Partnering up with Wisby did not leave Umber with a pleasant taste in the mouth. But he could not see, even when he reviewed matters back at the hotel, how he might have managed their encounter any differently. They stood a better chance of extracting the truth from Jeremy Hall by joining forces. Theirs was only a temporary alliance, Umber told himself. Once they had learned the truth – whatever it was – different rules would apply.
He phoned Larter during the empty few hours that separated him from their meeting with Jeremy. He should have made the call sooner, as Larter forcefully reminded him. The truth was that he had felt safer with no-one knowing his exact whereabouts. But it was not a feeling he could afford to indulge.
'What are you up to, boy?'
'Can't go into details, Bill.'
'Onto anything promising?'
'Depends what you mean.
'I mean something that will get George out of choky.'
'I might be.'
'I had him on the blower yesterday.'
'George?'
'Prisons ain't what they used to be. Inmates are allowed all sorts these days – including phone calls.'
'How did he sound?'
'Down in the mouth.'
'Did he ask about me?'
'Of course he asked about you. I told him you'd scarpered, intentions unknown. He didn't believe me, though. I could tell. He never said as much, but I got the feeling he reckons you'll have ignored his message. That's why he's keeping his lawyer in the dark. To give you a clear run.'
'I'll try and make the most of it.'
'You better had, boy. You better had.'
La Fregate was a cafe housed in an artful representation of the inverted hull of a wooden ship, beached on St Helier's breezy seafront. The chill edge to the breeze had driven its few customers inside, with the solitary exception of Alan Wisby. He was sitting at one of the outdoor tables, hunched over a cigarette and a cup of tea, when Umber arrived. There was nearly a quarter of an hour to go till their appointment with Jeremy Hall, but beating Wisby to any rendezvous was clearly next to impossible.
'Couldn't wait, hey?' said Wisby by way of greeting.
'Like you, it seems.'
'No, no. I got here early for the sea air. Ozone's good for the brain, they tell me.'
Umber did not pursue the point. He went into the cafe and bought a coffee. By the time he came back out, a way to wrongfoot Wisby had presented itself appealingly to his mind. He sat down and looked at Wisby, who had angled his chair to face the dual carriageway heading into St Helier from the west – the direction Jeremy Hall would come from.
'We should hear him coming even if we don't see him,' Wisby said. 'Unless he's already in town. As he may well be, if, as I suspect, he's been keeping the books in a safe-deposit box somewhere.'
'You can tell me about your theory now.'
'No, no. Not until the books are in our hands.'
'You refused to tell me earlier on the grounds that I might cut my own deal with Jeremy. Well, it's too late for that now, isn't it? So, there's no need for you to hold out on me.'
Wisby squinted round at Umber in the dazzling sunlight. 'No need for me not to, either.'
'Oh, but there is. Particularly if you want to be able to rely on my say-so as to whether the Junius he brings with him is the one Griffin promised to show me at Avebury. And that's central to your theory, isn't it?'
'Yes,' Wisby hesitantly and reluctantly agreed.
'So you need to be certain. Absolutely certain. And for that you need to give me something in advance.'
'Don't you trust me, Mr Umber?'
'Not at all.'
Wisby drew smilingly on his cigarette. Well, it's good to know where we stand, I suppose.'
'What's your theory?'
Wisby sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, then said, 'All right. I'll tell you. Since my good faith's being questioned. Griffin is central. Why didn't he turn up at Avebury?'
'I don't know. I've never known.'
'It's a mystery.'
'Yes. A total mystery.'
'Perhaps not. If he did turn up.'
'What do you mean?'
'Donald Collingwood was already dead when I went back over the case five years ago. That turned out to be to my advantage. I went to see his widow. She was in an old people's home. With Collingwood six foot under, she didn't mind telling me something she'd never have breathed a word about while he was alive. Seems Collingwood came into money straight after the Miranda Hall inquest. Not a fortune, but a tidy sum. He spun his missus a yarn about a lucky bet on the horses, but she never believed him. Just like she never believed he drove through Avebury on the twenty-seventh of July, 1981.'
'What?'
'Seems there was no reason for him to have been on that road.'
'And you're saying… he wasn't?'
'Exactly.'
'But -'
'He came forward three weeks into the inquiry to account for the car that followed the van. Don't you see? He was put up to it. Paid… to cover Griffin's tracks.'
'Griffin?'
'He was the car driver, not Collingwood. Griffin saw what happened and, good citizen that he was, set off after the van. Well, I think he caught up with it. Or was allowed to, once the driver realized he was tailing them. I think he was murdered to stop him telling the police where the van had gone. Plus its registration number, of course. Plus… who knows?'
'Can you prove any of this?'
'Not yet.'
