Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  Harry shrank back against the car seat, recoiling physically from all that Chipchase’s story implied. Dysart not Dysart at all. Then who? And why?

  ‘He must have spotted me, Harry. That’s all I can think. A fly customer, our so-called Alan Dysart. He must have guessed I’d find the stone and be intrigued by it. But he was too clever to let me see he’d rumbled me. He just made sure the next time I came – or anyone came – there’d be nothing to find. He had the stone removed. And that’s not all. I was dumbstruck to find it gone, but I wasn’t about to convince myself I’d been mistaken. Oh no. That’s asking too much of old Chipchase. I went to the cemetery office, dug out the attendant, got referred to some superintendent of the dead in a bigger cemetery the other side of Birmingham, went there, demanded to see the relevant register, was shown it and … guess what?’

  Like a boulder accelerating down a slope, like flood-water rising about him, Harry saw and felt the certainty of deception. Dysart’s deception. Not just of Harry. Not just of all those who had supported and admired him. But of the whole world he had moved and lived in. ‘I was slick, I was witty. I was word-perfect’. He had said so himself and he had meant it. He had played a part and never been caught out. Till now.

  ‘The page was missing, Harry. The bloody page was missing. Sliced out so close to the spine you’d not have noticed till you looked for its contents. Well, the superintendent went into a bureaucratic bloody spin about it, I don’t mind telling you, but there was nothing either of us could do. The stone was gone. The page was gone. And every shred of evidence with them. Dysart had made sure, you see, made sure it could only be my word against his. There was nothing. Not a trace.’

  Oh, but there was. Harry knew that even if Chipchase did not. Like a dove returning to its cote, truth had fluttered into his mind, pale and silent as an unmarked grave. This was the secret. Of course. Not corruption. Not murder. Not any other fantasy of an unavenged sister. But Dysart’s own secret. The secret of his life. It came to him without the need for proof or evidence. It came to him with a flood of guilt for doubting Heather. This was what she knew. This was why she had fled. Because to know the truth about Alan Dysart was to be in danger. Like Ramsey Everett. Like Willy Morpurgo. Like Clare Mallender. No wonder Heather had sought refuge in Iraklio if this was the connection she had made. Like the scattered shards of a broken stone reassembling themselves before him. With a name inscribed upon it. Alan Dysart. They were all his prisoners now.

  ‘Well, I dropped it there and then, Harry. What else could I do? I had gristlier joints than Dysart’s past to chew on around that time. Arranging a moonlight flit with Jackie and her wardrobe, to be precise. I forgot all about it as soon as we left the country. And I’d never have remembered but for Dysart playing Lord Nelson in the Falklands. That was a bad time to be an Englishman in Spain, I can tell you. It brought it all back to me. All that charm, all that casual dazzling bloody brilliance. I hear he’s in Parliament now – a minister in the government. I hear he’s so important those Irish headcases keep lobbing bombs at him. Well, maybe they’ve got it right. For the rest, they’re welcome to him. And so are you, Harry boy. I shouldn’t care to have Alan Dysart for a landlord. I shouldn’t care to have anything to do with him. As far as fraud goes, I’m not even in the same league as him. What’s flogging a time-shared shack on Mykonos compared with peddling a dreamed-up life? I don’t know who or what Dysart is, but this I do know. I wouldn’t trust him an inch. Not a bloody inch.’

  The warning had come too late. For Harry had trusted Dysart. And with far more than friendship or loyalty. He had trusted him with the secret of Heather’s hiding-place. ‘Hold on. I’ll need a pen. Right: go ahead.’ Harry had been duped all along, it was true, but not by Heather. He saw that now. He understood at last. ‘Flat three, twenty-four Odos, Farnakos, Iraklio, Athens.’ So simple. So precise. Heather’s secret was out. Courtesy of Harry, Dysart’s prisoner had been returned to him.

  Harry leaned forward across the back of the front seat, touched the taxi-driver’s shoulder and pushed a five thousand drachma note into his hand. ‘Pio grigora, parakalo.’ The taxi-driver glanced round at him, then down at the note. ‘Endaksi,’ he muttered. Then he swerved into the outside lane and pushed the accelerator towards the floor.

