Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

'We can talk it over now.'

'No. I have to see a man about a new lock. Tonight, at Alice's, the three of us: that's when we'll talk.'

At 45 Bengal Road, Umber found some chipboard and tools in the garden shed, as Larter had said he would. He knocked out the broken glass from the smashed pane in the back door and covered the gap as best he could.

Then he busied himself on the telephone. The one meagre consolation he could take from what had happened in Jersey was that Wisby had got away with less than he must have reckoned on. The inscription had been removed from his stolen Junius. There had to be a reason for that – a reason that might reveal some of what Jeremy Hall could have told them had he chosen to. The only advantage Umber possessed over Wisby was his historical training. There was still a trail he could follow that might lead to Junius – and the secret contained in the inscription.

Several phone calls later, he had established that the Ventry Papers were held at the Staffordshire County Record Office. Not Derby, Nottingham or Leicester, then, but Stafford. With the weekend looming, he would have to wait until Monday to inspect them. That felt like a preposterously long time in his present state of mind, but Monday it would have to be.

It was late afternoon when he left Ilford, but he did not go straight to Hampstead. Guilt and anxiety were gnawing at him as sharply as ever. From Liverpool Street he took the Tube to Bond Street and walked down to Kingsley House. A damp dusk was descending on Mayfair. It was more than dark enough for the lights to be on in the Halls' apartment. But none were. Umber risked a word with the porter manning the desk in the lobby.

'Mr and Mrs Hall have gone away, sir.'

'That must have been sudden. I told them I might drop by this evening. They didn't say anything that suggested they mightn't be here.'

The porter smiled tightly. 'Perhaps they changed their plans.'

'Have they gone to Jersey?'

'I couldn't say, sir.'

But Umber could. He knew exactly where they had gone. And why.

'Do you want to leave a message in case they phone?' the porter asked.

'No.' Umber turned towards the exit. 'No message.'

Dusk had given way to night by the time Umber reached Hampstead. He walked up Willow Hill, steeling himself for the accusations Alice and Claire had every right to throw at him. He had no adequate response prepared, nor any course of action to suggest that might lead them out of their difficulties. George Sharp in prison, Bill Larter in hospital and Jeremy Hall dead: they were the bitter sum of his achievements to date.

'Good of you to join us,' was Alice's sarcastic greeting. She had been hitting the gin, to judge by the half-empty tumbler of something with lemon clutched in her hand as she opened the door of number 22, not to mention the heaviness of her tread as she led him into the drawing room.

An aroma of fresh paint still lingered in the room. Redecoration was evidently complete. Some platitudinous enthusing over the colour scheme died on Umber's lips. Claire, who was sitting by the fire with a mug of green tea, rolled her eyes at him as Alice pulled round a chair.

'Would you like some tea, David?' Claire asked.

'I expect he'd prefer a beer,' said Alice.

Umber shrugged. 'Whatever.'

'Either way, it's in the kitchen. Help yourself.'

Umber shrugged again, this time for Claire's benefit, and made his way to the kitchen. He found a bottle of Grolsch in the fridge. While he was hunting down a glass, he caught a drift of words from the drawing room, but could not make them out. Claire was speaking, in an undertone. Only Alice's response was audible. 'Why should I?'

'It goes without saying that I'm sorry for dragging you both into this,' Umber ventured as he rejoined them. 'I never intended to cause you any trouble.'

'What did you intend to do?' Alice snapped.

'Learn the truth.' He sat down and countered her glare with a level gaze. 'If I could.'

'Find one more to your liking, you mean.'

'There's only one truth, Alice. And it's not what we thought.'

'I'm not going to start believing Sally was murdered just because you've stirred up a hornets' nest.'

'I think you may have to.'

'I was here when it happened. You weren't. Sally was alone when she died. There was no intruder. No murderer.'

'You can't be absolutely certain of that, Alice,' put in Claire.

Alice tossed her head pettishly. 'Not you too.'

'We need to consider every possibility.'

'OK, then. Consider this. How did the murderer get in?'

'Perhaps Sally invited him in.'

'Then promptly took a bath? Get real, for God's sake.'

'It was a summer's evening. She'd have had the windows open, presumably.'

'Yeah. But her windows happened to be on the second floor.'

'He could have swung down from the roof and through the open top half of the sash,' said Umber, reasoning as he went. 'Then just let himself out of the flat and left by the front door.'

'Who are we talking about here? The SAS?'

'A professional of some kind. That's who we're talking about.'

'I think David's right,' said Claire, calmly but firmly. 'Recent events don't really leave much room for doubt, to my mind. Sally was onto something. And somebody was determined to stop her bringing it into the open.'

'That's not what you said at the time.'

'I had no reason to think it. Then. But this is now. David's provoked a response. We may wish he hadn't. But we can't ignore it. Think about it, Alice. If Sally really was murdered…'

'She wasn't.'

'But if she was… do you want to let her killers get away with it?'

'Of course not.'

'OK, then. We have two options as I see it. One, tell David to go back to Prague and let his policeman friend take his chances in court, then hope everything blows over, as it probably will, Jeremy Hall's suicide notwithstanding. It's the line of least resistance. It's the safest and simplest thing to do.'

'But it's not the option you favour, is it?' Alice's tone was almost fatalistic.

'No. It isn't.'

'Better give us number two, then.'

'Do all we can to find out what Sally may have uncovered.'

'If anything.'

'Yes. If anything.'

Alice took a deep swallow of gin and looked sceptically at Claire and Umber in turn. 'You've left it five years too late. If there were any clues, they're long gone. Assuming there was something for there to be clues to.'

'What happened to her possessions?'

'Ask David.'

Umber winced. Alice had urged him to take whatever keepsakes he wanted when he had flown in from Turkey for the funeral. But guilt, grief and a secret, simmering anger at Sally for running away from life had deluded him into believing he wanted none. Alice had more or less forced him to take Sally's wedding ring. Everything else he had left. 'I don't know what happened to them,' he said hoarsely.

'Her parents took some stuff,' Alice stated matter-of-factly. 'The rest – clothes and such – went to Oxfam.'

'Were there any papers?' Claire asked. 'Notes? Diaries? Documents?'

'It was hardly my place to sort through it,' Alice replied. 'And David declined to. So I can't say. Whatever there was… her parents removed.'

'We'd better contact them, then.'

'They'll probably have got rid of it all by now.'

'Let's hope not.' Claire looked at Umber. 'Do you know where they live, David?'

'Unless they've moved, yes. They have a bungalow on the Hampshire coast. Near Christchurch.'

Umber had assumed till now that Reg and Peggy Wilkinson had left his life for good and all. He had few happy memories of his parents-in-law, as few as he suspected they had of him. Reg had never troubled to disguise his disapproval of Umber's rootless and pensionless existence. And what Reg thought, Peggy always went along with. It had never been a harmonious relationship. Sally's death had ended it as badly as could be imagined. But not, it seemed, as completely.