‘Yeah, well. I want him to stop. He’s making it personal. If he calls you, can you tell him you never filmed anything controversial, that you never saw anything that would be remotely significant for him to watch some forty years on.’
Henry considered this request and was half tempted to let rip, to tell Danny that he had total recall of everything on those DVDs and that Danny was in big trouble; but he knew discretion was the better part of valour, so he limited himself to ‘Yes, of course. Let’s all move on.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Danny as he got up to leave. ‘Thanks for your time. A cup of tea would have been nice,’ he teased with a half-smile, and Henry was relieved at this attempt at humour.
‘Oh, sorry. It’s just that I have an appointment with my chiropractor and …’
‘Don’t be,’ said Danny. ‘I was only joking. Good to see you, old son. Give my best to Justyn, and don’t forget to tell Morrison he can stick his head where the sun don’t shine!’
‘Yes, of course. Quite so. See you again some time. Bye,’ replied Henry as he shut the door firmly. He waited until Danny’s Audi had departed and then called Grant.
‘Hello, good to hear from you,’ said the voice at the end of the phone.
‘Danny’s on to you. He doesn’t know that you already have some of the DVDs, but he’s pretty paranoid about them – and you.’
‘Good, good,’ Grant announced playfully. ‘This is getting to the business end of things. Thanks, Henry – and lock your doors.’
‘I think it’s you who’d better lock yours.’
34
PRESENT DAY
It was a discovery one afternoon in September that led Brigit to reappraise her husband. There had been a phone call at their home from a Tom Youlen, who had left an answer phone message for Grant. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Morrison, but I just had to tell you I’ve been made a partner at Foster and Moon Solicitors here in Penzance. Once again I owe you. I’m sorry to ring your home phone, but I tried your office, and they said you were taking a sabbatical. So as I’d kept this number I just had to ring and tell you.’ He left a contact number, and Brigit knew that Grant would want to hear the message for himself. She thought about the name. Wasn’t that what the hotel night porter was called?
That evening she and Grant met for a curry at their favourite Indian restaurant, both pleased to be getting back together.
‘Tom Youlen phoned you today from Cornwall,’ said Brigit. ‘Look, I know the porter was called Tom Youlen, so who on earth is this?’
‘What did he say?’
Brigit gave him the gist of the message. Grant seemed pleased and decided it was time to tell her the full story.
Some twenty years earlier he had got involved in his firm’s pro-bono committee, which undertook mentoring and facilitation work in various locations and in schools with little access to or knowledge of the legal world in which he worked. Such had been his commitment to this activity that for the last ten years he had been committee chairman. Back in 1988 he had visited a large comprehensive school in west Cornwall. He knew in his heart that this wasn’t entirely altruistic; he was drawn to the area, as he sometimes dwelt on the events of 1972, although they were yet to attack his mind as mercilessly as seal pups being assaulted by marauding sharks.
‘Tom was a spotty youth sitting in the front row of a class of second-year A-level students, and he came up to speak to me after my talk there. Initially I just told him how to apply to law school, what sort of A-levels he would need, that sort of thing. He told me he came from a family with no interest in academic qualifications and that even being allowed to do A-levels was quite a struggle, as his father said they were a complete waste of time. Delving into the child’s home life was strictly off-limits, so I asked him why he was interested in the law. He was reticent at first and then told me how his grandfather had suffered severe hardship upon losing his job as a plasterer when his employer went bust after a developer left everyone in the lurch. He reckoned his family never recovered from this, regarding it as a great injustice, and said that he had set his sights on becoming a lawyer so he could right wrongs, as he regarded it. I told him I thought his motivation a good one and encouraged him to aim high. Then he told me there was another reason. His grandfather’s brother, also called Tom, had worked at a prestigious hotel in the area and had been poisoned in 1972. He said he had grown up hearing this story from his father Ivan. By this time I knew exactly who he was but figured that under no circumstances must I let on that I knew the boy was the child born to a sixteen-year-mother and kept in a Newquay bedsit by his father. I saw tears in his eyes as he revealed his sad family history, and I resolved to do everything I could to help him. If ever there was a lad who really deserved a chance, I had discovered him. I sponsored him until I managed to place him in a training contract with Ian Fothergill’s firm in Truro. There he took up his articles. I am so happy for him that he’s been made a partner.’
