Home Before Dark (29 page)

The avatar had disappeared down the hall that led to the
rear of the building. He heard the screen-door bang shut and
went after her, navigating with the cursor the twists and turns
of a labyrinthine kitchen region. The walls echoed the simulated
clatter of his running footsteps.
He found Danvers waiting for him on the back porch, in
the dark.
It had been daylight when he entered the house (in real
time it was still the middle of the afternoon); now suddenly
Campbell found himself looking at a sky full of stars, a slither
of moon above the roof, fireflies winking from the high banks
of mountain laurel.
His guide withdrew a flashlight from her pocket and, pulling
a shawl over her head, set off through the grounds, taking
the path between the barns that he had explored that morning.
Looking back he saw that there were no lights showing in
the house. She led him out of the garden and soon they were
deep in the woods.
A grove of dark arrowy pines loomed above them. The
beam of the flashlight shivered and dipped as Danvers’ silhouette
came to a halt at the gate of a small cemetery encircled
by a wrought-iron fence.
He heard the cry of an owl – standard for a night-time scene,
but always effective – as the beam passed over the half-dozen
headstones, came back and lingered on an elaborate winged
monument for June and Gary Seaton (later Campbell would
learn that the Seatons were buried separately – June in the
Colebrook cemetery, Gary in Danbury), then fell on two
newer headstones. The first gave him an unpleasant shock;

it was inscribed with the name of Sophie Lister, her dates,
nothing else.
The second stone, unmarked, stood above a freshly dug
open grave.
The beam played over the pile of earth, the yawning pit
. . . they were in B-movie territory now. Come on, dude,
Campbell thought, you can do better than this. Then Mrs
Danvers turned towards him, swinging the flashlight around,
and he found himself staring into the concentric rings of a
'blinding’ shaft of light.
As a crude attempt to intimidate him, it failed. The reason
he’d been given access to the website wasn’t so that Ward
could warn him that he was slated to be his next victim. In
cyber-land, his own mantra chimed in, things are never what
they seem.
No, he was sure the killer had another motive … something
he’d missed.
Campbell lifted his eyes to the TV. He reached for the
remote and released the mute button. Federer was sprinting
from the net to the backcourt, chasing down an unreturnable
lob. He saw the champion miraculously hit the ball between
his knees with his back to the net and win the point. The
crowd went wild.
He watched the avatar’s diminishing silhouette weave
between the trees and lose itself in the darkness – nice touch.
He smiled, then closed down his laptop and gave his full
attention to the tennis.
He had arranged to meet Grace Wilkes up at Skylands in
the morning – he would be able to ask 'Mrs Danvers’ about
a family plot in person.

'You look like you wished you weren’t here.’
Jelly turned her head too fast and the dance-floor swam.
She saw the blurred figure of a man standing behind her, his
hand resting on the back of one of the empty chairs at the
table.
'What you say?’ The music was loud enough to pretend
she hadn’t heard.
'I said you look as if you’d rather be some place else.’
The man, in focus now, was wearing a dark blue polo shirt,
chinos and loafers. Tall, not exactly good-looking, okay though
. . . sort of preppy but not. If he had a type, she couldn’t
quite place it.
'Yeah, right. I’d rather be locked up for the night in an
undertaker’s parlour.’ She squinted up at him. 'Do we know
each other?’
'Not yet.’ It was an open, friendly face. 'But I was hoping.’
'I bet you were.’ She stubbed her cigarette out in an overflowing
ashtray and reached for her glass.
'I’m not trying to hit on you. I just noticed you sitting
alone and, well . . . you seemed a little lost.’
He got that right. The party was beyond boring – a stuffy
older crowd, mostly white, nobody she knew. She’d even
caught herself earlier wondering what it would be like if Ed
Lister did show up.
'I don’t need rescuing, mister.’ Nudging the straw and little
umbrella aside with her nose, she drained her fourth Long
Island Iced Tea. She was ready to go home.
'No, I meant … I just thought . . . what the heck, you’re
an attractive woman, I’d like to make your acquaintance.’
'What the heck?’ She arched an eyebrow and smiled. He
was polite, seemed likeable enough and, after her, had to be
the youngest person in the room. She was going to be stuck
here another couple of hours at least.
'Mind if I sit?’ This couldn’t be him … oh my God,
could it?
'I’m with friends… this is their table,’ she said, still sounding
hostile though she didn’t mean to now. The others were all
up dancing. She waved at Ronnie and Steve, nostalgically
'getting down’ to Natalie Cole’s 'This Will Be’ (the party’s
retro theme was 70s and 80s RB), and suddenly felt in a
better mood. 'Hey, wanna dance?’
'I’m not much of a dancer,’ he said. 'I could use some air
though. How about we get ourselves a couple of drinks and
go out on the terrace . . .’
Jelly nodded, not crazy about the idea. She stood up, and
the room started to sway. She held out her arms and got her
kilter back by moving with the music.
'I just have to hear the end of my song.’

