Sight Unseen (41 page)

'How can I be sure of that, Umber? Her possession of the Junius letters proves it. That's how. She was there when they grabbed Griffin. They'd have wanted a woman on hand to look after Tamsin. That must have been Marilyn's role. She took the books from Griffin's car and hid them. Why? As ammunition to use against the consortium if the need ever arose. That would be my guess. When Jeremy started pressurizing her, she panicked and tried to get rid of them. But she kept the fly-leaves. That was a big mistake. She should have destroyed them. She really should.

'I found them, you see. I don't think she realizes yet they're not where she hid them, but she soon will. I spoke to Tamsin on the telephone earlier today. Chantelle, I should say. But she'll always be Tamsin to me. She sounded desperate. Well, she must have been, mustn't she, to phone me of all people? We agreed to meet tomorrow morning. She told me the truth about the letters. And I agreed to tell her the truth about her life.

'I've had Sharp on to me as well. He hasn't worked everything out yet, but he's getting close. Enforced idleness in La Moye has given him time to think a lot through. He believes he might be in a position to squeeze the truth out of me, or at least some of it. He might be right. I fixed his release on bail, just to show Smith and his friends they couldn't always have things their own way. I didn't tell Sharp that, of course. Nor did I disabuse him of the notion he seems to have got into his head that you've been nobbled.

'I'm supposed to be meeting Sharp tomorrow as well as Tamsin. It promises to be a busy day. The burial of a son. The resurrection of a daughter. And then... the sky falls in.

'That's what it would mean, Umber. Be in no doubt. If Tamsin returns to life, twenty-three years' worth of lies collapses around her and the truth emerges. Then Smith would need a firebreak between the consortium and me. To create it, he'd have to kill me. And Tamsin too.

'Plus you, of course. I mention that in case you need an incentive to do what I'm going to ask you to do. It truly is a matter of life and death.

'I have the fly-leaves with me. Match them to the books Tamsin has and you've got evidence linking Marilyn with Griffin's murder. If anyone's been buried in this forest for twenty-three years, it's him. I want you to meet Tamsin tomorrow morning and tell her what's happened. I want you to persuade her to turn her back on all this. I want you to take her away. I have a letter for you to deliver to a man called Ives. He has an office in Zurich. Ives has access to funds held on my behalf and can arrange new identities for both of you. With his help, you can disappear. Go wherever you want, as long as it's far from here. It's an escape route I devised for my own use a long time ago. But now I realize escape is simply not possible for me. The consortium would come after me. They'd never stop looking, because they couldn't afford to. In the end, they'd hunt me down.

'Different considerations apply to you and Tamsin. They'll decide, however reluctantly, to let you go, because in the wake of all this they'll need to lie low. They'll have their money, after all. I've seen to that. Smith must already be worried that they've shown their hand once too often. Sharp's continued probing will force him to be careful. And the suspicion that I've passed the missing fly-leaves on to you will prompt Marilyn to urge caution. You'll be in the clear. My guess is that they'll arrange for the case against Sharp to be dropped. Maybe the case against Wisby as well, though that will be more difficult to pull off. They'll want everything dropped.

'This is the deal, Umber. Tamsin says she'll be at Pewsey railway station when the seven twenty-four for London leaves tomorrow morning. Does she mean she'll be on the train when it pulls in or waiting on the platform? I'm not sure. There'll be quite a few commuters at the station. Maybe she wants witnesses to our reunion. Maybe she doesn't trust me. I could hardly blame her if she didn't. I used to catch the first train up to London from Pewsey every weekday, you know. When we were one big happy uncomplicated family, in those halcyon days I can hardly remember now, before the twenty-seventh of July, 1981. She's hardly likely to know that, of course. But I think of it a lot.

'I've booked the pair of you on a noon flight from Heathrow to Zurich. Be sure you're on it. And be sure Tamsin understands why you have to be. If I met her tomorrow, I wouldn't have the strength of mind to go through with this. That's why I mustn't meet her. Because this is her only hope. And she's the only child I have left.

'Take this envelope. The tickets to Zurich are inside. It also contains the letter to Ives and the Junius fly-leaves. You'll find the inscriptions on them very interesting. It's small wonder Griffin wanted to show them to you. I imagine you might have made quite a splash in the historical world with such information twenty-three years ago. Not now, though. It'll have to be your secret.

'This is the only way out, Umber. The only certain way. I have a gun under my seat. When you've gone, I'll put it to my head and pull the trigger. Suicide, the night before my son's funeral, in the forest where Radd's thought to have buried Tamsin's body. I've got a note in my pocket to leave on the dashboard. It'll make the coroner's job very easy, very straightforward. "Took his own life while the balance of his mind", et cetera, et cetera. You follow? Smith and his friends won't have to worry about me any more. And that means they won't have to worry about Tamsin. Or you. Provided you're never heard of again.

'I'm giving you a fresh start. Tamsin too. For her sake, naturally, not yours. But take advantage of it, there's a good fellow. I don't know what she's planning tomorrow. A graveside confrontation with her mother, perhaps? It mustn't happen. Talk her out of it. Talk her onto that plane. She trusts you. She'll go with you when you tell her why she has to.

'What does the future hold? For me, nothing. For you and Tamsin, who knows? She's young enough to be your daughter. And she is a kind of orphan. Take her in out of the storm, Umber. Do that for me. And for yourself. End this. Tomorrow.

'It's time you left. I've said enough. There's no need for you to say anything. Just take the envelope and go. It's the only assent I need from you. Wait along the track until you hear the shot. You won't have to wait long. I can promise you that.'

There was a score or more of London-bound passengers waiting on the up platform at Pewsey railway station next morning as the minutes ticked round till the arrival of the 7.24 to Paddington. It was on time, according to the information screen. Some people were already glancing down the track for a sight of it approaching. But as yet there was nothing to see beyond the illusory convergence of the silvery-grey lines of rail in the misty distance.

