Dying to Tell (26 page)

Then there was that choice Shintaro Yamazawa had smartly pointed out I still had to make. Finality of a kind was approaching, though whether fast or slow was pretty much down to me. Total anonymity had enveloped me since stepping off the Taiyo-Maru in Busan and there was no doubting how agreeable the experience was. I'd been handed a chance, after all, that many people would give their right arm for: a fresh start in a strange country with a newly minted identity. In Germany and Japan I was a murder suspect, in England a candidate for extradition to either country. In the United States, on the other hand, I was safe and a citizen to boot. It was tempting. Yes, it was very tempting. And my track record on resisting temptation didn't bear much scrutiny. Yamazawa had assured me Mayumi and Haruko would be safe. My conscience needn't be unduly stricken. I had let-outs available by the bucket load But ... (There were, of course, always buts.)

I could have taken a cab from the airport, except that then I'd have had to specify a destination. Tricky, when you don't have one. I didn't have much in the way of luggage either, which made the Sam Trans bus into the centre an attractive option. It was slow, but I was in no hurry, no hurry at all. Living the same day over and over again would have suited me rather well. Then the time to make that choice would never quite tick round.

I'd bought a San Francisco Chronicle before boarding the bus and leafed idly through it as we trundled up the freeway, with autumn sunlight winking off the waters of the bay to the right and the icing-sugar apartment blocks gleaming at me from the hills ahead. I don't know what I was looking for. I didn't turn to the classified ads in serious search of affordable accommodation. But on some level I was certainly playing with the idea of how I'd go about blending into this new world where nothing was known about me. And maybe it would have come to more than playing maybe if I hadn't noticed, as I searched past the sits vac for living space to let... ALDER, Rupe.

My gaze had already drifted beyond the name when recognition reached my brain. Suddenly, I was alert, jet lag banished, eyes wide as I backtracked up the page. A mistake, surely? A trick of blurred vision and wandering thoughts. But no. It wasn't.

ALDER, Rupe. We met briefly at Kimball Hall, Stanford, September 15. If you're still here, please call me urgently. Mobile 144671789.

I rang the number from a booth at the bus terminal and got a recorded message telling me the phone I was calling was switched off. All I could do was shout down the line that nobody stupid enough to pay to advertise an unavailable phone number should be enrolled at a prestigious university.

A couple of Ragin' River ales in a nearby bar soothed my temper, but couldn't stop my thoughts racing off into the wilder realms of speculation. So much for walking away from it all. Some promises just wouldn't take being broken for an answer. I was still on Rupe's trail whether I wanted to be or not. He'd been to Stanford to see Clyde Ledgister. There could be no other explanation. But who'd placed the ad? And why? I was close, all right, closer than ever. I tried the number again on the bar payphone.

And this time there was an answer.

"Hi." The voice was female, soft and husky, almost as if whispering.

"Is that one-four-four-six-seven-one-seven-eight-nine?"

Tub."

"I'm calling about your ad in this morning's Chronicle."

"Who are you?"

"I might ask you the same question."

"I'm Maris."

"OK, Maris. I'm Gary."

"What can I do for you, Gary?"

"I'm a friend of Rupe Alder's .. ."

"You are?"

"Why are you trying to contact him?"

"I can't get into that on the phone."

"Perhaps we could meet, then."

"Maybe."

"I don't think you're going to get any other response to your ad."

"You don't, huh?"

"You're lucky I saw it."

There was a brief silence, then she said, "OK, Gary, point taken. When do you suggest we meet?"

"Right away suits me."

"I have classes this afternoon."

"You're a student at Stanford?"

"Yuh."

"I could come to you."

"Where are you now?"

"Downtown San Francisco."

"OK. Do you know how to get here?"

"Not exactly. I just got into town."

"Then I am lucky, aren't I?"

"I said you were. Now, how do I get to Stanford?"

An hour's ride on the CalTrain to Palo Alto turned out to be the answer, with a courtesy bus laid on at the station to ferry students, staff and visitors to the university campus. Walking was pretty much out of the question, on account of the sheer vastness of the site. Stanford's acreage appeared close to limitless, with architectural statements of patron al munificence plonked spaciously around it.

The bus dropped me outside the main quad and I made my way through an elegant maze of honey-stoned colonnades to the university bookshop, where the mysterious Maris had said she'd meet me in the in-store cafe prior to a three o'clock seminar. I'd know her by her hair, she'd assured me. "Red, and lots of it."

