I scrambled past him into the cab, my mind already bracing itself for what I might see. But there was nothing. Amy wasn’t there. I craned over the backs of the seats to be sure. But it was true. She simply wasn’t there.
Then, as I turned round, I saw it, propped between the dashboard and the windscreen, where Nyman knew I couldn’t miss it.
A tape.
FIFTEEN
THIS IS IN case I don’t kill you, Jarrett. I haven’t made my mind up yet. Should it be you or Amy? Or both? Or maybe even neither? Let’s think it through, shall we? Let’s weigh the pros and cons.
One thing’s certain. There might be a way out of this for you and Amy. Might. But not for me. I’m going down. Nymanex has the skids under it. Ask your very good friend, Ms Heywood. She knows all about it. A Colombian banker of my acquaintance, Orlando Vecerra, was arrested six weeks ago in Frankfurt on money-laundering charges. Apparently he hasn’t stopped talking since. And Nymanex is a subject he keeps coming back to. I didn’t miss yesterday’s press conference simply in order to check up on Daphne. I also wanted to dodge some awkward questions. But you can only dodge for so long. Sooner or later, the men in ill-fitting suits will be coming for me. I just don’t intend to be there when they do.
I can’t go back to prison. Not for a third time. It’s unthinkable. Only I do have to think about it. And what I think is that I won’t let it happen. That’s what I swore when I got out last time. Never again. I was going to go straight. Can you believe it? You ought to. Because Isobel was the one who talked me into it. And the one who could have helped me make it work. Instead, what did I find when I came home? That she was dead. That you’d killed her. And that nobody had even bothered to tell me.
Isobel was the only person who ever stood by me. She was my big sister all her life. She mattered. That’s what this has been about. Making her matter all over again. Forcing you to remember what you did to her – and to regret it. I reckon I’ve succeeded. You’ll never forget her now. You’ll never be free of her. Even if I let you live. Especially then, perhaps. Because I don’t think you’ll be able to put your life back together again. Not as it was.
My mother had a pair of china rabbits that stood on her dressing table. Mr and Mrs Rabbit, we called them. Mr Rabbit had a pipe, Mrs Rabbit a shopping basket. Classic sexist stuff. One day, when I was playing hide-and-seek with Isobel – I’d have been coming up to ten, I suppose – I knocked Mr Rabbit off the dressing table. He broke into dozens of pieces. My father thrashed me for that. Anyway, Isobel stuck the pieces back together again. It took her hours to work out which piece went where, but she wouldn’t give up. Mr Rabbit was more glue than china by the time she’d finished. You could see what he’d been, but you could also see how much of what he’d been wasn’t there any more. I thought it would have been more merciful to wrap the fragments in newspaper and bury them in the bin. But thirty years later I don’t feel very merciful. So maybe I’ll just let you go on, like Mr Rabbit, glue and all.
I’ve burned the negatives – the physical proof of Marian Esguard’s achievement. I found them here, where I’m recording this, in Brant’s Carr Lodge, in a compartment hidden under the lower steps of the staircase, just like I had Eris tell you she found them at Bentinck Place. I only altered the location. I had to destroy them. I can’t take the risk of you turning yourself into some kind of celebrity by using them to rewrite the official history of photography. You do see that, don’t you? I can’t allow you to gain anything from this beyond an awareness of just how much you took out of the world when you killed my sister.
You’ll be wondering how the negatives ended up here. It’s an instructive lesson in the dangers of jumping to conclusions. I bought the house three years ago when it came onto the market. I was still investigating the parts of Isobel’s life she hadn’t told me about then. I knew Brant’s Carr was significant because of the interest she’d taken in it during our holiday at Wells. She kept coming back here to take photographs. Even crept into the garden to take close-up shots when the people who lived here were out. She couldn’t seem to stay away. I didn’t understand why, so I researched the history of the house. It used to be part of the Holkham estate. The archivist there let me look through the records. Maybe you’ve heard of Thomas Coke, the agricultural reformer. He inherited Holkham in 1776 and ran it until his death in 1842. In 1817 he let Brant’s Carr Lodge to a Francis Drew. The documents in the archives describe Drew as a veterinarian. Coke was keen on good veterinary practice, and Drew was one of the best. He went on to become a founder member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Back in 1817, he must have been just the sort of bright young man Coke liked. He came to Norfolk from Sussex with his wife, Ann, maiden name Freeman. With me yet, Jarrett? I’ll be disappointed if you’re not.
