Name To a Face (11 page)

It was eleven o’clock local time when Harding’s plane touched down in Nice. He retained little awareness of the journey that had filled most of the day. The train to Reading; the coach to the airport; the long wait in the terminal; the evening flight across France; they had been a blur somewhere at the margin of his thoughts, barely impinging on his consciousness.

Whybrow had declined to elaborate on his stark report of Hayley’s mercifully aborted attack on Carol.
“I’ll give you all the details when we meet.”
That had left Harding prey to as many dreadful speculations as his imagination could conjure up. Yet none was more dreadful in its way than the frightening realization that he had understood nothing as it truly was. He had been deceived. He had been manipulated. He had been made a fool of. And just how big a one he suspected Whybrow was going to explain with unsparing clarity.

Whybrow was waiting outside the customs hall. He appeared, as ever, cool and elegant, dressed in a dark suit and open-neck shirt. He was carrying a slim briefcase in one hand and a rolled copy of the
Financial Times
in the other. He had the fluent carriage of an athlete and the disconcertingly direct gaze of a powerful thinker. He kept his thinning hair bristlingly short and his chin baby-smooth. For all his undemonstrative, quietly spoken manner, there was something narcissistic about him, something faintly scornful of others. Whenever he had made up a drinking threesome with Harding and Tozer, he had always finished the soberest of them by some way with the least about himself revealed. Happiness was control in the world of Tony Whybrow.

“Bad business, Tim,” he said, tapping Harding on the elbow with his newspaper in greeting. “You don’t look so good.”

“I don’t feel so good. Think I’ll feel any better when you’ve told me exactly what happened?”

“No point pretending that’s likely.”

“Are we going to Barney’s now?”

“No. It’s late. And he’s been hitting the bottle. Go and see them in the morning. He’ll be more rational then. And Carol will be calmer. I hope.”

“It must have been a terrible experience for her.”

“Yes. It was.” Whybrow glanced in the direction of the exit leading to the car park. “I’ll drive you to your place. We can talk on the way.”

“OK. But-”

“Let’s go, shall we?” Whybrow cut him off, with a hint of impatience. There was much to say. But the time to say it had not quite come yet.

“You’re sure it was Hayley who did this, aren’t you, Tony?” Harding asked as they settled into Whybrow’s Lexus. “I can’t really believe she’s capable of threatening anyone with a knife.”

“How well do you think you know her?” The car started almost inaudibly and glided out of its parking bay with little apparent intervention from its driver. “You can’t have met her more than a couple of times.”

“I haven’t,” said Harding defensively. “Even so…”

“Here’s the deal, Tim. I only learnt the identity of Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper after Barney had talked you into going to Penzance on his behalf. I wouldn’t have allowed the situation to develop as it has if I’d known sooner. There were simply too many risk factors. As events have resoundingly confirmed.”

“Hold on. Are you saying you knew Hayley… before?”

“Knew of her, yes. I’ll come to that later. Barney and I are in the midst of some particularly delicate negotiations at present. I may have taken my eye off the ball where his family problems are concerned. He certainly did so himself. Hence the impossible position he put you in.”

“Why was it… impossible?”

“Because you didn’t know all or even most of the factors that were in play. Before I explain them, though, I’d better tell you how last night unfolded.” They were clear of the car park now, heading for the main road into Nice. “Hayley rang the penthouse around seven. The phone had rung a couple of times before and Carol had answered, but the caller had hung up. Only when Barney answered did she speak. She introduced herself and confessed straight out to stealing the ring from Heartsease.”

“She said that?”

“She did. She also said she regretted what she’d done and was willing to hand the ring over to Barney and explain why she’d stolen it. She wanted him to meet her in Menton later that evening. He agreed. It was a nicely judged decoy. She said she’d be waiting for him on the promenade near the casino at eight o’clock. He set off, telling Carol he was meeting me to discuss some business emergency. Perhaps if he’d told her the truth, she’d have been more on her guard, though I doubt it. Anyway, while Barney was in Menton, stooging around the sea front as eight o’clock came and went, Hayley was in Monaco. She’d been there when he left, hiding in the shadows near the back gate. As he drove out and the shutter-door came down, she’d wedged a bar under it to stop it closing. Barney’s not the type to wait to make sure the door’s completely shut every time he leaves. You know that. Well, it looks like she did too.”

