Fault Line - Retail (9 page)

‘You won’t have to wait long to find that out either. Just drive.’

Oliver was right. As soon as we reached St Dennis and he told me to take the side-road to Enniscaven, I knew our destination was Goss Moor. It stretched ahead of us, flat and featureless, dun-brown in the lengthening shadow of the clay peaks.

We followed the narrow road north through Enniscaven and crossed a cattle-grid. Another half mile or so and Oliver instructed me to pull in where a rough, rutted track led off between stunted trees and bushes into the heart of the moor. This was it. This was where it had happened, nine years before.

‘Your father died here, didn’t he, Oliver?’ I asked.

I got no reply for a full minute or so as Oliver stared ahead through the windscreen, watching the scenes his memory recalled to him. Then he said, ‘Let’s get out.’

The air was still and silent. There was a distant murmur of traffic from the A30 and the rumble of a train on the Newquay branch line, but closer to … nothing. Oliver opened his knapsack and took out a camera.

‘I want you to take my picture, Jonathan,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘Here?’

‘Yes. It has to be here.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’ He handed me the camera. ‘It’s wound on. All you have to do is point and press.’

‘OK.’

‘Stay where you are.’ He walked a few yards down the track and turned to face me. ‘Go ahead now.’

He looked small and vulnerable in the viewfinder, a slight, pale figure in blue jeans and a green sweater, the khaki knapsack hanging at his side, his blond hair gilded by the sun, his expression blank, eyes gazing at the camera, calmly it seemed, resolutely, but also, I sensed, wearily. Behind him the track wound away between gorse and bracken towards a line of electricity pylons and an ill-defined horizon. Nature was neutral here: the ghosts gathered only in Oliver’s mind.

I took the picture and lowered the camera.

‘I want a couple more,’ he said, walking back towards me.

‘I can take as many as you like.’

‘No, you can’t. There are only two left.’

As he moved past me, I glanced down at the exposure counter. It was on 22. I couldn’t help wondering what the other pictures on the film contained. But I knew better than to ask.

‘I’m ready.’ He’d positioned himself in the road, at some precise spot of his choosing. I wound the film on and took the picture. Then he pointed to the grass verge on the other side of the road. ‘Take one from there.’

‘Sure.’

I moved across to where he’d indicated. He stood by the car and signalled with a nod that he was ready. I took the picture – the last one. ‘That’s it,’ I said.

‘Good.’ He climbed into the car.

He was holding the knapsack open when I joined him. I handed him the camera and he stowed it away, buckling the knapsack carefully.

‘How much do you remember of what happened that day, Oliver?’ I asked as gently as I could.

‘The day my father died?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everything.’

‘But … you were only seven years old.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I made sure, you see. I made sure I never forgot any of it.’

‘Do you … revisit this place often?’

‘As often as I need to.’

‘And—’

‘Can we go now, please? I’ve got what I needed.’

At Oliver’s direction, I drove back towards Enniscaven, then cut across to Roche and took the St Austell road from there. He showed no inclination to talk, but I allowed him only a couple of miles of silence before I probed a little further.

‘Why did you want those photographs taken, Oliver?’

He gave no immediate reply, though he frowned thoughtfully, as if pondering what to say. But in the end all I got from him was a question of his own. ‘How did my stepfather react when you told him I’d already got enough?’

I laughed drily. ‘Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?’

‘No.’

I laughed some more at the blitheness of his refusal to play by any of the normal rules. ‘You’re impossible, Oliver. You know that, don’t you?’

‘How did my stepfather react?’

I sighed. ‘He said he was worried about your state of mind.’

‘Really?’

‘He thinks you believe your father would never have let CCC take Wren’s over.’

‘Interesting hypothesis.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘Like I say, it’s an interesting hypothesis.’

‘Why do you suppose your father killed himself?’ I asked, thinking I might catch him off guard.

‘I don’t need to suppose. I know.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why, then?’

‘To keep a secret.’

‘What secret?’

‘If I told you, it would devalue what he did. It would mean the secret wasn’t kept. So I can’t tell you. Sorry.’

Determined not to let him see how exasperated I was, I let a few seconds pass before asking, ‘How long have you known why he did it?’

