And who is that? Your tormentor-in-chief, I mean. The man who set all this in motion. I first met him a couple of years ago. I was at a pretty low ebb then, but he recognized my potential. He’s good at spotting people’s strengths – and their weaknesses. Yours included by the look of it. He’s asked me to do some strange things since I started working for him, but I guess this counts as about the strangest of the lot. I know he’ll have his reasons, though. He always does. Just like I always know better than to ask what they are. A man who treats me as well as he has doesn’t have to justify himself to me.
It’s different in your case. He’s put you through hell, one way or another. I reckon you’re entitled to an explanation. Well, he’s the only one who can explain. So, why don’t you ask him? Apparently you’ll know how to find him. His name is Conrad Nyman.
PART THREE
DEVELOPMENT
ELEVEN
SHOCK HIT ME like a wave a few minutes after I had the sense to pull off the road at the northern end of Belle Grève Bay. I stared out at the brilliant blue sea and the cloudless sky, my mind and heartbeat racing. I played the tape through one more time, listening to her voice and the mockery coiled within it. Then shock gave way to sudden frenzy. I screamed abuse at her, drowning out the words that pieced together the lies she’d told me. I wrenched the cassette out of the player so quickly the tape snagged on the heads. It tore as I yanked at it, but I no longer cared. I jumped out of the car, threw the cassette to the ground and stamped on it hard, several times, then watched the wind catch the unravelled tape and blow it away like a strand of seaweed.
I was angry with myself for being so easily fooled, but angrier by far with those who’d done the fooling. What gave them the right to tear my life apart? What had I done to deserve it? Nothing that I could even remotely imagine. They’d all been strangers to me, until they’d decided to become my enemies. But why? In God’s name, why?
Conrad Nyman could tell me. He was going to tell me, whether he wanted to or not. Even Eris had agreed I was owed an answer, and I meant to have it. My dismay was less than my determination to force the truth out of Nyman. Why me? Why now? Why the whole damn thing? What the hell was it for?
‘I’m going to find out,’ I said aloud. Then I climbed into the car and started back towards St Peter Port.
I couldn’t get a berth on any of the catamarans, so I had to opt for the traditional ferry, a slow overnight run to Weymouth. That left me with a frustrating afternoon and evening to kill, when all I wanted to do was go after the man who’d been pulling the strings in the puppet show my life had become. The delivery of the tape had been well timed, like all his other ploys. A Saturday at the end of Easter week was just about the worst possible day to try to leave Guernsey at short notice.
I called at La Fauconnerie to check what Eris had said. Sure enough, Niall Hudson had flown back to England on sudden and urgent business. I could have tried to book a flight myself, of course, but I reckoned I’d need the car when I arrived. There was nothing for it but to sit it out. I rang Daphne, but got only her answering machine. There was no point in leaving a message. I meant to deliver one in person sooner or later.
It all came back to Nyman. Where he lived I had no idea, but Nicole might know. She wasn’t answering either, though. I left a message, but she hadn’t rung back by the time I booked out of the hotel and headed for the ferry terminal. I just had to hope she wasn’t away for the whole weekend. It was better to confront Nyman at home, where he might feel vulnerable, than amidst the security of Nymanex’s Docklands HQ. Besides, I didn’t want to wait one minute longer than I had to. Everything he’d told me had been part of the lie. The meeting with Eris in Greenwich Park and her pursuit of him, the letters and the phone calls – none of it was true. He’d been enjoying himself at my expense. And now I meant to call him to account.
The ferry docked at Weymouth early on a grey morning. The roads were empty and I made it to London in not much more than two hours. If Nicole was spending the weekend at home, I was sure to find her in, quite possibly in bed. The guy she’d been entertaining when I’d called before Easter was a worry, though. New boyfriend meets old wasn’t a scene I needed.
As it turned out, there was no answer to my repeated rings at the bell. It looked as if she hadn’t left the answerphone on just for cover. I sat and fretted in the car a while, then doorstepped the neighbour on his way out for a paper. I recognized him, but it was probably just as well he didn’t seem to remember me. He might not have been so responsive to my plea of urgency.
