Caught In the Light

by Robert Goddard

  He was there, in front of me, his tweedy bulk swaying crazily in my face. I started back and gasped, colliding with a man behind me. The tilt of the train swung the door open. I gaped, and sensed the other man gaping, at the reflection in the mirror of Quisden-Neve, hanging like some huge swollen doll from the coat hook on the loo wall: head lolling, face purple. Something – some ligature of wire or rope – held him by the throat and was looped round the hook.

  ‘Help me get him down,’ I cried, gesturing to my dumbstruck companion. ‘He might still be alive.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ was the only answer I got. We were pulling into the station now. ‘I’ll call the guard.’

  Ignoring him, I stepped into the loo, grasped Quisden-Neve by the shoulders and tried to heave him off the hook, but his weight was too much for me. It felt like dead weight, too. My mind was a chaos of wrestling thoughts. What had happened? Had he killed himself? Or been strangled, then hung on the hook like some carcass in an abattoir? It would have taken a stronger man than me to do it. And why in God’s—?

  The ligature snapped as the train came to a halt, the strain finally proving too much for it. Quisden-Neve hit me like a falling sandbag, jamming me against the basin, his sightless eyes staring into mine. Then he slid onto the floor and flopped out into the vestibule just as the train door opened. I heard a woman scream. Then another. I couldn’t blame them. I felt like screaming myself.

  ‘OK, people,’ said the guard, bustling up from the carriage behind me. ‘Stand back.’ He stooped over Quisden-Neve and felt beneath his ear for a pulse. Then he glanced up at me. ‘You the gentleman who found him?’ I nodded. The guard rolled his eyes sadly. ‘They always think of new ways to top themselves.’ He looked out at the people on the platform. ‘There’s going to be quite a delay, ladies and gents. Why don’t you go and sit down?’

  They began slowly to disperse, as did the crowd that had formed in the vestibule, muttering to each other as they went. ‘He is … dead, isn’t he?’ I asked numbly.

  ‘Looks that way to me, sir. But if you want to try mouth-to-mouth …’ He ventured a smile. ‘I never took the lessons myself.’

  ‘Nor me.’ I turned and looked out through the window. God, what was going on? Quisden-Neve was no candidate for suicide. But if he hadn’t killed himself …

  My eyes suddenly focused on the car park beyond the platform. A man in a leather jacket and jeans was standing beside a car near the fence closest to the station. It was an old red Porsche. And the man was Niall Esguard. As I watched, he opened the door, tossed what looked like a Gladstone bag into the back, then climbed in and began to reverse out of the parking space.

  ‘Hold on, sir,’ said the guard as I plunged past him. ‘The police will be wanting a statement and all sorts.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I shouted to him as I jumped down onto the platform. Then I made for the footbridge. The Porsche was already cruising out of the car park. Pursuit was pointless. But so was getting trammelled in the bureaucratic aftermath of Quisden-Neve’s death. A post-mortem would probably show what I already knew: he’d been murdered. And I knew who the murderer was. Even though I couldn’t prove it. Or suggest a motive. To do that, I had to get back to Bath. Without delay.

  I headed for the station exit and climbed into a taxi, reasoning things out as I went. Quisden-Neve must have been expecting to meet Niall on the train, otherwise he wouldn’t have left his seat so quickly. For his part, Niall must have planned to get off the train at Chippenham, because he’d left his car there, so he’d clearly set Quisden-Neve up from the start. They’d been in this together. But Quisden-Neve had grown too demanding – or he’d had his conscience pricked by my visit. Either way, he’d suddenly become expendable.

  ‘Where do you want to go, sir?’ asked the taxi driver.

  ‘Bath Spa railway station.’

  ‘Haven’t you just come from there? I thought that train—’

  ‘Step on it, will you? I’m late.’

  ‘Oh, overshoot job, was it?’ He started the engine and pulled out of the rank. ‘Fall asleep?’

  ‘You could say that.’ I glanced up at the reflection of myself in the rear-view mirror. ‘But I’m awake now. Well and truly.’

