The High Flyer (42 page)

XII

“He’ll backtrack when he realises he’s failed to catch us,” I said. “Let’s stay right where we are till we see him return.”

“What makes you so sure he’ll head back after he realises he’s lost us?” demanded Tucker at once. “What would
I
do if I were Kim Betz? I already know an independent witness has heard me acknowledge I’m a murderer. I must know my marriage is finally washed up. I’m bound to realise in no time that my life in England is no longer viable, so—”

“He’ll take the rat-run,” I said unsteadily, “just as his father did. He’ll head for Heathrow and take the first plane out to a country where there’s no extradition treaty.”

“Where’s his passport?”

“At Harvey Tower—unless he asked his PA to bring it to Oakshott. He was already planning to go abroad.”

“Not straight away, surely?”

“After we were reconciled. But if he now plans to take the rat-run, he’ll want more than his passport—he’ll want the crucial papers, and they must still be at the flat among the stuff he kept in his junk-room.”

“What papers?”

“The papers relating to his Swiss stash. Tucker, he’s got to go back to Harvey Tower, got to—there’s no way he can vanish into the blue without first going back to the City . . .”

XIII

“We need a phone,” said Tucker when we had agreed that my theory was the most plausible possibility on offer, “and something tells me that if we start knocking on doors in this neighbourhood, the paranoid rich will refuse to let us cross their thresholds. Let’s go back to the house.”

“You’re nuts! If Kim returns—”

“As soon as he realises he’s lost us he’ll drive on to London.”

“But you can’t be sure of that!”

“He doesn’t have the time to come back here, Carter. Every second counts now.” He started the engine and began backing the car out of the garage.

“But couldn’t we drive into the village and find a payphone?”

“The house is nearer than the village.” He reversed the Ford into the road and shoved the gear-shift forward. “I’m going to call Nick,” he added. “If we call the local police we’ll be bogged down for hours in long explanations, but Nick knows the top brass in the City police and he should be able to cut through the red tape to ensure Kim’s intercepted at the Barbican . . . Can you save time by writing down the number of the Mercedes for me?”

My bag was still at the house but in the glove compartment I found both pen and paper. I had just jotted down the number when we reached the gates.

“Supposing he locked up before he left?” I said worried.

“He’d have been too distracted.” Tucker swung the car up the drive.

“But supposing he comes back after all and sees—”

“He doesn’t know this is my car, and you can keep watch from the hall once we get inside. We can always escape out of the back if we have to.”

We found the French windows still open. Picking up my bag from the coffee table I moved as if in a dream back to the hall to keep watch while Tucker made the call. I knew Sophie was near even though I could no longer see her. I thought of her as I stared through my unshed tears at the front lawn.

I heard Tucker explaining the situation succinctly to Nicholas. When the call finished I made no move but continued to stand by the window.

“I’m all right,” I said to Tucker as he moved to my side, and before he could touch me I repeated fiercely: “I’m all right.”

He said gently: “Come and sit down for a moment in the living-room.”

“No, I can’t wait to get out of this house.” I began to heave open the front door but stopped when I remembered Sophie again. “We must lock up,” I said. “She would have wanted her home to be protected from vandals and burglars. It’s something we can do for her.” So we closed and bolted the French windows before we left. I kept whispering: “Sophie!” to myself and wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Did he kill her?” said Tucker when we finally returned to the car.

“No. He just cheated and lied and brutalised her and said afterwards he’d treated her with kindness, generosity and consideration.” Anger helped me to get a grip on the tears. Once I was sitting in the car I found a tissue in my bag and began to mop myself.

“But he killed the blackmailer,” said Tucker, sliding behind the wheel before adding: “Did provincial police forces really have access to DNA testing back then?”

“I doubt it. I’m not sure that even today’s scientists can do a DNA test on semen. I think they can only do it on blood.”

“Then I’m surprised Kim didn’t query your DNA fantasy!”

“He was out of control, not thinking straight. And maybe he knows even less about new forensic techniques than I do.”

Tucker said no more but drove to the nearest pit-stop on the A3 where he insisted on buying me coffee and a doughnut. The caffeine gave my brain a boost; the sugar provided some much needed energy. Finally I was able to ask the big question. It was: “How on earth did you manage to be in the right place at the right time?”

“I always knew he’d grab control and rip up your well-ordered little plan.”

“When did you give up waiting for us at the hotel on Reigate Hill?”

