Майкл Ридпат: The Partnership Track

Soon after penetrating the woods, the path headed uphill. As the trees closed in around us, so did the silence. Just the crunch of my shoes on the snow and Manuela’s behind me. The soles of my shoes had no grip at all, and I made my way gingerly up the path, picking out stones and rocks for purchase. Manuela didn’t say anything until we reached a bench about three hundred feet up from the lake. We were both panting.

‘Can we stop here?’ Manuela asked.

We brushed the snow off the bench and sat on it. Trees had been felled or trimmed to create a view out over the flat white board of the lake. We couldn’t see the mountain lodge, which was directly below us, but we could make out the little promontory and the van and the police car. It was hard to tell from this distance, but a couple of the forensic team in their white suits seemed to be sitting down chatting. One of the lodge’s snowmobiles was buzzing back along the track from the van to the lodge, the whine of its engine echoing around the valley.

‘Can you make out the body?’ I said. ‘I thought they would put up a tent or something?’

‘No,’ said Manuela. ‘And I don’t want to see it.’

‘Sorry.’

Beyond the lake, the view stretched over miles and miles of thick undulating forest to a broad river. The White Mountains themselves were behind us and to the left. It was quite beautiful.

Manuela beside me began to sob, silently at first, and then uttering a low whine, a keening sound. It ripped at my heart. I put my arm around her and she buried her head in my chest, her narrow shoulders heaving. I let her cry like that, until eventually she sat up and wiped her eyes.

‘I’m sorry to do that to you,’ she said.

‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘You should cry.’

‘No I shouldn’t. I should be able to hold it in.’

‘Why? Harald was clearly really important to you. Why shouldn’t you be upset? It must be awful. Truly awful.’

‘Yes, but I mustn’t show it,’ said Manuela with determination that verged on anger.

‘Why not?’

‘Because that’s not who I am. It might have been who I used to be, but I’m not that girl any more. My success, my life, depends on keeping up the pretence — not the pretence, the reality that I am someone I am not. Or rather I am now someone I used not to be. You can’t possibly understand that — you’re an Englishman who went to Cambridge.’

‘My father was a coal miner,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to exaggerate things — he was paid reasonably well, and retired before the pit closed. We had a nice little house kept spotless by my mum, good neighbours, but I have had to become someone else too. Chosen to. I don’t know.’

The biggest change was when I had married Henrietta, whom I had met at Cambridge and whose father was a barrister. The joint life we had built together had been based much more on her family ways and traditions than mine. I dressed differently, spoke differently. Sometimes I told myself it was inevitable we did things her way because she was the woman in the partnership, but the truth was I liked it. It was the life I had aspired to once I had arrived at university, the life from which the majority of my fellow undergraduates had come, the life I was determined to have for myself.

‘So I have rejected who I was too. And sometimes I feel bad about that.’ Such as when I only showed up for a couple of hours at my mother’s funeral at the village Methodist chapel.

‘I thought there might be something like that,’ Manuela said. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you. You’re not like the others. Except Harald maybe.’

I knew ‘not being like the others’ was meant as a compliment, although being like the others was what we were both trying to prove to Bill. By lying about who we really were. Did Bill get that? Probably, knowing Bill.

But who cared? Harald was dead.

‘Tell me about him. How long had you been going out?’

‘About nine months. We were working on a deal together, naturally. It was in the London office — you were away somewhere, I guess. I’ve had plenty of boyfriends before, but none quite like Harald. I could be who I am with him. He listens — used to listen, without judging. You knew where you were with him — he never played games. He was just a thoroughly decent guy.’

‘He was.’

Manuela sniffed and gave a little laugh. ‘God knows what he was doing in Labouchere.’

‘Can you believe he was really going to be made partner? I saw you smile when Bill announced that, by the way. At the time I couldn’t figure out why.’

‘I was proud of him,’ said Manuela. ‘But no, I don’t know why Bill picked him. You never know with Bill.’

‘No, you don’t.’

We sat in silence for a moment. It was cold on the bench, but I was enjoying being there with Manuela. It was like a tiny haven of reality in what was a totally unreal situation.

A woodpecker shattered the calm with a jackhammer burst in one of the trees just behind us.

‘They seem to think I did it,’ I said. ‘Killed Harald.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Manuela. ‘Why?’

‘Because I was one of only two people to pass that spot this morning. The other being Trent. And because they think I saw myself as favourite for partner and was upset that Bill tipped Harald.’

‘That’s absurd,’ said Manuela.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Tell that to the police.’

‘I will. What about Trent?’

‘What about Trent?’

‘Did you see him do anything suspicious?’

‘No. He was running around the lake just like I was, except in the other direction.’

‘So it must have been him!’ Manuela said. ‘If it wasn’t you, it must have been Trent.’

‘Why would he kill Harald? He had even less reason than I did: Trent only ever had an outside chance of becoming partner, even with Harald gone. I mean, Trent is a bit dodgy, but even so. You’re not suggesting Harald supplied him with drugs or something?’

‘No, of course not!’

‘Then why?’

Manuela didn’t answer.

But in the silence of the forest, away from the pressure cooker of the lodge below, my brain began to work. Someone had killed Harald. And although I preferred to believe that it might be a stranger, or one of the hotel staff, it was most likely that it was someone who knew him.

One of us.

‘What about Bill?’ I said.

‘Bill? How could Bill have done it?’

‘He’s clever. And he’s manipulative. If he were to kill someone he would make it look like someone else had the motive and the opportunity.’

‘Like you?’

I didn’t like the thought of Bill picking me out as the fall guy. His opinion of me was important; I thought he liked me, admired me, even. But it was exactly the kind of game Bill might play. And he would figure out a way of making it seem as though only Trent or I could have done it.

‘Why would he want to kill Harald?’

‘Did Harald ever talk to you about Project Assegai?’

Manuela watched me, comprehending. ‘Yes, he did. It worried him a lot.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’m not sure exactly. It had something to do with Charlie Campbell, and Steve Rosenheit.’ Steve was a partner at Labouchere. ‘Charlie had screwed up somehow, and Harald was sent down to Mauritania to unscrew things. It was a mess. Harald never told me the details, but he did say he thought he had to speak up about it. Blow the whistle.’

‘Blow the whistle? Tell the press?’

‘Not the press. Bill. I got the impression that Charlie and Steve were keeping something quiet that Harald thought Bill ought to know.’

‘But Harald never told him?’

‘No. He was planning to do it after they announced the new partner.’