The Company of Fellows (42 page)

What now? The
chrome glint of the bin caught his eye. He reached inside and found
the slimy plastic that had held the squid. Good. Not too badly
ripped. He laid it on the side. Ravioli still boiling. Can’t make a
mess of dinner or Haydn would notice straightaway. He dropped the
mould, swaddled in kitchen towel, into the plastic, rolled it up,
and threw it into the coolbag, which he zipped shut. He washed his
hands and reached the runcible spoon into the pan, skimming out the
ravioli one by one.

Now he tore
some coriander by hand, and as he tossed the squid for 20 seconds
in steaming oil he was glad that his mind was still shut down, but
knew that he couldn’t sit through dinner.

He took two
exquisite plates through to the dining room and returned to the
kitchen as though to bring the third. He ran water loudly to mask
the tap on the keys and texted Rosie, “pick me up NOW. Becky’s.
T”

He checked his
breathing. It was raised more than was seemly for having prepared a
delicate Japanese dish and he shallowed it again before calling
Becky and Haydn to dinner.

“
Dinner is on
the table. Haydn, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I can’t stay. Rosie just
texted. I’m needed on ferry duty.”

“
Of course.”
Haydn smiled. If she was suspicious he couldn’t see it.

He took her
hand and led her through to the dining room, trying to feel any
tension that might suggest she sensed something was wrong. He felt
nothing.

He went back
for Becky, who had hung back in the reception room. He didn’t want
to give any detail away. Not yet, but he needed her onside. He bent
forward as if to kiss her goodbye, “Cover for me tonight,” he said.
“I’ll tell you everything in the morning.”

“
Everything?”

“
Everything.”

____

65

Tommy heard
himself draw in an enormous breath as he sank into the front seat
of Rosie’s car. His hand kept flexing on the handle of the coolbag
to reassure himself that it was still there.

“
You’re lucky
I hadn’t started on the wine yet,” Rosie said as she did a rapid
three point turn and shot up North Hinksey Lane. “What the hell’s
going on?”

“
I need to
tell you something.” Perhaps it was good that his mind was shot. He
wasn’t capable of thinking anything through, so all he had to go on
was instinct. His instinct that said even if she walked out she’d
still take the fingerprints off the mould.

“
I don’t like
the sound of that,” she said. “Let’s go to yours. Then I won’t have
to kick you out if I never want to see you again.”

“
Want a
drink?” Tommy asked as they sat on the sofa at the top of his
house.

“
No, Tommy, I
want the truth.”

Without
allowing himself time to think he told her everything, from the
moment Charteris collapsed on his doorstep to the moment he bagged
the mould. It was good to run everything through, made it feel less
like he had leapt on some wild hunch. He was able to see the logic
build towards its inevitable conclusion.

“
It all
happened because Becky wanted to get to know her father,” Tommy
concluded. “Haydn must have known. She told me that Becky had
changed since she got back from her travels, as though she were
hiding something. But it wasn’t her travels that changed her, it
was her father.”

“
So what made
her flip? Do you think she was frightened he’d do to Becky what he
did to Carol?”

“
Maybe. Maybe
she just didn’t want Becky near someone who could do that, and
didn’t want her to have to know why.”

“
But she
didn’t know.”

“
Didn’t she?”
Tommy could see exactly how she would have found out; or where, at
the least, the suspicions would have come from that would make her
look for the answer, “Who were the two people closest to her?
Hedley Sansom and Stephen Knightley. The only person who had always
known what really happened the night Becky and Carol were born, who
followed Haydn around like a lost puppy because it was the only way
he could bring himself not to kill himself; and the man who lost
his wife because of what happened and devoted his life to finding
out why.”

Rosie sat in
silence, thinking over what Tommy had said. “Not even Haydn’s that
imperceptive,” she said finally.

“
She’s not
imperceptive at all,” said Tommy. He was astonished, as he said it,
that it had taken him so long to figure her out, to connect the
coldness that seemed to run in her blood with the veil that he had
spent the last decade presenting to the world. Shutting everything
out was the only way she had of not letting everything in. She was
exactly like him. Her empathy was too strong. And when she spent
her time with people who knew what Knightley and Sansom knew it
must have felt as though she was being stung through every pore of
her skin every time she met them, with no way to make it
stop.

It was no
wonder she was so good at her research, so good at interviewing
people, collecting data about what was really going on in their
heads, in their communities, he thought. And then he stopped in his
tracks. Haydn had a far more selfish motive for wanting Charles
dead.

“
What is it?”
Rosie asked.

“
Something
Becky said. Something her father told her. Something I’ll bet she
let slip to Haydn, without even knowing it.”

“
What?”

“
She told me
that the day Val died, Charles saw her cleaner leave early. That
was when Val killed herself, when she was finally
alone.”

“
And?” She
clearly couldn’t see where this was going.

“
And her
cleaner was Chinese.”

“
So?”

“
So Haydn’s
work is all about interviewing members of the Chinese community is
England.”

Tommy saw
Rosie’s face light up in recognition. “So Val’s cleaner left early
that day so Haydn could interview her for her research.”

“
And Charles
found out.”

“
And what? He
tells Becky half the story and Becky lets it slip to her mother in
passing, not knowing it’s not common knowledge.”

“
Haydn guesses
at once that she can only have got it from Charles,” Tommy
concluded. “And she thinks that with Hedley about to retire, maybe
Charles will twist the knife one last time.”

“
And Hedley
would never speak to her again. She’d lose her only real
friend.”

“
Nor would her
daughter,” Tommy said. “She’d lose her daughter to a man she knows
is a monster.”