“I never went to Reigate. I drove straight to the hospital and followed the Mercedes from the beginning. It was easy at first in the slow-moving traffic, but although I lost you on the A3 I was sure by then you were heading for Oakshott.”

“How did you find out the address?”

“As soon as I reached the village I found the church, stormed the Vicarage and asked the vicar’s wife for help—I also used her phone to let Nick know what had happened.”

“And when you got to the house—”

“I skulked around in the garden for a time. All those trees provided perfect cover, and since the French windows were open I had a clear view of the two of you in the living-room. I was alarmed when you eventually disappeared, but when the neighbour turned up seconds later I figured you were safe for a while—obviously Kim wasn’t going to harm you as long as she was there. It was when she came out again that I started to worry, but then a very odd thing happened. This woman looked across the lawn, saw me standing among the trees and gestured to the French windows as if to say: ‘Do go in!’ but she didn’t call out to ask who I was or what I was doing. She just moved around the side of the house and . . . Hey, what’s the matter? What did I say?”

I said numbly: “There was no other person in the house.”

“Of course there was! I saw her go in and I saw her come out! She was wearing a dark red outfit with a straw hat and she was carrying a flat wooden basket, the kind my mother uses when she’s gardening—”

I finally succeeded in fainting.

XIV

After I had recovered consciousness I was offered a free cup of tea by our anxious waitress but I settled for a glass of water. Tucker then insisted on carrying me from the restaurant to the car, so just as I achieved my desire to faint he achieved his desire to sweep me off my feet. Quite what that proved and to whom I was too dazed to decide, but he seemed to find the experience satisfying and I was groggy enough to be glad of the ride, so this excursion into feminist pre-history was not without its rewards. Tucker was wearing a pale green shirt, almost entirely unbuttoned, but instead of the Essex-man medallion which so often accompanies this free-wheeling sartorial style, he wore a small, discreet gold cross. It was made even more discreet by the fact that it was half-buried in the dark red hair which ran in a tapering line from his chest to his navel. He was also wearing blue jeans, the weathered pair which had faded in interesting places, and although my capacity for sexual response was by that time as non-existent as that of a mass-produced doll, I was vaguely aware that in another time and in another place I might have found myself turning tigerish. The trouble was I could neither imagine another time nor picture another place. Pinned to an agonising present I was too pulped to do more than endure the damage I had suffered and wonder if I would ever recover.

“What a fluff-out!” I muttered as he arranged me on the front seat of the car.

“Relax—lie back and think of England!” he said kindly, as if I were a Victorian maiden being initiated into an upper-class breeding programme, and proceeded to drive me straight to St. Benet’s. I did manage to tell him he had seen Sophie’s ghost, just as I had, but he only said: “Do you really want me to drive into the back of a truck?” and added that I should avoid all conversation until later in order to rest. At that point I passed out again, this time because I was exhausted, and when I awoke I found the Ford was halting in the cobbled forecourt of the Rectory.

They all came to meet me. I was vaguely surprised by this mass turnout by the Healing Centre’s senior personnel; I supposed they thought I was some sort of emergency case, but I was feeling better by this time and no longer afraid that I might behave like a water-logged fluffette. Eventually I managed to say to Nicholas: “Did the police get there in time?” and Nicholas answered: “Yes, they did,” but he created a small pause before he added: “It’s all over now, Carter.”

Then I knew, with emotions almost unbearable in their intensity, that Kim’s final rat-run had turned out to be very different from the one he had always planned.

XV

The police were waiting for Kim at Harvey Tower but they allowed him to go up to the flat before they made their presence known. He paused in the podium lobby to pick up the spare keys, which I had long since returned to the porters’ desk, and remained unaware that the plain-clothes man in the basement car park had already alerted the patrol cars to the arrival of the Mercedes.

He opened the front door when the police rang the bell, and he appeared willing to talk to them, but as soon as they followed him into the living-room he opened the balcony door, supposedly to let some air into the stifling flat, and when he darted outside they were not quick enough to catch him. He ran the length of the wraparound balcony to distance himself from his pursuers, and then outside the bedroom where I had so often loved him so much, he scrambled over the rail without a backward glance and plunged thirty-five floors to the concrete far below.

I

“She killed him,” I said much later when I was alone with the two priests. “He kept getting these headaches and he said she’d skewered the image of the balcony into his brain. She terminated him.”

