Gregory's Game (15 page)

‘We still have to get authorization,' she said. ‘You shouldn't be alone. You should go to a friend, a relative, or get someone to stay with you.'

‘There is no one, really. I don't have family. Not apart from Kat and Daisy.'

‘Daisy?' She seemed curious that he'd used Nathan's pet name for the child, especially as Ian was so angry with Nathan.

Ian closed his eyes and cursed inwardly at this second mistake. ‘I can't always get my head around Desiree,' he said.

‘I see,' she said. ‘Look, you've got my number; call me if you change your mind or if you just need to touch base. I've got to warn you, there's not likely to be much I can tell you; we're still feeling our way.'

‘No, I understand that,' Ian said. ‘I'll be all right.'

He stood in the hall and looked around at the devastation left by whoever had put that photograph on his kitchen table. Fingerprint powder and a chemical scent he could not immediately identify added to the sense of this being a place he no longer recognized. Bending, he picked a couple of the books off the floor and then a sheaf of papers. He should tidy up; Kat hated it when things were a mess.

He clutched the books and papers close to his chest, trying very hard not to weep with rage and frustration. Wishing he could tell DI Fuller that he couldn't phone a friend because he really had none. Not close friends that would understand what he was going through. The closest he had was the young man who'd brought him back to this mess some seven hours before. Who had ‘fled the scene' as that sergeant, Vinod or whatever his name was, had put it.

Ian knew that Nathan hadn't really run away, just as he knew that Nathan would never deliberately do anything to endanger any of them. But how do you explain that to someone who knew nothing of the likes of Nathan Crow, knew nothing of the life Professor Ian Marsh had led before time and age had pushed him back into respectability?

Slowly, almost reluctantly, but because it was something to do and he had to do something, Ian bent and gathered up another book and a further sheaf of papers. He carried them through to his study and dropped them on to his desk. Then went back for more.

When Kat came back it would be to a clean and tidy and welcoming house. There would be no trace left of what had happened. There would be nothing to remind her. She would bring Desi in and they would settle down together on the big sofa and he would hold them both so tight, for so long.

‘Please God give me another chance,' he whispered to a deity he had long since stopped believing in. ‘Give me back my wife and child. Punish me but let them be all right.'

He wandered upstairs and stood at the door of Desiree's room. Not much had been disturbed in here. Her cot was untouched, her collection of soft toys still sat on the chest and her little night light glowed in the plug socket. He tried to picture his daughter there, sleeping softly in her bed or scampering up to him, arms raised to be cuddled. Ian turned away, overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of loss and shame. Instead, he went into the room he and Kat shared. Her mother's room, down the hall, was bigger, but neither of them had felt right moving in there and so they had remained in what had been the guest room, using the family bathroom rather than the master with its en-suite. He had come up here just after Nathan had left, a sudden impulse to check what had been done in the rest of the house drawing him into their sleeping space. That most intimate and private of places. A mess had been left here too, whoever had come in and wrecked their house seemingly enjoying the process. Bedclothes had been dragged on to the floor and drawers opened, their contents tipped out, but it was a half-hearted, done-for-effect sort of messiness. Unimportant and causing only nuisance. And he had seen it. Like the photograph on the kitchen table, this had been laid out in solitary splendour on his wife's pillow. Her mobile phone. The green light at the bottom corner telling him that there was a message.

Hesitantly, Ian Marsh had picked it up and opened the message screen. Two words.
Say nothing
.

Then there had been the hammering on the door and the police had arrived and he had been ushered out and taken care of. Given gallons of tea and sweet biscuits he'd normally have refused.

‘They're good for the shock,' his neighbour told him. ‘You can't beat tea and biscuits for a shock.'

Or for anything else, Ian thought. At least according to your average Brit. A cup of tea, a sit down and a sweet biscuit: the empire had been founded on that principle, hadn't it?

