Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  38

  ‘LET’S FACE IT, Harry,’ said Jackie with a mischievous grin as she handed him his coffee cup and let her knee brush briefly against his thigh, ‘you and I are both too old for fresh starts in life.’

  ‘I thought that’s what your return to Swindon represented,’ Harry replied, accepting the cup and recoiling to the corner of the sofa.

  ‘Hardly.’ The smile stiffened and dissolved. She lit a cigarette, exhaled the first lungful of smoke towards the spot-lit ceiling, then reclined against the cushions. ‘Hardly that at all. ‘

  ‘I’m sorry to have missed your husband.’ Harry was uncertain why he was troubling to proclaim such regret. To judge by the tastelessly expensive home he had bought in Swindon’s south-eastern suburbs and the charmlessIy pugnacious expression he wore in his wedding photographs, Tony Oliver, entrepreneur and athlete, was someone Harry had no wish to encounter. On the other hand, his unexpected business trip to Frankfurt had clearly left Jackie with an empty weekend on her easily bored hands and Harry had the disquieting impression he was intended to enliven it. Lunch and politely reminiscent conversation seemed increasingly unlikely to be all she had in mind. ‘Does he have to go away often?’

  ‘At least once a month.’

  ‘That must be a nuisance.’

  Jackie ignored the remark and cast Harry a weary look that suggested she had expected better of him than faltering platitudes. ‘You never thought of matrimony yourself, then?’

  ‘Thought of it, yes. And thought better of it.’

  Jackie laughed. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d done the same myself.’

  ‘Matrimony doesn’t seem to have treated you too badly.’ Harry nodded at the costly expanse of cream-carpeted lounge. ‘This is all a far cry from your father’s ironmongery shop in Wood Street.’

  ‘Trust you to remember that.’

  ‘Well, we go back a long way, Jackie. You said so yourself.’ It must have been in the spring of 1968, Harry reflected, around the time Ramsey Everett had plunged to his death from a window in Oxford, that nineteen-year-old Jaqueline Fleetwood of the long blonde hair and criminally short skirts had first deployed her nonexistent secretarial skills and super-abundant alternative charms at Barnchase Motors. Harry had interviewed her for the post himself and so, in a sense, was as responsible as his philandering partner for what had ultimately come of her appointment. ‘Do you ever hear from Barry these days?’ he said, before the indelicacy of the question had occurred to him.

  ‘No.’ Jackie smiled and an ambiguous look of nostalgia crossed her face. ‘We’ve lost touch completely. When the divorce came through, he had some kind of time-share business going in the Canary Islands. But that was five years ago. Since then, I wouldn’t know.’ And her expression implied she did not care. Harry admitted to himself that at rising forty she was still as physically attractive as she had been at nineteen. The hugging cashmere sweater, the short skirt and the long, prominently displayed legs left him in no doubt of that. ‘What about you, Harry? What have you been up to since you got back?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’m still trying to find my feet.’

  ‘Seen anything of Alan Dysart?’

  The question surprised him into an admission. ‘Well, yes, I have.’

  ‘You two keep in touch, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’ Jackie bent forward to sip her coffee, ran a crimson-nailed forefinger pensively round the rim of the saucer, then leaned back and drew deeply on her cigarette. ‘You’re lucky to have such an influential friend.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Do you think he’d remember me?’

  ‘I’m sure he would.’

  Jackie’s gaze shifted from the plate-glass tabletop to Harry’s face and rested there for several moments of concentrated assessment. ‘Perhaps,’ she said at last, ‘you could re-introduce us.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Arrange for Alan and me to meet up again after all these years.’

  What exactly did Jackie have in mind? Harry could scarcely believe, even of her, that the answer was what he was tempted to conclude. Had her second husband outlasted his usefulness? Had Harry been invited to lunch in his absence in order to be recruited as intermediary between Jackie and a glamorous future as wife or mistress to a famous man?

  ‘Barry didn’t like Alan, you know,’ she continued. ‘Didn’t trust him, anyway. I don’t know why. I had the impression something had happened between them, but I never found out what. Still, that’s Barry’s problem, isn’t it? It needn’t affect you and me.’

