Sight Unseen (6 page)

'And what have they done?'

'Well, you and Sally -- sadly -- we know about. That brings us to the Hall family. How much do you know about them?'

'We heard the Halls had split up.'

Sharp nodded. 'It's not uncommon in cases like this. The death of a child. The loss of another. The parents cling together at first, then drift apart. Their lives are shattered. In the end, it becomes easier to rebuild them separately. The Halls divorced while I was still in Wiltshire. Jane Hall married a local wine merchant. Name of Questred. He used to keep a shop in Marlborough. With any luck, he still does. They had a child of their own, you know.'

'Yes. I did know.'

'A daughter.'

'Sally had an aunt in Hungerford who seemed to think she needed to be kept informed about that sort of thing.'

'When you'd rather she'd been allowed to forget the Halls.'

'What about Oliver Hall? He didn't register on Aunt's radar. Banker, wasn't he?'

'Not sure, technically. Stockbroker. Financial consultant. Something like that. A money man. Retired to Jersey, I gather. That must make him a mega-money man. None of which brings his daughters back to him, of course. Also remarried. But no more children.'

'And the son?'

'Went to live with his father after his mother remarried. That was before his father pulled the same trick. Then...' Sharp shrugged. 'I never had any cause to find out. Until now.'

'None of these people are going to want to talk to us, George.'

'I can be very persuasive. You'll just have to follow my example.'

'Who else do you intend to contact?'

'The other witnesses. If they're still in the land of the living. Collingwood was seventy-odd and shaky. I'll check, but I'm not optimistic. Nevinson's a better bet. Unless one of the stones has keeled over on top of him, I guess he'll still be hanging around Avebury. He and his sister lived with their mother on the council estate at Avebury Trusloe -- where they put the villagers whose houses were pulled down in the Fifties. Aside from nature taking its course where the mother's concerned I can't see much having changed there.'

'But a nutter, by your reckoning.'

'Sending me a letter made up of old Junius quotes could be right up his street.'

'You reckon?'

'I don't know. It's a thought. Could Nevinson be Griffin?'

'Nevinson?'

The fellow had been there, at Avebury, with Umber, standing helplessly by the body of Miranda Hall, while they had waited for the emergency services to arrive. Customers from the Red Lion had joined them. Everyone, including those who had not seen the event itself, had been shocked, talking in soft, distracted undertones. The landlady had taken Sally and Jeremy into the pub, leaving Umber and Nevinson out on the road, watching the blood soak slowly through the blanket that someone had draped over poor dead little Miranda. They must have spoken to each other. They
must
have done. But Umber could remember nothing of what they had said.

'He can't be Griffin. I'd have recognized his voice.'

'Sure?'

'Of course. I'd have been bound to. It was only two days since I'd spoken to Griffin.'

'OK. Fine. But that leaves us with a problem.'

'Who is Griffin?' Umber mused, versifying the words in the style of
Who is Sylvia?
'What is he?'

* * *

Umber left Sharp dozing in the passengers' lounge during the ferry crossing and went on deck to watch the patchy moonlight skittering across the Channel. It was a still, cold night. Dover glowed amber ahead, Dunkirk astern. He found himself remembering his one and only conversation with the mysterious Mr Griffin, replaying it in his mind, as close to word for word as he could manage, so close, indeed, that he could almost swear they
were
the words, exact and verbatim.

* * *

Saturday afternoon, 25 July 1981. Umber was watching cricket on the television. He heard the telephone ring, but left his mother to answer it. Then she called to him, 'It's for you, David.' He watched one more delivery before ambling out into the hall.

'Hello?'

'David Umber?'

'Yes.'

'You don't know me, Mr Umber.' The voice sounded silken, muffled, faintly effete. 'My name is Griffin.'

'Right.'

'I'm in Oxford.' The phrasing somehow implied that Oxford was not Griffin's normal stamping-ground. 'I've heard about your... Junian researches.' This phrase too seemed loaded. The use of the adjective
Junian
suggested close familiarity with the letters and the controversy over their authorship.

'How did you --'

'I have something that may interest you. Something germane to your research.'

'Oh yeah?'

'It's a rather unusual copy of the 1773 edition of the letters.' That, as Umber was well aware, meant the second edition, incorporating an index and table of contents, for which Junius had told Woodfall he would wait before his bespoke copy was produced. 'Vellum-bound and gilt-edged. Very handsome.'

'Vellum-bound... and gilt-edged?' Umber could not believe his ears.

'Quite so. Complete with an illuminating and more than somewhat surprising inscription.'

'You're having me on.'

'No. I'm in earnest, I assure you.'

'But... you
can't
be.'

'I understand your incredulity. But I speak the absolute truth. I have what I describe. Would you like to see it?'

'What does the inscription say?'

'I can't discuss that over the telephone. If you're interested, I think we should meet.'

'Of course I'm interested.'

'Well, then?'

'I can come up to Oxford tomorrow.'

'This is no business for the sabbath.' Once again there came a hint of other-worldliness. It struck Umber that his caller sounded more like a man of the eighteenth century than the twentieth. 'Would Monday suit?'

'Sure.'

'But not Oxford. There are too many eyes and ears in this city. Do you know Avebury?'

'Yeah. Sort of.'

'Let's meet at the village inn. The Red Lion. I'll be there at half past twelve.'

'I can make that.'

'Good. It won't be a wasted journey. I think I can promise you that.'

'Look, Mr Griffin, I --'

'Until Monday.'

With that the line went dead.

