Caught in the Light (38 page)

"Actually, I don't. Nyman said he couldn't account for what had happened."

"He set it up, for God's sake. Niall was to murder Eris at my flat and frame me for the crime. She somehow got the jump on him. I found him there, dead from a stab wound. Eris had already left."

"Clever girl. I'm glad she's safe. I never thought it would come to this, you know. You have to believe me."

"Why should I? You've lied to me all along."

"The lies are over, Ian. We've got to stop Nyman. That's why I waited for you. We have to end it."

"We?"

"I'm offering to do whatever I can to prevent any more damage being done."

"You can start by telling my wife just what sort of a man she's mixed up with."

"All right."

"You'll come back with me right now to London and tell her?"

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"It's what you want, isn't it?"

"Of course it is. But I want the truth as well. I want to know what made you think you had the right to throw my entire life into turmoil."

"Isobel gave me the right." She didn't blush or flinch. Her expression gave me clearly to understand that she recoiled from whatever Nyman might do next, but didn't regret a single thing she'd already done to help him. "Nyman said you'd guessed. So there it is. We loved her, he and I, in our different ways. And we hated you for taking her from us. You deserved to suffer for that. I'm damned if I'll say otherwise. But you've suffered enough. We all have. This can't be allowed to continue."

"Too right it can't. But there's a problem. I don't trust you. Your change of heart could be just another of Nyman's set-ups."

"So it could. And I can't prove it isn't. But we don't have time to debate the point. I'll answer all your questions. And I'll tell Faith the whole truth. What more can I do?"

"It's not enough."

"It'll have to be. Right now, I'm all you've got."

I stared at her, my anger and distrust slowly weakening before the overriding imperative to act.

"My car's outside," she said softly. "Shall we go?"

"Who is Nyman?" I demanded, as soon as we were clear of the city, heading north towards the M4.

"He'slsobel's brother."

"That can't be. Her father told me she was an only child."

"Not true. Isobel had a younger brother, Robert, christened Robert Conrad. He was the black sheep of the family, clever but uncontrollable. A promising university career was cut short by a prison sentence for drug trafficking. Not just dealing, but recruiting other students, mostly female, to smuggle the merchandise in from abroad. His parents disowned him. "You're no son of ours" stuff. Meant literally, as you've discovered. Only Isobel kept in touch with him. Visited him in prison and stayed in contact afterwards, without her parents' knowledge or approval. From her brother's viewpoint, only her love was unconditional and therefore only she was worth caring about."

"Is that why he wasn't at the inquest because he was in gaol?"

"Yes. But not for the same offence. He went abroad after his release and got mixed up in bigger-league crime. He was in a Swedish prison serving a sentence for organizing microchip thefts when Isobel died. He acquired a fresh identity and a dry-cleaned business reputation when he got out. You only have to look at the financial press to see what a good job he's done. He hasn't gone straight, of course. He's more crooked than ever. What he's gone is respectable. Dirty money, clean hands."

"How do you know all this?"

"I know the family history because Isobel told me. We were lovers. I think you should understand that. It's the bond between Nyman and me. Isobel is the only person either of us has ever really loved."

"I thought she was your client."

"She was. At first. But then it went further. Falling in love with your psychotherapist is pretty common, actually. It's just not supposed to be reciprocated. Abuse of a position of privilege. Unprofessional. Irresponsible. It's the big no-no. But with Isobel... none of that mattered. I took precautions. I knew it was wrong. But I went on. We went on. Until one of those precautions killed her. She used to park at the station when she came to Barnet rather than outside my house, in case the neighbours noticed the car was still there in the morning. Which is why she was crossing Barnet Hill that night on foot."

"It was an accident, you know."

"No doubt. But that doesn't make her loss any easier to bear. Nyman came back to this country after his release looking for her. His parents hadn't even told him she was dead and he couldn't understand why she'd stopped visiting or writing. Eventually he tracked me down and persuaded me to tell him what she'd been consulting me about."

"Flashbacks to the life of Marian Esguard?"

