House of the Hanged (22 page)

‘Nightcap?' Tom asked once the tail lights had disappeared back down the driveway.

Barnaby brightened. ‘Oooo, a small glass of calvados might hit the spot.'

They carried a couple of armchairs from the drawing room on to the terrace and sat out there beneath the spangle of stars, lapped in the strange liquid tranquillity of the night.

‘You like her, don't you?' remarked Tom.

‘Who's that?'

‘Ilse.'

‘A bloody Kraut. Who'd have believed it?'

‘It might be best to keep that particular moniker to yourself.'

‘Too late. I've already told her she's a bloody Kraut.'

‘You old romantic. What did she say?'

‘Something offensive, I imagine. I caught the word
englander
in there somewhere.'

‘Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful thing.'

‘You know what?' said Barnaby, thoughtfully. ‘I think it just might be. She's certainly shaped exactly for my taste, blonde and slim and –'

‘– big-breasted?'

‘Aren't they magnificent? I managed to brush against one of them today.'

‘Really? Left or right?'

‘Left.'

‘Congratulations.'

‘Thank you, it took some pretty deft manoeuvring, I can tell you.'

Tom laughed.

Barnaby had always been far more brazen than he when it came to girls. At school he'd made a shameless play for their housemaster's daughter, and when that had failed to yield dividends (Barnaby's father was a stockbroker) he had turned his sights on one of the girls who worked in the kitchens, detailing his clumsy progress for the edification of his peers in the dormitory after lights-out. He wasn't bragging; he always painted himself as an inept fool. He was simply consumed by a curiosity for the opposite sex, and not in the least concerned about submitting to his baser impulses. In fact, the baser the better.

It was during their time at university that Barnaby had drafted Tom in as his foil, having developed what he believed to be a faultless tactic for approaching girls. It required assistance, teamwork, and like all the best devices its beauty lay in its simplicity. Barnaby would present himself to the targets, apologizing profusely for intruding on their conversation. He would then announce that his friend – cue a bit of shy simpering from Tom in the far corner of the room – had just wagered him two guineas that he didn't have the courage to introduce himself. Well, now he had, and it seemed only fair that he put some of his winnings towards more refreshments for the girls before leaving them in peace. ‘The drinks are on me' – little pause for dramatic effect – ‘That's to say, on my friend over there.'

As an opening gambit it almost always worked, and on the few occasions it didn't, Barnaby was able to retreat without loss of face, two guineas (supposedly) in his pocket. There was very little variation in the method. In the seamier clubs north of Shaftesbury Avenue the two guineas became ten shillings, for fear of attracting the unwelcome attention of thieves and hoodlums; at one of the grander London balls, it would become five guineas, in the hope of impressing the scions of the nation's most notable families. The only irritation was that Tom would inevitably find himself cast for the remainder of the evening as the slightly spineless friend with the deep pockets. There was more than a grain of truth in the first; none whatsoever in the second.

After a while he began to wonder if the true beauty of the ploy didn't lie elsewhere: in Barnaby's ability to pick up girls while he, Tom, picked up the bar bill.

Barnaby was quite open about the pleasure he derived from drawing Tom into his netherworld of Soho cabarets and chorus girls and dingy basement bars with postage-stamp dance floors. He saw it as his mission to release Tom from the harmful strictures of his upbringing: the lonely childhood in the wilds of East Anglia, sequestered in a damp rectory with a tyrannical priest of a father whose severe religiosity was matched only by his barefaced hypocrisy.

That wasn't exactly how it had been, but Barnaby had always had the journalist's eye for the big story. If the details couldn't be made to serve the argument then one was entitled to ignore them.

‘I've fallen behind in life,' said Barnaby, lighting a cigarette and staring up at the firmament. ‘I'll be forty in three months. It might be time to ditch the old motto.'

‘Which one is that? You generally have several to hand, most of them contradictory.'

‘
Melius nil coelibe vita
.'

The bachelor's life is best. ‘Maybe it's time for you to ditch it too,' continued Barnaby. ‘Make an honest woman of Hélène.'

Tom was impressed that he'd remembered her name. ‘If you'd met her you'd know that's the last thing she wants.' Not true; she'd set her heart on a Polish count.

‘Why
haven't
I met her?'

‘Oh God . . .' said Tom wearily.

‘What?'

‘I had Lucy on to me about the same thing last night.'

