Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

'Where have you been staying?' Umber asked Chantelle when he returned to the car.

'A small hotel on the other side of St Helier.'

'Right. We'll drive there, pick up your stuff, pay your bill and make for the Airport. There should be an evening flight to Gatwick we can get a couple of seats on.'

'We're leaving Jersey?'

'The sooner the better.'

Umber's every instinct told him they would be safer off the island. What they were going to do back in England he had literally no idea. The next step was all he could focus on. The step after that lay beyond his power to imagine.

'Where did you grow up, Chantelle?' he asked as they headed round the coast road towards St Helier through ever thickening traffic: the rush hour was upon them.

'South Africa. Hong Kong. Gibraltar. We moved about a lot. My parents -' She broke off. 'Roy and Jean Hedgecoe. That's what they're called. Not Dad and Mum to me any more. Roy and Jean.'

'What did they do for a living?'

'Good question. I never really knew. Roy was in import-export, whatever that meant. He had business with… strange people.'

'Like Eddie Waldron?'

'His sort, yeah. All his sort.'

'Any brothers or sisters?'

'No. Just me. Carted around the world by… Roy and Jean. When I was sixteen, we moved to Monaco. A new opening, they said. More like a reward, I guess. For looking after me so carefully. We lived high there.'

'And you met Michel Tinaud?'

'Yeah. He thought he was God's gift. So did I. I was pretty stupid back then. I had no idea what was going on. Any of it, I mean. Not just what was really going on. I was a different person. Not me. Not this me, anyway. Some… other girl they'd brought me up to be. Only it didn't work out. I was crazy about Michel. I didn't really think about much else. I went to Paris with him. Then Wimbledon. And that's when everything changed. Because of Sally. Your wife. How long were you two married?'

'Eight years. But we were together a lot longer than that.'

'You want me to tell you what happened when she tracked me down, don't you?'

'Yes. I do.'

'Do you blame me for her death?'

'Of course not.'

'Maybe you should.' She gazed ahead for a long, vacant interval, then said, 'Can I tell you later? I just… don't want to talk about it right now.'

'OK.'

'But I will talk about it.' She glanced at him. 'I promise.'

They entered St Helier and drove through the Fort Regent tunnel, then followed the main road out to the east until Chantelle pointed out the Hotel Talana ahead of them. Umber pulled into the car park at the rear and Chantelle went in to change her clothes, pack her few belongings and check out.

While she was gone, Umber fetched the camcorder from the boot and unloaded the cassette. The tape was only part-used, as good a confirmation as he needed that it held the recording of his meeting with Wisby. He dropped the cassette onto the ground and stamped on it several times, smashing the plastic case and the spools inside. He dragged the tape out of the wreckage and shoved it into his pocket for later destruction. At least he did not have to worry about being fitted up as Wisby's accomplice now, though there was no telling what Wisby would say about him to the police. For that reason if for no other, an early departure from Jersey was essential.

Back in the car, Umber checked through Waldron's wallet. It turned out to contain several hundred pounds and a couple of credit cards, one for John E. Walsh, the other for Edward J. Waldron. There was nothing else.

It was only as he closed the wallet that a thought caught up with Umber relating to Wisby. And a disturbing thought it was.

Wisby had no way of knowing Umber was not party to the plot against him. He would in fact assume Umber was very much a party to it. His best hope of persuading the police to believe he had been framed was to tell at least some of the truth about his reasons for visiting Jersey and to finger Umber as a treacherous accomplice. As matters stood he could not prove Umber had played any part in blackmailing Jeremy Hall, but he could prove Umber had been working with George Sharp, another self-proclaimed victim of a frame-up. If the police then learned there had been a killing at Jeremy's flat, they would eventually go to see Sharp's solicitor. Burnouf would probably be sufficiently alarmed by what had happened, and genuinely concerned for the safety of a client he had heard no more from since the previous week, to give them sight of the statement the client had left with him – a statement in which Umber had made it very clear he was in Jersey to extract information from Jeremy Hall by whatever means he could devise.

Umber glanced at his watch. It was nearly six o'clock. If it was not already too late for conducting business at Le Templier & Burnouf, it surely would be by the time he got there. So, either he left the statement where it was… or he was not leaving Jersey as soon as he wanted to.

Another quarter of an hour had passed before Chantelle returned to the car. She must have read Umber's heightened anxiety in his expression, because the first words she spoke to him were, 'What's wrong?'

Plenty was the answer. But what Umber actually said was, 'There's been a change of plan.'

'I'm not going alone.'

It was the third or fourth time Chantelle had said so and Umber had reluctantly concluded that she meant it. They were sitting in Umber's hire car in a desolate corner of the Airport car park, watching the light fade slowly beyond the terminal building as the last flights of the day came and went. Chantelle's refusal to leave without him that night would soon become unalterable, because leaving that night would soon become impossible.

'Jem put me on a ferry to St Malo on Thursday and told me he'd join me there the next day. But he was dead by then. I waited for him. But he never came. I don't want to do that again. I've spent too much of the past few years alone, Shadow Man. I can't do it any more.'

'It's too risky to stay, Chantelle.'

' You're staying.'

'Because I've got to get that statement out of Burnouf's office. I have no choice.'

'Fine. Get the statement first thing tomorrow. Then we'll go.'

'OK,' said Umber, glumly accepting the reality of her decision. 'Have it your way.'

'Do you think they'll have found Eddie's body yet?'

'Maybe.'

'And do you think they'll be looking for us?'

'If they've found him, for certain.'

'Better not stay here, then, had we?'

'Where do you suggest we go, Chantelle? It's a small island.'

'But not too small to hide in. Let's get moving.'

Trade was slack at the Prince of Wales, the hotel overlooking the beach at Greve de Lecq on Jersey's north coast. Postcards for sale at reception depicted the bay in all its kiss-me-quick, bucket-and-spade summer jollity. The story on a windy night at the end of March was rather different. A couple of rooms were readily to be had at a knock-down rate.

Umber tried to persuade Chantelle to eat something, but she insisted she was not hungry and in truth he had no appetite himself. After booking in, they walked down to the beach and stood among the deserted cafes and souvenir stalls as the sea crashed in, the surf a ghostly grey rim to the blackness of the night-time ocean.

'You saw me that day, didn't you, Shadow Man? The day my first life ended. The life I don't even remember. You were at Avebury on the twenty-seventh of July, 1981.'

'Me and a few others, yes.'

'But most of them are dead, aren't they? My sister. My brother. Your wife. All gone now.'