Precisely what he was going to do instead remained unclear. His visit to the Hudson Valley Psychiatric Center had only served to complicate an already confusing situation. Carl Dobermann’s unknown whereabouts and unguessable motives had been added to an insoluble equation. Why did David go to see him? What did they talk about? And where, two days late rafter thirty-six years of placid immobility, did Dobermann go?
His flight had clearly surprised the hospital authorities, as Glendon Poucher had freely admitted. “It’s unusual, if not unprecedented, for a long-stay patient like Mr. Dobermann to decamp. His was a carefully planned covert departure, taking advantage of reduced staffing levels and high visitor density during the Labor Day holiday. There’s been no trace of him since. I should add that he was not a voluntary patient, so any light you gentlemen can shed on his probable movements would be greatly valued.” But light they could not have shed even had they wanted to. Their hastily assembled story might only have helped cover Dobermann’s tracks. No, they definitely were not the pair who had visited him on 3 September. Their connection with him dated from using the same Upper West Side bar back in the fifties. Poucher was welcome to their names and telephone numbers at any rate the false ones they supplied. They would certainly be in touch if anything else occurred to them.
“Do you think he believed us?” Harry had asked once they were safely back in the car, driving towards the main gate.
“Maybe. He’s not exactly likely to guess the truth, is he? Just as well we both look as if we could have been propping up bars since… when the hell was it?”
“Some time in 1958. Dobermann was here right through the sixties, the seventies and the eighties. He never showed any signs of even wanting to leave.”
“Until two days after David hauled me up here. Jeez, I thought at any moment some orderly was gonna come in and say, “Yup, this is one of the guys who came to see Mad Dog Carl all right.””
But was Dobermann mad? And, if so, what form did his madness take? Poucher had been cagey on the point when Harry mentioned the strange rumours surrounding his fugitive patient. “I’ve heard no rumours. As far as I’m aware, Mr. Dobermann’s dementia has remained intractable since his admission. His condition certainly hasn’t altered of late. As to why he was admitted in the first place, that is naturally confidential. We are presently concerned with locating him, not re-examining his diagnosis. Insanity frightens many people, gentlemen. You would be surprised what outlandish explanations they devise for its symptoms.”
From the computerized security of Poucher’s office, that no doubt seemed as sensible a view as it was convenient. But to Harry, turning occasionally to stare at himself in the night-blanked window of the train, Dobermann was more than an errant madman. He was one with the blurred presence Harry had glimpsed at his shoulder in Copenhagen, the figure on the bridge, the shape beneath the sheets, the fading pitter-patter of following footsteps. He was the shadow of whatever had reached out from the darkness to overwhelm Hammelgaard and might reach out again.
“Would you do me a favour when you get back to New York, Woodrow?” Harry had asked when they were about halfway between Poughkeepsie and Albany.
“Depends.”
“Try and find out what happened to Dobermann in 1958. Why he was locked up in that hospital.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. Sweet talk your opposite number at Columbia. Caretakers go back longer than professors. Check the local papers for that year. See if something… unusual… occurred at the university.”
“Students going cuckoo ain’t exactly unusual.”
This must have been different. It has to be what led David to him.”
“Nah. I told you. That was the scraps of Dobermann’s thesis. Plus the rumours, o’course.”
“Ah yes, the rumours. You’ve heard them yourself, have you?”
“No. But ‘
“Nor had Poucher. So he claimed, anyway. Maybe David invented them for your benefit.”
“What are you getting at?”
An alternative explanation for the crop of deaths among former Globescope staff. That was where Harry’s fears were beginning to drag his thoughts. Did it start in Lazenby’s office on 29 August? Or at the Hudson Valley Psychiatric Center on 3 September? If the latter, then hunting down incriminating tape recordings was a pointless diversion. But no. That made no sense. The future would not matter to a man who did not even have a past. And yet… He looked round at the empty seat beside him and shivered. “He was close? Hammelgaard had said. “He was nearly there. He was on the brink of history’ Where was Dobermann? Far away? Or close by, all too close, all the time?
“I’ll see what I can dig up about the guy,” Hackensack had reluctantly agreed. “I’ll ask a few discreet questions.”
Thanks.”
“But don’t complain if I come up with damn all. We’re talking about the fifties. To most people today, that’s as remote as the Ice Age.”
“It seems clear enough in my mind.”
That’s because you’re not most people.”
“What do I do when I get to Chicago?”
“I’ll tell you at Albany.”
Tell me now.”
“Donna said ‘
“Just tell me, Woodrow. It’s my neck, remember.”
But was it? Gazing from the train as it drew slowly out of Albany-Rensselaer Station to see Hackensack standing by his Cadillac in the car park, Harry had wondered if carrying a message to Donna Trangam was actually any riskier than asking questions about Carl Dobermann. He had wished for a moment that Hackensack had refused to do him such a favour, a wish not far short of a premonition. Well, perhaps he would phone him from Chicago and tell him not to bother. There would be time enough for that once his appointment with Donna had been kept.
