Gabriel's Moon, page 10
‘Does this “Ray” know you’re in London?’
‘No. He thinks I’m in the States. I’m not going back there. I’m going to Amsterdam. Maybe Stockholm.’
She looked at him, tears welling again.
‘It was all meant to be so different, Gabriel, wasn’t it?’
‘In a parallel universe,’ he said a little coldly and saw the tears now roll from her eyes. Poor, wrecked, lost waif. He reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Nancy-Jo. I was looking forward to being with you in London too.’
‘What did you do with the drugs after you found them?’
‘I chucked them in a rubbish bin at Madrid airport.’
She laughed sardonically. Wiped her eyes with her thumbs.
‘Maybe the CIA will invoice you. Twenty grand, easy.’
How did she know that? he wondered.
‘Do you have those tapes, by the way?’ she asked. ‘I’d get rid of them if you do.’
‘I erased them,’ he lied. ‘There’s nothing there any more.’ Maybe she’d pass that on to Raymond Queneau.
They parted on the pavement. Gabriel kissed her cheek and tasted the salt residue of her tears.
‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘They’re nasty people. Ruthless people.’
‘Let me know where you go,’ he said. ‘I have lots of contacts – all over Europe.’
She made a little flipping goodbye gesture with her fingers and looked as if she was about to cry again – bright-lashed with new tears – then she turned abruptly and walked away.
Jesus Christ, Gabriel thought as he headed for the Tube. What in God’s name have I got myself into?
Jeff Muldoon brought over a tray with three pints of beer and handed them to Gabriel and a colleague called Hugh Summerbee who was the crime reporter on the paper. Summerbee was a solid-looking, energized man in his forties with a small, constant facial tic on his left cheek, as if there was something burrowing under the skin trying to get out. He had a pencil moustache and Gabriel noticed he had not removed his tweed pork-pie hat. Maybe he was bald. This meeting with Hugh Summerbee was the favour that Gabriel had asked of Jeff Muldoon. Gabriel thought that Summerbee might be the key to unlocking the mysteries of the fire at the family home, Yeomanswood Farm. Summerbee’s expertise as a crime reporter was what he wanted to access.
‘While I remember,’ Gabriel said, and handed Muldoon a large envelope with his notebook plus the notes he’d made about the interview on the plane and the rough drafts of his eventual article. All wholly innocuous. And useless, he assumed.
‘Thanks, Gabriel,’ Muldoon said. ‘Much appreciated. This will be a big help.’ He seemed genuinely grateful – but now Gabriel was in a position to understand what pressure he might have been under. Everybody suddenly interested in his Lumumba interview. The names – it must be the names, he thought.
‘So, when exactly was this fire?’ Summerbee asked.
Gabriel had outlined the nature and situation of the fire that had killed his mother.
‘1936,’ he said.
‘How old were you?’
‘Six.’
‘And your mother sadly died.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there would have been an inquest, because of the death. And that report will exist in some filing cabinet, somewhere. It was a big fire, I assume.’
‘The house was burnt to the ground.’
‘Local newspaper?’
‘Oxford Mail.’
‘Have you checked the archive?’
‘No.’
‘The newspaper and the inquest report will tell you what fire stations were involved,’ Summerbee said. ‘It was only – what? – twenty-five years ago, give or take. Got to be some young firemen who were at that fire who are still around now. That’s what I’d do. Find one of these chaps and get his version. Firemen remember all their fires – it’s kind of astonishing.’
Right, Gabriel thought. Anamnesis in action. ‘Thanks, Hugh. Amazingly helpful.’
‘It’s boring work – but it tends to deliver,’ Summerbee smiled.
‘Well said, son,’ Muldoon chipped in. ‘Hugh is the best at digging shit up. I mean digging up shit.’
‘Actually, I know someone on the Oxford Mail,’ Summerbee said, ignoring Muldoon. ‘I’ll tell him you might be passing by.’