“So, she got in by rolling under the door?”

“Yes. It wasn’t difficult. And it was even less difficult to get inside the apartment. The patio doors were unlocked. I expect she had some other way in planned, but that made it real easy for her. She crept into the kitchen and took a knife from the block on the worktop. Carol was in the lounge watching television. She never heard a thing. Suddenly there was a knife at her throat. She thought she was going to be killed. There and then.”

“Poor Carol.” Harding shut his eyes for a second, imagining how she must have felt in the moment when she realized her life might be about to end. “What did she do?”

“She was paralysed by fear. Probably just as well. But she wasn’t struck dumb. So, she talked, pleading for her life. At first, she didn’t know who her attacker was. Hayley stayed behind her. Carol reasoned with her as best she could. It was a monologue, apparently. Hayley never said a word. Then, suddenly, she threw down the knife and fled. It was only at that point that Carol recognized her.”

“But she’s never met her before.” It was a feeble objection. Hayley’s resemblance to Kerry Foxton made some form of recognition inevitable. As Whybrow emphasized in his own way by ignoring the point.

“Carol was in shock. She can’t properly account for what she did afterwards. Instead of calling the police, she locked herself in the bathroom, fearing Hayley might come back. She didn’t, of course. She was probably long gone by then. Meanwhile, Barney was starting to worry. He phoned home and got no answer. Then he worried some more. He didn’t want to head back in case Hayley was simply late for their appointment. So, he phoned me and asked me to call round. Carol was still in the bathroom when I got there. I had to do quite a lot of talking just to get her to open the door. I’d searched the apartment by then and was certain no one was hiding anywhere. The bar was still propping open the shutter-door when I arrived, by the way. Hayley hadn’t bothered to remove it. Or maybe she’d been too distraught at her loss of nerve to think of it.”

“How do you know she lost her nerve? Maybe she’d only ever intended to threaten Carol. Though why I can’t imagine.”

“She left something in the kitchen that convinced me she was planning to murder Carol. A pocket recorder, with a tape in it. I listened to the tape while waiting for Barney to drive back from Menton. I’d phoned him, but not the police. I don’t believe in acting hastily. And this is a good example of why that’s always a sensible policy.” Whybrow pressed a button on the dashboard. The radio and hi-fi panel lit up. A tape engaged in the player. And Carol’s voice echoed in the car.

Barney’s playing golf, so I thought I’d give you a call. What are you doing? Treating Humph to a cream tea? It’d be wasted on him. He doesn’t appreciate the good things in life. But I do. Our afternoons together are very good, Tim, very, very good. Shall we-

Whybrow’s finger hit the off switch. Silence reclaimed the foreground. Harding could not suppress a groan as he gazed out through the passenger window into the blackness of the Mediterranean. “That’s quite enough of that, I think, don’t you?” said Whybrow softly.

“Has Barney heard this?”

“Not yet. And there’s no reason why he needs to. As long as we can agree how to handle the… ramifications.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I believe Hayley’s plan was to frame Barney for Carol’s murder, leaving the tape to be found by the police when they responded to the anonymous 112 emergency call she obviously intended to make after killing Carol. She’d arranged for him to have no alibi that would bear examination, whereas I assume she had one standing by for herself. The tape would have supplied the perfect motive. It could plausibly have been obtained from your phone by some private detective, employed by Barney to check up on Carol. It was a good plan. We can only be grateful she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it. Barney’s denials wouldn’t have counted for much. I don’t know how I could have got him off. The beauty of it, from Hayley’s point of view, was that Barney would have understood very clearly who’d framed him and why, without being able to do a damn thing about it, except tell the truth and have it universally disbelieved. Sweet revenge, in Hayley’s mind. Better than murdering Barney, she’d have murdered his beloved wife and ensured he’d spend the rest of his life in prison contemplating that fact.”

