'I've heard nothing from Alan since he sent me the letter for you. And that was only a few words on a covering note.'
'He didn't get everything he wanted in Jersey, Mrs Wisby. Small matter of a missing inscription.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Maybe not. But he will. Tell him I've got the missing pages.' A lie designed to smoke out Wisby counted as a white one in Umber's book. 'He can't do anything without them.'
'Tell him yourself. You're more likely to get the chance than I am. And you can give him a message from me if you do. He's supposed to be retired, for Christ's sake. I'm fed up having to explain to his clients that his freelance activities have nothing to do with me. He seems to be doing more work now than when he was supposed to be in charge of the business. First there was that pensioned-off policeman. Then you. And then... what's his name?' She grabbed a scrap of paper from the nearest desk and squinted at it. 'Nevinson.'
'What?'
'Know him, do you?'
'Percy Nevinson?'
'He didn't give me a Christian name and I didn't ask for one. But he's been on several times this week.' She held out the note for Umber to read. He assumed it had been written by the secretary for Monica's attention.
Mr Nevinson called again for Mr Wisby. Please call with any news. 01672-799332.
'Mind if I use your phone?'
'Haven't you got one of your own?'
'No. I lost my mobile on your ex-husband's boat, as a matter of fact. I'll pay you for the call if it's such a big deal.'
Monica looked as if she wanted to refuse on principle but was unsure what the principle might be. 'Oh, be my fucking guest, then,' she said with a toss of the head.
Umber picked up the telephone and dialled. There was a distant, old-fashioned ringing tone. Then Abigail Nevinson answered.
'Miss Nevinson? This is David Umber.'
'Mr Umber. I was just thinking about you.'
'You were? Why?'
'Oh, it doesn't matter. What can I do for you?'
'Is Percy there?'
'No. Percy, er... Well... He's gone away. To one of his... ufological conferences.'
'Where's it being held?'
'I'm... not sure.'
'How would you get in touch with him in an emergency?'
'It would be difficult. I'd... have to wait for him to contact me.'
'Is that normal when he goes to one of these things?'
'Well... No. Not really. It's a little... concerning, I have to admit.'
'When did he leave?'
'Early this morning. Before I was up.'
'And when's he due back?'
'I'm not sure. I imagine it's just a weekend event, though. They normally are. Unless...'
'What?'
'I've just read about Jeremy Hall in the paper, Mr Umber. I suppose you know what's happened.'
'Yes.'
'You don't think Percy's trip... has anything to do with that, do you?'
Umber did think so. In fact, he felt certain of it, though what dealings Nevinson might have had with Wisby were a mystery to him. That applied to a good deal else as well. Every step he took led him further into a labyrinth of lies. For every one he nailed there was another waiting to deceive him.
* * *
From Blackfriars Road he walked aimlessly towards Tate Modern, pausing amidst the ambling tourists on the Millennium Bridge to stare downriver and wrestle in his mind with the confusions and contradictions that threatened to swamp him. Nevinson had gone to Jersey. Umber's every instinct told him so. The Halls and the Questreds were there and so were the clues to what had driven Jeremy Hall to suicide. Maybe Wisby had gone back there as well. And maybe Umber should follow. But what could he accomplish there? What could he hope to achieve? There was still no trail he could follow that promised to lead him to the truth.
* * *
Umber ended up walking most of the way back to Hampstead. Physical exhaustion seemed to be the only brake on the enervating whirl of his thoughts. He took a decision of sorts during the long trudge through Finsbury and Camden Town. It involved misleading Claire and Alice. But he reckoned he would be doing them a favour -- just about the only favour he had in his gift.
* * *
They had already returned from Hampshire when he reached 22 Willow Hill, his arrival time handily consistent with the studious hours he had supposedly spent in the British Library. He expected to be told they had learned nothing from the Wilkinsons. The assumption had been factored into his decision. But it was an assumption that was to be rapidly confounded.
'Alice is busy upstairs on her computer,' Claire said as she let him in and led the way towards the kitchen. 'We got back half an hour ago.'
'Empty-handed?'
'No.' She glanced over her shoulder at him. 'We found something all right, David.'
He recognized the object as soon as he saw it lying on the kitchen table: a spiral-bound crimson-covered scrapbook. 'My God,' he said. 'I never thought I'd see that again.'
Sally had amassed a collection of newspaper cuttings relating to Miranda Hall's murder and Tamsin Hall's presumed murder. Triggered by Radd's out-of-the-blue confession nine years after the event, she had bought a scrapbook and pasted the cuttings into it, along with new ones reporting Radd's trial. Umber had urged her to throw them away, but that had only fired her determination to preserve them. The book was a testament to her belief that 'Somebody has to keep a proper record in case they fiddle with the facts and hope we won't notice'. It was around then that Umber had begun to understand the intractability of her plight. Time had hardened Sally's wounds, not healed them.
'You've looked through it?' Umber asked, laying his hand lightly on the cover.
'Yes', said Claire from behind him.
'Morbid reading, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'And Sally did read it. All too often.'
'Unlike her parents, then. I don't think they'd ever brought themselves to open it.'
'No?'
'Not her mother, anyway. Reg Wilkinson had a stroke the year after Sally died. He's virtually mute, so there's no way to tell what he might or might not have made of it.'
'And Peggy?'
'She's fit and well. Sent you her love.'
Umber swallowed hard. 'Did she?'
'She was happy to let us borrow the scrapbook if it helped to make any sense of Sally's death.'
