Caught In the Light

by Robert Goddard

  How long had she been gone? I wondered. I looked at my watch and did some mental arithmetic. It came down to ten minutes at the outside, possibly less. She might have been hurrying out onto the street even as I was racing up the steps from the Underground. I fervently wished then that she’d stayed. It didn’t matter about Niall. We could have sorted something out. We could have helped each other. Not that she could have known I was about to arrive. Maybe she would have stayed if she had. Maybe …

  And, anyway, it did matter about Niall. Of course it did. He was dead, in my flat. Someone had killed him. Murdered him, the police might well conclude. Who would they suspect? There was only one candidate. Me. And what would they find when they checked Niall’s background? Me again, asking about him in his local pub, and mentioning Quisden-Neve into the bargain. I’d soon be nailed as the witness who’d done a runner at Chippenham railway station. After that I’d be lucky not to end up charged with double murder. Nyman’s plans had misfired again – Niall hadn’t turned out to be as efficient a killer as he’d supposed. But maybe that didn’t make a lot of difference. Maybe Nyman always had a fallback position, and this was it. If by some fluke Eris killed Niall, or I killed him trying to rescue her, I still carried the can. Heads he won, tails I lost.

  I sat down stiffly on a chair by the table and tried to think. What would Nyman like me to do? What would suit him most of all? For me to incriminate myself, of course. For me to make it worse. What had he said? ‘You could walk away from it. You could try to prove you were somewhere else.’ Fat chance. All I’d achieve by making a run for it would be to set myself up more clinchingly than Nyman had done. No. That wasn’t the answer.

  What was, then? I stared at the blood-bibbed figure in front of me and he stared vacantly back. Death had already drained him of menace. He was just a macabrely broken dummy, a carapace of the crude and vicious schemer he’d been, not really Niall Esguard at all any more.

  That was it. I almost smiled at the simplicity of the idea. How would the police know who he was if I didn’t tell them? Nyman could hardly volunteer the information. And Eris was running for her life. It was only my links with Niall that put me in the frame. If he was an anonymous stranger I’d found murdered in my flat, I was in the clear. Not completely, of course. I’d still be a suspect, even if the police didn’t say so. But none of my clothes were bloodstained. There was no murder weapon, certainly not one with my fingerprints on it. Forensically, I was clean. And there was no shadow of a motive that made sense.

  It was a risk. But everything else was even riskier. This way I had a good chance of talking my way out of trouble rather than into it. But it depended on Niall’s anonymity. I’d have to remove and destroy any identification he was carrying. It wasn’t likely to be much. A man with his fondness for aliases would surely carry as little as possible that proved who he really was. But there’d be something, even if it was only a credit card. Whatever it was, it had to go. And it had to go without leaving a trace – in the flat or on me.

  I rose, fetched a fork and spoon from the kitchen drawer, returned to where Niall was sprawled and crouched down in front of him. I lifted the sides of the jacket away from him with the spoon and checked for pockets. There was one inside. A probe with the fork revealed nothing. The outer pockets were visibly empty. The shirt pocket, of course, contained his cigarettes. So far so good. As for his jeans, the bulge in the right-hand pocket was unmistakably that of a wallet. I pushed the wallet slowly out with the spoon and plucked it clear. The left-hand pocket held only a handkerchief. The hip pockets, as far as I could see – and feel with the fork – were empty. A bunch of keys hung from one of his belt loops – a couple of Yales, a mortice and another sporting a Porsche shield on its fob. I unclipped the ring, taking great care not to touch the belt loop as I did so, and took the keys and wallet over to the table.

  The wallet held several hundred pounds in cash, plus three credit cards, each bearing a different name – Esguard, Hudson, Sherwood. That was it. He’d died as he travelled: light.

  I washed the fork and spoon in the bathroom and replaced them in the kitchen drawer. Then I wrapped a length of toilet tissue round the keys and stuffed them, with the wallet, into an old envelope, Sellotaping the flap and seams. I wrote a note to Tim to accompany the package.