Rosie put her
hand on his cheek. She closed her eyes and kissed him. “What are
you going to do?”

“
I’m going to
go and see your boss.”

Rosie smiled.
“I’d still love you. Even if you left the choice to
Becky.”

“
Old wine and
seduction.” Tommy smiled back, “Wait here. I think it’s time to
celebrate.” He got up and headed for the doorway. He put his head
back around the door as he left. “I love you too, by the
way.”

Tommy made his
way through the labyrinth of his house to the enormous wine cellar
at its heart. He lifted the already opened lid from the first case
he had brought from Shaw’s and took out the 50 centilitre bottle of
1864 Eszencia. He had thought about waiting to share it with Becky.
He imagined Shaw telling him to wait. He thought of all the reasons
to follow the Professor’s advice. He was upset, his mind was shot,
probably his senses too. Once it was opened it would be gone
forever.
Sometimes you just have to get on
and do it
, he whispered back.

He returned to
the sitting room with two small crystal Tokaji glasses and a
corkscrew.

“
What’s that?”
Rosie stared at the faded and worn label.

“
It’s
something perfect for a very special occasion.”

Tommy set the
bottle upright on a table. He felt his hands steady as he set the
corkscrew on the neck of the bottle and lowered the blade through
the wax. He turned slowly and withdrew the cork in one motion,
beckoning Rosie inwards, their heads just a few inches over the
nape as it came out and released the richest smell of burnt fruit
and toffee. He watched as the thick amber fluid slid into the
glasses, passed one to Rosie and held his to the light. His
eyebrows furrowed slightly, and as he lowered his nose over the
glass he wondered how badly his senses had been damaged. He was
sure he made out a slight sherry hint of oxidation.

He lifted the
glass to his lips. It was one of the most exquisite tastes he had
ever known. Rich, creamy, caramelised flavours that lingered for a
minute on his tongue. The unmistakeable, slightly oxidized caramel
of an Eszencia from 1972.

Tommy went
white.

“
Tommy, what
is it?”

“
I was
completely wrong,” was all he managed to say, and for several
minutes he repeated it over and over to himself in disbelief. “He
wasn’t murdered at all,” he said finally. “He killed himself. Just
like Emily thought all along.”

“
How do you
work that out?”

“
The wine. The
wine was why I knew he was murdered. For his last meal he drank two
fabulous wines. But he had two better ones in his cellar. He would
never have done that if he was going to kill himself. He would have
ended his life on the highest note possible, so it had to be
murder.”

Tommy picked
up the bottle and stared at it. “This is one of them, one of the
finest wines ever made, only it’s not. It’s the wine I thought he’d
drunk the day he died. He switched the wines. Chose the same wine
so I couldn’t tell from glancing at the shape of the
bottle.”

“
But if he
swapped the wines, wouldn’t you be able to see the bottle had been
tampered with?” Rosie asked.

“
No. It’s
common practice to have old wines recorked, especially Tokaji. In
some cellars it’s recorked as often as every five
years.”

“
But why would
he go to all this trouble to make you think he was
murdered?”

“
Because he
knew the trail would lead me back to Haydn.” He knew the next
question. It was the question that bothered him too, but for the
moment he couldn’t find an answer. “I’ve no idea why.”

“
What are you
going to do now?” Rosie asked. Tommy wondered if she thought he
should call Emily before he did anything else. It was what he
wanted to do, but he knew there was another message he had to
deliver first.

“
Now,” Tommy
said. “I’m going to tell Becky. She asked me to find her father’s
killer. She needs to know he killed himself.”

Tommy took out
his mobile. “I can’t do it over the phone.” He thought back to the
days after he had split up with Emily, unable to look anyone in the
eye, unable to connect with them. Why? Was it shame or guilt? Was
he frightened because he knew that if anyone looked into him they
would see that he had fallen short? Or was it simply that he never
wanted to look into someone’s eyes again and be sucked in by their
pain? He looked to Rosie for confirmation that it was OK to call
her now. She held his hand and nodded.

“
Becky, I need
to see you now. Let’s meet on the bridge at the end of North
Hinksey Lane. Ten minutes?”

“
I’ll drive
you,” said Rosie.

It was a
statement not a question and Tommy was too tired to argue. And the
vast grey nothing that was swirling inside his stomach and
threatening to damp out any remaining life the moment the last drop
of adrenalin leeched from his wrung-out body told him that he would
need someone to bring him home afterwards. He could already hear
the drumming patter of thoughts, memories, everything he didn’t
want to confront rushing like rats towards his consciousness.
Whether they reached him first, or whether his defences shut every
hatch in time made little difference. He was, as he believed the
saying went, buggered every which way.

Tommy couldn’t
remember getting in the car as Rosie pulled up in the car park of
the school at the bottom of North Hinksey Lane. He didn’t know how
to tell Becky that she was wrong. The belief that her father had
been killed, and that Tommy would find his killer, was the one
thing that had given her direction through her grief. It was the
one thing that had given him direction too, for that matter, since
he had first set eyes on her listless figure in the basement of the
Jericho Café. What would it mean to her that he had killed himself
after all? He was getting to know his daughter again after 18 years
but hey, the thought of having her back in his life just wasn’t
enough to keep him alive. He was thankful that for now his body was
running on automatic and he didn’t have to think about such things.
Rosie kissed him and he got out.

Becky was
waiting for him on the bridge, arms resting on the stonework as she
leant back in one of the lovers’ niches. The evening light was
playing games of chase with willow shadows on the water behind her,
but none of it reflected from her eyes. How did he
start?

Before he
could answer he found his lips had already begun.