“Of course she did!” agreed Lewis. “Her hold over him was demonic, she’d already caused his personality to disintegrate, and she finally pushed the self-destruct button.”

I turned to Nicholas who was still silent. “He wasn’t the suicidal type,” I insisted. “He was a survivor. He would have worked out that he was most unlikely to be convicted of the murder of that blackmailer—there was no knockdown forensic evidence, and I doubt if he would have been convicted on Tucker’s testimony of what was said in that hall. Prosecuting counsel would only have had to show that Tucker and I were attracted to each other—a fact amply demonstrated by Tucker’s presence at the scene—and then Tucker’s evidence would have become suspect. Kim would have hired a top QC to ensure an acquittal and then gone on to fight another day in the States. I tell you, if it hadn’t been for that arch-cow he’d be still alive!”

Nicholas said carefully: “We can’t ignore Mrs. Mayfield’s role in Kim’s tragedy, but this is a complex case and it may be that his decision to kill himself had more than one cause. One has to consider—”

“I don’t have to consider anything,” I said. “She killed him. Case closed.”

II

“She killed him,” I said to the psychologist. “She skewered the image of the balcony into his brain and I’ll bet she also got that bloody society to will him to death!”

“You’re saying you believe Mrs. Mayfield took a malign line,” said Robin.

“Damn it, I don’t just ‘believe’—I
know
she did!”

“Of course it’s very important, when we feel we’re drowning in chaos, to find certainties which can keep us afloat.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying I’m just proclaiming this fact—repeat,
fact
—to cheer myself up?”

“I think there can be little doubt that Mrs. Mayfield had a disastrous effect on Kim.”

“You concede she willed him to death?”

“I concede it’s not impossible. But right now I’m more interested in you—your grief, your anguish, your struggle to cope with this tragedy—”

“All I want is someone to believe me!” I shouted, and stormed out of his consulting-room.

III

“She killed him,” I said to the doctor. “She willed him to death, brainwashed him into it. It wasn’t suicide. It was murder.”

“Well, whichever way you cut the cake it was a tragedy,” said Val, “and tragedies are very distressing for those involved.”

“No, don’t start talking to me as if I’m unhinged! I’m thinking clearly, rationally and logically, and what I want is some kind of acknowledgement that Kim was finally destroyed by that bloody woman! In my opinion he died of evil!”

“I have every sympathy for that point of view,” said Val at once, “but since evil isn’t a listing in the medical dictionary I can’t serve it up to you as part of a professional opinion.”

“Then give me your professional opinion about why Kim should have committed suicide!”

“Well, Carter, I think we have to take on board the fact that he’d been in a mental hospital for a few weeks, and—”

“But he wasn’t suicidal in hospital!”

“No, but that might have been because he never lost hope of achieving a reconciliation with you. That hope was helping him to get better quickly, but when everything went wrong, the fragility of his mental health meant that he didn’t have the resources to—”

I cut her off and walked out.

IV

“He was murdered by that woman Mayfield,” I said to the police. “She willed him to death, programmed him to self-destruct. There have been cases reported in scientific journals. Aborigines can do it. This is murder, not suicide.”

The two policemen exchanged meaningful glances before the older one said to me kindly: “Of course this is all a big ordeal for you, Mrs. Betz. We can come back later, if you’d prefer.”

There was a long silence.

Then I nodded and they went away.

V

“How are you doing, Ms. G?”

“Fine.”

“Just thought I’d check in.”

“Thanks.”

“You don’t mind me phoning, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so, thanks.”

“Any chance of seeing you?”

“It’s a bit difficult right now.”

“I’m sure it is. You’ll let me know, won’t you, if there’s anything I can do.”

“Of course. Thanks, Tucker,” I said, and hung up before I could start to cry.

VI

“I’ve made you a chocolate mousse to tempt you to eat,” said Alice. “There’s something so comforting about chocolate, I always think, and the mousse will slip down so easily you’ll hardly be aware that you’re eating. Do give it a try!”

I managed three spoonfuls. “Alice, you do think Mrs. Mayfield killed Kim, don’t you?”

“Of course. Would you like a spot of cream to help the mousse along?”

“No thanks. Alice, she did kill him, didn’t she?”

“Definitely. And it was easier for her, wasn’t it, because he wasn’t mentally strong. He mightn’t have been the type to commit suicide when he was well, but that day must have been so stressful for a man who was still sick—why, the confession alone must have been such a strain, particularly since he so much wanted the marriage to come right—”

I abandoned the mousse and bolted.

