William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

A motor taxi puttered up the hill from Highgate and continued on its way. There was a little more traffic on Spaniards Road — a man wheeling a barrow, a dog-cart with two boys driving — but it was ideally quiet. He had a sudden urge to urinate, quickly unbuttoned his fly and did so. Trench-life again, he thought — a tot of rum and a piss before you went over the top. Think of the big attacks — tens of thousands of soldiers suddenly emptying their bladders. He smiled at the image this conjured up and –

A taxi pulled into the yard beside the inn.

Inside he saw a man in a Homburg lean forward and pay the driver.

Christian Vandenbrook stepped out and the taxi drove away.

Lysander shouted furiously from the shelter of the trees.

“Vandenbrook! What the hell are you doing here? Get away!”

Vandenbrook hurried across the road. He was wearing a long tweed coat that almost reached his ankles.

“I sent you the telegram!” he shouted, peering into the wood, still not seeing where Lysander was. “Rief? I know who Andromeda is! Where are you?” He saw Lysander and ran up to him, panting. “It came to me after the theatre — I just had to confirm a few things before I told you.” He stepped behind a tree and looked down Spaniards Road where it sloped towards Highgate. “Someone’s following me, I’m sure. Let’s get away from here.”

“All right, all right, calm down,” Lysander said and they headed down a beaten earth path that led deeper into Caen Wood. Vandenbrook seemed unusually tense and watchful. At one point he pulled Lysander off the pathway and they waited behind a tree. Nothing. No one.

“What’s happening?” Lysander asked.

“I’m sure I was followed. There was a man outside my house this morning. I’m sure he got into a motor and followed my taxi.”

“Why would anyone follow you? — You’re imagining things. So — tell me what you know.”

They were deep in the wood by now. In the grey, pearly dawn light Lysander saw that the trees around them — beech, ash and oak — were ancient and tall. Stands of holly grew at their feet and the undergrowth on either side of the pathway was dense. They could have been in virgin forest — it was hard to believe they were in a borough of north London. The wind was growing stronger and the trees above their heads whistled and groaned as the branches bent and yielded. Lysander gathered in the flying ends of his scarf and tucked them in his coat.

“D’you want a nip of this?” he held out his hip flask. “It’s rum.”

Vandenbrook took a couple of large gulps and handed it back.

“Tell me,” Lysander said. “So, who’s Andromeda?”

“It’s not a he — it’s a she. That’s what was confusing you.”

“And? —”

“The person who’s blackmailing me is a woman — a woman called Anna Faulkner. Don’t be confused by the name. She’s Austrian. The enemy.”

“She’s dead. She killed herself.”

“I know but — ” Vandenbrook stopped, looking suddenly shocked. “How do you know this?”

“Because she is — she was — my mother.”

Vandenbrook stared at him and Lysander saw his expression change from excited near-panic to something colder, icier. All pretence gone. Two men in a wild wood at dawn with a gale blowing about their heads.

Vandenbrook reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a revolver. He pointed it at Lysander’s face.

“You’re under arrest,” Vandenbrook said.

“Under arrest? Are you mad?”

“You and your mother — you were in it together — two Austrian spies. You were both blackmailing me.”

Lysander didn’t mean to laugh but one burst out of him all the same.

“I have to hand it to you, Vandenbrook — you’re exceptional. You’re the best actor I’ve ever seen. Better than any of us. Best ever. You missed your vocation.”

Vandenbrook allowed himself a small smile.

“Well, we’re all actors, aren’t we?” he said. “Most of our waking lives, anyway. You, me, your mother, Munro and the others. Some are good, some are average. But nobody really knows what’s real, what’s true. Impossible to tell for sure.”

“Why did you do it, Vandenbrook? Money? Are you stony broke? Did you want to get back at your father-in-law? Do you hate him that much? Or was it just to feel important, significant?”

“You know why,” Vandenbrook said, evenly, unprovoked. “Because I was being blackmailed — blackmailed by that bitch Andromeda —”

A fiercer gust of wind whipped Lysander’s hat off and, an instant later, Vandenbrook’s head seemed to explode in a pink mist of blood, his body thrown violently down to the ground by an invisible force.

Lysander closed his eyes, counted to three and opened them. Vandenbrook still lay there, the left half of his skull gone, matted hair, brains bulging, spilling, blood flowing thickly, like oil. Lysander picked up his hat, put it on and backed off so he couldn’t see. He turned to find Hamo striding through the trees, shouldering his Martini-Henri.

“You all right?” Hamo asked.

“Sort of.”

“I would have plugged him earlier — soon as he drew his gun — but I was waiting for your signal. What took you so long?”

Lysander wasn’t really concentrating. He was looking at Vandenbrook. From this angle all he could see was a small red hole under his right ear.

“Sorry, Hamo, what were you saying?”

“Why did you wait so long to take your hat off?”

“I was trying to squeeze some more information from him, I suppose. Get a few more answers.”

“Risky thing to do when a man is pointing a gun at your nose. Strike first, Lysander, and hard. That’s my motto. That’s why I used a dum-dum. One-shot kill required, no messing about.”

Hamo went to check on the body and examine the effects of his expanding bullet. Lysander took a notebook from his pocket and tore a sheet from it.

“So this is the man responsible for your mother’s death,” Hamo said, looking down on Vandenbrook.

“Yes. And he managed to kill her without so much as laying a finger on her. He was going to use her — and me — as his ticket to freedom.”

“Then may he rot in hell for several eternities,” Hamo said. “A good morning’s work, I say.”

Lysander scribbled a word on the sheet of paper and unclipped a safety pin from behind his lapel. He stooped and pinned the note to Vandenbrook’s chest. It read, ‘ANDROMEDA’.

“I assume you know what you’re doing,” Hamo said.

“Oh, yes.”

Lysander prised the revolver from Vandenbrook’s fingers and walked a few yards away before firing one shot into the ground. Then he fitted the gun back into Vandenbrook’s hand, pushing the forefinger through the trigger guard.

“That little pop-gun couldn’t do that damage,” Hamo said, almost sounding offended.

“They won’t care. Andromeda killed himself — that’s all they need and want. We won’t hear another word about it. Where’s your motor?”

“Round the corner on Hampstead Lane. I think he thought he was being followed — had the taxi take all sorts of turnings and doublings-back. Didn’t want to risk him spotting me.”

Lysander put his arm around his uncle’s shoulders and squeezed. He had tears in his eyes.

“That was absolutely the right thing to do, Hamo. I can’t thank you enough.”

“I told you to call on me, my boy. Any time.”

“I know, now we have our secret.”

“Silent as the grave.”

They walked away from Vandenbrook’s body, through the wood towards Hampstead Lane, as a weak sun managed to spear through a gap in the rushing clouds and, for a few seconds, the light was burnished, a pale gold.