Jelly came out of the washroom and with exaggerated care – even before she’d had a drink, the gold sandals with the
three-inch heels she’d found at the Shoe Inn had her tottering
like a newborn giraffe – made her way around the edge of
the dance-floor and out onto the terrace.
He was leaning on the rail looking at the ocean.
There was no way, no way this could be Ed Lister. For
one thing he was too young, early to mid-thirties. Plus she
knew what Ed looked like; she had his picture. But
then all she really knew about him was what he wanted her
to know. What if he’d made everything up? What if Ed
wasn’t who he said he was? What if this guy was him after
all? Just waiting for the right moment to declare himself?
The thought made her skin prickle.
He turned around to meet her and she noticed something
about his face. It was a perfect oval – ears small and flat to
his head, hair cut short like a cap – too perfect for a man.
There was nothing cissy, though, about his strong jaw and
brow, the deep-set eyes so pale they looked like a mistake.
She was beginning to see him as almost handsome.The moonlight
on the water thing going on in the background.
Jelly had never really thought Ed was serious about flying
over to meet her at the party. Just to be on toe safe side she’d
given him the name of a disco that no longer existed (Scarlett’s
had gone out of business before she was born). The trouble
was there were hardly any night clubs in Westoampton, and
it wouldn’t take much to find this place, right on the beach.
'I’m Guy, by the way . . . Guy Mallory.’ He smiled and
she saw how his thin lips receded until there was just face
around his teeth.
'Jelena.’ She held out a hand. 'Nice to meet you, Guy.’
She wasn’t getting any vibes off him. No way was this Ed.
She felt the surge of panic start to retreat. And another thing,
Guy spoke with an American accent, a cheesy Midwestern
twang that made her think he’d be calling her 'ma’am’ next – Ed was English. She’d never heard his voice, but she could
tell by the language he used, those quirky little phrases that
it would be difficult to fake.
She said, 'When you first came up I thought you were

someone else.’
He kept the smile. 'You know, I get a lot of that.’
'I was doubly wrong.’ She shook her head. 'You don’t
remind me of them at all.’ Then she asked in a tone she
wouldn’t normally have used with someone she’d just met,
'You ever been married, Guy?’
'No.’ He looked at her. 'Have you?’
She nodded. 'Once. I got married online. You go to this
website and type in stuff and then by the Law of the Internet,
da-dah, you’re married … I did it when I was like seventeen.’
'Who’s the lucky guy?’
'Colin Firth. But we’re legally separated. Any time I want
I can go back to the site and get a divorce.’
Ed had 'laughed out loud’ when she’d told him. She studied
Guy’s bland face for a reaction. He just smiled politely. It
was obvious he hadn’t heard it before, which was all she
wanted to know.
She found talking to him easy. When conversation slowed,
it didn’t feel in the least bit awkward.
They sat looking out
at the summer lightning over the ocean, listening to the surf
crash on the beach, the music – grooving on an old
Temptations song, 'I Can’t Get Next to You’ – all of it good.
At some point, Guy said, 'I’ll understand if you say no,
but I’d like to see you again … I mean, after tonight.’
His voice went up at the end of the sentence, making it a
question.
Jelly shrugged. 'Sure, why not?’
New York

