Shadow Hunter (28 page)

‘Now, this message you're going to give him. You mustn't say it's from us, of course. Pretend it's based on something your husband said to you, just before he sailed.'

‘What?'

‘That he intends to lay mines at the entrance to the main Soviet submarine base at Polyarny.'

‘Poly . . . what?'

‘Think of Polyanna. Tell him that, in fact. Mis-remembering the name will make it more convincing.'

‘Is this true? How do you know what Philip's going to do?'

‘We don't,' admitted Black. ‘It's a guess. But if the Russians send submarines to sea from Polyarny, and they're blown up by your husband's mines – that'll be war, Mrs Hitchens.'

‘What we need is time,' Hillier took over. ‘If the ‘Soviets keep their boats out of the way, it'll give our Navy more time to find your husband and bring him back.'

‘But supposing Gunnar doesn't make contact, or I don't convince him?'

‘Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?' answered John Black.

‘I'm sure you'll do your very best. You must want to – after what's happened,' Hillier added pointedly.

Eventually they left. They gave Sara a card with two telephone numbers on it. One was Hillier's desk in London, the other a Plymouth number for the local watchers.

The silence in the house terrified her. She wandered from room to room trying to peer from windows without being seen. Somewhere out there were two men. One to
protect her, the other . . . ? What did he want? Why had Gunnar come back?

It was unreal. Soon she would awake and the nightmare would fade.

And there was a third man, Philip. What wild obsession had gripped him? It wasn't just because of her – it
couldn't
be! The security men were blaming her for everything, but that was unfair!

There was much more behind it. If only she knew what.

Outside in the garden, a pigeon took flight with a clatter of wings. Somewhere upstairs an unfastened window banged shut in a sudden breeze. She shivered.

She was scared to be in the house alone, but they'd told her to wait.

Waiting for Gunnar. A title for a melodrama.

Suddenly there was the crunch of tyres on gravel. Her heart pounded. He wouldn't just arrive, would he?

She strained to see out.

Patsy Tinker. What did she want? If Gunnar came and saw the car he'd be put off.

She'd pretend not to be in.

Too late. Patsy saw her and waved.

‘Thought I'd drop in,' Patsy explained. ‘You seemed so down when we met on the Hoe yesterday . . .'

‘Oh, I'm okay. I'm expecting someone, that's all.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry.' Patsy looked embarrassed. ‘Should I . . .?'

‘No, no. Come in. Have some coffee or something.'

They moved to the kitchen.

‘Oh, you've had it done since I was last here,' Patsy exclaimed admiringly. ‘New units. Very smart.'

‘That was last year. Shows how long it's been.'

Sara busied herself with the kettle and mugs.

‘That was pretty startling, what you told me yesterday,' Patsy ventured. ‘All that security business. I'd be scared to death living out here on my own with all that going on.'

‘Well, with kind neighbours like you dropping in to get all the juicy details, I don't have time to be scared, do I?'

‘Sara, that's
not
why I came! I simply thought you might
want someone to talk to. It's bad for you, keeping it all bottled up. All those feelings locked up inside you. You'll burst.'

Sara was on the point of doing exactly that. She shook with anger at being lectured.

‘Look, sod off! I didn't ask you here!'

And she burst into tears. It was what Patsy had hoped would happen. The tension was broken.

Patsy let her cry, saying nothing, until Sara's shoulders had stopped shaking.

The kettle began to whistle.

‘I'll do that,' Patsy said. Coffee and tea had been left out, and there were unwashed cups and saucers in the sink. So, there'd been other visitors that morning.

Sara pulled a handkerchief from the handbag on the table.

‘I'm sorry,' she sniffed. ‘I know you mean to help. But really there's nothing you can do.'

Patsy placed a mug on the table next to Sara, and sat down.

‘Thanks.'

‘Is Simon all right? Have you been able to keep it away from him, all the problems?'

‘Hardly,' Sara laughed bitterly. ‘It was through Simon that Philip found out.