They finished their pints and Gabriel made a note of Summerbee’s friend on the Oxford Mail. As he walked back to the Tube Gabriel realized he wasn’t that far from Covent Garden, not that far from Long Acre. He had a mad idea. Sometimes a spanner in the works was the best recourse.
He rang the bell at the door of the Institute of Developmental Studies.
The intercom buzzed.
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if I could see Miss Faith Green. It’s a matter of some urgency.’
‘Miss Green is on annual leave.’
Sure, Gabriel thought.
‘Would you tell her that Gabriel Dax wants to see her? Thank you.’
He walked away, feeling oddly excited at his audacity. He could imagine Faith receiving the news and being furious. Bad procedure.
That evening Gabriel unfolded his large map of southern England and wondered where, on the long and winding course of the Thames, he would posit his exemplary place, his locus classicus. Chapter one, he thought, start close to home before voyaging off abroad to the Yangtse or the Amazon.
Scanning the meandering journey of the Thames, going upstream from Oxford on the map, he decided he liked the look of Newbridge. The place was interesting, because here a tributary, the Windrush, joined the Thames. There was an ancient mediaeval bridge there as well, he knew. Then his eye was caught by a village not far away: Eastwell Marsh. Eastwell Marsh was the nearest village to the Dax family home, Yeomanswood Farm. As a child, he had bought sweets in the village post office. They could walk there in ten minutes from the house . . . Anamnesis. It was meant to be: Newbridge was his Thames-locus. It was time he went back to Oxfordshire, time to gather information for his book and also start to investigate the fire at Yeomanswood. Somewhat ruefully he realized he was following Katerina Haas’s advice.
The phone rang. Faith Green, no doubt about to berate him.
He picked up.
‘Gabriel, it’s Nancy-Jo.’
He could tell from her voice that she was very frightened.
‘What is it?’
‘Queneau’s in London. He just called me. What the fuck do I do? How did he find me?’
‘Just keep calm. Don’t do anything. Don’t check out, whatever you do. Just leave through a side door and come to my flat. You can stay here. We’ll figure something out.’ He told her his address, gave her precise instructions.
‘I’ve got to make a few calls first,’ she said.
‘OK. I’m here. I’ll wait for you. Just knock on the door.’
He hung up, feeling a strange hollow emptiness in his chest, as if his lungs had been removed. This was all getting somewhat out of hand. And then he thought, or is she colluding with this Raymond Queneau? Is this a way of infiltrating her into my flat? A way of getting covert access to my Lumumba tapes? He dismissed the idea. That was genuine fear in her voice. He saw how a life of duplicity could so swiftly corrupt you. Nothing was straightforward, there were always other motives, people couldn’t be trusted, nobody was what they seemed.
He waited up late but she never came. Predictably, he had a very bad night’s sleep as a result, expecting her knock on the door at any moment, jerking awake every time a car passed. In the morning he felt jangled and light-headed. There was only one thing to do.
At the front reception of the Cumberland he asked to be announced to Miss Berndlinger, a guest staying at the hotel. He could see the instant commotion it caused. The desk clerk summoned a manager.
‘May I ask your connection with Miss Berndlinger, sir?’
What has she done? he thought. Why didn’t she just come to me? Has she run away, not paid her bill?
‘I’m a friend,’ he said. ‘She’s visiting London. She told me she was staying in this hotel. We were meant to meet up for the day.’
The manager was a young man with a Teddy boy’s quiff, his upper lip shiny with tension sweat, his body tense with unexpected pressure. He drew Gabriel deep into a corner of the lobby where they couldn’t be overheard.
‘Miss Berndlinger passed away last night, I deeply regret to inform you,’ the manager said, quietly. ‘She was discovered in her room early this morning.’
Gabriel didn’t need to feign shock.
‘What? Jesus Christ! What happened?’
The manager looked around.
‘The police are involved, sir. It seemed she died of a . . .’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘A drug overdose. The, you know, the drug paraphernalia was very evident in the room.’
Gabriel inhaled, exhaled.
