‘I did nothing. He took his own life. I don’t really know why.’
‘Yes you do, Shadow Man.’
‘To protect you, I guess, but—’
‘You boxed him into a corner. You left him no way out.’ Her face crumpled. She closed her eyes. Tears flowed down her cheeks. ‘No way out at all.’
‘Wisby was the one threatening him, Chantelle. Not me.’
She reopened her eyes and stared at him through her tears. ‘You’re lying. Wisby and you are in it together. Jem said so.’
‘I know he thought that and I understand why. But he was wrong. And I can prove it. Wisby’s gone. Left the island. He wouldn’t have gone if he knew about you. But he doesn’t. He never met you, did he? He never had the chance to put two and two together. Only I had that chance. I give you my word, Chantelle. No-one else knows what I know. And no-one else can protect you now Jeremy’s dead. Trust me. Please. For my sake as well as yours. Trust me.’
Her arms slackened. Her expression altered fractionally. ‘Give me one good reason … why I should.’
‘Because you have to. Because I’m your only hope. And you’re mine.’
‘You haven’t told anyone about me?’
‘I told Marilyn I’d met Jeremy’s girlfriend here. A girlfriend she knew nothing about. But I didn’t tell her what I really think you and Jeremy were to each other.’
Chantelle swallowed hard and sniffed. ‘What d’you really think we were?’
‘Brother and sister,’ Umber whispered. Then he took a step back, releasing her wrists. Her arms fell to her sides. She did not move. Her mouth was open. But she did not speak. She stared at him, barely blinking. A frozen moment passed.
Then she said, ‘Fuck.’ And that was all she said.
‘Why have your eyes changed colour, Chantelle?’
‘I haven’t got the brown lenses in. They were Jem’s idea. Part of my … disguise.’
‘It’s a good disguise.’
‘Not good enough, though. Is it?’
‘I’d never have seen through it.’
‘How did you rumble me, then?’
‘I didn’t. Sally did. My wife.’
‘I know who she is. Was. Sorry.’
‘She left a clue. I only came across it recently. A magazine cutting.’
Chantelle closed her eyes and sighed. ‘That fucking magazine. Changed my life. My whole life.’
‘Why don’t you—’
Chantelle’s eyes flashed open, wide and alarmed, at the sound of a car drawing near. Umber grabbed her by the shoulders and hurried her from the room, through the doorway into the sheltering darkness of the boat store, where they stood listening as the car drew nearer still, into the parking space in front of the office – and stopped.
‘Don’t worry,’ Umber whispered. ‘It’s Marilyn. She’s come to see me. I can get rid of her.’ They heard the clunk of a car door closing. ‘She’ll go up to the flat. I’ll follow and speak to her there. All you have to do is wait here. Will you do that?’
‘OK,’ said Chantelle in a quavering voice.
‘Don’t move from here. All right?’
‘All right.’
There was another clunk above them: the flat door closing. A floorboard in the hall creaked. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Just stay still and silent.’
‘OK.’
He squeezed her shoulder, then slipped out through the office.
And there he stopped. The car was not Marilyn’s. It was a charcoal-grey BMW. And Umber would have sworn on his life he had seen it before – in Yeovil.
* * *
Too many thoughts tumbled through his brain for him to sort into any pattern that made sense. It was Walsh’s car. Which meant Walsh, not Marilyn, was waiting for him in the flat. Which also meant Walsh knew of his appointment with Marilyn. Umber had clearly been set up.
Set-up or no set-up, he had no choice but to climb the steps to the flat and go in. If Walsh came down, he would find Chantelle, with consequences Umber dared not contemplate. He pulled the office door shut and ran up the steps two at a time.
A few seconds later, he was in the flat, the door slamming behind him as he rushed into the hall, expecting to see Walsh standing expectantly in the middle of the main room. But the room was empty.
‘Umber!’ came Walsh’s voice from the kitchen.
Umber turned. Walsh was leaning casually against the fridge, arms folded, dressed as if for golf, in mustard-yellow polo shirt, generously cut chocolate-brown trousers and two-toned brogues.
