When the music comes it’s light and airy, Mozart, and I drop into an armchair. My father kicks off his shoes and stretches out on the sofa. Mother never saw this place, he bought it after she died, but so much of what’s here, the furniture and paintings, even the clutter on the mantelpiece, is hers. And the music. But other items, like the burgundy curtains and lampshades, she would never have chosen. These recent additions are the handiwork of Mary Needham. But they don’t jar; I don’t find their presence offensive. My father, I think, has been more than lucky in his women.
‘I had a message from your Inspector.’
I look over. He’s lying on the sofa, eyes closed.
‘Ryan?’
'That’s the one.’ The music dances up and down the scales. ‘Wants to see me apparently. I’m busy tomorrow, so he can wait till Thursday.’ He turns his head and opens his eyes. ‘Raef, the other night, you mentioned when you came to see me about Daniel.’ We look at one another, but I say nothing. ‘I think I might have given you the wrong impression. I never told anyone.’
He never told anyone? He never did what I, at the time, intended him to do? I ask him now, tentatively, what he means.
‘I was going to speak with Daniel myself. Talk some sense into him. After . . .’ He waves a hand. ‘Well, I never got the chance.’
Is he saying what I think he is saying?
‘You didn’t tell Charles?’
‘No-one, Raef.’
My head reels. If he told no-one, my lie couldn’t have had the fatal consequence I believed. Whitehall and Westminster never knew.
‘I told you that Daniel was going public about the Odin deal, and you didn’t pass that on?’
He turns his head. ‘I wanted to speak with him myself first.’
‘But what? He was murdered before you had the chance?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Raef, I promised you that Odin was strictly between you and me. That still holds.’
I nod, lightheaded, drunk with the sensation of innocence. It wasn’t us. It wasn’t me. Guilty of an evil intent, yes, but an intent that had no consequence. I am innocent. I am not responsible for Daniel Stewart’s death. The wave of elation buoys me upward, and for the first time in a week I feel free, gliding into sunlight. But then as fast as it has risen, the wave breaks. If I’m not responsible for Daniel’s death, if Odin had nothing to do with the murder, if Whitehall and Westminster played no part in it; if I, thank God, didn’t kill him — who did?
WEDNESDAY
1
T
he early years of my marriage were good. We lived in Kensington then; Theresa worked at a charity just round the comer from our flat. We had wealth, youth, good health, it wasn’t hard to be happy and we were; but now all that sometimes seems like an alternative reality — not a life that was, but one that might have been. Theresa putting everyone at ease during our first big dinner party; the pair of us flying to Venice one weekend to see a Tintoretto exhibition; skiing trips to the States and fishing in Scotland, we stinted ourselves nothing. And I worked too, but I was learning more than doing, ambition spinning like a flywheel disconnected. We seemed to have so much time for each other but did we ever believe we could go on like that for ever? Perhaps in the unreflective optimism of our youth, we really did.
I remember one morning during a fishing trip up to the Borders, we rose before the rest of the party and climbed the hill behind the lodge. How long ago must it be? We emerged from the mist, sat on the grey rocks of the hilltop and watched the sun burn the mist to a thin haze. Theresa and me, and no sign of life for miles except a hawk circling slowly down the valley. Beautiful, the treeless hills and the clear sky; and I put my arms around my wife and kissed her. When we returned to the lodge the others had already left for the river, so we climbed into bed and made love and slept, and made love again. Happiness. That’s what seems so unbelievable now, the pure joy.
And I just can’t shake off those times, I can’t shed them like a skin outgrown, hard though I’ve tried. If I close my eyes even now I can still hear her breathing beside me, pressing close to me on a bed in the Borders.
Don’t get up. Hold me, she said.
How long ago? Fourteen years? Lying there in the quiet clear morning, we seemed complete. Not fourteen years but a lifetime. Lying there on a bed in the Borders, my wife said that she loved me.
‘Mr Carlton?’ The car has stopped, my driver has opened the door, and now he peers in at me curiously. It’s still dark outside. ‘We're here,’ he says.
Here. Kensington. We have stopped outside Daniel’s house. Bracing myself, I get out, mount the steps and ring the bell. While I wait, I turn my collar up against the cold.
