Days Without Number (4 page)

In visiting Carwether, moreover, Nick was offsetting the advantage of surprise with a greater disadvantage. They would be meeting where Andrew felt at home. And where he felt like the interloper.

The dog was first to detect his approach. It emerged, ears pricked, from the shadow of a barn as he drove slowly down the potholed track and it started barking as he passed the open gate. Nick pulled up and glanced hopefully towards the house as he turned off the engine. It would have been a relief to see Andrew emerging to call off the brute before he had to climb out and discover whether its bite was worse than its bark. He tried a blast on the horn, but that only

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seemed to annoy the dog, something Nick had absolutely no wish to do.

Then to his considerable relief, he heard his brother's voice. 'Quiet, Skip.' Skip instantly was. Nick looked away from the house towards a corrugated-iron-roofed shed, where the call had come from. And there was Andrew, dressed in a grease and mud-smeared boiler-suit, stepping out round the rusting rear of a Land Rover, wiping his hands on a rag.

His hair was a good deal greyer than when they had last met, his face gaunter. And there was a hint of a stoop where once he had been square-shouldered. Andrew Paleologus was one day short of fifty, but could have been taken for several years past it. The greyness went further than his hair, probably deeper too. He looked like a man who had been struggling for a long time to achieve something he now knew was ultimately beyond him.

Nick got out of the car. Skip growled, but made no move. The two brothers regarded each other solemnly across the yard. 'Hello, Nick,' said Andrew, just when it had begun to seem he might say nothing at all.

'Hello, Andrew.'

'No need to ask what brings you here.'

'I thought you'd be surprised to see me.'

'Hardly.'

'Irene's got me down for your birthday.'

'Glad I could provide her with an excuse.'

'It's only partly that.'

'But the biggest part, I'd say.' He moved closer. 'Want some tea?'

'Coffee would be nice.'

'Got none.'

Tea, then. Fine.'

'Come on in. You'll have to take me as you find me.'

Nick found him as he would have expected rather than hoped. Carwether was a middle-sized, solidly built moorland family farmhouse. It needed roaring fires and gambolling children to

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make it feel like a home. Instead it was cold and silent as a grave, sparsely furnished and echoing to their footfalls. They went into the kitchen, where a range gave off a meagre hint of warmth. Andrew set the tea going while Nick glanced up at a feed merchant's wall calendar hanging near the door. Every day was blank.

'As soon as Irene told me she'd cook me a Sunday lunch at Trennor for my birthday, I knew it was cover for a family conference,' Andrew said over his shoulder as he filled the teapot. 'So, it stood to reason you'd be in on it. She was bound to want you down. The only question was whether you'd come.'

'Well, here I am.' Nick sat down at the table. The Western Morning News was folded open in front of him. He closed it and saw, lying beneath, a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of Bodmin Moor. It too was folded open. Someone - Andrew, presumably - had marked apparently random locations on it with bright red crosses. Half a dozen or more were clustered around Blisland, on the western fringe of the Moor. The rest were scattered more widely. 'Plotting something, are you?'

'What do you mean by that?' There was aggression in Andrew's voice as he turned from the sink.

'These crosses.' Nick smiled to defuse the moment. 'On the map.'

'Oh, those.' Andrew sniffed, fetched a couple of mugs from the cupboard and plonked them down next to the map. 'Yeah. You could say I am. They're a year's worth of recorded sightings.'

'Sightings of what?'

'Big cats.'

'You buy into that?'

'They're out there. If you'd seen what was done to one of my ewes last back end, you'd not doubt it.'

'I thought it was just . . . rural myth.' And that was what he would have expected Andrew - an unvarnished rationalist, if ever there was one - to think as well.

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'What I've seen I've seen.'

'You've seen one?'

'More than one. Or the same one twice. Most recently, there.' He pointed to one of the crosses closest to Carwether. 'A panther of some kind. Large, loose-limbed and black as pitch, a field away from me. Dusk, it was. They're nocturnal, of course. Creatures of the night.'

'Dusk can be a confusing time, visually.'

'You don't have to believe me, Nick.' Andrew gave him a half-smile that was almost contemptuous. 'It really doesn't matter. I'll prove it in the end. To everyone.'

