Time to Pay (39 page)

Gideon wasn't sure, and it was academic now.
Besides this, he was pretty certain, from what Marion had told him, that Julian's motive in revealing the truth was by that time more selfish than anything. He had made the decision to take his own life and wished to depart the world with the slate wiped clean, regardless of the turmoil he might leave behind.

Gideon had read the journal from start to finish, not knowing at what point he would come across the familiar page, and, in doing so, had gained considerable insight into its author's troubled soul. ‘Nervous Norris' had indeed been an apt, if not especially kind, nickname for someone who privately agonised over the kinds of issues and daily events for which the average young man barely spared a thought.

Outside the windows the light had faded into twilight while he was reading, and on the table beside his chair a mug of coffee stood, cold and uninviting. Looking at his watch, Gideon rose a little stiffly to his feet and stretched the kinks out of his joints. On the rug in front of the wood-burning stove, Zebedee looked up, hopefully. It was gone seven o'clock and past his teatime.

‘Any dog worth its salt would have pulled the curtains, made up the fire and brought me another cup of coffee,' Gideon told him, and was rewarded by Zeb's feathery tail thumping on the mat. ‘OK, come on, I'll feed you.'

In the kitchen Gideon forked meat into bowls for Zeb and also Elsa, who had appeared – as if by magic – at the sound of the fridge door shutting.

Having found and read the diary, he was faced
with another problem. What to do with it? And what to do with the knowledge he had gained?

Tilly would, understandably, want to see the book. Should he let her? Or would the best course of action be to destroy it and deny finding it?
I should've burnt the bloody thing!
Reuben had said, and Gideon half-wished he had. He thought he could probably convince Tilly that the search had proved fruitless, but was it the right thing to do?

The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts, and he went into the hall. Caller display announced Puddlestone Farm, and he paused with his hand extended towards the receiver. If it was Tilly, what was he going to say?

He withdrew his hand and stood staring into space. She would ring again. He needed to gather his thoughts. The diary had revealed a lot about Julian's state of mind following Marcus' death but very little detail concerning the actual event. Gideon found he wanted to know more, and he felt sure that, if she saw the diary, Tilly would, too.

The telephone bell cut off mid-ring and Gideon reached a decision. Fetching Damien's list, he returned to the phone and keyed in a number.

When Gideon met Garth Stephenson in the Goose and Ferret some forty minutes later, the teacher looked tense and ill at ease. He had been inclined to hang up on Gideon when he rang, until Gideon said, ‘I know about the game you played at Ponsonby Castle.'

There had been a pause, then Stephenson had replied, ‘All right. I'll meet you. Half an hour, at the pub in the village?'

Now he took a long draught of his beer and looked at Gideon warily across the dark wood table, with its token carnation and fern frond in a slim glass vase. There were far fewer people in the bar than there had been on Gideon's last visit, and they were virtually alone in their corner by the fire.

‘How do you know about Ponsonby?'

‘I've seen one of the photocopies.' Gideon watched him for a reaction but saw only a deepening resignation.

‘Where did you get it?'

‘Damien had it.' Of the five, Gideon suspected the teacher least of all, but he was not about to take the chance of telling him he'd found the diary.

‘So now you know, what are you going to do about it?'

‘I'm not sure yet. I expect it'll be up to Tilly.'

For a moment, Stephenson looked puzzled.

‘Damien's sister,' Gideon supplied.

‘Oh . . . yes.' Stephenson bowed his head and regarded his beer glass gloomily. ‘I'm not sure I understand why you got involved in all this. What is it to you? I mean, it all happened so long ago.'

‘Damien's murder didn't.'

The teacher's blue eyes rose to meet Gideon's.

‘Is that what this is about?'

‘You tell me.'

‘What? I didn't have anything to do with that! I wasn't even sure it was him who . . .' His voice faded.

‘You weren't sure it was Damien who was blackmailing you?' Gideon said. ‘Is that what you
were going to say? But I've a strong suspicion someone did know.'