‘Away for the weekend, I’m afraid. I think the wife said she’d gone to see her parents.’
That was good news and bad perfectly balanced. At least I knew where she was. But I wouldn’t be a welcome caller in the midst of their cosy Sunday. They rattled around a big old mock-Tudor house on the outskirts of Bedford. I’d been summoned there when it still seemed possible I might be charged with causing death by dangerous driving following the accident on Barnet Hill. Old man Heywood had wanted to impress on me how important it was that Nicole’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in court. None of us was likely to remember the encounter with pleasure or desire a repetition, but, since I didn’t have their phone number, and directory enquiries refused point-blank to tell me what it was, there was no way round it.
It was late morning when I arrived, and about as untimely as it could be. The drive was full of cars, the garden aswarm with children and their doting parents: Nicole’s numerous siblings and their still more numerous offspring. One of the mothers recognized me by some weird kind of laser-sharp facility for recalling trouble spots in her sister’s past. Nicole was fetched from indoors and I was left to wait for her on the farthest patch of lawn from the house. It was as if Mr and Mrs Heywood’s health wasn’t reckoned to be equal even to a glimpse of me. And Nicole’s equanimity didn’t seem to be any more durable.
‘I thought Fran was joking,’ she said by way of barbed greeting, her thunderous expression clashing with the sunny riot of poppies on her dress. ‘What can have possessed you to come here, Ian?’
‘I had to speak to you.’
‘Couldn’t it have waited? It’s my parents’ ruby wedding anniversary. You’re not the surprise I had in mind.’
‘Give them my congratulations.’
‘I won’t give them the slightest hint you’ve even turned up if I can avoid it. What the hell do you want?’
‘Information.’
‘The police would like some as well, I gather. From the witness who fled the scene of Montagu Quisden-Neve’s murder, for a start. What exactly have you got yourself into?’
‘I don’t exactly know. But Conrad Nyman knows. I have to speak to him.’
‘So speak to him.’
‘Today.’
‘The best of luck. He’s not coming to our party. I can’t help you.’
‘Where does he live, Nicole?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You profiled him. Remember?’
‘I profiled his business. Chez Nyman didn’t come into it.’
‘You must have some idea.’
‘Oh, all right.’ She tossed her head in exasperation. ‘Will this get rid of you?’
‘It will.’
‘It better had. I only know because the architectural press wrote it up. He’s restored an old Lutyens house in Sussex. Derringfold Place, near Cuckfield.’
‘Address?’
‘You’ll have to ask around. That’s as much as I can tell you. But it’ll be well known in the area, I expect. You’ll find it. Though what kind of a reception you’ll get from Nyman I couldn’t say. If he’s there. He doesn’t like to have his privacy invaded, that I do know. I’d think twice about cold-calling him if I were you.’
‘There’s nothing to think about. This won’t exactly be an unexpected visit.’
‘Then why did you have to come to me to find out where he lives?’
‘Because he likes to play games. But, as you kn
ow better than most, I don’t.’
A hard, fast drive south got me to Cuckfield as the pubs were thinning out after the lunchtime rush. The landlord of the first one I tried enlisted the help of three regulars keen to show off their local knowledge, and I was soon heading down the lanes towards Derringfold Place.
Its massive chimneys and galleried windows showed themselves beyond the hedges for half a mile or so before I pulled in through an open gateway and sped up a curving drive. The mature grounds, splashed with spring blossom, made the house look even more elegantly manorial than it must have done when Lutyens finished it a hundred years or so ago. No wonder the architectural press was interested. Painstaking restoration had made it glowingly photogenic. If Nyman had wanted to buy an aesthetic reputation along with a chunk of mid-Sussex squiredom, he couldn’t have chosen better. There was nothing cheapskate about Derringfold Place. It was the real thing, even if its owner wasn’t.
