Surviving

by Allan Massie

  She had one of these little girl baby voices Kate had always despised: a Jackie Kennedy of the English suburbs, and the huge dark glasses she affected were simply absurd.

  She said, “I loved your book about that Dutch Nazi, it was really ironical.”

  “Oh, did you think so? Belgian actually. Kind of you anyway.”

  Trensshe wasn’t what she’d imagined, being fat and balding rather than lean and hirsute. He stuck his index finger in his handkerchief and ran it round his neck, inside his open collar.

  “I have to say,” Kate said, “I still don’t understand how you think I can help you.”

  “You’re the only lead we have,” Trensshe said. “We know Reynard Yallett flew out to see you and Kelly. I have to say – I believe in being frank – that I utterly disapprove of the idea of you writing a sympathetic book about Kelly. I think that’s what you are planning. In my view he’s nothing but a murdering toerag.”

  “So I’m glad you’re not my agent,” Kate said.

  “Don’t let’s get sidetracked,” Clarissa said. “I mean, that’s all so irrelevant, Phil, I’ve told you that. The question is what’s become of Reynard?”

  “Why’re you so interested?” Kate said, and hoped it came across as offensive. “I don’t understand your connection with him.”

  “Steady on,” Mike said. “We’re worried, that’s all, it’s natural. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

  “Well, as I said on the telephone, I don’t see that I can help you.”

  “But you had lunch with him, you and,” Trensshe paused, “Kelly.”

  “Certainly we did. Why not? I’ve known Reynard for years. I was a barrister before I became an academic, we were in Chambers together, it seems a life ago. And as you know, he defended Gary.”

  “What then?” Clarissa said. “It really is important, you know.”

  Tell as much of the truth as you can, Belinda had said; the more lies we tell the more complicated it all gets. But don’t we want to complicate everything, she had said, to be awkward? No more than is necessary, Belinda said.

  She sighed.

  “I’ve told Mr Trensshe all this.”

  He was standing where Reynard had lain. He would have been astride the body if the body had still been there.

  “But I don’t mind repeating. We took a taxi back to Parioli. Reynard said he had something he wanted to discuss with Gary. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. He wanted to go to a bar – I don’t keep drink in the apartment. So I dropped them in the piazza at the bottom of the road. I suppose they went into one of the bars there. There are three. You could ask. In a little Gary came back here. He went to his room and lay down, if you want to know.”

  “Why do you keep calling the little toerag Gary?”

  “It’s his name, isn’t it?”

  “You speak as if you like him.”

  “I do rather, actually. He has good manners.” Better than yours, Mr Trensshe, she almost added. “Better than Reynard’s I might say,” she said. “Not that that’s difficult.”

  “Aren’t you worried about Reynard?” Clarissa said.

  “No, why should I be? I repeat, I don’t understand your concern. He probably picked up a woman and is holed up with her somewhere. That used to be his style, I can’t imagine he’s changed.”

  Did the girl flush? Was her interest personal, not professional? And did Trensshe who had called himself her partner know that? These were questions Kate would have liked answered.

  “Look,” she said, “look, Clarissa, isn’t it, maybe you’re fond of Reynard. I’m not, I never was. He’s amusing and good company, but also a shit, always has been. But if you’re worried – then, though I can’t share your anxiety, my advice is to go to the police.”

  “We’ve done that, this morning,” she said.

  “And?”

  “They were useless, simply not interested.”

  “Well, there you are,” Kate said.

  “I want to speak to Kelly.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t”

  “Oh and why not?”

  “Two reasons,” Kate said. She was beginning to enjoy herself, which was easier, since Trensshe was every bit as easy to dislike as she had thought he might be … “First, after the things you’ve written and the part you played in getting him put on trial, it’s unlikely he wants to speak to you; and of course there’s no reason why he should do so. It’s not yet compulsory to speak to the Press – or have I missed something? And, second, he’s not here, he’s out of town.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t see that that’s any of your business.”

