Beneath that was a double-column headline: ESTATE AGENT’S MYSTERIOUS HOLIDAY DROWNING.
Nick read on.
An inquest at Sutton Coldfield Magistrates’ Court returned a verdict of accidental death yesterday in the case of Birmingham estate agent Jonathan Braybourne, who died while on holiday in Venice earlier this year. The coroner dismissed a suggestion by Mr Braybourne’s sister that he may have been murdered as groundless.
Mr Braybourne, 43, a partner in the long-established city-centre firm Oldcorn & Co., drowned in one of the Venetian canals on May 30. The Italian police failed to establish how Mr Braybourne came to fall in. There was no evidence that he was intoxicated or that he had been a victim of crime. Bruising on his left temple suggested he may have struck his head as he fell, perhaps causing him to lose consciousness. The incident occurred at night in a poorly lit district and Mr Braybourne’s body was not discovered until the following morning.
Emily Braybourne, the deceased’s sister, s.aid in evidence that she believed the Italian police had not investigated all the circumstances of her brother’s death. She said he had gone to Venice to visit an acquaintance who lived in the city and that this acquaintance had not been properly questioned. She believed him to be implicated in her brother’s murder.
The coroner, in his summing-up, said the British Consul in Venice had written assuring him that the police investigation had been diligently carried out. There were no grounds for suspecting the person named by Miss Braybourne. He suggested that Miss Braybourne was allowing her natural feelings of grief to cloud her judgement and urged her to accept that her brother’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident.
As Nick reread the article, its implications piled up in his mind. He reckoned he knew who Emily Braybourne was. Also the’acquaintance’ of her brother’s, coyly left unnamed by the Birmingham Post. And this, he supposed, was Tom’s warning. Go on digging and Nick could end up like Jonathan Braybourne and the man in the cellar, like Andrew and his father, like Tom himself. The list of the dead was growing. The accidents were becoming too numerous. The threat was not imaginary.
If that was true, Nick’s position was nothing like as perilous as Basil’s. He had alerted Demetrius Paleologus to his presence in Venice. He was suddenly a sitting duck. Panic seized Nick. He jabbed at his mobile, but there was no message from Basil. He rang international directory enquiries and gleaned with difficulty a telephone number for the Hotel Zampogna in Venice. He dialled it.
‘Pronto!’ The voice was female, the tone abrupt.
‘Hotel Zampogna?’
‘Si.’
‘I need to speak to one of your—’
‘Pronto?’ came the bellowed interruption.
‘Mr Paleologus. Can I—’
‘Chi parla?’
‘Listen. It’s very important. Molto importante. I’m Mr Paleologus’s brother. I need to—’
‘Telefono non per i clienti.’
‘But—’
But nothing. The line was dead.
What was he to do? He devoted several seconds to cursing Basil’s aversion to modern technology, but that took him nowhere. Basil might be sipping an espresso in a café in St Mark’s Square. Or he might be at the bottom of a canal. There was no way to tell.
Nick tried to calm himself with long, slow breaths, like the therapist had taught him. It helped, but not much. Basil might call him later and ask what all the fuss was about. Or he might not. If Nick simply waited, he might be doing the best thing. Or he might be frittering away the short time he had to save his brother.
He dialled another number. It was a call he was due to make anyway, though he no longer felt confident of managing it as sensitively as he had planned.
‘Old Ferry Inn.’
‘Irene, this is Nick.’
‘Hi. Good to hear from you. How’s it going in Edinburgh? You are in Edinburgh, aren’t you?’
‘Listen to me, Irene. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Tom’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘It looks like he killed himself. A drugs overdose. Kate and Terry are up here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but—’
‘When was this?’
‘Over the weekend. But never mind that.’
‘Never mind.’
‘Have you heard from Basil?’
‘Basil? No. What are you—’
‘Is Anna at work this morning?’