And he'd not dared to look at the phone again. Instinctively, he'd slipped it into his jacket pocket before he'd opened the door and he'd failed to mention it when the police arrived. Failed to mention it again when they'd gone through his house, looking for clues, or whatever it was they did. Not mentioned it when Tess and Vinod had talked to him. Not spoken of it when he'd told the neighbour he wanted to go home and she had fussed around, offering to cook him some dinner and inviting him back for a breakfast he knew he'd never eat, even if he accepted.

He took it out now, Kat's little mobile in its bright pink case, and stared at it intently. There had been no further message and when he tried to send a return text it just bounced back.

It wasn't meant to be like this, Ian though desperately. Something had gone seriously awry. Something had …

What?

He lay down on the still rumpled bed, his face resting against Kat's pillow, her phone in his hand and closed his eyes. Despite everything, or perhaps because he could no longer bear to be conscious of it, Ian Marsh fell asleep.

‘I
t's a life skill,' Harry had said. ‘You may never get to like it, but it's a useful thing to be able to do.'

And so they had found Patrick a driving instructor and he had embarked on the acquisition of this essential ability. And Harry had been right; he didn't like it. Two driving instructors later, Patrick had changed his mind. He knew he would never be a natural driver, but he was at least gaining a degree of competence.

The first instructor had enthused that ‘boys of your age always get it quickly; most pass first time.'

Three lessons in and Patrick had already undermined his faith.

The second had been patient enough, at first, but had also had expectations that Patrick knew he couldn't meet – conversational ones this time. Constant questions about potential girlfriends and ambitions and pop music completely flummoxed him. He wasn't much good at casual conversation at the best of times, even with people he knew well, and trying to have in-depth conversations about bands that Patrick didn't know or girlfriends that he didn't have while trying to remember what gear he was supposed to be in or which side of the steering wheel the indicator switch was on had just reinforced Harry's prediction that he might not like driving.

The third instructor had been different. She was a middle-aged lady in tweed skirt, sensible shoes and with a penchant for lavender cardigans. Harry had been very doubtful, but Patrick figured she couldn't be any worse than the first two. He would happily have given up and so far as he was concerned, this was his last shot. He told her that at the start of the first lesson, knowing he sounded defensive and probably brattish, but was frankly past caring what she might think of him.

‘I'm just really bad at it,' he said. ‘Everyone tells me I should be good at it. Apparently boys of my age always pass first time or something.'

She had laughed at that. ‘Really? That's the first I've heard. Let's just see what you
can
do, shall we, then we'll talk about the best way for me to help you do it better.'

Patrick had stared at her, then realized that he was being rude and looked away, but it had been the start of better times so far as the driving was concerned. She had questioned him gently and calmly about what he liked to do with his time, made no assumptions, not tried to be some kind of pseudo teenager, and finally sorted out how to get him to remember which was his right and left hand.

‘I'm dyslexic,' he told her almost apologetically. ‘Dyspraxic too. That means—'

‘You find it hard to orientate yourself physically and sometimes you get left and right mixed up or you transpose whole physical spaces. And you are maybe a bit clumsy at times.'

Patrick nodded.

‘My granddaughter has similar issues,' she said. ‘Patrick, which hand do you draw with?'

He held up his right.

‘So your drawing hand is your right hand. If I say turn right, then you turn in the direction of your drawing hand, OK?'

It was such a small thing, but it made an enormous difference. When he finally confided that he didn't know when to change gear, she encouraged him to listen to the engine, to hear the engine in the same way he'd hear music, with an underlying rhythm and a changing tone. More than that, she was totally unfazed if Patrick chose not to speak. Few people, Patrick thought, could really deal with silence and it was a relief to find someone that didn't insist on constant conversation when he was trying to focus on getting his hands, feet and brain all pointing in the same direction.

The upshot was that he was making progress and she was even talking about booking him in for his test. When he felt ready – which, he told himself, would not be for a while yet.