‘I'd been very silly. A little while back, there was a man I . . . used to see. He came round here quite often. I let Simon meet him. Then, ten days ago, he and Philip bumped into the man in the city. Suddenly Philip had found the key to my little box of secrets.

‘Simon was back at school when it all came out, so he missed the awful rows. I think he sensed it was coming, though; that's what's been behind the trouble at school this term.'

‘Vandalizing microscopes?'

‘That's it. I'm sure there's worse to come. Perhaps I'll bring him home for a while . . .'

‘Why don't you? That could be good for both of you.'

‘I think I will.'

They fell silent and sipped at their coffee. Patsy took a deep breath, and started the conversation again.

‘This man you were seeing . . . The one you said worked for a foreign government . . . the Russian . . . did you . . . tell him anything at all that you shouldn't have?'

‘I don't
think
so, but then I'm not sure what he wanted to know. Nothing really secret, that's for sure. I don't know anything secret. Do you? I mean, does Andrew talk about his work?'

‘Never.'

‘It's . . . , it's not my fault, Patsy,' Sara pleaded. ‘Whatever Philip's doing – it's unfair to blame me for it. It's much more involved than people think.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘This “revenge” they think he's planning – they imagine it's just because of me and Gunnar, but it isn't. It's more than that. It has to be.'

Wishful thinking, Patsy wondered?

‘They really think he's going to attack the Russians?'

‘Yes. They told me this morning.'

‘What? Who did?'

Sara scraped back her chair and stood up. She grabbed a transistor radio from the worktop next to the kettle, and turned it on at full volume.

‘We may be bugged,' she explained in a whisper.

‘Who by?'

‘MI5. They were here this morning.'

The pop music was deafening. Patsy found it unbearable.

‘Couldn't we walk in the garden? It's a nice morning,' she suggested. Sara led the way to the back of the house.

The garden was walled, sheltering it from the wind. Roses and honeysuckle clung to the old brickwork. The last of the season's apples weighed heavily on the branches of young trees which Andrew had helped Philip plant the previous year.

‘We should be safe out here.'

‘You must think I've gone mad.'

‘I'd be the same, I assure you.'

Sara reached out and held one of the apples, giving it a tiny twist so that it parted from the branch. Perfectly ripe. She held it out for Patsy.

Patsy took a bite. ‘Gorgeous.' Sticking her hands determinedly into her trouser pockets, Sara turned to face Patsy squarely.

‘Do you know about Philip's father?'

‘No. Should I?'

‘Philip hero-worshipped him, but he died when Philip was just fourteen.
HMS Tenby?
Does that ring a bell?'

‘Vaguely. One of the SSNs is called
Tenby
.'

‘This was an earlier one. An old diesel sub. Disappeared on patrol in the Barents Sea in 1962. All a big mystery. Philip's dad was her first lieutenant.'

‘Oh, yes. I remember something. An accidental explosion, was it?'

‘Not according to Philip. He's convinced the Russians sank her.'

‘What? I've never heard that said before!'

‘It was an open verdict at the official inquiry. No wreckage was ever found. No survivors. Just theories. The one they settled for was that there'd been a fire on board and the torpedoes had gone up. They even made changes to the way the things were stored on board after that.'

‘But Philip didn't buy that idea?'

‘I suppose he may have done at the beginning; he was only a boy. But he overheard someone talking to his mother about it, a few years later, saying the
Tenby
had been in the Barents to keep an eye on Russian torpedo trials. Nuclear torpedoes.'

‘Crikey! And was it true?'

‘I don't know. But Philip thinks so. He became convinced the Russians tested a nuclear torpedo on the
Tenby
and vapourized his father along with the rest of the crew.'

‘But that's madness! The Russians would never have done that. They'd have risked starting a nuclear war, wouldn't they?'

Sara shrugged. She'd never given much heed to Philip's theories before now.

‘It was November 1962, the Cuban missile crisis,
remember? All very jumpy. The Americans and Russians on the brink of war – Philip reckoned the White House put pressure on Britain not to make an issue of the
Tenby
.'

‘Oh.'