I’m not going to spell it out for you. I don’t need to, anyway. The answer’s in a letter Barrington Esguard received in September 1851, some thirteen years after his brother Joslyn’s death in the fire at Gaunt’s Chase. It was one of the items Quisden-Neve was carrying in his bag when Niall … bumped into him on the train. He must have got it from Milo. It didn’t quite tell him enough, though. Still, it would only have been a matter of time before … But see for yourself. I’ve sent all the documents Niall stole from Quisden-Neve to his brother. As next of kin, he’s entitled to them. And whatever good they may do him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to let you take a look.
I was sorry about having to take such drastic action against old Q-N. It was a poor reward for his persistence. And it’s only bought me a couple of weeks. The trouble was that Niall was just itching to do it. In case you’re wondering, it was Nicole who warned me what he was up to. I’ve been making it worth her while for some time to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. It’s been money well spent. A financial journalist is a useful person for someone like me to have on his side. I’d planned a more relishable enlightenment for you on the point, of course, but events have got the better of me. Nicole thought Quisden-Neve only had commercial dirt to dish. The realization that something far more sinister was going on, and that her old boyfriend was involved in it, would have overridden her understanding with me for sure. So, you see, I had no choice but to let Niall off the leash.
His was a brutal nature. Maybe he was some sort of throwback to Joslyn. He told me Milo died of natural causes fair and square, but I later learned he’d taken the old boy out for a day at the races when it happened. It was convenient for me, so I never asked any questions. And I was grateful for his ruthlessness where Quisden-Neve was concerned. Setting him on Eris was too much, though. I was hurrying by then, trying to finish you off before Vecerra finished me off. But it’s no excuse. Eris didn’t deserve that. I’m glad it didn’t work. Not for your sake, but for hers.
I met Eris in prison. I’m not joking. Her father was the only other English con in the prison the Swedes put me in. He died there. She’d been to see him once to my knowledge, then came over again to arrange for the body to be sent home, and visited me to ask how his last few months had been. I could tell, there and then, that she had real potential. After I got out, I found her holding down some dead-end job, eager to take any opportunity I offered her. When it comes to finding things out, or playing a part, well, she’s the best. As you’ve discovered.
Her real name … But I’m not going to tell you that. Knowing her as well as I do, I think you’ve seen the last of her. All those months of searching are going to leave you … nowhere. No Eris, no Nicole, no Faith. None of them will have you, Jarrett. You’re on your own.
Except for Amy, of course. She’ll stand by her father. But will I let her? That’s the question I keep coming back to. Can I do it? Should I do it? I don’t have long to decide. You’ll be here soon, I reckon. But not soon enough to forestall me. I can promise you that.
I’d better go upstairs now and see how she is. She won’t have had a comfortable night, what with the gag and the handcuffs. Not to mention the fear. She is very frightened.
And with good reason. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen. She doesn’t know what I’m going to do. Neither do I. Let’s find out, shall we?
SIXTEEN
I LIVE WITH this now. I will always live with it. It ravels and unravels in my mind, as if governed by some mechanism of perpetual motion. Nyman’s body, sprawled on the runway, his blood seeping into the cracks and crevices of the concrete. His taped voice, playing to its questioning end. Emptiness all round. And Amy, her absence part of the blank horizon, her voice half heard in the wind.
‘Where is she?’ I shouted at Nyman, stooping over him in the absurd hope that he could somehow hear me. ‘What have you done with her?’ But he’d said all he was ever going to say. And he’d already done whatever it was he’d decided to do.
