Skydancer (15 page)

The MI5 man chuckled. ‘No, not me. I don't really like women that much. They're all right for just one thing, but when they start expressing opinions, that's
when trouble starts.' He paused reflectively for a few moments. ‘But between you and me, Mr Joyce, it's
people
that I don't really like, people in general. Life could run so smoothly if it wasn't for people fouling it up, don't you think?'

Peter felt further conversation was pointless. Black's remarks were odious and insensitive. So he sat in silence for the rest of the journey, Mary's agonised face filling his thoughts. As they neared his village in the rolling hillocks of Berkshire, he began to dread how he would cope with Belinda.

Black leaned forward to instruct the driver to pull up outside Peter's house.

‘I'd be glad if you would call into my office at Curzon Street tomorrow morning around eleven,' John Black said. ‘There are still a number of security details that need clearing up. All right?'

‘Eleven o'clock? I'll try,' Peter answered coolly.

The driver retrieved his small suitcase from the boot and handed it to him.

‘Goodnight, Mr Joyce,' Black called from inside the car.

The car purred away down the road, and Peter was left with the sounds of the night. It had been raining, and moisture dripped from the branches of the oak tree in his garden.

The clouds prevented the moon from illuminating his path, but that did not matter. Light was streaming on to the drive from the bedroom window. His wife was awake and waiting for him.

BELINDA HAD JUST
reached the foot of the stairs as he opened the front door. She was in her dressing-gown. She gazed at him for less than a second, her face tear-stained and pained; then, without speaking, she turned towards the kitchen and moved away from him.

He deposited his overnight bag on the hall floor, and listened momentarily to the stillness of the house. He could almost sense the presence of his three children upstairs, sleeping in happy ignorance of the conflict about to engulf their parents.

He heard a kettle being filled, and followed his wife into the kitchen, knowing they could not put off the confrontation. Belinda plugged in the kettle and turned to face him with her arms folded.

‘Hello,' he greeted her weakly from the doorway, without even attempting to smile.

She did not reply. She was like a primed bomb of tense emotion, her whole body rigid, not daring to speak for fear the last remnants of self-control would slip from her grasp. Peter watched her uncomfortably, terribly aware that he was the cause of her acute distress. Her skin looked pale grey from lack of sleep, and her straight, streaked hair was uncombed.

‘I'm sorry . . .' Peter whispered, his voice catching in his throat. Pulling out one of the rickety pine chairs from under the kitchen table, he sat down staring vacantly into the corner of the room.

‘It would help . . . if you were to tell me how much
you know, Belinda,' he ventured, hoping to find a way through to her.

‘Huh!' she snapped angrily. ‘Of course it would bloody well help you! Help you to decide how little you need tell me!'

She found herself shouting but quickly moderated her tone, conscious of the sleeping children upstairs.

‘I'll tell you just one thing, Peter, give you just one clue,' she continued, unable to control the trembling in her voice. ‘Yesterday I had a visit from a man calling himself John Black. You know him perhaps?'

Peter nodded.

‘Well this man Black tried to interrogate me. He accused me of conspiracy, treason and theft . . . and of
sexual deviation
.'

Her voice rose to a pitch of indignation.

‘Then he told me tales about you which I refused to believe – until he showed me things to prove it.'

The kettle came to the boil behind her, and she swung round to turn it off, her eyes filling with tears.

‘I'm making some tea. I take it you'd like some?' she offered, struggling to steady her voice.

‘Yes, please.'

Peter took a deep breath before continuing.

‘I expect,' he began carefully, ‘that John Black told you I was having an affair with another woman.'

She stirred the tea noisily.

‘He showed me a letter you wrote her,' Belinda choked on the words. ‘It was full of . . . of love! You cheated, Peter. I trusted you!'

‘Did he tell you that I broke it off three months ago?' Peter asked hurriedly. ‘Did he? Did he tell you that?'

She placed his mug on the table, her face contorted with her effort not to cry. She shook her head.

‘Well, I did. It was all over. I haven't had any contact
with her since then . . . hadn't even heard any news of her until just now.'

His wife leaned back against the dresser, clasping her mug in both hands to keep it steady. She shivered; it was cold in the kitchen. She was not sure she was ready to listen to his pleas of mitigation.

‘What do you mean? What news? What have you heard just now?' she asked cautiously.

Peter pushed away the tea; the feeling of nausea was returning.

‘John Black just told me,' he said haltingly. ‘He told me . . . that she's dead. She killed herself yesterday.' Finally the words spilled out.

‘Oh, Peter!' Belinda gasped. She was shocked, yet deep inside she felt an uncomfortable gladness at the news. ‘How dreadful!'

The distress on his face would normally have evoked her sympathy, but at that moment she could feel none. His grief was for a woman who had been her rival, someone she could only think of as a thief.

‘Why did she kill herself?' Belinda asked after a pause.

Peter stared down at his tea.

‘It wasn't because of you . . . because of your breaking up with her, was it?'

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

‘Oh God,' she whispered, ‘it was, wasn't it?'

She pulled another chair from under the table and sat down opposite him.

Peter drew in a deep breath.

‘I met her . . .' he tried to steady his voice. ‘I met her two years ago. It began as . . . as nothing really. Just a little flirtation. There was no particular reason for it . . . it just happened.'

Peter spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. He badly wanted to avoid a probing analysis of his motives.

Belinda turned her mind back two years trying to guess when he had first been unfaithful to her. Surely she should have noticed something? In bed perhaps? How could he have been making love to another woman and not show it?

‘Two years! For two years you've been deceiving me,' she burst out.

Why had it all happened? There
had
to be a reason for it.

‘It was about two years ago I started campaigning seriously,' she continued more quietly. ‘That's when I got involved at the craft co-operative and began campaigning against your work, wasn't it?'

