Turquoiselle Page 6

  “And she doesn’t want to come back here yet,” His voice was entirely neutral.

  “I’m sorry.” Maggie had taken the neutrality as self-controlled disappointment. Or understandable relief? “I’m sorry, but no, she doesn’t. I’ll keep you posted, yes?”

  “All right. So long as you can manage.” She could, she was aware she could, and would. He was quite safe to fake concern.

  “You know you can trust me, Car.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “I’ll take great care of her. Honestly, don’t worry. It’s just a phase. She is my kid, after all, isn’t she?”

  “Thank you, Maggie.”

  “And – the other thing... You didn’t. I apologise. Of course you didn’t. That’s not you, Car.”

  “No.”

  She stood up.

  “I’d better get off. I’m – well, I’m meeting someone at a little restaurant over towards the town. It’s OK. Donna’s staying in with the TV, some wine and a couple of shows she likes and there’s a great takeaway place...”

  He decided abruptly, not having really considered it before, that Maggie too had become a fraction jaded with Donna.

  They said goodbye at the door and she planted her accustomed light press-kiss on his right cheek. She smelled of health and hygiene and Chanel No. 5. The Chevrolet started up immediately, eager to run, and vanished like a red wave around the bend of the red-leafed lane.

  Six

  Once the sun set, Carver took his position in the spare room.

  Downstairs he had switched on the porch light, but not the security. The nearest (distant) streetlamp was out, and so would stay out. The rest of the house, upstairs included, he also left to the darkness. Like a conscientious or impoverished light-saving citizen. Or like Donna, when she was trying to make some point about his latecomings.

  He sat near the window in the upright chair that was comfortable enough not to cause unnecessary movement, unrelaxing enough it did not tempt sleep.

  He had set a sandwich and a flask of coffee on the small table next to him, and a couple of other things that might prove helpful.

  Afterglow and English dusk filled the woods beyond the garden wall. In the distance, about two hundred and fifty metres off along the lane, he could, when they came on, make out the narrow dim illuminations of Robby Johnston’s cottage. By ten or earlier they would be dead again, although now and then, much later, one or two might reappear, generally starting in the upstairs bedroom. This indicated one of Robby J’s insomniac nights, as he called them, when he sat up reading, and occasionally meandered downstairs for tea or a whisky. He did not employ lighting to visit the lavatory.

  Carver would prefer tonight was not an insomniac for Robby. Everything needed to be back as dark as it could be, so nothing out in the woods might be disturbed.

  As the evening ebbed he heard bell-ringing from the old church at the far end of the village. This did not, any more, happen very often. The village had complained, it seemed, about the noise. Later he heard two or three people, and next saw them, as they negotiated the lane, headed doubtless for The Bell pub. Somewhere around midnight they would return by the same route, unless there was a lock-in, which could last until sunrise, if everybody was in the mood.

  Really, Carver knew he had set up his sentry post very early. But who could predict what preliminaries might go on, or if they did not, that too could be an indication.

  Time passed, now fast, now slow, relative to itself, or perhaps to him.

  Johnston’s lights came on late, at half past six. (He had been out? Or asleep.)

  Every hour Carver got up and went to check from the windows of the other upstairs areas, the main bedroom and en suite and the ‘playroom’ to the front; the second bathroom, and the annexe at the opposite side by the boiler cupboard, to the rear.

  Nothing unusual was apparent. No car drove through the lane, as rarely they did. When he opened the bathroom windows about nine, the air was much dryer and more cold. There was a smell of woodsmoke from some banked bonfire, and the indefinable odour of dying leaves.

  He ate half the sandwich.

  He gave no thought to Maggie, and none to Donna. She especially was now irrelevant, as so often, legitimate only though her absence. He did not even think of Silvia Dusa, or even of Latham in the room with the vodka and the recording of voices, Carver’s saying what he had not said at all.

  Between eleven and a quarter to midnight the vocal people who had gone to the pub waltzed back with a torch flickering like a giant firefly, laughing and careless, and disappeared into the farthernesses of night.