‘I think so, yes. Look, stop talking about Basil and Anna, Nick, will you? Tom killed himself’I
‘You can contact Kate and Terry at the Balmoral Hotel. Find out from Anna if she’s heard from Basil. Will you do that for me? It’s very important. I’ll call you later. I have to go now.’
‘Hold on, I—’
‘Sorry, Irene. I will call later.‘Bye.’
He put the phone down and started to pack hurriedly. Suddenly, what he had to do was clear to him. Weighing risks and waiting on events was a hopeless course to follow. The only way to be sure Basil had not walked into a trap was to follow him to where the trap might be set.
He wrestled the GNER pocket timetable out of his coat and checked for the next southbound service. A glance at his watch told him he would never make the noon train, but he did not propose to miss the one o’clock. Yet he still had to explain his abrupt departure to Kate and Terry and he owed Kate an account of her son’s death. What was he supposed to do? He could not cover every debt. He would have to go via Milton Keynes to pick up his passport. He phoned British Airways and they told him there were three flights daily to Venice from Gatwick, the last of them at 19.20. The scantiest of calculations told him there was no chance of his being on it. He tried to book a seat on the first flight the following morning, but it was full. Frustrated, he settled for the 13.15, due in at 16.25. Move as fast as he liked, it was still going to take him thirty hours or so to reach Venice. And a lot could happen in thirty hours. He only had to think about the last thirty to appreciate that.
The telephone rang. He picked it up, hoping it was not Irene and praying it might be Basil. It was neither.
‘Ah, Paleologus. Vernon Drysdale here.’
‘Professor Drysdale, I—’
‘I wanted to say how very sorry I was to hear about your nephew. I may not have been able to convey my sentiments adequately thanks to Mr Mawson’s belligerent manner, which I’m happy to attribute to the shock of his bereavement, but this is a historical as well as a personal tragedy. I can only imagine how you’re feeling.’
Nick strongly doubted if Drysdale had the remotest clue how he was feeling.‘I can’t talk right now, Professor. I’m going to have to ring off.’
‘Don’t do that. You see, I’ve reappraised matters in the light of this latest loss to your family and I’m forced to conclude that there may be some contemporary significance in events which I chose to make nothing of in my most widely read publication on the subject for fear that they’d be wrenched from their proper context by less scrupulous scholars than me and given an unwarranted and frankly unwelcome prominence. Where I did explore them in a more soberly academic treatment, there was no explicit cross-reference, you must understand, so unless—’
‘I’m sorry, Professor, but I just don’t have the time for this. I have to go, all right? Goodbye.’
‘But—’
Nick put the telephone down, stuffed the last of his belongings into his bag and made for the door.
‘You’re leaving?’
Kate stared at Nick across the sitting room of her and Terry’s suite at the Balmoral. She looked to have aged several years since Nick had last seen her. Her face was drawn, the skin stretched around her jaw and cheekbones, her eyes bloodshot and swollen-lidded. Wrapped in an oversized Balmoral bathrobe, she seemed to have become slighter and frailer overnight. Tom’s death had killed part of her too.
‘When are you leaving?’
‘Now. Right away.’
‘Can’t you wait until Terry gets back? He won’t be long.’
‘No. I’m sorry. I have to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t explain. It’s too complicated.’
‘But there’s so much I wanted to ask you about Tom.’
‘I told Terry everything.’
‘I wanted you to tell me. The way it was. Anything that could—’
‘I’m sorry, Kate. I can’t do this now. Believe me. I’ve got no choice.’
‘How can I believe you if I don’t understand?’
Nick gazed helplessly at her for a second or two, then said all he could.‘I don’t know.’ And then he turned away.
Thanks to its departing ten minutes late, the one o’clock train left with Nick on board. Before it had cleared the outskirts of Edinburgh, Terry rang him on his mobile.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on, Nick?’
‘I can’t get into it, Terry. I’m doing what I have to do to make sure this doesn’t get any worse than it already is.’
‘What could be worse than Tom killing himself?’
‘Go see Sasha Lovell, his ex-girlfriend. Fifty-six Rankeillor Street. He sent her a note. That tells you about as much as I know. Before you do, though, you’d better tell Kate the truth.’
