She paused. ‘Nothing beyond the Guth family, that is.’ She leaned forward. ‘I know that you were the one who was shot at. We don’t know who did this, but there has to be a chance it was one of the family.’
‘Justin?’
‘Too early to say. But yes, maybe. Keep your eyes and ears open, and let us know if you learn anything else that might be helpful.’
‘You know Alice isn’t responsible for Sam Bowen’s death now, right?’
DI Creswell just shrugged.
Forty-Six
Alice set to work on the kitchen. With so many people in the house, it needed cleaning. And rearranging.
Megan was helping. Megan rarely helped, which irritated Alice minorly, but it turned out that it was much worse when Megan helped properly. She wasn’t great at the cleaning, but that didn’t matter too much – Tara from the village would go over everything again when she came for her regular visit.
The real problem was that Megan didn’t understand how important it was that everything be put back in exactly its proper place. Seven years on, and the kitchen, Mom’s kitchen, was still exactly as she had left it. Soon after her mother’s death Alice had noticed how her father, who previously couldn’t care where anything was kept, now quietly ensured everything was where it should be. They had never discussed it, but Alice had been happy to go along with it, and in a ridiculous way she was proud that between the two of them they had managed to preserve her mother’s order for so many years.
Of course Megan knew nothing of this, and Alice wasn’t about to tell her. Megan’s view on cupboards was: if it fits, shove it in.
‘So who do you think killed Sam?’ said Megan as she pushed the flour jar back on the wrong side of the toaster. She tried to make it sound casual, but Alice recognized the tension in her sister’s voice.
‘I have no idea,’ said Alice, as she sorted the spice jars.
‘Do you think it’s connected to Lars’s death?’
‘I said, I have no idea.’
‘But you must have been thinking about it,’ Megan protested. ‘In jail.’
Alice wanted to scream at her sister. But she didn’t. She turned to face her. ‘Megan. Can you leave the rest to me? Please.’
Alice was ready for a barbed comment, or even a hurled insult. But Megan just looked hurt.
‘OK,’ she said, and she was gone.
As Alice rearranged the flour jar and the toaster, she felt guilty. She knew she was being unfair: for once, Megan was genuinely trying to help her. She was pulling her weight, and Alice knew she should appreciate it.
But it worried her. Megan was smart. The brain that had been able to untangle fiendishly complicated math problems may well be capable of figuring out what was happening at Barnholt.
Toby was smart too, and, unlike Megan, he understood people. He understood her. The two of them made a dangerous combination.
Alice stood by the sink staring out at the naked pear tree and the brown and orange saltmarsh beyond. She could feel the pressure building up on her shoulders to the point where it was almost more than she could bear.
She buckled. She lowered her head and sobbed, tears dropping into the kitchen sink.
But then she straightened up. Wiped her eyes. Sniffed. Tried and succeeded to pull herself together.
With her slippery solicitor’s help she had handled the police. She had handled her father. She had done her best, her very best, to hold her family together.
And now her sister and her husband were threatening to undermine it all.
Maybe she should trust them. She could sense the change in Megan, habitually her most untrustworthy sister. And Toby?
She had always relied on Toby. She had begged him not to ask her questions and, by and large, he had obliged. But she knew he was asking other people.
Toby was trustworthy. He was absolutely honest. He could always be relied on to do the right thing.
But could he be relied on to do the wrong thing?
Forty-Seven
It was lunchtime when Toby returned to Barnholt.
Alice was waiting for him in the hall. ‘Well?’
‘I didn’t say anything about Pat Greenwald.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
‘But now they seem to think you are having an affair with Justin.’
‘Justin?’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, great.’
‘Yep. I think they still think you killed Sam Bowen, and Justin killed Lars.’
Alice shook her head. ‘Wonderful.’
Toby put his arm round her. ‘We’ll figure it out.’
Alice made everyone a lunch of cold turkey sandwiches, everyone being Toby, Bill and Megan.
The Guth family’s response to the pressure of the weekend’s events was to revert to type. Despite his suspicion of his daughter, Bill was perfectly polite to her, solicitous even. He offered to help with the sandwiches, and Alice let him. But she was in charge.
Megan was surly. And Toby? He had no idea how to behave. He was on Alice’s side, that was all he knew. He retreated to politeness.
They all sat down. In that stilted, artificial atmosphere, it was Megan’s role to ask the direct questions.
‘So who do the police think killed Lars?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Toby. ‘But I know Justin is on their list.’
‘That’s good for Alice, right?’ said Megan.
Alice sighed. ‘Not necessarily. The police think Justin and I are having an affair.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ spluttered Bill, flinging down his sandwich in contempt.
‘Is it?’ said Megan.
Toby glared at her.
‘Of course it is,’ said Alice. ‘He and I had dinner together in San Francisco in September. Otherwise, I’ve scarcely seen him.’
‘And, you may have noticed, Alice is married,’ Toby said. ‘To me.’ He was keen to dismiss Megan’s suggestion without fuss. He didn’t want to think about it; he didn’t want to doubt his wife. Because he knew he could if he let himself.