I ran to my car and started driving, back the way I’d come, clinging to the notion that he meant me to find her and had therefore given me as much of a clue as I needed. The photographs still held the answer. He wouldn’t have broken his own crazy rules. The photographs would tell me where to go.
Wells-next-the-Sea. It had to be. The cosy seaside resort where the Courtney family had holidayed all those years ago. I’d seen the pictures, as I’d been meant to. I’d already been shown the place he’d taken her to.
It was only a few miles to the coast, and only a few more along it to Wells. I covered the distance in a matter of minutes, navigating by the map I’d torn from the wall at Brant’s Carr Lodge. I was aiming for the caravan site marked at the far end of the road running out along the western side of the harbour to the lifeboat station.
The town was quiet, the beach road a straight, flat run. There was a miniature railway to my left and a high bank to my right, blocking the view of the salt marshes. I glanced up at the bank, somehow expecting to see a figure silhouetted against the sky, as in Isobel’s photograph of her brother – dark, solitary, determined. But there was nobody there.
As I looked back at the road, I saw what was waiting for me at the far end. And I knew what it meant at once, even though I didn’t want to believe it. The map showed a car park in the lee of the pine-topped dunes above the beach. And there, ahead of me, flashing like blue tinsel against the green smudge of the trees, were the lights of police cars.
At least half a dozen of them were drawn up in a group. I heard the crackle of the static on their radios as I pulled in behind. Uniformed figures were milling round either side of a blue-and-white tape strung across a path that led into the trees. Raised and urgent voices were carrying on the wind blowing in from the sea. The tape was stretching and snapping taut like a whip.
I was intercepted before I made it from the car to the trees. I had Nyman’s blood on me and a wild look in my eyes. What the policeman who grabbed my arm must have thought I can only imagine.
‘There’s a girl’s body on the beach, isn’t there?’ I shouted at him. ‘You may as well tell me. It’s Amy. My daughter, for Christ’s sake. Nyman shot her, didn’t he? Just like that. The bastard. He really did it.’
A plain-clothes officer heard me and hurried over. ‘What exactly are you saying, sir?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing as he led me to one side.
‘My daughter. Amy. Nyman killed her.’
‘Who’s Nyman?’
‘The murderer. Don’t you understand?’
‘Not really, sir. How do you know there’s been a murder? Were you here earlier?’
‘No. Of course not. Otherwise I’d have—’
His glance over my shoulder was fleeting but anxious. I whirled round and saw the tape being lifted clear as two men in overalls carried a stretcher out past it to a van. The rear doors of the van stood open in readiness. There was a figure on the stretcher, covered in a plastic shroud.
I started running across the car park. There was a shout from behind me, but I ignored it. The stretcher was half in and half out of the van now. The men carrying it looked up at me in alarm. I pushed past a policeman who hadn’t seen me coming. The shroud was some kind of body bag, zipped at the centre. I lunged forward, stretching into the van to reach the fastener. Somebody grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back. But the zip came too.
I see her face now, as it was then. I see it in my dreams. There was a time when I saw it if I merely closed my eyes for a second, branded on my retina as if I’d stared into the sun. Amy. Her face pale and strangely tranquil, her eyes closed as if sleeping, her cheeks flecked with tiny spots of blood. And there, in the shadow of the shroud, where her hair should have fallen clear of her temple, was a deeper shadow still. Then nothing. A blank. White noise. A siren. Or a scream. I can’t tell.
PART FOUR
EXHIBITION
SEVENTEEN
FEARING THE WORST is a kind of talisman. Subconsciously we hope it will act as a self-averting prophecy. Once I’d realized Amy was in Nyman’s hands and at his mercy, the fear of what he might do to her gave me the confidence to believe he wouldn’t harm her at all. He knew her. Maybe he even liked her. She’d done nothing to hurt him. Not a thing. I was the guilty party if anyone was. Amy was innocent of blame. She didn’t deserve to die.
