Hand In Glove Part 71

"What is it?" snapped Golding.

"Mrs Abberley's daughter's been released. She's in the hands of the Spanish police-safe and well."

CHAPTER.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

Colin Fairfax-whose additional surname the National Health Service declined to recognize-did not die of his wounds.

Unlike Tristram Abberley, he was destined to make a complete recovery. Indeed, after an initial twenty-four hours of alternate agony and oblivion, he quite enjoyed being a patient in Wycombe General Hospital. He realized he was over the worst as soon as he stopped regarding the nurses as mother subst.i.tutes and began indulging in s.e.xual fantasies about them. From then on, he positively revelled in the celebrity status conferred on him by the dramatic circ.u.mstances of his admission and, but for the management's puritan att.i.tude towards drinking and smoking, could happily have contemplated a lengthy stay.

He decided at the outset to plead total ignorance where the events of 10 October were concerned, claiming to the police that he had driven Charlotte to Swans' Meadow at her request and without the first idea what might be happening there or in Spain. When she and Derek told him the whole story, he was confirmed in his judgement.

The less of the truth the police knew the better. Not least because he was in sole possession of one vital fragment of it. Charlotte seemed to have forgotten his attempt to share it with her, which was understandable in view of all that she had on her mind. And now, as the future stretched out enticingly ahead of him, he began to think it might also be providential.

On the day Colin was discharged, Derek drove up from Tunbridge Wells to collect him and take him back to his flat above the Treasure Trove. An heroic effort on Charlotte's part had rendered this almost homely in his absence. She was waiting to greet him with champagne and canapes, which he deemed an ideal way to inaugurate a convales-cence during which his surgeon had urged him to forgo alcohol.

It was clear to Colin from the popping of the first cork that Charlotte and Derek had more to celebrate than his recovery or, 432 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

indeed, the formal dropping of all charges against him by the police.

Their faces glowed with conspiratorial happiness and, though they were too bashful to say as much, it was obvious that love had blossomed during his stay in hospital.

"So," he innocently enquired halfway through his second gla.s.s, "What are your plans?" Deliberately, he had failed to specify which of them he was addressing.

"Well," Derek replied defensively, "they're a bit up in the air, actually. As of the end of the month, I shall be joining the ranks of the unemployed."

Colin choked. "You mean Fithyan & Co. have sacked you?"

"Not exactly. We've agreed on a parting of the ways."

"You mean they've sacked you."

Derek grimaced. "Chartered accountants don't use such expressions. I was . . . allowed to resign at short notice. But don't worry. With FCA after my name, I should be able to find somebody who wants my services."

"But before he starts looking," Charlotte interposed with a smile, "we're going on holiday. A few recuperative weeks in the sun."

Noting but not remarking on her use of the collective p.r.o.noun, Colin said: "Splendid idea! No objections from the police, I trust?"

"I'm not being charged with anything, if that's what you mean.

Sam's safe return seems to have defused their wrath. And Golding's given up asking questions. He knows we slipped something past him, but I don't think he's going to be allowed to spend any more time trying to find out what. The Spanish police are still investigating the matter, but Sam's given them so little to go on I imagine they'll soon lose interest."

"And how is Sam?"

"Up and down. Ecstatic one minute, depressed the next. I told her as much as I could, but I'm not sure she can bring herself to believe the truth about her father. She's taking it out on Ursula, I'm afraid-refusing to talk to her, excluding her from her life. She's even staying with friends until she goes back to Nottingham. It'll be a long time before she trusts her mother again-if she ever does."

"You aren't expecting me to sympathize with the wretched woman, are you?"

"Of course not. I certainly don't. In fact, I haven't spoken to her since . . . well, since you last spoke to her. And I don't plan to. I've decided to forget about my family-what's left of it-and concentrate H A N D I N G L O V E.

433.

on myself." She glanced at Derek. "And on those who I can be sure won't let me down."

"A sound policy," said Colin, holding out his gla.s.s for Derek to top up. "I should have done the same long ago."

Charlotte smiled. "And what are your plans, Colin?"

"Mine? Oh, business as usual. Re-open the Treasure Trove ASAP.

Scout around for new stock. Then sell it all at a huge profit in the run-up to Christmas. Some hopes, eh?"

"Nothing else?"

"What else should there be?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's just . . . When the police arrived, that day at Swans' Meadow, you were trying to tell me something. But you never finished and in the confusion I forgot to ask you what it was. I've been meaning to ever since."

"Really?"

"Yes. It seemed to be something quite important."

"I don't remember." Colin grabbed at a c.o.c.ktail sausage by way of distraction. "If and when I do, I'll be sure to let you know." He grinned uneasily and cast around for a change of subject. "Where are you going on this holiday, then?"

