Betrayal (24 page)

He kept going up the narrow passageway, and I shouted again.

I’m here, Sylvie said. She appeared from the dark front room. I was just coming to find you, she said.

I didn’t trust myself to speak.

She lifted a shoulder, she spread a palm. She said again: I was just coming to find you.

Who the hell’s he? I jerked my head up the passage.

Joe? He’s an old friend. That’s all, she said, reading my mind only too well.

Oh yes? I heard the infantile sarcasm in my voice.

Yes, she insisted laughingly. I’ve known him for ever. She reached up and passed a comforting hand down my cheek, and I shuddered under her touch.

She seemed completely unaffected by the night’s alcohol. Her eyes were clear and bright, her skin had a translucent sheen. Her loveliness stood out in stark contrast to the dinginess of the cottage.

Shall we go? she said, and she led the way down the path.

We got into the car and still I couldn’t speak.

I had to come and collect something, she explained. I thought I’d get back to the boat before you woke.

Well, you didn’t, I said. And there was a choke in my voice.

She put a hand on my knee. Poor Munchkin, she said. Her lips formed the shape of a kiss, her hand moved on my leg, and there was nothing in either gesture that was not completely deliberate. She said: Let’s go to the house.

She could have suggested an alleyway and I would have agreed. From that moment on my anger and my lust became inextricably entangled and I never managed to separate them again.

We drove to the house in silence. Once inside we stood slightly apart, weighing each other up as though for combat, then Sylvie took my hand and pulled me upstairs and into David’s old room.

I stood before her, not moving, not speaking. Perhaps she liked that, perhaps that made it into a game for her, because she smiled to herself before reaching forward and sliding her hand under my shirt.

Her eyes were very black as her hands travelled over my chest and up my back and then down, down over my bum to curl inwards around the back of my thighs.

I didn’t respond immediately, I didn’t want her to see how deeply engulfed I was. When I finally touched her it was to grasp her shoulders, but in my attempt to keep some control I must have gripped her more tightly than I realised because she flinched slightly and shivered.

I held my grip. Her lips opened, she gave a harsh sigh, a challenge or a capitulation. I realised with a blend of fascination and exultation that there were no barriers for her, that in her greed for experiences she set no bounds, and the realisation was an incitement to a more terrifying desire. In that moment I was finally lost.

We just made it to the bed. It was over in minutes. Later we made love in the study on the sofa with the lights on.

During the night she disappeared, leaving no word. Her telephone didn’t answer. This was the pattern of things to come, the pattern of uncertainty and torment that Sylvie practised on me so effortlessly.

It was not long after this, in late July, that Cumberland agreed in principle to the buyout. Leaving Howard and the lawyers to negotiate the finer points of the takeover, I spent much of the next two weeks at Hartford, drawing up a business plan. George offered to put me up, but I always found excuses to stay at Dittisham.

Sometimes Sylvie would announce that she couldn’t see me; she never felt she had to give a reason and she laughed at me when I demanded one. And when she did agree to meet me she would often be late or, worst of all, simply fail to turn up. Then, sick at heart, dismayed at my own weakness, I would look for her at the cottage or the shop, I would train my newly purchased binoculars on
Samphire
, I would walk through the village to the quay. Many times I would swear to finish with her, yet I continued to search for her with the same ghastly masochistic craving.

When I finally tracked her down I would question her pathetically, my humiliation mingled with undiminished longing. Finding me in this mood she would regard me with pity, and when I reached for her would pull away impatiently and leave without explanation. In those moments I began to understand how people could kill each other.

When she did let me make love to her – just twice in those two weeks – it was on the promise of making the long-delayed trip to France. I still didn’t get it, of course; I was still too dazzled to understand the significance of France.

I couldn’t get away over the following two weekends – a family wedding, then a batch of buyout meetings – but I slipped down midweek a couple of times. By then I had lost all restraint, and all caution too. I took risks, I left cryptic phone messages with long-haired Joe – calling myself M, my token to dis cretion – and once I took Sylvie out to dinner at a restaurant in the country where we could easily have bumped into people I knew. She laid down her terms at that dinner, she said she didn’t want to carry on unless we could get away to France. In my blindness I was flattered, I thought she wanted to relive our old adventures, to escape the madding crowd and be alone with me, and, desperate for my moment of happiness, I heard myself promise faithfully to take her to France the next weekend.