‘And you're surprised? Of course she's fascinated, she carries a big bloody torch for you.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘Whenever you're about it's all she can do to keep her tongue from hanging out, poor thing.'

‘Oh for goodness' sake –'

‘Don't pretend you don't know. And don't pretend you haven't thought about it.'

‘I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.'

‘Afraid I'll see through the lie?'

He looked Barnaby clean in the eye. ‘I've never thought about it.'

‘Not bad,' said Barnaby. ‘Almost convincing. But I'm not falling for it.'

They talked the subject into a corner and found Venetia lurking there.

‘I can tell you what Venetia thinks, if you like.'

‘She talks to you about it?' Tom asked.

‘She doesn't need to, it's written all over her face. I can safely say it's her worst nightmare, the thought of you and Lucy together. I think she might even kill you.'

‘Well, she's not going to have to. Anyhow, she seems to have her sights set on you right now.'

‘Me?' said Barnaby.

‘Come on, she's been at you from the moment you arrived.'

‘You think?'

‘You haven't noticed?'

Barnaby hesitated. ‘No, I've noticed.'

‘Have you offended her in some way?'

‘Worse,' said Barnaby, staring at his glass as he swirled the alcohol around it.

‘Is there something you want to tell me?'

Barnaby drew on his cigarette and exhaled. ‘There's something I
don't
want to tell you,' he replied finally, with a look that hovered between coy and contrite.

‘You didn't?' groaned Tom. ‘You haven't?'

‘Did. Have. But not any more. It barely lasted a month. That's how significant it was.'

‘Well, obviously Venetia doesn't agree with you.'

‘She ended it. Come to think of it, she also started it.'

‘How very polite of you to play along,' said Tom. ‘So why is she out for your blood?'

‘For God's sake, Tom, don't be so naïve. When has Venetia ever needed a reason to do anything? Maybe she sees me and Ilse getting on and it irritates her. Who knows how that mind of hers works? She's certainly not interested in me any more; I'm not sure she ever was.'

‘Enough to commit adultery with you.'

‘I don't think she saw it as adultery. She was only getting her own back. It was revenge.'

‘Revenge?'

‘For Leonard's infidelity.'

Tom was too shocked to respond.

‘Do you remember Diana Bevan?'

‘No, yes, vaguely. What are you saying? Leonard and Diana Bevan . . .?'

‘Venetia got wind of it and confronted Leonard. He broke it off immediately, but she was pretty upset, as you can imagine, what with it coming on the back of the whole money debacle. Look, I know I shouldn't have done it –'

‘Hold your horses,' interrupted Tom. ‘What money debacle?'

‘You don't know?'

‘Evidently not or I wouldn't be asking.'

‘Leonard's run through a small fortune on the cards.' He couldn't see it. Leonard had always liked to gamble, but soberly, with restraint.

‘How much?' Tom asked.

‘I don't know, Venetia didn't say. Enough to make a difference, though. Yevgeny had to step in and bail him out.'

Tom tried to find the words. ‘He's in hock to Yevgeny?'

‘Up to his neck, apparently.'

So that was it – the missing link. It explained everything. He had been coming at it all wrong. Leonard's involvement had nothing to do with Communist sympathies; he was clearing his debt to Yevgeny.

Barnaby took his silence as disapproval. ‘I'm not proud of what I did, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't enjoyable while it lasted. She's a vixen between the sheets.'

‘I don't want to know.'

‘I always thought you did already, but she said there'd never been anything between you two.'

Tom was taken with a sudden urge to change the subject, and not only because he needed information from Barnaby. It would have been an awkward matter to raise at the best of times. Following on from the shocking revelations, there was no way of folding it casually into their conversation. In the end, he came straight out with it.

‘Barnaby, I need to ask you something.'

‘Fire away.'

‘At lunch today did anyone make a phone call after I left?'

‘A phone call?'

‘Yes.'

‘How on earth should I know?'

‘Because you were there. I need to know if anyone made a phone call soon after I left.'

‘Why?'

‘I can't tell you. Not yet. But there's a lot riding on it.'

There certainly was. The dead Soviet had been tipped off in good time that Tom was on his way to Le Lavandou – more than enough time to collect Pyotr from his hotel room and for them both to then take up a position in front of Benoît's office before Tom arrived. Given that he'd only revealed he was off to visit Benoît as he was leaving lunch at Klaus and Ilse's place, and given that it had taken him twenty minutes at the most to drive from Le Canadel to Le Lavandou, he could safely conclude that someone had put a call through within ten minutes of his departure.