“OK, Harry. Have it your way. The train gets into Chicago at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Take a cab to the John Hancock Center. Ride the elevator to the top floor. There’s a restaurant up there, and a bar. Should be pretty busy around lunchtime. Buy yourself a drink, take a seat and admire the view of Lake Michigan. Donna will contact you there.”
“How will she identify me?”
“She’s gonna call me in the morning. I’ll describe you to her. But I doubt I’ll need to.”
“Why not?” “Cos, like I told you, you’re not most people.”
He was not most people. How Harry wished he could be at this low midnight ebb of his confidence. He struggled out of his seat and made his way to the vestibule, where he broached his last pack of Karelia Sertika and smoked one slowly through with the window pulled open to admit a freezing gale of air. He took David’s snapshot from his wallet and stared at his son’s smiling face in the sickly yellow lamplight. All he had learnt about this distant stranger-child was contained in the knowing warmth of his photographed gaze. An untold joke; an unshared secret; an unsolved mystery. They were waiting for Harry, somewhere out there. They were beckoning him on. They had neither time nor place in any printed schedule. But already they were fixed points in his future.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Harry did fall asleep in the end, just as day was breaking. Breakfast, along with substantial tracts of Ohio and Indiana, passed by in a drowsy haze and alertness only returned when the conductor announced they would shortly be arriving in Chicago. Stumbling out into the echoing maze of Union Station with a parrot-cage mouth, a fuzzy head and a sandpaper chin, he somehow managed to locate the taxi rank and mumble his destination before sitting back to blink at the glaring blue sky, the muffle red pedestrians, the ice-limned storm drains and the sunlight flashing off the tower block walls.
The John Hancock Center was a black-steel giant at whose fat-girdered feet Harry was in due course delivered. The lift rushed him to the top, which was as busy and panoramic as Hackensack had promised. Retreating into the bar as far from the dazzling view as possible, Harry ordered a beer and commenced sizing up the solitary females as surr
eptitiously as he could for one that might be Donna Trangam. There were not many candidates, but one blond-haired woman in a grey suit and pink blouse looked across at him with what seemed like significant deliberation before putting a cigarette to her mouth and flicking at a lighter with ostentatious lack of success.
“Can I help?” asked Harry, strolling across to her table, glass in hand, at what he judged to be a casual pace. “Matches never let you down.” He took the box with Hackensack’s number written on it from his pocket and rattled the contents.
Thanks,” she said, accepting the light. She was older than Harry would have expected, quite a bit older than David, with a hardness to her features that fear might have solidified. Her high-fashion suit and chunky jewellery were far from the blue stocking stereotype. Perhaps, he supposed, that was the point of them. “It’s good to know there’s one man left in Chicago who hasn’t kicked the habit.”
“Actually, I’ve only just arrived.”
“That sure isn’t a Midwest accent.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all. I’m feeling kinda lonely.”
As Harry sat down, she turned slightly in her seat to face him, crossed her legs and smiled coolly. “Where you from?”
“England. I’m Harry, Donna.”
“Pleased to meet you, Harry.”
“You’ve spoken to Woodrow today?”
“Pardon me?”
“Woodrow.”
The only other man I’ve spoken to today is my shmuck of a husband. Soon to be ex-husband. That’s if you count him as a man. Which I’m not sure I do.”
In the same instant that Harry realized he had made a ghastly mistake, a movement caught his eye on the far side of the room, by the windows looking west across the city. A slim dark-haired woman, dressed anonymously in jeans, trainers and a multicoloured brushed-wool sweater, raised one hand in cautious recognition. She did not smile. Indeed, there was a purse-lipped look of puzzlement on her face that assumed a tinge of irritation as he met her gaze.
“Glad to hear you’re not a Chicagoan, Harry. I’ve had it with the men of this city. Too damn smooth for my liking. There comes a time when a girl needs something rough to scratch her back on. Wouldn’t you say?”
Harry’s mouth sagged open as the ironies of the situation reverberated inside his head. She was a good-looking woman, smartly turned out and eager for company. His company, amazingly enough. And rather more than company, if he read the signs correctly. As the studiously sensuous manner in which she drew on her cigarette convinced him he did. It was the fulfilment of a lifelong fantasy. Or it promised to be. Unfortunately, he had waited forty years to be picked up by a glamorous middle-aged nymphomaniac only for opportunity to knock just when he could least afford to seize it.
“My name’s Carmen, by the way. Like the opera. It was my mother’s favourite. It appealed to her passionate nature.”
“Which you inherited?”
“Matter of fact, I did.” As she spoke, she applied a carmine-nailed forefinger to a minor itch somewhere high on her thigh, flicking up the hem of her skirt in the process. “What line of business are you in, Harry?”
“No kind.” He took a deep regretful breath. “I’ve just been released from a lunatic asylum.”
She smiled nervously. “You’re joking.”
“If only I were.”
That’s, er, kinda surprising.” She eased back in her chair and tugged the hem of her skirt down towards her knee. “How long… were you in there?”
