Chelsea Mansions

FORTY-ONE

T oby Beaumont gathered himself up and stood rigidly to attention-like a prisoner of war, Brock thought, that’s how he sees himself now, ready to give his name and serial number and nothing else. But he looked exhausted; prison was doing him no good, the effort involved in maintaining his front becoming too hard.

‘I brought you some reading matter,’ Brock said, and placed a small parcel of books on the table between them. He watched Toby open the package and peer at the titles: a new history of Napoleon’s campaigns, a reprint of Richard Burton’s 1855 book, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah. Toby looked pleased, until he turned over the third book, The Buster Crabb Mystery.

‘You’ve probably read that one,’ Brock said. ‘I imagine you buy each one as it comes out, wondering if they’ve finally discovered the truth. Well now they have, Toby, thanks to Nancy Haynes, though we won’t be reading about it. Like you, they prefer to keep it buried.’

Toby’s expression was unreadable behind the dark lenses.

‘Tell me about your father. He must have been a remarkable man.’

Toby remained silent.

‘I’m told he wasn’t a team player.’

‘He was a team leader.’

‘Why did he kill himself?’

Toby sniffed, but didn’t answer.

‘Did he change his mind about what he’d done? Did he realise that he’d never be able to explain to his friends how he’d betrayed a fellow officer to the Russians? Was he riddled with guilt at how it had turned out, once that brute Gennady got his hands on Crabb?’

Toby still said nothing.

‘It was while you were away, fighting on the Suez Canal, wasn’t it? I wondered if there was some connection. So I checked your army record, and discovered that you weren’t up at Catterick Camp on the twenty-sixth of April 1956 as you said. You were on leave.’ Brock leaned forward. ‘You were there, Toby, weren’t you, at Chelsea Mansions when they did it? You were part of it, helping. And I wondered if your father killed himself out of a feeling of guilt for having involved you? Or was his suicide the price they demanded, when they finally worked out what he’d done-the price to keep you out of it, to let you continue in your military career?’

Toby took a deep breath and spoke in a low voice. ‘It’s a matter of loyalty, Brock. In the end that’s the most important thing, loyalty to your kin.’

Brock rubbed his beard thoughtfully. ‘Apparently an unknown woman looked after Crabb’s grave for twenty years after he was buried. His family denied it was any of them. I wondered if it might have been your mother.’

Toby got abruptly to his feet. He picked up the first two books, but left the one on Crabb lying on the table, and turned and marched away.