Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

'She's fit and well. Sent you her love.'

Umber swallowed hard. 'Did she?'

'She was happy to let us borrow the scrapbook if it helped to make any sense of Sally's death.'

'Can't see how it could do that. There's nothing in these cuttings we don't already know.'

'That's not strictly true, David. Turn to the back of the book.'

Umber opened the book at the last page, which, like several before it, was blank. A sheet of paper had been slipped inside the cover: a page torn out of a glossy magazine. Under the heading INSIDE STORY was an assortment of paparazzo-snapped celebrities, most of whose names registered, if only dimly, in Umber's consciousness. It was a page from Hello!, of course. That, he knew at once, was the point.

'As soon as I saw it I remembered,' said Claire. 'When I had that stupid row with Sally in the coffee-shop the day she died and she threw the magazine at me. You know? I told you about it.'

'Yes?' He looked round and frowned at her.

'I'd forgotten, until I saw that. Sally tore a page out of the magazine before she threw it at me.'

'And this is it?'

'Has to be.'

'But what does it mean?'

'It means she saw something significant in a month-old copy of Hello! she was looking at in my waiting room. That's why she walked out. Because what she saw made a counselling session with me… suddenly irrelevant.'

Umber looked at the page again and turned it over. More INSIDE STORY zoom-lensed pictures of movie stars out shopping in sunglasses and baseball caps or sunbathing in cellulite-revealing swimsuits. 'I don't get it,' he said. 'What's significant about any of this?'

Claire flipped the page back over. 'There,' she said, pointing to a spread of three photographs of what looked to be a friendly game of mixed-doubles tennis on a red-clay court featuring an actor and actress Umber had never heard of on one side of the net and a tennis player he had heard of, plus girlfriend, on the other. According to the captions, the actor and actress were taking a break from promoting their latest blockbuster at the Cannes Film Festival. The bronzed, honed, raven-haired tennis star entertaining them on a local court was Monaco-based Michel Tinaud, of whom great things were expected at the forthcoming French Open. 'He's why Sally went to Wimbledon that week,' Claire continued. 'Remember what she said to Alice? "I don't need a ticket." Don't you see? She wasn't going to watch tennis. She was going to speak to a tennis player.'

'Why?' Umber already knew the answer, but the question was apt nonetheless. He knew. But he did not understand.

'It has to be the girlfriend,' said Claire.

And so it did. Unnamed by Hello! presumably because unidentified, Tinaud's playing companion was dressed in a red T-shirt and white tennis skirt. She had long fair hair tied in a ponytail and featured in only one picture, biting her lower lip and wrinkling her brow in concentration as she waited to receive service.

'Recognize the expression?' Claire slipped the Hello! cutting out onto the table, then turned to a page nearer the front of the scrapbook, where one of the Halls' photographs of Tamsin had been reproduced in a newspaper a few days after her abduction. The two-year-old Tamsin was wrinkling her brow at the camera and biting her lower lip.

'It's a common gesture,' Umber murmured. 'It doesn't mean -'

'Sally saw something. Probably more than just the expression. She was the girl's nanny. She knew her as closely as her mother did. She knew her well enough to recognize the child in the woman. The girl on the tennis court looks about twenty to me. What do you think?'

'Probably.'

'The right age.'

'Like thousands of others.'

'But not like thousands of others – in some way that convinced Sally she'd found her.'

'You can't be sure.'

'Sally was sure.'

'Was she?' Umber knew the answer to his question better than Claire could hope to. He was playing for time – the time he needed to think. Because he had seen something too. Not a tantalizing resemblance to a missing, presumed-dead two-year-old girl. But an unmistakable similarity to someone he had met only recently. The hair was a different colour, worn in a different style. The clothes were a bizarre contrast. The environment was alien to her. But there was absolutely no doubt in Umber's mind. Michel Tinaud's girlfriend… was Chantelle.

The decision Umber had taken was, in the event, merely reinforced by what Claire had shown him. Amid his general bemusement, he held on to the conviction that the only way he could atone for endangering innocents and bystanders and blameless friends alike was to ensure that he did not lead any of them further down a road whose end he could not foresee. He slipped the Hello! page back into the scrapbook and closed it. As he turned towards Claire, he saw Alice walk in through the door behind her.

'You look like you've seen a ghost,' she said, cocking her head at him. 'Think you have?'

'Maybe.'

'We reckon Sally was more certain.'

'So Claire tells me.'

'I've just been catching the latest tennis news on the Web. Tinaud's career isn't what it was in 'ninety-nine. He's just gone out of the Nasdaq Open in Miami in the first round.'

'Oh yes?'

'The next big tournament in the calendar is the Monte Carlo Masters. Home ground for Tinaud. So, I guess he'll already be back there.'

'And you're going to suggest we go see him?'

'I was sceptical about this whole thing, David. You know that. But I'm convinced now. Sally went to Wimbledon the day before she died to confront that man. We've got to find out what happened.'

'Do you agree?' Umber looked at Claire.

'It's the obvious next step. The only next step. We have to go.'

'No,' he said quietly.

'What?'

'I thought it all through while you were down in Hampshire. Sally's dead. We can't bring her back to life. All we'll do by chasing after answers to questions no-one's forcing us to ask is to put ourselves in unnecessary danger. We have to give it up.'

'You don't believe that.'

'I do. I'm taking your option one, Claire. I'm going back to Prague. I'm bowing out.'

'You can't.'

'I can. And I will. What's more, I advise you to follow my example.'

'What about George Sharp?'

'I'm not responsible for what happens to George. He dragged me into this. He'll have to drag himself out.'

'Jesus,' said Alice, staring at him with a mixture of surprise and contempt. 'It didn't take long for you to revert to type, did it? I thought you d finally found some moral fibre. But no. It was just a passing phase. This is the real you, isn't it? The man I urged Sally to have nothing to do with. The spineless shit she should never have -'

'Alice.' Claire glared round at her friend, commanding her silence. Then she turned back to Umber. 'You're not serious about this, are you, David?'

'Never more so.'

'We've just uncovered the biggest clue going to what Sally was up to. And you want to walk away from it?'

'Self-preservation, Claire. That's what it comes down to. Like Alice said. This is the real me. Someone who believes, at the end of the day, in looking after number one.'

'I don't think that's the real you at all.'

'Well, you'll have to start getting used to the idea. I'm not going on with this. It's as simple as that.'

' We'll go on with it.'

'You shouldn't. You really shouldn't.'

'Because of the risks?'

'Obviously.'

'Help us minimize them, then. Come with us.'

'No.'

'David, I -'

'You're wasting your breath, Claire,' said Alice. 'He's got it all worked out. Sometimes the wrong thing to do is the only thing to do. Isn't that so, David?'