Sight Unseen

TWENTY

Dusk had given way to night by the time Umber reached Hampstead. He walked up Willow Hill, steeling himself for the accusations Alice and Claire had every right to throw at him. He had no adequate response prepared, nor any course of action to suggest that might lead them out of their difficulties. George Sharp in prison, Bill Larter in hospital and Jeremy Hall dead: they were the bitter sum of his achievements to date.

'Good of you to join us,' was Alice's sarcastic greeting. She had been hitting the gin, to judge by the half-empty tumbler of something with lemon clutched in her hand as she opened the door of number 22, not to mention the heaviness of her tread as she led him into the drawing room.

An aroma of fresh paint still lingered in the room. Redecoration was evidently complete. Some platitudinous enthusing over the colour scheme died on Umber's lips. Claire, who was sitting by the fire with a mug of green tea, rolled her eyes at him as Alice pulled round a chair.

'Would you like some tea, David?' Claire asked.

'I expect he'd prefer a beer,' said Alice.

Umber shrugged. 'Whatever.'

'Either way, it's in the kitchen. Help yourself.'

Umber shrugged again, this time for Claire's benefit, and made his way to the kitchen. He found a bottle of Grolsch in the fridge. While he was hunting down a glass, he caught a drift of words from the drawing room, but could not make them out. Claire was speaking, in an undertone. Only Alice's response was audible. 'Why should I?'

'It goes without saying that I'm sorry for dragging you both into this,' Umber ventured as he rejoined them. 'I never intended to cause you any trouble.'

'What did you intend to do?' Alice snapped.

'Learn the truth.' He sat down and countered her glare with a level gaze. 'If I could.'

'Find one more to your liking, you mean.'

'There's only one truth, Alice. And it's not what we thought.'

'I'm not going to start believing Sally was murdered just because you've stirred up a hornets' nest.'

'I think you may have to.'

'I was here when it happened. You weren't. Sally was alone when she died. There was no intruder. No murderer.'

'You can't be absolutely certain of that, Alice,' put in Claire.

Alice tossed her head pettishly. 'Not you too.'

'We need to consider every possibility.'

'OK, then. Consider this. How did the murderer get in?'

'Perhaps Sally invited him in.'

'Then promptly took a bath? Get real, for God's sake.'

'It was a summer's evening. She'd have had the windows open, presumably.'

'Yeah. But her windows happened to be on the second floor.'

'He could have swung down from the roof and through the open top half of the sash,' said Umber, reasoning as he went. 'Then just let himself out of the flat and left by the front door.'

'Who are we talking about here? The SAS?'

'A professional of some kind. That's who we're talking about.'

'I think David's right,' said Claire, calmly but firmly. 'Recent events don't really leave much room for doubt, to my mind. Sally was onto something. And somebody was determined to stop her bringing it into the open.'

'That's not what you said at the time.'

'I had no reason to think it. Then. But this is now. David's provoked a response. We may wish he hadn't. But we can't ignore it. Think about it, Alice. If Sally really was murdered…'

'She wasn't.'

'But if she was… do you want to let her killers get away with it?'

'Of course not.'

'OK, then. We have two options as I see it. One, tell David to go back to Prague and let his policeman friend take his chances in court, then hope everything blows over, as it probably will, Jeremy Hall's suicide notwithstanding. It's the line of least resistance. It's the safest and simplest thing to do.'

'But it's not the option you favour, is it?' Alice's tone was almost fatalistic.

'No. It isn't.'

'Better give us number two, then.'

'Do all we can to find out what Sally may have uncovered.'

'If anything.'

'Yes. If anything.'

Alice took a deep swallow of gin and looked sceptically at Claire and Umber in turn. 'You've left it five years too late. If there were any clues, they're long gone. Assuming there was something for there to be clues to.'

'What happened to her possessions?'

'Ask David.'

