Heaven's Light (8 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ she said at once, ‘I’m intruding.’

Barnaby eased round in his chair. He had a glass of champagne in his hand and for the second time in two days she watched that same look ghost across his face. He hadn’t expected to see her. He was, in some curiously vulnerable way, disadvantaged.

He got to his feet, doing the introductions. Charlie Epple, a mate from London. Kate Frankham, a friend. She
smiled at the word. How exact it was, a relationship emptied of anything remotely dangerous. Kate lingered by the door, aware of Charlie watching her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, ‘barging in like this.’

Barnaby was charging his glass with the remains of the champagne, and offered it to her. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Have some fizz.’

Kate accepted the glass, wondering how to explain her sudden appearance. She remembered Charlie’s name now. Barnaby had talked about him often, telling her that Charlie was the closest he’d ever come to meeting real genius. He worked in London. He wrote adverts, spun dreams, earned pots of money.

Kate raised her glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘Here’s to D-Day.’

Charlie responded at once. His glass was empty. ‘Fuck D-Day. Here’s to the revolution.’ He was grinning again.

There was a long, awkward silence. Then Charlie got up, stretching his arms wide. He was tall, taller than Barnaby, and the sunlight through the big sash window caught in his hair, gilding it. He shot Barnaby a meaningful look and said he had to move on. He’d catch up later. There was sure to be word from Jess. He crossed the room, heading for the door, and Kate listened to the clatter of his footsteps on the stairs and the crash of the door as he stepped out onto the street.

‘Interesting-looking man,’ she said absently, settling into the chair in front of the desk.

Barnaby was standing by the window, watching Charlie thread a path through the afternoon traffic. Kate could hear his whistle through the open window, a tune emptied of everything except a kind of manic jauntiness. Barnaby turned back, making no effort to sit down, and Kate
thought again how pale he looked. Not just vulnerable but exhausted. She glanced around her. The shelves of leather-bound legal books. The rows of carefully indexed Law Reports. The piles of annotated typescript, hole-punched and threaded with green fasteners.

‘How’s it going?’ she said. ‘I should have asked yesterday.’

Barnaby looked round as if he’d never seen the room before. ‘It’s going fine,’ he said. ‘It’s a struggle, of course, but that applies to pretty much everyone. Nothing’s easy any more, as I’m sure you know.’

Kate ducked her head, hiding her face. When she looked up, Barnaby was staring out of the window again. ‘It’s none of my business,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t help wondering.’

‘Wondering what?’

‘Jessie.’ She ran her finger round the top of the champagne glass. ‘Nothing the matter, is there?’

For a moment Barnaby didn’t answer. When he finally turned round, pulling the chair towards him and sitting down, there were tears in his eyes. He put his head in his hands, then reached out blindly when he heard the scrape of her chair as she got up and stepped round the desk.

‘She’s a junkie,’ he whispered. ‘She’s sick.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, turning away his head. Kate bent over him and put a hand on his shoulder, telling him how sorry she was. She’d no idea. He should have told her. Yesterday. At the health club.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said, his face contorting again. ‘Can you believe that? Months and months of it and I didn’t bloody know. What kind of father does that make me? Eh?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, accepted the proffered tissue, blew his nose and shook his head angrily as if something had come loose inside. Kate retrieved the champagne
from the table beside her chair and held it out. Barnaby looked at the glass. ‘That’s no answer,’ he said, ‘but thank you anyway.’

‘It’ll make you feel better. I promise.’

‘You think so?’

He gazed up at her, that same imploring look she saw on some of the clients she counselled. Tell me it won’t hurt any more. Tell me the pain will stop.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ she said quietly. ‘Truly.’

‘You mean that?’

‘Scout’s honour.’ She bent to him, kissing him lightly on the forehead. He reached for her hand again, holding it tightly. Then he took a deep breath, cleared his throat and made a show of pulling himself together. She’d obviously come for a purpose. He was sorry about being so emotional.

‘Don’t be.’ She held his hand a moment longer, then stepped back towards the chair, Barnaby watching her as she sat down. He looked, she thought, utterly bereft. ‘I’ve got a problem too,’ she said brightly. ‘But I feel embarrassed even mentioning it.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’s about…’ she frowned ‘… Billy.’

‘Billy?’

‘Billy Goodman. My so-called partner. Actually, not my partner at all. More …’

‘A friend?’

