‘What made you use Profitis Ilias?’
‘I’d been there before. I knew the area quite well. It was relatively close to the airport, with several routes to choose from. And it had a special, rather disturbing atmosphere. You must have sensed it yourself.’
‘Oh yes. I sensed it.’
‘I hoped it would encourage speculation that I’d been murdered or abducted. I left my scarf at the summit for the same reason.’
‘After you’d gone, I heard a whistle. Was that Sheila?’
‘Yes. It was her signal to help me find her. She was waiting in a hire-car on the trail the other side of the mountain. She’d driven the long way round to get there, through Embona, and we took another indirect route back to the airport, through Apollona, to make sure nobody saw her both going and coming. Even so, we were in plenty of time for the six o’clock flight to Athens. Since it was internal, I didn’t have to show my passport or give my name.’
‘So you were off the island before I’d even raised the alarm.’
‘I’m sorry, Harry, really I am. It wasn’t fair to leave you in the lurch like that. But what else could I do? I couldn’t let you know what I was planning. I couldn’t leave any kind of trail for Dysart to follow.’
‘But you did leave a trail.’
‘The photographs? Yes, that was stupid of me. I’d used them to record the places I’d been. They were my secret symbols of all I’d discovered. Then, in the rush to get away, I forgot them. Later, I gave them up as lost. Instead of which, they were already in your hands.’
‘And what about the postcards you left in the car? Of Silenus and Aphrodite.’
‘What about them? I just grabbed two off a stall in Rhodes. They could have been of anything. I hoped they would support the idea that I’d been intending to return to the car.’
Harry did not know whether to laugh or cry. The postcards had meant nothing. They had concealed no message. They had held no secret. They were simply two minor components of the charade in which he had played the part of an obliging fool. And now this last hope that he had played some worthier role in Heather’s life was shattered, he scarcely had the heart to listen to what more she had to say.
‘Do you know what really frightens me, Harry? Not the thought that he’ll kill me if he gets the chance, but the thought of every one of those other deaths strung over the decades. Clare was only the latest. Before her there was Willy Morpurgo. He wasn’t killed, I know, but he might as well have been. Then Ramsey Everett. What did he do to provoke Dysart, do you suppose? According to Ockleton, he was something of a misfit in the Tyrrell Society: an amateur criminologist who dug up his fellow students’ guilty secrets for a pastime. So was that the mistake he made? Did he find a guilty secret that Dysart was hiding? If so, what was it? His relationship with Cornelius? Or something else?’
A wry and unseen smile came to Harry’s lips. Heather, he was forced to conclude, did not realize Dysart’s very identity was in question. Chipchase’s recollections had convinced him Heather knew the secret of Dysart’s life buried in a Birmingham cemetery. But not so. After all her probing of the mystery, she was further from the truth than he was himself.
‘I’ve thought often of the kind of mind a person would need to plan and commit such murders: cold; calculating; ruthless; resourceful; devoid of mercy and conscience; free of doubt and uncertainty. But is that what Dysart’s really like? Is that what’s inside him? You know him better than I do, Harry, so what do you think? Is that the true and total measure of Alan Dysart?’
‘I don’t know.’ Harry heard his voice continuing to speak, but at a distance, as if it were not quite his own anymore. ‘You tell me these things about Dysart and they seem to be true, but as far as I’m concerned you might as well be talking about a different person. A stranger. Somebody I’m not acquainted with. Somebody I’ve never even met.’
Ten minutes had passed. The car still stood in its patch of isolated night, but Harry was no longer inside. Muttering assorted platitudes about the need to stretch his legs and take the air, he had left Heather to her own devices and now sat thirty yards away on a low wall, sipping the whisky he had bought earlier at the airport shop. He had promised Heather he would not go far or let the car out of his sight, so his word was intact, even if Heather’s faith in him might not have been, had she realized how fragile his confidence had become.