“Barney might have understood. But I don’t. What would Hayley have been avenging?”

“Her sister’s murder-as she sees it.”

“What?”

“Her name isn’t Winter, Tim. It’s Foxton. She’s Kerry Foxton’s twin sister.”

I wasn’t with the company back in the summer of 1999,” said Whybrow His soft, susurrant voice was the only sound that reached Harding through the dark blanket of the night. “If I had been, things might have been very different.” They were parked in a lay-by just round the headland from Nice, no more than a couple of kilometres from Villefranche. “I think I’d have questioned Kerry Foxton’s credentials-and her motives-sooner and more searchingly than I gather Ray Trathen did. But that wouldn’t necessarily have made any difference. There’s no legislating for accidents. And an accident is what happened to her on that diving expedition.

“I made enquiries about the Foxton family at the time of the inquest. It seemed prudent to establish whether there were any surprises in store for Barney. That’s when I first heard about Hayley Barney really should have told me sooner. He’d heard from Carol, of course. Kerry had confided in her that she had a twin who’d suffered from depression since her mid-teens. Her parents were embarrassed by the contrast between the two girls and never mentioned Hayley. After a spell in hospital and a sequence of recoveries and relapses, Hayley cut herself off, living alone in Birmingham, where she held down various temporary jobs when she was well enough to work. Kerry kept spasmodically in touch with her, but the accident put a stop to that. Her parents told Hayley nothing about it, apparently for fear the news would only make her illness worse. She didn’t hear about their deaths until long after the event.

“She’d become content to have no contact with her family. Self-imposed isolation is quite common in such cases, I’m told. She must have supposed Kerry and her parents had abandoned her. Then, at some stage, almost certainly
after
the inquest, she found out what had really happened to them. I don’t know how and it doesn’t much matter now. The point is that she did find out.

“You’d think learning a thing like that might be the last straw for someone with a history of mental trouble. Not so in Hayley’s case, though. At the time of my original enquiries, I arranged to have a confidential word with a psychiatrist who’d treated her while she was still living in London. It transpired he’d had doubts about the diagnosis of depression all along and had come to believe the real problem was rooted in feelings of inferiority to her twin-something he never mentioned to the family. When I asked him what effect her twin’s death might have had on her, he answered in one rather surprising word: liberating.

“You never suspected Hayley was mentally ill, did you? Why not? Because Kerry’s death means she’s no longer crushed by her inability to match her sister’s achievements. More than that, it’s given her a way to surpass those achievements, by becoming her twin’s avenger.

“Who can say what she hoped to gain by latching onto Barney’s uncle Gabriel? Barney’s convinced she tried to persuade the old man to leave her Heartsease and all his money. It’s possible. That would have been a kind of revenge. If so, the plan failed. Gabriel was far from a soft touch. But the family feud over the ring came to light as a result of his death and she began to plot a direct move against Barney, having been encouraged by the likes of Ray Trathen-and maybe even Gabriel too-to believe he’d murdered Kerry. Whoever stole your phone must have been put up to it by Hayley. She was presumably looking for anything she could use against Barney. And, boy did she strike lucky.

“Don’t feel you have to admit or deny anything, but it’s occurred to me you may have got closer to Hayley than was good for you. The tape proves you and Carol are lovers. I’ve known that for quite a while, by the way, though happily Barney doesn’t have a clue she’s been unfaithful to him. Valuable information for Hayley. But was it also unwelcome information? Was jealousy part of the mix? You tell me. If you want to. Or not, if you don’t.

“I’ve advised Barney not to call in the police. Hayley’s arrest and prosecution would only tempt the media, especially Fleet Street, to reopen the Kerry Foxton story. Then they might start digging into Starburst International, which we don’t need at any time, but especially not at the moment, with a particularly juicy deal about to be finalized involving the sort of people who’d run a mile if the press started sniffing around.