‘Yes, sort of.’

Barnaby remembered the leather jacket in the back seat of the Audi. The image was like a spongeful of cold water, forcing him to concentrate. This man of hers. Billy. He listened to her telling him about the incident
outside the pub. Billy had been involved in some kind of fight. The other man, a young student, had been badly hurt. The police were involved. And now the local press.

‘So what?’ Barnaby asked, when she paused for breath. ‘Where’s the problem?’

‘They’re going to run an article. I’ve no idea why and I’ve no idea what they’re going to say but it won’t be helpful. I know it won’t.’

‘But what can they say?’

When she was nervous, Kate had a habit of playing with a lock of hair and she was doing it now, winding it around her little finger and then letting it uncurl.

‘Billy has been living with me on and off,’ she muttered, ‘and he has a criminal record.’

‘What for?’

‘Violence.’ She paused. ‘He gets carried away at rallies and demos. He’s not the sort to refuse a challenge.’

‘And you think the
Sentinel
are interested in all that?’

‘I think the
Sentinel
are interested in selling papers. Labour councillor tucked up with convicted heavy is a good story. In this city, especially.’

Barnaby gazed at the empty champagne bottle. Kate, as ever, was right. Like most local papers, the
Sentinel
had an appetite for civic outrage. The fact that a prominent local councillor was shacked up with a thug would make compelling reading. And that, in turn, made the story hard to resist.

‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘So what do we do about it?’

‘We?’

Barnaby glanced up. Kate was looking at him, the beginnings of a smile softening the anxiety in her face. He nodded. ‘We,’ he confirmed. ‘How do we get to the
Sentinel?
How do we phrase it?’ He returned her smile. ‘Just what do I say to Harry Wilcox?’

The
Sentinel
was published and printed from a low-rise modern complex in the east of the city. Harry Wilcox, the editor, occupied a glassed-in office at the head of the newsroom. Insulated from the constant trilling of phones, he could nevertheless keep an eye on the shrinking army of increasingly young reporters who generated most of the newspaper’s copy.

Barnaby followed one of the newsroom secretaries into the office. Wilcox, shirtsleeved, was on the phone. He signalled a greeting with his spare hand and waved Barnaby into a chair beneath an enormous rubber plant. There was a flask of coffee bubbling on the nearby cabinet and Barnaby helped himself while Wilcox finished his conversation. He’d known Wilcox for the best part of three years, first at various Rotary gatherings, latterly on alternate Monday evenings when they joined forces with two other couples and drove out to a regular pub quiz in a pretty village near Petersfield. Recently, they’d enjoyed a series of unbroken victories and the team had become minor celebrities on the local circuit.

Wilcox put the phone down with a sigh. He was a big man, tall, bulky, physically intimidating, but his career had never kept pace with his ambitions and he made no secret of his belief that Portsmouth was a smaller pond than he felt he deserved. Drunk, five pints down, he could fantasize savagely on the opportunities he’d missed in Fleet Street, and Barnaby knew that he resented the success and the trappings that had fallen to many of his contemporaries. Like most newspapermen in their late forties, he still dreamed of the big story, the ultimate exclusive, and in
Wilcox’s case it had become a minor obsession, the springboard that would finally take him away from the south coast and into the big time.

Barnaby passed him a cup of coffee. Wilcox stirred the thin brown liquid without enthusiasm.

‘Liz OK?’

‘Fine.’

‘Get that bloody wallpaper she was after?’

‘Yes, as far as I know.’

Barnaby pulled a face. The last time they’d met for the pub quiz, Liz had spent most of the evening bewailing the lack of choice in the city’s department stores. She was after something fancy for the spare room. It was very expensive and immensely tasteful and no one in Portsmouth had ever heard of it.

Wilcox emptied the coffee cup and dropped it in the bin beside his chair. Then he seized a copy of the paper’s noon edition and began to leaf through it, shaking his head as he did so. The
Sentinel
was the cross he had to bear, he seemed to be saying. Life would be so much simpler if he was excused the chore of trying to knock it into shape.

‘Listen to this,’ he said, his finger resting on one of the inside pages. ‘Whole bloody column on some woman’s budgie. A city of 180,000 and we’re driven to carrying stuff like that.’

