Betrayal (40 page)

And with that she gave me a rough kiss before swinging off the bed and reaching for her clothes. I watched her walk into the bathroom and it struck me that from this crisis Ginny was drawing a measure of, if not confidence, then self-possession. It lent her a strength I had never suspected. I was proud of her for it, and maybe a little in awe of her too.

While Ginny made something exotic with chicken I laid the kitchen table with crystal and candles. As we sat down to eat I thought how far away six months sounded at the moment, and how very quickly it would pass.

Choosing what seemed like a good moment I said gently, ‘I won’t ask again but . . .’ She had already stiffened. ‘What happened to the other dinghy? To Sylvie’s . . .?’

She looked down at the table, she twisted her knife, she brought herself slowly to the subject. ‘I took it back to the pontoon, tied it there.’ She gave an ironic smile. ‘I’d worked
that
one out all right. I just . . .’ she raised her head and looked beyond me, lost in memory ‘ . . . didn’t clean enough.
Thought
I had. Scrubbed the floor. And the sides of the bunks. And the seat covers. And the table – the legs, everything. Used a ton of bleach. Didn’t want to miss anything, you see. Went over it all again, to be absolutely sure.’ Shegrimaced.‘Wasn’tasthoroughasIthought,though, was I?’ She inhaled sharply as if to put this behind her. ‘Then . . . I found her bag. A small shoulder bag. I hadn’t noticed it the night before. I couldn’t decide what to do with it. I couldn’t very well chuck it over the side, in case someone saw me and picked the bag straight up again. So . . . I brought it ashore and put it in a rubbish bin in the village.’ Something about this memory made her wince, and I wondered if she had been seen. ‘Then I got rid of the cleaning things in a skip. And then I came back. To you.’

At this, we drifted away on our separate thoughts.

‘There was nothing else on the boat?’ I asked eventually. ‘No signs of anyone else?’

‘What do you mean – signs?’

‘I don’t know really. You didn’t see anyone rowing near
Ellie
?’

She shook her head.

‘On either day?’

‘No.’

‘Not on your way out that first time, before you found the body?’ I heard myself say ‘the body’ as though it had never been Sylvie.

‘No.’

Hearing the strain in her voice, I said placatingly, ‘It was just a thought. That was all.’

She nodded, then, eyelids fluttering nervously, she braced herself to ask, ‘Was Sylvie looking for you? Was that why she was there?’

This was the question I had asked myself countless times since her death. ‘I don’t think so. We hadn’t spoken in ages. Two weeks, in fact. We had – broken off communications.’ Ginny flinched a little and fiddled with the knife again. ‘I can only think . . .’ I paused to examine the idea again, to test it against my knowledge of Sylvie. ‘I can only think that she’d stashed some drugs on the boat and gone out to pick them up. Or to leave some more. She knew where the key was kept, she knew how to get into the boat.’

‘But why would she do that?’

‘Because she was dealing in drugs, or running them, or both. I think she and her friends brought them over from France and sold them on. I think she didn’t dare keep them at her place. She was incredibly organised where drugs were concerned. She planned her life around them.’ I thought of the parcel tape she had used to bind the package to her back, and the waterproof material she had wrapped it in. ‘She used every opportunity, every person she met. Including me. Well –
especially
me. That trip to France,’ I admitted with an undimmed sense of shame, ‘it was all about drugs.’

Ginny looked away and, following some logic of her own, said, ‘As soon as I got back to the house that night and found you there, saw you so normal, so un- . . . un-
bothered
, I
knew!
Deep down somewhere, I knew it couldn’t be you! But I couldn’t bring myself to face it. I couldn’t face up to the ghastly thought that I’d done all that – that I’d done everything I’d done – for nothing.
Nothing!
’ Reliving this thought she contorted her face as if in pain. ‘But then, of course, I realised! I
realised
. . .’

‘Realised?’

‘That it made no difference.’

And still I didn’t get it.

‘They would still
think
it was you. Whatever I said, whatever you might say – they’d never believe it, would they? Why should they, after all? So I realised I’d still done the right thing. The only thing.’

I stared at her.