"The Seych.e.l.les," Derek replied.

"Perfect! And so appropriate for a pair of lovebirds."

Charlotte arched her eyebrows. "Who said anything about lovebirds?"

"n.o.body. But I heard their distinctive song among the branches."

Derek laughed to cover his blushes. "Why so appropriate, may I ask?"

"Well, the Seych.e.l.les are home to the coco de mer, aren't they?"

"The what?"

"Haven't you heard of it? It's a species of palm unique to the islands. The nut of the female tree is shaped exactly like . . . But you'll find out for yourselves soon enough. Why should I spoil the fun? Just think of me sometimes, labouring away here, while you're . . . Well, just think of me."

"We will," said Charlotte. "And when we come back-"

"You can tell me what date you've fixed for the wedding."

By late afternoon, the party was over. Colin stood at the window, sipping at a last gla.s.s of champagne as he watched Charlotte and Derek 434 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

walk away along Chapel Place. They were holding hands and Charlotte had leant her head on Derek's shoulder. Colin smiled indulgently at the sight and dismissed any lingering doubts he might have had: he would soon be acquiring a sister-in-law.

Not that he objected. Quite the reverse, in fact. Charlotte was a likeable girl, just the spirited but sensible wife his brother needed. As for her curiosity about what he had been on the verge of telling her at Swans' Meadow, he reckoned he could deflect it for as long as it took to fade away completely. What else could he do? To tell her now would be to revive so much she wished earnestly to forget. It was kinder by far to guard his tongue. Indeed, he had only to imagine the words he would have to use to explain it to her to realize how unwise such an explanation would be.

"Well, Charlotte, it's like this. Remember when I called at Ockham House that morning to tell you Sam had been released-and we decided to drive up to Bourne End to put Ursula out of her misery? Of course you do. How could you forget? How could I? You went upstairs to change, leaving me in the lounge. While I was waiting, I gave your late aunt's Tunbridge Ware work-table the once over. A lovely piece, as I said at the time. And easier to examine because it was empty. Or almost empty. I noticed the lining in one of the drawers had become detached from the wood-or rather had been detached. And then I noticed the reason. A sheet of paper had been inserted under the lining. I pulled it out and took a look at it. It was pretty old and yellow at the edges: a hand-drawn map, with place-names and directions written in Spanish. I was still looking at it when I heard you coming down the stairs. There wasn't time to replace it, so I slipped it into my pocket, intending to mention it to you later. While I was waiting in the car at Swans' Meadow, I transferred it to my wallet for safe-keeping. Then , when I was lying on the hall floor with blood pouring out of me, wondering if I might actually be going to die, I tried to tell you about it-without success. Later, in hospital, thanks to what you and Derek told me, I realized what the map was. And how it came to be there. At least, I guessed. Beatrix must have stopped short of destroying it at the last moment and hidden it in the work-table. The irrevocability of what she'd planned to do must have stayed her hand. I can understand why. I couldn't bear to destroy it either."

H A N D I N G L O V E.

435.

No, it would not do. It would not be fair. Charlotte believed it was all over. And so it was, as long as the existence of the map remained a secret. His secret. Worth the small matter of forty million pounds.

Colin took out his wallet, slid the map from behind a wad of old credit card receipts and examined it reflectively. The route from Cartagena to the abandoned copper mine was clearly shown. It could be followed on any large-scale map of the locality. Or in a car, for that matter. If one wished to.

What was he to do with it? Post it to Delgado? Definitely not. Wait for the old fascist to die, then offer it to Galazarga? Hardly. Auction it at Sotheby's? Difficult, since he was not the rightful owner. Burn it?

That would be a shame, after it had survived for so long. Donate it to the Spanish nation? Too philanthropic for his taste. What, then?

Colin put the map back in his wallet, drained his gla.s.s and wondered if there was another bottle somewhere. Perhaps tomorrow he would turn his mind to finding out where Spanish law stood in relation to treasure-trove. Yes, on balance, that would probably be the best thing to do. To begin with.

If you enjoyed Robert G.o.ddard's HAND IN GLOVE, you won't want to miss any of his enthralling novels of suspense. Look for PLAY TO THE END, BORROWED TIME, and INTO THE BLUE, all now in Delta trade paperbacks, at your favorite bookseller.

And read on for an exciting early look at Robert G.o.ddard's latest electrifying suspense novel.

