Dying to Tell (39 page)

By the time I caught up with her, she was leaning on the parapet scanning the brown, swollen course of the Brue as it swept westwards towards Clyce Hole and Pomparles Bridge, where the A39 crossed the river.

"He's gone," she said, without looking round at me.

"What?"

"The river's taken him. As it took Father."

"You can't know that." Couldn't she? Win knew Howard better than I did. And if she was right there'd be nothing to see of him. The Brue, normally so placid, was a surging torrent. "He's probably just gone for a walk."

"No. I sensed the same with Rupert. It was true then and it's true now. Howard's lost to us."

"We can drive round to Pomparles and see if he's walking that way." It didn't sound convincing even to me. There was more water than grass visible on the riverside fields. He'd be wading, not walking. Unless, of course, he'd already drowned. From where he'd left the bike, directly above the middle of the stream, it would have been a short jump into a long hereafter for any but the strongest of swimmers. And as far as I knew Howard couldn't swim at all. "Win '

"I must go back to Penfrith and tell Mil." She turned away from the river and I saw the frozen certainty on her face. "There's just the two of us left now."

There was no reasoning with Win in her present mood. She was convinced beyond the reach of argument that her brother was dead. We went back to the car and drove towards Street. What would happen when we reached Penfrith I couldn't summon the strength of mind to imagine. We could hardly continue to lie low in such circumstances. But what else were we to do? Ventress's trap would be sprung before it was properly set if we contacted the police. And the police were the last people I wanted to see. Yet I couldn't just abandon Howard to whatever fate watery or otherwise had overtaken him. I had to do something.

What that something should be only came to me when we drove back into Street past Crispin School (where Rupe and I had spent a sizeable chunk of our teens together) and headed down the Somerton road. "Why are you stopping?" challenged Win as I pulled into the lay-by next to the call-box a few hundred yards further on. I didn't bother to answer.

I dialled 999 and asked for the police. "I think a man may have fallen into the Brue near Cow Bridge, on the Butleigh road south of Glastonbury. The river's in spate and '

"We know the state of the river, sir."

"Right. Well, you need to search the banks west of the bridge in case '

"Could I have your name, sir?"

"My name doesn't matter. This man could be drowning."

"Did you actually see him fall in, sir?"

Mil and me. Isn't that great? Isn't that wonderful? Doesn't that just make your heart sing?"

Win stared at me with a mixture of horror and distaste. Since I'd not previously specified the secret of secrets Townley was trying to keep the lid on, this was, I suppose, the moment when she finally understood the enormity of that little lie she and Mil had decided to tell, back in the summer of 1963, before Rupe and I had even been born. But she said nothing. Not a word. Perhaps, after all, there was nothing left for her to say.

I started the car and pulled out into the traffic.

Quite what I was going to say to Ventress quite what I was going to suggest we do about Howard's disappearance I still had no idea when I parked the car in Hopper Lane, on the same patch of verge I'd driven it away from an hour or so earlier. The rain was still sheeting down, but neither Win nor I hurried as we made our way along to Penfrith, despite the urgency we ought to have been gripped by. For me, the fear and the wondering were all gone. In their place a fatalistic lethargy had settled on my thoughts. I was only moving in the direction I was because, so far, nothing had stopped me. As for Win, I couldn't even summon the curiosity to consider what she was thinking.

I opened the front door and she followed me in. I'd vaguely expected Ventress to be waiting for us in the hall, but he wasn't there. Nor was Mil. "Gus?" I called. There was no answer. "Mil?" Still none. I walked along to the kitchen and pushed the door open.

And there was Ventress, spreadeagled on the floor, with a slack look of surprise on his face and a neat, round bullet-hole in the dead centre of his forehead. There was blood on the flagged floor beneath his head and a pool of what looked like black coffee, spilt from a smashed cup that lay next to his left hand, his index finger still crooked in the handle. There was no sign of his gun. Then I noticed the cracks radiating from a hole in one of the panes of the window next to the range, at about his standing height. The unhelpful thought came into my mind that he might as well have had a nip of Johnnie Walker in his cocoa after all.

Win was at my shoulder, staring like me at Ventress's corpse. "Where's Mil?" she murmured, close to my ear.

"Upstairs."

The voice had come from behind us. We turned to see Stephen Townley standing in the hall, halfway between us and the front door, with the door to the sitting room open to his right. He was wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket. The jacket was still beaded with rainwater. There were a couple of drops on the barrel of the gun he was pointing at us as well. His blue eyes sparkled. He looked younger than when I'd met him in London sleek and fulfilled. He was back in harness. And he was enjoying the sensation.

"I wondered when you'd get back. I'm glad I didn't have to wait too long."

"What have you done to my sister?" said Win, strangely un cowed by the experience of having a gun trained on her.

"You can go up and see her, Miss Alder. I don't mind. Lance and I have a couple of things to discuss. But they needn't concern you. Go ahead." He stepped to one side.

With a fleeting glance in my direction, Win moved forward and past him, then started slowly up the stairs.

"Back up, Lance," said Townley, nodding for me to retreat into the kitchen. "Be careful you don't trip." I took six paces back until I felt the range-rail behind me. "Good enough." He moved into the doorway.

"We have nothing to discuss," I said, surprised by how calm I felt now there really was nowhere else to run to. "Why don't you just get on with it?"