Patsy racked her brains to remember what that crisis had been about.

‘What is it you're saying? That this revenge Philip's planning is to do with his father's death?'

‘I don't know exactly. But I'm sure it's involved.'

‘
Why
are you so sure?'

Sara hesitated over how much to say.

‘This summer we went on holiday to Guernsey, all three of us. It was Philip's idea. He used to go there as a boy, but hadn't been back since. I didn't know before, but it was in Guernsey that he'd last seen his father. Straight after that holiday in 1962, the
Tenby
sailed north and never returned.'

‘Oh, I see.'

‘Something happened this summer, to Philip. We'd been there a few days, staying in an absolute dump of a hotel. He'd been a bit moody – memories and all that – then one afternoon he came back after a walk on his own, looking as if he'd seen a ghost. Simon and I were by the pool; I expected him to join us, and when he didn't I went up to our room to look for him. Well . . .'

She frowned.

‘Go on . . .'

‘He was – I didn't go into the room, because he seemed to be . . . crying. I could hear, through the door. I . . . I didn't know what to think. Philip's so – undemonstrative. So, I just stood there, listening to this awful croaking noise, sort of frozen. And then he said something, in a strangled voice. Out loud. He said “Dad, Dad, what have they done to you?”'

‘Good Lord! But you still didn't go in?'

‘I thought he'd be upset – embarrassed that I'd heard him. So I went down again and waited for him. He didn't appear for hours. Claimed he'd fallen asleep. I asked if anything was wrong, but he said no. So I just put it down
to his being back in the place where he'd last seen his father. Something deeply buried coming to the surface.'

‘And that was that?'

‘Well, no. He didn't sleep at night, tossing and turning; always desperately short-tempered and wanting to be on his own. Then a couple of days later, some other mother I got talking to at the hotel was telling me about a beautiful walk she'd just been on, lonely clifftops and all that, when she mentioned having seen Philip up there, sitting on a bench – with a woman.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘I thought the obvious at first. That evening I asked him about it. It shook him that he'd been spotted, but he dismissed it; said the woman had just been another walker who'd stopped for a rest. He was lying; I can always tell – he does it very badly.'

‘You think she had some connection with his father?'

‘I don't know. We came home at the end of the holiday; life returned to normal, except that Philip had closed up. I couldn't get through to him at all. He was like a man facing a crucial decision, unable to make up his mind.'

‘And he was still like that when . . .'

‘When he found out about Gunnar. Yes. But that's just it. Afterwards – after all the screaming and recrimination – he was different. It was as if he
had
finally made up his mind, finally decided what to do about the problem that had dogged him since Guernsey.'

A blackbird began to sing shrilly from a heavily-laden pear tree further down the garden. They began to walk again, Sara bobbing down to pull a long tuft of rye-grass from a flower bed.

‘Have you told anyone about this? The authorities?'

‘Hardly! It's just the imaginings of a silly woman, isn't it?' she snorted scornfully.

‘It could be rather more than that. I think you should tell someone.'

Suddenly Sara clutched at Patsy's arm. The noise of a car at the front of the house had startled her.

‘Sounds like you've got another visitor. Shall I go and look for you?'

Sara shook her head.

‘We can go round the side.'

A trail of paving stones led to the front of the house. A small green van was parked in the drive. Its driver stood outside the front door cradling a bouquet of roses.

‘Ah,' the youth turned. ‘One of you Mrs Hitchens?'

‘Yes, me.' Sara advanced towards him.

‘Could you sign here, please?'

She did, and took the flowers from him. As the van reversed down the drive, she stood quite still staring at the blooms, as if they were poisoned.

‘Aren't they beautiful? No one ever sends me flowers,' Patsy complained.

Sara looked petrified, eyes fixed on the envelope pinned to the cellophane.

‘Do you know who they're from?'

‘I think so,' she answered in a whisper. ‘I must find a vase.'

The front door was latched, so they walked the path back to the kitchen, Patsy feeling awkward. Greetings from a new lover or an old one, she wondered?