'How will you do that?'

Tnfra-red photography. I've been going out after dark with a special image-intensifying video camera and nightscope. I'll get one on tape sooner or later.'

'But you haven't yet.'

'No. Not yet.' Andrew poured the tea, then sat down at the other end of the table. 'Anyway, you're not here to discuss big cats. Fat ones, now, that's a different matter. We seem to have one by the tail.'

'You mean Tantris?'

'You know all about it?'

T've just come from St Neot. I met Elspeth Hartley there. She filled me in.'

'Persuasive woman.'

'Not as far as Dad's concerned, apparently.'

'He's bound to see it differently.'

'I'd have thought he'd want to be involved in the project. It's right up his street. Buried treasure. Historical mystery. Irresistible, surely, to someone who's made a career out of digging up all our yesterdays.'

'You should tell him that, Nick. It might shame him into agreeing.'

'Maybe I will.'

'Don't mind me. I don't want a fuss to be made about my birthday. A handy way to avoid that is for you to make a fuss about something else.'

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'You are in favour of this, aren't you, Andrew? I mean, Irene said you were, but . . .'

'No harm in checking, is there? Of course I'm in favour.' He leaned back in his chair and gazed through the window into the yard. 'Why wouldn't I be? This farm makes less and less money every year. What's the point of struggling on with nothing to show for it and no-one to pass the place on to?'

'Tom not interested?' Andrew's son had never displayed any enthusiasm for farming that Nick knew of, but still he felt obliged to ask.

'I wouldn't know what he's interested in. Haven't heard from him since Christmas. And that was just a card with his name on it. No message.'

'Is he still in Edinburgh?'

'According to the postmark, yeah. His course finished last summer. I didn't even get invited to the degree ceremony. I'm sure Kate went, though. And that Mawson slob.' The references to his ex-wife and her second husband did not suggest any lessening of hostility with the passage of time. But Andrew did not seem to want to dwell on the point. He had probably dwelt on it too long already. 'Look, Nick, the way I see it we could net at least half as much again as Tantris is currently offering by playing hard to get. He'll pay whatever he has to. It'd be crazy to turn our backs on a deal like this. Naturally, we're agreed. Irene doesn't want to be a pub landlady for the rest of her life any more than Anna wants to go on emptying bedpans. I need the money, God knows. So does Basil. And you're obviously not going to refuse your share. Dad just has to be made to appreciate how much we stand to gain.'

'But what does he stand to gain?'

'The comfort of knowing that he doesn't have to worry about us any more.' Andrew raised a smile. 'Wouldn't you think that'd be enough?'

It was agreed when Nick left that they would say nothing about his visit when they met at Trennor the next day. In

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truth, Nick found himself wishing he really had not gone to Carwether at all. Absence - of Kate, of Tom, of hope - had been stronger there than Andrew's own presence. Farming had been his vocation since boyhood. He had wanted to do only that and nothing else. But now his vocation was exhausted. Maybe Tantris's offer had forced him to acknowledge that painful truth. If so, what might follow upon rejection of the offer did not bear thinking about.

Nick took the A30 east across Bodmin Moor, then headed south through Callington towards Saltash. He chose the route despite, or perhaps because of, the diversion he would be tempted to take. And sure enough he did not resist the temptation.

At Paynter's Cross he turned off along the well remembered lane between the high hedges and the anciently bounded fields that sloped down towards the long, lazy meander of the Tamar as it broadened into the estuary. Not far off now, across those silent pastures, his father was living and breathing and whiling away his day. But Nick was not going to see him. Not if his luck held, anyway. He was not going home - if that was what Trennor really was. He was merely visiting his roots.

Landulph as a settlement barely existed. The parish was centred on Cargreen, a mile away. There were a few cottages near Landulph Church, at the far southern end of the lane Nick had followed from the main road, and a couple of farms within sight. That was it. Trennor lay half a mile off to the west, concealed by a fold of the land. A track led down from the church to the mud-flats bordering the Tamar, winding as it did so between the grounds of the old rectory and an area of marshland converted to meadow in the early nineteenth century and protected from flooding by a dyke.

