Stephanie (37 page)

They had discussed the measures that might be taken to correct Colton's error, to close the loophole, as it were, and there was talk of eliminating Errol himself. But that would not necessarily keep the girl quiet, and anyway by now Colton had too many contacts and might well have protected himself by leaving papers in a bank in the event of his death. (When his death did take place it seemed that in his usual casual way he had not even taken that precaution.)

So one flawed operator had brought the whole edifice tumbling down. Of course it would be built up again. It was a temporary setback. Money was the answer to everything.

It was not, however, the answer to his own future. Money could take him far out of reach of the British law. It could not, unfortunately, be used to grease the palms of British policemen. He had many friends in high places, but only one or two could be tempted that way, and none of these was in a position to influence the course of justice.

What was the future for him if he returned to face it out? The Lilliputs would tie him down. And then what? Could anything at all be proved about Stephanie? Unlikely that Arun Jiva would ever talk.

But whether or not the girl's death was involved he would be pinned down on the drugs charge. A sentence, then, of some sort. Ten years? Fifteen years? You couldn't tell. Some slow-witted arrogant old fool in a faded horsehair wig might think it necessary to ‘make an example' of him, just because of his eminent position. When he came out, Postgate would still be there and all the trappings of his wealth. In prison he might begin a new translation of Aristophanes. He'd had that ambition as a young man but had never got round to it.

Supposing he briefed some brilliant counsel who got him off on a technicality, his life could not even then be resumed as he had known it. Embezzlement, with a three-year stretch? People would soon forget or overlook. Evading tax? Of course. Being a drug baron? Not quite ever.

Anyway, was he even prepared to take the chance? There was plenty of time to return home.

He went on.

He had thought a lot about Stephanie Locke over the last weeks. He remembered her open, appealing face, the wisps of fair hair falling over her forehead as she talked. But she just talked too much. That day he had focused his eyes on her pretty mouth and thought – it says too much. There were some women like that – and often they were pretty women – however much they might say they were going to be discreet, they never were. It was not in their nature to be.

Erasmus, of course, was in favour of immediate action, and drastic. The arranged motor smash – or a kidnapping and the body discovered a week later in some pond. They had discussed it all one night, three of them, eight hours of coffee and talk and talk and coffee, with intermittent exchanges with Hong Kong. Errol Colton had been in favour – if he had been in favour of anything – of the arranged car smash. It had finally been vetoed because of its haphazard result and the likely injury to the other driver. Kidnapping would be followed by an unending and unrelenting police inquiry. Then they had sent for Arun Jiva.

What had gone wrong? Nothing in the execution. Except for the suppression or theft of the suicide note, nothing had gone wrong. The present crisis was nearly all due to the persistence and interference of the girl's ex-paratroop and crippled father. Better by far if he had himself become the object of an arranged accident in Corfu – if only in retaliation for the destruction of Colton and Apostoleris. Erasmus would be livid that it had not been fixed up.

But by then most of the damage had already been done – and Locke had done it.

Brune drove through a sleeping Swindon and got on to the M4, heading for the Severn Bridge. Time passed, headlights glimmering; still plenty of traffic on this road; but there were no queues at the bridge, as so often in daylight. He drove into Wales.

There would be no trouble in his getting out of the country. Although he had lived his life without apprehension, he had long ago prepared for the worst and then put it so far back in his mind as to be almost forgotten. A flat in Cardiff, a small car garaged underneath with the battery on a time-clock charger; suitcases, ample changes of clothing, valid passport in another name, hair dye, spectacles, sufficient particulars of another life, plenty of money in five different currencies.

So now a flight tomorrow morning from Cardiff to Dublin. Then Dublin to Zurich.

When he was knighted he had almost decided to close the flat. It was all too much cloak and dagger for the establishment figure, the rich scholarly philanthropist. Only a lack of decision had prevented him doing this. Fortunately now. Fortunately perhaps. He still could not quite believe he would make this move.

