Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

‘What for?’

‘Well, you were defending my property, weren’t you? That was real good neighbourliness.’

She smiled. It was very quiet in the kitchen, almost cosy, now that the police had left and there were just the two of us. There’s something about the early hours of the morning that makes you feel the rest of the world has disappeared.

‘Did the burglar take anything then?’ asked Rachel.

‘We checked the usual stuff. All present and correct. I was rather hoping he’d have taken the old carriage clock, but he even left that. You obviously copped him before he got started.’

She looked steadily at me, and I felt she could see straight though me, that she knew exactly where I’d been that night and what I’d been doing.

‘Never mind all that,’ she said.

I gave in. ‘Yes, you’re right. The blue folder has gone. Great-Uncle Samuel’s manuscript is missing.’

‘Oh, no.’

I started trying to persuade Rachel to go to bed. She didn’t argue too much, as she was clearly suffering from the same overwhelming tiredness that I felt, though from a different cause.

But first she started rambling about how lucky it was that Samuel’s notes and the canal owners’ box had been in her house, not mine. She seemed particularly concerned about the safety of the box. But that was ridiculous. I began to wonder whether she’d got a crack on the head after all. Concussion can do strange things to the brain, and the worst effects can sometimes be delayed. Who would even know about the box, and why should they go to the trouble of breaking into my house to get it?

‘I suppose I’ll have to re-create the entire manuscript from scratch,’ I said.

‘Not quite,’ said Rachel. ‘I still have the first chapter.’

‘William Buckley and the canal proprietors? Well, it’s a start anyway.’

‘Did you tell the police the folder had gone?’ she asked, reading my face again.

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t really know,’ I said.

I thought about it for a while, but my weary brain couldn’t even analyse my own motives. ‘Like DC Hanlon said herself, the attack on you is more serious.’

Rachel accepted this with a curiously pleased smile. She disappeared from the kitchen for a moment, then came back with the file and the box. The wooden surfaces had been painstakingly polished, so that it gleamed like bronze.

‘They’ll be safe in your house now,’ she said.

At last I managed to escape without too many more questions and went back to number six to fix an old piece of board over the broken window, until I could get a glazier in. I was sure Rachel was right — I was safe from another break-in now, since whoever had searched my house had already got what they wanted.

Rachel’s concern over the box made me wonder about the keys, though. I had two of them now, thanks to Samuel. Did someone out there have the vital third key, the one that would enable the opening of the box? I resolved to keep the keys separate from the box, just in case. I knew it didn’t make sense. The thing was plainly empty in any case.

Seeing the box had reminded me of the keys that Godfrey Wheeldon had given me. There were two of them on the ring, but it had been obvious when I pulled them out that neither of them was anything like the two already in the locks. I tried them anyway. They didn’t go anywhere near fitting. It had been far too much to expect.

I picked up the box and shook it. It was still empty, and no amount of imagination could convince me it wasn’t. I shrugged my shoulders with weariness, pushed the box back into its place under the sideboard, put the keys away in a drawer, and went to bed.

I hardly seemed to have fallen asleep when I woke with a start. It was already half past eight, and I was going to be late for work. But then I remembered that I didn’t have to go to work any more. It occurred to me that I knew this perfectly well and hadn’t set the alarm. And finally, it dawned on me that it was the phone making all the noise.

‘Chris? It’s Sally Chaplin. I’m sorry to ring you so early.’

‘That’s all right.’ Even in my groggy condition, I could tell from her voice that she was upset about something. ‘What’s wrong, Sally?’

‘It’s Frank,’ she said, as if the two words explained everything. In a way, I thought, they did. But how much did Sally know?

‘He’s gone missing,’ she added.

‘How do you mean, missing?’

‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘It’s only half past eight in the morning. When did you last see him?’

‘Last night. He stayed up watching TV after I’d gone to bed. He said he wanted to see the late film. It wasn’t unusual for him to do that. I’m often asleep by the time he comes to bed. I think that might be the aim, really. Only this time, he wasn’t there when I woke up this morning. He’s gone, Chris.’

‘Have you looked everywhere?’ It sounded stupid, but it was the sort of thing people say, and my mind wasn’t at its most original.

‘I’ve looked all over the house twice. I thought he must have had a heart attack or something, but I couldn’t find him. Then I drove out to the reservoir. That’s where he goes, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘But he wasn’t there either. I walked around for over an hour. Then I came back to ring you.’

‘Why me, Sally? I don’t know where he is.’

‘You came to see him again, didn’t you?’

I sighed. No point in lying. ‘Yes, there was something I wanted to ask him.’

‘I don’t know what it was, but he was upset after your visit. I could tell. Did something happen between you?’

‘Not exactly. I arrived at the wrong moment, that’s all.’

She was quiet for a while. ‘I see,’ she said miserably. ‘You know, then. You know what he does at the reservoir.’

‘He didn’t think you knew.’

‘Oh, I’ve never seen him in action, but I don’t need to.’

‘I can’t help you. I can’t imagine where he’s gone.’

‘You didn’t threaten to... expose him, did you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I’m worried what he’ll do. Something frightened him. He’d been reading in the paper about the canal restoration, some event at Fosseway. Did you talk to him about it?’

‘No, nothing like that. In fact, I didn’t really get to talk to him about anything.’

‘Well, there’s something that frightened him.’

By the time Sally hung up, I was completely awake and already sweating as if I had had a hard day. Frank wasn’t the only one who was frightened. My imagination was filling me with an irrational fear, a grey, amorphous terror that had no source and no meaning, and certainly no escape. Somewhere out there, it seemed, danger was lurking.

There were several cars pulled onto the grass verge at the Fosseway Wharf site. Normally there would have been no one working there today. But it was a special day when Lindley Simpson MP was visiting to see the site for himself. The restoration group wasn’t likely to let an opportunity pass to get publicity from a visit by a government minister.

Simpson hadn’t arrived yet, and six or eight restoration group members were standing around with that anxious air of people expecting things to go wrong. I waved to Andrew Hadfield and one or two of the others I knew, and had a quick word with the chairman. He assured me the MP was on his way, though he was running a bit behind schedule. They’d had a call from his mobile, and they expected him in five minutes. The chairman seemed most concerned about the two photographers from the local papers, who were standing by their cars with their camera bags, looking impatient. They were on tight schedules, and needed persuading about the importance of the occasion to make them wait.