Grant returned to the hotel that had given him peace of mind amid the turmoil of the last four days. He packed and drove back to Plymouth to return the hire car and took the train back to Paddington. He refrained from contacting Robert again, as he wasn’t sure what he could tell him and he didn’t see him having any further relevance to his investigations.
On his return to Brigit at their home in Mill Hill, after telling her all that had happened in the West Country, he tried hard but without success to persuade her to join his planned visit to South Africa. Brigit, while sympathetic, was growing tired of his pursuit and was alarmed when Grant admitted that he had allocated a considerable sum of his own money to its continuation.
‘Look, for some reason you have a crusade going on, and I am beginning to suspect a case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. So just go to Cape Town, see Suzie whoever-whatever and complete your cold case, because it seems to be heading from the fridge to the freezer!’
It dawned on Grant that Brigit was becoming disengaged from the whole project. ‘Well, thanks ever so much! It would be nice to receive more support, but I’m not backing off now. And, for your information, I think someone tried to poison me in Cornwall.’
‘What?’
‘You heard. I collapsed and was rushed into hospital. My condition didn’t last long, and I discharged myself as soon as I could. I recovered the next day.’
‘Now listen to me. This is becoming really creepy. It’s seriously dangerous territory. Why can’t you leave all this once and for all? Get a grip, Grant. Someone might die – and it might just be you. Actually, I didn’t mention this before, but we were followed on the walk that day from Gurnards Head to Cape Cornwall.’
Grant was not really listening. Her words floated past him. He knew the next stage of his mission loomed large, and nothing would put him off.
For a few moments the froideur between them was maintained until she drew him to her with a warm hug. ‘Go on then. Go off to Cape Town. But please be careful. You’re not a teenager any more. This isn’t Swallows and Amazons for adolescents. There is something I don’t like about this, something really quite dark, so I wish you’d leave it alone. But if you have to pursue it, just get it over with as quickly as possible.’
25
PRESENT DAY
Grant arrived in Cape Town after an eleven-hour flight, Table Mountain dominating the landscape as his plane descended towards the runway. His hotel on the outskirts of the city, approached through a manned security barrier and at the end of a rose-bordered driveway, was a lovely white converted farmhouse. He arrived too early to check in and pondered what to do before his appointed lunch with Suzie on the harbour front the following day. He decided to visit the wine plantations of Constantia, an area with cool, lush sea-facing slopes flanked by granite surrounds. He enjoyed himself tasting wines and touring wineries, cellars and bistros.
He dined alone in his hotel that night, contemplating the next day’s meeting with Suzie, which he now regarded as make-or-break for his investigation. After he had polished off several wines by the glass to accompany his lavish meal, he decided he would ask her what she knew of the relationship between her father and his mother. He would also press her about her on–off relationship with Danny, only too aware that this would stretch both of their powers of diplomacy and tact. Danny’s father, Paul, would come in for inevitable scrutiny, although Grant’s hopes of revelations were severely limited in this regard. He was, however, intrigued as to why Suzie’s father had felt it so important to ask her to tape his full recollection of the conversations and people involved in the run on the beach.
The following morning he had booked a ticket on the nine a.m. ferry to Robben Island to see the cell in which Nelson Mandela had been incarcerated for eighteen of his twenty-seven years of captivity. As the tourist-laden vessel set off on the forty-minute journey across a very choppy sea, he was struck by contrasts: the wonderful view towards the harbour front of Cape Town as against the forbidding, flat, barren island of low-lying buildings that they were approaching and which had taken the freedom of those interned there in such a horrific fashion. Grant toured the island by coach, with a well-informed guide relating the history and geography of the old prison and leper colony. A former political prisoner then took him on a tour of the buildings, stopping poignantly at the ‘home’ – a tiny cell – of Nelson Mandela. Quite apart from the story of the great man himself, Grant thought the guard a truly inspirational person, as he had found it possible to forgive the repressive apartheid regime and move on.
On his return journey he reflected on the injustice of what he had seen, as he watched a group of seals lying on their backs and riding the waves with flippers extended upwards, enjoying their freedom in the water under the glorious sun. As he approached the breathtaking waterfront he scrutinized the landing stage for Suzie and spotted her waving furiously from the shore.
Slightly chubbier than he remembered her, her face looked tired and gaunt, lined and wrinkled prematurely, probably as a result of too much sun. She strode towards him wearing a cream round-necked cardigan – protection against the stiff breeze – above a lemon-coloured pencil skirt, which Grant thought, uncharitably, did little for her rather shapeless figure. After the obligatory hellos and kisses she took him to an informal, trendy restaurant where they exchanged pleasantries while attempting to bridge the gap of some twenty-five years. Caroline Jessops had given Grant some of Suzie’s more recent background, enabling him to be direct.
‘I’m so sorry your mother had such a terrible time. It must have been awful for you and Frank.’
‘Yes. Thanks,’ replied Suzie. ‘Alzheimer’s is not a disease you would wish on your worst enemy, but at least we were able to look after her, and she had little idea what a burden she was. It was tricky because Tony was overseas, but Frank was fantastic. Anyway, how are you?’
