Fox Evil

17

Time was running out for Nancy. She had an hour to report to Bovington Camp, but when she tapped her watch and reminded Mark, he looked appalled. "You can't go now," he protested. "James is behaving as if he's had a blood transfusion. You'll kill him off."

They were in the kitchen, making tea, while James stoked the fire in the drawing room. James had been remarkably chatty since they left the campsite, but his conversation had been related to the wildlife that inhabited the Copse and not to the subject of the travelers or what had happened to Henry. He was as reticent about that as he had suddenly become about Ailsa's foxes before lunch, saying it wasn't a fit topic for Christmas.

Neither Mark nor Nancy had pressed him. Nancy didn't feel she knew him well enough, and Mark was reluctant to stray into any area that might raise more questions than it answered. Nevertheless, they were both curious, particularly about the name Fox.

"It's a bit of a coincidence, don't you think?" Nancy had murmured as they entered the kitchen. "Mutilated foxes and a man called Fox on the doorstep. What do you suppose is going on?"

"I don't know," said Mark truthfully, his mind obsessed with the coincidence of Fox and Lockyer-Fox.

Nancy didn't believe him but nor did she feel she had a right to demand explanations. Her grandfather both intrigued and intimidated her. She told herself it was the natural order of the army: captains looked up to colonels. It was also the natural order of society: youth looked up to age. But there was something else. A repressed aggression in James-despite his age and frailty-that broadcast "keep out" as effectively as the travelers' notices. Even Mark trod carefully, she noticed, despite a relationship with his client that spoke of mutual respect.

"It would take more than my departure to kill him off," she said now. "You don't become a colonel by accident, Mark. Apart from anything else, he fought in the jungles of Korea… spent a year in a POW camp undergoing Chinese brainwashing… and was decorated for heroism. He's tougher than you or I will ever be."

Mark stared at her. "Is that true?"

"Yup."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I didn't realize I had to. You're his solicitor. I assumed you knew."

"I didn't."

She shrugged. "You do now. He's quite something, your client. A bit of a legend in his regiment."

"Where did you find out all this?"

She started to clear the lunch plates from the table. "I told you… I looked him up. He's mentioned in several books. He was a major at the time and took over as senior officer of the British group in the POW compound when the previous SCO died. He was confined to solitary for three months because he refused to order a ban on religious gatherings. The roof over his cell was corrugated iron and when he came out he was so baked and dehydrated his skin had turned to leather. The first thing he did on release was conduct a lay service… his sermon was entitled 'Freedom of Thought.' After the service was over, he accepted a drink of water."

"Jesus!"

Nancy laughed as she filled the sink. "Some might say so. I'd say sheer bloody guts and bolshiness, myself. You shouldn't underestimate him. He's not the type to give in to propaganda. He wouldn't be quoting Clausewitz if he were. It was Clausewitz who coined the phrase 'fog of war' when he saw how the clouds of smoke from the enemy's guns during the Napoleonic Wars deceived the eye into thinking the opposing army was larger than it actually was."

Mark was busy opening cupboard doors. It was she who was the romantic, he thought, jealousy of the old man's heroism gnawing away at his heart. "Yes, well, I just wish he'd be a bit more forthcoming. How am I supposed to help him if he doesn't tell me what's going on? I had no idea Henry had been killed. James said he died of old age."

She watched his fruitless search. "There's a caddy on the worktop," she said, nodding toward a tin box with the logo "tea" on it. "The teapot's beside it."

"Actually, I was looking for mugs. James is too good a host. The only thing he's let me do since I arrived was today's lunch… and then only because he wanted to talk to you." Too bloody afraid Mark would plug in the telephone jack and intercept a Darth Vader phone call, he thought.

She pointed a finger over his head. "Hanging on hooks above the Aga," she told him.

He raised his eyes. "Oh, yes. Sorry about this." He cast around the worktops for electric sockets. "You can't see the kettle as well, can you?"

Nancy suppressed a laugh. "I think you'll find it's that big round thing on the Aga. You don't plug it in, though. It's the old-fashioned method of heating water. Assuming the kettle's full, you just lift the chrome lid on the left and bring the water back up to the boil by putting the kettle on the hotplate."

