Landscape of Lies

by Peter Watson

  Just then the cabin door opened again. Grainger had the gun in one hand, a bucket in the other. He walked across to Isobel, put down the bucket and cut the tape from her face. He was rough in his actions and Isobel cried in pain. ‘Here, be sick into this.’

  The sound of Isobel’s retching filled the cabin and a faint stench of vomit reached Michael’s nostrils. God, he thought, don’t let me be sick. Being sick, he knew, was exhausting in itself.

  Resting the gun near the door, Grainger unravelled a fresh strip of tape. He was just about to apply it to Isobel’s mouth when she suddenly said, ‘Now I know what it was like, sleeping on that sofa.’

  ‘Shut up! Close your mouth.’ Grainger wound the tape around Isobel’s face, stifling her sobs, and picked up the gun. Then he shuffled out and the door banged shut again.

  Isobel lay groaning for a while. Then, to judge from the regularity of her breathing, she fell asleep.

  The waves were dying down now, as the wind dropped, and the movement of the launch was more comfortable. Less uncomfortable.

  Michael turned over in his mind what Isobel had said. Code? Not really. She was just being Isobel, good under fire. Cheering him up. Themselves up. More than that. She was telling him she was alert, that Grainger might have them physically beaten but that was all. She was watching, waiting.

  Michael felt himself growing drowsy. He fought it. The dirty water in the bottom of the launch continually splashed against his face and that helped to keep him awake for a while. But then he too fell asleep.

  15

  When he jerked awake, Michael was immediately conscious that the light outside was different. It was yellower somehow. Evening was coming on. The sea was now much calmer and he could hear again the slap-slap of water against the hull as it raced past. He had a consuming desire for a cigar.

  The only satisfaction Michael could salvage from the situation was that he was refreshed now and Grainger could not be. The other man had been up all night and had needed to handle the launch in fairly heavy seas all day. He was a tall and sinewy man but he had to be weaker now, Michael hoped.

  The light began to fade. The sun must have just set. Funny how quite blustery days often settled down towards sunset. It was true the world over. Involuntarily, he thought back to the places he had been where he had watched wonderful sunsets—Jamaica, California, Chile, British Columbia, Australia. Michael was suddenly angry all over again. For a few moments since he woke up he had forgotten to be angry.

  He heard the rattle of the door handle as Grainger opened it. ‘Nine-twenty,’ he shouted. ‘We left Portland Lighthouse over an hour ago … there’s no one else in sight and it’s time to make a start.’

  The tape was unwound from Isobel’s face. Once more she cried out as it was pulled roughly from her flesh. Then the scissors were wedged under the tape which fastened Michael’s mouth. He pressed his lips together as best he could so that no more tender tissue was torn away.

  ‘There, you can both talk if you wish. Yell all you like. We’re out of sight of land.’

  Neither Isobel nor Michael spoke.

  ‘Very wise. Now I’m going to let you in on my plan. I want you both to know that, despite what happened at Oxford, and despite the fact that you beat me—by a whisker, I might add—my solution to the problem of your disposal is possibly the most brilliant conception I have ever devised. Given the circumstances …

  ‘I also want to get it off my chest. Think about all this from my point of view. I have worked out the most elegant solution to a problem. All the loose ends are tidied up, the problems smoothed away; the red herrings, the false clues I shall leave, are simple, clean and will work perfectly … the intellectual satisfaction is immense. But I can hardly tell anyone, can I? It’s not like the solution to an academic controversy which I can publish.’ He laughed. ‘But I can tell you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Since I am going to drown you shortly, there’s no harm in your knowing. In fact,’ he chuckled, ‘it helps me to let you in on my plans. Now I shall know that someone, even at such a—well, embarrassing—time, has appreciated my guile. So I shall feel … content. I can do what I have to do, knowing that someone, someone I respect, knew—for however short a time—knew that George Grainger’s mind was as sharp and creative as ever.’ He stopped smiling. ‘You are a safety valve. That is your value to me. In telling you, I shall never again be tempted to tell anyone else. If we were not having this chat, I might be tempted in years to come. But not now. The fact that you are listening makes it safe for me. I ought to thank you but that really would be silly.