‘Well . . . it
was
about that time,' he conceded uncomfortably.

‘So this . . . this was you getting your own back, was it?'

‘No! It really didn't begin for any reason that I can explain. It was just – an opportunity that suddenly presented itself; a temptation if you like, and . . . I failed to resist it,' he ended feebly.

He knew his explanation would not satisfy his wife. His fingers fumbled with the peppermill on the table.

‘We didn't meet very often, and I didn't really take it very seriously at first, but . . . Mary became more involved than I did. And in the end . . . I mean she knew I was married – always knew that . . . But in the end she seemed to expect me to leave you and the children and set up home with her – and I wasn't having it. So I told her I couldn't see her anymore.'

Belinda eyed him suspiciously. He must have encouraged the woman to fall in love with him.

‘And now she's dead . . .'

Peter flinched at the accusation in her tone.

‘Yes, she's dead.'

He still found it hard to believe.

‘There was a note. She left a note,' he continued with an effort. ‘In it she said that she was very bitter . . . that she'd wanted to hit back at me in some way. She said she took a page from a secret file at the Defence Ministry, photocopied it and left it on Parliament Hill . . . expecting that it would be found by a passer-by and cause a scandal which would damage my work at Aldermaston.'

‘What?' Belinda gasped with astonishment. ‘So
she
was at the bottom of this security scandal? You mean
she
was the one who's had you running round in circles the past few days? Well, she's certainly got her own back!' She shook her head with a certain admiration at the panic the woman had been able to cause.

For a few moments neither spoke, as Belinda took in the seriousness of what had happened. It was not just that Peter had been unfaithful to her; he was now at the very centre of a national crisis over Skydancer. It would be he who would take the blame for all that had happened. He faced disgrace in his professional life and his career would be in ruins.

His handsome face looked crumpled and crushed. She began to feel a little sorry for him, despite her anger and resentment at what he had done.

‘She must have been really desperate,' Belinda reflected.

‘I still can't believe she did it,' her husband murmured. ‘However much she may have got to hate me, I just can't believe she'd have done this. She was too . . . too professional. This is so out of character – it really is. I mean, it seemed obvious the Soviets would try to steal the Skydancer plans. They're bound to want to know
what we're up to. So when that paper was found on Parliament Hill, it looked exactly like a drop that had gone wrong. That explanation fitted perfectly. But now . . . Mary.'

He frowned as he tried to recall the exact words in the note John Black had given him. There had been something about that note that did not seem quite right, he thought in retrospect. He puzzled about what that was.

‘Is there any doubt?' Belinda asked, curious at the implications. ‘There is, isn't there? I can see it in your eyes?'

Peter was concentrating hard, trying to remember exactly what the letter had said. It was still in his jacket pocket, but he did not want Belinda to read it.

The more he thought about it now, the stranger it all seemed. Mary had been such a stable person. Would she really have taken such drastic revenge on him, and then killed herself? He somehow could not believe it. Or was he just telling himself that to lessen the guilt pressing down on his shoulders?

‘John Black said there was little doubt that she killed herself It seemed to fit the circumstances,' he murmured.

‘John Black?' Belinda spat. ‘You believe that
creature
?'

‘He
is
conducting the investigation,' Peter answered flatly.

‘Well, God help poor old Britain!' she exclaimed. ‘He's an evil man! And, anyway, I thought MI5 were discredited these days. Aren't they all supposed to be Russian moles? How do you know Black didn't murder your . . . friend, to cover up some spy operation being run by Moscow?'

Peter looked at Belinda in astonishment.

Whether meant seriously or not, her words further
stirred the growing doubts in his mind. For the past three days the Defence Ministry's guard had been up, trying to counter the loss of the Skydancer plans. But now, conveniently, it seemed there had been no loss of secrets after all, so they could all relax again. It was very comforting – perhaps too comforting.

Belinda was torn between both a need and a reluctance to know more about the secret life her husband had been leading for the past two years.

‘You loved her, didn't you?' she asked eventually.

‘What?' Peter was jolted back to the present. ‘I . . . I don't really know,' he stammered. ‘I suppose I was . . . sort of infatuated . . .
in love
with her maybe, but that's not the same thing is it? We got on together,' he continued carelessly. ‘There was no conflict between us until . . .'

‘Conflict! So that's it! Conflict. Something you didn't have with her, but you did have with me. But what
was
that conflict, Peter. What was it about? How did it happen? Well, I'll tell you, in case you've forgotten. That conflict only arose because, as I got older, I began to understand the meaning of morality, and you didn't. It all makes sense in a way; it explains your mistress. One immorality begat another!'

‘Immorality? What the hell are you talking about?' he rounded on her.

‘You know perfectly well what I mean,' she persisted. ‘Your work – that's the source of our conflict. It is utterly immoral for you to devote your life to designing means of genocide, building weapons of mass murder! And it is the moral duty of every rational human being to oppose your work and demand that it ends!'

‘Belinda, please! Let's not go through that all over again!' Peter pleaded.

‘Yes. I can see how nice it must have been for you to
find a woman who didn't object to what you did for a living. No wonder you fell in love with your Mary if she never said anything that would make your conscience trouble you! If it wasn't for the bloody bomb, none of this . . .'

She stopped halfway through her sentence, turning towards the door. Peter turned in his chair to follow her gaze.

‘I heard a noise and thought it was burglars.' Suzanne stood in the doorway, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. ‘Is it morning or what?'

Peter rose from the table and crossed the room. Putting his arm round her shoulders he led her back towards the stairs.

‘No, it's still the middle of the night. I've just got back from America, and Mummy and I were – talking,' he explained gently, taking her back up to her bedroom. ‘I'm sorry we woke you.'

He tucked her back under her blankets and kissed her on the forehead.