‘It’s a terrible shock,’ he said, formulaically. ‘I can’t believe it. We spoke on the phone just last night.’
The manager dropped his voice another register.
‘These things will happen, sir, if you’re using, you know, serious drugs.’ He glanced around. ‘If you’d made plans to meet today then it must’ve been an accident. A tragic accident.’
Gabriel agreed, though he was very aware that Raymond Queneau had been in town. Very aware of Nancy-Jo’s terror.
‘May I take your name, sir? The police may wish to interview you.’ The manager took a notepad from his pocket.
‘Of course. Harrison Lee, the Institute of Developmental Studies, 112 Long Acre, Covent Garden.’
The manager produced the obligatory grim smile, teeth like a grille.
‘My sincere condolences, Mr Lee.’
Faith Green made contact within twenty-four hours. Gabriel was returning to his flat, late afternoon the next day, with his laundry, when he saw her silver Mercedes 190 parked across the road in Redburn Street. She opened the passenger door and he slid in, dumping his bag of sheets and towels on his lap. He could smell her perfume – lavender – mingling with the scent of expensive new leather from the seats.
‘This has got to stop, Gabriel.’
‘This has got to stop, Faith.’
She sighed.
‘Look, you must never come to the Institute unless you’re invited. You must not casually give the names of our people to the police. It was very . . .’ She thought. ‘Very annoying.’
‘Agreed. But I wanted you to know something, urgently.’
‘What?’
‘That I had been set up for a drug bust at Madrid airport.’ He gave her a brief account of what had occurred, and how he had escaped arrest. He watched her very closely as he recounted the details of his meeting with Nancy-Jo in Madrid – and her sudden death in a London hotel. Faith Green gave nothing away.
‘I promise you,’ she said. ‘It had nothing to do with us. Why would we be involved in anything like this? Your job for us had gone perfectly well.’
‘Who set me up, then, if not you?’
She smiled at him sadly.
‘Look, Gabriel, I’m sorry this young woman killed herself but if you associate with drug addicts this is the sort of thing that happens all the time. They’re without conscience. Ruthless users of other people. You were available to her. She was using you as her “mule”. It’s a word that means—’
‘I know the expression.’
They looked at each other. Why do I believe you? Gabriel said to himself. Why don’t I believe you?
‘Do you know of a man called Raymond Queneau?’ he asked.
‘He’s a French novelist. Wrote Zazie dans le métro.’
‘It’s a pseudonym being used by an American CIA agent. A man in his fifties.’
‘No. Never heard of him.’
He took another bold step.
‘This is about Lumumba, isn’t it?’
‘What? Are you insane?’ She looked realistically blank.
‘That last interview I did with Lumumba. It’s all connected. That’s how you and I met. That’s how you were on the plane from Léopoldville. That’s why Nancy-Jo Berndlinger is dead.’
‘What? Total fantasy. Total.’
‘What were you doing in Léopoldville?’
‘Working at the British embassy.’
‘You’re not a diplomat.’
‘My job at the Institute takes me to embassies all the time. All round the world. You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘Right. Yeah, OK. Understood.’
They sat there in her smart car in silence for a while. Like two lovers quarrelling, Gabriel thought, fancifully. He looked at her. She looked at him.
‘All your conspiracy theories are ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Fantasies. Don’t ignore the obvious explanations for events, things, situations. That’s why they’re obvious.’
‘Of course, you would say that. I’d expect you to say that. I’m just a useful idiot.’
‘Don’t diminish yourself.’
‘I don’t. It’s just that I don’t like being – what’s the word? – “played”, like a chess piece.’
‘You’re too intelligent to be played, Gabriel. We have a stableful of useful idiots, if we want to use them. Only you could have convinced Blanco. Worked like a charm.’
Weasel words, he thought. Flattering him – not like her. She was rattled, he sensed. He opened the door.
‘Well, I’ll go back to my boring literary life. Lovely to have met you, Faith. Good luck.’
They shook hands.