'What about a body? If Griffin was murdered…'
'I've checked the records carefully. There were no unclaimed corpses within any feasible radius of Avebury in late July of 'eighty-one. And no missing-person report anywhere for anyone called Griffin. If there had been, Sharp would have picked up on it straight away.'
'Sounds like you've gone a long way to proving yourself wrong, then.'
'Not if Griffin was using an assumed name and/or his body was carefully disposed of.'
'Come off it. You're stretching.'
'Wait till you hear what Jeremy Hall has to tell us, Mr Umber. The key is how – and in whose hands – the book got from Avebury twenty-three years ago to Jersey a few months ago. I don't believe for an instant Jeremy found it on the shelf at Quires by chance. I reckon -'
'Mr Umber?' Both men turned at the call. 'One of you two Mr Umber?' It was the serving girl leaning out through the door of the cafe. "There's someone on the phone for you.'
Umber exchanged a glance with Wisby, then stood up and hurried into the cafe. The girl pointed towards the telephone at one end of the counter, receiver dangling off the hook. Umber picked it up.
'Hello?'
'That you, Shadow Alan?' It was Jeremy Hall. There was, of course, no-one else it could have been. His voice was slightly slurred, as if he had been drinking.
'Yes. It's me. Why aren't you here?'
'Wisby with you, is he?'
'Yes. As you arranged. I repeat: why aren't you here?'
'I thought about it and decided we ought to meet somewhere more… private.'
'Where?'
'The old man's place. With him and Marilyn away, it's nice and quiet. I'm there now. Wisby knows where it is. Come on over. I'll wait for you.'
'OK. But, Jeremy, you ought to know Wisby and I aren't -'
'Save it. I don't want to hear. Remember the day we first met, do you?'
'Of course.'
'There was a kestrel above us. I saw it. Turning and turning in the sky. Did you see it?'
'I don't think so.'
'Predator or prey. We're one or the other. You want your Junius, Shadow Man? You come and find him.'
Wisby had parked his hire car on the other side of the harbour. By the time they had reached it and got onto the dual carriageway heading out of town, twenty minutes had passed, testing both men's patience.
'I smell a rat,' said Wisby as he accelerated well beyond the sedate island-wide speed limit of 40 mph. 'He never intended to meet us in St Helier, did he?'
'Maybe not. But what difference does it make?'
'If he's planning to play some kind of trick on us…'
'What kind could he play? I thought you had him where you wanted him.'
'I do. But despite that he seems to be calling the shots. Which is worrying. Distinctly worrying.'
They turned inland halfway round the bay and headed north along a winding road through a tree-filled valley – Waterworks Valley, according to Wisby, named on account of its several reservoirs. Sunlight sparkled on the still blue water and the bright yellow drifts of daffodils in the roadside meadows. Oliver Hall had chosen a picturesque corner of Jersey to retire to.
Wisby slowed as they rounded a bend. A gated driveway led off the road to the left, climbing through landscaped grounds towards a large house set amongst trees. A sign at the foot of the drive identified it as Eden Holt.
'This is it,' said Wisby. He pulled up in front of the gates, lowered his window and pressed a button set next to an intercom grille on a post. 'Let's see if he's going to let us in.'
He was – without even bothering to confirm it was them. The gates swung slowly open. Wisby drove through and started up the slope towards the house.
Most of the building had been out of sight from the road. It was set on a shelf of land halfway up the side of the valley, commanding an expansive view of the rolling Jersey countryside. An elegantly meticulous recreation of a three-storeyed Queen Anne mansion, with porticoed entrance, mullioned windows and high, slender chimneys, its clean-cut grey stone glistened opulently in the sunshine.
The drive ran between the house and a wide, oval lawn towards a tree-screened triple garage. Jeremy's motorbike was standing in front of the garage, propped at an angle, sunlight shimmering on its petrol tank. Wisby stopped short of the balustraded steps that led up to the front door and turned the engine off. They climbed out into crystalline air and suspended silence, which the slamming of the car doors pierced like muffled gunshots. The two men exchanged a glance of mild puzzlement that Jeremy had not come out to greet them, but, as they started up the steps, they saw that the broad, green, dolphin-knockered door was ajar. It was a greeting – of sorts.
Wisby pushed the door open, giving them a view of the hall – a vast chequerboard of black and white marble tiles leading to a curving staircase. Doors stood open to ground-floor rooms on either side. But Jeremy did not step out of any of them, aware though he must have been that they had arrived.
'Where is he?' muttered Wisby. 'What's he -'
'Look,' Umber cut in. 'Look, man.'
Umber's gaze had drifted round to the console table standing against the wall a little way along the hall – and had gone no further. There was a silver tray on the table, intended for post, perhaps. There were no letters lying on it. But it was not empty.