‘I was just going to come and look for you. Thanks for saving me the effort.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Marilyn sent me.’ Walsh smiled his gleaming smile. ‘Well, that’s not strictly true. I sent her yesterday. And now I’ve come myself.’
‘What do you want?’
‘These, obviously.’ Walsh picked up the Juniuses from the work-top where Umber had left them. ‘For starters.’
‘Starters?’
‘The main course is Chantelle. What do you know about her, Umber? What have you found out?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Worse luck for you if true, which I doubt. Let me explain the situation to you. Then you’ll understand why you’ve no choice but to cooperate.’ Walsh glanced at his watch. ‘Wisby will have been picked up at the Airport by now. By the police, I mean. Acting on a tip-off. That money you gave him? Hot. Very hot. The serial numbers of the notes match those on a vanload of cash stolen from Securicor in Essex six months ago. Wisby will have a lot of explaining to do. As will the man videoed delivering the money to him at La Rocque earlier today. If and when the film comes to the attention of the police, that is. You catch my drift?’
‘I catch it.’
‘So, what can you tell me about Chantelle?’
‘Like I said: nothing.’
Walsh dropped the Juniuses back on the work-top, pushed himself upright and took two slow steps towards Umber. ‘You know who she is, Umber. You’ve worked it out. And according to what you told Marilyn you’ve recently met her. Well, I’d like to meet her too. Very much. So would one or two other people I know. Can you arrange that for us?’
‘No. I can’t. I wouldn’t know how to.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Many things are.’
‘Too true.’
The man moved like a snake striking. Umber had half-expected something of the kind, but his reactions were far too slow and Walsh was far too quick. The next thing Umber knew was that his face was pressed against the frame of the door to the main room, the edge of the wood grinding against his cheekbone, his right arm doubled up behind him several degrees beyond its natural limit.
‘You’re a lucky man, Umber,’ Walsh rasped in his ear. ‘Knowing more about Chantelle than anyone else means you get the chance to wriggle out of this situation. But don’t push your luck. I’d be happy to reopen those stitches I can see in the back of your head with a few taps against this doorpost. More than happy. So, I suggest you start talking. I really do.’
‘There’s nothing … I can tell you.’
‘Wrong answer. You’re going to have to—’
‘Stop!’
It was Chantelle’s voice. Umber could not see her, but he heard the front door bounce against its stop, setting the letterbox rattling, and glimpsed her shadow in the hallway from the corner of his eye.
‘Let go of him.’
‘Happy to.’ Walsh released Umber’s arm and moved back. ‘Now you’re here.’
Umber turned in time to see Chantelle advancing towards Walsh, her right arm tucked behind her, and guessed in that instant what she was about to do.
‘Good to see you again, Cherie,’ said Walsh. ‘It’s been far too—’
The blade plunged into his stomach, deep and hard. He rocked on his feet, clutching at her as she pulled the knife up, tearing through his flesh and innards and the fabric of his shirt, blood spilling and spreading betwee
n them. His mouth opened wide. But no words came. Only more blood and a clotted, strangulated groan.
He lolled forward against her. His weight pushed her back. The knife came out of him. There was yet more blood. And something thicker and darker, sagging from the wound. He dropped to his knees, then fell sideways into the kitchen doorway.
He moaned and pressed his right hand to his stomach. The sound in his throat became a gurgle. His feet scrabbled at the thin mat beneath them. Then, suddenly, they stopped. His body slackened. His hand slid away from his stomach. He twitched twice. And then he was still.
TWENTY-SIX
‘WHAT ARE WE going to do?’
It was the third or fourth time Chantelle had asked the question and Umber was no surer how to answer it. They were sitting on the bed, facing the Catherine-wheel window, neither caring to glance back at the shape in the kitchen doorway. Umber had covered Walsh’s body as best he could with the hall mat, though that did nothing to conceal the pool of blood on the tiled floor of the kitchen or the patches of it on the hall carpet. Chantelle had removed her blood-smeared T-shirt and trousers and was now enveloped in Jeremy’s dressing gown, but bloodstains remained on the trainers she would at some point have to put back on. Walsh’s death and her responsibility for it were facts they could not ignore.
