Pantheon (32 page)

He let out a long sigh of exasperation. He was chasing shadows. Chilling though it was to know he was being followed, and infuriating though it was to let his pursuers go unpunished, he knew this was a diversion. It was not them he had to find, it was Florence and Harry.

The immediate task was to make a call. He looked around and spotted a telephone booth on this side of the street, no more than thirty yards away. He sprinted over to it.

Maddeningly, he didn’t know what to do, having to read the laborious instructions on the printed card above the telephone. Eventually he heard the voice of an operator.

‘
Yale Daily News
, please.’

He knew he was playing with fire, making this telephone call. The sensible thing would be never to see or speak to her again. And yet who else could he turn to for the information he needed this very instant?

There was a click and then a voice on the end of the line, announcing the name of the newspaper.

‘May I speak with a Miss Dorothy Lake, please?’

‘Is she a typist?’

‘She’s a reporter, I believe.’

‘Hold the line.’

He heard a hand placed incompletely over the receiver and then a muffled voice calling out for Dorothy. There was a rustle and then her breath and then her voice.

‘Miss Lake, it’s James. James Zennor.’

‘Well, how are you, my disappearing Englishman? I was beginning to get worried about you.’ He could tell that she was smiling. He could picture her lips, full and slightly parted in that same knowing, playful expression he had seen over dinner last night.

‘I’m well, Miss Lake,’ he replied, his voice overly stern and businesslike. ‘I’m afraid I need your help. I need to go and see the Dean right away.’ He checked his watch. It was quarter to eleven. ‘I need his home address.’

‘Well, that’s easy.’

‘Really?’

‘The Dean has an official residence. It’s on St Ronan Street. Number two hundred and forty-one.’

The map was trembling in James’s fingers as he searched for St Ronan Street. His eye went west: York, Park, Howe, Dwight Streets. No sign of St Ronan. He checked east: High, College, Temple, Church. Now he looked north: Wall Street, Grove, Trumbull. Where the hell was St Ronan Street?

He looked outside the centre of New Haven, his finger running along what appeared to be one of the main arteries northward, Prospect Street. Nothing here. He looked across to the east, tracing the long Whitney Avenue. Nothing here either—

There it was, between the two main roads. It was a long way, but not complicated. He would not walk there: he would run.

As he pounded down Wall Street, ignoring the stares of the mid-morning strollers, he wondered how it had come to this: running through strange streets in a strange country, searching for his family. That he was now confronting an enemy – faceless and unknown – he did not doubt. But he could not deceive himself that that was why he was in this situation. Whatever evil his unseen adversary had wrought, this was still his fault. Florence would never have so much as considered leaving Norham Gardens, let alone England, if he had been the strong husband, the good father, she thought she had married. Instead, within months, he had become a stranger to his wife – a seething geyser of rage and resentment, a man who had turned inward, away from the two people in the world who most loved and needed him. His wife was young, vibrant and beautiful; yet what happiness had she known in recent years? They did occasionally go to the theatre or a concert, but only after she had cajoled and persuaded him. As for parties, she had learned not even to suggest such a thing. If she wanted a good, long walk in the countryside, she had had to turn to Rosemary Hyde and her Brownie pack rather than to her own husband who, when he did venture into the outdoors and the fresh air, did it alone and at dawn, when there was no danger of meeting another soul. His wife was a woman who flourished in the sunlight and he had kept her in the dark. It was not a shock that she had left him when the fear of invasion became too much. It was a surprise that she had not done it earlier.

He needed to tell her all this, to tell her he understood. But he could do nothing if he could not find her. Which was why he had to talk to McAndrew right now, face to face. He would start by demanding to know where Florence and Harry were and then get to the bottom of exactly why they were missing from that file. He would not be brushed off with vague promises this time: he wanted answers.

By now he had left behind the cluster of science laboratories that flanked the earliest stretch of Prospect Street and was running uphill through botanical gardens, hot and sticky in the morning sun. The gradient was steep; his shoulder was throbbing with pain. He looked down at his map; not far to go now.

