A Delicate Truth (22 page)

‘My patients tell me their secrets. I
don’t go handing them around. What makes you think Mum will hand yours around?
She’s silent as the grave. A bit more silent than you are sometimes.’

Time to mount his high horse:

‘Because these are
state
secrets, Emily. Not mine and not your mother’s. They were entrusted to
me
and no one else. The
only
people I can share them with are the people who know
them already. Which makes it, I have to say,
rather
a lonely
business.’

And on this fine note of self-pity, he rose,
kissed her on the head, stalked off across the stable yard to his improvised office,
locked the door and opened up his computer:

Marlon will respond to your personal and
confidential inquiries
.

With Sheba riding proudly in the back of the
nearly new Land Rover that he had acquired in exchange for his aged camper, Kit drives
purposefully up Bailey’s Hill until he arrives by design at a deserted lay-by with
a Celtic cross and a view of the morning mist rising in the valley. His first call is
foredoomed, as he intends it to be, but Service ethic and some sense of self-protection
requires him to make it. Dialling the Foreign Office switchboard, he gets a determined
woman who requires him to
repeat his name clearly and slowly. He does,
and throws in his knighthood for good measure. After a delay so long that he would be
justified in ringing off, she informs him that the erstwhile minister Mr Fergus Quinn
has not been at his post for three years – a thing Kit well knows but this doesn’t
stop him from asking – and that she has no number for him and no authority to pass
messages. Would Sir Christopher –
finally
, thank you! – care to be connected
with the resident clerk? No thank you, Sir Christopher would not, with the clear
implication that a resident clerk wouldn’t match up to the level of security
involved.

Well, I tried, and it’s on record. Now
for the tricky bit.

Extracting the piece of paper on which he
had written down Marlon’s telephone number, he touches it into his cellphone,
turns the volume to maximum because his hearing’s going a bit, and swiftly, for
fear of hesitation, presses green. Listening tensely to the number ringing out, he
remembers too late what time of day it is in Houston, and has a vision of a bleary
Marlon groping for his bedside phone. Instead, he gets the sincere voice of a Texan
matron:

‘We
thank
you for calling
Ethical Outcomes. Remember: at Ethical,
your
safety comes
first
!’

Then a blast of martial music, and the
all-American voice of Marlon on parade:

‘Hullo! This is
Marlon
.
Kindly be advised that your inquiry will
always
be treated in the strictest
confidence in accordance with Ethical’s principles of integrity and discretion.
I’m sorry: there’s nobody around just now to take your personal and private
call. But if you would care to leave a simple message of no more than two minutes in
duration, your confidential consultant will get right back to you. After the signal,
please.’

Has Kit prepared his simple message of no
more than two minutes in duration? During the long night, he evidently has:

‘This is
Paul
and I need to
speak to
Elliot
. Elliot, this is Paul, from three years ago. Something pretty
unpleasant has cropped up, not of my making, I may say. I need to talk to you urgently,
obviously not on my home number. You’ve got my personal cellphone number,
it’s the same old one as before, not encrypted, of course. Let’s fix a date
to meet as soon as possible. If you can’t make it, perhaps you’d put me in
touch with somebody I’m authorized to talk to. I mean by that somebody who knows
the background and can fill in some rather disturbing blanks. I look forward to hearing
from you very soon. Thank you. Paul.’

With a sense of a tricky job well done in
under two minutes, he rings off and sets out along a pony track with Sheba at his heels.
But after a couple of hundred yards his sense of achievement deserts him. How long will
he have to wait before anyone calls back? And, above all,
where
will he wait?
In St Pirran there’s no cellphone signal – you can be on Orange, Vodafone or
whatever. If he goes home now, all he’ll be thinking of will be how to get out
again. Obviously, in due course he will be offering his womenfolk some unclassified
account of what he’s achieved – but not until he’s achieved it.

So the question is: is there a middle way, a
stopgap cover story that will keep him within range of Marlon but out of range of his
women? Answer: the tedious solicitor in Truro he recently engaged to sort out various
piddling family trusts. Suppose, for argument’s sake, something has cropped up: a
knotty legal matter that needs to be thrashed out in a hurry? And suppose Kit in the
rush of events has completely forgotten all about the appointment till now? It plays.
Next move, call Suzanna, which will take nerve, but he’s ready for her.