SIGHT UNSEEN.

by Robert G.o.ddard coming from Delacorte Press in Spring 2007 SIGHT UNSEEN.

by Robert G.o.ddard On sale Spring 2007 It begins at Avebury, in the late July of a cool, wet summer turned suddenly warm and dry. The Marlborough Downs shimmer in a haze of unfamiliar heat. Skylarks sing in the breezeless air above the sheep-cropped turf. The sun burns high and brazen. And the stones stand, lichened and eroded, sentinels over nearly five thousand years of history.

It begins, then, in a place whose origins and purposes are obscured by antiquity. Why Neolithic henge-builders should have devoted so much time and effort to constructing a great ramparted stone circle at Avebury, as well as a huge artificial hill less than a mile away, at Silbury, is as unknown as it is unknowable.

It begins, therefore, in a landscape where the unexplained and the inexplicable lie still and close, where man-made markers of a remote past mock the set and ordered world that is merely the flickering, fast-fleeing present.

Saxon settlers gave Avebury its modern name a millennium and a half ago. They founded a village within its protective ditch and bank.

Over the centuries, as the village grew, many of the stones were moved or buried. Later, they were used as building material, the ditch as a rubbish-dump. The henge withered.

Then, in the 1930s, came Alexander Keiller, the marmalade mil-lionaire and amateur archaeologist. He bought up and demolished half the village, raised the stones, cleared the ditch, restored the circle. The clock was turned back. The National Trust moved in. The henge flourished anew-a monument and a mystery.

Nearly forty years have pa.s.sed since the Trust's purchase of Keiller's land holdings at Avebury. The renovated circle basks unmolested in the heat of a summer's day. A kestrel, soaring high above on a thermal, has a perfect view of the banked circ.u.mference of the henge, quartered by builders of later generations. The High Street of the surviving village runs west east along one diameter, crossing the north south route of the Swindon to Devizes road close to the centre of the circle. East of this junction, the buildings peter out as the effects of Keiller's demolition work become more apparent.

Green Street, the lane is aptly called, dwindling as it leaves the circle and winds on towards the downs.

As it pa.s.ses through the village, the main road performs a zigzag, the north-western angle of which is occupied by the thatched and limewashed Red Lion Inn. East of the inn, on the other side of the road, are the fenced-off remains of an inner circle known as the Cove-two stones, one tall and slender, the other squat and rounded, referred to locally as Adam and Eve. There is a gate in the fence, opposite the pub car park, and another gate in Green Street, on the other side of Silbury House, a four-square corner property that formerly served as the residence of Avebury's Nonconformist minister.

It is a little after noon on this last Monday of July, 1981. Custom is spa.r.s.e at the Red Lion and visitors to the henge are few. When the traffic noise ebbs, as it periodically does, somnolence prevails. There is a stillness in the air and in the scene. But it is not the stillness of expectancy. There is no hint, no harbinger, of what is about to occur.

At one of the outdoor tables in front of the Red Lion, a solitary drinker sits cradling a beer gla.s.s. He is a slim, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties, dressed in blue jeans and a pale, open-necked shirt rolled up at the elbows. Beside him, on the table, lie a spiral-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen. He is gazing vacantly ahead of him, across the road, towards the remaining stones of the southern inner circle. They do not command his attention, however, as a glance at his wrist.w.a.tch reveals. He is waiting for something, or someone. He takes a slurp of beer and sets the gla.s.s down on the table. It is nearly empty.

Sunlight glistens on the swirling residue.

A child's voice catches his ear, drifting across from the Cove.

There is, at this moment, no traffic to mask the sound. The man turns and looks. He sees a woman and three children approaching the Cove from the direction of the perimeter bank. Two of the children are running ahead, racing, perhaps, to be first to the stones: a boy and a girl. The boy is nine or ten, dressed in baseball boots, blue jeans and a red T-shirt. The girl is a couple of years younger. She is wearing san-dals, white socks and a blue and white polka-dot dress. Both have fair hair that appears blond in the sunshine, cut short on the boy but worn long, in a ponytail, by the girl. The woman is lagging well behind, her pace set by the youngest child, toddling at her side. This child, a girl, is wearing grey dungarees over a striped T-shirt. There can hardly be any doubt, given the colour of her hair, tied in bunches with pink rib-bon, that she is the sister of the other two children.

It is much less likely that the woman escorting her is their mother. She appears too young for the role, slim, fine-featured and dark-haired, surely not beyond her early twenties. She is dressed in cream linen trousers and a pink blouse and is carrying a straw hat.

Her attention is fixed largely on the little girl beside her. The other two children are dashing ahead.

As they approach the stones, a figure steps out from the gap between Adam and Eve, hidden till then from view. He is a short, tubby man in hiking boots, brown shorts, check shirt and some kind of multi-pocketed fisherman's waistcoat. He is round-faced, balding and bespectacled, aged anything between thirty-five and fifty. The two children stop and stare at him. He says something. The boy replies and moves forward.

