Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

A TV set, DVD player and VCR were housed in a cabinet in the corner. The video was evidently already in the machine. Metherell sat down at the desk and waved Harding towards an adjacent armchair, then rummaged among his papers, flourished a pair of remotes and aimed them at the TV

“Don’t get too excited,” he cautioned as the screen lit up. “It’s just people on a boat. I’d stopped shooting long before we realized there was a problem.”

It was immediately obvious that Metherell’s description- “just people on a boat” -was exactly right. The first shakily captured footage was of Carol relaxing in the stern with Ray Trathen. Carol was wearing denim shorts, flip-flops and a dramatically low-cut T-shirt. Ray, beer bottle in hand and looking rather more than seven years younger than the man Harding had met over the weekend, was clad in shapeless casuals. He rolled his eyes at the camera when he realized Metherell had caught him ogling Carol’s cleavage. The sea beyond them was, as Alf Martyn had said, millpond flat.

The camera panned slowly, taking in a lighthouse in the middle distance. Then the fo’c’sle of the Jonquil came into view, with Fred Martyn at the wheel and Alf standing beside him in the cockpit, squinting into the lens.

Barney Tozer and Kerry Foxton were standing amidships, between Metherell and the Martyns. They were wearing their wet-suits, but had not yet donned the rest of their diving kit. Kerry had her back to the camera. She was a small, slim, dark-haired young woman, slight enough of stature to be dwarfed by Barney, phocine and massive in black matt rubber. He winked at Metherell and said something to Kerry, gesturing for her to turn round. She obliged, cocking her chin and beaming theatrically as she did so.

Harding gasped at the first sight of her face. Metherell froze the frame and looked round at him. “Is something wrong?”

Harding stared at the blurred image of Kerry Foxton, short hair tousled, eyes bright, mouth parted in a smile. He had seen those eyes and that smile before. The resemblance was as uncanny as it was undeniable. Was something wrong? Yes. Definitely. Something was very wrong.

The divers, fully kitted up now, their faces obscured by wet-suit hoods, goggles and breathing apparatus, stepped off the boat, Barney taking the lead, into the stretch of sea adjacent to the buoy the Martyns had deployed earlier. Barney vanished first, then Kerry, the wake of her dive fading rapidly. She was gone. The video cut out.

“Want to see any of it again?” asked Metherell.

“No, thanks.”

“OK.” Metherell switched off the TV and set the video to rewind. “As you see, it doesn’t tell you much. There’s no clue as to what followed.”

It was true. The video contained nothing either suspicious or remarkable. Unless, like Harding, you were acquainted with Hayley Winter. “Did you ever… meet Kerry’s family?” he asked, his gaze still fixed on the screen.

“I met her father. He came down and asked a few questions of those involved. Those he could get to speak to, anyway. A nice man, as I recall, though nothing like as flamboyant as Kerry’s personality had somehow led me to expect. Small, inoffensive, quietly spoken. And crushed. Yes. Crushed is how he seemed.”

“No other relative?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Did she have any brothers? Or sisters?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I mean, she may have, but… I never met them.”

“Didn’t the family show up at the inquest?”

“No. Her parents were dead by then, of course.”

“They were?”

“Yes. It’s why-” Metherell broke off, waiting until Harding had turned to look at him before continuing. “It’s a sad story right to the finish. The doctors in Plymouth soon gave up on Kerry. Evidently, you don’t come out of the sort of coma she was in. Her parents refused to accept that. They moved her to a private hospital in London. Then to some clinic in Munich that had a reputation for working miracles with coma cases. They commuted over to see her. I don’t know if any progress was made. Not enough, obviously, because, when they were killed in a pile-up on the M4 driving home from Heathrow Airport after yet another visit to Munich, whoever was left to make the decisions… pulled the plug on Kerry.”

“I see.”

“Do you? I have the impression something’s… troubling you.”

“Have you ever met Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper at Heartsease?”

“Can’t say I have. I didn’t even know he had one.”

“What about Clive Isbister, then? Or Humphrey Tozer? Would they ever have met Kerry?”

“I don’t know. There’s no reason why Clive should have. The same goes for Humphrey, I assume, though I scarcely know the man myself. Why do you ask?”

“That leaves Ray Trathen, then. He must have noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

“The resemblance.” Harding looked back at the blank and unrevealing TV screen. “The quite startling resemblance.”

When Harding left Mercer House, he still had several hours at his disposal before the four o’clock helicopter back to Penzance. Metherell had obligingly offered to drive him to the airport, so it was agreed he would return to Mercer House around three fifteen. He lunched, on Metherell’s recommendation, at the Mermaid, down by the quay, then walked out round the walls of the old Elizabethan garrison at the western end of the town.

It was also the western end of the island. The dark grey finger of the Bishop Rock lighthouse stood out on the horizon, hemmed in by the other jagged rocks it gave warning of. Somewhere out there lay the wreck of the Association , scene of the disastrous diving expedition of 6 August 1999.

The date was both a tease and a lure. Harding had arrived in Penzance with Polly the following day, by which time Kerry Foxton was in hospital in Plymouth, in a coma from which she would never wake. He could never have met her. Not in Penzance, at any rate. Her photograph might have appeared on the front of The Cornishman , of course. He might have seen that. But it was not enough, not nearly enough, to account for his strong sense of familiarity.

And what of Hayley? How was it she so closely resembled Kerry Foxton? Was she aware of the similarity? It was too striking to be a matter of chance. Somehow, somewhere, there was a reason for it.

Harding glanced north towards Tresco, distinguishable from the other islands by its central belt of woodland. His memories of exploring the famous Abbey Gardens there with Polly were distinct yet distant, as if he were recalling the experiences of another life, another man. His past was numb, like a frozen limb, his present a labyrinth of contradictions.

Judith Metherell, a briskly mannered woman whose taste in clothes made her look a decade older than Harding suspected she really was, greeted him when he returned to Mercer House. She surprised him by apologizing for mishearing his name over the phone, then went to extricate her husband from his study.

“Glad you made the effort to come over?” Metherell asked as they drove out of town.

“Glad isn’t quite the right word.”

“Kerry Foxton wasn’t murdered, Mr. Harding.”

“I’m happy to believe it.”

“But there’s something else you’re not happy about.”

“True.”

“A passing resemblance that Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper bears to Kerry.”

“More than passing.”

“Maybe that’s why he chose her.”

“How do you mean?”

“The old boy always had a mischievous streak. He liked to get under people’s skin.”

“Did he really?”

“Yes. And it seems to me he’s still doing it. From beyond the grave.”