He did as instructed. "I suppose your mother has one of these?"

"Mm. She leaves the back door open so that everyone can help themselves whenever they want." She rolled up her sleeves and started on the washing-up.

"Even strangers?"

"Dad and his workers usually, but the odd passerby comes in from time to time. She found a tramp in the kitchen once, swigging tea like there was no tomorrow."

Mark spooned tea leaves into the teapot. "What did she do?"

"Made up a bed and let him stay for two weeks. When he left he took half her silver with him, but she still refers to him as 'that funny old man with the tea addiction.'" She broke off as he reached for the kettle. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you. Those handles get very hot. Try using the oven glove to your right."

He shifted his hand to the glove and pulled it on. "I only know about machines that work off electricity," he said. "Give me a microwave and a processed meal and I'm in seventh heaven. This is all a bit serious for me."

She giggled. "You really are a prime candidate for a survival course. You'd have a whole new perspective on life if you were marooned in the middle of a jungle during a tropical storm with a fire that won't light."

"What do you do?"

"Eat your worms raw… or go without. It depends how hungry you are and how strong your stomach is."

"What do they taste like?"

"Disgusting," she said, putting a plate in the rack. "Rat's all right… except you don't get much on the bone."

He wondered if she was teasing him because his life was so normal. "I'd rather stick with the microwave," he said mutinously.

She flicked him an amused glance. "It's hardly living dangerously, though, is it? How will you know what you're capable of if you never test yourself?"

"Do I need to? Why can't I just face the problem when it comes?"

"Because you wouldn't advise a client to do that," she said. "At least I hope you wouldn't. Your advice would be the opposite… find out all the information you can in order to defend yourself against whatever's thrown at you. That way, you're less likely to underestimate the opposition."

"What about overestimating the opposition?" he said tetchily. "Isn't that just as dangerous?"

"I don't see how. The warier you are, the safer you are."

She was back on the black and white answers, he thought. "What if it's your own side? How do you know you're not overestimating James? You're assuming he's tough because of what he went through fifty years ago, but he's an old man now. Yesterday, his hands were shaking so much he couldn't lift a glass."

"I'm not talking about his physical toughness, I'm talking about his mental toughness." She placed the last pieces of cutlery in the rack and pulled out the plug. "No one's character changes just because they get old." She reached for a towel. "If anything, it becomes more exaggerated. My mother's mother was a virago all her life… and when she hit eighty she became a mega-virago. She couldn't walk because of rheumatoid arthritis but her tongue kept wagging. Old age is about rage and resentment, not about going tamely into oblivion… it's Dylan Thomas's cry to 'burn and rave at close of day.' Why should James be the exception? He's a fighter… that's his nature."

Mark took the towel from her and hung it on the Aga rail to dry. "Yours, too."

She smiled. "Perhaps it goes with the job." He opened his mouth to say something, and she raised a finger to stop him. "Don't quote my genes at me again," she told him firmly. "My entire individuality is in danger of being swamped by your obsessive need to explain me. I am the complex product of my circumstances… not the predictable, linear result of an accidental coupling twenty-eight years ago."

They both knew they were too close. She saw it in the flash of awareness that sparked in his eyes. He saw it in the way her finger hovered within inches of his mouth. She dropped her hand. "Don't even think about it," she said, baring her teeth in a fox-like smile. "I've enough trouble with my bloody sergeant without adding the family lawyer to my list of difficulties. You weren't supposed to be here, Mr. Ankerton. I came to speak to James."

Mark raised his palms in a gesture of surrender, jealousy spent. "It's your fault, Smith. You shouldn't wear such provocative clothes."

She gave a splutter of laughter. "I specifically dressed butch."

"I know," he murmured, putting the mugs on a tray, "and my imagination's in overdrive. I keep wondering about all the softness that's underneath the armor plating."

Wolfie wondered why adults were so stupid. He tried to warn Bella that Fox would know they'd had visitors-Fox knew everything-but she hushed him and swore him to silence along with the rest. "Let's just keep it to ourselves," she said. "There's no point getting him worked up over nothing. We'll tell him about the reporter… that's fair enough… we all knew the press would stick their noses in sooner or later."

