“And she’s not been back since?”
“Apparently not. They gave me her home number, but it’s just an answering machine. She’s not responded to any of my messages.”
“Could she be with Hammelgaard?”
“Possibly.”
“Have you tried to contact him?”
“Yes.”
“At Princeton?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Same story. Absent without leave.”
“You mean missing?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I do.”
“For God’s sake!” Harry jumped up and strode to the window, where he took a few calming breaths before turning to look back at Iris. His anger drained away at the sight of her crushed expression. She seemed suddenly old and fallible and in need of help. She was not going to ask for it, of course. But that did not mean she would refuse it. Even from him. “A few moments ago, you said there was no reason to think they were in any danger.”
There isn’t.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Ken advised me to drop it. He said there was no point pursuing the matter. He said it couldn’t help David to antagonize his former employer.”
“Well, good old Ken.”
“But he’s right, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I do know one thing, though. The least the very least we owe David is to find out how this happened to him. And why. Did Donna say anything when you met her to give us a clue?”
“Not that I can remember. We discussed David’s condition. Nothing else.”
“But she didn’t mention the telephone call?”
“No.”
“Which means either he didn’t get through to her or ‘
“The call cost more than ten pounds, Harry. I should think he must have got through to somebody. Miss Trangam’s the obvious candidate.”
Then she can’t have wanted you to know what he said, can she?”
“No. It seems not.”
The thought clearly hurt Iris. But in her sidelong glance at David Harry detected a fear he was equally eager to stifle. Could the call have been a farewell message to a former lover? In that case, her reticence would not merely be forgivable, but admirable. “What about Hammelgaard? Did he say anything when you met him?”
“Not much. He offered his sympathy, of course. Apart from that, I don’t recall…” She shrugged. “He seemed preoccupied with the whereabouts of David’s notebooks, actually, but ‘
“His mathematical notebooks?”
“Yes.”
“The ones Hope said he was never parted from?”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘
“Weren’t they in his hotel room?”
“No. As a matter of fact, they weren’t.”
Too taken aback to speak for a moment, Harry walked slowly across to the bed and sat down in his chair. There was a flush of guilt in Iris’s cheeks when he looked up at her. “You mean they’re missing?”
“I mean he didn’t have them with him.”
“Did he have them with him when he came to see you in Wilmslow?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t search his luggage.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I assume he must have left them at his house in Washington.”
“Has anybody checked?”
“I haven’t. Perhaps Mr. Hammelgaard has since.”
“Only we can’t ask him because he’s gone missing.”
“Apparently so.”
“Hope specifically told me they went everywhere with him.”
“Well, she would know that much, I suppose.”
“So, if they weren’t in his hotel room, either somebody removed them or he didn’t take them there in the first place. Could he have left them somewhere else for safekeeping?”
“Why should he have done?”
“Because he thought they might otherwise fall into the wrong hands. Because he foresaw circumstances in which he could no longer protect them.”
Iris looked at Harry long and hard. “You realize what you’re suggesting?”
“Oh, I realize. But I don’t understand. The abstract jottings and abstruse calculations of a higher mathematician. What value would they have?”
“None you or I are capable of comprehending.”
“But it would be a different story for Hammelgaard, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. I imagine so.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I had no idea whether or not the notebooks were in David’s possession while he was staying with us. I suggested he should contact Athene Tilson, David’s old tutor at Cambridge. David mentioned he’d been to see her before coming on to us. She’s a mathematician, of course. He might have shown her his latest work.”
“Or left it with her?”
That too, of course.”
Harry leant forward across the bed. “Where can I find her, Iris?”
“Southwold. On the Suffolk coast. She’s retired there.”
“Have you heard from her since David’s illness?”
“No. Strangely enough, I haven’t.”
Then don’t you think it’s time she heard from us?”
“Perhaps.”
“Don’t you want to know what she has to say?”
That depends on what it is.”
It was the earlier fear re-echoed. A man preparing to make a voluntary exit from this life might well leave the fruits of his most recent intellectual endeavours with his trusted mentor. Just as he might pay a last visit to his mother and make a farewell call to his ex-lover. Before hanging up the DO NOT DISTURB sign outside his hotel-room door and filling a syringe with enough insulin to stretch his night’s sleep into eternity. That was really why Iris had shrunk back from probing the mystery of her son’s final hours. Because she was not sure the truth was preferable to not knowing. Because ignorance was safe even if it could not be blissful.
“You don’t have to do this, Harry. You can still take Ken’s advice. Stay out of it. Leave well alone.”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, glancing round at David’s calm unchanging face. “I really don’t think that’s an option any more.” He looked back at her. “Do you?”
THIRTEEN
Harry reached Southwold by bus from Ipswich on a bright breezy morning of fluffy fast-moving clouds and wide blue East Anglian horizons. Local poets might have been moved to verse by the bustle of the High Street and the gull-loud air of seaside purpose-fulness. But Harry was in far from poetic mood. He had just the sort of leaden headache and incipient liverishness he might have expected as a result of a heavy night at the Stonemasons’, a bolted breakfast and a rush-hour tube journey to Liverpool Street. He was troubled by the memory of Crowther’s sarcasm when agreeing to let him take the day off “Working here isn’t making too many demands on your time, is it, Harry?” And he was not at all sure that flogging out to the marshy margins of Suffolk was actually going to achieve anything he could not have accomplished in a telephone conversation.
