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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

There was a window to my left, admitting some grey remnants of daylight. Ahead, the entrance hall narrowed into a passage, lit by two bare bulbs and the glare from a third beyond the right-angled corner at its end. Three or four doors stood open along the passage, but the rooms they led to were in darkness. The flat looked what I sensed it to be-carpeted and curtained, but otherwise unfurnished.

I heard the front door click shut behind me and turned to find Sarah looking straight at me. She was dressed all in black-pumps, tights, mini-skirt and polo-neck sweater. Her eyes were wide and staring. She was breathing with audible rapidity. And she was holding her right arm behind her back at an awkward angle, bizarrely reminiscent of a suitor concealing a bunch of flowers from his beloved.

“Hello, Sarah,” I ventured. “Where’s Paul?”

“Never mind Paul,” she replied breathlessly. “How did you get here? And why did you come?”

The how was easy to explain. And I did. But the why? Something in her manner-something in her dilated eyes-stopped me telling her there and then that her father was dead.

“Mrs. Simpson,” Sarah muttered when I’d finished. “The stupid stupid woman. What do her bloody Christmas cards matter compared with-” She broke off and her tone became more controlled. “Why was Bella so anxious to contact me? Why isn’t she with you?”

“It’s your father. He’s… not well. Bella is… with him.”

“In Biarritz?”

“Look, can we-”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Why don’t we go somewhere more comfortable?”

“No. Tell me now. Tell me here.”

“I’m sure it would be better if-”

“Tell me!” Her cry-of pain as much as impatience-echoed in the empty hallway.

“All right. Calm down.” I moved towards her, but she stepped smartly back, bumping against the wall behind her. I saw a muscle tighten in her cheek. Her gaze narrowed.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I’m sorry, Sarah. Really I am. But the answer’s yes. Your father’s dead.”

She half-closed her eyes and tears sprang into them. Her head drooped. Her voice faltered. “How? How did it happen?”

“It’s not entirely clear. Some kind of-” I stopped as her right arm slipped from behind her back and fell to her side. Then I saw what she was holding in her hand. A snub-nosed revolver, its barrel and chambers glistening in the cold electric light. “Sarah! What in God’s name-”

There was a movement-a shadow across my sight-further down the passage. I whirled round and saw Paul standing at the end. He was wearing jeans, trainers and a dark green sweat-shirt. And he too was holding a gun.

“Paul?”

“Leave now, Robin,” he called to me. “Walk out and forget you were ever here.”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

“This isn’t your affair. Don’t get involved.”

“Involved in what?”

“Just go. While you still can.”

“Sarah?” I turned and looked at her. She raised her head and dabbed away her tears with the knuckles of her left hand. She was holding the gun firmly, her forefinger curled round the trigger. And her jaw was set in a determined line. “Sarah?”

“You don’t understand, Robin. But you will. Later. Just tell me how Daddy died. Then go.”

“I’m telling nothing and going nowhere until you two tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

“It’s best if you don’t know. Believe me.”

“That’s right,” Paul cut in. “Believe her.”

“Why should I?”

“Just do it!” He leant against the wall behind him, glanced along the passage to his right, then looked back at us. “I’ll give you five minutes to get rid of him, Sarah.” With that he pushed himself upright and moved out of sight.

“Where’s he gone?” I demanded, turning to Sarah.

“Don’t ask.”

“But I am asking.”

“This is nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, but it is. I’ve seen through your deception, you know. Paul’s confession. The faked corroboration. The whole elaborate game you’ve been playing.”

She stared at me incredulously, something in her expression signalling that she didn’t intend to deny it. “How?” she murmured.

“Never mind. What I want to know is: why did you do it? Why the secret address? Why the guns, for God’s sake?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“No. I can’t.” I peered down the passage. There was no sign of Paul. But there’d been a sound-a groan and a chink of metal. “Paul?” I called. There was no response. Except the same faint metallic rattle. I started towards it.

“Robin!” Sarah cried after me. “Stop!” But I didn’t stop. I don’t think I could have done. The passage drew me on down its carpeted length, dream-like and surreal in the low-wattage light, with the black gulfs of empty rooms to either side. I had to know now. I had to see for myself.

I reached the corner and looked to my left. At the far end of the passage, bright light spilt from an open doorway. A shadow moved across it. I glanced round at Sarah, who was slowly following me, shaking her head, as if to urge me even at this stage to turn back, to reconsider, to leave well enough alone. Then I walked on.

It was a bathroom, blue-walled and chill. The view through the doorway was of a wash-hand basin and a frosted sash window. Propped incongruously on the window-sill was a bulky black tape recorder. As I stepped into the room, my view broadened to encompass a half-open door in the far corner, a wooden-seated loo visible in the gloom beyond. The bath was to my left, an old roll-top cast-iron tub with ball-and-claw feet. The tap end was out of my sight for the moment, behind the wide-open door. Paul was leaning against the wall near the other end, his right arm crossed over his chest, his left hand supporting his elbow while he nestled the gun against his cheek. I didn’t know what to make of his narrow-lidded stare, but a phrase of Bella’s came into my mind-“extremely clever as well as seriously insane”-and fear suddenly descended on me, like some unseen and unsuspected creature leaping onto my back.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” he said matter-of-factly. There was a moan and a rattle from behind the door. I stepped forward and turned my head. And then I saw.

Shaun Naylor, dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a denim jacket, was on his knees in the bath. His wrists and ankles were shackled together behind him, the shackles held fast by a chain tied round the tap mountings and stretched taut to eliminate all freedom of movement. His arms were bound so tightly that his shoulders had been dragged back and his chest pushed forward. His chin was lolling against his chest, but he raised it to look at me. One of his eyes was swollen to the point of closure. There was a gash on his forehead and drops of congealed blood round the neck of his T-shirt. A broad strip of adhesive brown sealing tape had been stuck across his mouth. He was breathing hard through his nose and sweating profusely, either from panic or the vain struggle to escape. He strained at the chain as I watched, his brow creasing with the effort, his eyes swivelling up to meet mine. The hollow noise of metal on pipework was what I’d heard from the hall. But his knees slid no more than an inch forward or sideways and he gave up, slumping against the wall of the bath and groaning in protest.

“He thinks he can fight his way out of this,” said Paul with a snigger. “But he can’t. Hear that, Naylor? There’s no way out this time, you stinking bastard.”

“For God’s sake!” I shouted, horrified more by Paul’s gloating tone than the ugly weals on Naylor’s face.

“But that’s right,” said Paul. “It is for God’s sake. And Rowena’s. And her mother’s. And Oscar Bantock’s. We’re doing it for all their sakes.”

“That’s your justification for torture?”

“It isn’t torture,” said Sarah, stepping into the room behind me. I swung round to look at her. There was no hint of shame in her expression-or in her voice. “It’s justice.”