Ramsey Everett. Willy Morpurgo. Clare Mallender. Their names had formed in his mind a mantra of incomprehension. He thought of Alan Dysart, perpetually young, golden-haired and smiling in his memory. He thought of all the kindnesses he had been done by this man he had now to believe was a murderer. And still the very idea remained absurd and remote. It could not be. It could never have been. And yet, and yet. Save for Morpurgo, they were dead. As to that there could be no question. Nor were they all. There was another in the sequence whom Heather did not know about: Alan Dysart himself, the Alan Dysart whose grave Barry Chipchase had seen.
He took a last sip from the whisky bottle and slid it back into his pocket. Whatever else he was to do, he could not afford to become drunk, delicious though its promise of oblivion seemed. In a few hours they would be on Rhodes. Refuge of a kind would have been found. But what then? Even if Miltiades took them seriously and agreed to protect Heather, what was Harry to do? Stay on Rhodes? Return to England and confront Dysart? He did not know. However long and hard he thought, he could find no answer.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. The psarotaverna where he and Heather had lunched before driving up to Profitis llias came to his mind. That, he supposed, was the last time he had felt contented. Since then, doubt and suspicion had conquered all the ways in which he had sought to isolate himself from the world; doubt, suspicion and the crazy self-flattering notion that he could find Heather and so refute his accusers. Well, he had done it. And now he wished he had not.
He shivered. It was cold out here, alone in the dark, with a chill breeze blowing in off the sea. Yet he had no wish to return to the car. He had nothing to say to Heather and she, if the truth be told, had nothing to say to him. Fear and necessity bound them together. As for friendship and loyalty, he had only ever imagined their existence. He reached into his jacket pocket for the cigarettes he had bought with the whisky: Karelia Sertika, naturally. He pulled one out of the packet with his lips and chuckled ruefully. Heather could rely on him. Even if she did not know it, she could rely on him. He would do his best by her. He would do it to spite her. He slapped his pockets in search of the matches, found them and plucked out the box.
Suddenly, there was flame and heat close to his face. Not the matches. The box still lay unopened in his hand. It was the blue and yellow flare of a lighter. As he made to turn, he was at once aware of a tall, darkly clad figure standing immediately behind him, leaning forward over his shoulder, lighter held before him.
‘A light, Harry?’ He towered above him, his gaunt and shadow-shrouded face gazing down at him like some bird of prey hesitating in the instant before a kill. ‘I may call you Harry, may I not?’ He was Jack Cornelius. And in the wake of his name came a flood of fear, rising with hideous speed round every thought in Harry’s head.
57
CORNELIUS EXTINQUISHED THE lighter. Resting a hand on Harrry’s shoulder, he climbed over the wall and sat down beside him. ‘I would be grateful,’ he said, ‘if you did not move or call out.’ There was a softness in his voice, a sibilance that held within it a certainty of command. ‘I do not think Heather will miss you for a little while yet, do you?’
Harry swallowed hard. It crossed his mind that he might claim Heather was expecting him back at any moment, that unless he returned shortly she had instructions to drive away. But Cornelius’s very manner assured him that lies would be useless. Just as his sinewy hold on Harry’s shoulder implied that any attempt at flight would be in vain.
‘It may have occurred to you to wonder how long I have been here. The answer is as long as you have. I followed you from Iraklio,
after witnessing your somewhat comic precautions against sabotage. I was there when you arrived, hotfoot on your rescue mission. I was waiting for you, Harry, and you did not disappoint me.’
Speech and movement seemed beyond Harry. The hand on his shoulder, the serpentine pitch of Cornelius’s voice, the knowledge of what had happened to Clare Mallender and the others: all held him in their paralysing grip.
‘I haven’t long, Harry. You must excuse me if I dispense with preliminaries. How much has Heather told you – how much have you deduced yourself – about Alan and me?’
Harry struggled to compose an answer. ‘She thinks … I think … that you’ve been … that you are …’
‘How coy we are, how prudish. Well, let me spare you an attempt to describe our relationship. It has been a secret for so long that it is difficult to find appropriate words. Suffice it to say that Alan means more to me than any other living soul. I have been prepared to go to great lengths to protect him.’
‘Such as murder?’
