The Trinity Six (8 page)

Chapter 13

Miracles come in many different guises. This one came late on Sunday night, while Holly Levette was cooking supper at her flat in Tite Street. Gaddis was lying back on the sofa, reading the papers and drinking a glass of red wine. Holly’s laptop was open on a low table in front of him and he called out to her in the kitchen.

‘Mind if I check my emails?’

‘Be my guest.’

Glass of wine in hand, Gaddis logged into his UCL account and clicked through his messages. There was one from Natasha in Spain, another from a colleague in Washington, and a round robin from a distant relative in Virginia trying to persuade friends and family to buy the paperback of his latest book. Gaddis checked the Spam folder – ‘Be a Master of the Universe with a Huge Broadsword in your Pants’ – and within the mass of junk offering him tertiary education courses and Viagra, he spotted a message that he could scarcely believe:

The same weblink that he had seen on Charlotte’s Hotmail account was listed below. Gaddis looked up at the kitchen door, expecting Holly to walk into the room with two steaming bowls of spaghetti. He clicked the link and was again taken to the Hushmail website:

Gaddis quickly typed in the answer.

Benedict Meisner

It was wrong. He had only four responses left.

He tried ‘Ben Meisner’ and swore when the answer was again rejected. Third time lucky, gulping wine, Gaddis typed in ‘Dr Benedict Meisner’, whispering ‘Come on, come on’ under his breath as he hit ‘Return’.

Like the click of a lock on a safe, the door swinging open, he was taken to a private message:

Gaddis was flabbergasted. How did Neame know that he was investigating Crane’s death? Holly called out ‘Food’s ready!’ and her voice made him lurch half out of his seat in surprise. He quickly scanned the text a second time. He was aware that he should probably remove evidence of the correspondence from her computer, yet Gaddis had no idea how to clear the history quickly from an Internet browser.

He heard the strike of a match in the kitchen. Holly was lighting candles. Unsure of what to do, he simply signed out of his email account and shut off the computer. Holly put her head round the door just as he was closing the lid.

‘I was planning to eat the spaghetti
tonight
,’ she said.

‘Sure.’ Gaddis stood up. He had a head full of questions and an empty glass in his hand. ‘What do you know about Winchester?’

Chapter 14

Winchester was just as Holly had described: a well-scrubbed, moneyed cathedral city an hour south of London with a clogged-up one-way system and memorials, seemingly at every corner, of Alfred the Great.

Gaddis arrived an hour early. He had not slept well and left Holly’s flat at eight o’clock for fear of being stuck in traffic or, worse, of his superannuated Volkswagen Golf breaking down on the M3. He bought a copy of the
Herald Tribune
on the Fulham Road, knowing that it would be difficult to find one at any newsagent in Winchester, and drove, too fast, with a take-away cappuccino wedged between his legs and
Blonde on Blonde
on the CD player. In Winchester he ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs at a faux-French café in the centre of town, having established that Waterstone’s was not yet open. He had the latest issue of
Private Eye
and a photocopied
Prospect
article about Moscow to read, but found that he could concentrate on neither. The
Herald Tribune
lay untouched in a leather satchel at his feet. His waitress, a bottle-blonde Hungarian, was pretty and bored, stopping to chat to him in fractured English about a course she was taking in design and technology. Gaddis was grateful for the distraction.

At half-past ten, the morning moving with a tectonic slowness, he made his way to the entrance of the bookshop, drifting about on the ground floor with no discernible purpose other than to look up at every customer who walked through the entrance, hoping to see a ninety-one-year-old man. By force of habit, he searched for traces of his own work and found a single hardback copy of
Tsars
, nestled alphabetically in the History section. Ordinarily, Gaddis would have introduced himself to a member of staff and offered to sign it, but it seemed important to maintain a degree of anonymity.

At five to eleven, he walked upstairs. To his surprise, the first floor was not a large, open-plan area, comparable in scale to the ground floor, but instead a small, brightly lit room, no larger than the open-plan kitchen in his house, enclosed on all sides by shelves of travel guides and self-help manuals. There was one other customer present, a dreadlocked, tie-dyed girl of perhaps eighteen or nineteen who was working her way through a copy of
South-East Asia on a Shoestring
. Cross-legged on the floor, she looked up at Gaddis when he appeared at the top of the stairs, her mouth forming an acknowledging smile. Gaddis nodded back and took his copy of the
Herald Tribune
out of the satchel, preparing to make the signal. He tucked it under his arm, making sure that the banner was visible; the act of doing this felt both awkward and embarrassing and he drew a book at random from the shelves in front of him in an effort to make his behaviour appear less self-conscious.