49

She was all I could think about during the flight. I tried to
catch up on some work, I tried to watch a movie, read – I
couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept slipping back to the
thought that in a slowly reducing number of hours we were
going to meet. Sleep was out of the question.
Looking down, as we made landfall over the northeastern
tip of Long Island, I felt my heart give a lurch when I thought
I had briefly identified below us the lights of Westoampton
Beach. On the tarmac, as soon as they opened the cabin
doors, in that first lungful of warm night air reeking of jet
fuel and electricity, I could almost taste her presence she
seemed so near, so nearly within reach.
By the time, though, I got through customs and immigration,
any hope of catching up with Jelena that night had evaporated.
After standing in line for a couple of hours (an earlier security
alert at
JFK
had resulted in a backlog of arriving passengers),
anger and frustration had curdled into weary acceptance.
'The Carlyle,’ I told the driver, as I climbed into the waiting
limousine. It was well after midnight now, too late to drive
out to the Hamptons. The party would be over before we
even got there.
Manhattan bound, I poured myself a Scotch and water
and sank back into the grey leather upholstery, brooding over
the likelihood I’d missed my best and perhaps only chance
of tracking the girl down. As the glittering skyline rose above
Forest Hills, it suddenly hit home that I’d come to this vast
metropolis to find someone without an address, a telephone
number or even a name – it might have seemed funny, if the
stakes hadn’t been so high.
But this was New York, I reminded myself, a place I knew
well. I’d lived here, after all, nearly half my working life. It
was where I got my first break in business, made my first
million, where Laura and I met. For me it will always be the
city on the hill. If you’ve hit rock bottom in the Big Apple
(as I did a couple of times) before climbing back up and
finding success, you know that nothing is impossible.
The limo driver was listening to James Brown on the radio.
I asked him to turn the music up and began to make a plan
of action for tomorrow.
As we dipped down into the Midtown Tunnel, I thought
about Ward and the clipping Campbell had e-mailed me on
the Seaton tragedy. I’d told the detective I didn’t recognise
the boy’s parents. But since then I’d begun to wonder if something
about the couple in the blurry wedding photo didn’t seem familiar – if there might not after all be some connection
there with my own past.
I couldn’t be sure, but June Seaton had reminded me a
little of the woman in that dreamlike incident, my New York
dream, where I’m looking down on her half-naked body
sprawled on the murky floor of a black pit.
It occurred to me that I never knew her name either.

Ten minutes after I got to sleep, it felt like, I was woken by
the telephone.
I asked Campbell Armour to call back when I’d had some
coffee, but he was in a rush, on his way to interview the
housekeeper, Grace Wilkes, in a town called Torrington – at
the last moment she’d changed her mind about meeting him
at Skylands, told him the house brought back too many
memories.

I thought of coming clean with Campbell then about Jelena.
It was always my intention to share my concern that Ward
knew of her existence. Even if I was wrong about his
impersonating her online and I’d exaggerated or imagined
the threat to her safety, I could have used the detective’s
help in finding her. But it wasn’t something I wanted to
explain over the phone. We firmed up on the plan we’d
already made for getting together the next day. It would have
to wait till then.
After I’d showered, and had breakfast in my room at the
Carlyle – I have a similar deal there to my longstanding
arrangement with the Ritz in Paris and regard the place as
another home from home – I got down to business.
Without the usual credentials, I was forced to work from
the little information I had about Jelly: I knew her e-mail
address, I knew she took piano lessons with a teacher she
called 'Mrs C, not far from where she lived in Brooklyn, and
I knew she was some kind of supervisor at a local kindergarten.
She’d always been careful not to say what the kindergarten
was called, but the other day she had inadvertently – or maybe
it was deliberate – revealed the nearest subway stop.
I went online and googled 'childcare’ in the Prospect Park
area of Brooklyn. It didn’t take long to get a result. Using
Mapquest I was able to narrow the search down to three
possible nurseries within a five-minute-walk radius of the
Church Avenue subway stop on the Coney Island line.
I must confess this wasn’t the first time I’d tried to find
her. Soon after we first met I made a half-hearted attempt
to trace 'adorablejoker’. Out of curiosity, I gave her e-mail
address to one of those Net detective agencies that supposedly
can find anything out about a person (even their health plan
details and credit rating) for a few dollars. When they failed
to come up with the goods, I just let it go. I was afraid that
if she discovered I’d been checking up on her, she might get
the wrong idea.
The situation was very different now. I’m not sure if I was
driven more by the need to see Jelly, or to protect her – but
I felt a growing sense of urgency.
From the Carlyle I cabbed down to Fifth and Fifty-Third,
where I caught the F train out to Brooklyn. Entering the
subway station, assaulted by the familiar oven-waft of stale
piss and pretzels, I felt a nostalgic twinge that carried me
back twenty years to when I was Jelly’s age and didn’t always
have the price of a cab-fare.
On the elevated section of track, as I watched the Manhattan
skyline recede over a harsh, unappealingly flat cityscape of
low-rise buildings, bill-boards and decaying, sun-baked
streets, I began to have misgivings – not just about leaving
civilisation behind. I had on an old pair of jeans, black polo
shirt and dark glasses, aiming for a look that wouldn’t stand
out; but the thought occurred to me that in my rush to find
the girl before Ward did, I could be leading him to her.