‘Yes. Such as murder. I shall not seek to excuse the inexcusable, but let me ask you this: have you ever loved anyone? Perhaps not. Perhaps you have never known what it is to be willing to die for the one you love. Well, it is a short step from that state to being willing to kill for them as well. A very short step. And one I confess I have taken. You know the occasions to which I refer. You know them but you do not clearly understand them. Am I not right? I would like you to understand, Harry. Really I would.’
Whilst Cornelius went on talking there was hope of rescue or reprieve. To that hope Harry clung. ‘Why don’t you explain the circumstances?’ he said, as calmly as he could contrive.
‘Oh I intend to, Harry, I do indeed. Where shall we begin? Oxford, of course. Breakspear College. Where Alan and I first met. At once our salvation and our ruin. I arrived there as a lapsed monk whose nature had wrecked his vocation, Alan as a young man whose material wealth was only equalled by his emotional poverty. For a very long time we sought to resist the attraction each of us felt to the other, but not for ever. And once we had ceased to resist, we realized how perfectly we were matched. From the first, however, we observed a pact of total secrecy. Though we roomed together and spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, nobody was given any hint that we were lovers. Strictly speaking, our relationship was illegal, at least until Alan was twenty-one, but that was not the reason for secrecy. The reason was Alan’s ambition to become a naval officer and in due course a politician, careers which would have been closed to a known homosexual. I confess that as our time at Oxford drew towards its end, I came to dread our separation. I began to suspect Alan would abandon me, that he would feel it necessary to deny the love he felt for me. I began to crave some way of binding us together, of committing us to each other irrevocably, so that the future, whatever it brought, could not divide us. That, I suppose, is why I agreed to help Alan when he told me he had killed Ramsey Everett.’
‘Why did he kill him?’
‘Why? Because Ramsey Everett was a vile and greedy individual. Because he deserved to be killed. He was jealous of Alan’s popularity in the Tyrrell Society, jealous also of his wealth. He burrowed into Alan’s past like the weevil he was and tried to blackmail him with what he learned. For money, you understand. For nothing grander than a grubby handful of cash. Alan refused. Everett set a deadline: the St George’s Night dinner. And while we ate and drank in one room, Everett had his answer in another. An argument by an open window, a struggle, a push, a fall: if that was murder, I could blame no man for committing it, least of all the man I loved. Alas, Willy Morpurgo witnessed the event. And he thought it was murder. He threatened to denounce Alan at the inquest. Alan appealed to me for help. We agreed that if Willy could be sufficiently frightened, he would hold his tongue. Hence the visit to Burford. Sabotaging his car was intended to result in an alarming experience, nothing more. Alan planned to leave him in no doubt that a more serious accident could be arranged if he insisted on speaking out. As you know, things went rather further than that. Poor Willy. Happy enough with his lot now, I gather. Which is more than most of us can claim.’
‘If this is meant to justify—’
‘No! Not justify. Explain. A blackmailer dead. An honest fool crippled. I felt my conscience could bear such offences. I still do. Clare Mallender likewise. She was no less a blackmailer than Ramsey Everett. And what she threatened to reveal was far more serious, though I admit she can have had no inkling of what it really was.’
‘You had a hand in her murder?’
‘I condoned it. I made it possible. So yes, I was an accessory. To be frank, I had very little choice. It was her life – or mine.’
‘Surely not. It was only your reputation—’
‘More than that. Far more. It is time you knew how much more. Twenty years have passed since Oxford, Harry, twenty years during which Alan and I have grown apart in the eyes of the world, yet have stayed loyal to each other, loyal to our love if to nothing else. Alan is a hero of his country, a minister in its government, a spokesman for all that government does and believes. And I? What am I? A middle-aged schoolteacher? Something else as well, Harry, something else altogether. I am a patriot. An Irish patriot.’
‘So?’