  55

  ODOS FARNAKOS WAS dark and still, moist and chilly air suspended grainily in half a dozen porch lights. Harry made his way cautiously along the narrow pavement, pitted with shadows, until he reached number twenty-four. Then he gazed about him, straining his eyes to penetrate the gulfs of blackness that loomed between the pallid walls. Nothing stirred. Nothing moved. All was drab and silent normality. Only his tautened senses suggested otherwise. There was nothing to see, nothing to fear. Except what he had already imagined.

  He moved up the path between the pine trees, caught their scent on the air, and reached the door. Six buttons, each lit by a tiny bulb. Six names typed on perspex-covered card. Six grilles in which to plead a case for admission. On the third card, in capitals, KOΞ. No initial, no marital status, no Anglicized version: a strange conceit. Harry noticed his finger shaking as he pressed the button. Thirty seconds that seemed as many hours passed, then there was a crackle through the grille and a voice said: ‘Pios eenekei, parakalo?’ It was Heather’s. He leaned closer to the grille and tried to speak, but managed only a nerve-dried croak. ‘Ya soo?’ She had heard something and sounded anxious.

  ‘It’s me. Harry.’ The words were out at last.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Can I come in, please? It’s vital I speak to you.’

  ‘Harry?’ She seemed unable to believe the evidence of her own ears.

  ‘Will you let me in? We must talk.’

  The crackle ceased. Communication was suspended. But the door did not open. Instead, there was the sound of something heavy rolling back above him, a fluttering movement, a deepening of the shadows about him. He stepped beck and squinted up at the first-floor balcony. A figure was standing by the parapet, looking straight down at him. He shaded his eyes against the light.

  ‘Heather?’

  ‘How did you find me?’ She spoke quietly and much as he remembered, yet a tone of softness had vanished from her voice.

  ‘I could explain. But that doesn’t matter. Not now.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Her face was nothing more than a silhouette against the sky. He could distinguish nothing of her expression.

  ‘To talk. That’s all.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I need to know if I’ve done wrong. I need to know if I’ve endangered you.’

  ‘How could you have done that?’

  ‘By telling somebody else I’d found your hiding-place.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dysart.’

  She drew back as if struck. He thought he heard her gasp, thought he saw her grip on the parapet tighten.

  ‘Heather?’

  She seemed to sway above him, seemed almost about to fall, then recovered herself. He heard her take a deep breath. ‘Wait there,’ she said decisively. ‘I’ll let you in.’

  She was waiting in the doorway of the flat when he reached the first-floor landing, still in silhouette, the light behind her. As he approached, she turned away and he followed her down a short corridor into a spacious lounge. Thick rugs on a parquet floor. Dark curtains across the balcony window. Minimalist, clean-limbed furniture. Subdued lighting. A kitchen visible beyond an archway at the end of the room. Music playing somewhere: a folk singer he did not recognize. And Heather, facing him at last across no more than a yard of space.

  She was as he had seen her on Friday, somehow younger than on Rhodes, her flaxen hair cropped, her expression more elfin than he could ever remember. She was wearing an apron over jeans and a sweater and embroidered on the apron were row upon row of contented pandas chewing bamboo shoots. The cosiness of the image was like a blow to his ribs. And then he noticed how violently she was trembling.

  ‘How did y
ou find me?’ she said unsteadily.

  He took the photographs from his pocket and handed them back to her. ‘These were waiting for you in Rhodes. I found the receipt and collected them. The two shots you took here in Athens led me to Sheila Cox. I followed her here from Shelley College yesterday morning and saw you come in together. Where is she now?’

  ‘Out. When did you tell Dysart you’d found me?’

  ‘Yesterday aftemoon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So he could pass the information on to your parents. I didn’t want to speak to them in person. They’ve suspected me of God knows what since you disappeared. Have you heard from them?’