‘What are we going to do, Shadow Man?’ Chantelle’s voice was tremulous and plaintive. But the we was important. Umber had asked her to trust him. And now it seemed she did.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he said, forcing his brain to reason its way through the shock of what had happened. ‘They’ll come looking for him sooner or later. And you know who they are, don’t you, Chantelle? Or should I call you Cherie?’
‘Chantelle’s my name now. And I don’t know who they are. Or what they are. The people my parents work for, I mean. My foster parents, I ought to call them. My false parents. That man …’ She gestured with her chin towards the door.
‘Walsh?’
She shook her head. ‘Waldron. Eddie Waldron. Uncle Eddie, he wanted me to call him. But I never did. I was always frightened of him.’
‘You don’t have to be frightened of him any more.’
‘He’d have forced you to tell on me. When I saw his car and realized it wasn’t Marilyn who’d come …’ Her head sank. ‘I knew it was him or me.’
‘We’ve got to get out of here, Chantelle. That’s about all I’m certain of. We’ve got to get out.’
‘I was going to make a run for it,’ she went on, hardly seeming to hear him. ‘I wasn’t sure of you. I reckoned it was safer not to trust you. But when I saw the car … I went back for the knife. I thought, finish Uncle Eddie this time, girl. I thought … stop him ever hurting you again.’
‘You did that, Chantelle. You truly did.’
‘You’re not going to let me down, are you, Shadow Man?’ She looked up at him, her eyes moist and red-rimmed. ‘I don’t think I can … go on alone.’
‘We’ll get out of this. Together.’
‘How?’
‘Is there anything in this flat or the office or the boat store to lead them to you?’
‘No. Nothing. Jem was always careful about that.’
There were questions – a host of them – Umber longed to put to her. But they would have to wait. The need now was to act. And to make sure they acted for the best. ‘My car’s just round the corner. We’ll walk to it and drive away.’
‘What about Eddie?’
‘We leave him here. He’ll be found soon enough, but I’m betting those who find him won’t want to set the police on us. On you, anyway.’
‘I can’t walk down the street looking like this.’
‘Could you put some clothes of Jeremy’s on?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Do that. And fast. We should go as soon as we can. But there’s something I have to do first.’
She made no move and merely went on staring at him.
‘Please, Chantelle. Do it.’
She flinched at the forcefulness of his tone, which he instantly regretted. But it had its effect. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured, rising unsteadily and stumbling across to the chest of drawers. ‘Sorry.’
Leaving her to it, Umber jumped up and hurried out into the hall. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the rug clear of the body of the man he now knew as Eddie Waldron. Deliberately avoiding a glance at the bloody, oozing mess of the fatal knife wound, he unclipped the small bunch of keys he had seen hanging from one of Waldron’s belt-loops. The remote for the BMW was among them. Noticing the bulge of a wallet in Waldron’s hip pocket, he took that as well. Then he folded the rug back into place.
He pocketed the wallet and keys and stepped gingerly into the kitchen, keeping clear of the pool of blood. There he hunted down a tea towel, Sellotape and a roll of black plastic rubbish sacks. He took these out into the hall, wrapped the knife in the tea towel, put the bundle inside one of the rubbish sacks, folded it over and taped down the ends. Then he returned to the kitchen one more time – to collect the Juniuses.
‘I’m ready,’ said Chantelle, watching from beside the bed as he edged past the rug-shrouded shape. She was wearing jeans baggy enough to cover all but the toes of her bloodstained trainers, even though they were rolled up several inches at the ankle, and a navy-blue sweater, with some kind of yachting motif on it, that hung to just above her knees. Only the tips of her fingers were visible beneath the sleeves. Umber saw her glance fall to Waldron’s feet protruding from the rug. ‘Christ,’ she murmured. ‘I really did it, didn’t I?’
‘Don’t think about it,’ said Umber. ‘We’re leaving now. OK?’