'Can't see how it could do that. There's nothing in these cuttings we don't already know.'
'That's not strictly true, David. Turn to the back of the book.'
Umber opened the book at the last page, which, like several before it, was blank. A sheet of paper had been slipped inside the cover: a page torn out of a glossy magazine. Under the heading INSIDE STORY was an assortment of paparazzo-snapped celebrities, most of whose names registered, if only dimly, in Umber's consciousness. It was a page from
Hello!,
of course. That, he knew at once, was the point.
'As soon as I saw it I remembered,' said Claire. 'When I had that stupid row with Sally in the coffee-shop the day she died and she threw the magazine at me. You know? I told you about it.'
'Yes?' He looked round and frowned at her.
'I'd forgotten, until I saw that. Sally tore a page out of the magazine
before
she threw it at me.'
'And this is it?'
'Has to be.'
'But what does it mean?'
'It means she saw something significant in a month-old copy of
Hello!
she was looking at in my waiting room. That's why she walked out. Because what she saw made a counselling session with me ... suddenly irrelevant.'
Umber looked at the page again and turned it over. More INSIDE STORY zoom-lensed pictures of movie stars out shopping in sunglasses and baseball caps or sunbathing in cellulite-revealing swimsuits. 'I don't get it,' he said. 'What's
significant
about any of this?'
Claire flipped the page back over. 'There,' she said, pointing to a spread of three photographs of what looked to be a friendly game of mixed-doubles tennis on a red-clay court featuring an actor and actress Umber had never heard of on one side of the net and a tennis player he
had
heard of, plus girlfriend, on the other. According to the captions, the actor and actress were taking a break from promoting their latest blockbuster at the Cannes Film Festival. The bronzed, honed, raven-haired tennis star entertaining them on a local court was Monaco-based Michel Tinaud, of whom great things were expected at the forthcoming French Open. 'He's why Sally went to Wimbledon that week,' Claire continued. 'Remember what she said to Alice? "I don't need a ticket." Don't you see? She wasn't going to watch tennis. She was going to speak to a tennis player.'
'Why?' Umber already knew the answer, but the question was apt nonetheless. He knew. But he did not understand.
'It has to be the girlfriend,' said Claire.
And so it did. Unnamed by
Hello!
presumably because unidentified, Tinaud's playing companion was dressed in a red T-shirt and white tennis skirt. She had long fair hair tied in a ponytail and featured in only one picture, biting her lower lip and wrinkling her brow in concentration as she waited to receive service.
'Recognize the expression?' Claire slipped the
Hello!
cutting out onto the table, then turned to a page nearer the front of the scrapbook, where one of the Halls' photographs of Tamsin had been reproduced in a newspaper a few days after her abduction. The two-year-old Tamsin was wrinkling her brow at the camera and biting her lower lip.
'It's a common gesture,' Umber murmured. 'It doesn't mean --'
'Sally saw something. Probably more than just the expression. She was the girl's nanny. She knew her as closely as her mother did. She knew her well enough to recognize the child in the woman. The girl on the tennis court looks about twenty to me. What do you think?'
'Probably.'
'The right age.'
'Like thousands of others.'
'But
not
like thousands of others -- in some way that convinced Sally she'd found her.'
'You can't be sure.'
'Sally was sure.'
'Was she?' Umber knew the answer to his question better than Claire could hope to. He was playing for time -- the time he needed to think. Because he had seen something too. Not a tantalizing resemblance to a missing, presumed-dead two-year-old girl. But an unmistakable similarity to someone he had met only recently. The hair was a different colour, worn in a different style. The clothes were a bizarre contrast. The environment was alien to her. But there was absolutely no doubt in Umber's mind. Michel Tinaud's girlfriend ... was Chantelle.
The decision Umber had taken was, in the event, merely reinforced by what Claire had shown him. Amid his general bemusement, he held on to the conviction that the only way he could atone for endangering innocents and bystanders and blameless friends alike was to ensure that he did not lead any of them further down a road whose end he could not foresee. He slipped the
Hello!
page back into the scrapbook and closed it. As he turned towards Claire, he saw Alice walk in through the door behind her.
'You look like you've seen a ghost,' she said, cocking her head at him. 'Think you have?'
'Maybe.'
'We reckon Sally was more certain.'
'So Claire tells me.'
'I've just been catching the latest tennis news on the Web. Tinaud's career isn't what it was in 'ninety-nine. He's just gone out of the Nasdaq Open in Miami in the first round.'
'Oh yes?'
'The next big tournament in the calendar is the Monte Carlo Masters. Home ground for Tinaud. So, I guess he'll already be back there.'
'And you're going to suggest we go see him?'
'I was sceptical about this whole thing, David. You know that. But I'm convinced now. Sally went to Wimbledon the day before she died to confront that man. We've got to find out what happened.'
'Do you agree?' Umber looked at Claire.
'It's the obvious next step. The
only
next step. We have to go.'
'No,' he said quietly.
'What?'
'I thought it all through while you were down in Hampshire. Sally's dead. We can't bring her back to life. All we'll do by chasing after answers to questions no-one's forcing us to ask is to put ourselves in unnecessary danger. We have to give it up.'
'You don't believe that.'
'I do. I'm taking your option one, Claire. I'm going back to Prague. I'm bowing out.'
'You can't.'
'I can. And I will. What's more, I advise you to follow my example.'
'What about George Sharp?'
'I'm not responsible for what happens to George. He dragged
me
into this. He'll have to drag
himself
out.'