Krysalis: Krysalis (10 page)

The delivery man pointed out a break-in. David’s first impulse was to run down and look. Then he thought again. Disaster hovered somewhere on the
fringes of his consciousness. Don’t do
anything
on impulse, he ordered himself. Think first.

Phone the police. No, wait. Search the house. Start at the top.

He raced up the stairs two at a time. As soon as he entered the master bedroom, something seemed not quite right, something that he had sensed earlier but been unable to identify. His eyes darted into every corner. Anna’s suitcase no longer sat in its usual place on top of the wardrobe. He dashed across to the bed. Her nightgown had gone from under the pillow.

The sheets were soft, and still redolent of Anna’s night scent, a mélange of warm aromas, full of associations he loved, that made him want to cry. He flung the duvet back and turned away. As he did so, his eyes lighted on two images of himself, giving him a shock.

A black-and-white photograph of a much younger David stood on the stripped pine chest of drawers between the bedroom windows; it showed his face three-quarters toward the camera, with a narrow tie and white shirt. In those days his hair had been lighter—the photo was fifteen years old—and there was more of it, but the preoccupied smile was the same. Not quite … above the chest of drawers hung a mirror, disclosing David’s contemporary face, and he was startled to see how extensive a network of lines had eaten into his skin. He was forty-two, but looked five years older, a reversal of the state of affairs disclosed by the photograph, which was of a man in fact aged twenty-seven who appeared to be scarcely out of his teens. The new-style David was sallow, etched with the tension that comes from long, midnight-oil-soaked hours of labor in the service of his country. And today there could be no
mistaking his haggard expression of dread mixed with exhaustion.

What next? The hospitals, the neighbors … phone somebody,
anybody.

Call the police.

Not yet, not yet.

Why not?

He rested his head against the door frame and closed his eyes. Usually he kept his imagination well in check, but today it seemed that the rooms were smirking at him, as if they’d witnessed some scene which had left behind this extraordinarily unpleasant atmosphere.

Maybe Anna had collapsed and was incapable of speech, a stroke…. He cursed himself for stupidity, for not thinking of that before. It took less than five minutes to hunt through every room, look under bed, check closets. Then he knew for certain that she was not in the house.

He sat at her desk in the first-floor study, and stared down at the blotter while he tried to work out what to do. But it was impossible. Visions of Anna stretched out like a corpse, Anna maimed, kept thrusting their way into the front of his brain, obscuring thought.

At last he squeezed his hands into fists and banged them down on the desk. This was no way to go on. Stop fretting, start
thinking.

First: what did he know?

He found it hard to take seriously her passing mention of going to Paris: too unlike her. But… why had she left just as he arrived home, and without saying a word? He felt sure he’d heard a door close somewhere in the house and that must have been her; it couldn’t have been anyone else.

Yes, it could. Maybe when he’d got home the burglar was still in the house….

Yes, good, now you ‘re using your brains … don’t lose your grip again.

The police would ask questions. He ought to come prepared. He drew up a list of names on Anna’s scratch pad, and frantically started to dial. He misdialed the last digit, slammed down the phone, tried again.

“Hello … David Lescombe here, I’d like to speak to my wife, please. Yes, it’s still early, but could you just … of course, I’ll hold … she’s not in? Yes, I knew she was due to take a few days off, I just wondered if she’d been into chambers, or contacted you…. No, I see. Thank you.”

Now he knew something: Anna hadn’t gone to work that day and she hadn’t phoned her chambers. Next: Anna’s parents.

Mrs. Elwell answered with her usual note of querulous aggression. “Hello … hello, who is this?”

“Uh … me, David. I’m so glad to find you in, Lydia.”

“We
never go anywhere.”

David recognized this as the prelude to a critical résumé of his and Anna’s most recent holidays, with overtones of extravagance and want of application, and he had no time for it. “I was wondering if Anna had been in touch,” he said, more brusquely than necessary.

“We haven’t heard from her in ages.”

“You’re not expecting her, then?”

“Certainly not. Why—don’t you know where your own wife is?”

David’s heart gave a thump. He’d gone too far too fast and now would have to give some explanation. But
how to do it without complicating a situation that was already labyrinthine? “You may dig a hole for your minister,” they used to teach, tongue in cheek, at Civil Service College, “as long as you cart away enough soil to ensure that he can’t be buried.” David had no idea of his hole’s dimensions.

“David? David, are you still there?”

“Yes, oh Lord, I see what’s happened. I got onto the junior clerk at Anna’s chambers and he must have scrambled two messages. It looked as though she was going to her mother’s, he said.”

“I don’t know how Anna copes with her staff. They’d never have put up with it in my day. How is she?”

“Fine, thank you. Look, someone’s pushing a message under my nose and I’ve got to rush….”

“Oh, mustn’t hold up running the country.”

Sometimes when David talked to Lydia Elwell he wanted to explode, but now was not the moment. “No, well, nice to talk to you.” He put down the receiver while she was still in the middle of the string of polite codes you were supposed to use when terminating a conversation.

Where was she?
Where had Anna gone?

He looked at the scratch pad. Who to phone next? His civil servant’s brain began ordering the known evidence. One, Anna knew he was going to be at a residential seminar for a long weekend; two, she had sounded distraught on the phone; three, she sounded as if she had been drinking; four, her suitcase was gone; five, she was gone….

He consulted his list and decided on a long shot. Cornwall.

For what seemed ages he listened to the peculiar
rasping tone generated by the St. Mary Abbott exchange. At last he abandoned the call. They were probably feeding the pigs, or weaving, or doing whatever communal types did with their days. Besides, Anna had never got on with her daughter. She would hardly have confided in Juliet.