VII

After those interviews I decided to think no more about the manner of Kim’s death. Obviously it was less upsetting to let other people work out how and why he had died, and as soon as I reached this conclusion I felt much better. I also realised I was now free to detach myself emotionally from the mess and embark on a familiar exercise: reducing the chaos to order with professional efficiency.

In the immediate aftermath of the death the police continued to be kind to me, but Tucker and I were interrogated for a long time about the events at Oakshott. By mutual consent we never mentioned the ghost; when I said that Kim had caught up with me in the gallery I did not explain that I had been brought up short by the sight of Sophie in the hall, and when Tucker told the police about his decision to enter the house he merely said he had been unable to endure the suspense of waiting a second longer. The police were painstaking in their pursuit of detail not only because they needed to close their file on the blackmailer’s murder but because they were toying with the idea that Kim had been responsible for other unsolved homosexual murders committed in London over the past few years. However, the links with these murders were never proved, and I myself did not believe they existed. Kim’s “hobby” had been dangerous enough; I could not imagine him choosing to make it still more dangerous by committing murders which were unnecessary to his survival.

The media got the wrong end of the stick once again and decided I had called in the police to stop Kim committing suicide. Various theories for the suicide then circulated: he was the victim of an exorcism which had gone wrong, he was a drug addict who had despaired of kicking the habit, he had leaped from the balcony while under the influence of LSD. (The coroner later panned all these theories but no journalist seemed to take much notice.) Meanwhile the police, anxious to pursue their investigations in peace, said nothing about the information which Tucker and I had given them, and neither Tucker nor I had the slightest intention of giving a press conference. The media yammered away both after the death and at the time of the inquest, but fortunately on each occasion the news moved on swiftly and so did the reporters.

The inquest itself, neatly choreographed by the coroner, produced the inevitable verdict that Kim had committed suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed. As soon as evidence was given that he had been spending time in a mental hospital, the verdict was a foregone conclusion, although his doctors insisted heatedly that there had been no reason to regard him as a suicide risk.

Long before this the lawyers had carted away all the papers in Kim’s junk-room in order to explore every aspect of his finances, and I had discovered that under his will I had inherited all his real and personal estate—which included not only the house at Oakshott but the Swiss stash, numerous stocks and shares, and a substantial bank balance. Whatever problems I had to face in the immediate future, money was not going to be one of them.

Tucker phoned regularly, and I saw him at the inquest, but I found I was still unable to face meeting him on my own. Fear of intimacy, fear of making another catastrophic mistake in my private life, hung over me like a pall, but although I was aware of this additional legacy from Kim I recoiled from dwelling on it. It was easier just to toil on with the task of reducing the chaos to order, so although I told Tucker there would be a time later for socialising, I did not say when “later” would be and he took care never to pressure me by asking.

Then finally, after the interviews with the police, after the media blitzes, after the sessions with Kim’s lawyers, accountants, colleagues and bankers, after the inquest had delivered the formal verdict on the death, Kim’s body was released by the authorities and I found my next task was to organise the funeral. That was when my emotions crawled off the ice, where I had dumped them, and began to defrost. That was when I realised that the role of the efficient businesswoman could no longer be sustained. And that was when I knew I was face to face at last with the ordeal of trying to come to terms with what had happened.

VIII

“A cremation, of course,” I said to Lewis, “and no religious service.”

I was still feeling grateful to Lewis for supporting my belief that Mrs. Mayfield had killed Kim, but my gratitude quickly faded as he failed to approve this proposal about the funeral. He merely smoothed the skirt of his cassock and remained silent for a moment.

We were in the vestry of the church. Lewis did have an office in the Healing Centre but he spent much of his working day in the main part of the church as he attended to stray callers, the organisation of the services and the numerous other items of ecclesiastical business which Nicholas was too busy to deal with. The vestry desk was crowded; Lewis was, as usual, smoking a cigarette; in the distance the organist was practising, and the music provided comforting evidence of the church’s stable weekday routines.

Lewis said at last: “Kim was not uninterested in religion. I would definitely classify him as a seeker.”

“He conned you. At the end he was so anti-Christian that he tore the cross from my neck.”

“That was certainly significant. However—”

“He was depraved. Obscene. Evil.”

“True. But—”

“He was a murderer!”

“Yes, but immediately after his death, wasn’t it very important to you that Mrs. Mayfield’s part in his destruction should be underlined?”