The person best placed to see the train first was standing on the footbridge. He had been there longer than any of the passengers, but showed no inclination to join them on the platform. The holdall resting by his feet and his casual, weather-worn clothes marked him out from the smarter-dressed commuters who had left their four-wheel-drives and company saloons in the station car park and were dividing their attention between chunky wrist-watches and broadsheet newspapers as the arrival of the 7.24 drew near. Paddington was an hour away from them, the City an hour and a half. These aimless minutes of waiting at Pewsey were a featureless fragment of a hectic day. They meant nothing. They were forgotten even as they passed.

* * *

They weighed slow and heavy in the mind of David Umber, however. He was here, as Oliver Hall had told him to be. He was here, short of sleep and ragged of nerve. His thoughts were clear, but taut, stretched thin by doubt and anxiety. He had resolved to do what Hall had beseeched him to do. But if Chantelle did not step off the London train, his resolution would count for nothing.

There had been no sign of her at the station when he had arrived by taxi from Marlborough three quarters of an hour before. He had not seriously expected there to be. The train was always the smarter bet. He wondered where she had been staying. Taunton, maybe? Exeter?

It occurred to him then that Taunton and Exeter were places he knew reasonably well. But they were places he could never return to. The escape route Hall had mapped out for him was a flight into semi-permanent exile. It was a fresh start with a heavy price. A long time would have to pass before he could risk contacting his parents. His friends, in Prague and elsewhere, would be lost to him. David Umber was standing at the edge of his world.

But he was still alive. And he would go on living, whatever name he used. Not so Oliver Hall. The sound of the gunshot that had ended his life -- the exact, muffled note of it -- still echoed in Umber's memory. The sound -- and the long, vast silence of the forest that had engulfed it.

He tensed. There was the train, materializing in the distance as a dark, growing shape. He picked up his bag and headed for the steps leading down to the platform.

By the time he reached it, most of the waiting passengers had spotted the train themselves and were edging forwards, some hurrying towards the far end of the platform where the first-class carriages would be found, others bunching in the central stretch, near the gate in from the road. Umber threaded his way into the latter group and stood amongst them. The rumble of the approaching train grew.

Then the carriages were rolling past, slowing as they went. Umber shrank back, scanning the windows for a glimpse of Chantelle. But he could not see her. He heard himself muttering a prayer. 'Please, God, let her be aboard.'

The train came to a halt. The doors opened. The waiting passengers hurried forward. Looking towards the front of the train, Umber saw no-one get off except the guard. He turned to look the other way.

And there she was. Chantelle. He knew it was her at once by her dark, baggy clothes and pale, expectant face. He stepped out of her line of sight, into the gateway next to the station building, resisting the urge to run towards her for fear she would take fright and jump back onto the train. He could see her gazing nervously past him along the platform, her grip on the rucksack hoisted on her shoulder visibly tightening. She was braced for a first sight of her father and had no reason to think he might hide from her.

The last of the train doors slammed shut. The guard blew his whistle. Chantelle hesitated, as if wondering whether she should stay or go. There was a second blast on the whistle. The lights above the doors went out, signalling that they were locked. Chantelle glanced over her shoulder to check there was no-one waiting at the end of the platform behind her. The train began to move. She glanced back.

And Umber stepped into view.

She gaped at him, open-mouthed and wordless, as the train accelerated, the draught blowing her hair across her face. The rear turbine roared past them, exhaust fumes billowing and drifting in its wake.

Then the train was gone. And the station was empty. Save for two people, standing twenty yards apart, staring fixedly at each other.

'Shadow Man,' was all Chantelle could find to say in the end.

'Your father isn't coming, Chantelle.' Umber stepped cautiously towards her. 'He sent me.'

'You didn't come back to the car. I thought I'd lost you.'

'So did I.'

'You're all right?'

'I'm fine.'

'Where's my father?'

'Come and sit down.' He pointed to a bench a little way along the platform behind him. 'There's a lot I have to tell you.'

* * *

The next train to London was due in an hour. For most of that hour they would have the station to themselves. No-one came and no-one went as they sat on the bench and Umber told Chantelle all that had happened to him since their parting in Jersey.

She wept, shedding tears for a man she could not and now never would remember: her father, who had ruined her life and somehow contrived to offer her another to take its place. She was weeping for her mother as well of course, the mother who, though still alive, was yet as good as dead to her, as dead as the mother in turn believed her daughter to be. She was weeping for the unfairness of it all.

'I was giving in to all kinds of fantasies on the way here,' Chantelle said when he had finished. 'My father turning out to be a nice guy despite everything. Taking me to meet my mother and my stepsister and making everything all right again. Giving me back my family. I saw my mother on the flight from Jersey, would you believe? Of all the ironies. I saw her, but I couldn't speak to her. I could still speak to her today, though, couldn't I? At the church. Or the cemetery. She'll be there, in just a few hours, to say goodbye to Jem. And I could be there too. But if I am...' She thumbed the tears away from her eyes and gazed imploringly at Umber. 'What my father planned for us, will it work? Will it really work?'

'I think so, yes.'

'And nothing else can?'

'I don't see how.'

'But Tamsin has to stay dead?'

'Yes.'

'And they have to bury Jem without me?'

'Yes.'

'We'll be on a plane to Zurich, while they're shovelling the earth in on top of his coffin?'

'Chantelle --'

'It's OK.' She held his hand. 'What will they say about you, Shadow Man?'

'I don't know. Nothing good, I suspect.'

'I kept the Juniuses safe for you.' She nodded to her rucksack on the bench beside her. 'Never thought you'd get the fly-leaves, though.'