  Johnston’s lights were all out again for now. There would be no moon. And anyway the sky was once more overcast, only the splintery rhinestone of Jupiter intermittently visible. The vague lit aura of the village, also detectible from here, had sunk too, as it did not always do as yet. Though the shed, of course... a faint sheen, the reflection on the birches, nearly not there at all.

  At twenty-five minutes past one he began to use the night glasses. He had kept them from a stint a year ago, as other Mantik employees often did. They were not very strong, the I/R by now not up to much. He detected a fox, however, trotting between the trees, a vaporous incoherent green, and a while after a rabbit or big rodent sprang through like a firework. It was 2 a.m.

  Carver lowered the glasses, and closed his eyes for a scatter of seconds to clear them.

  When he looked again, firstly without the visual aid, a figure, clearly man-shaped, was standing about fifteen paces outside the wall of his garden.

  Just as Robby J had had it, Carver too was not sure which way the figure was facing. It seemed to have no face, nor any back or front. Even scanning it again through the erratic I/R the impression, if now haloed green, was of something less than human, featureless, yet having a head, two long legs and two long arms and a long thin torso, and all of these sheathed in a liquid rubber of blackness.

  With extreme care Carver put down the glasses, and edged closer to the side of the window.

  The faceless figure had not seemed to arrive, not even to evolve – as some CGI contrivance might have in a supernatural movie... It was not there, then it was.

  And it did not stir.

  He waited, not taking his eyes off it, preferring them now to the fluctuating glasses. And minutes ticked themselves antlike along his watch, more than audible in the unbreathing quiet. The shape was male, Carver decided. But that was all. It had no giveaways, offered no movement, was like some construct approximating a man – that in one or two seconds had slotted itself through from nowhere, and was now fixed forever.

  Out along the lane a pair of cats began a yowling battle song. Carver did not change position or lose concentration. Did not blink, and so saw the figure after all come slowly and jerkily alive. Like a toy, whose faulty mechanism had already abruptly re-engaged, it pivoted, and the faceless black blob of its head rotated in the direction of the sound.

  After which it took a single step. Only one. And again, it was gone. Even the glasses could not find it then. Had it dropped, smeared itself flat to the earth? Had it passed behind a solid partition which had only seemed the openwork patches of trees and shadow, but which could not be, so thoroughly did they now conceal?

  Carver did not move.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  The cats shrieked a crescendo and ceased their argument.

  When next he looked at his watch it was two forty-three.

  At two forty-five a light burst inside Johnston’s upper window, and soon struck the lower ones, like a thrown egg of fire. Bits of the fire-yolk dripped out also on to the woods. They revealed nothing significant.

  When presently Carver checked from the rest of the house windows, back and front, up and down, nothing at all seemed about.

  A motorbike snarled in the distance. But as a getaway vehicle it would be attention-seeking and unlikely. And he had not heard it before.

  Around an hour after, all
the lights went off again in Johnston’s cottage. The theatre curtain had come down on the scene. Carver could feel this: instinct or training, either, both.

  Despite that he watched until the sky began to pale and push higher, before he left the window, finished the coffee, and lay down on the bed.

  He would sleep one hour. Then take a walk in the woods.

  Seven

  After showering, he checked the games key Icon of his iPhone. It was routine to do so. Clue Up, it read, One down. And at another touch: Any Judge’s Main Verdict. Holding steady on Dusa then, the same letter-numerals. He touched the screen again, for Today’s Lucky Stone. It was Emerald. The alert had heightened, from blue to green. Nothing had come up on the radio, TV or other legitimate news outlets, which he had also been checking fairly regularly. This afternoon his new schedule began, and he was due back in Trench Street around 9 a.m. tomorrow. He considered contacting Latham now. But if Latham had decided there should be contact, it would probably have happened, and had not. And first thing this morning, even before going out, Carver had again run through the existing files on his computer, particularly the file on The Third Scar. Everything was there, nothing seemed altered or obscured, in any way. He retained therefore his permit, and could study and work on them as normal. Which implied he was not, then, (was he?) suspect.

