The High Flyer (19 page)

III

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s all right—I’m here—I’ll listen—I won’t go away . . .” Tucker was soothing me with old-fashioned gestures and modern platitudes; I was being enfolded in a solid, respectable clasp and my back was being patted gently, moves which kept his hands occupied in a suitably asexual manner. I was dimly aware that he was wearing a sweatshirt devoid of a logo, and white jeans. The sweatshirt smelled of fabric softener, as if it had just been laundered. His curly hair seemed longer than when I had last seen it, brushed and subdued, at Alice’s flat, and this hint of Bohemianism was enhanced by the designer stubble which was darkening his jaw. His eyes were bright with concern, astonishment and something else, something very friendly which I could not immediately define. It was as if my extreme vulnerability had touched him in ways which he had never anticipated but was far from finding unwelcome.

Meanwhile my disintegration into total fluffiness was so appalling me that I was struggling to stand up straight and switch off the water-works. As I feebly mopped my face again I managed to say: “Sorry, Tucker, not quite myself. Just been to hell. Didn’t like it.”

“Come up to my room and tell me everything!”

“Eric,” said the older Tucker, “I think Ms. Graham, who’s clearly very shocked, might prefer more neutral surroundings. Why don’t you take her into the reception room down here while I make some tea?”

“I’ll handle this, if you don’t mind, Gil.”

“I do mind. I’m responsible for strangers who come to this house in distress and I’m entitled to say how they should be received.”

“Oh, don’t be so damned pompous!”

“Better pompous than irresponsible!”

I seemed to be reviving ancient nursery feuds. Quickly I said: “I don’t want to cause trouble. I’ll just sit here in the hall.”

“No need for that,” said the younger Tucker quickly, shaping up. “We’ll do as Gil suggests,” but at once his brother said to me: “Is that acceptable to you, Ms. Graham? You’re the one who’s important here.”

I was so surprised by this unusual and imaginative consideration that at first I could only mutter an assent, but curiosity soon surfaced. “How did you know who I was?”

Gilbert Tucker gave a fleeting, ironical smile before saying drily: “You’ve been mentioned now and then during the past few weeks.” He turned aside. “Let me make that tea I mentioned.”

“This way, Carter,” said his brother bossily, piloting me across a nearby threshold into a small, shabby room where two battered leather armchairs faced each other beside an elderly gas fire. Above the fireplace hung a crucifix consisting of a light brown wooden cross and a figure made of pewter-coloured metal.

“Do you want to wait for the tea to arrive or do you want to plunge into your story straight away?” said Tucker, parking himself in the chair opposite me.

But I did not know. All I could say was: “God, I can’t believe I fluffed out against your chest like that!”

“I assure you my chest was happy to be of service.”

“I bet. Hey, Tucker . . .” My voice trailed away.

“Yes, Ms. G?”

“Something’s wired a computer virus directly into my brain. I’ve been hacked.”

“I’ll fix it.”

My eyes yet again filled with tears.

“Ah, Ms. G, Ms. G—”

“Can it, Tucker. I’ve got to think,” I said feverishly. “I must
think
.”

For by that time my battered powers of reason were telling me that I had to stop myself dumping him in deep trouble.

IV

The problem was my behaviour at Oakshott.

When lawyers find someone who may or may not have been murdered but who has without doubt died in a manner which requires investigation, they don’t go poncing around in rubber gloves while wiping fingerprints off doorhandles and snooping among private files. They call the police. Or at the very least they call for an ambulance. If Sophie had died by accident I might get away even now with pleading mere unprofessional behaviour, but if Sophie had been murdered I risked being charged as an accessory after the fact. In retrospect I was appalled that I had behaved so idiotically but at the same time I could see just how it had happened. Shock had knocked me off balance, and it was worth remembering too that the events at Oakshott were only the latest in a series of blows to my equilibrium. If I had finally freaked out in that silent, sinister house amidst those silent, sinister woods, it was hardly surprising. But it did leave me in a difficult position as I struggled to clamber back onto an even keel.

Obviously the most important task I now had to undertake was to protect Tucker from being dragged into the Oakshott débâcle. If Sophie had been murdered and I confided in him, he too could be classed as an accessory after the fact unless he confided in the police immediately. So I could not tell him Sophie was dead. But if I could not tell him Sophie was dead, how could I tell him that I had seen her ghost—and would he believe me even if I did tell him? I thought he might quixotically try to believe me, but I did not want someone being quixotic. I wanted someone who could accept my story and come up with some practical suggestions for sorting out my life. Or in other words, I was beyond being helped by a mere trained listener, no matter how sympathetic and delightful he was. I needed an expert—and not just some whimsical old ghostbuster from the nutty fringes. I wanted a professional who was protected by the rules relating to confidentiality.

I had just reached this rational though baffling conclusion when the Reverend Gilbert Tucker entered the room with a mug of tea.

V

Gilbert seemed alarmed by the deep silence, and as he set the tea down on the lamp-table by my chair he said quickly to me: “How are you feeling?”