Wolfie shook his head at her naivety but didn't argue.

"It's not that I want you to lie to your dad," she told him, crouching down and giving him a hug, "just don't tell him, eh? He'll be mad as a hatter if he finds out we let strangers into the camp. Can't do that, see, not if we want to build houses here."

He touched a comforting hand to her cheek. "Okay." She was like his mother, always hoping for the best even though the best never happened. She must know she would never have a house here, but she needed to dream, he thought. Just as he needed to dream about running away. "Don't forget to tie the rope again," he reminded her.

Jesus Christ! She had forgotten. But what kind of life had this little boy led that made him mindful of every little detail? She searched his face, saw wisdom and intelligence well beyond his physical immaturity and wondered how she'd missed them before. "Is there anything else I should remember?"

"The door," he said solemnly.

"What door?"

"Lucky Fox's door. He said it was usually open." He shook his head at her baffled expression. "It means you have a hiding place," he told her.

The tremors came back into James's hand when Nancy told him she had to leave, but he made no attempt to dissuade her. The army was a hard taskmaster, was all he said, turning to stare out of the window. He didn't accompany her to the door, so she and Mark said their farewells alone on the doorstep.

"How long are you planning to stay?" she asked him, pulling on her hat and zipping up her fleece.

"Till tomorrow afternoon." He handed her a card. "If you're interested, that has my email, landline, and mobile on it. If you're not, I'll look forward to seeing you the next time."

She smiled. "You're one of the good guys, Mark. There aren't many lawyers who'd spend Christmas with their clients." She took a piece of paper from her pocket. "That's my mobile… but you don't have to be interested… think of it more as 'just in case.' "

He gave her a teasing smile. "Just in case of what?"

"Emergencies," she said soberly. "I'm sure he's not sitting on that terrace every night for fun… and I'm sure those travelers aren't there by accident. They were talking about a psycho when I was outside their bus, and, from the way the child behaved, they were referring to his father… this Fox character. It can't be a coincidence, Mark. With a name like that he has to be connected in some way. It would explain the scarves."

"Yes," he said slowly, thinking of Wolfie's blond hair and blue eyes. He folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket. "Much as I appreciate your offer," he said, "wouldn't it make more sense to phone the police in an emergency?"

She unlocked the Discovery door. "Whatever… the offer's there if you want to take it up." She hoisted herself behind the steering wheel. "I should be able to come back tomorrow evening," she said diffidently, bending forward to feed the key into the ignition so that he couldn't see her face. "Could you ask James if that's okay, and text me the answer?"

Mark was surprised both by the question and the tentative way she put it. "I don't need to. He's besotted with you."

"He didn't say anything about me coming back, though."

"You didn't either," he pointed out.

"No," she agreed, straightening. "I guess meeting a grandfather isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be." She gunned the engine to life and thrust the vehicle into gear.

"What made it difficult?" he asked, putting a hand on her arm to stop her closing the door.

She flashed him a wry smile. "Genes," she said. "I thought he'd be a stranger and I wouldn't care very much… but I discovered he isn't and I do. Pretty naive, eh?" She didn't wait for an answer, just let out the clutch and slowly accelerated, forcing Mark to drop his hand, before she pulled the door closed and headed up the drive toward the gate.

James was sitting hunched in his armchair by the time Mark returned to the drawing room. He looked a forlorn and diminished figure again, as if the energy that had possessed him during the afternoon had indeed been the result of a brief transfusion of blood. There was certainly no sign of the tough SCO who had opted for solitary confinement rather than barter his religion to Communist atheism.

Assuming the cause of his depression was Nancy's departure, Mark took up a position in front of the fireplace and announced cheerfully: "She's a bit of a star, isn't she? She'd like to come back tomorrow evening if that's all right with you."

James didn't answer.

"I said I'd let her know," Mark persisted.

The old man shook his head. "Tell her I'd rather she didn't, will you? Put it as kindly as you can, but make it clear that I don't want to see her again."