Two small books, held together by a rubber band, had been placed on the tray. The books' smooth white covers identified their binding as vellum. And the gold-lettered titles on their spines identified them as particular, exclusive and unquestionably unique.
'That's them, isn't it?' Wisby asked, glancing at Umber.
'Oh yes.' Umber nodded. 'That's them.' And it was. There could be no doubt. There had only ever been one vellum-bound gilt-titled Junius, specially prepared to the author's specification and left for him by Woodfall at one of their secret coffee-house delivery points early in the month of March, 1773. Left – and later collected. 'At last,' Umber added, in a dreamy murmur. 'At long – What was that?'
He whirled round at a sound behind him: a sharp, metallic ping. Almost at once, there was a second ping and, this time, he saw what had caused it. A small pebble struck the roof of the car as he watched and bounced off. Another pebble followed.
Umber rushed down the steps onto the driveway and looked up, backing away towards the lawn as he did so. There were dormer windows set in the grey-slated roof, their lower halves obscured by a parapet running round the edge of the roof. In the centre of
the parapet, directly above the front door, was a pediment. Jeremy Hall was leaning nonchalantly against its sloping left-hand side. He nodded, as if satisfied now he had got some attention, and tossed
the remaining pebbles into the gully behind the pediment. Then he propped one foot on the parapet and gazed down.
'Spotted what's waiting for you in the hall, Shadow Man?' he called.
'Yes,' Umber replied.
'Take them. They're yours.'
'We want more man the books,' shouted Wisby as he caught up with Umber. 'You know what my terms are.'
'Oh yes,' Jeremy shouted back. 'I know.'
'Come down. Let's talk. Like we agreed.'
'Like you demanded, you mean. Remember the
kestrel, Shadow Man?'
'Yes. But -'
'Predator or prey. We're one or the other. Never both.' He seemed to look beyond them, into the distance. 'There's so much air up here. So much sky. And everything's so very, very simple.'
'Come down,' shouted Wisby.
'All right,' Jeremy responded. 'I will.'
In that second, Umber knew what Jeremy was going to do. He stepped forward. And so did Jeremy. Out into the empty air beyond the parapet. Out into a place he could see so clearly. Out – and down.
Umber closed his eyes an immeasurable fraction of a second before Jeremy hit the ground. But the sound of the impact – the squelching thud of flesh and bone on tarmac, the fricative last gasp of breath forced from Jeremy's mouth – was no easier to bear than the sight of it would have been. Umber could not keep his eyes closed for ever. When he opened them, he knew what he would see. And already, before he did so, he knew of the other death it would call to his mind. The mangled body; the wine-dark blood; the stillness and the silence: as it had been for the sister so it was now for the brother.
Umber opened his eyes.
By a small, scant miracle, Jeremy had fallen with his face angled away from them. Only the tide of blood seeping from his smashed body, carried towards Umber by the camber of the drive, declared his death as an unalterable fact.
Umber stepped back onto the lawn before the stretching red fingers reached him. He sank to his haunches and stared at the lifeless, crumpled figure in front of him, at Jeremy's tousled blood-flecked hair, at the upturned palm of his nearest hand, cradled as if to receive some gift.
Umber thought of Jane Hall, standing in the cemetery above Marlborough, mourning her daughters and comforting herself with the knowledge that at least she still had a living, breathing son. Soon, all too soon, she would have that comfort snatched away from her.
Umber had done nothing to save the daughters. And now his action, for reasons he did not properly understand, had destroyed the son.
'Oh God,' he murmured. 'Oh dear God.'
The car engine burst suddenly into life. Umber looked round and saw Wisby reversing the car away from him. It bumped up onto the lawn, then Wisby slammed it into forward gear, swerved round onto the drive and accelerated down the slope towards the gates.
Umber's reactions were addled by shock. He could not comprehend what was happening. Where was Wisby going? What in God's name did he think he was doing?
The probable answer hit Umber like a blow to the face. He jumped up and, skirting the pool of blood that had spread from Jeremy's body, ran across the drive and up the steps to the front door.
It was wide open. In the hall, on the console table, the silver tray stood empty.
Wisby had stopped at the foot of the drive, waiting for the gates to open after the car had crossed the sensor-cable. The gates swung slowly and smoothly. The car idled. Umber started running down the drive, certain he would be too late, but running anyway, his feet pounding on the tarmac.
The car started forward as soon as there was a large enough gap between the gates for it to pass through. Wisby pulled straight out onto the road and put his foot down. The car sped away. It was out of sight before Umber reached the gateway.
Umber's last few strides carried him out onto the road. He stared despairingly in the direction the car had taken – back the way they had come earlier. The gates were fully open by now. A few seconds later, they began to close again.
Umber had still not moved when they clanged shut behind him.