, was on the other foot. And I was underneath it. What was worse, in the half-full bar of the Whipper-in, I couldn’t even raise my voice in protest. Rain bird had my full attention. Whether I wanted to give it or not.
“I have faith in you, Tony. You either have James Milner’s confession or you have a very good chance of obtaining it. A better one than me, for certain. Now you have a compelling motive as well. I’m doing you a favour in that sense. The greyhound will not run without the hare. So, here is the hare, jugged. Or, in this case, taped. Matthew Prior is your best and oldest friend. You have said so yourself. I have heard you say so. Do you want him to hear as well? Not just that, of course, but other, less congenial, material. It could hardly be pleasant for a husband to listen to his wife being brought to orgasm by his best and oldest friend. What she wants, how she wants it, where she wants it. Mrs Prior really does believe in speaking her mind, doesn’t she? And what a mind. I can’t deny I felt quite envious when I—”
“Shut up.” I couldn’t stay silent any longer. I didn’t care if my shouted interruption caught the attention of others in the bar. “Just shut your filthy mouth.”
“I don’t believe I’ve uttered a profane word, Tony,” said Rainbird, mildly. “I’ve simply laid the facts before you and added my perfectly reasonable interpretation of them. But, since the ins and outs of the situation, so to speak, appear to distress you, let us come to the crux of the matter. I will give you one week to deliver James Milner’s confession to me—the original, mind, a copy will not be acceptable—failing which I shall furnish Mr Prior with a tape, comprising what we might call the edited highlights of life at Otherways during his trip to New York.”
“I have no way of finding Milner’s confession,” I said, through gritted teeth. “It still exists, his brother probably has it.”
“An interesting theory. Perhaps a bucket-shop flight to Moscow is in order. Do remember to take a bath plug with you.”
“I’m not going to Moscow, or anywhere else, on your say-so.”
“Am I to take that as an outright rejection of my proposal?”
“You can take it as an outright refusal to be blackmailed.”
“Shouldn’t you at least think about it?”
“Maybe I don’t need to.” I summoned what I judged to be a confident smile. “Maybe I don’t care what you do.”
“Your recorded agonizings over Mr Prior’s reaction to news of your relationship with his wife hardly support that hypothesis. Even if you do intend to tell him the truth, the tape will still be an unnecessary twist of the knife, one you should be anxious to spare him. He’s a loving, indeed uxorious, husband. And he’s also your friend. Just what is this savage disillusionment going to do to him, Tony? That’s what you have to ask yourself.”
I had asked myself. To make matters worse, I knew the answer: it was going to destroy him. I’d seen it happen, with my own eyes, at Otherways that very evening. “For God’s sake, Norman, be reasonable. I can’t do what you ask.”
“You can try. And you can hope proof of a sterling, if unavailing, effort on your part will persuade me to be charitable. I wouldn’t bank on it, though. Delivery of the confession within a week is your only certain course of salvation.”
Was it? In the unlikely event of my coming up with the goods, what was the betting he’d impose some additional demand? It seemed awfully like odds on to me. “Why do you want the confession so badly, Norman?”
“Find it and you might also find the answer to that question.”
“You’re just as well equipped as I am to hunt it down.”
“Au contraire. You have become an insider at Otherways. You have the ear of all the players in this drama. Doors that are closed to me will open for you. Likewise, hearts and minds.”
“No, no. The job’s made for you, Tony. I’m backing you to make a success of it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’ve often thought that of people I’ve worked for. I was nonetheless obliged to do their bidding, just as you’re obliged to do mine.”
“Am I really?”
“I think so, unless you’re more ruthless than I suppose.” He was right there, damn him to hell. This was something I couldn’t walk away from. “Oh, I nearly forgot.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, scribbled something on it and slid it across the table towards me. “My mobile phone number. You may need to contact me urgently. Feel free to do so as soon as you make any progress. Or even if you simply need some tactical advice. If I don’t hear from you in the interim, I’ll expect to see you next week.” He drained his glass. “Same time, same place?”
It was nearly dark when Rainbird left. I walked round the tomb-still streets of Oakham, trying to think my way out of the trap he’d caught me in. I was tired, but my mind couldn’t rest. There was no escape. Reason it how I pleased, I had no answer to his ultimatum, except to comply with it. Yet I had no realistic hope of finding the confession and hardly any that Rainbird would let me off the hook even if I did. That left only one course of action open to me: tell Matt the truth, nurse him through the shock of it, stall Rainbird as long as possible and pray Matt was over the worst if and when he got to hear the tape. In my mind, I’d already told him the truth, with consequences too awful to contemplate. But they couldn’t be worse than those that would follow if I let Rainbird enlighten him. Nor could I delay without telling Lucy about the tape, the existence of which she’d justifiably blame me for, unless I explained that some sort of dream had convinced me it was too dangerous to go ahead with our original plan, which would probably have her doubting my sanity, also justifiably.
