“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because of how close in looks she and Kerry are. They could almost be twins. Sisters, at all events. Coincidence? I think not.”
“Are you suggesting they’re related?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Maybe I will.”
“You could ask her what happened to my copy of Metherell’s video while you’re about it.”
“You think Gabriel Tozer tricked you out of it?”
“Somebody did.”
“That lad who spilt his drink on me last time I was here.” Harding noted with grim satisfaction the confusion his sudden change of subject had clearly caused Trathen. “Darren Spargo.”
“What about him?”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No. I see him in here off and on. That’s it. What d’you want with him?”
“It’s a-”
“Did you say you’re looking for Darren Spargo?” put in a man standing next to them at the bar.
“Er, yes.”
“Can’t imagine why.” The man laughed. “Bit of a pillock, if you want my opinion.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with you.”
“He lives out at Treneere, if you want to know, next door to my aunt. Worse luck for her.”
It was a cheerless walk out to Treneere, a large estate of council housing on the northern edge of the town. The Spargo residence blended drably but durably with its neighbours. There were lights at the windows. Rock music thumped from an upper room. Two bicycles lay where they had fallen next to the front path. Harding cast a leery eye about him before pressing the doorbell.
A child with Marmite smeared round her lips opened the door and stared up at Harding. Then a bustling, broad-hipped woman with tired eyes and a wary expression took her place.
“Can I help you?”
“Is Darren in?”
“No. He won’t be back for hours yet, I shouldn’t think.”
Harding had half-expected something like this and was uncertain how to proceed. But he did not have to consider the problem for long.
“Is your name Harding?”
“Yes,” he cautiously admitted.
“Darren said you might look round.”
“He did?”
“Left this for you.” She stepped briefly back, then reappeared… with Harding’s mobile phone. “Picked it up by mistake, he said. Is that right?”
Harding smiled despite himself. “Sort of.”
She handed him the phone. “No harm done, then.”
FOURTEEN
Harding had been sitting at the top of the steps leading down to the basement flat at Heartsease for what felt like several hours, but was actually less than one, when he heard footsteps on the drive at the side of the house and the faint rattling of a bunch of keys.
“Hayley,” he called, standing up and crossing the patio into the nearest shaft of lamplight. “It’s me.”
“Tim.” She was wearing her short raincoat over jeans and trainers and had added a bandeau round her head that made her look younger and smaller than ever. She was carrying the canvas bag he had seen her with on Saturday and was leaning slightly to one side to bear the weight of whatever it contained. “Thank God it’s you.”
“Sorry if I startled you.”
“You didn’t. Not really. I guess I was expecting you.”
“I heard about the burglary.”
“But you’d have come anyway. Once you’d seen the video.”
“Is the video why you put me off tonight?”
“No. I’ve been to my judo class. I go every Monday.” She smiled uncertainly. “Come inside, Tim. We’ve a lot to talk about.”
She offered him coffee and he accepted. They sat either side of the kitchen table, waiting for the kettle to boil, staring at each other wordlessly, both equally unsure how to begin.
Harding took his phone out of his pocket and laid it on the table. “I got this back,” he said quietly.
“Good. Darren promised to return it. He’s got a part-time job at the snooker club now. Morrison’s sacked him for absenteeism, apparently. Anyway, I spoke to him at the club this afternoon. He seemed to see reason.”
“Are you sure about that?” It had occurred to Harding that Spargo could easily have recorded the message Carol had left on the phone; Harding was not necessarily off that particular hook. “He didn’t sound very reasonable when he phoned me at the hotel this morning.”
“That was before he realized how much trouble I could cause him.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“If the police knew he’d been hanging around the house, they might suspect him of the burglary. I convinced him I could make sure they suspected him.”
“You play rough.”
“When I have to.” The kettle began to whistle. Hayley rose and filled their cups. She placed one in front of Harding and sat down again with the other. “Ironically, the burglary gave me the means to get Darren off my back. And yours.”
“Do you think he might have done it?”
“Why should he?”
“Why should anyone?”
“There’s a reason. There has to be.”
“I think there has to be a reason for everything, Hayley. Including your resemblance to Kerry Foxton.”
“You’re right. There is a reason.” She took a cautious sip of the coffee, and leant back in her chair, bracing one knee against the edge of the table. “Ray Trathen has the crazy idea Gabriel chose me as his housekeeper because of the resemblance.”
“But he didn’t?”
“No. Someone else did that.”
“Who?”