He drew in off the motorway at a service station and rang his home. The bell went on some time before it was answered. Then a strange voice came on, just giving the telephone number. All his staff were taught to answer ‘Sir Peter Brune's residence'. He hung up without speaking. Even in the two hours since he last rang something had happened, events had moved on. He got back into his car, lit another cigar, smoked half of it in silence.

He thought over the address that was likely to be given about him at the Encaenia in two weeks' time, the summary of his life, the rolling Latin phrases.

‘Of Anglo-Welsh parentage, educated in Cardiff, Lampeter, Oxford … brilliant Greek scholar, books on Euripides and Aristophanes …'

The Chancellor of Oxford University would pronounce the admission. ‘ Perceptive philosopher' (How did it go?
Philosopherum sollertissime
), ‘scholar and philanthropist, benefactor of the University and of many deserving charities throughout the land, I admit you by my own authority and that of the whole University to the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.'

He was, he knew, by choice and by temperament a gentleman. He had been born to be what he eventually made himself. To achieve that end he had overstepped the limits of what was loosely termed a civilised society. While mankind – or that part of it which made the laws – considered certain acts criminal, he was out of bounds. Now, through a hideous succession of ill events and ill judgments, his behaviour would become public knowledge.
Au poteau
, in fact.

A schoolmaster had once said to him: ‘Brune, I believe you could talk yourself out of anything.' So now. He would go back and talk himself out of this. It was not in his nature to run away.

He slowed to a crawling pace as he reached the outskirts of Cardiff. He had been born and brought up here. He knew it more intimately – and with the intimacy of youth – than any other city. Handsome as the town was, with much of the capital city about it – thanks, he supposed, chiefly to Lord Bute, who had made a fortune out of coal – it held too many bitter memories for him ever to want to return to it. To be brought up a rich man's son and to become a bankrupt's son; to have so strong and deep-rooted an attachment for his mother that after her death he had not been able to form a stable relationship with any other woman; to feel himself always to be more Welsh than English yet to be unable to come to terms with his chosen countrymen; to be about to go to Eton but instead to be sent to Cardiff High School, where his educated near-English voice had been a liability; to know himself to be much cleverer than most people yet to be unable to make the impression he wanted; to be used to money as a boy but to be brutally short of it as a teenager; all these sensations merged into an amalgam long associated with this town. When he had moved out of it and turned to the making of easy money, a new life had begun.

As he came into the city he saw Llandaff Cathedral on his left, and turned into the parking bay above it. There was a light on in the cathedral, a dim light perhaps left permanently on. Was the place locked, he wondered, or had vandals not yet crossed the Severn Bridge?

His mother had been a convinced Christian, his father a casual atheist; in this respect he took after his father; but he had been to the cathedral almost every Sunday and could still recite most of the relevant parts of the Prayer Book. Some of it he also knew in Welsh.

Still in his dinner jacket and black tie, he got out and went down the uneven path to the church door. How often he had trod this way.

The cathedral was lit as if with pilot lights, but there were sufficient of them to see the whole of the great Gothic edifice including – for one could not miss it – the Majestas, Epstein's brilliant but brutally incongruous sculpture in aluminium and concrete which straddled the nave.

He walked down and took a seat in its shadow. These were the seats he and his mother had occupied Sunday after Sunday all those years ago. He knew exactly what he was going to do now. No hole-in-the-corner escape, no panic flights across the Irish Sea and a long life in exile in Singapore or Hong Kong. He would return and face it out. It was all suspicion. There was not a
scrap
of firm evidence the police could bring against him. Even the little he had said to Nari Prasad could be explained away.