  Going back to Bibliomaufry was neither logical nor sensible. If there was anything to be found there to my advantage, Niall was going to have removed it by the time I arrived. The most I could hope to accomplish was to catch him in the act, and I had the memory of Quisden-Neve’s bloated, lifeless face fixed starkly enough in my mind to suggest how dangerous that might be. Besides, if I was seen breaking in, and the police matched my description with that of the vanishing witness at Chippenham, I could be storing up enough trouble for myself to spare Niall the effort of lifting a finger against me.

  In the event, I didn’t need to break in. The back door, accessible across an overgrown patch of garden, was standing ajar, consistent with Niall’s having taken Quisden-Neve’s keys from his pocket and been and gone already by the most discreet route. The state of the first-floor office told the same story. Several drawers were sagging open and it looked as if Niall had been through the filing cabinet as well. The drawer where Quisden-Neve had stored the letters from Marian to her father and from Joslyn Esguard to Sir John Conroy held only empty pockets. And the negatives? A small safe stood in one corner. It, too, was open and empty. Niall had been swift and thorough. Whatever I might have found, he’d found first.

  I picked up the telephone and dialled 1471. The computerized voice gave me a Bath number as that of Quisden-Neve’s last caller, at a quarter to nine that morning. I pressed 3, listened to it ring, then heard an answering machine cut in. ‘I can’t take your call right now. If you—’ It was Niall Esguard. As I suppose I’d known it would be.

  Then I noticed the desk diary lying beside the telephone. I leafed through it to today’s date, wondering if there’d be any appointment recorded. Somehow I didn’t think so. But I was wrong. One o’clock was circled, followed by the name and address of an Italian restaurant in Covent Garden. And the name of somebody who wouldn’t be meeting Montagu Quisden-Neve after all. Not that she’d be wanting for company. Nor for conversation. We were going to have a lot to talk about. Starting with why Quisden-Neve should even know her – let alone be having lunch with her.

  Nicole looked almost as surprised to see me weaving towards her between the tables of Bertorelli’s restaurant two and a half hours later as I’d felt on seeing her name in Quisden-Neve’s diary. It didn’t stop her looking good with it, though. She’d lost a little weight since I’d last seen her and gained a distinct touch of glamour. She had more of the fashion editor about her now than the news reporter. I’d been the one to end our affair. But she’d been the one to recover from it first. And she’d gone on recovering – ever since.

  ‘Ian! This is a coincidence, I must—’

  ‘It’s no coincidence.’ I sat down opposite her. ‘You’re waiting for Montagu Quisden-Neve, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled nervously. ‘How did—?’

  ‘He was found dead on the train up here from Bath this morning.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Strangled. It could have been suicide. But I reckon they’ll settle for murder in the end.’

  ‘Wait a minute. I don’t understand. You’re telling me Quisden-Neve’s been murdered?’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was on the train. I saw him. I found him, as a matter of gruesome fact.’

  ‘You found him?’

  ‘I was looking for him.’

  ‘Why? What have you to do with the man?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But tell me a shorter one, Nicole. What have you to do with him?’

  ‘What business is that of yours?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘Well, ask nicely, then. I don’t see why—’ She broke off as a waiter hove alongside. She ordered
a second gin and tonic. I ordered a double. The interruption imposed a fleeting calm between us that almost amounted to a truce. ‘Keep your voice down, Ian, please. You rush in here, shouting about a murder on a train. What are people going to think?’

  ‘I don’t care. Just tell me about Quisden-Neve.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I’ve never met him. And it seems now I never will.’

  ‘Why were you going to have lunch with him?’

  ‘I’m a journalist. I have lunch with all kinds of people. I even used to have lunch with you.’

  ‘Why Quisden-Neve?’

  ‘I was following up a lead.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer your questions. Certainly not when you won’t answer mine.’

  ‘Would it help if you owed me a favour?’

  ‘It might. But I don’t.’