‘Not good enough,' said Barnaby. ‘What's going on? I thought you'd given up all that cloak-and-dagger stuff.'

Barnaby could be an obstinate bugger once his interest was piqued. Dangling a carrot seemed the best method of proceeding.

‘Okay,' conceded Tom, disingenuously. ‘There's a story in it.'

‘What kind of story?'

‘The kind that lands up on the front page.'

Barnaby regarded him closely before speaking. ‘It's not your fault, I know – I'm entirely to blame – but you must have an extremely low opinion of me if you think I can be bought off that cheaply.'

Tom tilted his head by way of apology. ‘I don't know what to say. I need your help and I can't tell you why.'

‘Then ask me as a friend, Tommy.'

‘As a friend . . .'

Barnaby extended his leg. ‘Now lick my shoe.'

Tom smiled.

‘Soon after you left, you say?'

‘Within ten minutes or so. Could it have been Klaus, after he walked me to my car?'

Barnaby thought on it. ‘No, I heard you drive off and he reappeared immediately.' He played the scene through in his head before adding, ‘It can only have been Ilse.'

‘Ilse?'

‘Or Fanya. She offered to help Ilse bring the dessert out. No one else went inside the house.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Sure as God made little green apples. Talking of which, another glass of that calvados would slip down a treat.'

Tom was ready for sleep. He urged it on, willing it to take him, to draw him into oblivion, but it lapped at his ankles like a neap tide before retreating.

It wasn't the fear. He knew he had more reason to feel secure in his bed than at any other time in the past two days. Pyotr had warned him that others would be dispatched from Paris to deal with him, but at worst these faceless replacements had taken the night train from the capital and wouldn't be here before midday at the earliest. Almost twelve hours' grace. If ever there was a time to catch up on lost sleep then now was it.

His mind, though, had other plans for him. It took him to Toulon station to see if he could identify the men in question as they stepped from the train, allowing him to steal a march on them. It carried him off to Sicily, where he'd spent much of last autumn researching his book, and where he now constructed a new life for himself, a new identity, a secret existence somewhere remote – Noto, maybe, or Lipari – a place where no one would ever find him, no enemies, no friends. It would mean severing all ties if he was to guarantee his safety. There could be no exceptions. Was it Blaise Pascal who had said that all the misfortunes of men arise from one single thing: that they are unable to sit quietly in a room alone? Well, this time he would heed the lesson of those wise words and do it properly. He would learn to shut himself away.

He knew he could survive the upheaval. He had been cast adrift before, thrown back on himself, forced against his wishes into a new existence far from home, and his mind now hurled him back through the years to that moment and the incident which had triggered it.

His father had always been a man of rigid routine, never more so than on Sunday mornings when preparing to face his flock. Tom would generally wake to the smell of frying bacon and the sounds of his father pacing around in his study below, putting the finishing touches to his sermon, rehearsing his lines. Notes in a pulpit were anathema to him. What sort of preacher was it that required props? In his opinion, one who had no faith in the Lord's guiding hand. This uncompromising view was typical of his domineering self-assurance.

His father was in a particularly good frame of mind on the Sunday morning in question, having received word the previous day that the bishop would be unable to attend the morning Eucharist due to illness. The bishop's annual visit irritated his father no end, chiefly because it obliged him to temper the language of his sermon to satisfy what he perceived to be the bishop's ‘Roman' inclinations.

As ever, breakfast was cooked by Olive and served by her niece Kitty. Tom loved Olive – stout and brisk and with her soft, dimpled face – but he adored Kitty with the blind devotion of a neglected twelve-year-old. It wasn't that his parents ignored him – they didn't – but he had never been of any real interest to them, it seemed to him. He hoped that that would all change as he grew up; meanwhile, though, he had Kitty on hand to smother him with attention and occupy his hours during the school holidays.

She would call him Master Thomas around the house, but whenever they were off on one of their wild walks or striding the streets of Norwich together he was ‘Tom Thumb' or ‘Ho Hum' and sometimes ‘Skinny Bum'. Kitty opened his eyes to another world, another way of being far removed from the muted, cloistered existence of the rectory. She also taught him to lie, to look his father in the eye and say that he had enjoyed his visit to the cathedral, when really Kitty had taken him to see the death masks of the murderers in the Norwich Castle Museum, or to watch the eels being skinned at the old fish market in St Peter's Street.