“Nathan Gashry. An old boyfriend of Kerry’s. He never got over being ditched by her. He never got over her at all. I knew nothing about Kerry when I met Nathan. This was eighteen months ago. He seemed like-” She flinched as if in pain. “He seemed like the answer to my prayers. He worshipped me. So I thought. What he actually worshipped, of course, was a likeness of Kerry. I found out later he’d trawled through hundreds of pictures, probably thousands, on Internet dating sites, looking for her… doppelgänger. Eventually, he found her: me. My life was a mess around then. The wrist problem. The rejection by Roderick-the violinist I told you about. For a while, quite a while, I believed Nathan was my salvation. But the longer we were together, the more he talked about Kerry And the differences between me and her-the things you can’t see. Then I met a previous girlfriend of his. Veronica. He’d persuaded her to have cosmetic surgery to make her look more like Kerry. She was in a bad way. It frightened me. I persuaded Nathan’s sister to tell me the truth. Ann told me the whole story in the end. The Foxtons lived near her, in Dulwich. That’s how Nathan came to meet Kerry, through Ann. He was always too clingy for her, according to Ann. I could believe that. Kerry broke it off. Nathan refused to accept it was over. He convinced himself he’d get her back, sooner or later. Then came the accident. Nathan was devastated. He was forever visiting her in hospital, talking to her for hours on end. He never got a response, of course. Ann reckoned he finished up preferring Kerry comatose to Kerry conscious. She was unable to send him away; incapable of severing their connection. Kerry’s parents sent her to a specialist coma clinic in Munich. Nathan followed. Then the Foxtons were killed in a car crash.”
“And Kerry was taken off life support.”
“Yes. There were no other close relatives. It was a clinical decision. Nathan had no say in the matter. And no way of coping with it-other than to remake someone else in Kerry’s image. First Veronica. Then, because I looked so much more like Kerry than her without the need of any surgery, me.”
“What did you do when you found out?”
“I dyed my hair blonde.” She shook her head slowly and sipped some coffee. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I dyed my hair. To prove I wasn’t Kerry.”
“How did Nathan react?”
“Badly. As you’d expect. Crazily. Dangerously. He threatened me…
with a kitchen knife. I managed to calm him down. I convinced him I’d never do anything else to… ruin his image of me.”
“And then?”
“Then I left. While he was at work. Incredibly through all this… madness, he managed to hold down a succession of surprisingly well-paid jobs. Anyway the day after the knife incident, I fled.”
“Where to?”
“Here.” She smiled faintly, acknowledging his look of surprise. “That’s right. That’s when I had my moment of inspiration. But it wasn’t Proustian. I came here because of Kerry. She’d been a big part of my life, though for a long time I hadn’t realized it. I had nowhere to go, no one to hide with from Nathan. He knew where my parents lived. And my sisters. He’d soon have tracked me down if I’d gone to any of them. I decided to follow Kerry to Cornwall instead. Strangely enough, Nathan wasn’t interested in what had happened to her. He didn’t care why she’d ended up in a coma. His obsession was all about her and him. Nothing else mattered. So, this is the last place he’d expect me to run to.”
“Did you really see Gabriel’s advert in a discarded newspaper on the train?”
“No. I’m sorry Tim. I had to edit some of the facts. When I arrived, I booked into the cheapest guesthouse I could find. Ann had told me about Barney Tozer’s part in the accident. I first came to see Gabriel out of curiosity-to see what he knew about it. He claimed to know nothing and promptly turned the tables by persuading me to tell him why I’d left London. He could be charming when he wanted to be. And he was very… perceptive. The curmudgeonliness was an act. He offered me this flat. He did need a housekeeper, when all was said and done. I settled in. It was just the safe haven I needed. But then Gabriel died. And it stopped being safe, bit by bit. First there was Darren. Now this burglary. I have to leave anyway, sooner or later. Maybe it should be sooner.”
“You surely wouldn’t go back to London.”
“No. Both of my sisters would take me in, at least for a while. And neither of them lives in London, so…”
“But I thought you said Nathan would be able to find you if you went to them.”
“Yes. But he’s stopped looking for me. I’m still in touch with Ann, you see. According to her, he’s taken up with Veronica again. I feel guilty about that. I wish I could do something for her. But in the final analysis… you have to look after yourself.”
Harding smiled. “I expect the judo helps.”
She smiled back. “It’s certainly given me more confidence. Darren doesn’t worry me anything like as much as he thinks he does.” Her face changed then. A shadow seemed to pass across it. She drew herself up to the table and leant towards him. “The burglary worries me, though. A lot.”
“Whoever it was only wanted the ring.”
“Yes. But why? Gabriel never told me he had it, you know. He kept it locked away. I only realized it was here when Isbister started cataloguing the contents. It isn’t hugely valuable. And the only people known to have an interest in it, Barney and Humphrey Tozer, were set to secure it at the auction.”
“Somebody else obviously wanted it for themselves and couldn’t afford to outbid Barney. Does it really matter who that was?”
“It might. Ann told me things… about Kerry… that I didn’t take seriously. I’m starting to take them seriously now, though.”
“What things?”
“It was Ann who first got Kerry interested in the Association story in general and Admiral Shovell’s ring in particular. Ann thinks Kerry’s work on that story may have led her into danger. In other words, that what happened to her wasn’t an accident. But it had nothing to do with Barney Tozer’s dodgy business practices. Instead, it was all about the ring.”
“Why should anyone care so much about a three-hundred-year-old ring?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine. That’s why I thought Ann was wrong about the accident. But the burglary… makes me think she was right all along.”
“I don’t see how. The ring stolen last night never even belonged to Admiral Shovell. Metherell put me right on that. The admiral’s ring was looted by a local woman when his body was washed up on St. Mary’s. She owned up to what she’d done on her deathbed years later and the parish priest returned the ring to the Shovell family. It can’t possibly have ended up with the Tozers.”