Not that I had a clue what sort of man Nyman truly was. He’d been slick and amiable enough when we’d met, but that had clearly been an act. I meant to find out what the act was designed to conceal. I stopped as close to the house as I could get without actually driving up the front steps, bounded up to the porch and yanked at the bell pull. There was a bull’s-eye window set in the door, with a sinuous N worked into the glass.
I’d given the bell three tugs before there was an answer. A Hispanic maid opened the door and greeted my demand to see Nyman with a placid smile. ‘Oh, Mr Nyman, he plays tennis right now.’
‘Where?’
‘Out back. Shall I tell him you’re here?’
‘Don’t bother. I’ll tell him myself.’
A gravel path led off behind a privet hedge towards the rear. I left the maid in mid-remonstrance and started along it. It followed the line of the house, round the broad circular foot of the principal chimneystack and through an arched gateway into the garden. Lawns fell away ahead of me towards clumps of azalea and rhododendron, with mature trees beyond. Away to the right was a swimming pool and a screen of fir trees, through which I could glimpse a wire-mesh fence and the tramlines of a tennis court. Then I heard the plop-plop-plop of a rally, and a male voice raised in encouragement. ‘Bad luck.’ It was Nyman. I moved at a jog across the lawn and along the path linking pool and court.
He had his back to me as I rounded the last in the row of firs and pushed through the gate onto the court. He was standing casually, racket in hand, waiting to receive service, dressed in the white trousers, shirt and sweater of a bygone era. His opponent, a girl in shorts, sweatshirt and baseball cap, was gathering a ball from the back of the court. Somebody else, a woman, was sitting in a chair by the sidelines near the net. But they hardly registered in my mind. I was only thinking about Nyman and his responsibility for everything I’d endured since that fateful morning in Vienna.
‘Nyman, you bastard!’ I shouted. As he turned, I hit him, somewhere around the left cheekbone. I heard the breath grunt out of him as he fell, the racket clattering away across the court. He lay on his back for a second, then rolled onto his side, propped himself up on one elbow and raised his other hand to his cheek.
‘Oh my God,’ the woman near the net cried. ‘What … what are you doing?’ She jumped up, and the flash of her colourful sweater caught my eye just as the familiarity of her voice froze my thoughts. I looked across at her, unable to believe whose face I saw looking back at me. Then I shifted my gaze to the girl at the other end of the court.
‘Dad?’ Amy called nervously. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ said Faith as she rushed to Nyman’s side, her eyes blazing at me. ‘You must be. This is … this is insane.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nyman, smiling gamely as she crouched beside him. ‘I’ll live.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I barked out at Faith. ‘What have you brought Amy here for?’
‘A relaxing weekend. What the hell do you think we’re here for?’
‘With Nyman?’
‘Do you two know each other?’ called Amy, advancing cautiously to the net.
‘I’m afraid we do,’ said Nyman, rising to his feet with Faith’s superfluous assistance and letting me see, with a flicker of a glance, that I couldn’t have suited his purposes better than by hitting him in full view of my wife and daughter. He was the new man in Faith’s life. He hadn’t set out merely to destroy my life. He’d positioned himself to take it over. ‘I should have mentioned it, Faith. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to worry you. He came to see me at work just before Easter, throwing all kinds of threats around. I never thought anything like this would happen.’
‘Threats?’ Faith stared at me incredulously. ‘Ian, for God’s sake …’
‘He’s lying. I didn’t threaten anyone.’ But what I’d just done implied the exact reverse. I could almost see the conclusion forming in Faith’s horrified gaze. ‘This isn’t how it looks. He’s set me up. And you. Both of you.’
‘Oh, Dad.’ There was sorrow in Amy’s voice as she rounded the net and moved closer, sorrow and the beginnings of pity. ‘What’s happening to you?’
‘Ian,’ said Faith. ‘Is this about … jealousy?’
‘Of course not. I didn’t even know you were seeing each other.’
‘Then why did you go to Conrad’s office?’
‘He tried to warn me off,’ said Nyman, wincing as he fingered his reddening cheekbone. ‘Said if I didn’t leave you alone … Well, it seems he meant it.’
