Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

“Tuesday’s fine.”

“The auction will have come and gone by then. It’ll all be over.”

“I suppose it will.” Somehow, though, Harding doubted it.

“Until then, you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

“You think I need to be?”

“We all need to be.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Thanks for today, Tim. I enjoyed it-despite Darren.”

“So did I.”

She smiled and nodded faintly. “Good.”

There was only one Metherell in the directory with an Isles of Scilly address. Harding sat on his bed at the Mount Prospect, concocting a cover story even as he punched the numbers into the bedside phone.

A woman answered. “Mercer House.”

“Could I speak to John Metherell, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“My name’s Hardy But he… doesn’t know me.”

“Hold on.”

Harding heard her call “John” and waited through a brief, muffled conversation before a gruff male voice came on the line.

“John Metherell speaking. What can I do for you, Mr. Hardy?”

“It’s a… delicate matter. I was wondering if I could come and talk to you about… Kerry Foxton.”

There was a pause, during which Harding thought he heard Metherell sigh. “Oh yes?”

“I gather you have a video… shot on the day of the accident.”

Now there definitely was a sigh. “What’s your interest in this, Mr. Hardy?”

“Kerry was a friend of mine. We lost touch. I only heard recently of her death. I’ve been… trying to understand what happened.”

“What happened was a tragic accident. I don’t know that there’s anything more to be said. Especially not after all these years.”

“It would really help me if you could… at least let me see the video.”

“It won’t tell you anything.”

“Maybe not. But-”

“Where are you phoning from?”

“Penzance. I’ve come a long way, Mr. Metherell. If you could just see your way clear to-”

“All right.” A note of brisk compliance entered the man’s voice. “I don’t object to discussing it. Or showing you the video, come to that. If you’re willing to go to the trouble of flying over here.”

“I am.”

“Very well, then. When were you thinking of?”

“Tomorrow?”

Metherell clicked his tongue thoughtfully, then said, “Tomorrow it is.”

The Isles of Scilly were a subtropical archipelago set in an aquamarine ocean beneath a cloudlessly blue sky. That, at any rate, is how they appeared in the posters adorning Penzance Heliport. As Harding viewed them during the helicopter’s descent to St. Mary’s on a grey chill, wintry Monday morning, they were wind-lashed out-crops of rock in an angry, spume-flecked sea. His summertime visit to Tresco with Polly felt half a world and rather more than seven years away.

There was another and more substantial reason for his glum mood. Earlier, just before leaving the Mount Prospect, he had taken a phone call in his room. The caller had told the receptionist his name was Tozer and Harding had expected to hear Barney’s voice when he was put through. But instead…

“That you, Harding? This is your new buddy, Darren.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to lay off my girl. Hayley”

“She’s not your girl.”

“Isn’t Carol Tozer enough for you?”

“Now, listen. I-”

“No, you listen. Lay off Hayley, or Barney gets to hear the message his missus left on your phone. I don’t think he’ll like it, do you? What d’you think he’ll do about it? He’s not someone you want to cross, man, that’s for sure. Carol could end up like that friend of hers, Kerry Foxton. So could you. It could get seriously nasty. Know what I mean? But it doesn’t have to. It’s up to you. Stay away from Hayley”

Exactly how his life had become so complicated in the course of a single weekend was a mystery Harding pondered as he disembarked from the helicopter at St. Mary’s Airport. It had seemed such a simple errand at the outset. But at every step he had uncovered a disturbing secret. And he sensed his visit to Scilly would be no different. It was too late to turn back, though. He had to find out what was at stake. He had to give himself the advantage of knowing the truth.

“Mr. Hardy?” A tall, stout, bearded man wearing a flat cap, Barbour and corduroys moved forward from the vehicles parked behind the small terminal building. He unzipped a broad grin and extended a hand. “I’m John Metherell.”

They shook. “How did you recognize me?” Harding asked, more than slightly perturbed by the possible answers that occurred to him.

“Easy. You’re the only solitary male aboard I don’t recognize.” Metherell nodded to a couple of departing passengers he evidently knew. “Tourists are thin on the ground in February.”

“You didn’t say you were going to meet me.”

“Spur-of-the-moment decision. Plus I thought it might be useful if I showed you what the diving expedition was all about. Before you saw the video.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Wait and see. Hop in.”

They clambered into a battered white Honda and set off. “So, you knew Kerry Foxton?”

“Yes.”

“But… you lost touch.”

“I, er, went abroad. Lost touch with everyone. You know how it is.”

“Can’t say I do, actually.”

“Anyway when I heard she’d died, I… wanted to find out as much as I could.”

“How well did you know Kerry?”

“Very. For a while.”

“I don’t remember her father ever mentioning you.”

“I never met him.”

“Right.” Metherell paused to watch for traffic at the end of the airport access road, then pulled out. “Who put you on to me?”

“Ray Trathen.”

“Ah. Good old Ray. Was it he who told you about the video?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m puzzled. He has a copy himself as far as I know.”

“Mislaid.”

“Really?”

“So he says.”

“Well, he’s capable of mislaying anything, I suppose. Still peddling his murder theory, is he?”

“Yes.”

“With sufficient conviction to make you think it’s just possible Kerry’s death wasn’t an accident?”

“Exactly.” Harding was treading carefully and could only hope how carefully was not apparent from his tone. His cover was thin and could easily be blown. He had chosen to use a pseudonym on an impulse he now regretted. He should have deliberated longer and harder before contacting Metherell. But he had not, and now here he was, with Spargo’s squeakily menacing voice still echoing in his ear, risking exposure as an impostor with every word he spoke.

“It’s balderdash, I can assure you. Ray’s just working off a grudge against Barney Tozer. Although he probably drinks enough to believe his own fantasies. I’ll give him that. I daresay he’s convinced himself by now that Barney really did murder Kerry.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No. He may have neglected to check the equipment he and Kerry were using as thoroughly as he should have. That’s certainly what the coroner implied. So, you could argue he was partly responsible for what happened, although Kerry made things worse for herself by entering the wreck, but at the end of the day… it was just bad luck.”

“Where are we going?” Harding glanced round at the high-hedged fields of daffodils to either side of the road. His grasp of the island’s geography was just sufficient to tell him that they were not heading for Hugh Town, where Metherell lived.

“I thought a word with our skipper that day might put your mind at rest.”

“Alf Martyn?”

“Correct. He and his brother Fred grow daffodils when they aren’t ferrying tourists round the islands.”