* * *

And it had stayed dead for twenty-three years, subsumed and forgotten in the wake of the tragedy that had struck at Avebury two days later, engulfing all those who had been there to witness it.
'It won't be a wasted journey.
Griffin had said. '
I think I can promise you that.'

* * *

Dover in the small hours of a chill March morning did not make for a gala homecoming. Sharp's doze aboard the ferry had left him taciturn and liverish. Umber was tired and dispirited. Leaving Prague suddenly felt like a huge mistake. Little was said as they followed the signs for the motorway and headed towards London.

Sharp stopped at a service area near Maidstone and announced he would be stretching out in the back of the van for the rest of the night. Umber retreated to the cafeteria.

* * *

Come dawn Sharp was as bright as a lark, tucking into a full English breakfast after a wash and a shave in the service area toilets. Umber was bleary-eyed and mentally drained. He did not even ask where they were going next. Somewhere between Maidstone and the M25, he fell asleep.

'We're there,' Sharp announced, turning off the engine and opening his window to admit a gust of cold air.

Umber woke with a start. 'What?' he coughed and blinked around him. 'Where?'

'Avebury.'

'Christ. You never said...' Umber struggled to compose his thoughts. He had been to Avebury several times in the months following the tragedy and had driven through it, alone, maybe twice since. Sally's horror of the place had ruled out any other return visits, even if Umber had wanted to undertake them. They were in the High Street car park, he realized. Looking out of his window, he could see the village post office on the other side of the road. Straight ahead, the tower of St James's Church was visible beyond the trees fringing the churchyard. 'You never said we were coming straight here.'

'Where better to start?'

'I feel sick.'

'That's because you didn't have a proper breakfast. A breath of fresh air will set you right. Let's take a walk.'

* * *

It was a cold, grey morning. A wind had got up, driving slashes of rain into their faces. A solitary customer emerged from the post office as they left the car park. Otherwise, they seemed to have the village to themselves.

Sharp led the way towards the Red Lion, but crossed the road before he reached it and took up position beneath the trees on the opposite corner. Moving slowly and reluctantly, Umber joined him.

'Nothing much has changed, has it?' Sharp asked rhetorically.

Umber took a deep breath and looked across at the Adam and Eve stones in the field behind Silbury House, at the gate in the fence through which Miranda Hall had run that day they were both replaying in their minds. Then he looked along Green Street, towards the other gate, through which Tamsin Hall had been carried to the waiting white van. And then, almost as an act of mercy, a lorry rumbled round the bend from the north, blocking his view.

'If you'd been standing here rather than sitting outside the pub,' said Sharp, once the lorry had gone, 'you'd have seen for certain whether there were two men in the van, or only one.'

'There were two.'

'Yes. Two.' Sharp nodded thoughtfully. 'Paedophiles don't generally work in pairs. And Tamsin was a lot younger than Radd's other victims.'

'He was lying, George. You know it. I know it.'

'But why?'

'I thought you reckoned he did a deal with your successor.'

'Who'd not have been above such a thing, let me tell you. But what was the deal? There was nothing we could offer him. He was going away for life whatever he admitted to. So, what was in it for him?'

'You tell me.'

'That's the point.' Sharp looked round at Umber. 'I can't.'

* * *

To Umber's relief, they soon started back along the High Street. But they did not stop at the car park. Sharp had something other than a swift departure in mind.

'I thought we'd pay the Nevinsons a call.'

'Now?'

'No time like the present.'

'How about some other time, when I'm feeling more like myself?'

'Wait with Molly if you like.'

'No. I'll come with you.'

Sharp smiled. 'Thought you would.'

* * *

They crossed the churchyard and followed a narrow footpath between some cottages to the western edge of the old village. The footpath headed on to a river-bridge, then continued to a field-gate. There the tarmac ended, leaving Sharp and Umber to dodge muddy patches the rest of the way to Avebury Trusloe, a huddle of utilitarian brown-brick houses and bungalows straight ahead. An old man carrying a shopping bag, bound presumably for the post office, passed them on the way and nodded a wordless good morning.

The transplanted village was served by a lane off the main road. Crossing it, Umber wondered why they had not driven round, a thought he did not bother to utter, but which Sharp seemed to respond to anyway.

'I always used to cover the last few hundred yards to a suspect's home on foot. Most of my colleagues thought I was mad. But the lie of the land can be the key to the mystery. Understanding it can give you an edge.'

'So you've walked this route before?'

'No. I never have. Because Nevinson wasn't a suspect twenty-three years ago. But he is now.'

'And what has the lie of the land told you? Apart from the unlikelihood of an early spring.'

'That old man we passed.'

'What about him?'

'Eighty if he's a day. Probably born in one of the cottages that were demolished, then rehoused here.'

'So?'

'Still goes back, doesn't he? They move the people out of the village, but they can't move the village out of the people. Maybe I should have looked for the answer to this... a lot closer to home.'

* * *

Home for the Nevinsons was a poorly maintained semi-detached house with windows in need of painting, an unkempt garden and a fence with several pales missing. The neighbouring property was not in much better condition, the only splash of colour in its garden being a bright yellow toy car, lying on its side.

Sharp flung open the Nevinsons' gate and strode up the fissured concrete path to the door. He had given the bell two jabs with his forefinger before Umber caught up.

A woman answered, with surprising promptness. The sister, Umber assumed. Short and plump, clad in a voluminous sweater worn over tracksuit bottoms and ancient plimsolls, she had iron-grey curly hair framing a round, placidly smiling face. Sixty or so, he would have guessed. She might well have attended the inquest, if only to lend her brother moral support. But Umber had no memory of her.