‘Good question, Jonathan. Perceptive line of inquiry.’

‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘The answer is: not long.’

‘In that case, I’d guess your recent activities – the search of Wren’s records, the question about the pig’s egg you had me put to your great-uncle, the photographs I took back there – were prompted by whatever it was you discovered.’

‘You’d guess that, would you?’

‘Yes. Would I be right?’

‘Well, let’s put it like this. In tournament chess – serious chess – you play against the clock as well as your opponent. Forty moves in two and a half hours is the norm. So, you can’t afford to do all your thinking during the game. You have to prepare yourself properly. You have to play the game in your head before you move a single pawn.’

‘But you can’t plan your opponent’s moves as well as your own.’

‘You’d be surprised how often you can.’

‘And anyway, that—’

‘Could you take the Scredda turning up ahead? It’s a quieter route into St Austell.’

I guessed there was some other reason for his choice of route than its quietness, but I didn’t press the point and the reason soon emerged anyway. Before the narrow lane had wound its way as far as the hamlet of Scredda, he asked me to pull in by a grassy shelf of land, crowned by a mass of tangled hedge and undergrowth.

‘I’m going to walk from here,’ he announced.

It was certainly one way of ensuring he didn’t have to fend off any more of my questions. I turned and looked at him. ‘Whatever’s going on, Oliver, coping with it alone isn’t the answer. I’d like to help you, I really would, but—’

‘You have helped me, Jonathan. And I’m grateful. You drive on. I’ll be fine.’ With that he opened the door and jumped out, stepping on to the bank. Then he slammed the door and knocked the roof to signal I could go.

I considered getting out myself and trying to reason with him. But I was irritated by having successive offers of assistance rejected. I couldn’t force him to confide in me. And at that moment I didn’t even want to try. I put the car in gear and pulled away.

I saw him in the rear-view mirror, watching me, one leg bent against the slope of the bank, his left hand resting on his knee while with his right hand he pulled the strap of the knapsack over his head on to his other shoulder.

Then the lane curved away uphill towards Scredda and he was out of sight.

SEVEN

THE SOLE TOPIC
of conversation and all-consuming object of attention at Wren & Co. the following morning was the fateful board meeting. It was due to start at ten o’clock and during the hour beforehand the arrivals of the board members were carefully and none too discreetly monitored from the windows of the accounts section.

Greville Lashley was already present, of course, his green Jag stationed in its normal berth. Soon a maroon Rover was parked beside it, confirming Muriel and Harriet had joined him. Then a taxi delivered Francis Wren from the Carlyon Bay and the gathering was complete. Pete took a few sly bets on how long the meeting would last and the waiting game began.

The meeting had been in progress for about half an hour when Polly, to whose phone the few calls I had were generally put through, reported breathlessly that there was ‘a young lady’ on the line for me.

It was Vivien. And that was only the first surprise.

‘Do you have any idea where Oliver might be?’ she asked. There was an edge of anxiety in her voice.

‘Er … no.’

‘He didn’t come home last night. Maria thought he was sleeping in this morning, but when she took a cup of tea up to him she discovered his bed hadn’t been slept in.’

‘Well, I …’

‘No one’s seen him since yesterday afternoon. I don’t know what to do, Jonathan. Mother and Aunt Harriet are at the board meeting.’

‘I know. Look …’ What was Oliver playing at now? The question bounced around in my head. ‘I saw him last night, Vivien. He asked me to drive him out to Goss Moor. And I did.’

‘
Where?
’

‘Goss Moor.’

‘You mean …’

‘Yes.’ The exact location didn’t need spelling out. Vivien knew there was only one place on the moor Oliver would want to be taken.

‘Why on earth did you agree to do that?’

I sighed. ‘I couldn’t see any reason not to.’

‘You didn’t … leave him there?’

‘No, no. I drove him back. Well, most of the way back. I dropped him near Scredda. He said he’d walk home from there.’

‘
Scredda?
’

‘Yes. It’s not far. Only a mile or so.’

‘When was this?’

‘Oh … a little after eight, I suppose.’

‘You just dropped him at the side of the road?’ There was reproachfulness in her voice now, along with the anxiety that was mounting all the time.

