Play to the End (31 page)

But what did it tell me? What was its real message? What was the secret?

If Derek knew, how, I asked myself, could he have come into possession of such knowledge? What connected him with the late Ann Colborn?

Colbonite, obviously, if indirectly. But that applied to the whole workforce. And I had no reason to suppose Ann ever went near the place anyway. There had to be something else. There had to be something more.

Ann had lived far from the tight, dull little circles Derek moved in.

There was no point of intersection between their lives apart from the factory owned by her husband and his employer. And even that only applied to the six years between Derek going to work there in 1976 and Ann's suicide in 1982. There was nothing else. I thought of the Colbonite site in Hollingdean Lane, squeezed between the railway line and the municipal abattoir. Then I thought of the high white cliff top of Beachy Head, the blue of the sea below, the green of the turf above.

And then

I fell to my knees and grabbed the photograph album from where I'd left it yesterday, amidst the scattered contents of the wooden chest in the middle of the room. I flicked hurriedly through the pages, looking for the pictures I remembered. 1955. 1958. 1965. Yes.

Beachy Head, July 1968. There were two photographs of Derek as a ten-year-old, in striped T-shirt and short trousers with turn-ups, sitting on a picnic rug in one, taking guard with a cricket bat in another. Only the caption confirmed the location. The background could have been any fold of Sussex down land There was no way to tell how close to the cliff the Oswins had chosen to picnic. I flicked on through the pages and soon came to another Beachy Head shot. August, 1976. The year, quite possibly the month, Derek had started at Colbonite. He was standing with his father in this picture. They were posed and smiling. Behind them, the ground fell, then rose again, exposing a white flank of cliff to the camera and the candy-striped lighthouse out to sea that fixed their location as exactly as a grid reference. The road described a long curve towards and then away from the edge of the cliff behind them. There were two or three cars parked in a lay-by just beyond the road's closest approach to the edge. Was one of them the Oswins'? I wondered. No. It couldn't be. Surely Derek had said his father had bought the car in which he killed Sir Walter only after he'd become ill, as if, prior to that, they'd had no car at all. I imagined they could easily have travelled to Beachy Head by bus. They wouldn't have needed

My thoughts froze as my eye seized on the distinctive profile of one of the cars in the lay-by. The sleek line of boot and roof and bonnet, sunlight gleaming on polished paintwork. It was a Jaguar 2.4. And I had absolutely no doubt who it belonged to. Nor, come to that, as my mind dwelt for a second on the implications of what I was seeing, who had taken the photograph, who Kenneth and Derek Oswin were smiling at so warmly in the summer sunshine all those years ago, who I was really meant to see.

Circumstances are subtler conspirators than humans. They decree stranger alignments and juxtapositions than any we can devise. I spent last night lying on Derek Oswin's bed in the house he was born in forty-four years ago, staring into a darkness familiar and congenial to him, but novel and threatening to me. I'd used his dictation machine to record my experiences. My own machine was out of bounds at the Sea Air, where I couldn't safely return. The police would be on my trail, I felt sure, chasing the dangerous man Roger Colborn had arranged for them to believe I was. That made my inexcusably unexplained no-show at the Theatre Royal a trivial problem by comparison. But it was made to seem trivial in its turn by my discovery of the truth about the Oswins'

connection with the Colborns; the truth and all the other truths it beckoned me towards.

But so far those truths were only suspicions. What I needed what I had to lay my hands on before the police laid hands on me was proof.

It was barely light when I left 77 Viaduct Road, unobserved, as far as I could tell, by Mrs. Lumb at number 76. The morning was chill and damp, a fine drizzle fuzzying the still glowing street lamps. I headed down Ditchling Road to The Level, then cut across to St. Bart's, following in the long-ago footsteps of Derek Oswin's grandfather, on his way home from a ten-hour shift at Colbonite. His day would have been ending. Mine was only beginning.