  Tim,

  Whatever happens, hold on to this until you hear from me. Tell nobody and please don’t open it.

  I’m relying on you.

  Ian

  My story was going to be that, with no phone in the flat, and having left my mobile in the car – which happened to be true – I’d decided to make my way to the police station in Ladbroke Grove to report my gruesome discovery. It was only a few minutes away, so it wouldn’t sound so very odd, not when I laid it on about not wanting to spend a moment more than I had to alone with a dead man – which also happened to be true.

  Far more importantly, however, there was a post office on the corner of Ladbroke Grove, where I could buy a padded envelope and dispatch the package to Tim. Once I’d convinced the police I was on the level, I could reclaim Niall’s wallet and keys from him. The contents of the wallet had revealed nothing. But the keys would get me into 6 Bentinck Place, where I reckoned there’d be some kind of evidence to convince Faith that Nyman had known Niall. That would surely be enough to make her doubt him.

  But doubt cut several ways. Were the police really going to believe the dead man was a stranger to me? Given the turnover of tenants in a flat like mine, and the dubious character of a lot of them, it wasn’t so very improbable that one or more had kept a duplicate set of keys – removed by the killer, presumably. Why they’d gone there would be a mystery, but that suited me well enough. It could be months before the police made a connection with a man reported missing in Bath, if anyone ever did report Niall missing. Anxious friends and relatives weren’t exactly a feature of his life.

  I looked back at him before closing the door, and realized, with sudden dismay, that as far as I knew the Esguard line ended here, unworthily and anonymously. For Niall and the rest of them it was over. But not for me. And not for Conrad Nyman. We’d both make sure of that.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘YOU MUST BE mad,’ said Tim. It was the morning of the following day in Parsons Green. He was eyeing me across the breakfast table in his kitchen with apparently genuine concern for my sanity. The police had released me the night before, after a solid afternoon and evening of questioning, without charge and without, so far as I could judge, any active suspicion that I’d murdered the nameless intruder I’d found dead in my flat. The flat itself was sealed as a crime scene, so I’d had little choice but to impose on Tim’s hospitality. Clearly worried by my revelation late the previous night that the dead man was none other than Niall Esguard, he was now positively horrified by my announcement that Niall’s wallet and keys were likely to be landing on his doormat any minute. ‘Have you any idea the risks you’re running? I mean, for God’s sake …’ He threw up his hands in despair at my conduct.

  ‘You think I should have told the police everything?’

  ‘For innocent people, it’s normally the wisest course of action.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t have been believed. You know I wouldn’t. What could I do to help Faith and Amy from inside a police cell?’

  ‘That’s all very well. But if the police learn you’ve lied to them they’ll think you murdered Niall Esguard and Quisden-Neve.’

  ‘Nobody murdered Niall Esguard. It was self-defence.’

  ‘Maybe so. But it doesn’t look like self-defence, does it? Did they tell you how it was done?’

  ‘He was stabbed once, in the neck, severing the carotid artery. I think Eris must have smelled a rat and taken a knife with her for protection. When Niall tried to strangle her, she lashed out to save herself. It was probably just a lucky blow.’

  ‘Not for Niall. Has it occurred to you she was expecting to meet you there? If she was carrying a knife …’

  ‘I
t was to protect herself from me? I don’t think so. Remember, she didn’t seem to know Quisden-Neve was dead when she recorded the last tape. Maybe she’d found out since getting back from Guernsey. Maybe that’s what put her on her guard. She knows Nyman. Therefore she knows there’s plenty to be frightened of.’

  ‘She does now. And I take it Nyman will realize what this means …’ Tim flapped the newspaper at me. It was folded open at an inside page carrying a brief report of the discovery of a man’s body at a flat in Notting Hill Gate, closing with the words, ‘The police are treating the death as suspicious.’

  ‘I imagine he already knows. He’ll have made discreet enquiries when Niall failed to make contact.’

  ‘So both you and Eris are in considerable danger.’

  ‘Potentially. But Eris will have gone to ground now. We know how good she is at that.’

  ‘Which leaves just you.’