There was a long silence. Finally, she wrenched her gaze back to Umber. ‘OK.’
‘Put your clothes in this.’ He peeled off a second rubbish sack and tossed it to her, then moved to the front door and edged it open. There was neither sight nor sound of movement on the steps. He waited a few seconds to be sure. Then he stepped back and signalled to Chantelle. ‘Come on.’
She hesitated, then hurried out to join him by the door, the sack containing her discarded clothes clutched in one hand.
‘Go down to the office and wait there. I’m going to check his car. It won’t take long. Then we’ll go.’
Chantelle nodded and headed past him. With a parting glance behind, Umber followed, pulling the door shut as he left. Chantelle was already out of sight as he descended the steps. He flicked the remote at the BMW. The sensor behind the rear mirror flashed. The door locks released. There was no-one close by. The nearest passers-by were on the Boulevard and were paying events in le Quai Bisson no heed. He glanced into the car, but could not see what he was looking for. He strode round to the boot and opened it.
Inside was a smart-looking camcorder, nestling in an unzipped shoulder-bag. And there, to his astonishment, towards the rear of the boot space, was a white cardboard box, fastened with string. The word JUNIUS stared at him in his own, long-ago handwriting. He shook his head in disbelief and smiled despite himself.
‘What is it?’ called Chantelle, frowning at him from the doorway of the office.
‘Something I never expected to see again.’ He hauled the box out and dropped it on the ground, wedged the black plastic bundle under the string and hoisted the camcorder-bag onto his shoulder. ‘Come on.’
Chantelle hurried over. Umber handed her the Juniuses, then picked up the box. The strap of the bag slipped off his shoulder as he did so. Chantelle hoiked it back into place, squinting in puzzlement at the titles on the books she was holding and the word on the side of the box.
‘I’ll explain later. Let’s get moving.’
The walk to the hotel was brief and uneventful. Conspicuous though they felt, no-one in fact paid them any attention. They loaded everything they were carrying into the boot of Umber’s hire car, then he went into the hotel and booked out.
‘Where have you been staying?’ Umber asked Chantelle when he returned to the car.
‘A small hotel
on the other side of St Helier.’
‘Right. We’ll drive there, pick up your stuff, pay your bill and make for the Airport. There should be an evening flight to Gatwick we can get a couple of seats on.’
‘We’re leaving Jersey?’
‘The sooner the better.’
Umber’s every instinct told him they would be safer off the island. What they were going to do back in England he had literally no idea. The next step was all he could focus on. The step after that lay beyond his power to imagine.
‘Where did you grow up, Chantelle?’ he asked as they headed round the coast road towards St Helier through ever thickening traffic: the rush hour was upon them.
‘South Africa. Hong Kong. Gibraltar. We moved about a lot. My parents—’ She broke off. ‘Roy and Jean Hedgecoe. That’s what they’re called. Not Dad and Mum to me any more. Roy and Jean.’
‘What did they do for a living?’
‘Good question. I never really knew. Roy was in import-export, whatever that meant. He had business with … strange people.’
‘Like Eddie Waldron?’
‘His sort, yeah. All his sort.’
‘Any brothers or sisters?’
‘No. Just me. Carted around the world by … Roy and Jean. When I was sixteen, we moved to Monaco. A new opening, they said. More like a reward, I guess. For looking after me so carefully. We lived high there.’
‘And you met Michel Tinaud?’
‘Yeah. He thought he was God’s gift. So did I. I was pretty stupid back then. I had no idea what was going on. Any of it, I mean. Not just what was really going on. I was a different person. Not me. Not this me, anyway. Some … other girl they’d brought me up to be. Only it didn’t work out. I was crazy about Michel. I didn’t really think about much else. I went to Paris with him. Then Wimbledon. And that’s when everything changed. Because of Sally. Your wife. How long were you two married?’
‘Eight years. But we were together a lot longer than that.’
‘You want me to tell you what happened when she tracked me down, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I do.’
‘Do you blame me for her death?’
Sight Unseen Page 22