I got into a taxi at the railway station and asked to be taken to Ray Braddock's address in Peacehaven: 9 Buttermere Avenue. The driver gave a couple of meaningful glances in the rear-view mirror as he started away and my heart jolted in alarm. Maybe the police had told the local radio station they were looking for me. But, when he spoke, he only did so along the "Don't I know you from somewhere?" line I'd heard hundreds of times before.

"No," I replied, forcing a smile. "I just have one of those faces."

Buttermere Avenue, Peacehaven, a long, straight road of cloned semi-detached pebble-dash bungalows, was as silent as the grave many of its residents were no doubt close to. Number 9 had an immaculately kept garden that made the house itself look shabbier than it really was. The sunburst gate creaked so loudly when I opened it that I seriously wondered if Braddock deliberately refrained from oiling it in order to be forewarned of visitors. The no hawkers, no circulars sign certainly didn't suggest he welcomed casual callers.

There was a light showing through the dimpled glass of the front door and I could hear the faint burble of a radio within. I pressed the bell, long and hard. There was no way to go about this but head-on.

The burble was cut off at once.

A blurred and growing shape disclosed itself through the glass and the door was pulled abruptly open. Braddock, unshaven and swaddled in threadbare sweater and cardigan, glared out at me. Then, seeing who his visitor was, he softened his expression.

"Mr. Flood. Have you heard from Derek?"

"No. But I've heard news of him."

"You'd best come in."

He led me down a narrow hall into a kitchen at the back of the house.

The scent of fried bacon hung in the air. An egg-smeared plate and a breadboard thick with crumbs stood beside the sink. On the table in the middle of the room was a teapot and a half-filled mug, steam whorling up from the rim. Plonked next to it was an open copy of the weekend edition of the Argus. I could only hope it had gone to press too early to report the mysterious absence of the star of the show from last night's performance of Lodger in the Throat.

"There's tea in the pot if you want some," said Braddock.

"No thanks," I responded.

"What's this about Derek, then?"

I took the photograph I'd brought with me out of my pocket and laid it on the table.

Braddock sat down, fumbled in his cardigan for a pair of heavy-framed glasses, put them on and squinted at the picture. After a moment's scrutiny, he frowned suspiciously up at me. "Where'd you get this?"

"It was in the album at Viaduct Road."

"Yeah, but '

"I have a key."

His frown deepened. "You never told me that."

"There are things you never told me, either."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Look at the picture."

"I have done."

"What do you see?"

"Ken and Derek at Beachy Head. A good long while ago."

"Twenty-six years ago, to be precise. August, nineteen seventy-six."

"If you say so."

"What else do you see, apart from your old friend and your godson?"

He made a show of re-examining the photograph, then shrugged.

"Nothing."

"There are cars in the lay-by."

"Be odd if there weren't."

"One of them's a Jaguar two point four."

"Maybe."

"Ann Colborn's car."

"It could be anybody's."

"No. It's hers. You know that."

"I don't."

"She took the photograph."

"What?"

I sat down beside him. "There's no point acting dumb, Ray. I've worked it out. With a little help from Derek. Your friend Ken Oswin and your boss's wife, Ann Colborn, were lovers, weren't they?"

He looked as if the suggestion had angered him. But shocked? No. He didn't look that. "Are you trying to make fun of me, Mr. Flood?"

"Certainly not. I'm just asking you to confirm what I'm sure you've known for many years. Roger Colborn is Ann's son by Ken, not Walter.

Which makes him Derek's half-brother. He knows too. They both do."

Braddock rubbed his chin thoughtfully, patently debating with himself whether to opt for denial or admission. His instinct was to damn me for a liar. But in the end his anxiety about what had happened to Derek swung the contest. "How did you find out?" he said eventually.

"Does it matter?"

"There's no proof. There can't be."

"There can be these days, actually. But Roger's hardly likely to submit to a DNA test, so we're left with strong suspicions and firm beliefs. Ann, Walter and Ken were in no doubt. Nor are you. Are you?"

"Ken never .. . came out and said it to me in so many words."

"But..."