Nick knew the area with an exactness only lengthy childhood explorations could confer. Every field, every farm, every step of the path round the foreshore to Cargreen and beyond.

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He did not need to walk down the track and stand on the dyke to look across at Warleigh Wood and the delicate span of the railway bridge over the Tavy. He could see them clearly enough in his mind's eye.

The church dated from the same period as St Neot's, but was a plainer, less ambitious structure. It was not noted for its stained glass, nor famed for much beyond some artfully carved bench ends and the historical curiosity of Theodore Paleologus's memorial plaque. Nick found the church door locked, as he had expected, so he could not view the plaque. But its wording was lodged in his mind beyond forgetting. Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologus of Pesaro in Italye descended from ye imperyall lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece . . . Above it, engraved in the brass, was the double-headed Byzantine eagle, symbolizing the unattainable union of western and eastern Christendom.

But the double-headed eagle was not confined to brass at Landulph. Nick walked through the churchyard to the area of twentieth-century burials and round to his grandparents' grave. GODFREY ARTHUR PALEOLOGUS, DIED 4TH MARCH 1968, AGED 81. ALSO HIS LOVING WIFE, HILDA, DIED 26TH SEPTEMBER 1979, AGED 87. REUNITED AND SADLY MISSED. There also, carved in the stone above the inscription, was the double-headed eagle of Byzantium.

Nick's mother had been cremated at her own wish. He suspected that his father would prefer burial and that another Paleologus would eventually rest in this quiet, yew-fringed field of graves. But that would be the end. Whether they took Tantris's money or not, he and his siblings were gone from here. Not far, perhaps, but far enough. The eagle had stayed, but they had flown.

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CHAPTER THREE

Irene was naturally pleased that Elspeth Hartley had been able to secure Nick's support for Tantris's scheme. For her, it was the sealing of an alliance which their father could surely not resist. And she greeted with enthusiasm Nick's contention that the old man would have to go along with it eventually unless he was willing to sacrifice his scholarly integrity, which they agreed he prized above all things. Viewed in that light, it was an argument they could not lose.

Whether it was an argument they would actually win at Trennor next day was a different matter. That depended on how subtly they presented it. Emphasizing their father's alleged inability to cope on his own struck Nick as a poor tactic. But it was the tactic Irene had adopted and she was reluctant to abandon it. She always had enjoyed telling her nearest and dearest what was good for them, even when she knew they would not listen. It was clear to Nick that the occasion was not going to be without its flashpoints.

He set off for dinner with Anna and Basil, wondering what view they took of the matter. He knew what Irene had told him: that they were right behind her. But he also knew he would be more confident about that when he heard it from their own lips.

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Rain had set in by the time he crossed the bridge into Plymouth. Rear lights blurred by spray trailed him into the city centre. He parked in Citadel Road, a little way short of Anna's flat, and walked up on to the Hoe, relishing the dark wind and cold rain buffeting in from the Sound. He was nearly half an hour early, which was par for the course. It was a tendency that annoyed him, but which he was helpless to shake off. He turned east, towards Drake and the Barbican, the rain sheeting past him, halyards slapping against the flagpoles ahead.

There was only one other person on the Hoe, which was one more than he might have expected. A hunched figure in a hooded anorak was bearing down on him from the other end of the promenade. As the figure drew closer, some quality of posture and bearing suddenly struck Nick as familiar. Or maybe it was pure instinct that told him who it was.

'Basil?'

'Nick?' It was Basil, his narrow, bony face peering at him from beneath the brim of the hood. 'Trust you to be the only other poor fool game for a stroll on the Hoe in this weather.'

'I got here a touch early.'

'Not a much better excuse than mine.'

'Which is?'

'Cooking for a guest makes Anna nervous. And a nervous Anna is a short-tempered Anna.'

'I'm hardly a guest. And since when did Anna ever get nervous about anything?'

'Since I moved in. She tells me I'm enough to try the patience of a saint. Which is obviously true, as I invariably rejoin. I tried the patience of several and am in a position to know that their funds of it weren't inexhaustible.'