Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

‘Whose briefcase?’ Kim asked.

Caroline glanced at her father, who was glaring at her. ‘He was a man with a beard and sticking-out ears; I think he was a friend of yours and Mom’s. He came to Hondehoek with another man to see you. A stranger, I’d never seen him before. Do you remember? It was only a week or so before Mom died.’

‘I’ve no idea who that could be,’ said Cornelius.

‘When Mom saw me she was really angry,’ Caroline said, ‘but she was scared at the same time. Almost manic. She told me to forget what I had seen and never tell anyone.’

‘But now you have,’ said Cornelius.

‘She was my mother too,’ said Caroline. ‘I want to know what really happened.’

‘I wonder where the diary is now,’ said Kim.

‘It never turned up at Hondehoek,’ said Cornelius. ‘I’m sure of that.’

‘Could it have been found at the game reserve where she was murdered?’ Calder asked.

‘If it was, I didn’t hear about it.’

‘But if the police found it they wouldn’t necessarily have told you,’ Calder said.

‘They should have.’

‘Unless they were covering something up,’ Kim said.

‘In which case we have no chance of uncovering it now.’ Cornelius spoke this last statement with an air of finality.

‘I’m going to try,’ said Kim. ‘For Todd’s sake as much as my own. And Alex will help me.’

Cornelius glared at Calder and then at Kim. ‘I said, there’s no point. Drop it. Do I make myself clear?’

Kim glanced at Calder. ‘Perfectly,’ she said mildly, with a conciliatory smile. ‘Could you pour me some more water, Edwin?’

Calder guided the Maserati through the dark Norfolk lanes back towards Hanham Staithe.

‘You did an expert job of pumping Cornelius,’ he said.

‘It was like he wanted to talk. At least about why he left South Africa.’

‘But not about Martha’s death. It’s as if he’d rather not know what happened to her.’

‘See no evil,’ Kim said. ‘But that’s tough. He may be a powerful man, but he doesn’t have a right to decide what Todd should or shouldn’t know about his mother. Or Caroline for that matter.’

‘I liked her,’ Calder said.

‘Yeah. She’s a nice woman. She’s quite like Todd but not so self-centred.’ She glanced quickly at Calder. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to say that at all.’

They drove on in an uncomfortable silence for a minute or so.

‘Do you think Cornelius is genuine?’ Calder said.

‘You mean, is he hiding something?’

‘Yeah.’

Kim considered the question. ‘I don’t know. That’s the infuriating thing. Obviously he’s still upset about that period in his life, I’m sure that’s genuine. But I don’t believe he’s told us why, or at least not all of the reason why. You will help me, won’t you, Alex? Find out what’s going on. What he’s hiding.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Calder. ‘I don’t like people destroying lovely old aeroplanes like that Yak. Especially when I’m flying them.’

When they got back to Calder’s cottage, Kim went straight upstairs to bed. The emotional strain of the previous few days had worn her out. Calder had not drunk much at dinner because he was driving, but now he was home he poured himself a stiff malt whisky from the decanter his father had given him as a twenty-first birthday present. He sat down in an armchair and put on some music, with the volume turned well down. Tom Waits.

He reflected on his answer to Kim’s request for help. It was true that he and Todd had almost been killed, and for that very reason the prudent thing to do would be to back off and demonstrate that he was no threat to anybody. He knew that was what his sister would want him to do. But backing down wasn’t in his nature. There was clearly something fishy about Martha van Zyl’s death. Todd and Kim were asking difficult questions bravely and they needed his help, now more than ever. It would be wrong, cowardly, to walk away from them. Besides, he was confident he could look after himself.

He was impressed by Kim. Those qualities that he had admired in her when she was a student had matured. She had stood up well to Cornelius, and had pumped him skilfully, despite her own fragile emotional state. She was determined to see through what her husband had started. She clearly loved Todd very much, although there was that comment in the car about him being self-centred. And she was obviously unhappy playing second fiddle to him in small-town New Hampshire. She looked better too; her bony frame had grown into the fullness of womanhood. And that smile. He had always thought that her you-are-the-most-important-person-in-the-world smile had been freely bestowed on everyone, but now she seemed to be keeping it for him. Her new smile, the smile she showed the van Zyl family, was more restrained, more mature, still friendly but with a hint of reserve. He represented the certainty of the past in the uncertain present. It was clear that she trusted him completely, and that she needed him. He liked that.

He remembered the night he had crashed the college ball so many years ago, scaling walls and climbing over roofs. Kim’s concern for his safety had been written all over her face, much to the annoyance of her escort who had after all paid for her ticket. Much later, after dawn, after the ball was over and the man, whoever he was — Calder couldn’t remember his name — had retired to his own college, Kim and Calder had walked along the river towards Grantchester. It was a still, peaceful morning, swans gliding silently in the water, mist hovering a few feet above the fields. Kim was wearing a simple green dress that made her look delectable. It was cold, so Calder had placed his dinner jacket bought that week at Oxfam over her shoulders, and shivered in his shirtsleeves. They were both drunk, they were both tired. Magic seemed to hang in the morning air with the mist.

He wanted to kiss her. It was one of those brief periods when Kim was without a boyfriend: the man who had taken her to the ball was never really in with a chance. He wanted to kiss her desperately, but he hadn’t. Just in case she had pulled away from him. Or perhaps what scared him more was that she wouldn’t pull away, that he would become another one of her boyfriends, here today, gone tomorrow.

So he hadn’t kissed her. They had remained friends. And he had always wondered what might have happened.

He glanced up at the ceiling: she was sleeping in the bedroom directly above where he was sitting. He banished the thought before it had been fully formed, with a flash of shame. Her husband was in hospital in a coma, for God’s sake! He gulped his whisky.

His thoughts turned to Sandy. They had met the year before. She was a close friend of Jennifer Tan and had helped him find out who had killed her. A relationship of sorts had blossomed between them. She was a tall, slim woman with short blonde hair and tiny freckles on the end of her nose. She had worked as an associate at a major New York law firm on secondment to their London office. After she was transferred back to New York she and Calder had made sporadic attempts to stay in touch. When they were together, everything was fantastic. They had spent an idyllic week the previous September driving around Tuscany, wandering from hill town to tiny village, totally relaxed in each other’s company. They had carried on a week-long conversation, rambling over everything and nothing. Afterwards, Calder had flown over to New York to snatch a day or two with her, but she was always preoccupied with work, an urgent deadline, documents that had to be on the client’s desk by Monday morning. She had visited London and Norfolk on a similar two-day basis. Plans to spend Christmas together had fallen through. She was entitled to only two weeks’ vacation a year, and many of her colleagues didn’t even take that. It was hard for Calder, too, to get away at weekends: that was prime flying time, and the flying school needed all the instructors it could get. Then in April when he had finally managed to escape for three days to New York, it had all ended in disaster. The relationship wasn’t going to work.