  “Now, now,” Mike said. “Birds in their little nests agree.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike, I don’t like your friend’s manner. Mr Trensshe, I think it’s time you left. I repeat, Clarissa, I’m sorry if you are worried about Reynard, but there’s nothing I can do to help.”

  “I know something’s happened to him, I just know, something awful.”

  “You’ve not heard the last of this,” Trensshe said.

  “That’s as may be.”

  “When did Kelly leave Rome?”

  “Again I don’t see that it’s any concern of yours. After he and Reynard had had their little talk, obviously. If you want to play the private detective, maybe you should start in the bars in the Piazza. Reynard may have picked up a woman there after Gary came back here. It’s just a suggestion, but the most helpful one I can make.”

  XLII

  Tom Durward sat by the open window of the hotel room looking into the dark. The notebook he had bought at a stationer’s that afternoon lay on the table behind him. What he wanted to write in it – what he had intended to write when he bought it – couldn’t be written. You couldn’t, as an accessory to murder, write an analysis of why you had acted as you did. It was too silly to think of. And yet the temptation was extreme. Would he, he wondered, have acted the same way if the dead man hadn’t proved to be Reynard Yallett? Perhaps, but his motive would have been different: pity. As it was, to dispose of the corpse and then a day later stop the car, and burn Yallett’s passport on a Calabrian hillside: sweet revenge, eaten cold.

  He picked up the notebook. There is no need, he wrote, to speak to Stephen Mallany about Jamie. I can write Finis.

  Then he thought: but my whole life has been corrupted by that first death.

  He could not bring himself to write that, though for the moment he believed it to be true. Instead, picking up his pen again, he wrote, “Yet I was already a drunk, priding myself on the courage with which I contemplated the abyss, though in reality – reality? – practised in the habit of evasion. Who among us hasn’t known his promised land, his day – days? – of ecstasy and his end in exile. Conrad wrote that somewhere (I think). He is one of the trinity I still return to: Stendhal, Conrad, Proust. As for … in the Fall Tolstoy was always there but we did not go to him any more.”

  He pushed away the books, took his stick, let himself out of the hotel, and limped in the direction, again, of the beach.

  The moon was up and lay calm on the water. After a bit the beach became stony, and then there were rocks obstructing further progress. Silence enclosed him. He felt good and sat on a rock smoking and watching the moonlight on the sea. They had come as far as was necessary, he thought. He would call Kate in the morning.

  He walked higher up the beach on his way back to the town and the hotel. Just below the esplanade there were some benches and one was occupied. He was going to pass by when he saw it was Gary.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Tom said, statement, not question, and sat beside him.

  “I was thinking we might go north again tomorrow. The trip’s been long enough to be convincing.”

  “Me and Dr Sturzo … there’s no point in it,” Gary said.

  “No,” Tom said, “I suppose not, now. So what will you do?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Go home? Back to Lo
ndon?”

  “I’ve killed two,” Gary said. “The first, the nigger, didn’t set out to do him, you know. Rough him up, make him piss himself, that was … it got out of hand. And Mr Yallett, he was asking for it like I said, but all I wanted to do was stop him doing what he was doing. Doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. What you done doesn’t make sense.”

  “Perhaps not. But we did it. Can’t be undone.”

  “No,” Gary said. “He’d like to be mates with me, wouldn’t he? Erik, the way he looks at me, I don’t like it, gives me the creeps. If they question him … do you think he’d stand up to it, or spill everything?”

  Tom said, “I think he’s tougher than he looks. We’re all in it, you know.”

  He heard Gary sniff. Then, “I’m not going back to London. There’s too much there I can’t take.”

  “You’re probably right,” Tom said. “A clean break. I’ve been thinking. A friend of mine, a Pole, used to be a stuntman in Hollywood, runs a bar in Lyon. He might give you a job, tide you over for a bit. What do you say? You don’t have to answer now. Obviously. Think about it.”

  “Lyon, that’s in France, isn’t it?”