It was a copy of
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
. Gaddis felt the dreadlocked girl staring at him as he tried to pin the newspaper under his left elbow while at the same time flicking backwards through the pages. A minute passed. Two. His arm began to ache and his face was flushed with an involuntary embarrassment. What would Neame make of him for reading such a book? He put it back on the shelf and transferred the newspaper to his right hand, feeling as though he was standing in the middle of some vast stage, overlooked by a crowd of thousands. Would Neame approach him in the presence of the girl? Would he make himself known with a nod of the head and expect Gaddis to follow? It was like performing in a play that he had never rehearsed.

At precisely eleven o’clock, a second customer, a shaven-headed man in his mid-twenties, appeared at the top of the stairs. What excitement Gaddis had felt at the sound of his approach quickly dissipated. He was wearing torn denim jeans, white Adidas trainers and a blue Chelsea football shirt with the name ‘LAMPARD’ printed across the back. Hardly likely to be an associate of Neame’s. Without making eye contact, the man moved past Gaddis and headed straight for a stack of cut-price paperbacks at the far end of the room. Gaddis felt that he should still be seen to be browsing and picked up a second book from the Self-Help section, again pinning the
Herald Tribune
under his elbow. This one was called
Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
and Gaddis quickly replaced it with another day-glo paperback, this one entitled
The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need
, which at least brought a smile to his face.

What had happened to Neame? He looked back at the staircase but could see only promotional posters, a swaying light and a beige carpet worn by years of use. Five long minutes later, the dreadlocked girl finally stood up from the floor, put her guide to Asia back on the shelf, and went downstairs. Lampard was now his only companion.

Things happened quickly. As soon as the woman had gone, Lampard turned and walked directly towards Gaddis. Gaddis prepared to move to one side to allow the man to pass, but saw, to his consternation, that he was taking a piece of paper from his back pocket and attempting to pass it to him.

‘You dropped this, mate,’ he muttered, in a thick Cockney accent. Gaddis took the paper in a state of bewildered euphoria. Before he had a chance to respond, Lampard was halfway down the stairs, leaving only a cloud of BO behind him and a memory of his pale, undernourished face.

Gaddis unfolded the piece of paper. There was a short message, handwritten in a spidery scrawl:

Gaddis read the instructions a second time. He had seen enough spy movies to realize that Neame wanted to ensure that he was not followed from Waterstone’s to the cathedral. Lampard was obviously a hired hand, a facilitator. An old man of ninety-one would not be capable of carrying out counter-surveillance of any kind; nor would he wish to expose himself in public without first being able to ascertain that Gaddis was
bona fide
. All of this seemed logical and straightforward, yet he felt a strange sense of unease, akin to a fear of the law, as he made his way to the exit, turning right into the pedestrianized high street. On Southgate Street, he checked the message a second time, unfolding it in a manner that he felt was certain to draw attention. He tried to make a mental note of its contents, but was forced to check them again at Blinkers, which turned out to be a small hairdressing boutique on a narrow road where sparrows hopped on the pavement and a young mother was pushing a pram. As he emerged from St Clement Street, Gaddis saw the entrance to Waterstone’s a few metres away and realized, with a dumb embarrassment, that Lampard’s directions had taken him in a simple clockwise loop.

He continued to walk downhill, as instructed, wondering how many eyes were watching him. He saw a narrow stone monument, about four metres high, on the right-hand side of the street. There was a shop selling pasties beside it and he concluded that this was the memorial mentioned in the note. Outside the pastie shop – a drifting smell of mince and curry powder – Gaddis found himself in a low, narrow alley which opened into a smaller, still pedestrianized street. The glass-fronted Café Monde was clearly visible a few metres to his left. He had no need for coffee – he’d drunk four cups in as many hours – but ordered an espresso all the same and took a seat at the back of the café, wondering how long he should take to drink it. He felt restless and pushed around, but was prepared to honour the tradecraft of Lampard’s note because it would surely guarantee a meeting with Neame.

After a minute of waiting, he drank the espresso, paid for it, and went outside. He had glimpsed the cathedral on his way into the café and now walked through the gates of a small park bisected by a tree-lined avenue, making his way towards the southern façade. Clumps of teenagers – French exchange students, anoraked Americans – were milling around outside, buffeted by an unruly wind. Gaddis was drawn into a short queue and paid five pounds to enter the cathedral. Whispers echoed off the vast vaulted ceiling as he walked between several rows of wooden chairs and took a seat on the right-hand side of the nave. He put his satchel on the ground, set his phone to mute, and looked around for Neame. There was an old, free-standing radiator next to his seat and he tapped his fingers against the scuffed iron as he waited. It was almost half-past eleven.