After leaving my father last night I returned home to find a message from Celia: she sounded worried, so I rang straight back. Apparently Daniel’s life insurers won’t be paying out on his policy until they receive a full coroner's report. I assured her it was just standard practice, but God knows if I’m right. Her other concern is the will. She has learnt from the lawyers that Daniel was amending it, but he left them no signed codicil. As an executor, a friend, and probably the only person she can turn to, I have been asked to come and search his study.
‘The boys are still asleep,’ she whispers as we go down the corridor. She asks if I've had breakfast, but I tell her not to bother, that I don't have the time. When we get to Daniel’s study she opens the door and steps back. ‘I appreciate this Raef,’ she says.
To me, the man who wanted her husband dead. She says that she’d rather not go in there. ‘Do you mind if I leave you to it?’
‘No. I’ll call if I find anything.’
‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’
The study isn’t large: one book-lined wall, a big oak desk, a cabinet by the bay window, and an armchair that Daniel salvaged from the attic at Boddington. Behind the door there’s a pile of old magazines. The room has the same air of friendly disorder as his office, but here I feel like an intruder. This is where Daniel conducted the business of his family.
After a quick circuit of the room, I sit behind his desk and work my way through the unlocked drawers. Here, instead of office business, there are credit card statements, council tax demands, electricity and water bills: the usual trail of paperwork that stretches behind every modern life like the wake from a runaway boat. Bills and receipts, letters from solicitors, one from the RSPCA thanking the Stewart family for their donation. But no codicil. No new will.
In the bottom drawer, I find a dictaphone. I hit the rewind button and the machine whirs for a while. When it stops, I hit play. Daniel’s voice. Nothing dramatic, just a reminder to himself of a phone call he has to make. It catches me raw. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a film of tears forms in my eyes, and I shake my head.
‘What are you doing?’
I look up. Martin, my godson. He’s standing at the door, in his pyjamas, his eyes fixed on the dictaphone. I say his name and he comes and stands by the desk. He asks it again. ‘What are you doing?’
I flick off the dictaphone. Martin, at last, looks at me. I ask after his younger brother.
‘He’s asleep.’
‘Your mother’s in the kitchen.’
He makes no move to go. He is ten years old, but he’s always seemed quieter and wiser than his years. I could make a joke of it, spin him around and send him on his way. But somehow, with Martin, that doesn’t seem appropriate. Feeling rather awkward now, I restart my search beneath his clear-eyed gaze.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Your mother wants me to find some papers. I won’t be long.’
He comes round the desk and stands beside me. He smells of scented soap, a child’s smell that reminds me of Annie.
‘What do they look like?’
‘The papers?’
He nods.
‘I’m not sure, Martin. There’ll be some signatures on them.’
‘Dad’s signature?’
I glance up to find him regarding me quizzically.
Yes, I tell him. Probably.
Then I close the last drawer, my first cursory pass over the desk complete. Martin steps out of my way as I cross to the cabinet. It has a slatted rolling door which I pull at. Locked. And there were no loose keys in the desk.
Martin says, ‘Are they in there?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
When I turn, he’s climbing onto the desk. He stands and reaches up to a high bookshelf then he fumbles between the books. He finds what he wants, then climbs down and comes and presents me with it: a bright silver key.
The key fits the cabinet. Inside there are three shelves, loose papers on two of them and a heavy folder on the third. The loose papers are just more of what I’ve seen in Daniel’s desk; but opening the folder I see at once that I’ve found what I’m after. Private documents: the first page is Daniel’s birth certificate, and the next is his marriage licence.
‘Is that them?’
I tell Martin yes, that I think so.
He returns the key to its hiding place while I flip quickly through the file. The will is almost certainly here, but I can’t find it immediately.
‘Mum says you might come and see us,’ Martin says, sliding from the desk. ‘Down at school.’
‘If you want me to.’
He considers this, but doesn’t seem to think it warrants an answer.
‘I’ve got to go now, Martin.’
Tucking the folder beneath my arm, I pause to squeeze my godson’s bony shoulder as I pass from the study.
Out in the kitchen, Celia gives the folder a quick glance. She has bacon frying in the pan.