  ‘You do, actually.’ I showed her the page I’d torn from Quisden-Neve’s diary. ‘When the police realize they’re dealing with a murder, this sort of titbit could get you a lot of unwelcome attention. I thought you might prefer to forget all about your appointment with him in the circumstances. Now you can.’

  She looked at me long and hard, then took the page from my hand. ‘He was definitely murdered?’

  ‘No question.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No idea. What about you? This lead, perhaps?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She gave an evasive little moue. ‘If he really had something.’

  ‘Something about what?’

  ‘You’re better off not knowing.’ She set light to the diary page with a match from the complimentary box on the table and let it burn out in the ashtray. ‘Sounds like it could be getting serious.’

  ‘You could never be frightened off a story, Nicole.’

  ‘I’m older and wiser.’ The gins arrived. She took a sip. ‘Unlike you.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Faith. She phoned a couple of months ago. Accused me of starting it up with you again. Took a lot of dissuading. I gathered you’d left her.’

  ‘You gathered right.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘Must be somebody pretty special, that’s all I can say. I never coaxed so much commitment out of you.’

  ‘Life turned sour on us, Nicole. You know that.’

  ‘Didn’t it just? Well, it still doesn’t seem to be doing you many favours, Ian. I’ve seen you look better. Actually, I can’t remember seeing you look worse. Not even after the accident.’

  ‘Tell me about Quisden-Neve.’

  ‘No. It worries me, you knowing him. It makes me feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘Please, Nicole. I’m begging you.’

  ‘My God.’ She looked at me with a shocked expression. ‘You really are desperate.’

  ‘Oh yes. More desperate than I’ve ever been.’

  ‘All right, then. As long as it goes no further.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘And I know what that’s worth, don’t I?’ She held up her hand to forestall my protest. ‘OK. It’s no big deal. Well, maybe it is, if getting yourself murdered is anything to go by. Quisden-Neve phoned me a few days ago. He’d read a piece I’d written for one of the Sundays about Nymanex. Heard of it? Read it, maybe?’

  ‘No. On both counts.’

  ‘Nymanex is a sky-rocket financial services company. Come from nothing. Going as high as the market will let it. Flash Docklands HQ. Even flashier profits. A bit iffy round the edges. No-one’s quite sure how they started. Nor how close to the wind they’re sailing. There’s a lot of money sloshing around. But some of it – whisper it if you dare – could be anonymous clients’ laundry.’

  ‘They’re crooked?’

  ‘Or their rivals are jealous. Or both. Who knows? Well, Quisden-Neve claimed to. Hence lunch. He said he had information about the early life, and by implication criminal career, of Nymanex’s chairman. Since Conrad Nyman’s every bit as mysterious as the company he founded, I thought I’d better—’

  ‘What did you say his name was?’

  ‘Nyman. Heard of him? Well, I can’t say I’m—’

  ‘His first name.’

  ‘Conrad.’ She stared at me. ‘What about it?’

  I’d always associated Docklands with photographic assignments: the running battle between Rupert Murdoch and the print unions at Wapping; the phallus of the Canary Wharf tower rising from the wastes of the Isle of Dogs; river light falling on the prettified warehouses and the heron-like clusters of cranes and gantries. It was strange to drive into it along West Ferry Road on a bright spring afternoon with no camera bag in the car beside me and no concern for weather or angle or point of view. Being a photographer, which I’d once have said was central to my personality, was falling away behind me somewhere, in the past that Eris and Marian between them had exiled me from.

  Yet photography was part of what was happening to me and part also of what had happened to them. The mystery of what Marian Esguard had or hadn’t accomplished back in 1817 was wrapped around the enigma of Eris Moberly. It held the answer. I just wasn’t looking hard enough, or in the right place, to see it for what it was. But I would in the end, I felt certain. Because it was there. And it couldn’t stay hidden for ever.

  Nymanex Ltd occupied the top floor of one of Canary Wharf’s lesser summits, a gold-tinted steeple of glass overlooking what had once been a basin of West India Docks. The secrecy Nicole had described was nowhere to be seen, but money was a different matter. Green-veined marble, swirl-knotted hardwoods and co-ordinated silks had been thrown about the place with profligate zeal. It seemed more like a luxury hotel than a working office.