“Banjaxed. But not brain-dead, not any more.” I turned to his brother. “Tucker,” I said, “don’t go ballistic, but I’ve got to talk to Gilbert on his own. I’ve just worked out that I need a priest.”

“It can happen to the best of us, Ms. G, but at least the clerical white rabbit is right here and I don’t even have to pull him out of a hat.” He stood up.

“No need to go too far away—”

“I’ll be in the kitchen.” He smiled encouragingly at me before he left the room.

As Gilbert took his place in the armchair opposite I said: “How far does clerical confidentiality run nowadays?” but he was reassuring.

“Nothing you tell me now will be repeated by me to anyone else.”

I listened to my shallow breathing for several seconds before saying: “Truthfully?”

“Truthfully. I deal in trust, not betrayal.”

I swallowed. “All the time?”

“It has to be all the time. After all, you can’t be half trustworthy any more than you can be half pregnant. You’re either trustworthy or you’re not.”

I mentally pawed these sentences as if they were pieces in a complicated jigsaw which needed rearranging, but finally decided no rearrangement was necessary for the picture to make sense. I reminded myself that I was not about to confess to murder. My misdeeds, terrible though they were when committed by a lawyer, were almost certainly not sufficient to drive a clergyman to wash his hands of me and phone the police. I decided some sort of confession could now be risked. But I also decided to be as sparing as possible in my references to the Oakshott horrors.

“All right,” I said. “I trust you not to shop me but I wonder if I can trust you not to laugh. I’ve seen a ghost.”

Gilbert looked startled but not, so far as I could tell, disbelieving. “Where?”

“In my flat just now. It was my husband’s ex-wife.”

“When did she die?”

“Earlier this evening in Surrey. I found the body.”

Somehow Gilbert kept calm and continued to ask sensible questions. “How sure are you that she was dead?”

“There was no pulse. She had fallen downstairs. Her neck was broken.”

“An accident?”

“Probably.”

“But you didn’t call the police?”

“Too worried about the possibility of murder.”

“I understand, but let me just get this absolutely straight. You found this woman dead in Surrey. You then drove home to your flat—”

“—and found she was already there, waiting for me, yes, except of course she couldn’t have been. I don’t believe in ghosts so I couldn’t have seen what I know I did see. But on the other hand—”

“—you did see what you know you did see.”

“Yes—and I can’t deal with that, can’t get any kind of handle on it at all.” I paused to suck in some air before adding: “All I know now is that I can’t go back to the flat until this has been sorted out, but how can I get rid of this thing? How can I be sure it’s gone away? How can I be sure it won’t try to kill me by dragging me out onto the balcony and tipping me over the rail? I met a vile woman this afternoon who calls herself a psychic healer and she tried to make me believe I’d want to throw myself off the balcony, so what I’m afraid of is—”

“You must have the best possible help,” said Gilbert Tucker at once, not even waiting for me to finish this sentence, “and you must have it without delay. Now, I’m not an expert in this area, but I certainly know a man who is. He’s another priest here in the City, and his name is Nicholas Darrow . . .”

VI

The church of St. Benet near London Wall—St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall, as it was known in late twentieth-century London—was a striking little number designed by the architect of St. Paul’s, Sir Christopher Wren, in the seventeenth century after the Great Fire had devastated the City; I learned later that St. Benet’s had been damaged in the Second World War but restored in the 1950s. Unlike Gilbert Tucker’s gloomy gothic anomaly in Fleetside, this church was floodlit, white and sleek. It stood in a little graveyard where flowers and shrubs had been cultivated, and beyond the graveyard Egg Street ran north to London Wall, the road which ran parallel to the south side of the Barbican. I knew Egg Street but I had barely noticed the church; I had barely noticed any of those City churches before I had arrived with Tucker at St. Eadred’s Fleetside after our champagne farewell at the Lord Mayor’s Cat.

I had previously paid little attention to the Rectory of St. Benet’s either. Its high handsome Georgian façade was familiar to me but I had thought the house merely contained the offices of some old-fashioned firm willing to endure the inconveniences of an antique building. I looked at the house now with new eyes as Tucker halted Gilbert’s car in the forecourt and switched off the engine.

The time was almost eleven, but I still felt I was travelling in a dimension where the ordinary rules relating to time had blurred. For a moment I remembered my life-plan, mapped out in the days when the past could be ignored, the present was under control and the future was always subject to the power of my will, and as I saw how efficiently this vision had been hacked to pieces I wanted to scream with rage and despair.

“Okay, Ms. G?”

“No, but never mind.”

“Want to fluff out against my chest again?”

“Maybe I could save that for later. I feel in urgent need of something to look forward to.”

He laughed as he unbuckled his safety belt, and I groped my way out of the car.

Nicholas Darrow, the pale, bony, smooth-talking item who was currently giving that nice Alice such a tricky time, opened the door before we could ring the bell. Evidently he had been watching out for us from his study, an austere room into which he ushered us as soon as we entered the house. I was surprised to see a computer standing on the modern desk; I had assumed all clergymen would still be living a pretechnological existence.

