Betrayal (26 page)

‘For Christ’s sake, David!’ He had done this when we were younger, made some bold statement only to disclaim it later and somehow shift the blame for the misunderstanding onto me.

Under my furious gaze he made a grudging concession with a lift of one shoulder, and waved an ambiguous hand. ‘It was a rumour, that was all. Hospital gossip. You know – the police pathologist drops a hint. Or it might have been a forensic technician. But it’s not too reliable that sort of thing. Believe me.’

‘But she was your patient.’

‘Ha!’ My naivety brought a hint of bitter amusement to his face. ‘You think patients tell their doctors everything? You think they tell them about their secret drinking and their forty fags a day and their extra-curricular pills?’ He lifted his eyes expressively. ‘Sylvie only came to see me a couple of times and the subject of whether she was on drugs didn’t
exactly
come up.’

‘What about the people she mixed with?’

He took a swig of his drink. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘There was that deadbeat with the long hair.’

‘Which one?’ he exclaimed sardonically, as if his surgery was beset by long-haired deadbeats.

‘Joe something.’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘And someone called Hayden.’

He shook his head. ‘Not one of mine. Well – so far as I know.’

‘She used to go sailing on Hayden’s boat. That’s what they said at the boat yard, anyway.’

‘And he’s a druggy, is that it?’

‘Someone must have been.’ I dragged my hands wearily down my face. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t bloody know, David. It’s all such a bloody nightmare.’

‘Well,’ he said laconically, ‘it’s not worth panicking about, is it? They can’t get you for something you didn’t do, can they?’

‘I hope not,’ I said fervently. ‘But sometimes . . .’

‘For what it’s worth,’ he continued in the same brisk tone, ‘we’ll do what we can. You know – support and all that.’

After such a day my emotions were running close to the surface and when I thanked him my eyes misted over, the words caught in my throat.

Looking alarmed at this display, David said sharply, ‘I gather they want our fingerprints.’

‘Yes,’ I said, pulling myself together. ‘For elimination purposes – that’s what they call it. Tingwall can explain it better than me. Apparently you don’t have to agree, but if you don’t they could insist.’

David gave a shrug suggesting that it was no skin off his nose, then turned away to deal with the boiling kettle.

‘The family contacted me,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Family?’

‘Sylvie’s brother. Jean-something. Jean-Paul.’

A memory flickered, an image of a self-absorbed guitar-playing youth who had appeared once or twice during that distant summer. ‘God . . . I’d forgotten.’

‘An
academic
of some sort. Bristol.’

‘What did he want?’

David poured hot water into a mug. ‘Oh, where to go for the burial arrangements, that kind of thing.’

I hadn’t thought about her family. I hadn’t thought about the funeral. ‘When will all that be?’

David dunked the bag of mint tea uncertainly into the mug, then lifted it out and, creasing his brows in faint annoyance, dropped it in again. ‘Oh, not for quite a time, I wouldn’t think.’ He added casually: ‘He wanted to know how to get in touch with you.’

‘
Me?
’ The thought disturbed me profoundly. ‘Why?’

‘Not sure. Old time’s sake maybe.’ And I couldn’t tell if he meant this ironically. ‘Anyway I talked him out of it.’

‘He didn’t realise that I was the prime suspect, then?’ I said with a lurch of self-pity.

‘Probably not, no.’

This was the way of the future, I realised. In my new state of social unacceptability I would have to rely on my family to shield me from unsuitable encounters, and my lawyers to protect me from the worst intrusions of the press.

David yawned and rubbed his eyes savagely with his forefingers.

‘Sorry,’ I said immediately. ‘I’m keeping you up.’

‘No, if you want to talk . . .’ He stood there doing his best to look approachable, but it was not something that came easily to him, and it showed in the restlessness of his eyes and the wariness of his manner. As boys we had told each other everything, we had been accomplices in many a misdemeanour and covered for each other steadfastly, yet in our early teens David had abruptly distanced himself from me and the world in general, and in the muddle of adolescence I had never been sure why.

‘Thanks for the offer,’ I said, ‘but I’m exhausted.’

He nodded with what might have been relief and, turning off the lights, led the way upstairs.

I carried the tea in to Ginny as she lay reading a magazine in bed and, placing it on the table beside her, kissed her on the forehead. She smiled a loyal smile, and it came to me that, if I was to be locked away, this would be the worst deprivation of all, the loss of such moments of quiet domesticity.

