Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“My exes always did,” he said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Just because a woman can’t bear to live with a fellow doesn’t mean she won’t bed him. Did you find another?”

“For a time.”

“Lost her, eh? Not to worry, Nick. There are, thank God, so many women in this world. God was very good to us in that regard. Oh, well done!” This was for a fine late cut that left a policeman running vainly towards the boundary. “The batsman”—my father pointed with his cigar—“is doing three years for computer fraud. Not very clever to be caught, was it?”

“Wasn’t clever of you,” I said.

“Bloody stupid of me.” He smiled at me. He was delighted I had come and had not once mentioned all the unanswered letters. I felt awkward, ashamed, and inadequate. He had always made me feel that way, though never intentionally. “My trouble,” he said, “is that I think too big.”

“True.”

He laughed. He’d been arrested for fraud and God alone knows what else. He had been running an insurance company and there had been no money to pay the claims, and over half the policies—which he had been selling off to other companies as a bookmaker lays off his bets—turned out to be false. “Another year,” he said wistfully, “and I’d have been solvent. Had a very tasty scheme going in Switzerland with Iranian money. In fact, Nick, if you fancy a trip to Berne…”

“No, Father.”

“Of course, Nick. Money never was your thing, was it?” He sounded contrite. We paused in our stroll and I was proudly introduced to a warder and his family. My father made a great point of mentioning the VC. The warder’s family seemed really grateful that my father had taken notice of them, just as if he was from the local gentry and they his tenants. They said how pleased they were to have met me.

“Decent people,” my father said as we strolled on. We found two deckchairs in the shade of a fine oak tree and we sat. “So what have you been doing, Nick?”

“Recovering, mainly.” I told him about Sycorax .

He thought it was a wonderful jest that I’d found a refuge with George Cullen, and I had to give a detailed description of our night trip to rendezvous with the French trawler. “I thought the old rogue would have died years ago. Drinks like a bloody judge! He’s making you pay for all this gear?”

“Through the nose.”

“Nick, Nick!” I had disappointed my father who had the haggling skills of the bazaar. He frowned in thought. “Ask him about Montagu Dawson.”

“The artist?” I was puzzled, but that was nothing new when I was with my father. I did remember, though, how he used to have two classic Dawsons hanging in his London offices; both paintings showed tall ships driving through foam-flecked seas.

“George sold a few Dawsons,” my father said. “They were as bent as a snake’s wedding tackle, of course, but George used to find American yachtsmen in the Barbican pubs, and he’d spin this yarn about Dawson having been a friend of the family.” My father chuckled. “The paintings were done by a fellow at Okehampton.

He’s the same chap who painted that Matisse your mother’s so very fond of. Talented fellow, but a piss-artist, I fear. Anyway, point of it all, one of George’s bent Dawsons ended up in the wrong hands, the police were tumbled out of bed, and officially the case has never been closed. It isn’t a major threat to George, of course, but he won’t like to be reminded of it, and he certainly wouldn’t like it if you suggested you might drop a line to Scotland Yard. Do they still have a fine-art squad? I don’t know, but George has certainly got a couple of those fake Dawsons still hanging in his home. Have you ever been to his house?”

“No.”

My father shuddered. “Ghastly place. Plastic furniture and music-box cocktail cabinets. The old bastard’s as rich as Croesus, but he’s got the taste of a camel. Oh, good shot!” The ball flicked across the grass straight towards our chairs. I fielded it with my foot, then flinched as I bent to pick the ball up. I threw it to the nearest fielder and my father watched me sadly. “Is it bad, Nick?”

“It’s all right. I can sail a boat.”

“Round the world?” he asked dubiously.

“Round the world,” I said stubbornly.

He was quiet for a moment or two. His cigar smoke drifted up into the oak leaves. He’d been pleased with Harry Abbott’s gift, and I wished I had brought him something. He looked very relaxed and confident despite the blue prison clothes. He gave me one of his shrewd, amused glances. “Harry Abbott came to see me a week or so back. He gave me some news of you.” I was watching the cricket and said nothing.

“Been in the wars again, have you, Nick?”

“Harry should keep his mouth shut.”

“You know Kassouli was setting you up, don’t you?” For a second I didn’t react, then I turned to look into his eyes.

“What the hell do you know about it, Dad?”

He sighed. “Nick! Do me a small favour. I might not be able to sail a small boat through a hurricane, but I do know what makes the wicked world go round. I did some business with Kassouli once.

He’s a tough bugger. Still got the stink of the souk about him, despite his Boston wife and Savile Row suitings.”

“Setting me up?”

He drew on his cigar. “Tell me about it, Nick.”

“I thought you knew the answers already.” I was defensive.

“Just tell me, Nick.” He spoke gently. “Please.” So I told him. I hadn’t planned to tell him about Angela, but I did in the end, because I wanted to tell somebody. I missed her horribly.

I kept telling myself that she was not for me, that she was too urban-ized and ambitious, too elegant and difficult, but I could not persuade myself that I would be better off without her. I missed her, and so I found myself telling my father about the visits to London, the nights in her small bedroom, the weekend in Norfolk, and then the recent news of her engagement and forthcoming wedding. The date had been announced in the papers. Angela would marry Bannister in the English Church in Paris after the coming weekend.

I told my father more. I told him about Mulder and Jill-Beth and Bannister and Kassouli. He listened in silence. He finished the cigar, threw it away, and its stub smoked in the grass like a newly fallen fragment of shrapnel. He rubbed his face. “This Kirov girl. You say she phoned you at Angela’s flat?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She wanted to reach me, of course.”

He shook his head. “Ostensibly she wanted you to be Kassouli’s man in Tony Bannister’s crew, yes? The whole essence of that, Nick, is that Bannister wouldn’t know that you were Kassouli’s man. So why risk alerting him by leaving a message on his girlfriend’s answering machine? There’s only one answer to that, Nick. They wanted Bannister to know you were dodgy. They gave you a high profile, didn’t they? She makes sure you rescued her from Mulder, she flies you to the States, and she smudges a damn great fingerprint on Angela’s answering machine. Why?”

A ribald cheer went up as one of the prison batsmen was run out.

The prison needed fifty-three runs to win and still had eight wickets left. “And someone sent Mulder a picture of me, too.” I spoke slowly.

It was like a moment after an awful storm when the clouds rend, sunlight touches an angry but settling sea, and the storm damage at last becomes visible. Seeing the sense of my father’s words, I felt foolish. “It was a photograph taken at Kassouli’s Cape Cod house.

He didn’t say who the sender was.”

My father gave me a pitying look. “It was the Kirov girl. Or Kassouli. They wanted Bannister to know you were tied up with them.