The options were fewer now. David added another name to the list, at the foot of the page, to indicate that it was a last resort and that there might be alternatives he had not yet considered. Then he rang two local hospitals, drawing a blank in each case.

Perhaps she really
had
gone to Paris …?

The final entry on his list appeared to have been written in darker ink than the rest. He could not take his eyes off it. He imagined himself already talking to the person, trying to anticipate the questions….

There had to be a simple explanation. But he encountered only this hole where perceptions of his own wife ought to live and did not. Something that a more sensitive husband might have noticed had passed him by, leaving him with this guilty void.

They had tickets for the South Bank the coming weekend. Brahms, the Second Symphony. It enraged David that at this crucial juncture the thing he remembered was that Anna shared his love of Brahms. Unless she really didn’t like Brahms at all … oh, don’t be stupid, she wouldn’t walk out on you to avoid going to a concert! No, but—how had her voice sounded when he proposed the outing? David could not remember. He was starting to experience an eerie kind of nausea. Nothing could be taken for granted any more.

It occurred to him to search Anna’s desk. At first he rejected the thought. When you loved someone, trusted her, adored her, you didn’t rifle through her
private papers. But sometimes you
had
to do a small bad thing …

David opened the top drawer. Anna’s diary. He hesitated before opening it. There were few daily entries, but the last section overflowed with names, addresses, phone numbers, none of which meant anything to him. Who were these people? Professional colleagues? Friends? More than friends …?

The memory of his interview for the Krysalis committee came back to him:
At one time she seemed to be rather friendly with a German chappie.
But none of the names in Anna’s diary sounded the least bit foreign. He slammed it shut and tossed it back inside the drawer, now angry with himself as much as Anna.

David clasped his hands on the lip of the desk and rested his weight against them. Only one number left to ring now. Before he telephoned, however, there was something to check. He rose and went to open the safe.

For a long moment he stared into the cavity. Then he reached out behind him and groped his way back into the nearest chair, where he slumped down, still keeping his eyes on the safe. He couldn’t breathe. There was an ache in the pit of his stomach, a devastating mixture of colic and a punch from a prizefighter. Blood throbbed inside his head until he felt it would lift off his shoulders.

Krysalis gone.

He could not believe it. He
refused
to believe it.

David stood up. For an instant he staggered, his legs not supporting him. At last he summoned up the strength to go and pick up the phone.

The man he was calling answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

“My name’s David Lescombe. I’m deputy head of department, defense department, FCO.”

“Yes? Could you speak up?”

“My wife’s disappeared.”

This time there was a long pause before the inevitable “Yes?”

“My copy of the New Testament appears to have gone as well.”

“Are you at home?”

“Yes, I’m at—”

“We know where you live. Stay there.”

The line went dead. David replaced the receiver. He was back in the maelstrom of a moment ago: his head ached with tension, his stomach churned, terrible visions of the coming interrogation swamped his mind. But through it all, like a poisoned spear, thrust the knowledge that the woman he adored most in all the world had gone away, no one knew where.

David rested his head in his hands. And the spear pierced his heart.

CHAPTER
8

Albert had just finished his lunch when he heard the phone.

“Hi,” said the voice at the other end. “Guess who this is?” And they laughed, so that anyone listening in would think that they were just a couple of high-spirited men enjoying a joke, instead of two extremely professional people covering their tracks.

“How are you?”

“Fine, fine,” said Albert. “What’s up?”

“Sorry to bother you, but your father’s been trying to get hold of you.”

Albert, whose father had been dead for five years, examined his fingernails critically and said, “Oh yes?”

“I explained you’d been out of town.”

The adjutant enjoyed acting out this little charade with the British army’s youngest lieutenant colonel; Albert could tell from his voice. “Ah.”

“So he might want to ring you later.”

Albert was pleased to hear this news, although when
his thin mouth extended in a smile, it came nowhere near his eyes.

“I said I didn’t know if you’d be going out or not,” the adjutant continued.

“No, not. Did he leave a number?”

“Sorry.”

“Never mind.” A pause. “Anything else?”

“No, except it looks as though we’ll have to cancel tonight.”

“Yes. Bye, then.”

Albert replaced the receiver and stood in thought for a moment. Then he went over to his bag and unpacked it again, knowing he wouldn’t be going back to the regiment for a while. With the phone staying silent, he embarked on his fifteen-minute routine for cleaning the flat: not the full “churn-over,” as he called it, but a real dust killer, all the same. Albert had a horror of dirt.

Still no call.

He straightened his tie, turning his head first to the right, then to the left. The suntan from a recent skiing holiday had already begun to fade, but in the mirror he still looked every inch the taut, fit army officer that he was. His hair needed cutting—Albert liked to keep it unfashionably short—but that would mean going out and he didn’t want to miss the expected phone call. There were some shirts to iron; he never looked less than spruce. The wine cellar was seriously depleted. He could take a chance, sprint to the delicatessen and buy olive oil; they’d sworn the first pressing would be in by Monday and that was today. The deli people were fairly reliable, for Eyeties, which meant little enough, of course.

When the phone obstinately remained silent, Albert began to resent it. Good news was on the way, he felt
sure of it; his horoscope for the past two days had promised financial gain. He took up the
Financial Times
and retreated to the living room. As he opened at the stock-market page, something furry brushed against his thigh and he absentmindedly reached down to stroke it. “Hello, Montgomery,” he murmured; and the stout tortoiseshell cat purred in reply.