  ‘It’s now getting dark. We’ve sailed west all day and are now about five miles offshore of Weymouth. According to the maps there are about four hundred feet of water at this point. I have just transferred the box with the skulls and rings in it to the skiff at the back of the launch. Also the two fishing rods I bought at Wareham this morning, my radio, coffee flask, bits of silver chocolate paper, the seven fish I caught today. When I motor into Weymouth in about—oh, two hours—I shall look like a perfectly ordinary but very keen fisherman who’s been out all day. It will be dark, so no one will pay any attention to an old box. Everything will all look so natural.’

  Michael went to speak, but Grainger raised his voice and hurried on.

  ‘Before all that, however, there comes the bit I’m most proud of. Where I’ve been really clever.

  ‘As soon as it’s completely dark, I shall invite each of you out of the cabin and on deck. There I shall remove the tapes and the ropes—and all of your clothes. The cabin is too small for such sport. Then you will be … persuaded back into the cabin, and locked in again—’

  ‘Why—’

  ‘Then I shall scuttle the launch. It’s quite easy—I just turn a tap by the engine. The boat will take about seven or eight minutes to sink. After about four minutes, I shall take to the skiff and watch the rest of the proceedings from there. As soon as the launch is safely out of sight I shall head for the shore. I should reach Weymouth about eleven-thirty. Late but not suspiciously so for a fishing fanatic on a summer’s evening.’

  ‘The launch will be missed before we are.’ Michael could keep silent no more.

  ‘No doubt. But it can’t be traced to me—or to you, for that matter.’ Grainger shifted, to make himself more comfortable. ‘I must confess that, like you, I expected to find the silver in Pallington church. Unlike you, however, after I’d worked out that the church was the place, I always considered it risky, from my point of view, to use a car to take everything away in. There’s traffic on a country lane even in the depths of night and I couldn’t risk being seen. That’s why I chose the river. Unfortunately, the launch I was in when we had our … encounter … on the river had been hired only for a day. That’s why you caught up with me and even overtook me; I had to search for another.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been clever to hire one, of course. They don’t let you keep these things out after dark. So I had to … help myself.’

  ‘You stole it?’

  Again the chuckle. ‘The least of my sins, as you will shortly find out.’

  Michael stared at Grainger, trying to control his hatred.

  ‘It was remarkably easy. There’s a large basin at Poole, a wide stretch of water just inside the drawbridge and on one of the banks is a rather nice pub. I had a drink there on Sunday afternoon and watched a couple moor their launch in the middle of the basin, on a pontoon. They covered the deck area with a tarpaulin and then rowed ashore. They joined a crowd they knew in the pub, had a couple of drinks, then got into their car, waving to everyone and telling the world, or anyone who cared to listen, that they would be back next weekend.’ Grainger shook his head from side to side, mentally congratulating himself on his cunning. ‘Yesterday morning, very early, I rowed out to the launch, fiddled with the ignition—it’s just like a car or a motor bike—and, well … here we are.’ He stared at Michael. ‘This launch won’t be missed until next Saturday morning at the earliest and even
then it can’t be linked with either you or me.’

  He stroked the crease in his cheek. ‘If your bodies are found, then it will look as though you stole the launch. Once your bodies have been identified, people will then remember that you have already had one “accident” with a boat, and ended up in the water. They will assume you were careless, fatally so, a second time. If they don’t find you, as I suspect will be the case, they will assume you flew off—’

  ‘– but if they find the bodies and the car, miles away, that will look suspicious.’

  ‘No. If you were going to steal a boat, you wouldn’t park your own car nearby, would you? If the launch were to be missed early, a nearby car without a local registration would be one of the first things the police would check—and it would lead straight to you. A sensible thief would leave his car some way away … like a long-term car-park where it wouldn’t arouse suspicion. You can get from Bournemouth to Poole very easily, by train or bus.’

  Michael forced all the hatred he could muster into his eyes. They were his only weapon.

  But Grainger only chuckled icily again. ‘Keep trying. Your objections just show, so far, how clever I’ve been in working things out.