By tradition Ginny and I always left for a ten-day break in Provence on the Friday of the August bank holiday weekend, but at two days’ notice I told Ginny I couldn’t go. I said I had too much work at Hartford, that she should go on her own for a day or so to prod the estate agents into action and inspect the house. If she had put up a fierce argument, if she had challenged me about an affair, my conscience might have got the better of me, but she didn’t, and with an adulterer’s logic I took her acceptance as some kind of permission.

I couldn’t get down to Dittisham until midnight on the Friday. Sylvie was waiting for me at the house. It was too late to go out to the boat that night, so we picnicked in the study by the french windows. The anticipation was like a drug. My head was light, my pulse racing. We made love on the sofa with the curtains undrawn.

As Sylvie moved over my body I thought I heard a sound outside but, lost to the sensations of the moment, I quickly pushed the idea from my mind.

H
ENDERSON PREPARED
unhurriedly, arranging his papers, checking the recorder, ignoring me.

Tingwall poured me a cup of water and murmured, ‘Okay?’

I nodded, trying to suppress my nerves. ‘We’ll get a break at some point?’

‘Oh yes, I’ll make sure we do.’

‘I don’t want my wife sitting there for hours.’

‘Don’t worry, we won’t go on all night.’

It was the same interview room as before. Reith was sitting a foot or so back from the table, to Henderson’s left. Phipps was propping up the wall by the door. The air was hot and stale as though the room had just been vacated by another team in pursuit of a sweating quarry. For an instant I wondered what the air was like in prison, whether it was like this or worse, whether it stank of sweat and urine and drugs, and fear whispered in my stomach.

The tape recorder was switched on. Henderson intoned some preliminaries, informing me the interview was being recorded and that I could take a copy of the tape away with me if I so wished. He then logged the time, the place, and identified each person in the room.

He slid his heavy forearms onto the table and raised his gloomy eyes to mine. ‘Mr Wellesley, could you please take us through your movements on Saturday, the thirtieth of September?’

‘I got the time of the petrol wrong,’ I announced straight away. ‘It was earlier than I thought. Four-fifteen.’

‘And where did you buy this petrol?’

‘At the Gordano service station.’

‘And that’s on the M5?’

‘Yes, just this side of Bristol.’

‘Four-fifteen . . . So what time did you leave London?’

‘It must have been nearer two-thirty. Maybe even two.’

‘In your previous statement you stated that it was three o’clock.’

‘I was working hard that day. I was under a lot of pressure. I didn’t notice the time.’

‘And what time did you arrive in Dittisham?’

‘At about quarter past seven.’

‘So it took you three hours to get from just past Bristol to Dittisham?’

‘Yes.’

‘Though the traffic jam you mentioned in your previous statement was
before
Bristol,
before
you stopped for petrol?’

‘The traffic was heavy everywhere. It was a Saturday.’

‘But three hours, Mr Wellesley?’ He tilted his ponderous head. ‘Even if the traffic was heavy it would be extremely unusual to take that long, surely?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, that’s how long it took.’

‘These timings seem rather uncertain in your mind, Mr Wellesley.’

‘No. I’ve got them right now.’

‘How can you be sure when you arrived in Dittisham?’

‘I noticed the time because I needed to buy some food and I realised the village shop would be closed.’

‘Yet you can’t account for this unusually long journey time?’

‘No. Yes. I mean – I can only tell you what happened.’

‘Indeed,’ he said, and the scepticism showed in his voice.

He looked down briefly. ‘What time did you arrange to meet Sylvie Mathieson that day?’

My mouth dried slightly. ‘I had no arrangement to meet her.’

‘Come now. You had an arrangement to meet her early that evening, didn’t you?’

‘No, I did not.’

‘You had an arrangement to meet her on your father’s boat, the
Ellie Miller
?’

‘I had no arrangement to meet her that day.’