"Correct. She'd been troubled by them since childhood, although at first she didn't understand what they were. They grew much worse and more intense after she'd passed thirty, the age at which Marian disappeared. She came to me for a cure, but there was no cure. I convinced myself and her for a while that the Marian persona was a psycho pathological delusion. But it wasn't. We both realized that in the end. Somewhere, somehow, by some strange intersection of consciousnesses, Isobel and Marian were one. You can call it reincarnation if you want. I'd call it shared identity. Isobel couldn't help remembering being Marian. Maybe Marian couldn't help foreseeing being Isobel. I don't know. At some point outside time, they meet; they are. I can't explain it. I couldn't then and I can't now. But it was true. And it was way beyond my power to cure in any sense. It was also fascinating, of course. I don't deny that. I urged her to keep coming. I waived my fee. At first out of curiosity to see what we could uncover about Marian. Then .. . out of love."

"Did Nyman know you were lovers?"

"Oh yes. Isobel told him about the relationship during her last visit to him in Sweden. He hadn't realized I was her psychotherapist, however. He hadn't realized she even had one. She'd kept the Marian problem from him. Hadn't wanted to worry him with it. Investigating that part of her life became a key element in the grieving process for him. By encouraging it, I thought I was helping him come to terms with his loss."

"But not so."

"No. Not so at all. I lost touch with him after a while and assumed that was the end of it. I noticed his meteoric rise in the business world with wry amusement. It was the exact opposite of my own career. I somehow lost my confidence after Isobel's death. I couldn't seem to trust myself as a therapist. I grew cautious and aloof. My client list shrank. I started to suffer from depression. Then, this time last year, Nyman made contact again. He was ready for what he'd evidently been planning all along: to move against you. Well, you must know by now what it was he proposed. Trick you into leaving your wife, abandoning your career and wasting months in a search for somebody who didn't really exist, while Nyman took over your family much as he would some corporate minnow."

"And you went along with it."

"Yes. He set me up in Harley Street and gave me a renewed sense of purpose. The tapes Eris recorded were doctored versions of taped sessions I'd had with Isobel, grafted onto Nyman's elaborations on what he'd subsequently learned about the Esguards, past and present. He'd met Niall and Milo during his investigation of Marian's life. Niall's weakness was money, of course. There wasn't much he wouldn't do if the pay was good. One of the few things I did find at the flat was a file of statements from a Guernsey bank account in the name of Niall Hudson, showing a very healthy balance."

"So you were both on Nyman's payroll."

"I never accepted a penny beyond the Harley Street rent. Nyman made it easy for me. In return for just a little play-acting, I got a ringside seat at your humiliation."

"And that's what you wanted?"

"Since you ask, yes. I thought you deserved what you got. Deceiving you also gave me my confidence back. My practice is on the up and up. I'm suddenly in fashion. And there was a stick as well as a carrot. Nyman could make out a good case of unprofessional conduct against me any time he chose."

"You're saying he blackmailed you?"

"I'm saying he might have done if I hadn't co-operated. But I did co-operate. Gladly. You didn't give a damn about Isobel. I could see that at the inquest. She was just a stupid woman who'd been inconsiderate enough to walk into the path of your car. I bet you don't feel that any more. I bet she matters to you now."

"Yes. She does."

"That was all we were supposed to be doing, according to Nyman. Reminding you, painfully but justly, of the consequences of taking a life."

"And what are the consequences, Daphne? You can tell me, now you've had some experience of it yourself."

"I had no part in Quisden-Neve's murder. A private disagreement between him and Niall. That's what Nyman told me. It was never supposed to happen."

"You believe that?"

"I did. I let myself believe it. But now ... I wonder if even old Milo's fatal heart attack was entirely natural. Niall was with him at the time. Maybe he ... gave him a helping hand. I don't know. As for Quisden-Neve, I think he worked out what was going on. Isobel had visited Milo, much as Eris described, only years ago, when Milo was still living at Bentinck Place. Milo later told Quisden-Neve about her strange familiarity with the life of Marian Esguard. Quisden-Neve tried to trace her, only to learn she was dead. He must have found out as much as he could about the circumstances of her death. When you went to see him, he'd have recognized your name from the inquest. He knew Nyman was paying Niall to set you up and he suddenly knew why. Maybe he had doubts about Milo's death himself. What he certainly had was a saleable story about Nyman. The press would have gone for it in a big way, don't you think? Remember, it was worse than Quisden-Neve knew, with Nyman's criminal past likely to emerge if they dug deep enough."