Summoning Sheba, he returns to the Land
Rover, slots his cellphone into its housing, switches on the ignition and is
startled by the deafening shriek of an incoming call on maximum
sound.

‘Is that Kit Probyn?’ a male
voice blurts.

‘This is Probyn. Who’s
that?’ – hastily adjusting the volume.

‘My name’s Jay Crispin from
Ethical. Heard marvellous things about you. Elliot’s off the radar at the moment,
a-chasing the deer, as we say. How’s about I stand in for him?’

Within seconds, as it seems to him, the
thing is settled: they will meet. And not tomorrow but tonight. No beating about the
bush, no umming and ahhing. A forthright British voice, educated, one of us, and not in
the least defensive, which of itself speaks volumes. The kind of man that in other
circumstances it would be a pleasure to get to know – all of which he duly reported to
Suzanna in suitably coded terms while they hurriedly dressed him in time to catch the
ten forty-one from Bodmin Parkway station:

‘And you’ll be
strong
,
Kit,’ Suzanna urged him, embracing him with all the power in her frail body.
‘It’s not that you’re weak. You’re not. It’s that
you’re kind and trusting and loyal. Well, Jeb was loyal too. You said he was.
Didn’t you?’

Did he? Probably he did. But then, as he
reminded her sagely, people do change, darling, even the best of us, you know. And some
of us go clean off the rails.

‘And you’ll ask your Mister Big,
whoever he is, straight out: “Was poor Jeb telling the truth and did an innocent
woman and her child die?” I don’t want to know what it’s about. I know
I never shall. But if what Jeb wrote on that beastly receipt is true, and that’s
why we got the Caribbean, we must face up to it. We can’t live a lie, however much
we might like to. Can we, darling? Or
I
can’t,’ she added, as an
afterthought.

And from Emily, more baldly, as they pulled
into the station forecourt:

‘Whatever it is, Dad, Mum’s
going to need proper answers.’

‘
Well, so am I!
’ he had
snapped back at her in a moment of angry pain that he instantly regretted.

The Connaught Hotel in the West End of London
was not an establishment that had come Kit’s way but, seated alone amid the bustle
of waiters in the post-modern splendour of its lounge, he rather wished it had; for in
that case he would not have chosen the elderly country suit and cracked brown shoes that
he had snatched from his wardrobe.

‘If my plane’s late, just tell
’em you’re waiting for me, and they’ll look after you,’ Crispin
had said, without troubling to mention where his plane was coming from.

And sure enough, when Kit murmured
Crispin’s name to the black-suited major-domo poised like a great conductor at his
lectern, the fellow had actually smiled:

‘Come a long way today, have we, Sir
Christopher? Well, Cornwall, that
is
a long way. What may I tempt you with,
compliments of Mr Crispin?’

‘Pot of tea, and I’ll pay for it
myself. Cash,’ Kit had retorted stiffly, determined to retain his
independence.

But a cup of tea is not something the
Connaught gives up lightly. To obtain one, Kit must settle for the Chic & Shock
Afternoon Tea and look on helplessly while a waiter brings cakes, scones and cucumber
sandwiches at thirty-five pounds plus tip.

He waits.

Several potential Crispins enter, ignore
him, join others or are joined by them. From the strong, masterful voice he has heard on
the telephone, he instinctively looks for the man to match it: big-shouldered perhaps,
bags of confidence, a good stride. He remembers Elliot’s glowing eulogy of his
employer. He wonders to himself in nervous jest what earthly form such powers of
leadership and charisma will take. And he is not
entirely disappointed
when an elegant forty-something man of medium height, wearing a well-cut grey pinstripe
suit, sits himself quietly down beside him, takes his hand and murmurs, ‘I rather
think I’m your man.’

And the recognition, if such it could be
called, is immediate. Jay Crispin is as English and smooth as his voice. He is
clean-shaven and, with his groomed, swept-back head of healthy hair and smile of quiet
assurance, what Kit’s parents would have called clean-limbed.