‘You walked out on our marriage, Ian.’ Faith’s eyes were still fixed on me. ‘You left me for another woman. How did you expect me to deal with that – by going into a bloody nunnery? You don’t have the right to comment on my choice of male company, let alone—’ She broke off, tearfulness suddenly overcoming her. ‘This is … You make me so ashamed, you know that?’
‘Hey, don’t get upset,’ said Nyman, slipping his arm round her, and looking straight at me as she turned towards him for comfort. ‘I’m not going to sue for assault. Ian’s just … overwrought. Right, Ian?’
‘No. Wrong, Conrad. You think you’re very clever, but let me tell you, you’re not going to get away with it.’
‘Away with what?’
‘Wrecking my life. Stealing my wife and daughter.’
‘Stealing? You talk as if they belong to you. As if they’re your property.’
‘You’re twisting my words. Faith, I didn’t mean—’
‘What didn’t you mean?’ She glared at me. ‘That you’d fallen in love with someone else? That we had no future together? Wasn’t I supposed to believe you?’
‘I didn’t know what was going on. I was being manipulated. By the man you seem to think is some kind of white knight in shining armour.’
‘My feelings for Conrad have nothing to do with you. You made it obvious you couldn’t care less about me. Amy, too. She was expecting to hear from you over Easter, you know that? She trusted you to call. But did you? Did you hell.’
‘He made sure I couldn’t.’ I pointed accusingly at Nyman, who looked as uncomprehending as I knew he wasn’t. ‘He got me out of the way. Had that tame psychotherapist of his lure me off to Guernsey.’
‘I’d heard you were seeking help.’ Nyman sounded almost compassionate. ‘I have to say, I think you need it.’
‘Why? Planning to try to convince them I’m mad, are you?’
‘For God’s sake, Ian,’ said Faith. ‘You’re doing a fine job of that yourself.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
‘You’re accusing your psychotherapist of working for Conrad?’
‘She is.’
‘That’s crazy, Dad,’ said Amy gently. ‘Seriously crazy.’
‘If you have her number, we could phone her now,’ said Faith. ‘We could try to sort this out.’
‘Oh, I have her number. And your boyfriend’s.’ I nodded at Nyman. ‘It’s the same.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I’m not meant to be. But I am. Daphne’s on the payroll. So’s Eris. She was working for him when I met her in Vienna.’
‘Eris? I thought her name was Marian.’
‘Just another lie. Told at his bidding.’
‘You can’t believe that.’
‘I’m afraid he does,’ said Nyman with syrupy reasonableness. ‘I’m very much afraid he believes every word.’
‘Listen to me, Faith. You, too, Amy. Leave here now. Get away from this man. He’s dangerous. Don’t trust him. He plans to harm all of us.’
Nyman shook his head. ‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘You tell me. It’s why I came here. To force you to tell me.’
‘But I can’t. Because it isn’t true. I don’t know this … Eris. Or Daphne. They aren’t working for me. I met Faith by chance, not as part of some grand scheme to hurt you.’
‘How did you meet her?’
‘I’m really not sure I—’
‘In the National Gallery,’ Faith put in. ‘Admiring the Bathers at Asnières.’
‘Your favourite picture,’ I said, eager to claim a fragment of our lost intimacy.
‘Mine, too,’ stated Nyman placidly.
‘Here’s a test for you, Faith,’ I went on, refusing to take my eyes off her. ‘Try to find some shred of evidence that he had the slightest interest in Seurat – before it suited his purpose to claim one.’
‘Stop this, Ian,’ she insisted. ‘It’s grotesque.’
‘I’m not sure he can stop,’ said Nyman. ‘It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. He left you; I must have tricked him into it. I like the same kind of art as you; I must be faking. I deny persecuting him; I must be lying. I advise him to go to his psychotherapist for help; she must be working for me. I don’t think you’re too far gone to realize, Ian, that what this amounts to is classic paranoia.’
‘I realize that’s what you want it to amount to.’
‘Why don’t we phone Daphne?’
‘Because she’d only say what you’ve told her to say.’
Caught In the Light Page 25