He had phoned Dr. Tilson, of course, but had spoken only to a housekeeper, through whom he had managed to fix an appointment without having to say more than that he was a friend of David Venning’s mother. Reticence had seemed only prudent till he could meet David’s old tutor and weigh her expression along with her words. Now, trudging out to the se afront and reeling before the brain-scouring force of the wind, he could not help doubting whether he had played his hand wisely.
Avocet House was a high-gabled Victorian villa set behind gale-carved hedges at the southern end of the town. It looked more like some whiskery admiral’s final mooring than an academic’s hideaway. Why Dr. Tilson should prefer this patch of salt-sprayed obscurity to the wood-panelled college rooms Harry found it easy to imagine she had left behind in Cambridge was at first sight a mystery.
The mystery did not evaporate when Harry was greeted at the door by the housekeeper he had spoken to on the telephone. Younger than he would have
predicted, she was short and plump, with a startlingly clear-skinned face and a mass of marmalade-coloured hair. The plain dress and headband were consistent enough with the position Harry had assumed she held, but the quivering air of insecurity was not.
“You must be Harry Barnett,” she said in a breathless voice. “Come in.” Harry stepped into the cavernous hallway. “Athene’s in the conservatory.” Athene, Harry noted. Not Dr. Tilson. “Come on through.”
He followed her along the hall and into a dowdily furnished drawing room which gave onto the conservatory. She left him at the doorway with an offer of coffee. He accepted, failing to specify the strong black brew that he badly needed, and went on alone.
The conservatory was clearly contemporary with the house; terra cotta lozenge tiles underfoot, grimy glass and cast iron overhead. Cacti and assorted frond-leafed exotics occupied most of the floor space, their thick green stems planted firmly in fat red pots. There were no statuettes or figurines, no grinning gnomes or frolicking cherubs. The place would, in fact, have seemed more like a working greenhouse than a domestic conservatory but for the wicker chairs and table set in a kind of arbour at the far end.
Seated on one of the chairs was a thin grey-haired woman who looked up as he approached. She was wearing stout shoes, corduroy trousers and a guernsey, with what looked like a tennis shirt underneath. Her hair was short, her face lined and free of make-up. She made no effort to rise, which Harry assumed the pair of walking-sticks propped against the table explained, but her dark piercing eyes engaged him more directly than any word or gesture.
“Mr. Barnett?”
“Yes. Dr. Tilson?”
“Indeed. Come and sit down.” There was a hint of sharpness in her voice that made the invitation sound more like an instruction. “Has Mace offered you anything?”
“Er… yes. Coffee.”
“Coffee? How unexciting.” She watched him closely as he sat down. “Well, it can’t be helped. We have no beer in the house. And cigarette smoke would disturb the plants.” Catching his frown, she added: The waistline is a giveaway, Mr. Barnett. And I have a keen enough nose to detect the aroma of a cigarette recently smoked. Not English, I think. Italian?”
“Greek, actually.”
“Really? How disappointing. For me, I mean. For you, I imagine, it was a considerable pleasure.” She smiled with surprising warmth. “A touch of emphysema means tobacco is a banned substance in this house, I fear. And it’s a ban Mace polices rigorously.”
“Well, the sea air must be … good for…”
“Clarity? Yes, it is.” She glanced out through the window, where the fall of the land and the lie of the garden hedge disclosed a sun-winking wedge of the North Sea. “Clarity of thought as well as respiration.” She looked back at Harry, then down at the book she had been reading. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness by Roger Penrose. It looked a fat and formidable work. “I don’t suppose you’re familiar with Professor Penrose’s… No, of course not. You’re not a mathematician, are you, Mr. Barnett?”
“No. I’m afraid not. But I’m here about a mathematician.”
“David? Yes. Poor boy. I really was so very sorry to hear what had happened to him. It would always be sad, naturally. But for the possessor of such a first-class brain… Well, you’re a friend of the family, so I need hardly elaborate.”
“Actually, I don’t know David at all. To be honest, I don’t think you could really call me a friend. Of any member of the family.”
“Could one not? Well, well. You do intrigue me.” She grinned mischievously as Mace brought in his coffee. “Mr. Barnett is here under false pretences, Mace. What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s not so unusual,” said Mace. She placed the cup at Harry’s elbow and left again without looking at either of them, the hem of her dress brushing past the plants like a forest breeze.
Dr. Tilson chuckled. “You didn’t want sugar, did you, Mr. Barnett?”
“Er… No.”
“Just as well. Mace obviously decided it would be bad for you.” Her gaze narrowed. “But don’t let me distract you from explaining yourself.”