‘I had nothing to do with it!' Stephenson whispered fiercely. ‘I'm not a criminal! It was all an accident – you saw the page from the diary – it was a stupid game that went wrong. The only thing I'm guilty of was covering it up. I never wanted to do it and I've regretted it ever since.'

‘That was Lloyd's idea, wasn't it?'

Stephenson looked swiftly about him, as if expecting to see one of his co-conspirators lurking at an adjoining table. Apparently reassured, he continued, low-voiced.

‘Originally, but the others agreed – except Julian, of course. We put it to the vote. It was awful, with poor Marcus just lying there. But Lloyd said us owning up wasn't going to do
him
any good. He said there'd be hell to pay, and we'd probably get chucked off the team. He said Marcus wouldn't have wanted that and, after all, he'd asked to join in the game.'

‘Tell me about the game,' Gideon prompted. ‘How did it start?'

Stephenson frowned slightly, remembering. ‘It was Saturday and we'd been given the evening off, so we all went down to the pub in the village – the Iron Kettle, I think it was called. We'd been training really hard all week and we were on a bit of a high, like kids let out of school. Of course we all drank too much. I guess there was a little one-upmanship going on; a bunch of guys, in our late teens and early twenties, all trying to prove how grown-up we were.' He broke off and laughed bitterly.

‘A recipe for disaster,' Gideon agreed.

‘Well, there were one or two older; I mean, Lloyd was nearly thirty but he was very fit because he'd been doing triathlon, and he was the best rider among us, and one of the best swimmers. We all thought he was a cert to make the team, though our fitness coach, Major Clemence, was pretty down on him, I must say. Kept calling him “the old man” but I think that was just to make him try even harder. You know, the way you're sometimes harder on a promising pupil, just because you know he can do better – no, perhaps you don't . . .'

‘So you all got drunk. What then?'

‘Well, I don't suppose we were
all
drunk,' Stephenson said, thinking back. ‘There were fifteen or twenty of us there that night. I expect one or two stayed fairly sober, but not in our group. It was the day after Marcus' eighteenth birthday, and the first time he'd been legally allowed to drink, so we made sure it was a night he'd remember. God, you're so bloody stupid at that age, aren't you?'

‘How old were you?'

‘Me? I was twenty-one. Robin was twenty; Adam, Sam and Julian were about twenty-four or twenty-five.'

‘So what happened then?'

It appeared Stephenson had long since stopped worrying about the wisdom of confessing all. In fact, now he'd started, he seemed almost eager to unburden himself.

‘Most of the boys went back by the road. One or two of them were feeling rather the
worse for wear and just wanted to get back as quickly as possible, I think, but a few of us decided to go across country – across the castle grounds – and that's when we started playing that stupid game.'

‘What was the game?'

‘I don't know really. I think we made the rules up as we went along, but then it doesn't have to make sense when it's nearly midnight and you're plastered.'

‘Can you remember who started it?'

His brow creased. ‘I think it was Robin. We were walking along beside the lake and he dared Sam to dive in off the bridge, so he did, and when he got out he dared Robin to swim across the lake, naked. Then I did it. Bloody stupid, really. That lake was incredibly cold. Any one of us could have got into trouble and drowned or even died of the shock. But it had to be Marcus.'

‘So did Marcus go in the lake? I thought the diary said he fell.'

‘No, he didn't go in the lake. We'd moved on, by then, and we were passing this kind of folly. It was like a ruined castle, only it wasn't really old – not medieval, I mean. Anyway, Lloyd looked at it and said, “What about that, then?” So then Adam – I think it was Adam – dared him to walk up and round the perimeter wall. It wasn't very big; there was a tower and a couple of arches and this wall, with stones around the base as if they'd fallen. It didn't have a roof or anything; I don't imagine it ever had one. It was built to look romantic – probably by the Victorians.'

‘And Lloyd walked along the wall?'

‘Yes, easily. And then he dared Marcus to do it. It was only about twelve feet tall, maybe a little more over the arch, and there was good footing. It was bright moonlight. Anyone could have done it.'

‘Unless they were drunk,' Gideon said.