Barnaby forced a smile, a gesture of mute sympathy, recognizing Wilcox’s mock-despair for what it really was. The D-Day weekend had been the city’s biggest story for a decade and Harry had masterminded special edition after special edition, splashing the paper’s pages with huge colour photos of the celebrations. By common consent, the
Sentinel
had risen to the challenge with immense flair and it was plainly Barnaby’s role to find a way of saying so.

‘You must be knackered,’ he murmured. ‘Bloody hard work.’

‘It was.’

‘Successful, though. Looked a treat.’

‘You think so?’

‘Definitely.’

Wilcox permitted himself a smile, staring out at his charges in the newsroom.

‘So what brings you here?’ he asked, turning back.

Barnaby swirled the remains of his coffee around his cup. Anticipating this conversation had made him realize just how little he knew Harry Wilcox. They’d never risked anything as complicated as a real friendship and in his heart Barnaby recognized that bluff pub banter every other Monday night was no substitute. They were middle-aged. They were moderately successful. They pulled good salaries. And that was about it.

‘It’s tricky,’ Barnaby heard himself saying. ‘The last thing I want to do is put you in an awkward position.’

‘Oh?’ Wilcox was visibly interested. ‘What’s it about, then?’

Barnaby told him what little he knew about Billy Goodman. The man had some kind of record. He’d once lived with a local councillor, Kate Frankham.

‘Lives,’ Wilcox grunted. ‘Present tense.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah.’ Wilcox nodded. ‘They’re shacked up in her house. She’s got a nice little pad in King Street. That’s another angle, by the way. The terrace got a conservation grant and technically that falls to some committee she’s on. So,’ he grinned, ‘guess who didn’t declare an interest? And guess who ended up doing the work?’

‘Goodman?’

‘In one. Spot on.’ He tapped the paper. ‘Hellraiser boyfriend Billy Goodman.’

Wilcox sat back, pleased with himself, and it occurred to Barnaby that it might be wiser to end the conversation. Kate had mentioned nothing about the conservation grant. More to the point, before she’d left the office she’d told him that the relationship with Goodman was over.

‘You know Kate?’ Wilcox was smiling.

‘Yes, she’s a friend.’

‘Known her long?’

‘Couple of years. Long enough.’

Wilcox said nothing, letting the silence between them speak for itself.

Barnaby cleared his throat. ‘Don’t get this wrong, Harry…’

‘Don’t get what wrong?’

‘Me and Kate Frankham. We’re friends, buddies. I owe her a favour or two. And I also happen to think she does a bloody good job.’ He paused. ‘It would be a shame, that’s all.’

‘A shame what?’

‘Messing it all up for her.’

‘Messing all what up? I’m not with you, mate. We’re newspapermen. We’re looking at a story. If the story stands up, we’ll run it.’ Wilcox jabbed at the paper in front of him. ‘Unless you’re saying there’s some good reason not to.’

Barnaby shook his head at once, acknowledging the weakness of his case. Maybe he should have dwelt on the D-Day weekend a bit longer and given Wilcox the chance to boast about the banquet he’d doubtless attended. What Clinton had said to him. What Hillary had worn. Whether or not she had good legs.

‘There’s no reason not to,’ he agreed. ‘None at all.’

‘Then what’s the problem?’

Barnaby looked him in the eye, unblinking. He could hear someone laughing in the newsroom outside. ‘I don’t want to see her hurt,’ he said at last. ‘Believe me, it’s that simple.’

Wilcox shook his head. ‘Nothing’s that simple. Are we talking local politics here? Only you never struck me as—’

‘No,’ Barnaby said. ‘It’s nothing to do with local politics. I don’t care a shit about local politics.’

‘Then it must be personal.’ Wilcox stuck his thumbs inside his braces.

‘Yes.’

‘Very personal?’

‘That’s not a fair question.’

‘Fair question?’ Barnaby heard the braces twang. ‘You come in here and ask me to spike a story? And you’re talking fair question?’

‘Touché.’ Barnaby conceded the point, shamefaced. ‘
Mea culpa
.’

There was another long silence. The laughter had come to an end. Finally, Wilcox reached again for the paper, folded it up and positioned it on the desk so that Barnaby couldn’t miss the front page. An elderly veteran was saluting on a beach in Normandy. His bent figure cast a long shadow across the wet sand. Over the picture, the headline read
A DAY TO REMEMBER
.