Sight Unseen

THREE

21. January

SIR, It is the misfortune of your life that you should never have been acquainted with the truth with respect to the Marlborough murderers.

It is not, however, too late to correct the error. I am unable to" correct it. It is time for those who have no view to private advantage, it is time for such men to interpose.

You have already much to answer for. The subject comes home to us all.

JUNIUS.

David Umber had read the letter several times and he was still unable to offer an intelligent response. Someone had cut various words and/or phrases out of an edition of the Junius letters and stuck them onto a sheet of paper to form this strangest of messages. It was a photocopy, of course. The letters themselves need not have been mutilated. But that was a small point. The overriding issue was: why?

'Aren't you going to say something?' Sharp prompted.

They were in the blandly decorated bar of Sharp's no-frills hotel near Charles Square. Umber had gone there in a mood of some scepticism, expecting to see something spectacularly un-Junian. But what Sharp had brought down from his room-safe was in fact eerily authentic.

'For God's sake, man, tell me what you make of it.'

'I don't know,' Umber said at last. 'I really don't know.'

'Are those Junius's words on the page or aren't they?'

'The words? Oh yes. I recognize some of the phrases. The start's from his famous letter to the King. The rest? I couldn't say exactly which letters they come from, but it's all Junius. The use of the long S confirms it as eighteenth-century type. The splitting up of the word "acquainted" is obviously an original line break. And the date's authentic too. Junius's first letter was dated the twenty-first of January, 1769. These must be extracts from one of the early collected editions.'

'Like the one Griffin was offering to show you?'

'Like it, yes. But -'

'It's tied up with that, isn't it?'

'How can it be?'

'Your guess is as good as mine. Or better. You are the Junius expert.'

'Was. A long time ago.'

'That still makes you one of the few people who could have put this letter together. I'll bet you've got a first-edition Junius tucked away somewhere.'

'Not so, actually.' It was true, thanks only to the flood, a detail Umber decided not to mention. 'Besides, I thought you accepted that I didn't put it together.'

'I do.' Sharp sounded as if he almost resented his own exclusion of Umber as a suspect.

'How was it addressed to you?'

'See for yourself.' Sharp slid the envelope across the table.

It was white A5, bearing a first-class stamp with a smudged postmark and what looked like a computer-generated address label. George Sharp, 12 Bilston Court, Nunswood Road, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AQ. The word-processed characters held no clue. The clues, such as they were, had all been in the letter.

'London postmark,' said Sharp. 'Date barely legible. But probably the twenty-first of January. I received it on the twenty-second.'

'I was here at the time,' said Umber.

'That wouldn't clear you in my eyes.'

'Derbyshire, Mr Sharp. What took you there?'

'A return to my roots. And you can call me George, since we're in this together.'

Umber could not decide which was more ominous: the invitation to use Sharp's Christian name – or the hint of an alliance between them. He tried to ignore the point. 'My guess would be that whoever sent this chose Junius as the source in order to throw suspicion onto me.'

'If you're right, that means they know everything there is to know about the Avebury case. Your reason for being there didn't exactly make the newspaper front pages.'

'The implication is that they know the whole truth of it, surely.'

'Maybe. But the other implication is that I can find out what the truth is. If I set my mind to it. "It is not too late to correct the error." Notice he says "the Marlborough murderers".'

'I can't imagine Junius ever mentioned Avebury. But he would have mentioned the Duke of Marlborough. The town's only a few miles from Avebury, so-'

'That's not what I mean. Murderers plural. It rams the point home, doesn't it? It rules out Radd's confession.'

'We've already ruled that out, haven't we?'

Sharp sipped his whisky and offered no reply. But the deep furrows in his brow gave a kind of answer. The letter was a reproach as well as a challenge. And he was vulnerable to both.

'What do you mean to do about this?'

Still Sharp said nothing.

'George?'

Now, at last, there was a response. Sharp set down his tumbler with a clunk on the table. 'Exactly what it dares me to do.'

'"Correct the error"?'

'Dig out the truth. If it's there to be dug.'

'What can you hope to learn now that you failed to learn twenty-three years ago?'

'I'm not a policeman any more. I don't have to go by the book.'

'Have you reported receiving this letter?'

'Of course not. Wiltshire CID wouldn't want to know. And they'd try to spike my guns. The only advantage I have is that nobody will be expecting me to go down this road again.'

'Other than… what shall we call your correspondent?… Junius?'

'It's what he calls himself.'

'Or what she calls herself.'

'I suppose it could be a woman.' Sharp ground his teeth. "'I am unable to correct the error." "It is time for men to interpose." I see what you mean.'

'You're jumping to conclusions, George. The mid-eighteenth century's a tad early for gender equality. Junius – the real Junius – wouldn't have envisaged women interposing in anything. All I'm saying is that you don't know who you're dealing with.'

'Except that he or she is an expert on the Junius letters.'