“Oh, but it can. Metherell obviously doesn’t know the full story.”
Harding’s curiosity was aroused. “Doesn’t he?”
“Ann’s a keen genealogist. She researched the life of one of her ancestors, Francis Gashry, who was some kind of civil servant back in the eighteenth century. In the process, she turned up something about Shovell’s ring. She told Kerry what it was. That’s why she came down here. One of the reasons, anyway. And Ann believes it may be the reason why she met with a fatal so-called accident.”
“What did Ann find out?”
“Basically, that Shovell’s ring and the Tozers’ ring are one and the same.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know. I was never interested enough to try and get Ann to tell me. I didn’t think it mattered. Until now.”
“Do you think she knows who stole the ring?”
“She might. Who had cause to steal it, at any rate.” Hayley finished her coffee and set the empty cup down, staring across at Harding as she did so. “But you ought to understand this. She promised me she’d never do anything that risked alerting Nathan to my whereabouts. And she’s a woman of her word. She won’t tell you a thing-she won’t even speak to you-unless I ask her to.”
“And would you be willing… to ask her?”
“I’m not sure. I’m really not. But…” She pressed her hands together in a gesture he recalled from their first meeting. “I’ll think about it while I’m taking a bath.” She smiled. “I need one. You’re welcome to stay. We can talk again afterwards. Unless, of course…” Her look grew hesitant. “Unless you feel you have to go.”
“No,” he said, noting the sudden lightening of her gaze. “I’m happy to stay.”
FIFTEEN
It was not what he had expected. Not exactly, anyway. She had asked him to stay. She had not wanted to be alone. Nor had he. At first she had only asked him to hold her and he knew enough about her past to do no more than that. Soon enough, though, they had made love, once in the small, still, silent hours, then once again as dawn crept in greyly around them.
It did not feel like a betrayal of Carol. Indeed, it set his affair with her in its proper context. Sex by appointment, during engineered afternoons, at his apartment in Villefranche, had never been like this. He wanted to cradle Hayley in his arms, he wanted to caress and protect her, far more than he wanted to savour the moment when she stared up into his eyes and he could hold back no longer. This he remembered and recognized as the beginning of love.
“I can trust you, can’t I, Tim?” she asked as they lay together in the serenity of early morning.
“You can, yes,” he assured her.
“Why does this feel so right?”
“Because it is, I suppose.”
“A lot’s gone wrong in my life.”
“I know.”
“I need that to change.”
“Maybe it just has.”
“You won’t let Nathan find me, will you-you won’t lead him to me?”
“Of course not.”
“And you won’t go looking for him while you’re in London?”
“No. I won’t.”
Late the previous evening Hayley had called Ann Gashry and asked if she would meet Harding and tell him whatever he wanted to know about the ring. Ann had agreed, while making it clear to him when he had taken the phone that she was doing so for Hayley’s sake, not his. She had sounded precise and calm and cautious-the ideal person to keep a secret. They had made an appointment for five o’clock the following afternoon, Harding reckoning it would take him most of the day to travel to Dulwich. But he was no longer sure now that he wanted to go at all.
�
��I won’t go near him, Hayley. I promise.”
“Good.” She kissed him. “You’re still going to London, though, aren’t you?”
“I think I have to.”
“Is it really the ring you’re looking for? Or is it Kerry?”
“I told Barney I’d do my best to find out what’s going on. So, I have to speak to Ann Gashry. It’s as simple as that.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“You must have wondered, though. If the person you’re certain you’ve met before isn’t me, but Kerry.”
“How would I have met her?”
“If the diving expedition hadn’t ended in disaster, you might have bumped into each other in Penzance in August 1999.”
“But it did. And we didn’t.”
“Are you sure? I was reading a book recently about the latest ideas in cosmology. The Universe Next Door. Part of Gabriel’s library. Strictly speaking, it should be in the auction. Technically, I stole it. Anyway, cosmologists apparently think there’s an alternative universe out there somewhere for every alternative reality. Which means, in one version of this world, you did meet Kerry. Perhaps that’s what your mind’s trying to tell you.”
“By that rationale, there’s a version in which you and I met before as well.”
“And one in which we never meet at all.”
“I guess so.” He looked into her eyes. “But let’s not go there.”
He left reluctantly and hastily, while it was still too early for Isbister’s crew to arrive and start preparing for the auction-an auction from which Lot 641 would now be omitted. The postman was making his rounds, but no one else was about as Harding hurried along Polwithen Road through a chill grey morning, with the taste of Hayley’s farewell kiss still lingering on his lips and the joys of the night still alive in his mind.
He spent no longer at the Mount Prospect than the few minutes he needed to pack his bag and the few more minutes it took to check out. He should have phoned Barney, of course, and told him what he was doing. But he phoned no one. Neither Barney nor Carol would be able to contact him now, since they had no way of knowing he had recovered his mobile. And that was how he wanted it. Whatever the future held, the present was a tangle of unanswered questions and conflicting obligations. He believed his life was better for what had happened between him and Hayley but he knew it was no easier. Far from it.
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