‘I can’t do that. Not yet.’
‘We’re out of time. You and me both. Face her with it. That’s my advice.’
‘Some advice.’
‘It’s all I can offer. Goodbye, Terry.’
Nick was sorely tempted to turn his mobile off, but he had to keep it on in case Basil called. Basil did not call. Nor, following their terse exchange, did Terry. When a call next came, as the train glided out of York station, it was from Irene.
‘I’ve spoken to Kate, Nick. She’s devastated. And your behaviour isn’t helping. Where are you going?’
‘Has Anna heard from Basil?’
‘No. But Basil can look after himself.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Greece. Or on his way there. Why?’
‘He’s in Venice.’
‘You’re mistaken. He told Anna—’
‘He was covering his tracks, Irene. He’s gone to Venice to confront cousin Demetrius.’
‘He can’t have done.’
‘But he has. And something I learned from Tom makes me think he could well be in danger.’
‘You’re going after him, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you mustn’t. It’s as simple as that. For goodness’ sake, Nick, this is no time for misguided heroics. If Basil’s in some kind of trouble we don’t want you getting mixed up in it as well.’
‘You don’t understand, Irene. I’m already mixed up in it. As a matter of fact, we all are.’
The train reached King’s Cross just before six o’clock. Night had fallen in London. A chill, damp rush hour was under way. Nick hurried west towards Euston station, the route he had been following when he and Tom had met by chance the previous October. Nick thought of how carefree Tom had seemed then, of how stressless his life had apparently been. In the space of four months, everything in it had been turned upside down. And then it had ended. Tom was part of the past now. He was over. He was gone. But the things he had done and the reasons he had done them were not over. They had not gone. They had still to be faced.
Milton Keynes’s rush hour had passed by the time Nick walked out of the station and got into a taxi. The journey along thinly trafficked dual carriageways felt nothing like the homecoming it technically was. The town somehow defied familiarity. Nick had lived there for eight years without losing a sense of transience. Nothing he had done there had greater durability than a footprint on a beach.
Home was a bigger house than he needed in a prim cul-de sac in the Walnut Tree district. It did not look neglected to Nick as he walked up the drive after paying off the taxi driver. It wore his absence as lightly as it always had his. presence. There was not even a great deal of post to obstruct the opening of the front door. The silent, empty house seemed not to have missed him.
He dumped his bag and the accumulated mail in the kitchen, then went round closing curtains and switching on lights. In a bedroom drawer he found the one thing he had come for: his passport. He put it in his pocket and went back down to the kitchen. There was no sense unpacking. But there was time to put some clothes through the wash. They would dry by morning. He set the machine going, then made some tea and drank it in the dining room that doubled as an office, listening to his answer phone messages, most of which he erased.
Next he sorted through the post, with similar results. His bills were paid by direct debit. His life operated by a set of interconnected administrative arrangements. Personal intervention was not required. Everything was orderly and predictable. At all events, it was here.
He had opened the freezer in search of a microwaveable supper, when the doorbell rang. He stood quite still, frowning in puzzlement at his own reflection in the glazed front of the oven next to the fridge. A neighbour, perhaps, concerned by the sudden blaze of lights? It was hard to think who else it could be, uncharacteristic of the residents of Damson Close though this was.
He looked out into the hall and saw the blurred shape of his unexpected visitor through the frosted-glass panel in the door. He had failed to switch on the porch light, so the shape was altogether too dark and indistinct for him to recognize, even supposing he knew the person. It occurred to him that it might be a canvasser or a charity collector or, worse still, a Jehovah’s Witness. He drew back in the hope that they would go away.
But they did not go away. The fuzzy shape of an arm was raised. The doorbell rang, lengthily, insistently. Perhaps it was a neighbour after all. Perhaps they had something important to tell him, something they thought important at any rate. A lost tile, a wrongly delivered parcel. It could be anything. But it would have to be dealt with.
