Never Tell (42 page)

They were closing St Paul’s Cathedral to sightseers as I finally reached the great stone stairs. For too long now my life hadn’t made any sense; I had to know the truth. Someone, somewhere, had to know the truth.

Inside, the internal gate was shut.

‘Please,’ I gasped at the curate, closing up. ‘Please, I have to – I’ve come so far.’

That someone might be here.

‘You look pretty desperate,’ the jolly curate relented, his chin resting on his collar, waving me through with his walkie-talkie. ‘Last one in. This one’s on God.’

‘How do I get up to the Whispering Gallery?’ I wheezed gratefully, leaning on the barrier for a moment to catch my breath.

It took me ten minutes to climb up, and my heart was banging so hard by the time I’d reached the gallery in the huge dome that I had to sit down as soon as I got there. I’d passed a gaggle of Italian tourists coming down the stairs, but otherwise the space was empty. I thought he hadn’t come, the anonymous writer – and I heard my name said softly, and I turned and saw him.

They say that when you’re drowning your whole life flashes before your eyes – though it seems unlikely that anyone could confirm it. True or not, I felt like I was falling backwards now, splashing messily through my own life.

He walked towards me, thin and no longer elegant, wiry-limbed and crop-haired instead.

‘Hello, Rose,’ he said and I tried to find my voice.

‘I thought,’ it came at last, ‘I thought that you were dead.’

Lord Higham had let it be known that his eldest son, Dalziel, had taken his own life, permanently scarred by the tragic and sudden death of his girlfriend, Lena. There was never any formal announcement of the death and the funeral was said to have taken place quietly and privately on the family estate in Scotland. And of course, that suited them just fine.

How could Higham ever admit that, actually, one child of his had attempted to murder another? One child of his, high on the drug PCP – or angel dust – had tried to coerce a ‘friend’ – the bullet-headed Brian – into raping another child, his own half-brother, in front of an audience. One child of his had encouraged his once-girlfriend to use so much heroin and Xanax that she had overdosed and died, gurgling at our feet.

And so all this time, James believed that he had effectively murdered his best friend after they had tussled with the knives. Dalziel had been removed in an ambulance, bleeding, taken to a private hospital after the horrible scuffle whilst I still lay unconscious. I’d been hospitalised myself; James had been briefly arrested along with Brian whilst the police tried to ascertain what had happened.

Enquiries I’d made later to the family about Dalziel had been politely rebuffed. They were mourning their dear son; they didn’t want strangers’ eyes on them, and I accepted that. Brian had disappeared into the navy, I found out later. James and I returned to our lives, separated – scathed and saddened but ultimately the apparent survivors. We had been utterly brazen in our ambition to show no one could restrain us – and our ambition had exploded in our faces.

All these years, James had endured the pain of thinking he’d murdered his friend; that his fatal blow had killed Dalziel. We’d believed that Higham had covered up the death to prevent a scandal; that James had been saved by the lies of the father for the death of the son.

But Higham had been covering up something very different indeed.

I sat beside him, staring, staring, and I was eighteen again, back in Oxford. My hands were shaking. I kept looking up at him to check that I hadn’t gone mad.

‘Where have you been?’ I said, and he smiled slightly, and I saw a glimpse of the old Dalziel, the boy I had once known. Although now I looked closer, I could see that his beauty was quite ravaged.

‘Here and there, darling, here and there. South America, mainly.’

‘But how can you have just disappeared like that? You can’t have just vanished off the face of the earth.’

‘I can.’ He put his hand in his pocket. ‘Although obviously I didn’t.’

‘Well, where—’

‘There are plenty of places to hide, Rose, if you don’t want to be found.’

‘So your father … ‘ I said slowly.

‘Has forgiven me? Just about.’ Dalziel tried to smile, his teeth bared briefly. They told the tale of past addiction and indulgence; no longer perfect and straight and white. ‘As long as I do what my father says, I’ll be all right.’