  ‘I’ve been in danger ever since Nyman decided to punish me for Isobel Courtney’s death. It’s no worse now than it ever was. But that’s not the point. He made it crystal clear to me that he planned to get at me through Faith and Amy. Especially Amy.’

  ‘How can you stop him?’

  ‘By staying out of police custody and proving to Faith that he isn’t—’ There was a rattle from the letter box and the plop of mail on the doormat. I got up at once and rushed out into the hall. ‘It’s arrived,’ I shouted back to Tim, snatching up the package and tearing it open. ‘So that’s a load off your mind.’ He was watching me from the kitchen doorway as I dropped the keys and wallet into my pocket. ‘Burn the envelope, just to be on the safe side. We don’t want you branded as an accessory, do we?’

  ‘Technically, I already am one. Strangely enough, though, that’s the least of my worries. You’re going to Bath, I assume.’

  ‘Right now. I had to promise the police I wouldn’t leave London without informing them, so, if they phone, could you be as vague as possible? Like I said in the note you haven’t read, I’m relying on you.’

  ‘In that case, I shouldn’t neglect my duties as your adviser. If there’s anything to incriminate him at Bentinck Place, Nyman will try to remove it.’

  ‘I aim to beat him to it. Besides, he won’t necessarily know it’s there. I’m banking on Niall’s double-dealing nature.’

  ‘Also, there’s no telling how Nyman may react to Niall’s death. It’s his first serious setback. It could tip him over the edge.’

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Neither do I, Tim.’ I shrugged on my coat and made for the door. ‘Let’s hope we don’t find out.’

  I’d surrendered my car to the police for forensic examination. ‘For the purposes of elimination,’ they’d said, meaning just in case they found a bundle of bloodstained clothes in the boot. ‘You can reclaim it in the morning.’ But, now it had come to it, I couldn’t afford the time. It seemed quicker and easier to make for Paddington and catch the next train to Bath: the nine fifteen, getting in at ten forty.

  I took a taxi from Bath Spa to the corner of Bentinck Place and gave number six one slow, watchful walk-by before concluding that the coast was clear. I marched smartly up to the front door, got lucky with my choice of Yale key and let myself in.

  The hall was as Eris had described it: shabby and silent. I walked straight across to the door of Niall’s flat, unlocked it and stepped inside.

  I was in a high-ceilinged drawing room, the thick curtains tightly closed. There was a hollow sound to the closing of the door behind me, suggesting the contents didn’t amount to much beyond the three-piece suite I could make out in the gloom-filled centre of the room. Wooden sliding doors were set in the wall to my right, with a gleam of bright light around the frame. I slid them open and looked through, only to be momentarily dazzled by sunlight flooding through the uncurtained rear windows of the house.

  Once my eyes had adjusted, I could see the little there was to see: a sitting room wallpapered and carpeted in faded Sixties style, and almost devoid of furniture. A table stood against one wall, with a single chair drawn beneath it. In the centre of the table was a telephone, beside a well-filled ashtray and a half-empty bottle of lager. There was nothing else. It was as if Niall had stripped the flat of his family’s possessions and replaced them with none of his own. I turned back towards the drawing room.

  And stopped in my tracks at the sight of Daphne Sanger, lying full length on the sofa, her head propped on the arm, her brow furrowed, as if in mild academic curiosity about my next move. The gold frames of her spectacles glistened in the shaft of sunlight that stretched past me. ‘Hello, Ian,’ she said, sitting up with a nervous lick of the lips. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘You’ve been waiting for me?’

  ‘Yes.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘An hour or more.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Nyman sent me to check the place over. He was too busy to come himself.’

  ‘Busy with what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She rose and walked slowly towards me, stopping when she reached the nearer of the two armchairs. She rested against it and I noticed her fingers trembling as she trailed them along the back. ‘I never know.’

  ‘What are you checking for?’

  ‘Incriminating material. Anything mentioning Nyman. Or me, of course. There’s nothing. I can save you the bother of looking. Niall seems to have distrusted records of all kinds. Apart from some clothes, you’d be hard pushed to find any real evidence that he ever lived here. Not much of an epitaph.’

