Borrowed Time (32 page)

“I just want to be sure, Mr. Bryant. Only your wife doesn’t seem to be.”

“She’s his mother. What else would you expect? She can’t bring herself to believe he could commit murder.”

“But you can?”

We reached the car and stopped. He didn’t look directly at me or answer my question specifically. But a shuffle of his feet and a droop of his chin gave me some kind of response. “It was good of you to call, Mr. Timariot. I appreciate it. But I have to think of Dot, you see. I have to help her come to terms with what’s happened. And what’s going to happen. Raising her hopes will only make her feel worse when they’re dashed.” Now he did look at me. “As you and I both know they will be.”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind on the subject. I think you should do the same.”

“Paul’s walked out on his job, you know. It was a good job too. The basis of a fine career.”

“You think that proves something?”

“I think it proves he’s preparing for the worst. That’s why we have to do the same.” He frowned. “I’d be grateful, Mr. Timariot . . . for Dot’s sake . . . if you didn’t come to see us again . . . in the circumstances.” Then he sighed and added: “Sorry.”

“What if I learn something useful from Peter Rossington?”

A car drove past us and Mr. Bryant waved over my shoulder to the driver, a smile coming instantly to his lips—and leaving as quickly. His eyes followed the vehicle for a moment, as if he were wondering how many neighbourly waves he’d have to do without, once Paul’s guilt became widely known. Then he looked back at me. “You won’t,” he said, without the least hint of animosity.

“I might.”

An expression of politely restrained scepticism crossed his face, such as I could imagine him having worn when a heavily overdrawn customer of the bank sought an extension of credit on the flimsiest of grounds. “Goodbye, Mr. Timariot,” he said, shaking my hand and turning dolefully back towards the house.

I phoned Schneider Mackintosh from my office first thing Monday morning. Peter Rossington proved elusive, being out of the room or on another line each time I tried and showing no inclination to return my call. Eventually, around four o’clock, I struck lucky and was rewarded with a brief conversation. He sounded young, cocksure and faintly patronizing. He also sounded distinctly suspicious when I said I wanted to talk to him about Paul Bryant. Well, I couldn’t blame him for that. But jumping to the conclusion that I was some kind of headhunter keen to check Paul’s suitability for prestigious employment was quite another matter. Since it was an idea I’d done nothing to plant in his mind, it seemed only fair to make the most of it. Especially since lunch at my expense in a restaurant of his choice was the fancy price I had to pay for whatever information he was prepared to dispense. I suggested the following day, but he pleaded pressure of other commitments and we finally settled on Thursday.

By then, Bella had been in touch, eager for news of my progress. But a description of my visit to the Bryants didn’t seem to qualify under that heading. “You didn’t get anything out of them at all?” she complained, contriving to imply the reason lay in some deficiency on my part rather than the dismal truth that there was nothing to be got. “Well, you’d better be more persistent when you meet Peter Rossington, hadn’t you?”

But I doubted if persistence—or any other kind of interrogative ingenuity—was going to reveal a flaw in Paul’s account of his activities in the summer of 1990. Cheryl Bryant had told me I was wasting my time and, as far as I could see, she was absolutely right. But Bella wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d wasted a good deal more of it.

Another difficulty weighing on my mind when I travelled up to London on Thursday morning was how to question Peter Rossington about Paul without revealing the real reason. Posing as a headhunter was only going to carry me so far. And it was a pose I knew an astute young advertising executive would see through in pretty short order.

It transpired I needn’t have worried. Not about that, anyway. Rossington was waiting for me when I reached The Square, a light, airy and punctiliously staffed establishment in the heart of St. James’s. He was a pencil-thin pasty-faced fellow with haircut and suit so abreast with the fashions that he looked even younger than I reckoned he was. More like nineteen than twenty-five. His smile was broad but cool, his eyes frankly appraising. A keen brain was apparent behind the braying voice and sneering air. I disliked him at once. And I had the distinct impression that the feeling was mutual. But neither of us was there to indulge our feelings. Though the senses were evidently a different matter, as his call for a second glass of champagne immediately revealed.

