The divers, fully kitted up now, their faces obscured by wet-suit hoods, goggles and breathing apparatus, stepped off the boat, Barney taking the lead, into the stretch of sea adjacent to the buoy the Martyns had deployed earlier. Barney vanished first, then Kerry, the wake of her dive fading rapidly. She was gone. The video cut out.
“Want to see any of it again?” asked Metherell.
“No, thanks.”
“OK.” Metherell switched off the TV and set the video to rewind. “As you see, it doesn’t tell you much. There’s no clue as to what followed.”
It was true. The video contained nothing either suspicious or remarkable. Unless, like Harding, you were acquainted with Hayley Winter. “Did you ever… meet Kerry’s family?” he asked, his gaze still fixed on the screen.
“I met her father. He came down and asked a few questions of those involved. Those he could get to speak to, anyway. A nice man, as I recall, though nothing like as flamboyant as Kerry’s personality had somehow led me to expect. Small, inoffensive, quietly spoken. And crushed. Yes. Crushed is how he seemed.”
“No other relative?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Did she have any brothers? Or sisters?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I mean, she may have, but… I never met them.”
“Didn’t the family show up at the inquest?”
“No. Her parents were dead by then, of course.”
“They were?”
“Yes. It’s why-” Metherell broke off, waiting until Harding had turned to look at him before continuing. “It’s a sad story right to the finish. The doctors in Plymouth soon gave up on Kerry. Evidently, you don’t come out of the sort of coma she was in. Her parents refused to accept that. They moved her to a private hospital in London. Then to some clinic in Munich that had a reputation for working miracles with coma cases. They commuted over to see her. I don’t know if any progress was made. Not enough, obviously, because, when they were killed in a pile-up on the M4 driving home from Heathrow Airport after yet another visit to Munich, whoever was left to make the decisions… pulled the plug on Kerry.”
“I see.”
“Do you? I have the impression something’s… troubling you.”
“Have you ever met Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper at Heartsease?”
“Can’t say I have. I didn’t even know he had one.”
“What about Clive Isbister, then? Or Humphrey Tozer? Would they ever have met Kerry?”
“I don’t know. There’s no reason why Clive should have. The same goes for Humphrey, I assume, though I scarcely know the man myself. Why do you ask?”
“That leaves Ray Trathen, then. He must have noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“The resemblance.” Harding looked back at the blank and unrevealing TV screen. “The quite startling resemblance.”
When Harding left Mercer House, he still had several hours at his disposal before the four o’clock helicopter back to Penzance. Metherell had obligingly offered to drive him to the airport, so it was agreed he would return to Mercer House around three fifteen. He lunched, on Metherell’s recommendation, at the Mermaid, down by the quay, then walked out round the walls of the old Elizabethan garrison at the western end of the town.
It was also the western end of the island. The dark grey finger of the Bishop Rock lighthouse stood out on the horizon, hemmed in by the other jagged rocks it gave warning of. Somewhere out there lay the wreck of the Association, scene of the disastrous diving expedition of 6 August 1999.
The date was both a tease and a lure. Harding had arrived in Penzance with Polly the following day, by which time Kerry Foxton was in hospital in Plymouth, in a coma from which she would never wake. He could never have met her. Not in Penzance, at any rate. Her photograph might have appeared on the front of The Cornishman, of course. He might have seen that. But it was not enough, not nearly enough, to account for his strong sense of familiarity.
And what of Hayley? How was it she so closely resembled Kerry Foxton? Was she aware of the similarity? It was too striking to be a matter of chance. Somehow, somewhere, there was a reason for it.
Harding glanced north towards Tresco, distinguishable from the other islands by its central belt of woodland. His memories of exploring the famous Abbey Gardens there with Polly were distinct yet distant, as if he were recalling the experiences of another life, another man. His past was numb, like a frozen limb, his present a labyrinth of contradictions.
Judith Metherell, a briskly mannered woman whose taste in clothes made her look a decade older than Harding suspected she really was, greeted him when he returned to Mercer House. She surprised him by apologizing for mishearing his name over the phone, then went to extricate her husband from his study.
“Glad you made the effort to come over?” Metherell asked as they drove out of town.
“Glad isn’t quite the right word.”
“Kerry Foxton wasn’t murdered, Mr. Harding.”
“I’m happy to believe it.”
“But there’s something else you’re not happy about.”
“True.”
“A passing resemblance that Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper bears to Kerry.”
“More than passing.”
“Maybe that’s why he chose her.”
“How do you mean?”
“The old boy always had a mischievous streak. He liked to get under people’s skin.”
“Did he really?”
“Yes. And it seems to me he’s still doing it. From beyond the grave.”
It was a twenty-minute flight to Penzance, nothing like sufficient for Harding to decide what his next step should be. Carol’s friendship with Kerry; Kerry’s resemblance to Hayley; his own conviction that he had met Hayley or Kerry-or both, for that matter-before: he was beset on all sides by the inexplicable and the unresolvable.
One problem he no longer had any patience with was Darren Spargo. He did not like being threatened. He did not like it at all. He felt, in fact, very much in the mood to do some threatening of his own. And Morrison’s supermarket was only a short walk from the heliport.
But he was out of luck. The woman at the information desk informed him that Darren no longer worked there. And if she knew where he lived, she was not telling.
Ray Trathen was the obvious source to tap for information about Spargo and much else besides. Harding decided to try the Turk’s Head at Trathen’s usual time. That left him an hour or so to freshen up back at his hotel. Hayley had declined his invitation to dinner and he wondered now if that was because she had known what he would discover during his day trip to Scilly But he wondered also if that was one suspicion too many. He wanted, he needed, to give her the benefit of the doubt.
None of which was any kind of preparation for the news that awaited him at the Mount Prospect.
“You’re a popular man, Mr. Harding,” the receptionist said as she handed him a note with his key.
“Sorry?”
“All these phone calls.”
“Ah.” He glanced at the note and ran his eye down the list of callers. Clive Isbister at 10.38. Barney Tozer at 11.21. Isbister again at 12.08. Barney again at 14.10. Carol at 14.58. Humphrey Tozer at 16.11. And Isbister yet again at 17.02. The message was the same in each case. Please call as soon as possible. He was popular. Or unpopular. What was going on? What could they possibly all want with him?
He phoned Isbister first, judging he might not be available on his office number much longer. And the man himself answered promptly.
“Mr. Harding. At last. Where have you been?”
“Out of town.”
“All day?”
“Yes. Since you ask.”
“Sorry. None of my business, really. I gather from Barney you’ve lost your mobile, so perhaps you haven’t heard what’s happened. Unless you’ve spoken to him since your return, of course.”
“I haven’t spoken to Barney.”
“Ah. I see.”
“What has happened?”
Isbister sighed. “There was a burglary at Heartsease last night, Mr. Harding. A very specific burglary. Just one thing taken. And I expect you can guess what it was.”
“Not… lot six four one?”
“The very same.”