Set in Stone, page 25
part #10 of Robert Goddard Series
“Owed for what?”
“We come back to the same old question. I’m not going to tell you, Tony. They killed Marina because they thought I’d told her. And I don’t think you could successfully pretend not to know once you did. So, cling to your ignorance. It may save your life.”
“Or it may not. You’re going to have to tell me eventually.”
He thought about that for a moment, then gave a reluctant little nod. “You’re probably right. But eventually’s not yet.”
A summer Saturday meant lots of traffic in Plymouth. But delay was strangely reassuring. The red saloon hadn’t reappeared in the rear-view mirror and it didn’t seem feasible to suppose that anyone could have calculated the indirect route we were taking. There were crowds of holidaymakers at the station and they had a similar effect to the traffic congestion. I began to relax, or at least feel marginally less anxious. Cedric’s state of mind was hard to read. I suppose he’d spent so long concealing his true emotions that it had become more of a habit than a technique.
“I think we’re in the clear,” he grudgingly admitted, “but I can’t be sure.”
“Let’s try and look on the bright side. Assume we are. Do we just get on the next train to the Midlands?”
“No. I have to make a phone call first.”
“I ought to make one myself. To the hospital. Check how Matt’s doing.”
“That’s too risky. They may have anticipated you’d do that. If they traced it here, they’d know we’d taken the train.”
“How come your call’s worth the risk, then?”
“Because it’s one they won’t have anticipated.”
“To your mystery man.”
“Exactly. So, if there is any risk, it has to be taken. While I do that, buy us a couple of tickets for the next train to London.”
“London?”
“Safety in numbers, Tony. That makes London as safe a place as we’ll find. Oh, and you’d better pay in cash.”
“I’m not sure I’ve got enough.”
“Allow me.” He took out his wallet and handed me a wad of twenties. “Just as well I never use plastic, isn’t it?”
The mystery man turned out not to be in. What we were going to do if he’d gone to Tuscany for a month didn’t bear contemplation. Not, at least, until Cedric had tried again later. We boarded the next train to London, due into Paddington at three o’clock. There was nothing to do till then but sit where we could find a space amidst the families and elderly couples making their way home after a West Country holiday. I bought a drink to steady my nerves, then another, but they didn’t have any noticeable effect.
“I get the impression,”, said Cedric, shortly after we’d left Exeter, “that Lucy Prior’s guilt or innocence matters a great deal to you, Tony.”
“Of course it does. She’s my sister-in-law.”
“Did you seriously suspect her of…” He lowered his voice and smiled thinly at the abstruseness he felt obliged to resort to, despite the raised voices all around. “Sororicide?”
“I did for a while.” I smiled myself then. This was one small relief: if an official conspiracy to silence Cedric Milner really existed, Lucy was exonerated.
“Why?” His voice was soft, no more than a verbal nudge.
“Circumstances…made it seem possible.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
“Then you must have…imputed a motive.”
I had, of course. But I couldn’t tell him what it was. It was too shameful to admit. “Blame Otherways. You know the tricks that place can play.”
“Only too well.”
“Did it ever play any on you?”
“Oh yes. I wasn’t immune, though clearly nothing like as susceptible as James. I was already a boarder at Harrow when we moved there, so ‘I always spent as much or more time elsewhere—Harrow, then Cambridge. The surveying experiment was my first real insight into the peculiarities of the house. I did that the summer before I went up to Cambridge. I just couldn’t get the measurements right. There was always a…marginal inconsistency. I blamed my tools. Then I blamed myself. Then I gave up. The house beat me, I suppose you could say. Or maybe it showed me its secret without my being able to grasp what it was.”
“Do you grasp it now?”
“Put it this way. There’s more to it than limestone and mortar. If I had to guess why you became suspicious of your sister-in-law, I think I’d guess right. But I have the advantage of experience. Ann and I, during the months we spent alone at Otherways, while James was watching the show trials in Moscow…”
“You had an affair?”
“No. But we came close. So very close. And history repeats itself, doesn’t it?” He looked at me quizzically. “Especially at Otherways.”
“Not any more,” I said briskly, trying to brush off his implication before he could force me to acknowledge it. “I’ve persuaded Lucy to move in with Daisy while Matt’s in hospital. That could be a long time. So, for the present, the house stands empty.”
“Empty. But always waiting.” His gaze lost its focus. “Maybe that’s why I came back.”
At some point—blame the drink or the motion of the train—I fell asleep. When I woke, Cedric wasn’t there. I wasn’t worried at first—he’d gone out several times before for a smoke. But when his absence had stretched to half a pack’s worth, I became really concerned. For some stupid reason the idea came to me that we’d stopped without my waking and he’d got off. We were running alongside the Kennet and Avon Canal, which put us somewhere between Pewsey and Reading, but I couldn’t remember if we’d been due to call at Westbury. It didn’t make any sense, of course, unless he’d decided I’d be safer without him. That was possible.
I got up and made towards the front of the train, wondering where he could be if he hadn’t got off. I reached the buffet with no sign of him and pressed on into the first-class carriages. Going to the very front seemed pointless, but nevertheless I went.