“Thirty-six years.” He saw her jaw drop. “Oh, there’s my daughter. She’s waiting to take me home. You’ll have to excuse me.”
“Sure,” said Carmen, nodding numbly.
Harry picked up his beer and walked slowly across to the window, letting a shudder of deprivation come and go. As he reached Donna Trangam’s table, she rose to meet him. A slightly built woman of thirty or so, with bobbed brown-black hair and a pale peaceful face in which eyes as dark and rich as teak glistened behind small gold-framed glasses, she frowned reproachfully and murmured: “What the hell were you playing at?”
“Telling a goose I didn’t like golden eggs. Not much of a game, I can assure you.”
“You were supposed to be careful.”
“I had to settle for being good instead. My mother would have approved.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Suits me.”
“I’ll meet you by the elevator.”
Harry returned to his original table by a semi-circular route that avoided any possibility of eye contact with Carmen. There he plonked down some money for his beer, grabbed his coat and bag and headed for the lift. Donna was waiting by the doors in a short red coat and black beret. The simultaneous departure of a lunch party meant she and Harry could say nothing to each other then or during the descent, even though they were jammed together in a corner of the car. In the circumstances, Harry thought it best to stare fixedly at the floor indicator.
Eventually, they reached the ground, where Donna led Harry out by a side-exit into the teeth of a cold blast of Lake Michigan air. “We don’t have long,” she said. “Certainly not long enough for stunts like that.”
“It wasn’t a stunt.”
“I spoke to Woodrow this morning. He told me about Torben. He also told me about your trip to Poughkeepsie. That was a stupid thing to do.”
“You reckon so?”
“What I reckon is that I should never have responded to Torben’s message if your behaviour so far’s any guide. He was probably killed because of you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But do you think at all? That’s the question.”
“Listen to me!” Harry snapped, grabbing her by the shoulder as anger flared up at the memory of all he had so far endured on account of this woman and her friends. “I didn’t ask to be your bloody carrier-pigeon. I didn’t ask to become involved in any of this. Since I am, and since whoever’s fault it is it damn well isn’t mine, I’d be grateful if you didn’t treat me like a student who’s handed in a shoddy essay. I’m sorry about the woman in the bar. It was a mistake. I make them from time to time. I imagine you do too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in such a mess. Would you?”
“No.” The cool logician and the frightened loner met in her sudden wincing admission of weakness. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. It was She broke off and turned abruptly away. For a moment, Harry thought she might burst into tears.
“I’m sorry too,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“The news about Torben was a terrible shock. I don’t think I’ve quite taken it in yet. We thought we’d outwitted them. We thought we were safe for as long as we needed to be. Then this. And then something else.”
“What else?”
“Your smile when you went over to that woman’s table. I can’t tell you. It was so … so … very like…”
“David’s?”
“Yes.”
“I am his father.”
That’s another thing I’m having trouble taking in.”
“Me too.”
She looked back at him and shaped a hesitant smile of her own. “You have something to tell me, Harry. Why not get on with it?”
“It’s a little… complicated.”
“I’m a scientist. I’m used to complexity.”
“All right. But can’t we go somewhere warmer?”
“Somewhere even colder would be safer. There’s a beach two blocks north of here. In this weather, we’ll have it to ourselves.
No chance of being overheard.”
“No chance of being heard at all if I’m too cold to speak.” “Then walk as fast as you talk. You look as if you could use some exercise.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
It had taken an hour and several aimless miles of lakeshore walking for Harry to relate the events and discoveries that had led him to Chicago. Sustained by chain-smoked cigarettes and Donna’s remorseless questioning, he had doled
out every fact and supposition he held in his mind. Now, cold, hungry and drained of secrets, he sat beside her on a low wall enclosing a harbour side esplanade, staring out vacantly into the clear blue distance while traffic roared by on the expressway behind them and the skyscrapers to north and south kept up a looming vigil like some gathering of respectful giants.
“So David and Torben betrayed us,” said Donna, as neutrally as if confronting a scientific proof.
“It seems so.”
“For that foolish dream of theirs.” She shook her head and briefly closed her eyes. “How sad. Yet how predictable. I should have guessed.”
“Why?”
“Because of the part it played in David and me breaking up. He wanted so badly to prove he was right and I was wrong. I suppose this must have seemed an opportunity too good to miss.”
“You broke up over a scientific argument?”
“Partly. A fundamental difference of professional opinion doesn’t do much for a relationship. He wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t admit his theories could be flawed in any way.
He wouldn’t compromise at any price.” Her chin drooped. “That used to make me mad as hell.”
“I don’t think he or Torben saw it as a betrayal.”
“No. But we can all devise a justification for our actions if we try hard enough, can’t we? They thought they knew better than the rest of us. Well, where judging Byron Lazenby’s character is concerned they were wrong. Push him and he pushes back. Play dirty and he gets his retaliation in first. That’s the kind of man he is.” She paused. “The murderous kind.”
“What will you do now?”
“Go back to Makepeace and Rawnsley and discuss what they think we should do. It’ll be a joint decision.”
Out of the Sun Page 15