He had been seated for no more than a minute when he heard a noise behind him, the sound of a walking stick clicking briskly on stone. Gaddis turned to see an elderly man in a tweed suit moving towards him along the nave, his eyes catching a source of light as he looked up to greet him. The man was so close to Charlotte’s description of Thomas Neame as to remove all doubt about his identity. Gaddis began to stand, as a gesture of respect, but the old man made a brisk, sweeping movement with the base of the walking stick which had the effect of pushing him back into his seat.

Neame shuffled along the pew and settled beside Gaddis. He did so without apparent physical discomfort but was slightly breathless as he sat down. He did not offer to shake Gaddis’s hand, nor did he look him in the eye. Instead, he stared directly ahead, as if preparing to pray.

‘You’re not one of these Marxist academics, are you?’

Gaddis caught the ghost of a smile in Neame’s stately profile.

‘Born and bred,’ he replied.

‘What a pity.’ The old man moved a hand in front of his face, distracted by something in his field of vision. His back was stooped, the skin on his face and neck dark and loose, but he looked remarkably robust for a man of ninety-one. ‘Sorry about all the scurrying around,’ he said. The voice was imperially upper-class. ‘As you can probably understand, I need to be very careful who I’m seen to be talking to.’

‘Of course, Mr Neame.’

‘Call me Tom.’

Neame laid the walking stick across the three seats adjacent to his own. Gaddis looked at his hands. He was moving them constantly, as if squeezing a small exercise ball in the palm to strengthen the wrists. The near-transparent skin across his knuckles was as taut as parchment.

‘I don’t think I was followed here,’ Gaddis said. ‘Your colleague’s instructions were very clear.’

Neame frowned. ‘My
what
?’ He had not yet turned to face him.

‘Your friend from the bookshop. Your colleague, Lampard. The one wearing a Chelsea shirt.’

Neame generated a small but infinitely condescending silence before responding.

‘I see,’ he said. Now he turned, slowly, like a statue with a cricked neck, and Gaddis saw concern within the folds and lines of the old man’s face. It was as if he was worried that he had overestimated Gaddis’s intelligence. ‘My friend’s name is Peter,’ he said.

‘Is he a relative of yours? A grandson?’

Gaddis had no idea why he had asked the question; he wasn’t particularly interested in the answer.

‘He is not.’ Somebody, somewhere was dragging a steel trolley across a stone floor in the cathedral, the sound of the wheels squealing in the echo chamber of the nave. ‘You followed his instructions as requested.’

Gaddis couldn’t work out if Neame wanted an answer. He decided to change the subject.

‘As you can imagine, I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask.’

‘And I you,’ Neame replied. He turned to face the distant altar. There was already a tension between them, a fractiousness which Gaddis had not anticipated. He felt the gap in their respective ages as a chasm which he would struggle to cross, almost as if he was a small boy again in the presence of his grandfather. Neame was still exercising his hands, the counter to an apparent arthritis. ‘How did you come to hear about Eddie?’ he asked.

‘From Charlotte. She was one of my closest friends.’

Neame cleared a block in his throat. ‘Yes. I would like to express how sorry I was to hear about her death.’ The words sounded sincere. ‘A lovely girl. Very bright.’

‘Thank you. Yes, she was.’ Gaddis took advantage of the improving atmosphere between them to discover more about their relationship. ‘She said that she met you on several occasions.’

This was confirmed with no more than an abrupt nod. Neame then looked down at the satchel and asked if Gaddis was recording their conversation.

‘Not unless you’d like me to.’

‘I would not like you to.’ Again the response was quick and clipped; Neame clearly wanted to leave no doubt as to who was in charge. He winced as a sharp pain appeared to jag across his hunched shoulders, then quickly suppressed his discomfort with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Gaddis recognized the familiar, uncomplaining stoicism of the war generation. His own grandfather had possessed it, his grandmother also. No fuss. No complaints. Survivors. ‘Charlotte visited me on three occasions,’ Neame continued. ‘I am resident at a nursing home not far from here. The Meredith. Twice we met at country pubs for a chat about Eddie, and once in my room. In fact, that occasion was rather amusing. She had to pretend to be my granddaughter.’ Gaddis thought of Charlotte engaged in the subterfuge and found himself smiling. It was the sort of ruse she would have enjoyed. ‘I must say that I was shocked when I heard that she had died.’

‘We all were.’

‘Do you suspect an element of foul play?’

Both the implication of the question and the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Neame had posed it took Gaddis by surprise. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

Neame sighed deeply in a way that Gaddis thought of as overly theatrical.

‘Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? But now you’re the man on the scene. You’re the chap tracking the story. And I suppose you want me to tell you all about Eddie.’