  Carver went down to the kitchen and put bacon in the steel pan to fry. His body was hungry and the smell pleased it, although his mind moved uneasily elsewhere.

  The woods, an hour and a half after dawn, had been empty of anything unusual, let alone informative. He had not really anticipated much else. The image of the black-camouflaged man, however odd it had appeared, had been real, concrete, a fact. Its behaviour, its apparent tricks of visibility and vanishment might even be due to some coincidental, quirky but logical happenstance. For could it – he – have been certain anyway he was under surveillance? The intruder was most probably a nobody up to nothing at all.

  But should Carver inform Latham of the man in the woods?

  It seemed more prudent, and less edgy, to tell Latham in person tomorrow.

  Carver would need though to drop in on Robby J, say that he had kept an eye out, and had noted somebody around. But Carver thought he would add the man was most likely a wildlife-spotter. (Maybe he even was.) The main thing in any case was to deter Johnston from calling in the police, which could cause muddle, some kind of cluttering up, either of the perfectly innocuous – that might then turn resentful (the wildlife-fan becoming nasty and summoning his mates once the law had gone) – or, if the source were other, untidy any genuine evidence.

  Carver knew, despite the untampered-with files, despite his being let go, free it seemed as air after Latham had played him the surreal recording, that all curious follow-up events could well have their source in Mantik.

  Without quite being shown it at first, a leash might be on Carver now. Loose fitting enough it felt he could do as he wanted. Yet just now and then, almost to be glimpsed from the corners of his eyes, felt as it tapped, gentle, noose–like, on his neck.

  Going back through the wooded lane, heading for Johnston’s cottage about 10 a.m., Carver found automatically he still scanned from side to side. But of course there was nothing, as there had been nothing valid detectable by him during his initial search. If available, he would have found it then. Instead he had noted the slight disturbance created by animals and birds, and further along one of the pub returnees, who had piddled up a tree then lost his footing and broken some branches, leaving a thread from trousers or jacket snagged there. The ground, aside from the area by the peed-on tree, was unmoist, and had taken no imprint of footware. Leaves were down everywhere also, covering and artistically blending. Even where the male figure had stood immobile for such a long while, over twenty-five minutes, no notable impression marked the earth. Nor had he broken a single twig. Not even with that one impressive step that sequentially and utterly hid him.

  Robby J was up and making tea in his kitchen.

  “Hi, Car. Can I offer you some of this disgusting brew? No. Wise choice. Christ knows what they put in these T-bags now. Dung and senna pods from the taste.”

  Carver relayed the edited version of last night’s vigil, and the verdict (hardly ‘Any Judge’s Main’ one) of an obsessive badger-botherer.

  “Well,” said Robby, “it could be, could be. I heard him about again last night, you know. Woke me, the devil, I was having one of my good nights, curled up a-snore in my cosy roost. Hadn’t even had to visit the lats. And then crash-blunder right under my bedroom window. Just before three, when I focussed on the clock.” (This conformed with the cottage lights having gone on at two forty–five, as did Robby J’s next statement.) “Put all the lights on, no messing. Didn’t like the sound of it, all that thumping about, as if he was off his head on drugs, and/or meant to wake everybody up. I tell you, I wouldn’t have minded a shotgun and the US shooter culture to go with it. But you know what it’s like now, if some burglar pillock breaks in and stabs you, he can sue you for snapping his fucking blade on your ribs.”

  “Did you see him?” Carver asked, having given the complementary acquiescing nod.

  “No. That was the odd part, in its way. The racket the chap made, I expected a grandstand view of him sprawled in the front garden, or what serves for it, throwing his guts up or eating a squirrel or something. But not a sign. And by the time I got downstairs it was Silent Night again.”

  “Nothing looks disturbed outside,” Carver said. It had not.