  ‘How did you learn he was dead?’

  ‘Nyman has contacts everywhere. He learns what he wants. Did you kill Niall?’

  ‘No. Eris killed him. In self-defence. I’m sure you know what was planned.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t. Nyman said he couldn’t account for what had happened.’

  ‘He set it up, for God’s sake. Niall was to murder Eris at my flat and frame me for the crime. She somehow got the jump on him. I found him there, dead from a stab wound. Eris had already left.’

  ‘Clever girl. I’m glad she’s safe. I never thought it would come to this, you know. You have to believe me.’

  ‘Why should I? You’ve lied to me all along.’

  ‘The lies are over, Ian. We’ve got to stop Nyman. That’s why I waited for you. We have to end it.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’m offering to do whatever I can to prevent any more damage being done.’

  ‘You can start by telling my wife just what sort of a man she’s mixed up with.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You’ll come back with me right now to London and tell her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is. But I want the truth as well. I want to know what made you think you had the right to throw my entire life into turmoil.’

  ‘Isobel gave me the right.’ She didn’t blush or flinch. Her expression gave me clearly to understand that she recoiled from whatever Nyman might do next, but didn’t regret a single thing she’d already done to help him. ‘Nyman said you’d guessed. So there it is. We loved her, he and I, in our different ways. And we hated you for taking her from us. You deserved to suffer for that. I’m damned if I’ll say otherwise. But you’ve suffered enough. We all have. This can’t be allowed to continue.’

  ‘Too right it can’t. But there’s a problem. I don’t trust you. Your change of heart could be just another of Nyman’s set-ups.’

  ‘So it could. And I can’t prove it isn’t. But we don’t have time to debate the point. I’ll answer all your questions. And I’ll tell Faith the whole truth. What more can I do?’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘It’ll have to be. Right now, I’m all you’ve got.’

  I stared at her, my anger and distrust slowly weakening before the overriding imperative to act.


  ‘My car’s outside,’ she said softly. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Who is Nyman?’ I demanded, as soon as we were clear of the city, heading north towards the M4.

  ‘He’s Isobel’s brother.’

  ‘That can’t be. Her father told me she was an only child.’

  ‘Not true. Isobel had a younger brother, Robert, christened Robert Conrad. He was the black sheep of the family, clever but uncontrollable. A promising university career was cut short by a prison sentence for drug trafficking. Not just dealing, but recruiting other students, mostly female, to smuggle the merchandise in from abroad. His parents disowned him. “You’re no son of ours” stuff. Meant literally, as you’ve discovered. Only Isobel kept in touch with him. Visited him in prison and stayed in contact afterwards, without her parents’ knowledge or approval. From her brother’s viewpoint, only her love was unconditional and therefore only she was worth caring about.’

  ‘Is that why he wasn’t at the inquest – because he was in gaol?’

  ‘Yes. But not for the same offence. He went abroad after his release and got mixed up in bigger-league crime. He was in a Swedish prison serving a sentence for organizing microchip thefts when Isobel died. He acquired a fresh identity and a dry-cleaned business reputation when he got out. You only have to look at the financial press to see what a good job he’s done. He hasn’t gone straight, of course. He’s more crooked than ever. What he’s gone is respectable. Dirty money, clean hands.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I know the family history because Isobel told me. We were lovers. I think you should understand that. It’s the bond between Nyman and me. Isobel is the only person either of us has ever really loved.’

  ‘I thought she was your client.’

  ‘She was. At first. But then it went further. Falling in love with your psychotherapist is pretty common, actually. It’s just not supposed to be reciprocated. Abuse of a position of privilege. Unprofessional. Irresponsible. It’s the big no-no. But with Isobel … none of that mattered. I took precautions. I knew it was wrong. But I went on. We went on. Until one of those precautions killed her. She used to park at the station when she came to Barnet rather than outside my house, in case the neighbours noticed the car was still there in the morning. Which is why she was crossing Barnet Hill that night on foot.’