That was why he killed her, of course. Because she was blameless, like Isobel. And because she was my daughter, a part of me just as Isobel had been a part of him. In destroying her, he broke me, beyond restoration if not repair. Like his mother’s china rabbit, I’d go on, glued together, a thing of fragments and fears fulfilled.
‘It’s a grievous thing to outlive your own child,’ Sam Courtney had said. ‘Not natural,’ was how he’d put it. ‘Not in the order of things.’ And this was Nyman’s gift to me. This was the price he’d put on his sister’s life. Now, at a time and place of his choosing, the price had been paid.
* * *
I don’t remember the next few hours with any real clarity or grasp of sequence. My mind doesn’t seem ready yet to let me relive the events as they unfolded. Maybe it never will be.
I was taken to the small police station in Wells, which had become the crowded and noisy centre of a murder inquiry, and held there for questioning, presumably as a suspect, though I don’t recall being aware of such a status. How the truth and meaning of what had happened were going to emerge seemed unimportant to me. My thoughts and actions were paralysed by the enormity, the unalterability, of Nyman’s revenge.
His body had already been found, by a farm manager doing his rounds of the converted hangars up at the airfield. The pathologist probably told the police it looked like suicide there and then. Apparently the Range Rover matched the description of a vehicle seen speeding out of the beach car park at Wells by a caravanner shortly before he stumbled across Amy’s body in the dunes. At some point I gave them Faith’s phone number. They didn’t seem to want me to contact her direct. Not that it made any difference, since the Met were monitoring Faith’s calls by then in the hope of hearing from Nyman. Faith had called them in as soon as she’d listened to the tape. Her estimate of my chances of success had turned out to be exactly right.
By the time she arrived in Wells a few hours later, the local police had pieced together most of the story and satisfied themselves as to where I figured in it. Faith and I met in the stark privacy of the station’s one and only interview room. I can’t remember what we said. But I can remember her eyes, bloodshot and brimming with tears. And the silences between whatever words we stumbled over, silences heavy with grief and anger and condemnation.
An inspector called Forrester, who’d accompanied Faith from London, badly wanted to talk to me. There was the small matter of Niall Esguard’s murder to be thrown into the pot. He knew I’d lied about that from his questioning of Daphne. He was treading carefully, but he was suspicious all the same. Whether the second tape made him less suspicious or more I neither knew nor cared. It was over. Everything now was post mortem.
By early evening he’d finished with me and I was, in that chilling masterpiece of police-speak, free to go – at least for the time being. Tim was waiting to collect me. Faith had asked
him to make sure I came to no harm. She’d gone to Norwich, where Amy’s body had been taken. Her parents were driving over from Cheltenham to meet her. There were arrangements to be made in the wake of what had happened, but no-one supposed for a moment that I was capable of making them.
I have a memory of walking with Tim along the harbourside at Wells, fishing boats bobbing at anchor, the setting sun gilding the salt marshes, neither of us speaking because there were no words equal to the horror that had overtaken us. The world proceeded on its placid way while we stumbled in a void.
It was dark when we started back for London. Nightfall seemed to cut me off from Amy more profoundly than ever. She was in the past now. With every nightfall to come she’d slip further and further away. Her death had been instantaneous, the work of a moment. But I was going to lose her, bit by bit, memory by memory, for the rest of my life.
* * *
I stayed with Tim overnight. Early next morning Faith’s father phoned from Norwich to say they’d be taking her back to Cheltenham with them. There was a clear implication that I should stay away. I wanted to share my grief with her. Maybe she wanted to share hers with me. But too much had gone wrong between us for that to be possible. Each of us instinctively recoiled from the only person who could truly understand how we felt.
The press were on the scent by then. Nyman’s suicide started as a shock to the business world, and turned with bewildering speed into a features-page sensation. Money and murder made an irresistible combination. Luckily for me, none of the papers got wind of the revenge element. Nymanex’s shady dealings and its founder’s violent end, spiced by Nyman’s murder of his lover’s daughter as a brutal prelude to the taking of his own life, were more than enough to be going on with.
Caught In the Light Page 34