Mark felt as if his legs had been chopped out from underneath him. "Why on earth not?"

"Because your advice was right. It was a mistake to go looking for her. She's a Smith, not a Lockyer-Fox."

Mark's anger flared abruptly. "Half an hour ago you were treating her like royalty, now you want to ditch her like a cheap tart," he snapped. "Why didn't you tell her to her face instead of expecting me to do it?"

James closed his eyes. "It was you who warned Ailsa of the danger of resurrecting the past," he murmured. "A little belatedly, I'm agreeing with you."

"Yes, well, I've changed my mind," the younger man said curtly. "Sod's law predicted that your granddaughter should have been a clone of Elizabeth because that's exactly what you didn't want. Instead-and for God knows what reason-you get a clone of yourself. Life isn't supposed to be like that, James. Life's supposed to be a complete and utter bummer where every step forward takes you two back." He clenched his fists. "For Christ's bloody sake, I told her you were besotted. Are you going to make me a liar?"

To his dismay, tears welled through the old man's lids and ran down his cheeks. Mark hadn't intended another breakdown. He was tired and confused himself, and he'd been seduced by Nancy's conviction that James was the tough soldier of her imagination and not the shadow Mark had witnessed for the previous two days. Perhaps the tough soldier had been the reality of James Lockyer-Fox for the few hours she'd been there, but this broken man, whose secrets were unraveling, was the one Mark recognized. All his suspicions gathered like a knot around his heart.

"Ah, shit!" he said in despair. "Why couldn't you have been honest with me? What the hell am I going to say to her? Sorry, Captain Smith, you didn't come up to expectations. You dress like a dyke… the Colonel's a snob… and you speak with a Herefordshire accent." He took a shuddering breath. "Or maybe I should tell her the truth?" he went on harshly. "There's a question mark over your paternity… and your grandfather intends to disown you a second time rather than put himself forward for a DNA test."

James pressed a thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. "Tell her anything you like," he managed, "just so long as she never comes back."

"Tell her yourself," said Mark, taking his mobile from his pocket and programming in Nancy's number before dropping the piece of paper in James's lap. "I'm going out to get drunk."

It was a foolish ambition. He hadn't appreciated the difficulty of getting drunk on Boxing Day afternoon in the wilds of Dorset and drove in aimless circles, looking for an open pub. In the end, recognizing the futility of what he was doing, he parked on the Ridgeway above Ringstead Bay, and in the rapidly fading light watched the turbulent waves thrash the coast.

The wind had swung to the southwest quadrant during the afternoon and clouds rode up the channel on the warmer air. It was a darkening wilderness of louring sky, angry sea, and mighty cliffs, and the elemental beauty of it brought a return of perspective. After half an hour, when the spume was just a phosphorescent glow in the rising moonlight and Mark's teeth were chattering with cold, he switched on the engine and headed back to Shenstead.

Certain truths had become clear to him once the red mist had faded. Nancy had been right to say that James had changed his mind some time between the first and second letter to her. Prior to that, the pressure to locate his granddaughter had been intense, so much so that James had been prepared to forfeit damages by writing to her. By the end of November, the pressure was working the other way. "You will under no circumstances feature in any legal documents relating to this family."

So what had happened? The phone calls? The mutilation of foxes? Henry's death? Were they linked? What was the order in which they'd happened? And why had James never mentioned any of it to Mark? Why write a fable to Nancy to refuse to discuss anything with his solicitor? Did he think Nancy might believe in Leo's guilt where Mark could not?

For all James's insistence that the man Prue Weldon had heard must have been his son-"we sound alike… he was angry with his mother for changing her will… Ailsa blamed him for Elizabeth's problems"-Mark knew it couldn't have been. While Ailsa was dying in Dorset, Leo was shafting Mark's fiancee in London, and, much as Mark now despised the airhead he had once adored, he never doubted she was telling the truth. At the time Becky had had no regrets at being cited as Leo's alibi. She thought it meant the affair-so much more passionate than anything she'd experienced with Mark-was leading somewhere. But Mark had listened to too many hysterical pleas for a second chance since Leo had unceremoniously dumped her to believe she wouldn't retract a lie that had been coerced.