  “Lucky, I suppose,” said Robby. ‘‘Y’know, I even wondered if it was old Ted from The Bell, Book and Candlegrease. Someone told me he’s started seeing fairies in the woods. Perhaps they were only the old-fashioned kind, the ones with old-school ties. God,” he said sharply, “my leg’s playing up this morning.’ His face settled to a wry amused rancour. “Bloody tea makes it worse, I reckon. Too acid, and I’m addicted to the muck, you know. Ten or twelve mugs a day. Need a whisky to wash it through. Can I tempt you?”

  “Not today, worse luck. Work to do.”

  “Oh well. I’ve got the advantage of ending up a senile old cripple. Something for you young ones to look forward to, in a hundred years. Take care of yourself, Car.”

  The dinner with Latham at the steakhouse off the Maidstone road, had been a ‘decoy’ meal, one of a group, involving altogether eleven Mantik employees. Spread out at various locations, Guildford and Cornwall being the farthest venues, false trails were laid by two separate pairs, one separate foursome, and three individuals driving and eating alone. Carver certainly had no idea what strategic meeting he and Latham, not to mention the rest, had been drawing attention away from. Obviously, there had been similar outings in the past.

  This afternoon Carver had to undertake a drive, ultimately heading into Tunbridge Wells. This also was a decoy run, but was freelance in as much as he might stop as and when he wanted, if at least twice. The car he must use he would find in a by-lane near Lynchoak. Returning, there would be a ‘cab’ at Tenterden.

  The indication was that if any ‘interest’ were shown in him, he should expect it in the vicinity of Tunbridge Wells. He did not need to try to lose it, of course, and later the ‘cab’ driver could slough anything that still clung on.

  Carver drove to Lynchoak, stowed his car, and was in the new vehicle heading south-west by around five minutes to two. Within six more minutes, long before any mooted feasible connection, he was very sure a tail had already attached itself.

  It was a shabby Merc, cadaverous grey in colour.

  This car seemed to make so little pretence it was not following him that Carver began to wonder if it was not. It moved behind him along the curving side roads he had chosen, keeping a barely civilised distance between them. Until, turning on to a broader thoroughfare, he saw he had lost it. Perhaps naively he continued to think this until it reappeared, emerging with no warning from a side-turning, as if it had selected a parallel path solely in order – p
layfully – to surprise him.

  From then on, the Merc continued to favour this type of manoeuvre. It would indiscreetly hug him, then slip aside and vanish for miles – before abruptly resurfacing out of some often unexpected turning or lay-by, so displaying an enviable SatNav, or personal acquaintance with the map of local roads. Carver himself kept doggedly on, as if he was either too dumb to have noticed, or too stoical to struggle. He had attracted the tail and might as well keep it busy.

  He stopped the first time by driving into the small car park of a pub. The Merc sailed by and vanished at a twist of the lane. But Carver was ninety-five percent convinced once he had drunk the non-alcoholic lager, got back in his car and set off again, the Merc would rejoin him, which indeed it did, at a handy T-junction, shambling out on to the road with bumpy clumsy enthusiasm.

  There seemed to be only the driver in the vehicle. He was blank-faced and nondescript, dressed in some sort of woolly jumper, death-grey to match the car.

  They played this match all that short late-year afternoon, driving between fields, along narrow, bad, lumpy tracks, past leaning old barns and ruined fences. Now and then Carver gave them a turn on a trim motorway. He also stopped twice more before they reached Tunbridge Wells, once at another pub, and once at a farm shop, which involved a gravelled hiccupping jolt of a pathway, on to which the Merc did not even attempt to propel itself.

  Day was on its last legs in the sky by the time they got into Tunbridge proper.

  Carver parked near the Royal Ash Tree Restaurant, and getting out, found the Merc had bumbled off again.

  He idled about for an hour or so, traipsing through the Pantiles, and from force of habit buying a silver-black and onyx necklace for Donna, in a pillared burrow with bulging windows.

  By then the dark had opened up and the lighted shops were beginning to close. ‘There was no more sign of the Merc, or the woolly-jumpered driver.