‘Kit, I’m just so very sorry
that this should have happened,’ the perfectly tuned voice declares, with a
sincerity that cuts straight to Kit’s heart. ‘What a bloody awful time
you’ve had. My God, what are you drinking – not
tea
!’ And as a
waiter glides to their side: ‘You’re a whisky man. They do a pretty decent
Macallan here. Take all this stuff away, will you, Luigi? And bring us a couple of the
eighteen-year-olds. Make ’em big ’uns. Ice? – no ice. Soda and water on the
side.’ And as the waiter departs: ‘And look here, thanks a million for
making the trip. I’m just so
terribly
sorry you had to make it at
all.’

Now Kit would never admit that he was
attracted to Jay Crispin, or that his judgement was in any way undermined by the
man’s compelling charm. From the outset, he would insist, he had harboured the
gravest suspicions about the fellow, and kept them going throughout the meeting.

‘And life in darkest Cornwall suits
you all right, does it?’ Crispin asked conversationally while they waited for
their drinks to arrive. ‘You don’t pine for the bright lights? Personally,
I’d be talking to the dicky birds after a couple of weeks. But that’s my
problem, they tell me. Incurable workaholic. No powers of self-entertainment.’ And
after this little confidence: ‘And Suzanna on the mend, I gather?’ –
dropping the perfect voice for intimacy.

‘
Vastly
better, thank you,
vastly. Country life is what she loves,’ Kit replied awkwardly, but what else is
he supposed to say when the man asks? And gruffly, in an effort to turn the conversation
round:

‘So where are
you
actually
based? Here in London or – well, Houston, I suppose?’

‘Oh my God, London, where else? Only
place to be, if you want my view – apart from North Cornwall, obviously.’

The waiter was back. Hiatus while he poured
out the drinks to Crispin’s specification.

‘Cashews, bits?’ Crispin asked
Kit solicitously. ‘Or something a bit more substantial after your
travels?’

‘Thank you, I’m doing very
well’ – keeping his guard up.

‘Shoot away, then,’ said Crispin
when the waiter had left.

Kit shot. And Crispin listened, his handsome
face puckered in concentration, his neat head wisely nodding to imply he was familiar
with the story; even that he’d heard it before.

‘And then, the same evening, there was
this
, you see,’ Kit protested and, drawing a damp brown envelope from
the recesses of his country suit, passed Crispin the piece of flimsy lined paper that
Jeb had torn from his pad. ‘Take a look at
that
, if you will,’ he
added, for extra portent – and watched Crispin’s manicured hand take it over,
noting the double cuffs of cream silk and the gold engraved links; watched him lean back
and, holding the paper in both hands, scrutinize it with the calm of an antiquarian
examining it for watermarks.

Well, did he look
guilty,
darling? Did he look shocked? Well, he must have looked
something
!

But Crispin, so far as Kit could make out,
didn’t look anything. The regular features didn’t flinch, there was no
violent trembling of the hands: just a forlorn shake of the trim head, accompanied by
the officer-class voice.

‘Well, you poor chap is all I can say,
Kit. You absolute poor
chap. What a truly bloody awful situation. And
your poor Suzanna too. Ghastly. What
she
must be going through, God alone
knows. I mean, she’s the one who
really
took the flak. Quite apart from
not knowing why or where it’s coming from, and knowing she can’t ask. What a
little shit. Forgive me.
Christ!
’ he said vehemently under his breath,
suppressing some stab of inner pain.

‘And she
really
needs to get
a straight answer,’ Kit insisted, determined to stick to his guns. ‘However
bad it is, she’s
got
to know what happened. So have I. She’s taken
it into her head that our posting to the Caribbean was a way of shutting me up. She even
– totally unintentionally – seems to have infected our daughter with the same idea. So
not a very
pleasant
insinuation, as you can imagine’ – cautiously
encouraged by Crispin’s sympathetic nod – ‘not a very
happy
way to
go into retirement: reckoning you’ve done a decent job for your country, then
discovering it was all a charade to cover up a – well –
murder
, not to put too
fine an edge on it’ – pausing for a waiter to bustle past pushing a trolley
bearing a birthday cake with a single candle sparking on it. ‘Then throw in the
fact that a first-class soldier has had his
whole life
trashed for him, or may
have done. That’s not the sort of thing Suzanna takes lightly, seeing she tends to
care rather more about other people than she does about herself. So what I’m
saying is: no beating around the bush, we need to have the facts. Yes or no. Straight
out. Both of us.
All
of us. Anyone would. Sorry about that.’