It had made sense nine months ago. Leo-charismatic Leo-had taken an easy revenge on the lawyer who'd dared to usurp his friend, and, worse, refused to break his pledge of confidentiality to his clients. It was hardly difficult. Mark's long hours and disinclination to party night after night had presented Leo with a peach, ripe for the plucking, but the idea that wrecking his imminent marriage was anything but a malicious game had never occurred to Mark. Ailsa had even planted the idea in his head. "Do be careful of Leo," she'd warned when Mark mentioned the dinners he and Becky had had with her son. "He's so charming when he wants to be, and so deeply unpleasant when he doesn't get his own way."

"Unpleasant" was hardly the word for what Leo had done, he thought now. Sadistic-twisted-perverted-all were better descriptions of the callous way he had destroyed Mark and Becky's lives. It had left Mark rudderless for months. So much trust and hope invested in another person, two years of living together, the wedding booked for the summer, and the desperate shame of explanations. Never the truth, of course-she was being laid behind my back by a dissolute gambler old enough to be her father, only the lies-"it didn't work out… we needed space… we realized we weren't ready for a long-term commitment."

At no point had he ever had time to step back and take stock. Within twenty-four hours of arriving in Dorset to support James through the police questioning, he had had a weeping Becky on his mobile, telling him she was sorry, she hadn't meant it to come out like this, but the police had asked her to confirm where she was the night before last. Not, as she'd told Mark, shepherding a group of Japanese businessmen around Birmingham in her role as PR to a development agency, but with Leo in his Knightsbridge flat. And, no, it wasn't a one-night stand. The affair had started three months before, and she'd been trying to tell Mark for weeks. Now that the secret was out, she was moving in with Leo. She'd be gone by the time Mark came home.

She was sorry… she was sorry… she was sorry…

He had struggled with his devastation in private. In public he had remained impassive. The pathologist's findings-"no evidence of foul play… animal blood on the terrace"-took the heat out of the investigation, and police interest in James promptly died. Where was the point then in telling his client that the reason his accusations against Leo had been dismissed as "wild and unfounded" was because his solicitor's fiancee had exonerated him? He couldn't have said it even if he'd thought it necessary. His scars were too raw to be opened up to public inspection.

He wondered now if Leo had gambled on that. Had he guessed that Mark's pride would prevent him telling James the truth? Mark knew the moment Becky admitted to it that the affair had had nothing to do with Ailsa's death. He could salvage some self-esteem by calling it Leo's revenge-he even believed it at times-but the truth was more pedestrian. What had he done wrong? he asked Becky. Nothing, she said tearfully. That was the trouble. It had all been so boring.

There was no way back from that, not for Mark. For Becky it was different. Reconciliation was a way to salvage her own pride after Leo threw her out. Most of what she said was recorded on his answerphone. Leo was a mistake. All he wanted was sex on tap. Mark was the only man she'd ever really loved. She begged and pleaded to be allowed home. Mark never returned her calls, and on the few occasions when she caught him in, he laid the receiver beside the telephone and walked away. His feelings swung from hatred and anger through self-pity to indifference, but he'd never once considered that Leo's motive had been anything other than spite.

He should have done. If the tapes in James's library proved anything it was that someone who knew him ultimately was prepared to play a long game. Three months' worth? To provide a rock-solid alibi on a single night in March? Maybe. This was all about fighting demons alone, he thought… the absurd British class psyche that said, keep a stiff upper lip and never show your tears. But what if he and James were fighting the same demon, and that demon was clever enough to exploit it?

"Divide and rule… fog of war… propaganda is a powerful-weapon…"

If he understood anything at the end of his cold vigil on that Dorset cliffside, it was that James would not have pressed so hard to find his granddaughter if there had been the remotest chance that he had fathered her. He didn't fear a DNA test for himself, he feared it for Nancy…

…and had done since the calls began…

…better she hate him for rejecting her a second time than drag her into a dirty war over allegations of incest…

…particularly if he knew who her father really was…

Message from Mark

I've picked a side. James is a good guy. If he's told you different he's lying.