And there he was, standing calmly in the vestibule beyond the last carriage, smoking one of his Russian cigarettes. He was clinging to the handrail, as if it was the only thing holding him up, and he looked pale and haggard, a cough growling deep in his throat as he drew on the cigarette.
“Sweet dreams?” he asked, with an ironic cock of the eyebrow.
“None that I can remember.”
“I believe they’re the best kind.”
“Are you all right? You look like death.”
“You can’t have seen much death if you think that. I’m tired, Tony. Tired and old. Simple as that. Far too old for all this cloak and dagger. It’s got to stop.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“Perhaps. I came up here to use that.” He pointed to the payphone in the cubicle behind us. “I’ve just come off it.”
“Well?”
“Heraclitus has agreed to meet us.”
“Who?”
“An old code name. Conferred by me. A pompous choice, I dare say. Designed to demonstrate that physicists can also be classicists.”
“Heraclitus was the source of the inscription on Ann’s gravestone.”
“So he was. ‘All things pass, nothing remains.’ My suggestion, as it happens. Daisy was still prepared to listen to me then. Not any more. But Heraclitus, he’ll listen. For what it’s worth.” He frowned and raised his hand, the smoke from the cigarette wavering in the draught from the window. “Sorry. That’s the fatigue talking. It is worth a try. Really. It’s the only thing we can try, as a matter of plain and simple fact.”
“When do we meet him?”
“Tomorrow. At six.”
“Why wait so long?”
“He has a fair way to come. More than forty years is quite a journey. I suppose that’s why I suggested a venue we both know.” I knew then, without doubt or elaboration, the venue he’d chosen. “Well,” he added with a shrug, “you did say it was standing empty.”
He bought a couple of miniatures of Glenfiddich on the way back through the buffet and polished them off as the train sped on towards London. It made his cough worse, but it also put some colour back in his cheeks, and some optimism into his soul.
“You never took to the vodka, then?” I asked, as he stared out at the trackside scene.
“You only drink a mother’s milk if she is your mother,” he replied, without diverting his gaze.
“Isn’t Russia yours, at least by adoption?”
“I’m an Englishman.”
“But also a communist.”
“Did I say I was?”
“I realize they’re thin on the ground in Russia these days, but even so…”
“I was never a party member where it matters: in my heart.”
“Then why defect?”
“There came a point when I had no choice. If I’d stayed, I’d have been thrown to the wolves. Little did I know they’d still be waiting for me all these years later, out there in the forest.”
“How long did you spy for the Russians?”
“Three and a half years.”
“Did you really give them the H-bomb?”
“A helping hand towards it, certainly. My services hadn’t been required at Los Alamos. I was in Montreal at the time of the Trinity test. It’s not the sort of thing you expect to get a second chance of witnessing. But I did, of course. At Semipalatinsk, in August ‘fifty-three. There was devastation such as you cannot conceive. Ground zero means just that: nothing. It isn’t destruction, it’s…erasure.”
“Were you proud of what you’d helped to achieve?”
“I was satisfied that I’d done my job.”
“For which you were amply rewarded, no doubt.”
“Not particularly, since you ask. Defectors have their uses, but nobody exactly admires them.”
“Strathallan thought you enjoyed the act of treachery itself. He reckoned that was a stronger motive for you than politics.”
Now Cedric did look round at me. “He said that?”
“To a journalist called Martin Fisher. It’s quoted in a book about you, among others. Seven Faces of Treason. Fisher went to Moscow to interview you, back in the Seventies. But the KGB saw him off.”
“That’s what they were there for.”
“Do you regret nothing, Cedric?”
“Oh, a very great deal.”
“But selling secrets to Stalin isn’t one of those regrets, is it?”
“I didn’t sell. I gave.”
“Either way.”
“It makes a difference.”
“It’s still treason. It’s still betraying your country.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. You know that. You sleep with the knowledge, I imagine, every night of your life.”
Cedric leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Are you much of a churchgoer, Tony?”
“No.”
“Thought not. Me neither. But I absorbed a fair amount of Christian teaching as a boy. Didn’t have much choice about it.”
“So?”
“Judas always worried me. I never could understand him. The arch-traitor of all time. Thirty pieces of silver and the Field of Blood. A byword for treachery over two millennia. That’s quite an obituary, don’t you think? But why? Why did anyone need to betray Jesus? He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. The high priests wouldn’t have had any trouble picking him out in a crowd of a hundred, let alone a huddle of twelve. Why did they need Judas at all?”
“I don’t know.”
Cedric opened his eyes and looked intently at me. “It was to fulfil Old Testament prophecy. The Messiah had to be betrayed, otherwise he might not be the Messiah. Somebody had to do it. And he had to do it sincerely, in the full knowledge of what his reward had been prophesied to be. “Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.” That’s one Bible passage I do remember.”
“What are you getting at?”
“The heart of treachery, not the face of treason. There’s a difference.”
“And the difference is why Heraclitus has agreed to meet us?”