  ‘No,’ Harry said doubtfully. ‘I suppose it needn’t.’

  ‘So you could arrange for us to meet?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be difficult, would it?’ She transferred the cigarette to her right hand and let her left snake across the sofa cushions towards him. ‘I’d be very grateful.’ There was, in her slowly broadening smile and carmine-clawed proximity, a hint that her gratitude might know no bounds. ‘Really I would.’

  Before lunch, she had shown Harry round all the rooms in the house, glorying in a sequence of domestic extravagances. Now the mirror-lined and thickly rugged interior of the master bedroom recurred to his mind. For an instant, but no more, a vision of Jackie filled the scene, draped wantonly across the bed, naked and stretching out her hand in invitation. Then, much as an alarm clock will splinter a dream, the telephone rang.

  ‘Oh, damn. Excuse me. It might be important.’ Jackie rose and hurried across the deep-piled vastness of the room. As she went, long legs brushing faintly together, shapely rump working beneath the clinging material of her skirt, Harry felt more relief than regret at the interruption. ‘Hello? … Who? … Oh, I see … Hold on …’ She headed back towards the sofa, telephone in hand. ‘It’s for you, Harry.’ There was a scornful curl to her lip. ‘It’s your mother.’ Jackie’s proposition, it seemed, was not to be the day’s last surprise.

  ‘Hello, Mother?’

  ‘Is that you, Harold?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is.’

  ‘Could you come home straightaway?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘There’s a young man here who’s anxious to speak to you. He says it’s a matter of extreme urgency.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He seems positively distraught, Harold. Refuses to leave without seeing you. Says there’s something he absolutely has to tell you.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Quite honestly, he stutters so badly it’s hard to be sure.’

  ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ Harry was already rising to his feet. ‘Don’t let him leave before I arrive.’

  ‘It is important, then?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. I think it probably is.’

  39

  A POT OF strong tea reinforced by a sly addition of whisky appeared to have a calming effect on Nigel Mossop. At length, perspiration ceased to flow down his face, his stammer declined and his limbs grew less tremulous. Harry sat opposite him in the soothing gloom of his mother’s front parlour, waiting as patiently as he could for the lad to become master of himself if not of his destiny. Eventually, his forbearance was rewarded.

  ‘S-Sorry to b-barge in on you … like this, H-Harry.’ It was Mossop’s first coherent remark since Harry had returned.

  ‘I’m the one who should apologize, Nige, for landing you in hot water with Roy.’

  ‘N-No. I should have … should have st-stood up to him.’

  A less likely proposition Harry could scarcely imagine, but now was not the time to remind Mossop of his frailties. ‘Perhaps you’re doing just that by coming here.’

  ‘I h-h-hope so. You see … if I g-go back in tomorrow … I’ll be on the car-car-carpet g-good and proper. … You know that. … If R-Roy threatens me with all the f-fires of hell – and he will – I’ll never … never … have the c-courage to tell you.’

  Courage, oddly enough, was just what Mossop was displaying, courag
e of the highest order when set against a lifetime of abject timidity. ‘Don’t worry about Roy. I’ll deal with him.’

  ‘I w-w-wish … I could believe that.’

  ‘If you don’t, why are you here?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been … been th-thinking … about it … since R-Roy threw me out of the office on F-Friday … The f-fact is, Harry … I’ve got to tell you.’ Every muscle in Mossop’s body was rigid with tension. His eyes were blinking madly in a semaphore of barely controlled panic. Yet there was also a strange and admirable determination locked within him, a degree of resolution which Harry had never expected to find there. ‘I’ve g-got to bring the truth … out into the open … I owe it to H-Heather, Harry … D-Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Nige, I understand. Why not just start from the beginning?’

  ‘Like … Like all g-good stories … you mean?’ Mossop tried to grin. ‘Well … Well, you w-were … r-right … about Heather … I did like her … a lot. You don’t … don’t meet … many p-people who are good … through and through … but Heather was one of them … is one of them. She j-joined the c-company in April … and we w-worked together from then … then on. I got to like her … like her awfully … but I knew … knew she was just being f-friendly … knew she didn’t see anything in me … except somebody to p-p … somebody to pity.’ He bowed his head briefly, then resumed with a greater measure of self-control. ‘Don’t worry, Harry. This isn’t g-going to be … a sob story. Had we l-leased Cambridge Road … in your day?’

