Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

The drinks, numbing though they were, only nourished his suspicions of Sharp. His silence since Tuesday, it seemed ever clearer to Umber, was the real giveaway. A week in prison could have sucked all the pride and determination out of a man of his age and former occupation, leaving him all too susceptible to whatever deal had been offered him. Release on bail might have been the down payment, a dropping of the charge held out as the ultimate reward, in return for… what? Had Sharp been set the same task as Umber? Could that be it? Were they each insurance against the failure or defiance of the other?

It was gone ten o'clock when Umber made his woozy way back to the Ivy House. He had no plan now beyond a few hours' sleep. He did not expect it to help. He did not expect anything at all. He was no longer thinking about tomorrow. He could not bear to.

'Message for you,' said the receptionist, handing him a note along with his key. 'Could you phone this number? Urgent, apparently.'

Umber stared at the piece of paper in his hand. A mobile number was written on it. And that was all. 'There's no name,' he blearily objected.

'He didn't leave one. Declined to, actually. I did ask.'

'When did he phone?'

'Around eight o'clock. Then again about half an hour ago.'

'Old? Young?'

'Not young. Polite. Well-spoken. But…'

'What?'

'Edgy. You know? Definitely edgy.'

Umber dialled the number on the phone in his room. It was answered before the second ring.

'That you, Umber?'

It was not the voice Umber had expected to hear. Despite the receptionist describing the caller as well-spoken, which was hardly a perfect fit, he had convinced himself during the short walk along the hotel corridors that the message was from Sharp; that the old man had seen sense and decided they should rejoin forces. But the message was not from Sharp.

'Know who this is?'

'Of course.'

'We need to meet. Tonight.'

'Why?'

'Want the truth? The whole truth? And a way out of it?'

'Yes.'

'Then don't argue. I'll pick you up at midnight. Wait in front of the Town Hall.'

'How did -'

'Will you be there?'

'Yes. All right. But -'

'See you then.' The line went dead.

Umber put the phone down, hoisted his feet up onto the bed and lay back against the pillows. He stared up into the shadows angled across the ceiling, his mind struggling with the implications of what had just happened. Oliver Hall wanted to see him. Oliver Hall was willing to tell him the truth. Oliver Hall was offering him an escape route. It was too good to be true. It was too alluring to be anything but a trap. And maybe it was a trap deadlier than any of those he had so far blundered into. But he had agreed to go. And he would. He could not ignore the summons. He could not resist the bait. He could not avoid the trap.

Umber got to the Town Hall several minutes early. Marlborough was quiet, the High Street largely empty. It had occurred to him by now that leaving an anonymous message at the Ivy House and nominating a pick-up point a little way from the hotel showed just how determined Hall was to avoid leaving any evidence that they had conversed, let alone met. Such precautions did not augur well. But there was of course no reason why they should. Umber waited, sitting on the steps that led up to the Town Hall entrance, staring along the curve of the High Street.

He had no way of knowing Hall would approach from that direction, of course. In the event, shortly after St Mary's Church clock struck twelve, a gleaming blue-black Bentley purred round the sharp-angled bend to Umber's left and pulled in.

Oliver Hall nodded at him through the driver's window, then jerked his head towards the passenger's door. Umber stood up, walked round and climbed in.

'You came, then.' Hall was dressed in a Barbour, open-necked shirt and dark trousers. His face was sallow in the filtered amber lamplight, his eyes hooded and weary, his brow furrowed, his mouth set in a grim, charcoal-shadowed line.

'I said I would.'

'You said you'd wait to hear from me before visiting Jeremy. You didn't, though, did you?'

'Sharp's arrest forced my hand.'

'Did it really?'

'Yes. It really did.'

'Were you surprised to hear from me this evening?'

'What do you think?'

'It doesn't matter. You're here. That's what counts. Let's go.' Hall started away.

'Where are we going?'

'Not far. Not far at all.' He swung the car round into Kingsbury Street and headed up the hill Umber had climbed earlier on his way to the cemetery.

'How did you know where to find me?'

'Edmund told me you were in Marlborough. It was a fair bet you'd stay at the Ivy House again.'

'Where are you staying?'

'Worried about how close Marilyn is, are you, Umber?'

'Should I be?'

'No. She's still in London. I'm here on my own. On my own initiative, you might say.' Hall followed the road round to the right at the top of the hill. The cemetery, then, was not their destination. 'High time, you might also say. And you'd be entitled to. Don't think I'm not aware of that.' He took another right onto the main road.

'Where are we going?'

'Savernake Forest. Where my ex-wife has convinced herself Radd buried Tamsin. Where she often goes to mourn her, I believe.'

'Why there?'

'No possibility of interruption, Umber. No prying eyes or ears. That's why. That and something else we'll come to later.'

'You promised me the truth.'

'So I did.'

'When am I going to get it?'

'Soon enough. There are a few questions I want to ask you first.'

'Such as?'

'Why did you choose to study the letters of Junius?'

'What?'

'I mean, was there any particular reason?'

'Why in God's name should you care?'

'Humour me on the point.' Hall took the Salisbury road at the double-roundabout just beyond the bridge over the Kennet and headed towards the forest that was waiting ahead of them, still and silent in the moonless night. 'There's a good fellow.'

'I specialized in eighteenth-century British politics. Junius was an ideal case study.'

'No other reason? Nothing more… personal?'

'I'd always been curious about him. There was an old copy of the letters in the bookcase at home. Something of an heirloom in my father's family.'

'Was it now?'

'But I can't believe you're dragging me out here to discuss Junius.'

'He does have a bearing on what we need to discuss, Umber, take it from me. But that can wait.'

The road curved as it climbed Postern Hill. At the top, Umber knew, Savernake began. The old Norman hunting forest had once stretched for many miles to east and west. What remained was a remnant, but a large remnant nonetheless. Several square miles of heavily wooded land in which bodies could plausibly be buried – and secrets likewise.

'Jane believes our three children are all dead now, Umber. Do you believe that?'

'Do you ?'

They drove in silence, the unanswered cross-questions contending in the darkness between them. The car's headlamps arced across the screen of trees ahead of them as they crested the rise. Then Hall said, with quiet emphasis, 'Of course not.'

Umber was at first too dumbstruck to respond. Hall was as good as admitting that Tamsin was alive and that he had never once thought otherwise in all the twenty-three years since her supposed death. 'You mean…'

'Tamsin is Cherie… is Chantelle. That's what I mean. You know it. And I've always known it.'

'You've known ? All along?'

'Oh yes.'

'But -'

'Sometimes I've envied Jane her certainty. The simplicity of her grief. The finality of it. Tamsin dead rather than taken. Buried rather than hidden.' Hall sighed. 'But only sometimes.'