  The next day they drove north. Tom said he intended to leave the car in Naples. They could take a train from there. He would telephone his Polish friend. Maybe Gary could go straight up to Lyon.

  In Naples Erik went to an internet café to check his e-mail. There were several messages from his agent in Los Angeles. There was a part for him if he shifted his ass.

  XLIII

  Tom spoke to Kate, then to Stefan in Lyon. For Kate it was a kind of solution. It was better in any case that Gary should not return to Rome, oh for several reasons. But what about his passport? And his clothes? He had his passport with him, Tom had checked that; he’d slipped it into his jacket pocket when he went to dress after that shower, showed he was thinking even then, didn’t it. As for clothes, they didn’t matter, surely. No, Kate said, tell you what. I’ll meet him at Termini, he’ll have to change trains anyway, with a case. Besides I want to say goodbye to him, owe him that.

  Speaking to Stefan, Tom was circumspect. The boy was in trouble, no, not with the police, Stefan needn’t worry about that – not that he would much, would he? If Tom remembered him right? So could he accommodate him for a while, as a favour to Tom. Yes, those had been good nights they’d enjoyed, in LA and also down Mexico way. Thanks, do the same for you one day, but there’d be no need for that, now Stefan was so respectable. How’s Maria, give her a big hug from me. Thanks, mate, mon vieux.

  Stephen … Stefan, Tom thought, like the brackets enfolding what to him was essentially Jamie’s story.

  Tom said to Erik, “I’ve bought Gary his ticket. He wants to travel alone. We’d better see him off. What are your plans?”

  “It’s odd,” Erik said, “it feels like the end of a holiday. Or the end of a school term.” They took a taxi to the station. It was evident Gary couldn’t wait to be rid of them. But he managed to shake hands. When Erik wished him luck, the corner of his mouth moved as if he might attempt a smile.

  He said, “Don’t suppose we’ll meet again, but thanks.”

  The train was filling up. Tom looked at his watch. “You’ve got Stefan’s address. You’ll find he’s all right. Give him my best …”

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” Erik said as they watched the train pull out.

  “It depends what you mean by all right. And you?”

  “This part my agent’s got me. I booked my flight this morning. From Rome on Friday. It’s good.”

  They were drinking coffee in the station bar. Erik would take the next train to Rome. He said, “Do you think we’ve got away with it?”

  “Who can tell? Hertz will valet the car before they rent it again. They’re punctilious about that. Of course there’ll be questions asked when they find the body which somebody must do someday, but, well, you’ll be in California.”

  “Yes,” Erik said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you’ve written us a great script.”

  “Sure,” Tom said. “Maybe we should make a movie of it. Maybe not.”

  “Shame we can’t. What are your plans now?”

  “Capri for a few days. Most beautiful place I know. Used to be happy there.”

  “Capri? That’s where Tiberius retired to, but not for orgies according to the novel I read. Do you think that was right?”

  “Who can tell?” Tom said again. “Most history’s fiction. That’s what we’ve been doing the last few days, making a fiction of history.”

  Erik went to fetch a couple more espressos from the bar.

  Tom said: “Douglas, the writer I’ve been boring you with in Calabria, set a novel on Capri. Its theme, how to make murder acceptable to a bishop.”

  “Neat,” Erik said. “Cool. What’s the title?”

  “South Wind. Dated, but you might enjoy it.” He lit a half-cigar. “You’ll let Belinda down lightly, won’t you. She’ll miss you. She’s fond of you, more than that maybe. None of my business but …”

  “She’s wonderful, Belinda. Don’t think I don’t know what I owe her. I’ll miss her too, but …”

  “Yes,” Tom said, “there’s always a ‘but’.”