It was true. I had no trouble spotting her, sipping cappuccino and distractedly turning the pages of a fat textbook. She had the porcelain skin that sometimes goes with red hair, apparently untouched by the Californian sun. The hair itself was long and lustrous and very conspicuous. She was wearing a baggy grey sweater and cropped trousers. A black rucksack, sagging round book-shaped bulges, lay at her feet. She glanced at her wristwatch a fraction of a second before noticing me. And an expensive wristwatch it looked to be.

"Hi. I'm Gary Young. We spoke on the phone."

"Hi. Maris Nielsen. Do you want a coffee?"

"OK."

"You have to buy it at the counter."

I glanced round at a three-long queue, at the head of which a minute girl in a purple beret was agonizing over her choice of Danish. "Forget it." I sat down. "We don't have that much time, do we?"

"Guess not." Maris put her book away and gave me her attention. "So ... Gary .. . how, ah .. ."

"I'm an old friend of Rupe's."

"From England?"

"Actually, I'm American by birth." (It seemed a good idea to flag up my cover story early.) "But I grew up in England. Rupe and I were at school together."

"What brings you to San Francisco?"

"This is where Rupe was when his family last heard from him."

"And when was that?"

"Mid-September. Since then, nothing."

"Mid-September, huh?"

"Yeh. Which is when you met him, according to your ad."

"Oh, it's when I met him, all right."

"How did you .. . meet him?"

"Could I just get something straight first? As far as his family and friends are concerned, Rupe Alder's vanished, right? You're here to find him. But you have no way of knowing whether he's still in San Francisco. No hard idea, in actual fact, where he could be."

"That's the size of it."

"Seems you can't help me, then."

"I might be able to. If you told me why it's so ... urgent .. . that you contact him."

"Who said it was urgent?"

"You did." I plucked the half-page I'd torn out of the paper from my pocket. "In your ad."

"Oh yeh." She sat back, then slowly picked up her cappuccino and sipped it, patently playing for time. "Well, the wording was just to get his attention, of course."

"It got mine."

"Yuh. So it did."

"Look, Maris '

"Could we go outside?" She glanced around. "You know, away from ... people."

Out we went, into the clean, cooling air. Stifling the observation that the choice of rendezvous had been Maris's, not mine, I followed her through a pillared and pedimented archway into a courtyard in front of a white-faced mission-style building. Benches, most of them unoccupied, were arranged round a central fountain. Sunlight was dancing in the plashing water. Maris made for the bench furthest from anyone else and sat down.

"Sorry about having to get out of there," she said as I joined her. "I don't want everyone knowing my business."

"I can understand that."

"I especially don't want Clyde hearing about the ad."

"Clyde?" I raised my eyebrows to strengthen the impression of ignorance it seemed important to convey.

"My boyfriend. Clyde Ledgister. Did Rupe ever mention him to you?"

"I don't think so."

"Only I got the impression ... well, that Rupe had come here to see Clyde. Specifically, I mean."

"Why was that?"

"I don't know. That was the whole point of.. ." She lowered her voice, though the only people within earshot were absorbed in their own conversation. "The Arabs were the ones who standardized the incorporation of fountains in architectural design, you know. Odd, when you consider how little water they had to spare. But fountains weren't considered luxuries by your average Middle Eastern potentate. The sound of the water made it kind of hard for eavesdroppers. An early anti-bugging device, I suppose you could say." She glanced at her watch. "I don't have all that long, I'm afraid."

"Why not just tell me why you're so keen to speak to Rupe, then?"

"OK. But if Clyde ever finds out.. ."

"Mightn't he see the ad?"

"Not really. He's out of town at the moment. His uncle's died." (And was no doubt being buried in Berlin. Yes, Clyde was well away.)

"That's why you put it in today?"

"All this week, actually. Clyde won't be back till next week."

"Right. So, this was a good opportunity to see if Rupe was still around."

"Yuh. I mean, OK, it was a long shot, but .. . I'm worried about Clyde. What else could I do to find out what in hell's going on?"

"Why are you worried about him?"