  ‘No. And I should have done by now, shouldn’t I, Harry?’ She turned abruptly away and seized a chairback as if for support. ‘I don’t have time to express any regrets, Harry. You’re owed quite a few, I know, but the trouble is you don’t understand what you’ve done by telling Dysart.’

  ‘What have I done?’

  She looked back at him, her face distorted by rising panic. When she spoke, it was almost in a scream. ‘If he finds me, he’ll kill me.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’ But it could be. He knew so in his heart. ‘He’s been as anxious as me to … to …’

  Heather looked down at the photographs in her hand. ‘To what, Harry? The answer was here all along, if you’d only known. The secret he’s trying to hide. The secret he killed Clare to keep.’

  ‘Clare? That’s impossible.’

  ‘Don’t you realize what these are about?’ She turned and waved the photographs in front of him. ‘Don’t you have any idea?’

  ‘Of course.’ A childish wish to prove his intelligence came upon him. ‘The Tyrrell Society. The defenestration of Ramsey Everett. The car crash. Willy Morpurgo. Cyril Ockleton. Rex Cunningham. I traced them all, you see. I know Clare was pregnant. I know your brother blackmailed Dysart into giving Mallender Marine the Phormio contract. But none of that proves Dysart murdered Clare. Or that he could even think of murdering you.’

  ‘I thought the same myself at first.’ She seemed almost inclined to smile. ‘I spilled out my wild theory to Dr Kingdom and he poured polite scorn all over it. I went to Rhodes to try to forget it.’

  ‘But he followed you there. Why?’

  ‘Dr Kingdom? Oh, merely to confirm I was all right. To reassure himself my recovery was proceeding well. How did you—’

  ‘What about his visit – a few days later?’

  ‘What other visit? I’ve not seen him since he came to Lindos on my last Sunday there.’

  ‘That can’t be true. He was on Rhodes the day you disappeared. ‘

  ‘No he wasn’t.’ Heather frowned. ‘He can’t have been.’

  ‘But he was. He returned. And he didn’t leave alone. And according to his file notes … there’s every reason … to think …’ His words died where understanding was born. Had he ever seen the file notes in Kingdom’s possession? Had he ever seen the airline records of Kingdom’s journeys to Rhodes?

  ‘I didn’t run away because of Dr Kingdom, Harry. He was the one who convinced me I had nothing to fear, the one who finally persuaded me my theory about Clare being murdered was a delusion, a symptom of my illness. It wasn’t because he came to Lindos that I changed my mind.’

  ‘Why did you, then?’

  ‘Because of what happened three days later. I went into Rhodes Town on the bus. Remember?’

  ‘The day you hired the car?’

  ‘Yes. I saw Jack Cornelius there. I saw him, but he didn’t see me. And then I knew Dr Kingdom was wrong. There could only be one reason for Cornelius to be on Rhodes. Me, Harry. He’d come to arrange my death. It would have been another terrorist attack gone tragically wrong. That’s why Dysart offered me the use of the villa: to make me a sitting duck. They’re in this together, you see, he and Cornelius. They killed Everett. They as good as killed Morpurgo. They murdered Clare. And they mean to murder me. And now you’ve led them to me.’

  Dysart had assured Harry that Cornelius was attending a funeral in Ireland on 11 November. And had also convinced him Kingdom had been on Rhodes the same day. But not so. Dysart had lied to him every inch of the way. And why? Because he must have thought Kingdom suspected him. He must have guessed the Versorelli Institute was where Heather was hiding. He must have employed Zohra Labrooy to lend credibility to the false schedules and faked notes which had sent Harry scurrying off there to do his bidding, only for a dreadful miscalculation to become apparent: Heather was not there at all. Then where was she? In the nick of time, obliging old Harry had rung from Athens with the answer. And that was already more than twenty-four hours ago. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured bleakly.

  ‘I must leave here at once,’ said Heather, ignoring the futile apology. ‘God knows what they’re planning, but I must—’ There was a sound from the hallway behind them. Harry saw Heather’s face twitch with fright, then relax at the jangle of a bunch of keys. It was a noise she seemed to recognize. ‘Sheila?’ she called, smiling in relief.