‘It means I recruit; I pass information; I gather intelligence; I cultivate young minds; I strengthen the cause of Irish unity; I participate in the struggle to free my country from British occupation. Do you think the IRA is sustained by nothing more than bloodlust and mania? Do you imagine it has survived and thrived all these years without the support of well-placed and educated sympathizers? Dozens of young Irish Catholics come before me every year at Hurstdown. I pay close attention to those with imagination and perception, I monitor their intellectual progress and to a select few, before they leave, I explain how they can give practical aid to those who fight and die on their behalf. You would, I think, be surprised to learn how many of them now, in their widely differing careers and professions, continue to help us. Some are wealthy, some eminent, some influential. All play their part. And all do so at my instigation.’
There was pride in Cornelius’s voice, a vibrant sense of glory at the secret role he had played. But for Harry there was only the mounting horror of an insistent question: why was he prepared to reveal so much? ‘Does … Does Alan know this?’
‘Of course. How could it be otherwise? He knew before I took the post at Hurstdown. You might even say he has always known, always known, that is, where my heart lay on matters touching Ireland.’
‘But … But he’s a minister in …’
‘The British Government. Precisely, Harry, precisely. We stand on opposite sides of the armed struggle. We owe allegiance to two different and conflicting traditions. Yet we also owe allegiance to each other. Intellectually, he agrees the British have no place or right in Ireland, no place they have not stained with Irish blood, no right they have not stolen from Irish hands. But publicly he must be seen to avow a different version of history. I shall not debate the matter with you. I shall not lecture or proselytize for the cause. Like most of your fellow-countrymen, I imagine you know as much of Ireland as you do of Madagascar or Mars. So let us leave it there. Its relevance is this. One of the few things I would not do for my country is betray my love for Alan. I have never tried to extract information from him. I have never sought to exploit our relationship for the benefit of the organization which I serve so assiduously in other ways. Alas, my fellow patriots would not understand my reasons. They would regard my conduct as treacherous. They would assume that if I had not corrupted Alan, then he must have corrupted me. That is why I could not allow Clare Mallender to expose us. Not because it would have meant political ruin for Alan – although it would – but because it would have marked me down as a traitor, a traitor for whom only one punishment would have been deemed appropriate.’
‘Death?’ said Harry hoarsely.
‘Yes.’ Cornelius sounded almost wistful as he confirmed th
e point. ‘Death. In such cases, neither swift nor painless. And now I have compounded the offence, every sinew of the organization will be strained to ensure the sentence is carried out.’
‘Compounded? How?’
‘I supplied Alan with the kind of explosive and the type of device the IRA regularly employ. I provided the code-words which we used to persuade the police that the IRA had planted the bomb which killed Clare. I betrayed the operational secrets of the IRA for my own benefit. In short, Harry, I mixed the two worlds which I had striven for seventeen years to keep separate. And I fondly believed I could escape the consequences of such an act. Alas for folly. Alas for Jack Cornelius.’
The grasp on Harry’s shoulder tightened. All about him stretched darkness and isolation. His very future seemed restricted to the scant diameter of his sight, limited to whatever the man beside him would say or allow. He forced himself to speak. ‘What do you mean to do?’
Cornelius chuckled. ‘Nothing, Harry. Nothing at all. I have already done what needed to be done. I have put matters right.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No. But shortly you will. You have learned much about Alan in your search for Heather, have you not? Well, so have I. And what I have learned has led me to consider the possibility that the killing of Ramsey Everett was premeditated and that Willy Morpurgo’s accident was always intended to be fatal. Do you follow, Harry? Do you see where such possibilities lead?’
‘I … I’m not sure.’
‘He has deceived me, Harry. He is not what I thought. He has gone too far. The man I love has betrayed me. Ramsey Everett and Clare Mallender were blackmailers. In a sense, they deserved their punishment. But Heather’s is a different case. She has done nothing. She has committed no offence. She has threatened nobody.’ Cornelius fell silent for a moment, then resumed, his tone more disciplined than before. ‘I am as guilty of Clare’s murder as Alan is. That I do not deny. But I was determined to ensure it ended there. There could be no more. That was the last for me, the very last. When Alan decided Heather was too close to the truth, he thought we could repeat the trick. I did not try to dissuade him. I could see he was beyond dissuasion.
Into the Blue Page 45