  ‘Now, let me get on with explaining my plan. This is the next clever bit … I left my motor cycle in a side road in Wareham. If I have missed the last train from Weymouth to Wareham, I shall simply take a taxi. From Wareham I shall ride to Moreton station. It’s about half a mile outside the village and, as you will see, is necessary to my plans. I see from the map that it also has two caravan sites—which means that, at this time of the year, there is a lot of strange traffic in the area. I shall not be noticed. Moreton is, of course, barely two miles from Pallington. I shall walk there keeping to the hedges so that no one sees me. It should take me no more than an hour. Between two and three o’clock tomorrow morning, I shall therefore locate your car, which must be hidden somewhere near the church in Pallington. And that reminds me: where are the keys?’

  Michael was silent.

  ‘Come along! Or I shall harm Miss Sadler here.’ And he jabbed Isobel’s thigh with the boat-hook.

  ‘Here, in my jacket,’ breathed Michael softly. He was feeling totally humiliated by Grainger’s treatment.

  Grainger reached forward, found the keys, but also noticed the cigar which was still in Michael’s top pocket. He laughed, took it out, smelled the leaves. He put it in his own jacket pocket and then stood back again near the door. ‘I shall search your car for any incriminating documents or other evidence and dispose of them. I shall then drive your car to Bournemouth airport. Somewhere along the way I shall “lose” the fishing rod and the rest of the junk. As soon as everyone else wakes up, so I don’t draw attention to myself, I shall park the car in the long-stay car park and then take a bus to Bournemouth railway station. No one will pay any attention to me—I shall just be one of hundreds of bus passengers that day. I shall then take a train back to Moreton and pick up my motor bike. I shall drive that to Bournemouth airport and leave it in the same car park. Then I shall go back into Bournemouth, this time by taxi, and catch a coach or bus to Weymouth. It would be quicker to catch a train but if I used the railway station twice in the space of a few hours it might look suspicious. In Weymouth I shall take the ferry to Jersey. I can’t fly out of the country because I would have to use my real name. And in any case it’s as good a way to get to Jersey as any, which is where my first stop will be. The banking system there, being what it is, is perfect for my plan. As you may know, Jersey is stuffed with safety deposit centres which are open at all hours and are much more anonymous than banks proper. I shall deposit the Pallington box in one of them.

  ‘Next, it is just a short hop from Jersey to France, where I should arrive by early tomorrow evening. They never stamp your passport these days. A train should get me into Paris some time late at night.’

  Michael’s mind involuntarily went back to the Bibliothèque Nationale and the coffee he had drunk in the square outside. He realised how much his body ached for coffee now. And a cigar.

  ‘Next comes the third clever part. You cannot, of course, stay in a French hotel without registering and giving your name. If anything should go wrong with the rest of my plans, and people should want to know where I was at the time of this … incident … then I would need an alibi and the dates on hotel registration forms might not stand up. Therefore I shall enjoy myself and spend tomorrow night at Barbara’s, a rather busy brothel just off the rue de Seine. One can spend a night there very pleasantly. Expensively, but pleasantly. No one, of course, expects anyone to use his real name, nothing is ever written down, all transactions are in cash. The next day I shall proceed to Amsterdam and repeat the same process at the Chequered Flag, a not dissimilar establishment. All the while I shall be sending postcards to friends and colleagues. They will, of course, be pre-dated. The postcards will turn up days later and people will never remember when they got them, still less work out when they were posted. That’s the way with postcards—some take a day or two, some take a week. But if called upon to be witnesses, months later, these friends will confirm that I was certainly in Paris and Holland at this time. I shall also look up university colleagues in Paris and Amsterdam.

  ‘Then I shall return to England and retrieve my motor cycle. That was another brilliant touch. I haven’t ridden one of those things since I was a boy, so no one will associate a fifty-year-old don with motorbike leathers. The helmet came in very handy, of course, as a disguise. Most probably, your bodies will never be discovered and my elaborate plan will have been unnecessary. Pleasant, expensive, but unnecessary. If, however, for some reason your bodies and the boat are found, the situation will be clear. Being naked, you were engaged in having sex, you didn’t notice the boat was sinking and, too late, were inadvertently locked in the cabin. You probably haven’t noticed but there is a bracket attached to the wheelhouse outside the cabin which clips on to the door to keep it open. In a moment I shall pull it away from the wood it is screwed into and then fix it to the fitting on the door, so that it will appear as if the door slammed shut accidentally after the restraining bracket broke loose. But, as I say, I don’t expect your bodies ever to be found, and most probably people will think, weeks from now when the airport authorities finally pay attention to your car, that you flew off somewhere. You will be listed missing and that will be that. Now, we’ll start with you, Miss Sadler. Get up, please.’