‘And I’m so happy you’re back,’ smiled Brigit. She listened as Grant told her about what he’d been up to since their rift, omitting only the tale of his wild night out with Justyn. At no stage did he show any self-pity, even when he elaborated on his meeting with young Tom’s father at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They smiled at the irony. However, he related there was one cloud still on the horizon – Suzie’s arrival at Heathrow early the following day.
When he finished Brigit gripped his hand across the table, staring warmly into his eyes. ‘I understand. If it helps, I’ll come with you.’
‘That’s very sweet of you,’ Grant replied, ‘but I think I’m stuck with the cast of ’72. We all need closure now.’ He was relieved to see her eyes still looking at him with affection.
35
PRESENT DAY
On her arrival at Heathrow Terminal 5 Suzie moved swiftly through customs towards baggage retrieval. For the first time she began to feel nervous about her expedition to London, arranged largely to show Grant what was on the fourth DVD. ‘No time to be faint-hearted,’ she admonished herself. She knew he would be waiting when she emerged in the arrivals hall. She stopped briefly, ostensibly to check where she had put the scrap of paper with the address of her aunt’s flat in Bayswater but actually to buy a little time before the anticipated encounter with Grant, an event that she knew would set the hares running. She was the genie in the bottle – and then with a shiver she thought she was Dr Frankenstein about to unleash the monster. She hesitated a moment longer before reverting to being the no-nonsense, pragmatic person she had become: the practical nurse dispensing care and performing her duties with a sense of purpose and appropriate professionalism. This was merely another task that had to be undertaken, she told herself. But still she hesitated. She had been through so much with the Galvins, and even though Paul, Danny’s ogre of a father, had long since passed away, the sudden breakdown of her engagement was never far from her mind. She still harboured strong feelings of affection for Danny … She pulled herself together, braced herself and walked purposefully into the bright lights of the arrivals hall.
Grant’s broad smile – more from relief that she had arrived than pleasure at seeing her – greeted her, but she presented a slightly frosty, businesslike countenance to which he was oblivious. ‘So good to see you,’ he said with an enthusiasm she knew was sincere. He kissed her formally on both cheeks and took her heavy luggage. She retained her hand luggage, which he felt sure contained the precious DVD.
After his routine inquiries about her journey she got quickly to the point. ‘OK, I have the disk, and I know you are breaking bones to see it, but first I must deal with niceties at Aunt Mary’s where I’m staying.’
‘Yes, sure. Of course,’ he replied, privately cursing her aunt. He knew that he must not be too pushy. Parking ticket in hand, he left Suzie in order to retrieve his car, having arranged where he would pick her up. What if she were mugged? What if she had a stroke? Such was his paranoia that he ran through the short-stay car park to locate
his Toyota and could barely contain himself as he screeched out of his parking spot as if racing in a Grand Prix. On reaching the assigned meeting point he scanned the pavement, thronged with people awaiting collection. Where was she? Where in the name of the Almighty was she? She was nowhere to be seen, and he felt panicky. He sensed the blood rush to his head, his breathing becoming shallow. He stopped the car, controlled his breathing with deep intakes and expulsions of air from the pit of his abdomen, which immediately evoked memories of his panicky nights in Zennor.
Several agonizing minutes passed. Still no sign of her. Had she been kidnapped. Had a Galvin or a Youlen waited in the wings, watched her making her way through arrivals and pounced? To his huge relief she suddenly appeared in his rear-view mirror walking calmly, almost nonchalantly, towards him. He jumped out of the vehicle, almost in one motion, and felt a sharp twinge in his lower back. ‘Damn,’ he exclaimed as quietly as he could. But that was nothing compared with the pain and disbelief he experienced when he noticed with horror that she was no longer carrying her hand luggage.