Grant brought her up to speed with the personal details of his life, but it wasn’t long before he moved things along. ‘You see, Suzie, I think someone doesn’t want me pursuing this matter. The Spooks in Zennor were a manifestation of this.’
‘What?’
‘Well, strange things happened when I went to Cornwall. I booked into a pub near Zennor and was woken by tapping on the door. Then there were anonymous phone calls, and during a power cut in the bar someone stroked my face in the dark. And someone slammed a church door shut behind me. There was also the extraordinary matter of an elderly couple taking it in turns to stare me out both before and after the power cut.’
‘What! You were rattled by a pair of senior citizens outstaring you? Come on, Grant. You do take yourself a bit too seriously. You always have done.’ She started to giggle, slightly patronizingly in his opinion.
He decided to avoid further humiliation by withholding any mention of the nursery-rhyme serenading. ‘OK, OK. Brigit had the same reaction. Anyway, that is all just background noise. The fact is, I am no nearer to discovering who poisoned Tom and who may have helped Hector drown.’
‘Is it so important?’
‘What?’
‘Is it so important? You’ve just visited Robben Island and seen for yourself one of the worst human injustices of all time and you are concerning yourself with events from over forty years ago that had nothing to do with you and with which no one has been much concerned since – apart from you, it would appear.’
‘OK, I admit it has become an obsession, but why won’t people talk to me? Why did Ivan Youlen close up like a clam after spewing language that would have shocked a sailor? What does Trevor Mullings know – and should Ken Holford have hanged?’
‘Probably,’ Suzie replied. ‘And the Beatles should have got back together, and Danny always used to tell me that Brian Clough should have been the England football manager, but you can’t change the past.’
Grant decided to change tack. ‘I gather you and Danny became pretty close some years after we all stopped going on holiday together.’
‘If by cl
ose you mean we were going to get married, had named the day and I pulled out the week before, yes, you could say we were pretty close.’
‘So why did you?’
‘You know, if you even consider marrying into a family like the Galvins you virtually have to sign a compromise agreement, like the sort of thing employers insist on, so that when an employee leaves there’s no badmouthing or litigation.’
‘Yes, I understand. I know perfectly well what a compromise agreement is, thanks,’ Grant replied, a little bit aggrieved at Suzie’s schoolmarmish tone. But he got the message; this was a no-go area. Their conversation was stilted. Suzie veered from dogmatic, verging on dictatorial, to putting up a brick wall whenever she didn’t like a question.
Grant had always feared that this meeting – in contrast to the ones with Jenny and Caroline – would prove somewhat awkward. He had found the others quite convivial, whereas Suzie seemed colder and more complicated. While old friendships can easily be rekindled, they had lived about half a lifetime since their holidays in Cornwall, and other relationships had intervened. He had never gone out with Suzie and was finding it much harder to re-establish a rapport. He longed to raise the subject of the potential complicity of their parents but opted for safer ground with the tape-recording of the four fathers’ beach adventure.
‘I have always wanted to ask you, why did your father want to record that episode of the run on the beach and the meeting with Bob Silver in the National Trust café?’
‘Father was a very careful, precise man, and he had little confidence in either the police or the Crown Prosecution Service. He thought the original arrests were clumsy and badly thought through, so he started recording everything and obtaining witness statements. He was involved in some very serious pioneering work into heart disease using animals in a way that has remained highly controversial to this day. Working in the spotlight like that made him particularly cautious.’
‘Fair enough.’ Suzie’s warming to the conversation emboldened Grant to ask a more delicate question. ‘Did you know that he and my mother were quite fond of each other?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much did you know?’
‘They were lovers,’ she continued. ‘Everyone thought Father got involved with one of his nurses down from London at the cottage in Zennor, but I’m afraid, Grant, that it was your mother.’
Grant went pale and ordered a beer, neglecting his usual manners by forgetting to ask whether she wanted another drink, too.
‘I’m sorry to be so forthright. I thought you knew. You’d heard about the interrupted walk up the hotel’s drive, I presume? Yes, of course you had. We all talked about our parents’ various shenanigans that night in the pub after the Minack Theatre, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, that was the night Hector was abused for having spotted your father and my mother walking arm in arm and Tom arrived to break up the quarrel.’
‘Whatever,’ continued Suzie, with a hint of resentment. ‘I think that little episode went round the hotel pretty quickly.’
‘But how did you know the rest?’
Before she could reply they were interrupted by the arrival of her husband, Frank. After polite introductions Suzie asked Grant when he was leaving Cape Town.
‘The day after tomorrow. I’m going up Table Mountain tomorrow morning, but I should be free later in the afternoon.’
‘Perfect,’ she said, as Grant took stock of Frank, a burly former policeman now working in security in Cape Town. He wore the hangdog expression of a dominated, henpecked husband who had long given up trying to be Suzie’s equal, as she left him in little doubt that he was subordinate in the relationship.
‘Frank, darling, you don’t mind if I take Barnard for a walk with Grant tomorrow afternoon, do you? We still have some catching up to do.’