"Look, only Ann Colborn would know for sure, wouldn't she? Maybe not even her. And what difference does it make, anyway? There was something between her and Ken once, that's true. Maybe he was Roger Colborn's natural father. Maybe. But Roger's still Walter's boy in the eyes of the law. What the hell does it matter now, when all three of them are dead and gone?" He glared at me defiantly, but we both recognized the hollowness of his words. It mattered. It definitely mattered. "Are you sure Derek knows?" he murmured.

"Yes."

"And Roger knows and all?"

I nodded in answer.

"Dear Christ."

"What about Derek's mother? Was she in on it?"

"No. I'm sure of that. Val wasn't .. . the inquisitive type. It happened before they were married. And it didn't last long."

"It lasted till she died, Ray. The photograph proves as much."

"I meant .. ." Braddock chewed his lip. "I meant .. . they weren't lovers for long. But I don't suppose they forgot in a hurry, not if Roger .. ." He gave a helpless shrug.

"Beachy Head a regular rendezvous, was it?"

"How should I know?"

"Are you saying you don't?"

"Well.. ." He cleared his throat. "Val never went there. She couldn't abide heights. But Ken and Derek liked a walk. Summer Sundays, they often used to take the train to Seaford, walk round the cliffs to Eastbourne and catch another train back from there. I suppose Ann Colborn .. . might have known that."

"All this sheds new light on Sir Walter Colborn's death, don't you think?"

He bridled. "I don't see how."

"Maybe Ken blamed Sir Walter for Ann's suicide."

"If he did, he never said so to me. And he waited a hell of a time to do something about it, didn't he?"

"He waited until he was dying. Until he no longer had anything to lose."

"I don't believe it."

"That's your prerogative. Anyway, it doesn't matter. What matters is whether Derek believes it."

"If he's gone and stirred all that up .. ." Braddock shook his head.

"Whoever told him about it has a lot to answer for."

"Maybe no-one told him. Maybe he just worked it out."

"Did he put this in his damn book, do you think?"

"Reckon so. Along with the explanation for the high death-toll among Colbonite workers. Not a palatable combination if you're Roger Colborn."

"What's this man done to Derek?"

"I don't know. Let's hope nothing." I was holding out on the old man, of course, shamelessly so. But I knew if I played him Derek's message he'd urge me to comply with Colborn's demands and go quietly which I was no longer in any position to do. For me, it was all or nothing.

And though Braddock had confirmed what I suspected, he hadn't given me what I needed: proof. Indeed, he'd made it clear he didn't believe any proof existed. But I didn't go along with that. I couldn't afford to.

"Who else knew about this, Ray? Who else knew for a fact?"

"No-one. Like I said, how could they, anyway? For a fact, I mean."

"Think, man, think." I'd grabbed his forearm without realizing it, I suddenly noticed. He seemed to have been as unaware of this as I was.

Sheepishly, I let go. "I have to nail this down."

"Why?"

"For Derek's sake."

"You reckon the boy's in danger?"

"I do, yes."

"Well..." He licked his lips hesitantly.

"What?"

"There's Delia Sheringham, I suppose."

"Delia?"

"Walter's sister."

"I know who she is," I snapped, realizing as I did so that Braddock might well have supposed I didn't. In the same instant, I remembered how close Syd Porteous had said the two of them were. "What about her?"

"I bumped into her at the hospital once when I was visiting Ken. It was only a couple of weeks before he died. They'd let him out of prison on bail by then, knowing the state he was in. Delia was coming out of the ward as I went in. She didn't recognize me. Well, I wouldn't have expected her to. But I recognized her. Pulled me up short, seeing her there. Why was she paying a call on the bloke supposed to have done her brother in?"

"Did you ask him?"

"No need. Ken told me straight off. He seemed to think it was funny.

I mean, he was chuckling about it when I got to his bed. "What do you reckon, Ray?" he said. "Sir Walter died without leaving a will. His sister's just been in to tell me. Reckoned I ought to know." That seemed to tickle him. Which was some achievement, seeing how much pain he was in. I pretended not to understand, but it was plain as the nose on your face what he meant. Sir Walter didn't make a will because he no more had a wife living to leave his money to than he had '