Sam Bourne - Pantheon

He needed to tell her all this, to tell her he understood. But he could do nothing if he could not find her. Which was why he had to talk to McAndrew right now, face to face. He would start by demanding to know where Florence and Harry were and then get to the bottom of exactly why they were missing from that file. He would not be brushed off with vague promises this time: he wanted answers.

By now he had left behind the cluster of science laboratories that flanked the earliest stretch of Prospect Street and was running uphill through botanical gardens, hot and sticky in the morning sun. The gradient was steep; his shoulder was throbbing with pain. He looked down at his map; not far to go now.

This was clearly the expensive part of town, the timber-clad houses large, the street wide and leafy. Perhaps this was where he and Florence would be living if fate had made them a pair of young American academics at Yale, rather than Oxford. They would be together now, enjoying a calm, peaceful life, no fear of war scaring her half way around the world. He might never have gone to Spain; not many Americans did. He would never have been shot, his shoulder would still be intact, but he would never have met Florence, they would never have had Harry…

James was gasping now, his lungs craving oxygen. He let his head fall, his palms resting on his thighs. He was sweating hard, even with his jacket bundled half a mile ago into his satchel.

Now he resumed at walking speed, turning right onto Canner Street. It would not do to turn up a panting wreck at the Dean’s home. James gripped his shoulder, trying to squeeze the pain away. One more turn, left, and he would be on St Ronan Street.

The house numbers were in the eighties; he was nearly there. The houses were even wider and grander now than on Prospect Street, with their smooth lawns and their five-step staircases up to the front porch. How safe it seemed here, thousands and thousands of miles away from the blacked-out towns and cities of England where, right now, they were girding themselves for another night. Soon they would be huddling in their Anderson shelters. The damp smell of soil, waiting for the siren to come, the exhausted desire to go back to bed…

There. Number two hundred and forty-one, a house as substantial as the others. The style, James decided, was colonial; the door was painted a solid, respectable black. He walked up the path and rang the bell, mentally preparing his lines in case Mrs McAndrew answered the door. I met the Dean yesterday and he said I should contact him any time if I needed any help. He wiped his forehead to remove any remaining traces of sweat.

There was no response. James rang again, this time leaning close to listen for any sign of movement on the other side. Nothing.

He moved onto the porch, so that he could peer through the window. Pressing his face against the glass, he saw that the living room at least looked empty. There seemed to be no lights on anywhere.

James turned to see if anyone was around, if he was likely to be seen. No one. With all the confidence he could muster, trying not to look like a burglar, he strode over to the side of the house and began walking down the path. There was a bicycle propped up against the wall, but then the path dead-ended in a wooden gate.

Another look over his shoulder and James placed his foot on the bottom timber. One more pull and he was halfway up, sufficiently high that he could look over the top of the gate and at the garden. His shoulder was screaming again.

James scoped left to right, confirming in an instant that the house was entirely empty. There was a table and two chairs on the paved area, a large, well-kept lawn with a single, stand-alone child’s swing in the middle, a couple of fruit trees towards the back, and lots of well-kept bushes and shrubs all around.

James was just wondering if there would be any value in vaulting over the gate altogether, perhaps even trying to get into the house from the back garden, when he felt the grip around his right and then his left ankle.

He turned awkwardly, trying to look down, which only sharpened the agony in his shoulder. He let out a howl of pain, which prompted the grip around his ankles to grow tighter.

He heard a voice, instantly familiar. ‘Do not resist, Dr Zennor,’ it said. ‘You’ve reached the end of the road.’

He looked down at his feet to see that they were in the firm grip of Detective Riley of the Yale Police Department. From above he could see the same white, fleshy features, slightly flushed this time, probably on account of the slight incline of the front lawn the police officer had just climbed to reach him.

‘I’m going to need you to come down, sir.’

‘Oh for God’s sake! Please, this is not what you think-’

‘Just come down, sir.’

James gestured towards his feet, indicating that he couldn’t jump until Riley let go.

Once down, he started again. ‘Detective Riley, please. I was not burgling this house. I came here to speak to the Dean. I need to speak to him urgently, I’ve-’

‘Wrists.’

In the moment James hesitated, Riley produced a pair of handcuffs. Now James understood. He felt a surge of fury and then, like a wave that breaks only to trickle back into the sea, he felt it recede. He was too exhausted for rage. Curiously, too, he felt no anger towards Riley. Instead he blamed himself and his own stupidity.

He had not been seen, he was sure of that. The side path of McAndrew’s house was not overlooked by any neighbours; he had checked left and right, up and down, before he had ventured down here. Yes, he might have been spotted by a vigilant neighbour across the street. They might have suspected a break-in. But he didn’t care how technologically advanced these Americans were, there was no way they could have telephoned the police and brought a police car here that quickly. He had arrived at the house no more than two or three minutes ago and would have struck even the most nervous neighbour as acting suspiciously only in the last minute. Until then, he was just a man ringing on a doorbell.

‘Detective Riley, can I ask a question?’ James said, as Riley and his partner frogmarched him down past the sloping lawn towards their vehicle.

‘You can ask what you like. Don’t mean I’m gonna answer.’

‘Are we still technically under the jurisdiction of the Yale Police Department?’

‘On this property, we sure are. This is the Dean’s residence, part of Yale University territory.’

‘Of course. But this area. This would fall under the New Haven Police Department, surely?’

‘Yeah, but you ain’t in this area. You’re on this property. And you’re trespassing too.’

‘I understand. But if someone was to call the police for help, someone who lived in this street, they wouldn’t get you, would they? Their call would be answered by the New Haven police force, am I right?’

Riley fell silent, pushing James’s head down as he folded him into the backseat of the car. That settled it. He had not been spotted by a neighbour or passer-by out walking their dog. He had been betrayed. Only one person knew he was coming here — and she had betrayed him.

The journey into town was brief; only minutes later they were back in the police station where his day had started yesterday morning, though it felt like weeks ago. He didn’t say anything in the car, just stared out of the window wrestling with a question that spun around him like a whirlpool, trapping him ever deeper and lower: why?

All he wanted was to regain his family. That was all. He did not want to know the truth of the death of George Lund. He did not want to know how Preston McAndrew was caught up in this, nor even why Dorothy Lake had kissed him last night and betrayed him today (though he did wonder, fleetingly, if the two events were connected, whether she had tipped off the police in revenge for his rejection of her). He did not even particularly care why he had been followed earlier. He did not want to know any of that. All he wanted to know was where he could find Florence and Harry. He wanted to find them and hold them, to stroke their hair and smell their skin. That was all he wanted.