‘Good luck to you, too. I’m sorry about your friend.’
He was about to say something but contented himself with a half-smile.
‘Sayonara,’ he said, then he picked up his bag of laundry and eased himself out of her Mercedes.
10.
Eastwell Marsh
Gabriel borrowed Tyrone’s car – a Ford Prefect – to drive to Oxford. Or rather he hired it. Tyrone asked for £5, because of the potential ‘wear and tear’, he said. ‘Oh, yes, and you might want to top up the tank. Bit low on petrol.’
Hugh Summerbee’s friend at the Oxford Mail was their crime reporter, a genial man called Tony Building, with a very elaborate comb-over failing to conceal most of his bald pate. He took Gabriel down to the newspaper’s archive and they found the huge black folders that contained all the 1936 issues.
They flipped through, looking for the date – and there it was: ‘FATAL FIRE AT YEOMANSWOOD FARM’. Gabriel read on, mesmerized, learning about his own ‘miraculous’ survival and the tragic death of widow Rosalind Dax (36), mother of two. The key detail was in the third paragraph. ‘Fire engines from the local fire brigades of Witney, Woodstock, Abingdon and Oxford attended the conflagration.’ Gabriel noted them down. Oxford was the biggest, surely. That’s where he should enquire to see if any retired firemen still remembered the fire at Yeomanswood Farm.
He drove on to Newbridge in sombre mood. The reality of the account in the Oxford Mail had triggered the few memories he had of that awful trauma – memory-flashes of his moon night light, of a beam falling, the trilling bells of the fire engines, the orange flames blending and weaving in the fish pond. He had a strong suspicion he would need a Seconal or two to see him through the night.
There were pubs at both ends of the eponymous thirteenth-century bridge that crossed the Thames at Newbridge. He had a half-pint of shandy in one and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich and another half-pint in the other. He noted the confluence of the Windrush with the Thames – a modest river at this stage of its journey to London, the estuary and the sea, and reckoned he had his first chapter of Rivers securely conceived. Newbridge was perfect, both idiosyncratic and representative, and that knowledge improved his mood, seeing the concept behind the book as entirely feasible. He finished his sandwich, ordered a third half-pint of shandy and consulted his map. He had to go back to the site, he realized, now that he was so close; he had to see what had become of Yeomanswood Farm and his past.
His memories of Eastwell Marsh bore little resemblance to the village as it now stood. The post office and its shop had gone and there was a small Spar supermarket and a launderette where it had once been. The village had expanded with a mass of new council housing on the road to Standlake. He drove up the lane that led to Yeomanswood and parked his car by a carved wooden sign that said ‘Sutton Court’.
He lit a cigarette and walked through an ornate cast-iron entrance, as if into a mediaeval demesne; the gates were swung wide, and somehow he expected his past and his childhood to come rushing at him like a tidal wave. But, instead, he found a grouping of six large late-1930s Tudorbethan houses with all the faux half-timbering, mullion windows and polygonal chimneys of the genre, carefully positioned to afford maximum privacy, with large ramps of lawn leading to the front doors and substantial gardens behind. Each house had a double garage and there were different conifers planted here and there, now mature, almost a quarter of a century on. Very bourgeois, very desirable. The parked cars that were visible were Rovers and Armstrong Siddeleys, Jaguars and Wolseleys. He saw a bright red Austin-Healey Sprite. There was a paddock with some jumps, ponies grazing. The good life, Oxfordshire style. Not a trace remained of his childhood home.
He threw away his cigarette and walked back to Tyrone’s car. He wasn’t cast down, he told himself, he was reassured, if only because there was nothing here, in ‘Sutton Court’, to haunt him, no traces – no sturdy tree he’d climbed, no flower-badged meadow where he’d wandered with his butterfly net, no gargling brook where he’d fished for tiddlers. The fire that had consumed Yeomanswood Farm had in its way done a more thorough job than it could have imagined: it had created a new landscape, a new world – one that had nothing to do with him. No anamnesis here.