“Cards on the table, Mr. Timariot,” he said straightaway. “There was something ever so slightly fishy about your invitation. So I decided to check with Paul. One of the reasons I put off meeting you until today. I wanted time to take the temperature.” He raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice. “Turned out to be a lot hotter than I’d ever have imagined.”

“Right,” I said, my mind racing to accommodate the consequences of what he’d said. My cover was blown, of course. But worse still, Paul now knew I was digging around in his past. It was something I might have avoided if I’d been honest with Rossington from the outset. But it was too late to repair the damage. “So . . . You know what this is about, do you?”

“’Fraid so. Wish I didn’t, as a matter of fact. Sounds hideously messy. But that’s Paul’s problem, isn’t it? And yours, apparently.”

“Have you seen Paul?”

“Yeh. We met yesterday. He told me the lot. It was a real shaker. I mean, we were never close friends. Never friends at all, come to that. Paul wasn’t the matey type. He didn’t let you see inside his head. And now I know what was going on inside it, I can understand why. But even so . . .” He lit a cigarette, without troubling to offer me one. “Even so, it takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? Being acquainted with somebody capable of . . .” He shook his head and sent up a plume of smoke. “Bloody hell.”

I smiled awkwardly. “Sorry to have misled you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yeh. Well, so you should be. Perhaps you’d like to explain why you did. It’s the one thing Paul couldn’t enlighten me about.”

“I’m simply trying to confirm his story before the police become involved.”

“They already are, according to Paul. He warned me to expect a visit. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

“Why not?”

He frowned. “Because nobody likes being mixed up in something like this. Murder’s bad enough. Especially with a sex angle. But . . .” He made another effort to speak softly. Clearly, it didn’t come naturally to him. “But a miscarriage of justice makes it worse, doesn’t it? Big headlines. Mega-coverage. And my name in there somewhere. Where colleagues are bound to notice it.”

“So you’re worried about a little . . . professional embarrassment?”

“You bet I am. Some swine’s going to suggest I should have tumbled what Paul was up to, aren’t they?”

“And should you have?”

“Of course not. He never gave me any hint—” He broke off to order his meal. Unprepared, I ordered the same. Wine wasn’t mentioned. Something rather stiffer might have hit the mark. But that wasn’t mentioned either. “Like I told you,” Rossington resumed, “Paul was and is a closed book to me. I suggested we tag along together on the trip to Europe because I didn’t fancy going alone. Simple as that. He gave me no inkling of an ulterior motive. Well, I suppose there wasn’t one at the time. That came later, didn’t it?”

“Did you notice a change in him between fixing up the trip and setting off?”

“I’ve
never
noticed a change in him. He seems the same to me now as he did then. Cool, calm and collected. Absolutely his own man.”

“And you split up in Lyon?”

“That’s right. Because he wanted to spend a week in the Alps and I was keen to press on to Italy before my money ran out. I didn’t have a lot of it then. I had no idea he meant to go to Biarritz. How could I have? Paul isn’t the sort to drop clues in your lap.”

“But what would he have done if you’d agreed to divert to Chamonix?”

“How the f—” Rossington calmed his irritation with a long draw on his cigarette. “How would I know? He’d have dreamt up some other excuse, I suppose. He was always good at thinking on his feet. I actually saw him off at the station in Lyon, you know. On the train to bloody Chamonix. My train left later, you see. Do you know what he did, the cunning bastard? Got off at the next stop down the line, waited till he could be sure I’d be on my way, then doubled back to Lyon and caught the next train to Paris. Simple, really.”

“On what day did this happen?”

“Can’t remember. Paul told me yesterday it was Wednesday the eleventh of July. Well, that sounds right to me. It was certainly towards the end of the week when I hit Rome.”

“And the next time you saw Paul?”

“Was back at Cambridge in October. I’d heard about the Kington murders by then. Knew Sarah Paxton’s mother was one of the victims. Well, everybody was talking about it. Even Paul. But he played it bloody cool, I can tell you. You’d never have guessed. Not in a million years. He even set up a sort of alibi for himself with me. Boasted about some Swedish sex-bomb he’d picked up in Chamonix. Made her sound so real he had me drooling with envy. But it was all a lie. He admitted as much yesterday. A lie to stop me thinking he might have been somewhere else. Like Biarritz, for instance. Or Kington.”