'Not so very expert, actually.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I said Junius's first letter was dated the twenty-first of January 1769, and that's true – as far as the collected edition is concerned. But his first letter to the Public Advertiser appeared in November 1768. For some reason, he decided not to include it in the collected edition. Of course, that makes an original copy hard to come by, but the correct date could be concocted by…' Umber broke off and grabbed the letter. A door had opened in his mind. The writer could reasonably have hoped that Sharp would bring this letter to him. It could therefore be a message to both of them. Indeed, the sentiments were in many ways more applicable to him than to Sharp. 'The misfortune of your life.' Yes, what had happened at Avebury on 27 July 1981 was that all right. And the subject came home to him. Only too well. 'Bloody hell.'

'What is it?'

'Griffin must have sent this.'

'Aren't you the one who's jumping to conclusions now?'

'Maybe. But he didn't turn up that day, did he? Either because of road blocks… or because he never intended to.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning he wanted me there. As a witness.'

'That makes no sense, Umber. No-one could have known Sally would take the Hall children to Avebury that particular morning.'

'God, no.' Umber put his hand to his brow and dropped the letter. 'They couldn't, could they?' He fell back in his chair. 'I swore I was finished with this when Sally died. The wondering. The theorizing. Constructing one house of cards after another out of frail suppositions. And then watching them collapse. She never stopped doing that. But I did. In the end, I was just so… weary of it… that I felt… weary of her.'

'You're not going to go maudlin on me, are you?'

Umber's answer was a long time coming. 'I'll do my best not to.'

'I need your help.'

'My help?'

'To crack this.'

'It can't be done, George.'

'Which – the cracking or the helping?'

'Both. Contrary to what Junius says, it is too late.'

'We won't know that till we try.'

'We?'

'I could have gone on drawing my pension and tending my allotment happily enough, you know. But not now. Not now I've been reminded of what I did wrong all those years ago.'

'And what was that?'

'I gave up. I stopped looking. I wrote the little girl off.'

'You didn't have much option.'

'We'll see about that.'

'I can't get involved, George. Not now. Not after… putting it all behind me.'

'What exactly have you done with the past twenty-three years, Umber?'

'This and that.'

'I came here expecting to find you'd sent me this letter because you blamed me for Sally's death.'

'Sorry to disappoint you.'

'You disappoint yourself. You know you do. You live in a dingy apartment scraping by on odds and sods of casual tour-guiding. Is that how you plan to go on for the next twenty-three years?'

'Something will turn up.'

'It just has. Your big chance – and mine – to set things right.'

'You're kidding yourself, George. It's a fool's errand. Besides, you're the detective. What do you need me for?'

'Younger pair of legs. Keener pair of eyes. And the last word on Junius. That's what I need you for.' Sharp drained his glass. 'I'll cover your travelling expenses if that's what you're worried about.'

'Police pensions must be more generous than I thought.'

'I just don't want you to have any excuse for turning me down.'

'I don't need an excuse.'

'That a fact? Then, tell me, why are you trying so hard to find one?'

'I'm not going back with you, George.'

'I'll give you twenty-four hours to think it over.'

'It won't make any difference.'

'No. It won't.' Sharp slid the letter back into its envelope. 'Because you already know what you're going to do.' He smiled at Umber. 'You just can't bring yourself to admit it.'

Half an hour later, Umber was on the number 24 tram, trundling north through the darkened streets of Prague – streets Sally had never trodden. Their wanderings had taken them to most of the capital cities of Europe, but never this one. That, he knew, was one of the reasons he had come to Prague – and had stayed. He opened his wallet and took out the snapshot of her he always carried with him. It was the only picture he had of her. The flood had claimed the others. All that was left to him was this spare passport photograph from nearly twenty years ago.

Her dark, shoulder-length hair cast part of her face in shadow, accentuating her high cheekbones and making her look gaunt and troubled, whereas in his mind's eye she appeared neither. He remembered her smile so very clearly. But she had seldom smiled for the camera. Somehow, she had never quite trusted herself to.

He put the picture away again and looked at his own, ghostly reflection in the window. 'What do you want me to do, Sal?' he asked her under his breath, watching his lips shape the words. 'Just tell me. That's all you need to do. That's all you ever needed to do.'

There was no answer. There could never be. It was too late for that.

He dreamt of Sally that night, for the first time in a year or more. They were in the tiny flat in Barcelona that had been their first home together. But he could not understand why she was there. 'They told me you were dead,' he said, over and over again. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the neck. 'Me, dead?' she whispered into his ear. 'That's such a silly idea.'

He was woken by the telephone. Opening his eyes, he saw that it was light outside. According to his bedside clock, it was nearly ten. He had lain awake for what felt like hours before falling asleep, but sleeping this late in the morning was nonetheless a surprise.

He grabbed the telephone, wondering if it would be Sharp badgering for an answer, then realized it could not be because he had not given him this number.

'Halo?

'Dobre rano.'

'What can I do for you, Marek?'

'Not for me, brother. For Ivana. She needs you to cover Tuesday.'

'Ah… Tuesday?'

'Jo. Day after Monday. Day before Wednesday. I can put you down for it?'

'I'm not, er… too sure I…'

'I need a decision, like, right now.'

'Then it's no.' Sharp was right, of course, damn him. There never had been any doubt about what Umber was going to do. 'Not Tuesday. Not any other day. For the foreseeable future.'