Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

“I hope they haven’t given you a hard time, Tim.”

“They just wanted as many details as I could supply.”

“You look all in.”

“Shock, I expect. Delayed reaction. Sorrow most of all. I never saw this coming. Not in a million years.”

“Carol and I flew up here on the same plane. She’s at the morgue now.”

“Oh God.”

“You’re going to have to go through it all again, I’m afraid.”

Harding sighed. “We should have contacted the police after she threatened Carol, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes. I blame myself for that.”

“Barney was confident he could come to an understanding with Hayley. He was… looking forward to meeting her, I think, in a strange kind of way.”

“And she was looking forward to meeting him. In a very different kind of way.”

“Yes.” Harding nodded glumly. “Apparently she was.”

Carol joined them in the bar at the Cortiina. She seemed numbed by her visit to the morgue, so overwhelmed by what had happened that she was not even visibly upset. Her face was a mask, her gaze barely focused. She listened to Harding’s account of how her husband had died with little reaction beyond a few faltering questions, though one of those was in its way more difficult to answer than any the police had posed.

“Do you think Barney knew who’d shot him?”

“Maybe. But he only had a second or so to know anything. It was quick, Carol. That’s the only consolation I can think of.”

“It’s not much of one.”

“I know.”

“Do they execute murderers in Germany, Tony?”

“No, Carol. They don’t.”

“Pity.”

“But they imprison them for life. And I’m sure that’s what they’ll do to Hayley Foxton when they catch her.”

“If they catch her.”

“They will, I’m sure. Soon, probably.”

“How soon?”

“The police will let us know immediately if there’s any news.”

“I’ll have to tell Humph.”

“D’you want me to do that?” Harding offered.

“No. He’s not the only one I have to notify. I’d better just… get on with it.”

“I’ll deal with everybody on the business side who needs to know,” said Whybrow “And I’ll handle all the form-filling to get Barney back to Monaco.”

“Or Cornwall,” said Carol. “I’ll have to discuss that with Humph.”

“All right. But don’t take too much on yourself. We don’t need to make any decisions until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Tomorrow. Yes.” Carol looked at Harding, a spark of her normal self gleaming in her gaze. “I want to go to Nymphenburg tomorrow, Tim. To see where it happened. Will you take me?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll organize a car,” said Whybrow.

“No need,” said Carol. “We can take a taxi. And… I’d like it to be just Tim and me.” She glanced at Whybrow. “If you don’t mind, Tony.”

Whybrow smiled tightly. “No problem.”

“That was interesting,” said Whybrow, when Carol had gone up to her room-Barney’s room, where his clothes and toiletries were still waiting for him, but which he would never use again.

“Interesting?” Harding dragged his thoughts back to the present once more, away from his memories of the gentle, truth-seeking Hayley he could still not reconcile with the Hayley he had seen running away through the trees at Nymphenburg that morning.

“Carol’s a surprisingly resilient person,” Whybrow mused. “She’s already adjusting to the new reality. As I suppose we’ll all have to.”

“How d’you mean?”

“Well, I assume Carol will inherit everything from Barney. Including Starburst International. She’ll be in charge from now on.”

The point had not yet occurred to Harding. Tozer’s death had cut the ground from beneath Whybrow’s feet. His hold over them had been his threat to tell Tozer about their affair. Now it did not matter. Carol had become a power in the land. And Whybrow was going to have to accept that she was the boss.

Or was she? Harding’s mind grasped a more complex and disturbing possibility in the instant before Whybrow put it into words. “One should never underestimate the ability of the police to misread situations, of course. If certain information came into their possession, they might think you and Carol had a motive for murdering Barney. And they only have your word for it that it was actually Hayley who shot him.”

Harding took his time before responding. He looked at Whybrow unwaveringly determined not to rise to the bait by losing his temper. “A woman walking her dog on the other side of the canal saw the whole thing. The police told me they’d interviewed her.”

“But will she be able to identify Hayley-when they pick her up?”

“I don’t know.”

“No matter. I’m sure the police will settle for a straightforward interpretation of the facts. Provided nobody… muddies the water.” Whybrow smiled thinly. “It might be a good idea if you mentioned that to Carol tomorrow, Tim. During your visit… to the scene of the crime.”

Harding walked himself into a state of exhaustion that night round the streets of Munich. Horrified by what had happened and sickened by his failure to understand the way Hayley’s mind had been working, he could be sure of only one thing. He would have to extricate himself from the affairs of the Tozer family. He would have to start his life afresh, without Carol, without Hayley, without the hope-as well as the anguish-the recent past had brought him. There was no other way. He had done it before. He could do it again. Somehow or other, the future would have to be faced.

Nymphenburg once more. The weather had changed; a cold wind was blowing across the park beneath a slate-grey sky. A long stretch of the canalside path and a large chunk of the woodland bordering it had been cordoned off. Uniformed police were dotted around the perimeter to ensure the cordon was not breached. The search for evidence continued within, though out of sight from the path on the other side of the canal, where Harding stood with Carol, muffled up against the chill, gazing across at the spot where Barney Tozer had died.

The news of Hayley’s arrest, which Harding had half expected to hear that morning, had not come. She had either slipped through the net and fled the city or was lying low somewhere, waiting for the intensity of the search to fade. They would catch her eventually, though. That he did not doubt. Even if Carol seemed to.

“I don’t want her to get away with this, Tim. Barney was a nice guy. Maybe I never loved him. But I was fond of him. And I already miss him. More than I’d ever have thought possible.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “They’ve got to find her.”

“And they will.”

“Humph talked as if it was Barney’s own fault somehow. Heartless bastard. They were flesh and blood. Though you’d never have known it.” She lit a cigarette, Harding holding her hand for a moment to steady the flame of her lighter. “Anyway, his attitude settled it for me. He took it as read Barney would be buried in Penzance. But he’s got another thing coming.”

“It’s your decision.”

“Like quite a lot else now, hey? You know, I can’t believe Tony thinks he can still push me around. Let him tell the police about us if he wants. Hayley did what she did. There’s no way we can be dragged into that.”

“He wouldn’t go to the police direct, Carol. I imagine the tape of your message would find its way to them anonymously.”

“He doesn’t care that Barney’s just been murdered, does he? He only cares about safe-guarding his position. One of the first things I’m going to do after the funeral is hire an independent accountant to go through Starburst’s books line by line. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tony had been cheating Barney.”