‘Grant, I’m so sorry. I had to go to the ladies’. It’s the rush-hour. It could have been ages before …’
‘And you’ve lost your hand luggage?’
‘Didn’t lose it. I put it down to wash my hands, and while I was using the dryer it was taken.’
‘Have you reported it?’
‘Yes, I tried,’ she replied. ‘I have to go to Lost Property at some building on the airport perimeter.’
Grant didn’t know whether to cry or curse, but he had little option other than to play the gentleman. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll drive there now. There’s bound to be CCTV footage. Hopefully we can identify the thief, which might give us a breakthrough.’
‘Why? What makes you think we’ll be able to identify him?’
‘Because people have been trying to thwart me for months now, trying to scare me and generally put me off the scent. I have a pretty good idea of who we will see on CCTV.’
Suzie looked at him, her face betraying a trace of triumph that confounded him. ‘Don’t worry. I have a duplicate of the DVD in my luggage. I know the contents are dynamite, and I was never going to risk coming all the way to London with just one copy.’
Her words transformed his mood, and he found himself genuinely in awe of her. ‘Phew.’ Grant released the word as if he was relieving all the tension that had built up since she had arrived. He could now focus his thoughts. ‘But someone’s followed you and in all likelihood me as well today,’ he continued as they drove off towards the West End. ‘They knew of your journey and your arrival time, and in all probability they will know you have the DVD. We have to be very careful now. We are probably being followed now. I’ve been tailed quite a lot recently.’
‘Should we call the police?’
‘I have thought of doing so many times, but if the truth … Well, we may yet have to, I suppose, if things get worse.’
She fixed her eyes on him and for the first time thought he might be quite a catch, a feeling she had never had in Cornwall on those family holidays. The chemistry had never been right between them, unlike that between her father and his mother. She knew he had been involved with Caroline and briefly with Jenny Charnley. (Who hadn’t? she reflected.) Her own romantic involvement had centred on Danny. Meanwhile she had been all too aware of her father’s abiding passion for Grant’s mother, which had always been something of a major complication. She knew her father would have disapproved of a second liaison between the two families, and that had made any glimmerings of attraction to Grant a total no-go zone. For a brief moment she wondered how her life might have panned out if she had fallen for him. And would she have prevented the crusade that now so consumed him?
‘How’s Brigit?’ she asked breezily, as if their previous conversation had never occurred.
‘Fine,’ he replied. He had no more intention of discussing his private life with her than he had had with Danny on his unexpected visit to his home in Mill Hill. ‘So how long are you here for, and when can I watch Apocalypse Now?’
She laughed and relaxed a little. ‘As soon as Aunt Mary has left the flat. She has a hairdressing appointment at eleven.’
He glanced at his watch. It was only eight, but he knew he had to be patient. He found himself reflecting on how odd the situation had become, Suzie having travelled all the way from Cape Town with the cherished DVD on which so much seemed to rest. He, too, wished there was more of a rapport between them; he had never felt very comfortable in her presence. At least as an adult she had gained some self-confidence.
‘OK, so why don’t I drop you off, go and get a coffee near by – which might throw off any unwanted hangers-on – and return at eleven-fifteen? But first let’s go to the Lost Property place.’
‘Oh, I have a number. I’ll call it now.’
No sooner had she dialled than she was put through. After being asked at which terminal she had arrived, her time of arrival and place of embarkation, she was told, ‘No, we’ve had nothing from Terminal 5 since six last night. If you call in after three today we usually have the items handed in from six p.m. last night onwards.’ Suzie cast a knowing glance at Grant, which seemed to suggest she had anticipated an answer like this.
He headed into the West End, a journey made onerous by the morning rush-hour; a trip that should have taken no more than forty minutes was more than doubled.