‘The best preparation,' she said, ‘is for me to get a friend of mine, another instructor, to take you out just as if it was a driving test. I'll sit in the back, but I won't say anything. When you can cope with that, then we'll think about the test properly. You're a good little driver, Patrick. You just need to believe that enough to cope when I'm not there.'

They ended the Thursday morning lessons just outside the university so Patrick could get straight to his lecture.

‘Are you enjoying it any better?' she asked him.

‘Not really, but I'll stick with it, see what happens. And this is just my foundation year, so I suppose it's all about finding out what I do and don't like.'

‘You'll be staying here for your degree?'

‘I think so. I know everyone says you should leave home and stuff, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that.'

‘Some people fly the nest early,' she said. ‘I did, but I think generalizations are terribly overrated.'

Patrick smiled at her and then got out of the car and fished his bag from behind the seat.

‘Less to carry today,' she remarked.

Patrick flushed. ‘I left all the stuff I didn't need at home,' he said. ‘I guess I don't need the “just in case” stuff so much after all.'

She just nodded and Patrick wondered what she really thought about him. He had the awful suspicion that his driving instructor actually understood a lot more about him that he would have liked.

Hitching his bag on to his shoulder, Patrick started off round the corner to his entrance. He found that he was looking out for Gregory and slightly disappointed not to see him – though, he told himself, there was absolutely no reason why the man should have been there. He had thought long and hard about why he liked Gregory so much. Was it because the older man inhabited a world Patrick had only glimpsed; one that was exciting and alien?

That was inevitably part of it, he had decided, but certainly not a big part. On the whole Patrick had no desire to see any more of that world. He was certainly no proto maverick, not about to run off and join the army or the foreign legion or whatever people like Gregory did when they were Patrick's age. He decided in the end that the appeal was that he and Gregory were oddly alike. They both had difficulty in navigating the ordinary, basic stuff that most people took for granted. They both felt they were on the outside of things, like watching the rest of the world through a plate-glass window. People on the other side of that window waved and encouraged them to come over to their side, but Patrick – and he felt Gregory too – never could seem to find the door.

T
ess and Vinod arrived half an hour late for their meeting. Despite the satnav, they had become confused in the narrow lanes and had to back track twice. The uniformed officer leaning against his car seemed merely amused by their apologies.

‘It's tricky round here,' he said, his accent seeming both round and flat to Tess's ears. ‘You got to know the roads.'

The car had tipped on to its side in the ditch. The driver's side front tyre was shredded and skid marks on the road revealed Kat's fight for control.

‘Blow out?' Vin asked.

‘Mebbe. But I reckon not and the CSI would seem to agree with me.'

‘What then?'

‘Mun took a pot shot at 'er,' the officer said.

It took a moment for Tess to translate. ‘Someone shot her tyre?'

‘Surely looks that way. Doubt she was going fast round that bend, not if she knew the road. She'd ha slowed and took it careful, but a tyre gone and even at a reasonable kind o' speed she'd have left the road.'

‘They've found the bullet?'

‘What was left of it. Found it this mornin', figured I'd tell you when you got here, seein' as it was new information.'

Tess looked around her, trying to figure out where such a shot might have been taken from. The landscape was flat and low lying. Hedgerows divided fields, the odd tall tree breaking the rhythm. She looked down at the skid marks and the direction of travel. Vin was just a breath ahead of her.

‘That oak over there?'

‘That's the way I figure it. Got a team coming along in a bit to take a look-see. You want to wait around or come back down after you've talked to the family?'

‘We'll come back,' Tess said. She crouched down to look at the ruined tyre. It would have been a difficult shot, she thought. And somehow this latest revelation made the whole thing even more sinister. She had checked in with the team earlier that morning: so far there had been no contact, no demands, only two calls logged to Ian Marsh. One had been her own call to him the night before and one made by Kat's uncle just after.