After a restless night I woke early to a clear sky and scents of autumn. I lay in bed and remembered waking to a morning like this not so long ago and thinking how lucky I was to be alive. That must have been before the cash flow crisis, before David told me that Pa had cancer.

Ginny had taken some pills and was still asleep. I got up quietly and, making myself some coffee, carried it out into the freshness of the garden. My shoes darkened as I wandered across the dew-laden grass. Above me the leaves of the oaks were saffron, lemon and gold, and on the far side of the croquet lawn a maple blazed. Somewhere a lone bird was calling. It was best not to consider the beauty of it all; that way lay depression and despair.

A sound made me turn and there, in a reprise of our meeting at Dittisham House, was Mary, waving hard. She closed the door behind her and came striding towards me in her Barbour jacket, knee-length skirt and gumboots, her round face cracked into a smile.

‘I meant to stay awake last night,’ she declared indignantly as soon as she had kissed me. ‘I told David to give me a shout the moment you arrived! Honestly!’ With a flick of the hand, she gestured the futility of such expectations. ‘But listen – how are you?’

‘How am I?’ I considered this with a mournful laugh. ‘Oh, for public consumption, I’m fine. You know – full of righteous indignation and protesting my innocence from the rooftops. But in reality . . . Quite frankly, Mary, when I’m not feeling choked I’m scared stiff.’

‘They’ve found out, have they, about you and Sylvie?’

I lifted my shoulders. ‘God only knows. They’re not saying.’

‘And what have
you
told
them?
’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing,’ she repeated thoughtfully, as though she wasn’t entirely convinced of the wisdom of this but didn’t like to mention it.

‘Well, what am I going to tell them, Mary?’ I argued with sudden heat. ‘That as it happens they’re dead on track, that I’ve lied through my teeth, that I had a wild affair with Sylvie, that I had every reason to kill her—’

‘
Every
reason?’ she interrupted with a small embarrassed laugh.

In telling her, I realised that I was testing the story against a time when I might have to deliver it on a larger stage. ‘Well, she’d dropped me, hadn’t she? Finished the whole thing. Just – without warning. For no reason at all. She wouldn’t say why. In fact, she wouldn’t communicate at all. She deliberately avoided me. Just . . . cut me out! She was brilliant at that,’ I added wryly, ‘at shutting people out.’

‘
Oh
,’ Mary murmured, her face puckered with concern. ‘Oh. I hadn’t realised.’

‘Oh, I knew it was no good!’ I declared. ‘I knew the whole thing was hopeless! I realised she wasn’t the same person. I realised she’d changed out of all recognition. In many ways she was utterly
un
likeable. But still, but
still
. . . I couldn’t
stop
myself, you see. I just couldn’t.’

Mary absorbed this with the faraway look of someone attempting to imagine a passion completely outside her own experience. ‘Poor old thing,’ she said at last. ‘How awful for you!’

We strolled towards the croquet lawn.

‘When was this?’ Mary asked.

‘Oh—’ I muttered vaguely. ‘At the end of August.’

A pause. ‘You mean – when you sailed to France?’

‘Thereabouts.’

‘Aha.’ And she drew the sound out until it took on a wealth of meaning. ‘I realised it must have been Sylvie on the boat with you.’

I halted.

‘Ginny’s always hated sailing so much.’

‘God. Does anyone else . . . David . . .?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘The thing is . . . we’re saying it was Ginny. We’re telling the police we went to France together. Ginny’s absolutely determined. She’s making a statement about it. You won’t . . .’ I gestured feebly. ‘I mean . . . not to anyone?’

Mary fixed me with her most fiery look. ‘If you weren’t in such a state, I’d take that as a bloomin’ insult!’

‘Sorry.
Sorry
, Mary. Sometimes I get paranoid.’

She shook her head fondly and we continued our walk.

‘Hate to mention it and all that,’ she said after a while, ‘but Ginny wasn’t anywhere else when she was meant to be sailing with you, was she? I mean, nowhere
obvious
.’

‘No.’

Whether she was simply being tactful or had deduced that Ginny had come secretly to Dittisham, she didn’t ask me to elaborate on this curious answer.