“The, actually. Not us. He doesn’t know about you. But he’s due a surprise, so you can be it.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“No. But I expect it will be answered.” He looked back out through the window. “Tomorrow.”
But tomorrow was still half a day and a night away. Until then we had to lie low—and wait. When the train reached Paddington, we set off on foot in search of the sort of hotel that respects privacy if not fire regulations. There were quite a few of them between the station and Hyde Park. We chose the cheap and cheerless Allerline House in Sussex Gardens, booked in, then walked down to the park and wandered vaguely in the direction of the Serpentine.
There was the usual assortment of joggers, dog-walkers, frisbee-throwers and solitaries. The sun was shining and childrens’ voices could be heard from the lakeside ahead of us. It was a bland and unexceptional scene: a London park in summer, safe, shadowless, unhaunted. But the world is what you carry with you, not what surrounds you. Our safety was provisional. And our ghosts were only keeping their distance.
“What did you expect Matt to do with James’s confession?” I asked, as much to break the silence that had fallen between us since leaving the hotel as to glean an insight into Cedric’s thought processes.
“I had no expectation. I just wanted him to understand what sort of a house he was living in.”
“Did you think he’d take it seriously?”
“If he’s already experienced some of Otherways’ stranger qualities, he was bound to.”
“He was actually planning to show it to a scientist at Hull University—an astronomer, called Lois Carmichael. She’s a sort of ghost-hunter. I think he wanted independent confirmation that those…stranger qualities…really exist.”
“That suggests he had experienced them.”
“Yes. So it does. But he never said so. He never confided in Lucy. Or me.”
“Perhaps he didn’t trust you.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“What’s lost can be won back.”
“Can it?”
“I hope so.” He paused to light a cigarette and recover his breath. “You’d better hope so, too.”
A short walk in Hyde Park was enough to tire Cedric out. The quickness of his brain and the keenness of his eye had made me forget how old he was. We had to rest on a bench halfway before we could even make it back to Allerline House.
“I think I’ll take a nap,” he announced when I saw him into his room, a twin in every shabby detail of my own room further down the passage. “It’s been quite a day.” A coughing bout interrupted his progress to the bed. He sank onto it with palpable relief.
“Perhaps you should cut down on the smoking,” I said, as he tossed his half-empty pack of cigarettes onto the bedside cabinet.
“If cancer’s going to get me, it won’t be because of the cigarettes.” He slowly lay back against the pillow and gazed up at the peeling plaster on the ceiling. “When we did the thermonuclear test in November ‘fifty-five, I remember feeling the heat of the blast on my face. It was like standing in front of an open furnace. Yet it was freezing weather and we were seventy kilometres from ground zero. That was a real health risk.”
“To the whole world.”
“Yes, yes.” His voice was slurred now and dreamily indistinct. “I know what you think.” For a moment, I thought he’d fallen asleep. But no, his mind was still ranging over the past. “There was a celebratory banquet at Nedelin’s house after that test. Scientists and generals rubbing shoulders. I still had hopes then. I’d…accomplished what I’d set out to do…and genuinely believed…there’d be a way…”
He said nothing else. When his breathing had lapsed into the slow, heavy pattern of sleep, I slipped out, closing the door gently behind me.
Cedric needed to rest, but nothing could be further from my own thoughts. Now we were in London, a phone call to check on Matt didn’t seem very risky to me. Partly to appease Cedric, however, should he find out, I put a precautionary half-mile between me and the hotel before dropping into a pub in Marylebone to load the change from buying a drink into their payphone.
The phone was mounted on the wall at the head of the stairs leading down to the loos. Had it been in the bar, I probably wouldn’t have been able to hear what the hospital switchboard operator said to me. The pub was crammed with people far gone along the road to ensuring this was a Saturday night they wouldn’t remember. I literally crossed my fingers when the operator put me through to Matt’s ward, praying this wouldn’t turn out to be a Saturday night I wanted to forget.
“Good news, Mr Sheridan,” said the ward sister. “Mr Prior’s recovered consciousness.”
“That’s great.”
“He’s still drowsy, of course, and in a certain amount of pain, but—”
“He’s going to be all right.”
“Well, obviously there’s—”
“But he is, isn’t he? That’s what it amounts to.”
“Let’s just say we’re very pleased with his progress.”
“OK.” She could probably have heard me grinning in Leicester. “Let’s just say that.”
“He’s been asking about you, actually.”
“He has?”
“Can I tell him you’ll be in to see him?”
“Sure.” I crushed myself against the wall to make way for somebody going down to the loo. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, forcing me to stay where I was. I had a view across the bar now. As I glanced towards the doorway on the far side, my eyes met those of a burly figure in dark clothes. His gaze was stern and unflinching. He wasn’t smiling. And we both recognized each other.
“Mr Sheridan?”
At that moment, I felt a sharp pain in my right thigh. I turned towards the man at the top of the stairs and realized he was looking at me, intently but expressionlessly. I tried to speak, but a wave of nausea and weakness swept over me. My vision suddenly blurred. I began to fall, hearing the phone strike the wall behind me as if it were the echo of a sound in the far distance. Then it, and everything else, was gone.