  XLIV

  Reynard’s disappearance made the English Sundays. There was a long piece by Trensshe, leaning heavily on the connection with Gary Kelly. Was Kelly the last person to see Yallett? Trensshe asked, implying the last to see him alive. A photograph of Gary leaving the Old Bailey amidst jeers from a hostile crowd after his acquittal accompanied Trensshe’s story. Clarissa’s profile of Yallett, hastily concluded and with a new slant, both questioning and elegiac, was given prominence on the front page of the paper’s review section. She too mentioned Gary. “Reynard couldn’t get that case out of his head,” she wrote, “yet shied away like a nervous thoroughbred when I probed him. Has his obsession with Gary Kelly some connection with his disappearance?” Elsewhere, there was a report of the Home Secretary’s intention to review the law on Double Jeopardy … Even Mike got in on the act, with a piece suggesting that this was not the first time the Italian police, who were, he conceded, overworked and underpaid, had shown a distinct lack of interest in the disappearance of a foreigner.

  “It could have been worse,” Kate telephoned Belinda to say.

  “Oh I never take anything the papers say seriously …”

  Instead she immersed herself in The Charterhouse, which she hadn’t read since she was sixteen. It was Erik’s copy. When she knew he was returning to America, she had gone to the Lion bookshop and bought him a new copy, so that she might inscribe it, and keep his as what? A token? No, more than that. A bond. Now, near the end, when she arrived at a certain sentence in the chapter, “An Evening in Church”, she found herself in tears. “The kind of misery which a frustrated love engenders in the soul makes anything that calls for concentration or action a frightful burden.” How true that is, she thought, how well Stendhal understood women, even if this sentence was actually written with reference to Fabrizio himself. And I don’t even have a photograph of him. Stephen was coming for supper. She could – even might – ask him for one. Or Erik himself to send one? That was better. Their parting had been all the more bitter because he was so excited by the prospect of resuming his career and “this great part my agent has got for me”, and she had had to try to share his delight; and reveal nothing of her pain. The most she allowed herself was to say, “Write and let me know how things work out …” and, at the barrier, “Don’t forget me”.

  But he would. She was sure of that. And why not? He was young. Perhaps in thirty years, when she was dead, and he was ageing badly, his beauty gone, then he might think of her with tenderness. Well, that was it. And if he did write she would be distressed by the banality … still she would settle for that.

  Reynard’s story took a new twist in the week that followed. The Times ran a half-page on the disappearance. The writer had done some digging. R
eynard was deep in debt, especially to the Inland Revenue, on account of his failure to file tax returns for several years. Indeed he was threatened with bankruptcy. He was also due to appear before the Bar Council; there were allegations, unsubstantiated of course, of approaches made to a female member of a jury in a case he was pleading. In short, he might, it was hinted, have had good reason to disappear.

  Kate related this to Belinda in some excitement.

  “No mention of Gary, takes it all well away from us.”

  But Gary returned in a tabloid later in the week.

  “Where is Gary Kelly?” He too, it seemed, had vanished, and here too it was suggested he had last been seen in the company of the man who had defended him, Reynard Yallett – for whom, it was suggested, Interpol were now searching. Reynard Yallett had been married twice and was regularly photographed with top models, stars and posh It-girls. But the tabloid had found “a close friend” to say that it was no secret Reynard swung both ways. His name had been linked with a Premier Division footballer and a member of a Boy Band (now disbanded). Could the disappearance of Reynard Yallett and Gary Kelly be connected? Could it be mere coincidence that both had vanished at the same time? “Reynard has taken several holidays in Thailand,” a source revealed.

  “Oh, it’s too silly,” Belinda said, handing the paper back to Kate. “Who can be bothered with such nonsense? Do you suppose anyone takes it seriously? All the same, the more confusion the better, don’t you think. I do wonder about the body though.”

  XLV

  In appearance and manner Commissioner Angeloni was as mild as his voice on the telephone had suggested. His dark suit gave the impression of having been cleaned too often and the heels of his polished black shoes were very slightly worn down; but his shirt was freshly ironed and the maroon tie neatly knotted. His complexion was dark and he spoke with the slight lisp characteristic of his home town of Bari. He apologised to Kate for the necessity that brought him here to trouble her, and looked inquiringly at Belinda. Kate introduced them, explaining why she had asked her friend to be with her, and then said she would make coffee.