Our meals arrived, leaving us to contemplate each other across the same succulent dishes neither of us had an appetite for. Rossington extinguished his cigarette and cocked his head, examining me critically.

“You do realize, don’t you, Mr. Timariot? He did it. Trying to trip him up over dates and places isn’t going to work.”

“You may be right. I just want to be sure.”

“Who are you doing this for? Paul said you had only the most tenuous connection with the case. And with the family.”

“Maybe I’m doing it for him.”

“He doesn’t seem to think so.”

“For myself, then.”

“But you already believe he’s telling the truth. You told him so, apparently.”

“I’m just double-checking, that’s all.”

“And what’s your double-checking turned up so far? Any doubts or discrepancies?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Not one.”

“There you are, then.” He picked up his knife and cut off a yielding slice of duckling. “Seems to me you’d do better following my example.”

“And what is your example, Mr. Rossington?”

“Look after number one.” A pink morsel of flesh slipped between his polished teeth. “And let Paul Bryant look after himself.”

Rossington’s advice was sound but impractical. Paul knew I was up to something and the least I owed him now was a prompt if necessarily incomplete explanation. When I left the restaurant, I hopped into a taxi and went not to Waterloo but to Paddington. From there I caught the next train to Bristol. And by four o’clock I was standing outside the chic little town house on Bathurst Wharf that Rowena had been walking towards the last time I’d ever seen her.

Paul answered the door quickly, as if he’d seen me approaching. He was looking smarter than when he’d come to Petersfield, but Sir Keith’s description of him—“
like a man in a trance
”—held good. His self-control had become so total, his sense of purpose so dominant, that a calmness amounting almost to blankness had descended on him. He gazed at me as a committed member of some closed religious order might gaze at a hapless stranger who’d knocked at their gate. With disdain and pity equally mingled. “Hello, Robin,” he said quietly. “Come on in.”

I followed him along a short passage past a dining-room and kitchen, brushing against a coat hanging on a hook that had surely belonged to Rowena. I glanced into the kitchen and glimpsed other traces of her presence. A casserole dish moulded and painted to look like a broody hen. A calendar above the sink illustrated with Beatrix Potter characters. I couldn’t make out which month it was, but the word was too short to be September. It could easily have been June, though—the month of her death.

The thought stayed with me as we climbed the stairs to the first-floor lounge. And there it was strengthened. The curtains and carpets, the upholstery of the sofa, the oval rug in the centre of the room, the bowl of pot-pourri, the vase of dried flowers: she’d chosen them all. And there was a scent in the air reminiscent of the delicate floral perfumes she’d worn. So reminiscent, in fact, that I was tempted to ask Paul if the pot-pourri had the same aroma. But a sudden fear that he might tell me I was imagining it got the better of me. I went to the window and looked down at the yachts moored along the wharf, at the swing-bridge across the harbour that I’d watched her cross that day in June. Craning forward, I could even make out the floating pub on the other side of St. Augustine’s Reach I’d watched her from. Everything was the same. Everything was exactly as I remembered. But no lone figure with flowing hair was approaching. Nor ever would be.

“Looking for something?” asked Paul from the other side of the room.

“No.” I turned round to meet his gaze. “Nothing.”

“Like me, then. I stand there and stare out at nothing quite a lot. It helps me think.” He slowly rounded the sofa as he spoke. Then he stopped, propped himself against its back, folded his arms and frowned at me with mild curiosity. “What’s all this about, Robin? I take it you did have lunch with Peter Rossington today.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Is he the only person you’ve been questioning about me?”

“Actually, no. I spoke to your family.”

“Did you? They haven’t mentioned it.”

“Perhaps they didn’t think there was any need to.”

“Perhaps not. Mind explaining why you went to them?”

“Not at all. It’s why I came. To explain.” I tried to smile, but only succeeded in producing a tight-lipped grimace. “I just wanted to confirm your story . . . to check some of the details . . . before the police became involved.”

“Why? Don’t you think they’ll do a thorough job?”

“It’s not that. I . . .”