Megan looked at the two of them. ‘Hey, I’m sorry, Alice. And Toby.’
‘OK,’ Alice said. There were a number of different ways Alice could say ‘OK’. The three others around the kitchen table knew that she meant to forgive Megan.
‘Did Justin mention Sam Bowen at all when you saw him in San Francisco?’ Toby asked.
‘No,’ Alice replied. ‘It was a few months ago. October, I think. I guess it may have been before Sam had started asking questions.’
‘We don’t know when that was,’ said Megan, glancing at her father. ‘Sam must have been researching the book for several months at least.’
Bill shrugged.
Alice hesitated. ‘But he did start talking about Craig – you know how Justin has always been obsessed with him. He asked me whether I knew what had really happened on the submarine, how Craig had died. He couldn’t believe it was just an accident, and he said Brooke had told him I knew more than she did. Which was true.’
‘Did you tell him?’ said Bill.
‘No,’ said Alice. She hesitated. ‘Although I kind of implied that Craig had been in favour of launching the missiles. I didn’t really mean to – what I said was that Dad and Lars were the only officers on the sub who didn’t want to launch. Justin got upset at that and asked me for details. I backtracked and said I didn’t really know what happened, it was just an impression. But it was clear he took it badly.’
‘Do you think he guessed what really happened?’ Toby asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Alice. ‘I suppose he might have figured it out afterward, but I don’t see how.’
‘It looked to me like he was genuinely surprised when Lars claimed he had killed Craig by accident,’ said Megan.
Toby pondered what Alice had told them. ‘If Justin thought that the father he admired so much had actually been in favour of starting a nuclear war, he would be upset. He would be even more upset if Sam was going to tell the whole world about it.’
‘I wondered about that,’ said Megan. ‘Upset enough to kill him?’
Toby shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Alice.
They munched their sandwiches in silence.
‘I wish we knew what the police knew,’ Toby said.
‘What do you mean?’ said Megan.
‘I mean they will have done a load of forensic analysis. They will have interviewed dozens of witnesses. They’ll have checked alibis. They’ll have searched Sam Bowen’s stuff, and his phone records. And they won’t tell us any of it.’
‘Why should they?’ said Alice. ‘Especially if they still think I’m guilty.’
‘Did you talk to MI5 about Pat Greenwald?’ Megan asked Toby.
Bill flinched.
‘No,’ Toby said, glancing at his wife. ‘I decided not to.’
‘Good,’ said Bill.
‘Did you know she’s dead?’ said Megan to her father.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘No. No, I didn’t. How come you know?’
‘Googled her last night,’ said Megan. ‘She was murdered. In New York.’
‘How awful,’ said Bill. He was clearly trying to give his words the correct weighting of concern: enough to register that that was an awful way for anyone to die, not enough to suggest he was especially concerned.
‘Yeah. It is awful. And it was in 1996. The same year the FBI came looking for you.’
Bill chewed his sandwich, trying – and succeeding – to control his annoyance with his daughter.
‘Did they find who killed her?’ said Alice.
‘No. The newspaper report said it was a mugging gone wrong.’
Bill’s shoulders seemed to relax slightly.
‘There’s more to Pat Greenwald than you have told us, isn’t there, Dad?’ said Megan.
‘I’ve told you what I can,’ said Bill.
‘Oh, yes?’ said Megan. ‘And was that the truth?’
‘Of course it was the truth!’ snapped Bill.
‘But not the whole truth?’ Megan glanced at Toby. ‘The reason Sam Bowen and Uncle Lars were killed has something to do with that woman. It must have!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bill.
Megan turned to Alice. ‘Come on, Alice? You must agree with me?’
Alice didn’t answer. But she was glaring at her father.
Toby spoke. ‘Don’t lie to us, Bill.’ He hadn’t thought before he spoke those words: they were more direct than would be expected from a recent son-in-law hiding behind politeness. But he said them quietly and sincerely, and that gave them power. He wanted to trust his father-in-law. He wanted Megan and Alice – and Brooke and Maya – to trust him.
He could see that was something Bill wanted also.
‘All right,’ Bill said. ‘There are some things to do with Pat I left out when I told you about her before. And some things that were not strictly accurate.’
Megan, Toby and Alice listened in suspicious silence as Bill explained a bit more about what had happened after he had quit the Navy: about seeing Pat Greenwald in Central Park in 1984, and the trip he and Donna took to Paris to talk to a Russian physicist.
And then he told them about another meeting one evening later on that year.
Forty-Eight
June 1984 New York
I got a job in a bar on the Upper East Side after I was discharged, while I waited for the business school semester to start. I was staying with Donna in her tiny studio apartment. This was fine for me – her studio was many times the size of the JO Jungle – and she coped pretty well. I was tidy, I was considerate. It was great to be together.
I found adjusting to civilian life a bit of a shock. I had been in the arms of the Navy since the age of eighteen and I had gotten used to the structure. It wasn’t so much my own liberty to do what I liked that bothered me, as much as everyone else’s. It kind of bugged me if people didn’t do what they were supposed to. The manager who ran the bar was a nice guy, as were the other staff, who were mostly students or actors, but the operation was slapdash. Glasses unwashed, drinks unpoured, counter unwiped.