  Michael’s brain was a jumble of questions and delaying tactics. ‘What about Helen Sparrow? She can link you to us.’

  Grainger smiled his cold smile. ‘Can she? I wore my helmet all the time I was there. And at that point, Whiting, even you thought I was called Molyneux.’

  Michael groaned. Grainger was right … No, he wasn’t right. He was overestimating his own cleverness and underestimating the police. It was that intellectual vanity again—and it was what made him so dangerous. Helen would obviously alert the police if she didn’t hear from Isobel and Michael, or if their bodies were discovered. She would tell them about Molyneux. That might not lead straight to Grainger but the police would know that the launch ‘accident’ was no such thing.

  All these thoughts flashed through Michael’s brain as fast as a guillotine but he didn’t speak. Grainger’s vanity was leading him on and no amount of argument would change his stubborn mind. Michael had to watch for his chance, then seize it. Rather than waste energy on arguing, it was better to nurse his strength.

  The tapes and ropes around Isobel’s ankles were cut. She was led out on deck. Her wrists were now fixed to the gunwhale.

  ‘Don’t think of jumping overboard,’ said Grainger. ‘You’ll only be dragged along behind the launch and get caught up in the propeller. There … I think that’s tied firmly enough. Let me just pull it hard, to see … Yes, that’s fine. Struggle if you want to. You won’t get free.’ He turned back to the cabin. ‘Now, Mr Whiting. You. I’m going to untie your feet. Please don’t think of kicking out at me
. The gun isn’t in my hand but it isn’t far away. If I need to I shall hit you over the head with it and undress you myself while you are unconscious. That may spoil my plan a little but I shall wait for you to come round before I drown you.’

  Michael watched in silence as the tape was pulled back from his knots, then the knots themselves were loosened. His legs were free.

  ‘Stand up and walk towards me.’

  Out on deck it was a beautifully clear night. As Michael came out of the cabin and felt what was left of the breeze on his cheek, Grainger grabbed his arms from behind and pushed him quickly to the back of the launch. Michael started to turn to kick out at Grainger but was neatly tripped by the other man. He fell, crashed into Isobel’s legs and banged his head against something hard. The pain made his eyes water. Before he could recover, Grainger was on him and tying another rope around his wrists. His arms were jerked up behind him, painfully, as Grainger hurried to tie Michael to the gunwhale.

  Michael regained his feet. Steadying himself, he looked all around him. Grainger was right: there was no land in sight, no other boat or ship, not a light or a sail, not anything.

  Grainger, who now had Michael’s cigar wedged in his mouth, addressed him. ‘No reason why you shouldn’t enjoy the show, Whiting. I don’t know whether you’ll find it erotic or embarrassing. I don’t really care. Now, Miss Sadler, I’m going to untie you. As I do so I shall stand about six feet from you. In one hand I shall have the gun. The boat-hook is also very close. At that range I can do you serious damage the minute you depart from the script. First I want you to shake free of the ropes on your wrists.’

  Michael had to stop it. ‘Helen Sparrow may never have seen your face, Grainger. But she saw—and cleaned—the picture. So, even if you do find the missing silver, you can never sell it or publish how you found it. It won’t help your academic reputation.’

  Again the cold smile. ‘Oh, but you are wrong, Whiting. Very wrong. You surprise me and underestimate me. The Pallington box could not suit my purposes better. You are probably interested in—oh, the gospels perhaps, as the most valuable item, financially. Or the crosier, which is probably the most beautiful piece. I, however, am not. For the first part of my plan, the most useful items are the hand reliquary and the map of the True Cross. The reason? Very simple. They both contain jewels. The hand bears exquisite rubies, while the map shows the sites of the cross, each one designated by an emerald. Some of them are fairly small, but by no means all. There’s an account of the Monksilver treasure in a sixteenth-century manuscript in the British Museum. You may not know about that.