‘Yes, or scared of heights.'

‘And Marcus was?'

‘Well, he
looked
petrified. I didn't realise at first, we were all chanting his name – it was part of the game, which just goes to prove how smashed we all were. But when he got up there and had to let go of the tower, he kind of froze. Gradually we all stopped chanting and someone – I'm not sure if it was Lloyd or Sam – called out, “Go on, Marcus! You can do it.” And then Julian said, “He doesn't have to, if he doesn't want to.” But he did really, didn't he . . .?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, because he was the youngest, and desperate to fit in.'

‘He wanted your respect?'

‘Yes, and especially Lloyd's. He idolised Lloyd – I think because he was older and more experienced, and one of his brother's friends. I think Marcus would have done almost anything Lloyd asked him to, that night.'

‘Poor little bastard!'

The teacher nodded sadly.

‘Anyway, he edged away from the tower and looked down, and then he stepped forward and just seemed to miss the wall altogether. It was horrible.' Stephenson grimaced, as if seeing it again, and his fingers whitened around his beer
glass. ‘He fell so slowly but he didn't try to save himself, and suddenly he was there, lying on the stones at the bottom of the wall, dead.'

‘What did you do then?'

‘Well, Julian went to feel for a pulse but we all knew he was dead. It was the way he was lying, and there was blood coming from his nose and his ears.' Stephenson shook his head. ‘I've seen him so many times in my dreams. He looked so young and – well, so peaceful. Apart from the blood, he could have been sleeping.'

‘So you had a vote and decided . . . what? To say he went off on his own?'

‘Yeah. We just walked on back to the castle as if nothing had happened, and when we went in we were all laughing and mucking about – that was Lloyd's idea – to look as though we'd been doing it all the way home. One of the trainers was there, he ticked our names off and asked if we'd seen Marcus. I nearly cracked then, but Sam said, cool as you like, “No, we thought he was with the others.” It was that easy.'

He paused and drained his beer.

‘Clemence woke us at six the next morning to give us the news. He said they didn't know how it happened. God, that was an awful moment, waking up and remembering! It was like it had happened all over again. Everybody was devastated, and a couple of people said he'd seemed quiet lately. Some of the younger guys were crying – I think I was – and the coaches were so nice, so supportive, it made me feel even guiltier. I wanted to scream out the truth, but I couldn't because of the others, and every minute that
passed made it more impossible to own up. That was the longest day of my life.'

Gideon regarded him with a certain amount of compassion. There was no doubt at all in his mind that Stephenson was telling the truth. It would have been natural, aged twenty-one and scared witless, to follow the lead of an older, more experienced man, and so difficult to break out of the group and assert himself. He could only wish that Damien had enquired further before he made the fateful decision to make the group suffer. But then, maybe not. The story as told by Sam or Lloyd might have been entirely different.

‘Another drink, gentlemen?'

The barman had stopped in passing, and Stephenson looked momentarily blank, as if he'd forgotten where he was.

The offer was repeated. Stephenson accepted, Gideon declined, and their empty glasses were whisked away towards the bar.

‘You didn't guess it was Damien who was blackmailing you, then?' Gideon asked.

‘I thought it might be but I wasn't sure. I thought it could have been Julian's widow or brother, as it started after Julian died, but whoever it was, there wasn't much I could do except pay. It wasn't as if he was asking for a huge amount, and I don't think the head would have been too pleased with that kind of publicity. In a way, I felt I deserved to be punished – does that sound ridiculous?'

‘No. But I think you're being too hard on yourself. Marcus' death was an accident and all you did was succumb to peer pressure. If anyone was
to blame, it was Lloyd. He was old enough to know better.'

Stephenson sat staring broodingly at the beer mat he was twiddling between forefinger and thumb.

‘I know you're right. It's what I'd tell any of my boys, but somehow it's different when it happens to you, isn't it?'

In due course his beer arrived, and he took a grateful swallow, running his tongue along his top lip to remove the froth.

There was little more to say, really. Gideon sighed and got to his feet.