‘How on earth do people cope with this every day?’ Suzie asked, staggered by the volume of traffic. As with much of their conversation in South Africa, the flow of conversation was stilted. They decided to keep off the subject of the DVD. He thought of inquiring after her family but decided not to invite any reference to her father.
After some minutes of silence he suggested putting the news on the radio; Suzie welcomed this diversion, remarking that she felt very out of touch with UK news when in Cape Town. The first item they heard could hardly have been more appropriate: a piece about advances in DNA technology and how murderers should live in perpetual fear of being convicted because even the most microscopic strand of hair could provide evidence in a new prosecution. Suzie listened in silence, glancing at Grant to see if he showed any reaction to the news story.
Meanwhile his intermittent curses about the M4 arterial route into London grew more vocal at the blockage around Hammersmith. Finally, he decided to break their own conversational traffic jam. ‘Did you ever want to go back to Cornwall after 1972?’
‘Danny suggested it once, but I thought there were a lot of other places to visit.’
‘A pity,’ replied Grant. ‘We all had five or six great holidays there, our parents rebooking for the following year the moment the latest one ended.’
‘Perhaps we just grew up. We were no longer characters in Alice in Wonderland. It wasn’t even as if it was the way normal people in their late teens generally behaved back then. Normal teenagers would have spent the summer backpacking around Holland or camping out at music festivals. I remember thinking that I should have been at the Isle of Wight festival.’ She said this with some vehemence, almost intentionally raining on Grant’s parade, before softening slightly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not soaked in your nostalgia for it all.’
‘Yeah, probably I am – but it was fun while it lasted. I guess it was a bit of a bubble. At least we all avoided marrying one another!’ He was deliberately lightening the tone but also trying to get her to reveal more about her relationship with Danny – especially why the wedding had been cancelled at such short notice. It failed, as did all attempts to scratch beneath the surface of her past.
‘Well, whatever. It was a pretty false world, being on family holidays in our late teens in an expensive hotel financed by the Bank of Mum and Dad.’
It was the Bank of Dad that Grant would have loved to have asked about. How wealthy had her father been? Had he been trying to play God with his experiments? What risks had he taken in his professional and private life at his cottage in Zennor? But Grant k
new he had neither the communication skills nor the rapport with Suzie to broach the subject.
Just after nine-thirty they arrived in Bayswater. Grant dropped Suzie off. She removed her luggage with the minimum of fuss or even acknowledgement and proceeded to ring the front doorbell, with a merely cursory backward glance towards him. He welcomed the opportunity to park several streets away and undertake some surveillance. From the time he had left his home to stay with his brother near Guildford he had been convinced that he was being followed. In his mind there was only one suspect: Danny Galvin, although he knew now that the stalker in Zennor and the driver of the car that followed him to Glen’s home might not be one and the same person. Danny had, after all, alerted him that Trevor Mullings might be involved.
Grant monitored cars parking near Suzie’s aunt’s residence. The fact he had at least ninety minutes to kill before he could finally view the film footage was very convenient. Anyone following him would surely despair of him entering the flat after such a long wait, even if he had been spotted dropping Suzie off.
36
PRESENT DAY
Shortly after eleven Suzie opened the front door to her aunt’s flat to find a very impatient Grant on the doorstep. Initially she thought she would play it cool, offer him a coffee, engage in some light conversation, but his body language made plain that any conversational foreplay wasn’t on the agenda as he paced the room looking for a DVD player.
‘OK, it’s showtime in the sitting-room,’ she announced with a little more than her customary matter-of-factness. Grant sat on the edge of a large chair and watched her operate the controls until there it was at last: the fourth DVD, the converted Super 8 film, being played out before his eyes on the television screen. So absorbed was he that he didn’t notice the family photographs adorning the mantelpiece and the Steinway piano that flanked the television; they all featured Mary’s brother, Richard Hughes-Webb.
Half a Pound of Tuppenny Rice Page 18