Frank acquiesced grudgingly, knowing that their beloved border terrier would welcome the exercise. Suzie arranged to meet Grant at Kirstenbosch, assuring him he would enjoy walking round one of the greatest botanical gardens in the world.
They met as arranged, but with so little time left Grant was impatient to find out how much more she knew about their parents’ affair. Walking through the magnificent trees and plants, they managed to lose the border terrier Suzie referred to as a ‘border terrorist’, which was about as close to humour as she got. Barnard reappeared just as Grant was about to learn how she knew so much.
‘OK, Grant, here’s the unexploded bomb. Henry, Justyn’s elder brother, was busy with his film-making most of that last holiday in 1972, and before his death Father was keen to get hold of the film. Unfortunately Danny got his hands on it first and refused to return it. When I broke off my engagement to him I grabbed the film together with a lot of other personal stuff that I had kept in our flat in Fulham. Danny was burgled the very next day, and I don’t think he ever suspected I had taken it – and, no, the burglary was nothing to do with me. Anyway, years later someone took it upon themselves to convert Henry’s cine films to DVDs. And let’s just say there was some incriminating stuff on them. Father never saw the films. I thought they might upset him, as I knew what was on them. I thought let sleeping dogs lie, so I didn’t actually tell him I had the films, but I never felt good about deceiving him.’
‘I understand,’ said Grant solemnly. ‘Is there any chance I can see them?’ He was bursting at the seams to view the footage; he felt that it might just provide important answers to some of the mysteries he was pursuing and that he might finally get somewhere.
Suzie had, of course, been expecting this query and had already decided to be helpful. ‘Well, you could, but they’re in storage back in England with a lot of other stuff.’
By the end of their walk she had agreed to make arrangements with her solicitor in London for Grant to have access to the DVDs.
He asked her one final question. ‘Why did Paul Galvin go to gaol – twice?’
Suzie, who had been a qualified nurse and who knew when to leave questions unanswered, stared so coldly at him that he was sure he felt a drop in temperature. ‘Look, I support you finding out the truth, but I am not going to talk about the Galvins. I know Father would have advised against it.’
Grant was struck by her total obsession with her father even from beyond the grave. He reflected silently: if only Richard Hughes-Webb had been worthy of such idolatry.
He flew back to London later the same night, feeling he was at last making some sort of progress. He was happy that Suzie now seemed involved in his quest to establish the truth from so long ago; this was a significant change from her attitude when they were first reunited on the harbour front. However, something about her troubled him. He had felt, at times, that he wasn’t so much talking to a brick wall as a brick wall was talking to him.
On the flight home, after his meal he sipped a Cognac. It induced a soporific haze, and he found himself humming ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle’ as he fell asleep, the glass still precariously in his hand. He continued to doze intermittently during the eleven-hour flight but woke after dreaming about the burglary at the Fulham flat Suzie had shared with Danny. Was there any connection with the burglary at Tom Youlen’s cottage in Zennor where Arnie Charnley’s cash had disappeared? Two unsolved burglaries, where only selected items had been targeted. He had no doubt that Danny’s burglary had been solely about the film footage, as Suzie had told him that no other items apart from these had been taken.
On one score, though, Suzie had definitely put him right. He had seen for himself the appalling circumstances of Nelson Mandela’s captivity – and that of so many others – and Grant shifted uncomfortably in his seat, knowing he had lived through the years since that time to witness the incredible power of the human spirit to overcome adversity and forgive injustice. His own quest for truth and justice suddenly seemed rather inconsequential. He felt like a pygmy on the shoulders of a giant.
26
PRESENT DAY
Grant returned from Cape Town t
o Mill Hill and found relations between himself and Brigit somewhat strained. On his arrival she had been frosty, almost indifferent, and there was a lack of engagement in her conversation. After he had unpacked, showered and changed, he started telling her his news, which she half-heartedly tried to take in. However, she seemed distracted, as if she had no interest in his discoveries. Despite this he carried on talking about incriminating DVDs, burglaries and Suzie’s failed relationship with Danny quite impervious to the atmosphere until Brigit finally yelled, ‘Enough!’
‘What?’ he asked, stunned.
‘Enough. I’ve had enough! This is your story, Grant – your world, your obsession – but please leave me out of it. I think you are embroiled in something I wish you would leave well alone. Don’t forget you were very ill in Cornwall, very likely poisoned, but what does my opinion count for? I know you need to find out what happened and then get closure. Then I’ll be here for you again.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’
‘I have had it with your Jessops, Charnleys, mermaids, messages in bottles, trips to Cornwall and South Africa, your obsession with all this. The fact is, Grant, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less about any of it, save for the rather unsettling fact that you are playing with fire and someone might actually harm you next. Why can’t you accept that this case went dead forty years ago? The police carried out their investigations, and the CPS closed the file. Nobody was tried, nobody has died because of those events – and nobody, apart from you, gives a damn.’
‘I am not going to drop it – and somebody did die …’ Grant tried to sound defiant.
Half a Pound of Tuppenny Rice Page 13