Nick marched to the door and opened it.
The light from the hall flooded out onto Elspeth Hartley’s face.
‘Hello, Nick,’ she said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Will you come for a drive with me?’
Elspeth Hartley was not as Nick remembered. Her hair was shorter and straighter. She no longer wore glasses. She was dressed in a different style as well—black leather jacket and trousers and a black roll-neck sweater; her true style, perhaps. She looked thinner in the face and had her hands buried tensely in her pockets. But, tense or not, she seemed able to brush aside a host of tragedies and deceptions with a breathtakingly insouciant invitation, to which Nick was barely able to frame a response.
‘Well, will you? We can’t talk indoors.’
‘Have you any idea of the damage you’ve done to my family?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you come here like this and calmly ask me to go for a drive?’
‘Who said I was calm?’
‘I just don’t believe it.’
‘I know about Tom. I had a letter too.’ She pulled a crumpled envelope from her pocket.‘He told me what he was going to do. I didn’t really need the police to confirm it. He always did what he said he would. He also said he was going to tell you about Jonty.’
‘Was Jonathan Braybourne your brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which makes you Emily Braybourne.’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘Tom wanted to warn you off. But after everything that’s happened, I reckoned you couldn’t be warned off. You’ve come back for your passport, haven’t you?’
‘You’re very clever.’
‘Not really. Just a good reader of people. I’ve been waiting for you since this afternoon. I don’t think anyone followed you and I’m pretty sure no-one beat me to it. But I’ll feel safer in the car. Are you coming?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you want to know the truth. And with Tom gone, I have to tell it to someone. You’re the only one I can trust.’
‘You
trust me?’
‘Yes. And when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say we’ll trust each other.’
‘Where are we going?’ Nick asked, after they had climbed into the Peugeot and started away. He was still gripped by disbelief at the turn of events. He had looked for her, but he had not found her. She had found him.
‘We’re not going anywhere. I’ll just drive round the ring road.’
‘While you tell me why you set out to destroy my family. Is that right?’
‘No. It’s not right. I didn’t set out to destroy anyone.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘This is the deal, Nick. I talk. You listen. Are you comfortable with that? Because if not ’
‘You promised me the truth.’
‘And I’ll deliver it. On my terms. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Good.’ She concentrated for a moment on joining the dual carriageway that ran round the perimeter of the town, then resumed.‘How much do you know about my father?’
‘Very little. According to Julian Farnsworth, my father and your father met during the War, when they were both stationed in Cyprus. But Dad never mentioned a Digby Braybourne to me. All three of them were archaeologists at Oxford. Your father got involved in an auction-house fraud and wound up in prison. That was in nineteen fifty-seven. And that’s it.’
‘Right. Then this is the rest. My mother worked in the kitchens at Brasenose College. She was a real looker in her youth. My father took a fancy to her and led her on with a promise of marriage. A lie, of course. It would have been unthinkable for a fellow to marry a servant. She got pregnant. Jonty was born just around the time Dad went to prison. When he came out, everything had changed. Now he was more than willing to marry Mum. He had no-one else to turn to. So, they got hitched. I was born in nineteen sixty-six. We lived out at Cowley. A long way from the university, metaphorically as well as literally. Mum pulled some strings to get Dad a clerical job with Morris Motors. But he couldn’t stick office work. He started drinking and gambling. When he was drunk, or out of luck with the horses, he used to knock Mum about. He got the sack. Then he left us. And then he came back. And then he left us again. I didn’t see much of him when I was growing up, but it was more than I wanted to see of him. It was different for Jonty. Dad could do no wrong in his eyes. He adored him. To do Dad justice, I think the feeling was mutual. He very much wanted to be a father Jonty could be proud of. But he didn’t have it in him. In the end, Mum divorced him. By then, Jonty was at Cambridge and he told me later that Dad often went up from London, where he was living, to see him. Mum forbade him to go to the graduation ceremony. But he heard about it later, of course.’
Days Without Number Page 26