I hesitated, knowing I was about to test Mary’s patience yet further. ‘I’m going to be paranoid again,’ I announced. ‘But I’ve got to ask – you haven’t told David anything at all, have you? About me and Sylvie?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ She threw her head back and gave a sharp laugh, half amusement, half scorn. ‘He wouldn’t listen anyway!’

We had reached a bench set on a small rise overlooking the croquet lawn. Pulling a scarf out of her pocket, Mary began to sweep the dew from the seat with broad strokes.

‘Oh, it’s not that he isn’t
concerned
’, she assured me. ‘It’s just that he doesn’t like to hear about anything even faintly disturbing. Never has done. He’s the original ostrich when it comes to problems and crises. Just blanks them all out. That’s why he should never have been a GP – can’t deal with the patients. And that’s why I’ve brought up the children almost single-handed. Oh, don’t think I’m bleating!’ she added breezily, beating the last drops from the wood with whip-like flicks of the scarf end. ‘Because I’m not. It’s just the way he is. I don’t
mind
. Having stuck with his foibles for all these years, I’m certainly not about to give up on him now!’ She gave another bray-like laugh and, sitting down and crossing her muscular legs, patted the seat next to her.

‘What happens now?’ she asked in the bracing tones of a pragmatist.

‘Oh, more questioning, I suppose.’ I sank disconsolately onto the seat. ‘But I want Tingwall to press them on what
else
they’re doing. On why they haven’t bothered to look into the rest of Sylvie’s life. Like her drug connections for a start.’

Mary threw me a glance. ‘She was involved with drugs?’

‘One way and another.’

‘Blimey!’ she exhaled noisily with a kind of baffled admiration, as though other people’s lives never failed to amaze her. ‘She told you, did she?’

‘Me?’ I gave an ironic laugh. ‘Hardly. But then if I’d been in my right mind she wouldn’t have had to. It was staring me in the face. She had a runny nose half the time. And she’d be morose one minute and go off to the loo and, hey presto, when she came back she’d be full of life again.’

‘And you’re saying the police haven’t realised this?’

‘No,’ I conceded. ‘I suppose they must have done. I mean, if David knew . . .’

‘David knew?’

‘Some rumour on the medical grapevine.’

‘Ah.’

‘But the police don’t seem interested in following it up – finding out about her pals, where she got the stuff from, that sort of thing.’

Mary, picking her way cautiously through alien territory, ventured, ‘You mean she might have been mixing with dealers and other dubious specimens?’

I chucked the dregs of my coffee onto the grass. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

In the silence a light aircraft droned overhead and we both looked up at it.

I said in a rush, ‘She worked for them.’ I got it out quickly before I had second thoughts.

Still following the plane, Mary took her time. ‘She worked for the dealers?’

‘The trips she took on
Samphire
. They were all about drugs.’

Mary turned to examine my face. ‘They had them on board?’

‘They picked them up in France. I don’t know exactly what sort of stuff it was, but it was hard stuff. Powder of some sort.’

Mary waited silently while I found the words to tell the rest of the miserable tale.

‘Sylvie fell out with her chums,’ I began. ‘Well, I guess she did because suddenly
Samphire
went to sea without her or didn’t go to sea at all.
So
. . .’ I spread my hands derisively. ‘Alternative plan. Set up in business on your own. Find a mug with a boat, preferably someone who’s pretty naive and malleable—’

‘Oh, Hugh.’

‘—Use him to get you to France.’

‘Oh no.’

‘—Collect your package, allow your dewy-eyed lover to stand you an expensive meal before getting him to sail you back. Then leave him to carry the can.’

Mary looked alarmed. ‘You mean you got
caught?
’

The memory gripped me and I shuddered. ‘So nearly, Mary. So nearly.

As
Ellie Miller
crept out from under the lee of the land and caught the first uncertain gusts of wind, I felt the elation of someone who had forgotten the extraordinary illusion of freedom you get at sea, the sense of leaving the world behind.

I went about the boat, trimming sheets, tightening halyards, entering the log, and relived the exhilaration of my boyhood trips, when my father had expected no crew member to stop until all the tasks were done, when no sail was considered trimmed until it had passed his beneficent scrutiny, when, at twenty, I was first entrusted with the job of navigator. The pride I had felt, and the fear of failure, and the satisfaction when the destination was made.