"So Quisden-Neve had to go."

"That's my reading of it. As for Eris, I never had the slightest inkling Nyman was planning to have her killed and you framed for her murder. But he must have been, right from the start. I see that now. It was to be the coup de grace."

"I'm not so sure. I think he took against her because she wasn't as indifferent to me as she was supposed to be."

"Maybe. It doesn't really matter, though, does it? We're all running now."

"Where will Eris have run?"

"I don't know. Nyman made sure we knew as little about each other as possible. We've only met once. I have the impression Nyman rescued her from bad times. But it's only an impression. I don't even know her real name. We're virtually strangers. Maybe Nyman thought that would mean I wouldn't care what happened to her. But I'm not willing to be a party to her murder or anyone else's. I'm going to call a halt to what he's doing once and for all."

"How can you?"

"To begin with, I can open your wife's eyes to his true nature."

"That won't stop him."

"No. But the threat of exposure will. I could ruin him overnight. Who'd trust Nymanex with their money once they'd learned what its founder had done on his way to the top?"

"Not many."

"Exactly. I think he'll see reason. I think he'll realize he's gone far enough."

"Are you sure?"

"No. But it's worth a try. There has to be a way out of this. For all of us."

"Does there?" I stared at the road ahead. "I wonder."

Neither of us spoke for quite a while after that. We drove on, absorbed in our own thoughts. I hadn't a shred of a hope that Daphne could talk Nyman into giving up. He was going on to the end, whatever the end was, and I was going with him. But, before we got there, Faith and Amy had to be made to understand what was happening, and only Daphne could accomplish that. Until then, I couldn't afford to question her strategy.

Anger wouldn't have helped much either. Strangely enough, though, there was none to suppress. Close to the heart of everything Nyman had done to me was a truth I was slowly bringing myself to acknowledge. I hadn't cared about Isobel Courtney. I hadn't wanted to know. But now I did care. Now, for the first time, I genuinely wanted to know.

"Tell me, Daphne," I said as we neared Reading, 'have you ever seen Isobel.. . since her death?"

"Since her death? What do you mean a ghost?"

"Kind of."

"No. Nothing. I wish I had. Why?"

"It's something that happened while I was in Chichester. I'm not sure what it was, exactly. But the only thing separating us from the past, or the past from us, is time, right? I mean, when I walk along East Pallant, so does Isobel, so does Marian, in a sense."

"But only in a sense."

"A photograph lifts the barrier, though. It's a snapshot of time as well as people and places. To take a photograph, as Marian did, before anyone else even understood what a photograph was, must have been .. . incredible. Did Isobel really find those negatives?"

"No. That part was one of Nyman's inventions. Though it seemed to me, when I heard how he'd told Eris to describe them, well, it seemed almost as if .. ."

"What?"

"As if he'd seen them."

"How could he have?"

"I don't know. But when he wasn't building up Nymanex I reckon he was devoting himself to the mystery of Marian Esguard. How did he know Byfield settled on Guernsey, for instance? It must have taken a lot of painstaking research. Either that or he discovered some source of information Isobel had never come across."

"Of which the negatives could be part."

"It's possible. They always sounded real to me. He grew up with Isobel, remember. He saw and heard more about her strange obsession than anyone else. I suppose that gave him a crucial advantage. Quisden-Neve spent years ferreting after the truth, but Nyman gave him a head start and still got there first. He told me the negatives didn't exist, that they were just imaginary devices to lure you further into the thicket. But he only ever told me what he judged I needed to know. He could easily have been lying. He does it for a pastime. He's not going to find it easy to go on lying, though."

"He won't like that, will he?"