‘Not that day?’ He affected a look of curiosity. ‘Another day then?’

‘No.’

‘You met Sylvie on the boat regularly, didn’t you, Mr Wellesley?’

I glared at him. I didn’t reply.

‘I repeat, you met her on the boat regularly?’

‘I told you – I met her there twice.’

‘You also went to her home, didn’t you? To Blackwell Cottage?’

I realised, then, that his information could only have come from Joe. Long-haired, spaced-out Joe.

‘You went to her home more than once?’

I shook my head.

‘Could you speak out, please, Mr Wellesley?’

‘I’ve told you how often I saw her.’ I was fighting for time. I was trying to work out if Joe would be able to identify me after a brief glimpse through a crack in a door and a slightly longer look in darkness when he was stoned out of his mind. I was also trying to decide whether drug addicts were likely to be regarded as reliable witnesses.

‘The question I’m putting to you, Mr Wellesley, is whether you met her regularly?’

‘I had no arrangement to meet her that day,’ I repeated doggedly, not answering the question.

‘But what about all the other times?’ Henderson said, still asking it.

‘I told you how often I met her.’

‘Three or four times?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that was all lies, wasn’t it, Mr Wellesley? You saw her much more often than that, didn’t you?’

‘I did not meet her on that Saturday.’ It was the only tactic I could think of, to repeat the point like a liturgy.

‘You’re not answering my question, Mr Wellesley. You met Sylvie Mathieson on a regular basis, didn’t you?’

‘I did not meet her on a regular basis.’

‘You’re denying it then?’

I thought of Ginny, of what she had asked of me, and he got his direct answer at last. ‘Yes.’

Henderson turned down his rat-trap mouth and moved on. ‘You went on a trip to France on the boat, didn’t you? At the end of August?’

‘Yes.’

‘You went with Sylvie Mathieson?’

‘No. I went with my wife.’

Henderson raised his brows slightly at that. ‘You went with your wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘It’s hardly something I’d be mistaken about.’

His mouth compressed into a sharp line, he fixed me with his droopy eyes. ‘Presumably not.’ He addressed himself to Tingwall. ‘Would Mrs Wellesley be prepared to make a statement to this effect?’

Tingwall gave me the briefest glance. ‘Er, I would have to confer, obviously, but I imagine there will be no difficulty.’

Returning to me, Henderson murmured, ‘But you did go on a trip with Sylvie Mathieson at some point, didn’t you, Mr Wellesley?’

‘No.’

‘What – no trip at all?’

‘No.’

‘Never mind France. Anywhere . . . Up the river?’

I exhaled harshly. ‘No.’

Henderson tapped his stubby fingers twice on the table. ‘What about there in the harbour then? You spent time with Sylvie Mathieson on the boat there, didn’t you?’

‘Just the once, as I told you. And the time she rowed over and talked to me from a boat.’

‘Perhaps you’d care to reconsider your answer, Mr Wellesley. You see, there are witnesses who will say they saw Sylvie Mathieson on the’ – he referred to his notes – ‘
Ellie Miller
more than once or twice. They’ll say they saw her there several times.’

‘I’ve already told you she came to the boat just twice.’

‘And you don’t want to add to that statement?’

‘No.’

‘But there
were
other times, weren’t there, Mr Wellesley?’

‘I’ve told you.’

‘And what about these witnesses, the ones who saw Sylvie visiting you on the boat?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Come now, Mr Wellesley, we know you saw her regularly. Why not tell us about it?’

This was his method then, a kind of verbal bullying. The technique was transparent enough, yet I could see how it might wear people down, how they might tell him what he wanted to hear just to win some respite. I wondered if he realised that in most respects I was already won over, that I hardly needed any wearing down, that if it hadn’t been for my solemn promise to Ginny and the dire interpretation I felt sure he would put on any admissions I might make, I would have told him the truth about the affair half an hour ago. An affair was nothing, after all, compared to murder. This thing had gone on too long and become too frightening for considerations of pride.

‘There’s nothing more to tell.’

Henderson appraised me with open interest, trying to gauge whether I was mad or simply stupid.