For much of the rest of the day, Harding dwelt only half in the real world. Part of his mind-and, strangely, it also seemed to him, his body-was absent, banished to some realm where the events of the past twelve days assembled, dismantled and reassembled themselves slowly and inexorably before him, obedient to a logic he had understood too late. Barney Tozer was dead. Hayley Foxton had taken her revenge. And Harding had been there to witness it happening.
The sluggishness of his reactions posed no problem to the Kriminal-Polizei officers who interviewed him at Munich Police HQ for several long, laborious hours. The British Embassy had supplied an interpreter and the translation of the officers’ questions and Harding’s answers slowed the proceedings to a crawl. He told them as much of the truth as he knew. Tozer’s death had rendered any kind of subterfuge or suppression not merely futile, but obscene. Not that the police evinced much interest in the complexities surrounding the case. To them, it was simple. Hayley Foxton blamed Barney Tozer for her sister’s death. Tozer had foolishly failed to take the intrusion at his apartment in Monte Carlo as the danger signal it undoubtedly was. He had even more foolishly agreed to meet Hayley in an exposed and isolated location. And he had paid the price.
Harding emphasized that no one could have imagined Hayley would possess a gun-let alone know how to use it. But the police, it seemed, routinely imagined such things. They pointed out that she could have been practising target-shooting for months with this moment in mind. He was, they implied, lucky to be alive himself; unless, of course, she had missed him deliberately, wanting him to identify her as the murderer, needing there to be no doubt what she had done and why.
The search for Hayley had commenced long before Harding’s questioning had ended. By the time he was thanked for his assistance and sent on his way, late that afternoon, she might, for all he knew, already be under arrest. There was nothing he could do for her now. If they had not found her yet, they soon would. The future she had made for herself allowed for no turning back.
Tony Whybrow was waiting for him in the station’s reception area, a layer of grimness added to his habitual calm.
“I hope they haven’t given you a hard time, Tim.”
“They just wanted as many details as I could supply.”
“You look all in.”
“Shock, I expect. Delayed reaction. Sorrow most of all. I never saw this coming. Not in a million years.”
“Carol and I flew up here on the same plane. She’s at the morgue now.”
“Oh God.”
“You’re going to have to go through it all again, I’m afraid.”
Harding sighed. “We should have contacted the police after she threatened Carol, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes. I blame myself for that.”
“Barney was confident he could come to an understanding with Hayley. He was… looking forward to meeting her, I think, in a strange kind of way.”
“And she was looking forward to meeting him. In a very different kind of way.”
“Yes.” Harding nodded glumly. “Apparently she was.”
Carol joined them in the bar at the Cortiina. She seemed numbed by her visit to the morgue, so overwhelmed by what had happened that she was not even visibly upset. Her face was a mask, her gaze barely focused. She listened to Harding’s account of how her husband had died with little reaction beyond a few faltering questions, though one of those was in its way more difficult to answer than any the police had posed.
“Do you think Barney knew who’d shot him?”
“Maybe. But he only had a second or so to know anything. It was quick, Carol. That’s the only consolation I can think of.”
“It’s not much of one.”
“I know.”
“Do they execute murderers in Germany, Tony?”
“No, Carol. They don’t.”
“Pity.”
“But they imprison them for life. And I’m sure that’s what they’ll do to Hayley Foxton when they catch her.”
“If they catch her.”
“They will, I’m sure. Soon, probably.”
“How soon?”
“The police will let us know immediately if there’s any news.”
“I’ll have to tell Humph.”
“D’you want me to do that?” Harding offered.
“No. He’s not the only one I have to notify. I’d better just… get on with it.”
“I’ll deal with everybody on the business side who needs to know,” said Whybrow “And I’ll handle all the form-filling to get Barney back to Monaco.”
“Or Cornwall,” said Carol. “I’ll have to discuss that with Humph.”
“All right. But don’t take too much on yourself. We don’t need to make any decisions until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Tomorrow. Yes.” Carol looked at Harding, a spark of her normal self gleaming in her gaze. “I want to go to Nymphenburg tomorrow, Tim. To see where it happened. Will you take me?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll organize a car,” said Whybrow.
“No need,” said Carol. “We can take a taxi. And… I’d like it to be just Tim and me.” She glanced at Whybrow. “If you don’t mind, Tony.”
Whybrow smiled tightly. “No problem.”
“That was interesting,” said Whybrow, when Carol had gone up to her room-Barney’s room, where his clothes and toiletries were still waiting for him, but which he would never use again.
“Interesting?” Harding dragged his thoughts back to the present once more, away from his memories of the gentle, truth-seeking Hayley he could still not reconcile with the Hayley he had seen running away through the trees at Nymphenburg that morning.
“Carol’s a surprisingly resilient person,” Whybrow mused. “She’s already adjusting to the new reality. As I suppose we’ll all have to.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well, I assume Carol will inherit everything from Barney. Including Starburst International. She’ll be in charge from now on.”
The point had not yet occurred to Harding. Tozer’s death had cut the ground from beneath Whybrow’s feet. His hold over them had been his threat to tell Tozer about their affair. Now it did not matter. Carol had become a power in the land. And Whybrow was going to have to accept that she was the boss.
Or was she? Harding’s mind grasped a more complex and disturbing possibility in the instant before Whybrow put it into words. “One should never underestimate the ability of the police to misread situations, of course. If certain information came into their possession, they might think you and Carol had a motive for murdering Barney. And they only have your word for it that it was actually Hayley who shot him.”
Harding took his time before responding. He looked at Whybrow unwaveringly determined not to rise to the bait by losing his temper. “A woman walking her dog on the other side of the canal saw the whole thing. The police told me they’d interviewed her.”
“But will she be able to identify Hayley-when they pick her up?”
“I don’t know.”
“No matter. I’m sure the police will settle for a straightforward interpretation of the facts. Provided nobody… muddies the water.” Whybrow smiled thinly. “It might be a good idea if you mentioned that to Carol tomorrow, Tim. During your visit… to the scene of the crime.”
Harding walked himself into a state of exhaustion that night round the streets of Munich. Horrified by what had happened and sickened by his failure to understand the way Hayley’s mind had been working, he could be sure of only one thing. He would have to extricate himself from the affairs of the Tozer family. He would have to start his life afresh, without Carol, without Hayley, without the hope-as well as the anguish-the recent past had brought him. There was no other way. He had done it before. He could do it again. Somehow or other, the future would have to be faced.