“What we really need to do is to find Hayley and persuade her to submit herself to professional care so this kind of thing can’t happen again. We’ll see she has the best treatment available. Barney will pay. The fact she didn’t go through with her plan suggests to me she knows she needs help. We’re willing to supply it. I think she may be willing to accept it, especially if it’s offered by the right person. I see you as that person.

“I imagine you must have found out enough about Hayley at least to know where to
start
looking for her. We’ll cover your expenses. Do whatever is necessary to find her. Quickly. I doubt Carol will sleep soundly in her bed until you do. She doesn’t know about the tape, incidentally. She was still locked in the bathroom when I came across it. So, that’s between you and me. Which is how it can stay as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to sully Barney’s rosy vision of his marriage.

“I can’t predict how he’d react if he learnt the truth about your afternoons with Carol. His volatile temper and the stake he has in Jardiniera suggest to me it would work out badly for you. And for Carol. So, for all our sakes, let’s avoid that, shall we?”

Harding did not immediately respond. He sat still, staring straight ahead through the windscreen towards the faint, twinkling lights of Villefranche. But there was no stillness in his mind, where more grim realizations and queasy suspicions than he could keep track of jostled and collided.

He was being blackmailed. That was clear, however subtly Whybrow had phrased his proposition. Harding did not need to be told how disastrous it would be if Barney heard the tape of Carol’s message. He had no choice but to do what was asked of him. Or at least to try.

Finding Hayley, if she did not wish to be found, would be far from easy. She would surely not return to Penzance. Ann Gashry could well know where she was. It was certainly apparent that Ann had lied about Hayley in virtually every particular. Nathan had not been her brutal Svengali. Nathan, indeed, might not even exist. Some explanation for Hayley’s likeness to Kerry had been needed to distract Harding while the plot against Barney Tozer was set in motion. Feeding him titbits about Francis Gashry and sending him to see Herbert Shelkin had served the same purpose. And then there was the night he had spent with Hayley. Had that just been another way of blinding him to the truth?

He wondered if Ann had tracked Hayley down in Birmingham and told her her parents and twin sister were dead. If so, it implied they had been co-conspirators ever since. He wondered also if Whybrow could be right about Hayley’s mixed motives for attacking Carol. Either way, Hayley knew about his affair with Carol and had done even before they slept together. Darren Spargo had not been stalking her. Rather he had been acting a part, scripted and paid for by Hayley.

There was one consolation worth clinging to. She had not taken her plot against Barney to its logical, murderous conclusion. Carol was traumatized but unscathed. Barney was outraged but at liberty. The situation was not beyond redemption. Maybe Whybrow’s solution to the problem was the best all round.

And maybe it was too good to be true. The reasons he had given for avoiding police involvement were not entirely convincing. Harding knew what Ray Trathen for one would say was the real explanation. Barney did not want Hayley’s belief that he had murdered Kerry to be examined in court-not to mention the newspapers-because she was right: he
had
murdered Kerry.

If that was true, Barney’s reluctance to see Hayley prosecuted was reinforced by guilt. He did not know how she had planned to frame him for Carol’s murder, of course. As far as he was concerned, she had only intended to do to him what he had done to her: take the life of a loved one. Maybe he saw the justice in that and had no wish to punish her for it-an interpretation that only rendered Whybrow’s calculation more impenetrable.

In the final analysis, it did not really matter. A peace offering was on the table. And Harding was to be its broker. Willingly or not.

“I’m asking a lot of you, I know,” said Whybrow, breaking the long, heavy silence. “But I wouldn’t if I thought you weren’t equal to the task.”

“Is that so?”

“You’ll do it?”

“I don’t appear to have much option.”

“I’m sorry you see it like that. Truth is, this is in everyone’s interests.”

Oddly, Harding felt that probably
was
the truth. He sighed. “There are leads… I could follow.”

“Good.”

“When would you want me to start?”

“As soon as possible.” Whybrow ejected the tape from the dashboard player and handed it to him. It was a cynical, mocking little gesture. There would be another copy. There would always be another copy. “There’s no time to be lost.”