  By Cambridge Road Mossop meant a small warehouse on the Granby Industrial Estate just outside Weymouth, which Mallender Marine had acquired, largely on Roy’s initiative, to provide extra storage capacity. Harry had poured scorn on its viability at the time and had not been thanked for doing so. ‘Yes, Nige. I remember it well.’

  ‘Well, we’ve hung on to it … even though, as far as I can see, we don’t need it.’ Harry could guess why that was: admitting mistakes had never been Roy’s strong suit. ‘It’s used … used as a dump now … for broken machinery and … old paperwork nobody’s bothered to sort into what needs keeping … and what doesn’t. A real … real glory-hole.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Hardly … Hardly anybody ever goes there. But last summer … well, you know how slack we get then … Around the end of July, Pickard had this g-good idea.’ Mossop frowned. ‘You remember Pickard, don’t you?’

  Pickard was a worthless toady of Roy Mallender, introduced as office manager shortly before Harry’s dismissal. ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Well, he decided the records at Cambridge Road … needed going through at last. A thorough … sorting out. And he chose … Heather and me for the job. So … off we went. It was quite a cushy number … actually. Just the two of us, sifting through old paperwork … without anybody breathing down our necks. Most of the stuff was w-worthless rubbish. Some of it went back … years. I even came across notes in your handwriting, Harry. That prompted me … prompted me to tell Heather about how you’d been dismissed … set up just because Roy didn’t like you. The idea that her b-brother could behave … like that … s-seemed to shock her. But, as it turned out, she had … had a much bigger shock in store. Amongst the newer stuff … was a whole load of files from last year r-relating to the Phormio contract. Phormio is some … some new development the Navy’s been working on at P-Portland. Strictly top-secret. Not … not that there was anything secret in the file. It just contained details … of Mallender Marine’s tender to s-supply some of the … electronics. Nothing … nothing odd about it at all. We got the contract, too. One of our … most lucrative in years … actually. But that was just the point. Amongst the documents … I found the original exchange of memos between Roy and Charlie fixing the p-price to be offered … And on one of them, added in Roy’s own handwriting, a n-note … clearly sh-showing … sh-showing that …’

  ‘There was bribery involved?’

  ‘Yes. That is … N-No … Not b-bribery, as far as I could tell. But c-certainly … c-c-c- …’

  ‘Corruption?’

  Mossop’s face reddened with the effort of expressing himself. ‘Yes. Corruption. It had to be. It couldn’t be … couldn’t be read any other way. The memo was d-dated the t-twenty-s-second of June … and the tender had to be in by the end of the month. It showed the p-prices we were qu-quoting for each s-section … of the contract. We were awarded every s-single one in the end and there was the memo, in my hands, setting them all out. At the t-top, Roy had written a note to his father, dated the t-twenty-third of June, just before sending the memo on its way … I suppose.’

  ‘What did the note say?’

  Mossop managed a smile. ‘It was short enough for me … for me to remember every word. ‘These prices,’ it said, ‘will put us five per cent ahead of the competition in most of the categories according to … to … to …’

  ‘According to who, Nige?’

  ‘It was just … just a pair of initials, Harry, that’s all. … They didn’t mean anything to me … at the time … except they didn’t b-belong to anybody in the c-company. Some kind of informant, that was c-clear to me. … I showed it to Heather, well, because I wanted to blacken Roy’s name as m-much as I could. … As s-simple as that … And that’s all … all I wanted to do. … I hate Roy … and I wanted to make Heather hate him as well … But she recognized the initials, Harry … She realized who they belonged to … and how s-serious my d-discovery was … I’d never have sh-shown her … if I’d understood … what it meant.’

  ‘What were the initials, Nige?’