He spoke differently, no longer with the louche drawl I remembered, more clipped as if there were no words to spare, and he held himself as if he was so tense he might never relax. Once willowy, now he was wiry, the veins on his arms too pronounced. And he didn’t look well, I thought suddenly. He was too thin and his eyes seemed to be blazing with something, though the dim light made it hard to tell. I felt a shiver. It was hard to imagine Dalziel ever growing old. In my mind, he was twenty-one for all time, gone for ever, having lived fast and died too young. I’d always thought he was like Dorian Gray. He would never age, never grow old or ugly or fat.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good:
Wilde had written it, Dalziel had lived it. But now, here he was. Severe and somehow rather monk-like.

Slowly it began to tumble into place. The reason Higham had tried to buy me off. And now apparently, why he had stepped in, involving himself in something on a far bigger scale.

A little girl in polka dots entered the gallery, dragging her mother behind her.

‘You’ve got little ones then, Rose?’ Dalziel watched the couple as the girl leaned precariously over the barrier. I imagined I saw a shadow of something flit across his face. ‘With the lovely James.’

For the first time, I felt anger flare. ‘You nearly destroyed him, you know.’

Dalziel bowed his head.

‘He still has nightmares now.’ I had never spoken up against Dalziel, not once during the days of Society X, not until that fateful final night, but now I could hardly bear to summon the filthy terror he’d put us through. ‘James thought he’d killed you. He’s been haunted by what happened. How could you let him think that for all this bloody time, Dalziel?’

‘I didn’t have much choice,’ he said flatly.

‘What do you mean?’

He sighed, and the thing in his pocket that he fiddled with rattled. ‘Let’s just say I haven’t been master of my own ship for some time. And I promise you, I’m haunted too. Utterly.’ He slumped back against the bench. ‘I’m ruined for all time. Though I must say, James did have a pretty good go.’

‘That’s rubbish and you know it. He just tried to stop you doing –’ I paused – ‘doing whatever it was you were about to do.’

We sat there for a second in quiet contemplation. Did either of us even know what Dalziel had planned?

‘I still bear the scars, you know.’ Dalziel pulled his black shirt aside at the neck to show me the fine puckered line of a wound I’d never seen, a wound that travelled from collarbone to breast, that had missed his throat by centimetres. But James had no intention of killing Dalziel, that much I knew. He was struggling with him when the knife in his hand had slipped and gashed his friend.

Slowly Dalziel did the buttons back up, right up to the top so no flesh was exposed. ‘I guess it was no less than I deserved.’

‘It wasn’t about what you deserved. It was desperation.’

‘I was mad, Rose.’ His voice was a monotone. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

‘Christ, Dalziel. Why didn’t you tell us, though? We thought that you were dead.’

‘Let’s not bring Christ into it, shall we?’ He tried to smile that confident smile that I remembered so well, but he was hollowed, a shadow of the boy I’d known. ‘That’s where the trouble started, I seem to remember.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I was incarcerated for a while.’

‘A while?’

‘A few years. A special hospital in Buenos Aires. I have to take a lot of meds today.’

‘Medicine?’ I said. ‘For what?’

‘Depression. Schizophrenia. You name it, Rose. But I’m fine. Really. Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not scared of you, Dalziel.’

‘But you’re angry.’ It was a curt statement.

‘No. I don’t know. It’s been so long. It’s such a bloody shock.’

Two portly Americans entered the gallery and began to search for the Whispering Wall. I thought of how Dalziel had opened up my narrow world. For all his madness and grand designs, he had lent me a lust for life that I hadn’t had before I’d met him, an enthusiasm that had led me to places I’d never have seen if I hadn’t known him.

‘Why now?’ Dully I watched the Americans. ‘I mean, why are you here?’

‘I came to pay my dues.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘To help get James acquitted.’

‘How the hell could you do that?’

‘I think that’s a question for James, dear Rose.’

‘But James isn’t here, Dalziel. So you’d better tell me.’

‘I only know the bare facts. She tried to blackmail him, you know.’

‘Who did?’

‘I came back to see a doctor a few years ago, at the London Clinic. I spent a bit of time in town before my family corralled me again. I fell into some of my … of my old habits, shall we say. And that girl who had got involved with Charlie recognised me.’

‘What girl?’ I stared at him. ‘Kate?’

‘The silly waitress who loved James.’

‘Yes, Kate. And?’

‘And she tried to blackmail my father. Last year. My little brother put her up to it, though, I fear.’

‘Why?’