It was Kitty who introduced Tom to Baint, an elderly tenant farmer who lived in the neighbouring village. He was a distant relative of Kitty's father and his real name was Joseph, although Kitty called him Baint because he was always moaning that ‘Things bain't what they was'. Baint had been born with his hands in the soil. There wasn't one thing he didn't know about the countryside, or one thing he wasn't happy to share with a curious boy. Kitty always claimed that he was wiser in the ways of horses than any other soul, living or dead.

Baint proved her right one warm day in spring. Officially, Kitty and Tom were in Cromer, far to the north of Norwich, taking a healthy dose of sea air. Instead, they had headed south with Baint to the races at Bungay. The bookmakers had nothing to fear from Baint that day, and Tom could feel his faith in the old man's equine expertise beginning to waver. Then came the penultimate race of the day.

The leader pulled away from the rest of the field right from the off, flying the hurdles, and was maybe six or seven lengths clear when it popped over the last and came galloping up the slope towards the stand. People were cheering wildly, not least of all Tom, because it looked as though Baint had finally backed a winner.

Baint wasn't so sure. Raising his hands to his mouth, he bellowed: ‘Get off him – he's a dead 'un!' Several people threw amused glances Baint's way. They weren't smirking when the horse dropped down dead right in front of the stand, sending the jockey tumbling to the turf.

Tom barely slept that night, troubled, though not by Baint's mystical prophecy. He was thinking about Kitty and the double-life she had led him into. The lies were getting bigger – betting on horses instead of building sandcastles on the beach – and so were the risks. He loved Kitty for her reckless streak, her sure-footed lawlessness, but he couldn't help feeling he was being drawn out of his depth, that it would all end in tears.

And so it did, a few weeks later, on the Sunday the bishop showed up for the morning Eucharist.

The fixed routine after breakfast required Tom to squeeze himself into the starched tissues of his ‘Sunday best' before accompanying his mother and Olive to the church for choir practice. Olive sang in the choir, a tremulous alto, and his mother liked to sit and watch, offering a few kind words of guidance to ensure they were at their best for the service. Meanwhile, back at the rectory, Kitty would be setting the table in the dining room for lunch while his father robed up. Ordinarily, they would arrive at the church together with five minutes or so to spare.

The routine was shattered that day by the unexpected arrival of the bishop soon after the bell ringers had gone to work. He offered his apologies to Tom's mother; his fever had broken quite suddenly during the night and there had been no time to send word. Tom's mother bowed and scraped and showed him to a pew at the front. She then took Tom aside and instructed him to hurry home and warn his father. Under the circumstances, an alb, chasuble and stole might be more fitting than the humble cassock and surplice his father generally favoured.

The rectory was hard by the church, a short walk through the churchyard, beneath the lych gate, over the footbridge spanning the brook and across the back garden. At a run, Tom covered the distance in less than a minute. He entered the house silently through the back door, not wishing to disturb his father, who he knew liked to give himself to prayer right up until his departure for the church.

Sure enough, Tom heard murmurings from the study. The door was ajar and he stole across the hallway, waiting for a break in his father's devotions before presenting himself. When none occurred, he peered through the crack in the door.

His father was standing in a gloomy corner of the room beyond his desk. His head was tilted back, his eyes were closed, and Kitty was kneeling before him. Although Tom couldn't make out the words, his father's hand was resting on Kitty's head and he was clearly administering a blessing of some kind. But as his eyes adjusted to the thin light from the window Tom realized with horror that quite the reverse was true.

He now saw that his father's cassock was hitched up to his waist and that Kitty's head was bobbing back and forth with an urgency suggesting far more than simple benediction. When her hand rose into view and her nails traced a slow path down his father's long pale thigh Tom turned and crept away.

He made every effort to be silent, but it was hard to judge with the blood drumming so loudly in his ears. As soon as he was through the kitchen and out of the back door he began to run. Halfway across the lawn he realized his error and stopped dead. He hadn't delivered the message. How could he possibly explain his failure to do so? His father would know immediately. Then it came to him: he must return and make a lot of noise this time, slamming the back door as he entered, maybe even knocking over one of the chairs in the kitchen. Yes, that was it!

When he turned back to the house he saw his father observing him from one of the kitchen windows.