‘I have to go.’
She looks disappointed. What she wants, I know, is to talk about Daniel. And I, most definitely, do not.
‘Well, maybe after you’ve found the will,’ she says.
After I have found it? I’d intended to leave the folder with her now, duty done. But I bite my tongue. Like Martin, she trusts me to help.
‘Bring Theresa,’ she says, glancing over her shoulder. ‘For supper? Maybe next week?’
‘Martin’s up. He saw me in the study.’
She puts two plates in the warmer. ‘He’s a good kid,’ she says.
I hitch the folder beneath my arm again and start to say goodbye, but she breaks in over the top of me. ‘Did you know Daniel and I talked about a divorce?’
My heart sinks. I really don’t want to hear this.
‘You didn’t, did you?’ She sits, and the strange smile on her face starts to tremble. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘Celia—’
‘All those tarts, and I stay with him. Then he turns round and tells me we should start thinking about a divorce.’
Daniel asked her? Have I heard that right?
‘Do you think that was fair? Was that fair, Raef?’
I have heard it right. I ask her, Why?
‘He wouldn’t say.’
‘No reason?’
‘Reasons?’ She opens her hands despairingly. ‘He didn’t want to do this, he didn’t like the way I did that. Pick, pick. All rubbish. He knew it was rubbish too. He just didn’t want to tell me at first.’ Her hands drop to the table with a thump. She swears, something she never does. ‘Christ, what does it matter now?’
A wise man would let it rest here. She needed to tell someone, she has told me, and that should be the end of it. Would be the end of it, if I wanted it to be.
Instead I ask, ‘When was all this?’
‘The end of last year.’ She toys with the salt shaker. ‘He went cold on the idea lately. Funny, you know. By then he’d just about convinced me I’d be better off without him.’
‘And he didn’t say why?’
‘He did, actually.’ She looks at me. ‘He’d got some tart pregnant. He was going to marry her.' Her eyes blaze. ‘God,’ she says. ‘I really hated him sometimes.’
A numbness creeps over me. If Daniel meant to marry Theresa, what else would he have told Celia? But even in December, Theresa never flung this one in my face. Divorce from me and marriage to Daniel? Was that ever in Theresa's mind?
‘Have you mentioned this to Inspector Ryan?’
‘He knows we were thinking of a divorce.’
‘I mean about why Daniel wanted one. Did you tell Ryan that?’
‘No.’
‘It might be best if you don’t. And I wouldn’t tell him about hating Daniel either. Ryan’s got a suspicious mind.’
The light of understanding dawns, Celia’s lips part in surprise.
On the way down the hall I pass the boys’ bedroom. At first I think they are talking together in there, but then I realize it’s a man’s voice. Daniel. I don’t understand at first. Then I do. Martin has taken the dictaphone from the study. Their father is in the room with them now, dictating a memo.
Stepping outside, I suck in mouthfuls of the cold morning air.
2
T
here has been a change on the nightdesk. Owen and his offsiders have been replaced, but the Dealing Room looks much as it did last Thursday, the whole place in darkness save this one island of light.
‘Much happening?’
‘Dead as a fucking dodo.’ The trader hands me the deal-sheet.
Twenty years ago our Treasury operations were just a necessary support to Corporate Finance, but nowadays the profits generated here often exceed the fees gathered by Vance and his team. The balance of power between the departments at Carltons remains reasonably equal — the constant wrangling between Vance and Daniel was an unhappy testament to that - but at other City institutions the dealing rooms have gained the upper hand, and the corporate culture has inevitably followed, straight into the gutter.
As I read the deal-sheet, the trader repeats, ‘Dead as a fucking dodo.’
My grandfather would not have taken kindly to this kind of thing. My father, too, regards the Dealing Room’s blunt directness with distaste. But taken in measured doses, I can’t say that it troubles me. Five minutes with Darren Lyle can make me feel grubbier than any amount of time out here. Handing back the sheet, my gaze wanders up to the restaurant. Win has come in early, he’s talking to the cleaner.
‘Henry’s lunch,’ the senior dealer informs me. ‘Big Win’s come in early to get ready. Henry’s birthday today. You didn’t get an invite?’