  When Harry turned round, Sheila Cox was standing in the room, gaping at him in amazement. ‘Who’s this?’ she demanded.

  ‘Harry Barnett,’ said Heather. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve nothing to fear from him.’

  The look in Sheila’s eyes suggested she was not convinced. ‘But he’s a friend of Dysart’s. You told me so yourself.’

  ‘He is yes, and he’s told Dysart where I am. Nevertheless—’

  ‘Let’s keep calm,’ Harry interjected. ‘There’s no sense—’

  ‘You’ve given Dysart this address?’ Anger was being added to surprise in Sheila’s expression.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘How long? How long has he known?’

  It was Heather who replied. ‘Since yesterday afternoon, I’m afraid.’

  ‘My God! Do you realize what this means, Heather?’

  ‘Yes, I realize. It means we’ve got to get out of here. Immediately.’

  ‘It can’t be as bad as that,’ Harry protested. He could hear the pleading note in his voice and knew Heather would be able to as well. But she could not supply the reassurance he craved and he could not make good the damage he had done.

  Sheila fixed Harry with a hostile glare. ‘If you’re not working for Dysart, why did you tell him Heather was here?’

  ‘Because I thought he was trying to help her. Because I thought Dr Kingdom posed the real threat to her safety.’

  ‘Dr Kingdom?’

  ‘Yes. According to Zohra Labrooy—’

  ‘Zohra?’ said Heather. ‘What has she to do with this?’

  ‘She persuaded me Kingdom was obsessed with you, that he was determined not to let you become independent of him.’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s what I believed. I thought she was your friend, for God’s sake. What was I supposed to—’

  ‘Zohra!’ exclaimed Heather. ‘Of course. She was a friend, Harry, but she’s also a Sri Lankan national fighting a deportation order. I introduced her to Dysart six months ago because I thought he might be able to help her win a reprieve. She told me later he’d taken up her case personally. If she’s deliberately misled you, it can only be because—’

  ‘Otherwise Dysart will let her be deported.’ The reality of betrayal closed around Harry as he finished Heather’s sentence. Every friend was false, it seemed, every ally a deceiver. Those he had believed he should have doubted. Those he had doubted he should have trusted. Those he had trusted he should have accused. ‘You’re right,’ he murmured. ‘We must leave here at once.’ Yet still he seemed unable to summon the urgency he knew he should feel. ‘We can’t stay here a moment longer.’

  ‘Where should we go?’ Heather’s voice was bitterly reproachful. ‘You’ve already closed off my last escape route, Harry. So where do you suggest we go next? Nobody will believe us. Nobody will even listen to us. Above all, nobody will protect us.’

  Suddenly, the realization hit Harry that
he was the biggest traitor of all. He had not been blackmailed. He had not been threatened. He had acted out of pride and spite. He had betrayed Heather for no better reason than to avenge a petty humiliation. And this – the unattainability of safety, the impossibility of escape – was the result. Heather was right. There was nowhere they could flee to and nobody they could turn to. For all their sakes it would have been better if Heather had never been found, the mystery of her disappearance never solved. Death without a corpse, as Miltiades had called it, seemed at this moment a merciful oblivion. And then, as Harry thought of the phrase and its inventor, the answer came to him. ‘Miltiades,’ he said abruptly. ‘We must go to Miltiades.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s a senior police officer in Rhodes. He handled your case. I got to know him quite well. Even to like him. He’s met Dysart – and your brother. He’s intelligent and imaginative. He’d give us a fair hearing – and I think he might believe us.’

  ‘Go back to Rhodes, you mean?’

  ‘He’s the only man with the power to help us who might be prepared to do so. He’s the only potential ally I know. So yes: I think we should go back to Rhodes.’

  Heather neither moved nor spoke. Harry saw her lick her lips nervously and exchange a glance with Sheila. ‘I’m not sure,’ she began. ‘It might—’

  ‘How can we trust you?’ Sheila interrupted. ‘You’ve admitted acting as Dysart’s informant.’

  ‘Not deliberately!’

  ‘How do we know you’re not just leading us into a trap?’