The study walls were painted an unpleasantly stark shade of white and there were no pictures, only a modern crucifix quite different from the one in Gilbert’s reception room. This one looked as if it had been specially commissioned from a talented artist; carved out of a single piece of wood it was all flowing lines and unusual angles, rather like Nicholas himself. As my gaze returned to his face I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

“Lewis has gone to fetch Alice,” he was informing us, “so why don’t you stay until they get back, Eric? Carter, take a seat in this chair here”— I was installed in a tub-like arrangement of hard wood laced with foam rubber—“and, Eric, if you want to bring that chair closer . . .”

I was so glad to be in the presence of the necessary expert that I was prepared to be uncharacteristically meek, but there was something about this man which set my teeth on edge. It was perhaps unfair to label him arrogant; he was merely exuding the self-confidence which all successful professionals display when in action on their own turf, but nevertheless he had the air of a man who deep down thinks himself the cat’s whiskers. I still did not find him attractive, but I could see now that he had the kind of off-beat sex-appeal which would keep the females mewing in the pews if not raving in the nave.

“Let me just touch on a couple of practical details before we go any further,” he said, sitting down near me at his desk and swivelling his chair so that he was directly facing the tub where I was installed. “Gil mentioned that your flat was currently uninhabitable, so I want to offer you the option of staying here tonight. That’s why Alice is coming—to be with you in the flat at the top of the house if you want to stay. Of course you may prefer to go to a hotel, but you’re very welcome to stay here if you wish.”

I realised he was trying to beat back his natural bossiness and avoid imposing solutions on me; this was good. But the idea of him being able to summon Alice so easily from Clerkenwell at such a late hour was one which made me want to hiss; this was bad. Instantly I found it much harder to suppress my twinge of hostility.

“How kind of you,” I said, very cool. “I would indeed like to stay. But I’m sorry Alice has been inconvenienced.”

“Oh, she’s more than capable of saying no to me, I assure you!” he replied at once. “But you made a big impression on her recently, and she said she’d be only too willing to help.”

This was a slick sentence but it had the ring of truth, and when I allowed myself to look mollified he gave me a brief professional smile as if he quite understood that I was not the kind of female who would ever mew in a pew. “The next practical matter we need to touch upon,” he said, “concerns your husband. As you’re on your own I assume he’s engaged elsewhere this evening, but when is he due to surface? He’ll want to know where you are.”

This was certainly an angle I had failed to consider. I stared at him as I tried to work out how to respond.

“It’s not urgent,” he said as he saw I was baffled. “If you told him you were going to be out for the evening he’s not going to start worrying about you just yet. On the other hand, if you disappear for the whole night without warning—”

“Yes.” I could see the problem but the solution still eluded me, probably because I was finding it increasingly hard to cope with the thought of what Kim might have been doing.

“Do you have an answering machine?”

“I do, yes, but I can’t think what message I could leave on it.”

“Oh, I’ll leave the message,” said Nicholas. “No need to worry about that. Would you object if I were to tell him where you are?”

“Uh . . .”

“Has he been showing a pattern of violent behaviour?”

“Oh no!” I said at once. “He loves me!” But then the words “violent behaviour” sank deeper into my mind and I remembered Sophie’s crumpled body. “Oh my God,” I heard myself mutter. “Oh my God . . .” Tears began to stream down my face again.

“Eric,” said Nicholas, “pass that box of Kleenex, would you? Thanks. Now Carter, we’ll get to all the tough stuff later when Lewis returns, but meanwhile let’s just focus on clearing up this practical detail. As I see it, this is the situation: you don’t have to talk to Kim at this point and you don’t have to see him, but I do think it might be a good idea to feed him some basic information. Otherwise even if he doesn’t call the police to report you missing, he’s going to be angry and upset tomorrow morning, and angry, upset people are always harder to deal with than people who are merely puzzled and concerned.”

“Yes. Right.” I could understand this. “Okay.”

“Shall I make the call?”

“Please.”

“Number?”

“Oh God, I can’t remember, I’m so banjaxed—no, wait a minute, it’s coming—” I reeled off the numbers and he started to dial.

As the machine picked up the call he said neutrally: “Mr. Betz, this is Nicholas Darrow, the Rector of St. Benet’s Church in Egg Street. I’m calling to let you know that your wife’s safe and that she’ll be staying tonight with Alice Fletcher here at my Rectory.” He gave his phone number, repeated it and hung up. “Now on to the next question,” he said to me. “When did you last eat?”

“I think I had lunch. Or did I? I can’t quite—”

“Have you had any alcohol during the last twelve hours?”

“Yes, but that was ages ago.”

“How much did you have? I’m sorry, that sounds as if I’m about to criticise you, but I’m not—I’m just trying to get an accurate picture of your physical condition.”

“I drank two double vodka martinis. I’d had the hell of a shock, and—”

“You don’t need to justify yourself. What you do need to do is eat. When Alice arrives—”

A car door slammed outside.

“Good timing!” said Tucker wryly, and went out into the hall to open the front door.