  I didn’t blame the receptionist for looking at me doubtfully when I asked to see her ultimate supremo on an urgent personal matter. I could only hope the simple message I persuaded her to convey to Conrad Nyman’s secretary would open as many doors as it needed to. ‘Tell him it concerns Eris.’ Was she his wife? Nicole hadn’t known for certain if he was married or not, but she’d thought probably not. I couldn’t risk assuming anything, except what was by now an article of faith for me. He was Eris’s Conrad, in some way, shape or form. I wasn’t reeling in a string of coincidences. There was a meaning and a connection between everything.

  That much was swiftly confirmed. Eris’s name acted as an open sesame. I was shown through to the secretarial suite. Nyman’s personal assistant, Anunziata, who looked as if she could, and quite possibly did, model for Vogue in her spare time, explained that the great man was in a meeting he couldn’t leave, but she had spoken to him and he’d be happy to see me if I could wait twenty minutes or so. Her air of breathless discretion suggested she knew who Eris was and why her boss would be anxious to discuss her with a stranger, but I knew better than to probe. It was Nyman or nobody.

  I leafed through a glossy brochure about the way ahead in financial services – the Nymanex way, naturally – while I waited. There was no sparkle-toothed portrait of the chairman, which I thought unusual, but hardly suspicious. All in all, I didn’t catch the slightest whiff of the shady dealings Nicole had hinted at. But I wasn’t exactly an expert. And Anunziata’s perfume was potent enough to blot out a midden-load of odours.

  The meeting broke up on schedule in a march-past of suits. Anunziata went into Nyman’s office to confer with him, then came out and said he was ready to see me. I walked into a room of empty pastel vistas, with high windows that opened on to a balcony, where Nyman was waiting to greet me against a backdrop of sunlit tower blocks camped along the curving shore of Limehouse Reach.

  He was a strikingly handsome man, probably in his early forties, with blue eyes, grey-blond hair and rugged features, dressed more for the weekend than for the office, in blazer, open-neck shirt, cream trousers and soft leather loafers. He looked the outdoor type, a yachtsman perhaps, or a horseman, certainly not a City wheeler-dealer. He was sniffing the clear cool air like somebody ill at ease in a world
of tinted glass and tubular steel. But there was a glint in his gaze as well, a hard steady set of caution about him. He was nobody’s fool. And he was unlikely to suffer them gladly.

  ‘Mr Jarrett.’ He shook my hand firmly. ‘I’m Conrad Nyman.’

  ‘Good of you to see me.’

  ‘I could hardly refuse, could I? Do you want to sit down, by the way?’

  ‘No. Out here’s fine. It’s a wonderful view.’

  ‘But you didn’t talk your way in here to admire it.’

  ‘I didn’t talk my way in at all. I just … asked.’

  ‘True enough. So ask some more.’

  ‘Is Eris your wife, Mr Nyman?’

  He smiled. ‘No. I’m not married. Never have been.’

  ‘Ever met a man called Montagu Quisden-Neve?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or heard of a woman called Marian Esguard?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But you do know Eris. Eris Moberly, that is.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘May I ask how?’

  ‘No. But only because I think it’s my turn now. How do you know her, Mr Jarrett?’

  ‘I met her in Vienna in January. We … Well, we agreed to keep in touch back in England. But she vanished without trace.’

  ‘January, you say? That’s odd.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because January’s about when I stopped hearing from her. But go on. What brought you to me?’

  ‘In Vienna, she called herself Marian Esguard. Back here, Eris Moberly. I traced her psychotherapist, who mentioned Eris had claimed to be married.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘To somebody called Conrad. The connection’s tenuous, I admit, but you’re the first Conrad I’ve come across in my search. I know Eris had dealings with an antiquarian bookseller, Montagu Quisden-Neve, who subsequently offered to supply information about you to a journalist I happen to know, Nicole Heywood.’