Locked in her memory, she rushed on, ‘I still had to finish the job the next day, didn’t I? I still had to go and clean the boat out. The floor – the floor was the worst. Bleach was the only thing. Lots of bleach. And the bunks too. It was a nightmare, trying to find every spot—’

She was still in full spate as I reached across and took her hands. ‘It’s all over,’ I soothed her. ‘All over now.’

She came to a halt with a final indignant echo: ‘It was still the right thing to do.’

The right thing? I didn’t know what to say. She had done all this for me. She had succeeded in protecting me – if protection was the word – but at what cost? Could it be worth all this?

‘I think I should go to bed now,’ Ginny breathed at last. ‘Too much wine.’ And she gave a single uncertain laugh.

Clasping her hand, I tucked her arm ceremoniously under mine and, leaving the dinner uncleared, we turned off the lights and headed across the hall. The phone began to ring. We paused and looked at it.

‘Might be Tingwall,’ I said.

Howard’s voice said, ‘Hugh! There you are. You’re really very difficult to get hold of, you know.’ He gave a humourless chuckle to show that he was prepared to forgive me this lapse.

I mouthed ‘Howard’ to Ginny and cast my eyes heavenward.

‘Now listen – this EGM business,’ Howard said without pause. ‘It’s a waste of everyone’s time, you know. You should pull your hounds off and save yourself a lot of trouble. Really, Hugh, it’s not going to get you
anywhere
.’ He was using his this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you voice. ‘We’ve done a straw poll of the institutional shareholders. And I have to tell you that they’re going to back the board all the way. I think you’ll find this’ll do your little consortium a lot of harm, you know. And the publicity. Well, it’s bound to be bad, isn’t it’ – he hesitated for dramatic effect – ‘what with one thing and another . . .’

A mixture of anger and exultation stormed through my veins: for once I knew exactly what I was going to say to Howard.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ I began quietly. ‘One small detail? Aren’t you forgetting that I don’t have to listen to you any more, Howard? That I don’t have to take any more of your claptrap? The delights of working with you are now behind me. The Cumberland board now have that pleasure – and good bloody luck to them! You have no rights over me, Howard, and the sooner you realise that, the sooner you might also realise that nothing you say is going to make the blindest difference to what I choose to do.
Since
you mention the EGM, thanks to the terms
you
negotiated for all of us, both David and I have shares in Cumberland, so we have every right to call an EGM if we so wish. And we
do
so wish. Along with all the other shareholders who don’t like what’s going on.’ My heart was pounding with savage excitement. ‘I also take exception to your gratuitous and insulting attempt at intimidation. Don’t talk to me about publicity or any other of your bully-boy tactics. Your threats don’t hold any water with me, Howard. And finally – while we’re talking about what I take exception to – I take exception to your calling me at home late in the evening. I have a perfectly good office and daytime phone number, and I don’t want my evenings interrupted by you, on the telephone or in any other form—’

The line buzzed in my ear.

‘Damn – he’s rung off,’ I said.

Ginny was laughing gently. ‘Well, you told him all right!’

‘You think so?’

‘Great stuff!’

‘There’s one thing I wish I’d said.’

‘What was that?’

‘I wish I’d told him to fuck off.’

But I was pleased all the same.

T
INGWALL
’
S SECRETARY
looked up from her work. ‘Are you sure you don’t want him to know that you’re here?’

‘No. I’ll wait, thanks.’

Ginny’s meeting with Tingwall had overrun by almost half an hour, but I didn’t want to interrupt them, I didn’t want Ginny to feel I was looking over her shoulder.

Flicking inattentively through
Country Life
I came across a full-page advertisement for Melton. The photograph had been taken in early summer, with the wistaria and lilac in full bloom, a last flush of bluebells under the trees and razor-sharp mowing tracks striping the lawns. The house looked idyllic with its wide bays, mellow brickwork and comforting Georgian symmetry, the sort of place that features in glossy picture-books peddling quintessential dreams of English rural life. Nobody is immune to dreams, and being a workaholic I’d probably been more susceptible than most, beguiled as I was by visions of instant tranquillity. Yet for all the ambitions Ginny and I had attached to Melton, the dream hadn’t been impossible, just a little too wearing perhaps, just an inch or two beyond the grasp of our busy lives.

Tingwall put his head round his door and called, ‘Come in, Hugh.’

I met Ginny on the threshold, on her way out. ‘Back in a moment,’ she murmured. I couldn’t read anything in her face as she passed.