‘It’s what he asked me to do.’

‘You can show me where you dropped him, can’t you –
exactly
where you dropped him?’

‘Of course. But—’

‘I’ll pick you up in five minutes.’

Fortuitously, Maurice Rowe was out of the room when Vivien’s Mini pulled into the yard. She beeped the horn and peered up at me. I signalled I’d be right down and exited before anyone else had a chance to react, pausing only to ask Polly if she’d tell Rowe I had to deal with a family emergency. It was nothing less than the truth, except that it didn’t concern
my
family.

If I hadn’t already begun to regret taking Oliver to Goss Moor, the expression on Vivien’s face would have caused me to. It was clearly only her concern for her brother that was holding her anger with me in check. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what Oliver was doing,’ she said tightly as we started away.

‘I honestly didn’t think there was anything to worry about,’ I said lamely.

‘Tell me what happened.’

I stuck to the line I’d fed her stepfather about Oliver’s search of Wren’s records but supplied otherwise what was a complete and accurate account: Oliver’s belief that Strake was following him, our rendezvous at Nanpean, the photo-shoot on Goss Moor, our parting near Scredda.

‘Why should Strake be following him?’

‘I don’t know, Vivien. But he is.’

‘And these photographs – what did Oliver want them for?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Where could he be?’

‘A friend’s home, perhaps.’

‘He doesn’t have any friends in St Austell.’

‘A friend from school, then. He could have caught the sleeper up to London – or somewhere on the way to London.’

This was to my mind the likeliest explanation. And I sensed Vivien very much wanted to believe it. ‘Let’s hope so,’ she said as she accelerated up Menacuddle Hill – the quickest route to Scredda.

We pulled into a field gateway just short of the spot where I’d dropped Oliver and got out of the car. The scene was as I remembered it: a simple curve of the lane beneath a grassy bank, topped with trees and bushes. It held no apparent significance.

‘Which way did he go?’ Vivien asked, hugging herself as she glanced around.

‘I don’t know. He was just standing there on the bank as I drove away.’

‘Which way was he looking, then?’

Yes. Which way had he been looking? It was a good question. ‘Up … I think.’

‘Up the bank?’

‘Yes.’ There’d been something in the way he’d lifted the strap of the knapsack over his head, now I thought about it. It was as if … ‘I think he went up there.’

The bank was steep and slippery. I scrambled up, leading Vivien by the hand. At the top was a trampled-down fence of rusty barbed wire, then a thick belt of low trees and thorny bushes. The land fell away sharply beyond them and I could see the surface of a lake winking and shimmering below us.

‘This is Relurgis Pit,’ said Vivien, releasing my hand as she squinted down at the water.

‘You know it?’

‘It was the first clay pit my great-grandfather excavated as an independent operator.’

So, Oliver’s choice of dropping-off place hadn’t been random. It was futile to go on believing that. He’d come here – to the pit where Wren & Co. had started its commercial life back in 1895 – for a reason: a highly specific reason.

‘
Oliver
,’ I shouted, without seriously expecting a response. ‘
Oliver
.’ After the echo faded, there was only silence.

‘We must get down there,’ said Vivien, plunging on ahead.

The water was a milky blue, still discoloured by the clay despite the pit’s long disuse. The slopes above the lake were steep and heavily wooded, though away to our left the land shelved more gently and I could see a small jetty at the end of a track that I assumed led in from some point further along the road.

It would have made more sense to drive round and try to reach the lake from there, but Vivien was beyond such reasoning, preferring to force her way down through the barriers of undergrowth and brushwood from where we were – the route, it had to be supposed, Oliver had taken himself. I followed as best I could.

When I saw Vivien pull up on the crest of a small ridge where the tree cover thinned, my first thought was that she couldn’t see a way down from there. Only when I was nearly at her shoulder did I realize she’d stopped because she’d caught sight of something floating in the water below us.

The green of Oliver’s sweater must have told her at once what it was: a body,
his
body, drifting face down, arms and legs spread wide. It was just what she’d feared she would see, of course. It was the discovery we’d both dreaded but hadn’t spoken of. Oliver was dead. She must have known that at once. And grief must have swallowed her – a grief darker and deeper than the shock I felt.