The man outside the Red Lion watches for lack of anything more interesting to watch. He sees nothing sinister or threatening. What he does see is a flash of sunlight on gla.s.s as the man by the stones takes something out of one of his numerous pockets. The boy steps closer.

The woman is hurrying to join them now, not running, nor even necessarily alarmed, but cautious perhaps, her attention suddenly diverted from the slow-moving infant who follows at her own dawdling pace, before abruptly sitting down on the gra.s.s to inspect a patch of b.u.t.tercups.

The man outside the Red Lion sees all of this and makes nothing of it. Even when another figure enters his field of vision from behind Silbury House, he does not react. The figure is male, short-haired and stockily built. He is wearing Army surplus clothes and is moving fast, at a loping run, across the stretch of gra.s.s beyond the stones. The woman, who cannot see him moving behind her, is smiling now and talking to the man in the fisherman's waistcoat.

And then it happens. The running man stops and bends over, grasps the seated child beneath her arms, lifts her up as if she weighs little more than the b.u.t.tercup in her left hand and races back with her the way he came.

The man in the fisherman's waistcoat is first to respond. He says something to the woman, raising his voice and pointing. She turns and looks. She puts her hand to her mouth. She drops her hat and begins running after the man who has grabbed the child. Screened as he is by Silbury House, he can no longer be seen by the man outside the Red Lion. The roaring pa.s.sage of a southbound lorry further confuses the senses. Everything is happening very quickly and very slowly. The beer-drinker does no more than rise from his seat and gape as the next minute's events spray their poison over all who witness them.

A white Transit van bursts into view round the corner from Green Street, its engine racing, its rear door slamming shut. The child and her abductor are inside. That is understood by all, or in-tuited, for only the woman has seen them scramble aboard. A second man is driving the van. That is also understood, though no-one catches so much as a glimpse of him amidst what follows.

The man in the fisherman's waistcoat has taken a few ineffectual strides after the woman, but has now turned back. The boy is standing stock-still between Adam and Eve, paralysed by an inability to decide what to do or who to follow.

No such indecision grips his sister, though. She is running, ponytail flying, towards the gate onto the main road. What is in her mind is uncertain. From where she was standing, she will have seen the van pull away. She knows her sister is being stolen from her. She is not equipped to prevent the theft, yet she seems determined to try. She flicks up the latch on the gate and darts through.

The van turns right onto the main road. A northbound car, slowing for the bend, brakes sharply to avoid a collision and blares its horn. The driver of the van pays this no heed as he accelerates through a skid, narrowly avoiding the boundary wall of the pub car park.

The girl does not pause at the edge of the road. She runs forward, into the path of the van. She turns towards it and raises her hands, as if commanding it to stop. There is probably just enough time for the driver to respond. But he does not. The van surges on. The girl holds her ground. In a breathless fraction of a second, the gap between them closes.

There is a loud thump as hard steel hits soft flesh. There is a blurred parabola through the air of the girl's frail, flying body. There is the speeding white flank of the van and the slower-moving dark green roofline of the following car. Neither vehicle stops. The car driver proceeds as if he has seen nothing. And maybe he has somehow failed to register what has occurred. He does not have to swerve to avoid the crumpled shape at the side of the road. He simply carries on.

The van and the car vanish round the next bend in the road. All movement ceases. All sound dies.

It is only for a second. Soon everyone will be running. The boy will be crying. The woman will be screaming. The man who was drinking outside the Red Lion will be hopping over the wall of the car park, his eyes fixed on the place at the foot of the opposite verge where the girl lies, her blue and white dress stained bright red, the tarmac beneath her darkening as a pool of blood spreads across the road. And her eyes will seem to meet his. And to hold them in her sightless gaze.

But that is not yet. That is not this second. That is the future, a future forged in the stillness and the silence of this frozen moment.

It begins at Avebury. But it does not end there.

It had been a fickle winter in Prague. Yet another mild spell had been cut short by a plunge back into snow and ice. When David Umber had agreed to stand in as a Jolly Brolly tour guide for the following Friday, he had not reckoned on wind chill of well below zero, slippery pavements and slush-filled gutters. But those were the conditions. And Jolly Brolly never cancelled.

Umber's exit from the apartment block on Sokolovsk that morning was accordingly far from eager. A lean, melancholy man in his late forties, his dark hair shot with grey, his eyes downcast, his brow fur-rowed with unconsoling thoughts, he turned up the collar of his coat and headed for the tram stop, glancing along the street to see if he needed to hurry.