Tingwall’s expression was more transparent, a blend of gravity and apprehension.

‘She’s told you what happened,’ I said when he had closed the door.

‘Yes.’

‘Well? What do you think?’

He considered for a long moment before saying, ‘Not for Ginny’s ears, Hugh, but I have to say that as a defence it would worry me a great deal. You mustn’t go entirely by what I say, of course, you must take Grainger’s advice, but for what it’s worth I can’t help thinking it’ll be an extremely difficult defence to pull off. Far more difficult than – well, the other alternatives.’

‘What are you saying then?’ I said in alarm. ‘You’re not suggesting she should plead guilty?’

‘No,’ he replied carefully, perching himself on the edge of his desk. ‘No, I would never do that. But pleading not guilty has certain risks – a harsher verdict, a heavier sentence. And if on top of that you’re asking the jury to believe that an unknown third party committed the crime – well, it’s going to present some serious problems, Hugh. To plead that sort of defence successfully one needs hard evidence, you see. Something to back up one’s story. Now Ginny might come over well in the witness box – in fact, I’ve no doubt she’d come over very well indeed. But that in itself – well, it’s not likely to be enough. Not when the opposition have what seems like unassailable forensic evidence.’ Glancing towards the door, he lowered his voice. ‘And then – who is this third party? Are we saying it’s someone completely unknown? If so, why didn’t Ginny report the murder straight away? What was to stop her? That’s what really bothers me,’ he declared unhappily. ‘If she tells the jury that she thought
you’d
killed Sylvie and was trying to cover up for you – well, that’s not going to look too good, is it? To put it mildly. In the eyes of the world you’d be branded guilty without ever standing trial. It’s a Catch-22 situation for Ginny.’ He didn’t attempt to conceal his dismay. ‘She’ll be damned if she tells the truth, and damned if she doesn’t.’

‘But if we could show that someone else had been there? The killer.’

Tingwall lifted his hands and raised his eyes heavenward: if only.

‘What evidence would it take?’

He blew out his lips. He began to speak, he paused glumly, he folded his arms only to unfold them again. ‘I’ll have to think about that,’ he said finally. ‘A witness, I suppose. Someone who saw a third party going to the yacht before Ginny got there. Or . . . some forensic evidence, something to show that this third party was aboard at the time of the murder.’ His tone was not abounding with confidence. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

Faced by Tingwall’s loss of heart, I found myself faltering. ‘What about hiring an investigator?’ I asked. ‘Someone who can find witnesses the police might have missed? Who can search out Sylvie’s druggy friends – the ones the police never bothered with?’

Whether he suddenly appreciated my argument or, faced by the inadequacies of Ginny’s story, was all too ready to grasp at straws, Tingwall showed his first real interest in the idea of a drug connection. ‘We can give it a try,’ he agreed, talking himself into it by the moment. ‘There’s a chap I use occasionally, here in Exeter. And another in Bristol, ex-CID man. In fact he’d probably be a better bet for this sort of thing. Rather more high-powered. His name’s Pike. Not cheap, I’m afraid.’ Catching my expression, he said, ‘I’ll get on to him straight away then.’ He added, ‘Of course, the prosecution might be lining these people up as witnesses against us. You do realise that?’

I made a show of absorbing this.

‘Mind you,’ he said with some of his old spark, ‘even if they’re with the other side it’ll be no bad thing to sound them out. At least we’ll get a better idea of what we’re up against, won’t we? So . . . Any thoughts on where Pike might start?’

‘There’s a man called Hayden. He owns the boat Sylvie used to go sailing on.
Samphire
. Moored on the river. According to the local grapevine Hayden’s a professional yacht skipper who lives, or used to live, near Totnes.’ Tingwall was making notes. ‘And then of course there was Joe who shared the cottage with Sylvie. Or just dossed there. Probably known to the police. Well, I’d imagine so, the way he dosed himself with drugs. Out of his mind most of the time. I’m trying to get his surname and an address.’ If Tingwall thought I was overstepping the mark with my amateur detective work he didn’t say so. And if he was wondering at the number of facts I hadn’t previously disclosed to him or the police, he didn’t remark on that either.

‘There was another girl who sailed on
Samphire
, but I don’t know who she is.’