"Because he's not been the same since that day September fifteen. I knew there was something wrong when I walked in on them in Clyde's room. Your friend, Rupe, well, he was pleasant enough. But the ... atmosphere .. . was all wrong. I had the feeling ... he was threatening Clyde. After he'd gone, Clyde just tried to brush it under the rug, said there was nothing wrong, nothing I needed to bother about. But he wouldn't say what Rupe had wanted or how they'd met. And anyhow ... I can read him like a book. He couldn't fool me. He was scared of something. Something Rupe had said to him, or told him about, or asked him to do. He was real scared. And then

"What?"

"After Rupe's visit, I couldn't get so close to him, you know? There was a part of him sealed off. We'd always told each other everything. So I'd thought, anyhow. But that all changed. He got to be ... secretive. And oftentimes absent, without explanation. Most everyone lives on campus here. Stanford's a self-contained community. San Francisco's a long way off and feels even further. Clyde and I never went into the city much. But after your friend's visit, that altered. I wouldn't be able to find Clyde in the usual places at the usual times. Then someone would tell me they'd seen him heading for the train station. When I asked him where he'd been, he'd just get mad and shout at me to stop interrogating him. So, I stopped."

"But you went on wondering."

"Yuh. The more I thought about it, the more it led back to the quietly spoken Englishman I'd met in his room that Friday, September fifteen Rupe Alder. He didn't say much about himself. At the time, I wasn't interested. But I am now. So, what can you tell me about him, Gary?"

"Nothing that'll answer your questions. He's a professional guy, single, thirty-six years old. Lives in London. Works for a shipping company. Did work for a shipping company, I should say. Resigned at the end of August. Nobody knows why. Nor why he came here. What he was up to what he wanted with Clyde is a total mystery."

"There must be some clue to his intentions."

"Not really. Except.. ." I sensed the moment had arrived when, if I volunteered something, however meagre, I might get a little more in return. But what to volunteer? I couldn't mention Townley. If Maris knew that was the surname of Clyde's recently deceased uncle, it could set some unhelpful alarm bells ringing. "There's a photograph he seems to have been interested in, pinned up in his kitchen, of someone nobody close to Rupe recognizes. It's possible, going on odd remarks he made to his lodger, that he's, well, looking for the person in the photograph."

"Do you have the photograph with you?"

"Er .. . yeh." I burrowed in my bag and produced the snap Rupe had taken of the picture of Townley with Loudon and another man at the Golden Rickshaw. "It's the guy on the right that Rupe was interested in."

"How do you know that?" (A fair question.)

"Ah, well, there was another photograph. I mean, there were two on the wall. I didn't bring the other one with me. Only this fellow' - I tapped at Townley's face with my finger' appears in both."

"Where was it taken?"

"Not sure. But, er, the other one .. . was taken at a railway station in Somerset, near where Rupe and I grew up. Now, the station closed the whole line closed, in fact in nineteen sixty-six, so the pictures obviously predate that."

"By how much?" (Another fair question.)

"Well, our friend's in civilian clothes in the station shot. The fashion looks to be ... early to mid-nineteen sixties."

Maris's expression suggested such reasoning wouldn't pass muster with her tutors. But she didn't seem inclined to make an issue of my failure to bring the other photograph with me. "So, how old would this guy be now?"

"Oh, sixty-five, seventy."

"Sixty-five, seventy." The computation had given her food for thought. "That's kind of interesting."

"Why?"

"Because .. ." She looked away, chewing her thumb pensively, the first thing I'd seen her do that was less mature than she evidently wanted to appear. "God, this is difficult."

"What is?"

She glanced at her watch again. "I really should be going soon."

"Do you know who the guy in the photograph is?"

"No. Not .. . exactly."

"But you know something about him?"

"Kind of. I mean She shook her head irritably in a flame-red flurry, then said, "OK. No sense starting down this road if we don't go to the end. One day, a couple of weeks after Clyde had started going missing, I ... followed him. I saw him getting on the Marguerite that's what we call the shuttle bus. Well, it goes out round by the children's hospital and the shopping mall on its way to the station, so I knew if I cycled straight down Palm Drive I'd get there first. I also knew -because I'd found the used tickets a couple of times in his waste basket that these trips of his were all the way into San Francisco. I kept out of sight when the Marguerite pulled in and stayed that way till the train arrived. Clyde was on foot, so he got straight on, without paying any attention to me and a few others boarding the bike car. I didn't really know how