This was clearly the expensive part of town, the timber-clad houses large, the street wide and leafy. Perhaps this was where he and Florence would be living if fate had made them a pair of young American academics at Yale, rather than Oxford. They would be together now, enjoying a calm, peaceful life, no fear of war scaring her half way around the world. He might never have gone to Spain; not many Americans did. He would never have been shot, his shoulder would still be intact, but he would never have met Florence, they would never have had Harry …

James was gasping now, his lungs craving oxygen. He let his head fall, his palms resting on his thighs. He was sweating hard, even with his jacket bundled half a mile ago into his satchel.

Now he resumed at walking speed, turning right onto Canner Street. It would not do to turn up a panting wreck at the Dean’s home. James gripped his shoulder, trying to squeeze the pain away. One more turn, left, and he would be on St Ronan Street.

The house numbers were in the eighties; he was nearly there. The houses were even wider and grander now than on Prospect Street, with their smooth lawns and their five-step staircases up to the front porch. How safe it seemed here, thousands and thousands of miles away from the blacked-out towns and cities of England where, right now, they were girding themselves for another night. Soon they would be huddling in their Anderson shelters. The damp smell of soil, waiting for the siren to come, the exhausted desire to go back to bed …

There. Number two hundred and forty-one, a house as substantial as the others. The style, James decided, was colonial; the door was painted a solid, respectable black. He walked up the path and rang the bell, mentally preparing his lines in case Mrs McAndrew answered the door.
I met the Dean yesterday and he said I should contact him any time if I needed any help
. He wiped his forehead to remove any remaining traces of sweat.

There was no response. James rang again, this time leaning close to listen for any sign of movement on the other side. Nothing.

He moved onto the porch, so that he could peer through the window. Pressing his face against the glass, he saw that the living room at least looked empty. There seemed to be no lights on anywhere.

James turned to see if anyone was around, if he was likely to be seen. No one. With all the confidence he could muster, trying not to look like a burglar, he strode over to the side of the house and began walking down the path. There was a bicycle propped up against the wall, but then the path dead-ended in a wooden gate.

Another look over his shoulder and James placed his foot on the bottom timber. One more pull and he was halfway up, sufficiently high that he could look over the top of the gate and at the garden. His shoulder was screaming again.

James scoped left to right, confirming in an instant that the house was entirely empty. There was a table and two chairs on the paved area, a large, well-kept lawn with a single, stand-alone child’s swing in the middle, a couple of fruit trees towards the back, and lots of well-kept bushes and shrubs all around.

James was just wondering if there would be any value in vaulting over the gate altogether, perhaps even trying to get into the house from the back garden, when he felt the grip around his right and then his left ankle.

He turned awkwardly, trying to look down, which only sharpened the agony in his shoulder. He let out a howl of pain, which prompted the grip around his ankles to grow tighter.

He heard a voice, instantly familiar. ‘Do not resist, Dr Zennor,’ it said. ‘You’ve reached the end of the road.’

He looked down at his feet to see that they were in the firm grip of Detective Riley of the Yale Police Department. From above he could see the same white, fleshy features, slightly flushed this time, probably on account of the slight incline of the front lawn the police officer had just climbed to reach him.

‘I’m going to need you to come down, sir.’

‘Oh for God’s sake! Please, this is not what you think—’

‘Just come down, sir.’

James gestured towards his feet, indicating that he couldn’t jump until Riley let go.

Once down, he started again. ‘Detective Riley, please. I was not burgling this house. I came here to speak to the Dean. I need to speak to him urgently, I’ve—’

‘Wrists.’

In the moment James hesitated, Riley produced a pair of handcuffs. Now James understood. He felt a surge of fury and then, like a wave that breaks only to trickle back into the sea, he felt it recede. He was too exhausted for rage. Curiously, too, he felt no anger towards Riley. Instead he blamed himself and his own stupidity.