All right, people would talk. The whole of Oxford University was a gigantic gossip shop. They would talk behind his back; but suppose he upped his contribution to the University to the million mark for this year? Who would refuse it on the tendentious grounds that it was tainted money? What of America? Half of the great universities of the past had been built and endowed by gangsters, men making fortunes out of the early railways, out of a corner in metals, out of a ruthless extermination of their rivals. Before they knew where they were, Oxford would be celebrating the opening of a whole new medical laboratory financed by him, or even a new college. Money in the end would solve anything. He would return to Postgate tonight and smilingly put himself into the clutches of the Lilliputians.

A clock somewhere in the cathedral struck three. He was the only person, it seemed, in the entire building. The only one alive anyway. He sat quite still for a long time. His brain was not active but he had no sleep in him. For a time he felt his mother's presence beside him, smelt the eau de Cologne which was the only scent she ever permitted herself. Then for a moment there came quite strongly to his nostrils the terrible smell that had come and gone around her when she was dying.

He stirred restlessly, and the clock struck four. In another hour it would be daylight. Time he was going. Time to return to the poised, sardonic, competent, rich and richly gifted man to whom a Doctorate of Civil Law would shortly be awarded. A few policemen, a little scandal, what did that matter?

He took out a phial from his jacket pocket and held it up in the dim yellow light. The phial was filled with a light purplish liquid, about an ounce in all. Half was a lethal dose. He drank it all. The taste was bitter but he knew the effects were quite painless.

He moved into the seat his mother had always occupied and composed himself for sleep.

Evelyn Gaveston was a week late returning home, but she did so in the end, wispy-haired and flat-shoed, and clutching a large handbag in which was concealed a hamster bought in New York and smuggled through the customs. Henry, whose business it was to keep the law, at least in small things, despaired, and banished the animal to a back room for their first luncheon party.

James Locke and Mary Aldershot were among the guests, as were Teresa – looking plump and roseate – and Tom; but since there were twelve at table not much private conversation was possible. This was Evelyn's aim. Everyone steered clear of subjects such as suicides, drug taking and college scandals. Indeed, as most of her guests were from distant parts of the country, the tragedies of the last two months did not loom so large. Obviously they had all heard – or rather read – and so would exercise tact in the subjects opened, but with much less effort and constraint than if it had been a local gathering.

Tom and Teresa left fairly early, since they wanted to get back to London before the traffic built up. As they left Teresa kissed her father warmly on the lips.

He squeezed her hand. ‘When?'

‘Next Thursday or Friday, they expect.'

‘I'll be thinking of you.' He kissed her again.

‘Daddy,' she said.

‘Yes?'

‘Be of good heart.'

Some of the others drifted away during the next half-hour, but two sisters, maiden ladies of great wealth and little learning, stayed on and on, so Henry invited James to come out of doors and view his
Sciadopitys verticillata
, which he had got some reluctant students to guy for him last weekend.

The two old friends moved off together, one pushing the other in an unmotorised wheelchair specially kept for James's visits. They inspected the wayward tree, and James told Henry he simply had to make up his mind. The tree quite clearly needed the support to keep it steady in wind; the ground it was planted in was a moderate clay which should give it a substantial grip; but something was wrong, roots remained too near the surface, spreading rather than digging deeper. It would need this sort of support for at least another ten years, he said, and in that time you'd have to watch that the ropes didn't slip or rot. A simple choice between maintaining a distinguished invalid or cutting it down and rooting it up.

‘I'll give it a year,' said Henry. ‘I'll give it one more year.'

‘You're wasting your time. If the guying offends you you may as well root it up now.'

Henry grunted and looked his old friend over, studiously. ‘When are you marrying Mary?'

James shifted in his chair. ‘Not yet, certainly. Of course not yet.'

‘What's stopping you?'

‘While this suspicion hangs over me I can't do anything. Maybe in a year or two.'

‘Then you're wasting your time. This suspicion, as you call it, is going to hang over you for the rest of your blooming life. The police don't altogether ever lose interest in a murder, they put it on a back burner and there it'll stay, waiting for something to turn up and set it all alight again.'