Umber winced. Alice had urged him to take whatever keepsakes he wanted when he had flown in from Turkey for the funeral. But guilt, grief and a secret, simmering anger at Sally for running away from life had deluded him into believing he wanted none. Alice had more or less forced him to take Sally's wedding ring. Everything else he had left. 'I don't know what happened to them,' he said hoarsely.

'Her parents took some stuff,' Alice stated matter-of-factly. 'The rest – clothes and such – went to Oxfam.'

'Were there any papers?' Claire asked. 'Notes? Diaries? Documents?'

'It was hardly my place to sort through it,' Alice replied. 'And David declined to. So I can't say. Whatever there was… her parents removed.'

'We'd better contact them, then.'

'They'll probably have got rid of it all by now.'

'Let's hope not.' Claire looked at Umber. 'Do you know where they live, David?'

'Unless they've moved, yes. They have a bungalow on the Hampshire coast. Near Christchurch.'

Umber had assumed till now that Reg and Peggy Wilkinson had left his life for good and all. He had few happy memories of his parents-in-law, as few as he suspected they had of him. Reg had never troubled to disguise his disapproval of Umber's rootless and pensionless existence. And what Reg thought, Peggy always went along with. It had never been a harmonious relationship. Sally's death had ended it as badly as could be imagined. But not, it seemed, as completely.

'There's something you should understand, Claire,' he said hesitantly. 'The Wilkinsons and I… er…'

'What he means,' put in Alice, 'is that they hate his guts. They aren't likely to give him the time of day, let alone the chance to root through whatever they have left of Sally's.'

'It's not as bad as that,' Umber protested. But, almost instantly, it struck him that pretence on the issue was pointless. 'Well, maybe it is.'

'Yes,' said Claire dispassionately. 'Bearing in mind what Sally told me about how things stood between you and her parents, I should imagine it might well be. Which is why Alice and I will go to see them without you.'

'Excuse me?' spluttered Alice.

'Tomorrow,' Claire breezed calmly on. 'I think we can all agree there's no time to be lost.'

Several hours and an awkward little supper party later, Alice took herself off to bed none too soberly, leaving Claire to load the dishwasher, while Umber sat at the kitchen table with a mug of black coffee.

'She'll be fine in the morning,' said Claire, with a wry smile. 'Stress affects people in different ways.'

'You seem to be coping all right,' said Umber, understating the case if anything, given her consistent sangfroid.

'It's just a technique. I break problems down into small, soluble portions. That way I can kid myself nothing's beyond me, as long as I can take it one logical step at a time.'

'Do you teach the technique to your patients? Sorry. I mean clients.'

'Well remembered. And yes, I do. Or at any rate I try. But psychotherapy isn't really that simple.'

'I imagine not.'

'It can be helpful, though.' She pushed the dishwasher door shut and started the machine going, then turned to look at him. 'It can resolve a lot of issues.'

'Think I could benefit from a course?'

'I'm sure you could.' She sat down at the table opposite him. Her shoulder-bag was hanging from the back of the chair. She delved into it and plucked out a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter. 'Just now I recommend something a bit more basic, though. You want one?'

Umber shook his head. 'I didn't know you smoked.'

'Only in emergencies.' She lit up and piloted a spare saucer into the centre of the table to serve as an ashtray. 'What about you?'

'Never got the taste for it.'

'Nor for resolving issues?'

'I've taken that up late in life.'

'With what results?'

'Mixed. Decidedly mixed.'

'Alice suggested something to me before you arrived this evening. And before the gin hit her bloodstream. She said the two of us ought to go away together. She had South America in mind. An adventure holiday. A couple of middle-aged girls on a spree.'

'Sounds like fun.'

'Think we should go?'

'You could do worse.'

'Like staying in London, you mean?'

'The people we're dealing with, Claire, whoever they are, whatever their motives -'

'Aren't kidding around?' She held his gaze through a plume of cigarette smoke.

'No. They're not.'

'So, if we succeed in finding out what Sally knew…'

'You may wish you'd taken that trip to South America.'