Harry sipped evasively at the coffee before replying. It tasted insipid enough to be decaffeinated. “I’m David’s natural father.”
Dr. Tilson nodded reflectively as she absorbed the information,
then said: “Why don’t I find that as surprising as I should?”
“A resemblance, perhaps. David’s ex-wife thought she noticed something in my smile.”
“Yes. I think she’s right. Put three stones and twenty-five years on David and I suppose you’re something like what one would get.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Take it as compliment, Mr. Barnett. I met Mr. Yenning once. David’s legal father as I suppose I should call him. You represent an improvement, believe me. But let’s come to the point. What brings you here?”
“Some of David’s possessions seem to be missing. Which makes the circumstances of his insulin overdose look less straightforward than most people seem to think.”
“Which… possessions … in particular?”
“His mathematical notebooks. I gather he always carried the latest few around with him. Did he have them with him when he last visited you?”
“Yes. Most certainly he did. We glanced through some of his recent work. I’m flattered to say he still values my opinion. Mathematicians peak early, Mr. Barnett. David would be thought by some to be past his best already, even without … As for a septuagenarian like myself, well, the present generation look upon me as a museum piece. Those that don’t assume I’m long dead, that is. David is exceptional in his ability to disregard the fashions of the moment when assessing mathematical significance. It’s an ability that did little for his career. But as for posterity, that could prove to be a vastly different matter.”
“You mean David’s on the track of some important discovery?”
“Maybe. To be honest, some of his calculations proved to be a little beyond me. My mind simply isn’t as agile as it once was. I can’t help hoping emphysema will claim me before Alzheimer’s does.”
“But you did see what he was working on?”
“Some of it. He was reluctant to show me everything. He said much of the material was too speculative to be shared. But there was certainly plenty of it. The freedom he’s enjoyed since leaving Globescope had evidently been put to good use.”
“Did he say why he left Globescope?”
“Not exactly. He was recruited by them a couple of years ago, along with half a dozen or so specialists from other disciplines, to work on the corporation’s most ambitious project yet. Project
Sybil, it was called, presumably after the prophetess of antiquity. The objective was to assemble a detailed and accurate model of the state of the world fifty years from now. A consortium of international companies wanted to take a long-term look at where they should be going and how they should be planning to get there. Futurology is something of a fad in big business at the moment, I believe. Blame the imminence of the millennium. I dare say Ethelred the Unready was up to something similar a thousand years ago. But he didn’t have Globescope to hire, did he?”
“Was the project finished, then?”
“I had the impression not. But David said very little about it. He referred airily to some sort of disagreement with the President of Globescope and left it at that.”
The same disagreement that led four other scientists to leave, two of whom have since died?”
Dr. Tilson started with surprise. “Died?”
“A Canadian biochemist, Marvin Kersey, and a French sociologist, Gerard Mermillod. Within a fortnight of David’s… accidental overdose. Their deaths were accidental too. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It does.”
“Did David mention them in connection with Project Sybil?”
“Not that I recall. But then, you see, Globescope and Project Sybil we
re just means to an end to him. They paid well. And he needed money the sort of money only American entrepreneurs seem able to come up with to finance his brainchild: a hyper-dimensional research academy. HYDRA, it was to be called, appropriately enough. That’s what was on his mind when he came here. The world of higher dimensions, not futurology.”
“And that’s what his recent work was about?”
“Of course. In a sense, it’s what all his work’s been about. Ever since he was an undergraduate. His promise was immediately obvious to me. But so was his interest in higher dimensions. Sometimes it… unbalanced his achievements.”
“What are higher dimensions, Dr. Tilson?”
“They’re what particle physicists tell us are necessary to explain the fundamental structure of matter. I don’t suppose you’re acquainted with super string theory?”
“You suppose right.”
“Well, super strings are about the most satisfactory way physicists have come up with for harmonizing Einsteinian relativity with quantum mechanics, a difficulty that’s dogged them for most of this century. For super strings to work mathematically it’s necessary to accept the existence of dimensions additional to the four we get on with from day to day: length, breadth, depth and time. Superstring theory tells us there are at least another six out there somewhere.”
Harry nodded. “I went to see Adam Slade’s magic show. He claims to be in touch with them.”
Dr. Tilson clicked her tongue. “A charlatan, Mr. Barnett. Neither more nor less.”
“Does David see him that way?”
“Not as clearly as I should like. David has always been eager to seize upon evidence of the actual physical existence of higher dimensions. It’s a deeply unfashionable concept. Superstring theorists prefer to dispose of the problem by arguing that the additional dimensions were compactified at the point of origin of the universe into a space so minute that they can never be detected. Quod erat disponandum. Neat, don’t you think?”
“Er … I suppose it fits the facts.”
“Quite so. But beware convenience. It’s often a treacherous ally. If you really want to understand higher dimensions, without recourse to compactification, you could do worse than my own foray into the subject. It earned me a limited kind of fame when it was first published, but it was fame of an impermanent nature. David was the first undergraduate I came across who’d read it in, oh, ten years at least.”
Out of the Sun Page 7