He had not been seen, he was sure of that. The side path of McAndrew’s house was not overlooked by any neighbours; he had checked left and right, up and down, before he had ventured down here. Yes, he might have been spotted by a vigilant neighbour across the street. They might have suspected a break-in. But he didn’t care how technologically advanced these Americans were, there was no way they could have telephoned the police and brought a police car here that quickly. He had arrived at the house no more than two or three minutes ago and would have struck even the most nervous neighbour as acting suspiciously only in the last minute. Until then, he was just a man ringing on a doorbell.

‘Detective Riley, can I ask a question?’ James said, as Riley and his partner frogmarched him down past the sloping lawn towards their vehicle.

‘You can ask what you like. Don’t mean I’m gonna answer.’

‘Are we still technically under the jurisdiction of the Yale Police Department?’

‘On this property, we sure are. This is the Dean’s residence, part of Yale University territory.’

‘Of course. But this
area
. This would fall under the New Haven Police Department, surely?’

‘Yeah, but you ain’t in this
area.
You’re on this
property
. And you’re trespassing too.’

‘I understand. But if someone was to call the police for help, someone who lived in this street, they wouldn’t get you, would they? Their call would be answered by the New Haven police force, am I right?’

Riley fell silent, pushing James’s head down as he folded him into the backseat of the car. That settled it. He had not been spotted by a neighbour or passer-by out walking their dog. He had been betrayed. Only one person knew he was coming here – and she had betrayed him.

The journey into town was brief; only minutes later they were back in the police station where his day had started yesterday morning, though it felt like weeks ago. He didn’t say anything in the car, just stared out of the window wrestling with a question that spun around him like a whirlpool, trapping him ever deeper and lower: why?

All he wanted was to regain his family. That was all. He did not want to know the truth of the death of George Lund. He did not want to know how Preston McAndrew was caught up in this, nor even why Dorothy Lake had kissed him last night and betrayed him today (though he did wonder, fleetingly, if the two events were connected, whether she had tipped off the police in revenge for his rejection of her). He did not even particularly care why he had been followed earlier. He did not want to know any of that. All he wanted to know was where he could find Florence and Harry. He wanted to find them and hold them, to stroke their hair and smell their skin. That was all he wanted.

Soon they were back, he and Riley, across that blank table in that blank interview room. Wearily, James asked, ‘Do you do everything for your police force, Detective?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Well, one minute you’re investigating a murder, the next you just happen to be on call for what must have looked like, at worst, a minor break-in.’

‘Let’s say I like coming out on special occasions.’

‘And why exactly was this a special occasion?’

‘You’re an important man, Dr Zennor.’

‘Ah, so you knew I was involved, did you?’

‘I know now.’

‘I see. So when Dorothy Lake told you to dash over to the Dean’s house on St Ronan Street, you dropped everything and ran.’

Riley’s failure to react, his lack of surprise or puzzlement at the mention of Miss Lake confirmed it: she had made the call. ‘I see you’re not denying it.’

‘It’s not me who’s under arrest for criminal trespass, Dr Zennor. So why don’t we say that I ask the questions and you answer them, OK?’

‘Fine with me, Detective.’

Riley plodded his way through the interrogation, James responding with a simple, straight, if not complete, account of the truth. He had discovered that his post – sorry, his
mail –
had been intercepted and wanted to take this matter up urgently with the Dean. That was it.

‘Talk to him, eh? Do you break into the houses of all the people you wanna talk to?’

‘I wasn’t breaking in! I was looking into his garden. Just in case he was there.’

They went round and round, Riley trying to make two and two equal five, trying to get James to stumble on an inconsistency, James stubbornly offering a straight bat. Finally the detective, who seemed as weary as James, sighed heavily and said. ‘I’m going to arrest you, which means you have the right to make a telephone call. Most people call their lawyer.’

He led James out of the interview room and into a tiny cubicle which contained nothing but a plain chair and a telephone on a small shelf. ‘I’ll be right here.’