  For answer, Mossop launched himself on a flawless recital of the note Roy Mallender had written to his father. ‘ “These prices will put us five per cent ahead of the competition in most of the categories, according to A.D.” ’

  Harry flinched physically as well as mentally. A.D. could only be Alan Dysart, Member of Parliament, Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, decorated war hero, man of the people, terrorist target, friend in need … and stooge of the Mallenders. Twenty-three days after Charlie Mallender’s daughter had been killed aboard his yacht, Dysart had evidently passed commercial secrets to Charlie Mallender’s son. Who better to ensure that Mallender Marine would win the contract than the man in charge of those awarding it? But why? Why should he have risked his reputation in such a way? A vague sense of responsibility for Clare Mallender’s death could not be the reason. There had to be more to it.

  ‘I see you recognize the initials as well,’ Mossop went on. ‘Alan Dysart, the p-p-politician. Heather told me at once … they had to be his. The man her s-sister had worked for. I was ama-amazed. I knew … knew Dysart had s-served with Ch-Charlie in the Navy and might have done the company one or two f-favours, but … but not this kind of thing. It was m-mad … It made no … no sense.’

  ‘What did Heather make of it?’

  ‘That was the s-strangest part of all. She treated it like … like confirmation of something else. I don’t know what exactly, but something to do with her illness. She reckoned it p-proved she’d been right all along about her sister. She wouldn’t say more than that … She r-reckoned I’d be safer not knowing what it proved.’

  What would Heather have deduced from such a document? The answer had to lie in her belief that Clare had been pregnant, a belief others had been keen to interpret merely as a symptom of her illness. Suddenly, chanced upon in the archives, she had obtained evidence that Dysart had bought her family’s silence within a month of Clare’s death. What else but Clare’s pregnancy by him would Dysart have needed them to be silent about? Heather could not have known at that stage how much less straightforward the circumstances really were. She could not have guessed one fraction of all she was subsequently to discover. ‘What did you do with the information, Nige?’

  ‘I wish … wish to God … we’d destroyed it. But Heather decided to confront Roy with it. To prove to him, I suppose, that she hadn’t been mad to believe whatever she h
ad believed about her sister. Anyway, the next thing I knew she was off sick. Then Roy called me in and told me I was being … pr-promoted. I couldn’t … couldn’t understand it. There was no … no mention of what we’d found … then or later. According to Roy, I was being r-rewarded for l-long and l-loyal service. I was being shut up … of course. … I knew that … well enough. But what … what c-could I do? Without Heather … and the evidence … what could I do?’

  ‘Nothing, Nige. Go on: what happened next?’

  ‘Well, Heather came back after about … about ten days. She seemed very … subdued … and didn’t say anything about what had occurred. She hardly spoke a word to me … in fact. I took it … took it she didn’t want to d-discuss it, so I didn’t … didn’t press her to. I th-thought we’d just pretend it had never … never happened. But then, the Friday before August b-bank holiday … she asked me to have a drink with her after work. It was the first time we’d been alone together … since working at Cambridge Road. Well, that was when she t-told me … what Roy had done when she’d shown him the memo. He’d taken her st-straight in to see the old man, it seems, and they’d persuaded her to hand it … over to them, saying she’d misconstrued the situation, didn’t understand business affairs and should put it out of her mind completely, otherwise … well, if she went round making wild allegations, p-people might think she needed to be re-committed to h-hospital. She’d gone along with them … because she’d been f-frightened by what they’d said … but she’d also decided to m-make some enquiries on her own account … after the d-dust had settled. Not repeat the mistake of telling her family what she was doing, just see what she could dig up. She asked me to d-drive her to Tyler’s Hard that w-weekend … to make a start. Apparently, she’d met Dysart’s c-cleaning lady at Clare’s funeral and wanted to f-follow up something the woman had said. Roy and Ch-Charlie probably thought they’d frightened her out of doing anything, but … they were wrong, Harry, so … so wrong. She’d acquired this … this determination … to go on with her personal crusade … and I could see … see there was no stopping her. So I drove her to Tyler’s Hard on the Sunday, like I told you before. She didn’t involve me after that. She said … said it was better if I had no p-part in what she was doing, said that way I could p-pretend I knew nothing about it.’