I stared, sensing he was trying to throw me a lifeline. After a moment I said: “Go on.”

“I think that despite all that had happened your first instinct was to try to hold on to your memory of the Kim you had loved—the real Kim—by keeping him separate from the other Kim, the demonic Kim, the man who terrified you at Oakshott and who (you now clearly feel) deserved all that was coming to him. And I think the only way you found you could do this was by pushing the idea that Kim—the real Kim— had been destroyed by Mrs. Mayfield. You’ll remember I supported this theory. I supported it even though we don’t know for certain whether or not she was willing him to kill himself; all we do know is that in his weakened mental state he became obsessed with the lethal image of the balcony.”

I made a huge effort to grasp what he was saying. “You mean you supported me because—”

“—because it was your way of saying there were two Kims, and I believed this to be a genuine insight into what was going on. Let’s take the incident when he tore the cross from your neck. Was that the real Kim, who (as he told you) was disillusioned with Gnosticism and who (as he told me) was beginning to feel Christianity might have something to say to him? Or was it another Kim altogether? Was the man who tore off the cross a manifestation of Kim’s true personality, or was he manifesting the subpersonality which Mrs. Mayfield fostered and controlled, the subpersonality which expanded to such a size during those final scenes that it crushed the true personality to pieces?”

There was a long silence.

“If you want no religious service,” said Lewis at last, “then of course your wish should be respected. You’re the widow. But who is it who deserves no religious service? Mrs. Mayfield’s ‘Jake’? Or the real Kim who saw you as symbolising the escape which he wanted to make from her world?”

All I could manage to say was: “You’re splitting hairs.”

“No. Just pursuing the unvarnished truth.”

I fought hard to maintain my equilibrium. “You knew him,” I said when I was sure I could keep my voice level. “What do you think he would have wanted?”

“Well, we know what he wanted when he left hospital, don’t we? He wanted forgiveness. He loved you and was willing to embark on a very difficult confession because he wanted the marriage to go on.”

“But he didn’t love me! He radically misunderstood the kind of person I really was!”

“That’s true. But nevertheless he experienced a love which he believed was genuine, and this love made him long for forgiveness and reconciliation.”

“Yes, but—”

“Love is the most powerful integrating and healing force on earth,” pursued Lewis, “and Kim believed not only that he loved you but that this love would prove the pathway to salvation. His beliefs were misdirected, but nevertheless he was still involved with a certain spiritual dynamic, and this was why he was so receptive to my visits. The dynamic—the spiritual cycle—consists of sin, repentance, forgiveness, redemption, resurrection and renewal. That’s the Christian pattern, and that was the pattern he was reaching for.”

After several seconds spent groping for a reply I muttered: “But he still wasn’t a Christian.”

“No, but real Christianity is about counting people in, not drawing a line to keep people out—as the Gnostics do when they declare their special saving knowledge is only available to a few. Carter, I’m not denying Kim had committed himself to a corrupt form of Gnosticism which had been designed by evil people for evil purposes. All I’m saying is that in the end he wanted to reject that and start again because after he met you what he wanted to believe in was the primacy of love and the need for forgiveness. Those two things point to a very different path to salvation—and when I say ‘salvation’ I mean integration and healing.”

I tried to process this information, tried to make sense of it, tried not to feel that I was being led into a minefield where one false step might blow me to pieces.

“Kim was on a journey,” said Lewis at last. “He was derailed in the end because the Powers were still in possession of a major section of his personality, and in the crunch he wasn’t integrated enough to withstand their overwhelming pressure to fragment, but I believe he was finally on his way from darkness into light. I’m not suggesting that there should be a full Christian burial service, but I think a brief acknowledgement of his spiritual struggle for a new life might not be entirely misguided.”

I was unable to speak.

“An opening sentence,” said Lewis. “A reading. The Lord’s Prayer. A silence of perhaps thirty seconds for private prayer. A blessing. The whole thing need take no more than five minutes.”

I had a sudden picture of Kim. But it was not of the barracuda who had terrified and revolted me at Oakshott. It was of the playful dolphin who had been so happy with me on our honeymoon.

Tears filled my eyes as Lewis said: “It would symbolise that the Powers never have the final word—and symbols are so important, always pointing beyond themselves to truths which aren’t easily expressed in words . . . What do you think, Carter? Could this perhaps be a more appropriate way forward?”

I nodded and stumbled away.