He tried his best, but lying, he discovered, was much easier when he'd been briefed by Kitty beforehand. This time he was on his own, and after he'd broken the news about the bishop's surprise appearance he was brought down by one simple question.

‘Why were you running away from the house, Thomas?'

Nothing came to mind. Nothing at all. He just stood there, hopelessly mute, staring blankly up at his father's grave face.

‘Thank you, Thomas. Please tell your mother I'll be right over.'

A dismissal. And confirmation that he knew Tom had seen them together. He would normally have repeated the question until he got an answer.

One of the readings that morning was from the First Book of Kings. It told of the death of Ahab at the Battle of Ramoth-gilead. This was a gift from his father, who would throw in a passage from some bloody Old Testament saga every so often for Tom's entertainment. It was their secret. Tom would drop out of time as he listened to the ancient stories of gathering armies and racing chariots and skies blackened with arrows. And later, he would watch with amusement as his father struggled to link the reading to the theme of his sermon that week. He always managed it, though, and when he did he would catch Tom's eye from the pulpit and give him an almost imperceptible wink.

There was no wink that Sunday. In fact his father was barely able to look him in the eye for weeks, even after Kitty had moved on. Nothing was mentioned, but everything had changed. A few months later, his father took him into his study and announced that Tom would not be taking up his place at King Edward VI School in Norwich the following September, but would instead be continuing his education at a college near Brighton – way, way to the south, far beyond London, another world. No reason was offered, and none was required.

With time, his upset gave way to anger and resentment at his expulsion. He no longer blamed himself (for snooping), or the Devil (for leading his father astray), or Kitty (for being, well, Kitty). No doubt his father had squared himself with his God, if not his conscience, but he had made no such efforts with his son. Their relationship was worse than dead, it was a living lie. Only during his last year at school, while they were both preparing for the Oxford Entrance Exam, did Tom finally pluck up the courage to tell Barnaby about the incident, and only then because it seemed no more scandalous than many of the confidences Barnaby had shared with him about his own family over the years.

‘Holy Moly,' said Barnaby, ‘that's a hard one to top – no pun intended. But think of it this way: If young Kitty hadn't licked his lollipop, we would never have got to meet.'

Tom found himself swinging his legs off the bed and pulling on his clothes. He knew he had drunk too much and wasn't thinking straight. He knew that his violently restless mood was too tied up with the past to be let loose on the present. But he still took both handguns with him when he unlocked the bedroom door and disappeared into the night.

Yevgeny and Fanya's house had shouldered its way over the years into an awkward kind of beauty. Given how little remained of the original farmhouse – a few thick stone walls at the heart of the property – it would have made more sense for the previous owners to have pulled it down and built the Italianate villa of their dreams from scratch. They had put up the guest cottage in the grounds, where Walter was now staying, and its delicacy of touch stood as an unfortunate testament to what might have been achieved with the main house.

The setting, though, was hard to fault. La Quercia occupied a prominent position near the tip of the high headland, with an uninterrupted view down on to the bay of Le Rayol. This was why Tom was able to determine that someone was still up and about. Stalking along the beach, he could make out a couple of lights still burning on the ground floor.

At the western end of the beach the sand gave way to sheer rock, but a narrow pathway cut inland, winding its way up the wooded slope towards the coast road. This was the route he would normally have taken, a route he had often trod: joining the coast road for a few hundred yards before turning down the long track which served as a driveway to La Quercia and the handful of other houses occupying the headland. Tonight, though, he wasn't coming with friendship in his heart and a gift for the hostess in his hand. He couldn't run the risk of being spotted, and as soon as he judged it safe to do so he bore left off the pathway, scrabbling from tree to tree across the vertiginous slope which ended just below him with a long drop on to the rocks.

It took him five anxious minutes to work his way round to the end of the headland. He knew that the anger still burning inside him was a confused thing, fired by memories of his father. He knew that he should master it, separate out the strands, before deciding how to proceed. But he was in the grip of something that left little place for such prudence. He needed to know if the man who had filled his father's shoes had also failed him, betrayed him.

Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to blame Leonard, even now. Leonard had been targeted, patiently cultivated, manipulated into a corner. Tom held no such sympathies for Yevgeny and Fanya. God only knew what other evils they'd been party to over the years, but they were about to discover that most things we strive for in life come at a price which is duly exacted. He didn't plan on harming them, but the prospect of calling them to account, of terrorizing them into some truths, was really quite agreeable.