"There's a case for that. But I'm ahead of schedule. Ahead of Ventress's schedule, for sure. He obviously wasn't expecting me so soon. As for Howard, well, who knows what he was expecting?"

"What do you know about Howard?"

"He made it easy for me, taking an early-morning stroll by a swollen river. Just one push was all it needed." (Win's feelings had been right, then, but her conclusion wrong. Howard hadn't gone quite like his father.) "Now, while Win says a few prayers over her departed sister pending their early reunion I want to know, Lance: what was this about? Why did Rupe come gunning for me?"

"It was a mistake."

"A mistake?"

"Yen. He thought you'd killed his father."

"I never even knew his father."

"Like I say: a mistake."

"A pretty goddam far-reaching one."

"You said it. But talking of far-reaching, why don't you tell me what was behind the thing in Dallas you helped to pull off? I mean, people always say they remember where they were and what they were doing when Kennedy was shot. Personally, I was busy getting born, just down the road from here. But what about you? What were you up to?"

"As long as you don't know, I still have the luxury of letting you live. And maybe I'll do that if you co-operate. Where's the photograph?"

"Photograph?"

"You know the one. Rupe's snapshot of the picture Mayumi took of Miller Loudon and me at the Golden Rickshaw in the spring of 'fifty-eight."

"Of you and Miller Loudon and Lee Harvey Oswald, you mean?"

"Where is it, Lance?" (In my bag was the simple answer, but laying hands on that amidst the dusty gallimaufry of the Alders' possessions had presumably given Townley a few problems.) "It's a loose end I really do need to tie up."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'll find it anyway."

"And you'll kill me anyway too, won't you? So, why should I do you any favours?"

"Because there's a difference between dying and dying slow." The barrel of the gun dropped fractionally as he fired. There was a flash of heat and pain in my left knee. Then I was on the cold, flagged floor, my head resting against one of Ventress's outstretched legs. A jolt of something way beyond the dictionary definition of agony hit my brain. I grabbed at my knee and felt a hot, liquid mess of smashed bone and torn flesh that I could hardly believe was part of me. Townley loomed into view. "Tell me where the photograph is and I'll make it quick, Lance. That's a solemn promise."

I wanted to tell him then. I really did. But something stopped me some low, lurking perversity that wouldn't let me give him everything he wanted. If he left without the photograph, maybe somebody would be able to use it to make a case against him. (A frail hope, I admitted to myself, riding on a big if.) "A solemn promise, from you?" I gasped. "Is that meant to be a ... joke?"

There are more painful parts of the body than the knee, Lance. Do you want me to move on to one of them?"

"How long ... do I get to think about it?"

"Have it your way." He aimed the gun. I closed my eyes. There was an echoing roar of noise. But the extra pain never came. I opened my eyes.

To see Townley's toppling figure hit the range and slide down to rest against its base. The right rear side of his head was missing, as if some creature about the size of a Siberian tiger had bitten a chunk out of it hair, skull and half a brain missing. There was a spray of blood on the wall behind where he'd been standing. And something wet that could also have been his blood on my face.

I looked across to the doorway and saw Win standing there, slowly lowering a rifle, the barrel smoking faintly. The weapon must originally have belonged to her father. I'd once seen her shooting rabbits with it. The memory only returned to me as I lay there, staring woozily up at her. Rupe and I had watched her from the top of Ivythorn Hill, bagging bunnies for the pot in a field below Teazle Wood. When would that have been? 1974 or '75. Some time around then.

"She's a good shot, your sister, isn't she?" I'd said.

"You bet," Rupe had replied, smiling. "Never misses."

POSTSCRIPT

And that's how it was. That's exactly how it was. But it's not exactly how I've been telling it over the months since. I've needed to talk my way out of trouble, not deeper into it. And the truth wouldn't have helped. Not the whole truth, anyway. My solicitor (having a solicitor being one of many new experiences the past year has brought me) seems to think I'll soon be off the hook. But maybe he wouldn't think that if he knew what really happened. Just as well he doesn't, then. Just as well no one does. Except Win (who isn't talking to anyone) and Echo (who isn't sure she believes it). Plus me, of course. The poor guy it all happened to. Yours truly (for once).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been given a great deal of help in the writing of this story generously and cheerfully, by old friends and new acquaintances. Ann Symons shared with me her memories of growing up in Street, Hugh Loftin provided invaluable insights into the shipping business and Toru Sasaki smoothed the path of my researches in his enchanting homeland. I am also indebted, in many different ways, to David Cross of Tilbury Container Services Ltd; Koichi Hirose of NYK; Assistant Inspector Shoichiro Harada of the Kyoto Police; Dr. Boyd Stephens, Coroner of San Francisco; Senator John Vasconcellos and his assistant, Sue North; Jack Roberts; and Miyoko Kai. Thank you all.

LIBRARY EDITION

THE NOVELS OF ROBERT GOD DARD

Past Caring (1986}

In Pale Battalions (1988)

Painting the Darkness (1989)

Into the Blue (1990)

(Winner of the first WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award and dramatized for TV in 1997, starring John Thaw)

Take No Farewell (1991)

Hand in Glove (1992}

Closed Circle (1993)

Borrowed Time (1995)

Out of' the Sun (1996) (a sequel to Into the Blue)

Beyond Recall (1997}

Caught in the Light (1998)

Set in Stone (1999}

Sea Change (2000)