Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

Umber left Questred to puzzle over his intentions and headed along the High Street to the Ivy House Hotel, where he booked himself in for the night. Before going to his room, he borrowed the local Yellow Pages from behind the desk and hunted down the addresses and telephone numbers of Marlborough undertakers.

There were only two, so it seemed easier to walk round than phone ahead. As it happened, the first one he tried, a short walk away at the eastern end of town, was the firm handling the Jeremy Hall funeral.

He had harboured no wish to view the deceased, but felt bound to ask if he could do so, if only to camouflage his curiosity about who else had been to the chapel of rest for the same reason. The receptionist had been well schooled in the arts of discretion, however. She was giving nothing away, other than a coolly framed confirmation that he was the first person from outside the family to make such a request – which happened to be exactly what he wanted to know. So much for his hunch that Chantelle would not be able to stay away. Unless, of course, she had claimed to be a relative. A cousin, perhaps. Something like that. Anything, in fact, but what she really was.

He had seen Sally only a few hours before her funeral, at a chapel of rest in Hampstead. He had wished later that he had not seen her, so hard did it prove to rid his mind of the memory of her white, drained, lifeless face. This time he knew better than to linger by the coffin. He prowled the room for a few minutes, just long enough to suggest he was a sincere mourner, which in one sense he was. He did no more than glance at Jeremy Hall. The young man's face was unmarked. Either that or the marks his fatal fall had left on it had been expertly masked. You could imagine he was at peace, if that was the way your imagination worked. It was not the way Umber's worked, however. He hurried out.

The cemetery was his next destination. Chantelle's sister was buried there, after all. And men were at work digging the grave, not far from Miranda Hall's, where Jeremy Hall would be laid to rest tomorrow. There was a good chance Chantelle would go there. But there was no sign of her. She could have been and gone, of course. She might be planning to visit later, when the gravediggers had finished their work. Or she might be determined to stay away. She might be miles away – thousands of miles, even. In a part of his mind, Umber hoped she was. But in another part, the part where hope held no sway, he knew she was not.

He walked out along the Ridgeway, then on across the downs towards Avebury. The afternoon began to fade into evening. The light was pearly grey, the air cool but barely moving. He could hear skylarks singing above him, but he could not see them. Once he saw a larger bird that might have been a kestrel, hovering away to the north. But he could not be sure. He pressed on through the broad, rolling landscape.

He had acknowledged the probable futility of his journey long before he reached Avebury. The simple truth was that even if he was right about the places Chantelle would feel drawn to, he had no way of calculating when or even if she would actually visit them. If he found her by this method, it would be pure luck.

But he had no other method to apply. Passing Manor Farm and cresting the last hillock before the henge came into view, he half-expected he would see her, walking slowly along one of the banks, head bowed, lost in thought, her slim, dark-clad figure silhouetted against the wide, pale sky.

But she was not there. Umber walked most of the way round the north-eastern bank, from which he had a clear view of the Cove. No-one was loitering by the Adam and Eve stones. Visitors to Avebury were few at this hour of the day. Umber could see nobody even remotely resembling Chantelle.

He doubled back and completed a slow half-circuit of the henge, passing one dog-walker and a pair of hikers on the way. He finished up in the High Street of the village with nothing to show for his efforts but a renewed ache in his injured knee. It was growing cold now. The place was different, utterly different, from how it had been that blazing day of high summer twenty-three years ago. But still it was the same place. The ghosts remained, whether they showed themselves or not.

Umber headed along the High Street towards the Red Lion. Chantelle might be waiting till dusk to put in an appearance, he told himself, till it was safe to follow in her own forgotten footsteps. He would wait at the pub, as he had waited before.

But someone had got there before him. As Umber rounded the front gable of the pub, he saw a figure seated at one of the tables set in the angle of the L-shaped building, a figure muffled up against the encroaching chill, anorak collar turned up, Tilley hat brim turned down.

'Good evening, David,' said Percy Nevinson. 'Thank goodness you've arrived. It's getting decidedly nippy out here.'

'Percy.' That was all Umber could find to say. There had been a risk of bumping into Nevinson. He had realized that. But the pub was not the man's natural territory. And it was clear that this encounter, unlike their last, was not a product of chance.

'Shall we go inside? Perhaps I could buy you a drink?'

'All right.' Umber struggled to recover himself. If Chantelle did turn up, the last person he wanted for company was Nevinson. Getting rid of the man would be next to impossible, however. Maybe it was safer for them to be inside the Red Lion than out. 'Let's do that.'

The bar was quiet. Nevinson bought Umber a pint and another half for himself. They sat at a table by the window, Umber taking the chair facing it, so that he had a view of the road and the stones of the henge's southern inner circle. Nevinson took off his hat and ruffled his hair, smiling at Umber with irritating mildness.

'You came to no harm in Jersey, then,' he said after a sip of beer.

'As you see.'

'When Abigail came back from shopping in Marlborough this afternoon, she told me she'd spotted you from the bus. I felt sure you'd come out here sooner or later if I waited long enough.'

'And you were right.'

'Gratifyingly so. Our last meeting was… rudely interrupted. It's good to have this opportunity to take up where we left off.'

'Look, Percy, I -'

'It's no good claiming to be in all kinds of a hurry this time, David. The last bus to Marlborough left at six fifteen. Even if you phoned for a taxi now, we'd have at least twenty minutes to chat.'

'All right. Let's chat.' Umber smiled grimly and flung himself into an attempt to lead the discussion, since discussion there clearly had to be. 'Talking of Abigail, did you tell her why you went to Jersey? Or are you sticking to the ufological-conference line?'

Nevinson pursed his lips. 'A white lie to spare my sister's feelings, nothing more. Naturally, I've… come clean since returning home.'

' Completely clean, Percy?'

'Well, I…'

'Did you mention hiring Wisby?'

Nevinson grimaced. 'That would only have confused her.'

'Why did you hire him?'

'I didn't. Not really. I asked him… to share his findings with me, that's all. Which he never did, beyond what he judged sufficient to extract an exorbitant fee from me.'

'Slippery character, Wisby.'

'Indeed.'

'What about standing idly by while I was grabbed off the street by a couple of heavies in St Helier? Did you mention that to Abigail?'

'There again…'

'You didn't want to confuse her.'

Nevinson grinned nervously. 'Exactly.'