‘My brother hates my father almost as much as I do. And he admitted to Kate – Katya – that I was alive when she asked. She put two and two together: she saw that my father was on the political up and she threatened to expose the fact that his son was a mad ex-junkie, still alive. Amongst other things.’

So Lana had been right. But that would mean James had known Dalziel was alive … Panic rose in my belly.

‘What sort of things?’

‘Things she had on my father.’

‘How did she know your father?’

‘Don’t be dim, darling.’ For a second, he sounded like the old Dalziel. ‘Because she was a whore.’

So it had been true all along. I thought of the photos of Higham, taken at three in the morning. The pictures of scantily clad women entering the house earlier. Some kind of posh brothel, presumably.

‘And then she paid the ultimate price.’ His voice slowed. ‘She died, didn’t she?’

I realised the thing in his hand was some kind of worry beads.

‘Yes. In my house. But it was an accident.’ I tried to keep up with what he was saying.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. It was, definitely. Or, at worst, it was some kind of stupid noble suicide.’ I saw James being hustled out. I saw Charlie Higham chatting up the girls who’d adored him. ‘It wasn’t murder. She fell.’

‘I see. Well. That’s one relief, I suppose.’

‘But – hang on. The trial. It was your father who got it stopped? Is that what you’re saying? And James – James knows you are alive?’

‘I guess so. And I don’t doubt my father had some hand in it once I’d applied the pressure.’

‘But he’s not that powerful, Dalziel. Not even Lord Higham could halt a trial.’

‘Never underestimate the old school tie, darling. The firm grip of the odd handshake. The power of the politically corrupt.’

‘And why would he?’

‘Because my father knew I’d come forward. Because he wants me back out of the way before the media cotton on. He plans to take over the world, you know,’ his eyes blazed, ‘and he doesn’t want his lunatic son emerging from the grave.’

Nothing made much sense right now. We sat in silence again, listening to the Americans bounce their shrill voices off the walls, giggling at each other like small children.

‘And the Kattans?’

He shrugged. ‘We were always going to pay, my darling, I guess, for our iniquity. Ash never forgave me for – for screwing with his girlfriend.’ I felt him hesitate on the harsh word. ‘Though she was already screwed, shall we say. Beautiful angel. Beautiful lost woman.’

‘Why did you do it? Why her?’

‘Because,’ and his face took on a blankness I remembered for a moment, ‘I suppose, if I’m honest, because he humiliated me in front of all those people. At the Union that night. And she was around, abandoned by Ash, most of the time, for all his anger – at all the parties in London, hungry for oblivion, already an addict. Easy to persuade.’

I remembered her, utterly insensate, I remembered Brian between her legs. I felt like someone was scooping out my insides.

‘And my father liked Ash, too much,’ Dalziel muttered. ‘My father and Hadi were in cahoots for most of the eighties – till it all went wrong over the oil deal. And my father’s undying bloody respect,’ he was paler now than before, ‘his respect for the high-achieving Ash? Well, that hurt.’

‘Is Ash –’ my brain was whirring – ‘is Ash your brother too?’

For a moment I thought Dalziel might cry. ‘What do you think?’ he whispered.

I thought of those eyes, the steely ambition, the photo of the parents. ‘I’d say it was quite likely.’

‘And you’d be right, my Rose.’

‘And so the whole Huriyyah thing? Was that just to get at Ash – at your own half-brother?’

‘I suppose so, yes. But, look,
she
was as lost as me – Huriyyah. As lost as I was, before I found God.’

‘Oh Christ, you didn’t.’ I stared at him. In the old days, he would have laughed, but his face was still blank. ‘Have you really?’

‘I always knew I would, I think. That was my path. There is such a thin line between Lucifer, the light bringer, and our Maker. It’s been my salvation.’

I looked at him carefully, still expecting him to turn and laugh at my naivety.

‘That’s why I thought we should meet here, Rose. At Heaven’s gate.’

I thought of the psalm on the note.
Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered
. Atonement for his sins. He was deadly serious, I realised. Not worry beads in his hand, but a rosary. I found it painful to hear him now.

Downstairs, Evensong was beginning. We would have to leave soon.

‘Where do you live?’ I still couldn’t believe he was here. ‘Back in London?’