I would just have to get used to it. I was going to have to adjust to the civilian world, rather than the civilian world adjusting to me.
From what the others told me, the bar used to be a thriving pick-up joint, but the AIDS scare was taking its toll. Weekends could get busy, but it was quiet early in the week. One Monday evening a morose-looking guy of about forty in a crumpled suit drank his way through a few whiskeys, chatting to me disjointedly as I kept him topped up. He was foreign, probably an expat banker.
After we had closed up for the night, I was surprised when he emerged from the shadows outside the bar.
‘Can I have a quiet word?’ he said.
I tensed. The man didn’t look like a mugger, or a guy trying to pick me up – not that there was much of that any more with the fear of AIDS.
A con man, probably.
I turned to face him. ‘No,’ I said, firmly.
‘My name is Vassily Sapalyov,’ he said. ‘I am a colleague of Irena Boyarova. I believe you know her?’
‘I see.’
‘Let me buy you a drink? There is a hotel a couple of blocks away. Their bar will still be open.’
‘Haven’t you had enough to drink?’
The man laughed. ‘I’m Russian. I have not had nearly enough to drink.’
The hotel bar was indeed open, although empty, and Sapalyov bought us both single-malt whiskies. Glenfiddich.
‘I love this stuff,’ said Sapalyov with a grin. ‘I think it is the one thing I enjoy most about trips outside Russia.’
The melancholy seemed to have left him. It was if he was a different person. As if he had been acting before.
‘Are you a physicist too?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Yes, just like Irena.’
I doubted that, somehow. The guy just didn’t look like a physicist. ‘What is your field?’ I asked. I was a nuclear engineer and I had majored in Physics at the Naval Academy: I was planning to ask questions.
‘I’d rather not say,’ said the Russian.
‘You work for the KGB, don’t you?’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ said Sapalyov. ‘Why do you Americans think all Russians work for the KGB?’
‘All Russians outside the Soviet Union.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
I didn’t care about this joker. But something else caused me much more concern. ‘Is Irena in the KGB?’
Sapalyov had intelligent eyes. Not the kind of intelligence that can immediately grasp negative probabilities in Quantum Mechanics. They were shrewd. They could read people. No way was this guy a nuclear physicist.
‘Irena is not in the KGB,’ Sapalyov said. ‘She is a devoted worker for peace and a good friend of mine. The information you gave her has made its way to people who can influence our nuclear policy.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘We would like to introduce you to Pavel. You may have heard of him?’
‘Yes, Irena mentioned him. He is an officer in your navy.’
‘That’s correct. Like you he is concerned about nuclear accidents. He knows of a similar event on one of our submarines that happened two years ago in the Pacific.’
Despite myself, I was intrigued.
‘How do I get to meet this Pavel? He’s a serving officer, right?’
‘A neutral country. You would have to fly there, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you now you have left the Navy.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘What have you got to lose? Just talk to him.’
‘To a serving officer in the enemy’s navy?’
‘But that’s the point, isn’t it, Bill? He has the same doubts you do.’
I drained my whiskey. ‘No, Mr Sapalyov. I have done all I’m going to do. I’m not a spy, or at least I don’t consider myself a spy, and I won’t become one. I won’t have any more contact with you in the future, or Irena Boyaro
va.’
‘But there is so much more you can do for the cause of peace,’ said the Russian.
‘No. That’s it.’ I stood up.
‘You have already betrayed your country,’ said Sapalyov. His voice was low, a growl.
I sat down again and leaned over towards the Russian. ‘Don’t try to threaten me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t care. I don’t care if you expose me. I don’t care if you assault me. I don’t even care if you kill me. You don’t know what it’s like to stare the end of the world in the face, like I’ve done. I don’t care what the consequences are: I will not betray my country. Is that clear?’
And at that moment, I truly didn’t care.
‘If you can use the information I gave you to make a nuclear war less likely, all well and good. If you want anything else from me, you won’t get it.’
Sapalyov’s shrewd eyes assessed me. He decided I wasn’t bluffing.
‘I have no intention of making you do something you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to meet Pavel, that’s fine. I – we – are grateful for what you have already told us.’
‘And by “we”, who do you mean?’
‘The Gorky Trust Group. The Soviet peace movement, such as it is.’ The Russian reached out his hand and touched my sleeve. ‘I just have one last question for you.’
‘Yes?’
‘Would any of the other officers on the Alexander Hamilton be willing to speak to us? After all, they saw the world come to the brink of destruction just like you.’
I thought of Lars. Of the XO. Of Commander Driscoll. Then I thought of the KGB.
‘No.’
The Russian let his disappointment show, but after a moment’s reflection seemed to accept my refusal. ‘I understand. Goodbye, Lieutenant Guth. And if you change your mind, just tell Dr Greenwald.’
As I walked downtown towards the subway, I was worried. I knew nothing about spies, but there had to be a good chance that Vassily Sapalyov was one. Which meant that Irena Boyarova was probably a spy also. Maybe even Pat Greenwald.
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