“Might.”
“Or is all that kind of information high security?”
“Of course it is, Carole dear.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“But don’t you worry about that. I’ll find it. I always think discretion’s such an overrated virtue…don’t you?”
? Death on the Downs ?
Twenty-Nine
Trevor Malcolm rang back within the hour. It was nearly six o’clock. “You’re lucky to get me still in the office this late on a Friday.”
“I do appreciate it, Trevor.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Nothing I like more than a little
Carole cut through the potential introspection. “Did you have any luck?”
“Not with the young Adonises, no.”
“I meant – ”
“I know exactly what you meant, dear. And I wouldn’t have rung you back if I hadn’t got anything to tell you. The assignment wasn’t easy, let me tell you – ”
“I do appreciate your making the effort, Trevor. It’s very generous of you.”
“Yes, I am generous. Not recognized as much as it should be, perhaps, but it gives me a warm inward glow. And you don’t get many of those to the pound these days. Still, you want to know what I found out, don’t you?”
“Would be nice.”
“Mm. Well, I had to be a bit lateral. Most of the relevant information would be in personnel files and the Council tends to be a bit anal with those, very unwilling to let all and sundry peer through them…which I suppose you can understand. There are a few little details of my time in Morocco that I wouldn’t necessarily want everyone to know about. By no means. That business with the two waiters and the camel…hmm…So, as I say, I had to think laterally…I went to the Literature Department instead.”
“How would that help?”
“A lot of the work someone like Graham Forbes would have been doing out in Malaysia would be hosting tours by British writers, you see. So I thought, if there was anyone out there over the time you’ve asked about… Well, Bob would be your male aunt, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Carole, a little bewildered. “Very clever.”
“Hm…Yes, I always have been clever…in every area except my private life…Still, I don’t want to whinge. That would just be too painful. No, it was wonderful. I hit pay-dirt straight away. There was a writer out on a tour in Malaysia at exactly the right time.”
“Brilliant. Do you have any means of contacting him?”
“All on his file. Address, telephone, fax…It’s even been updated with an e–mail address.”
“Trevor, you’re a genius.”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I? Not that you’d know it from the way the riff-raff round here treat me…Some of us were born, you know, just not to be appreciated…”
¦
Carole had heard a blip on her Call Waiting towards the end of her conversation with Trevor Malcolm, but she hadn’t bothered to respond to it. At the end of her call, she checked 1471.
At first she didn’t know the number. Then she recognized it as Barry Stillwell’s. It didn’t seem like less than twenty-four hours since she’d had her date with him; could have been years before.
What on earth did Barry want? She didn’t bother to ring him back.
¦
Sebastian Trent was very happy to talk to them. Carole had rung on the Friday evening and he’d said in his laid-back, slightly aristocratic voice that he always did ‘interviews and stuff in the afternoon. “I write in the mornings. Can only do three hours a day. If I do more, my writing just gets glib.”
He suggested three o’clock on the Monday. Carole tried to spell out to him what she wanted to ask about, but he waved the detail away with, “I’m sure we can sort all that out when you come. House is dead easy to find. You are familiar with Hampstead, I assume?”
She didn’t really know why she wanted Jude to come along with her for this part of the investigation. Maybe it was just that she felt uncertain of her own people skills and knew that everyone responded to Jude’s easy manner. She was also keen to bring their enquiries together, so that they didn’t get into another ‘devil’s advocate’ situation. If they both got information at the same time, they might find making sense of it easier.
Jude agreed readily – indeed enthusiastically. “Yes,” she said, “I haven’t had to go to London for a while. The timing’s right.”
That was intriguing. Why did Jude have to go up to London? But, as ever, Carole didn’t have time to put the supplementary questions.
“But can we meet there – at Sebastian Trent’s house?”
“Yes, if you like.”
Carole was slightly put out. She’d had in mind a girls’ jolly, travelling up on the train from Fethering together and then perhaps a nice lunch somewhere. She didn’t, however, let her disappointment show.
Jude went on, “I think this was meant to happen.”
“What was meant to happen?”
“You suggesting I should go up to London. I’m clearly meant to go up there this weekend. It’s a synchronicity thing. There’s someone I ought to see.”
But, once again, before the compulsion to see this person – or indeed his or her identity – could be explored, the conversation had moved on.
¦
On the Sunday morning, Carole took Gulliver for a long walk on Fethering Beach. He was completely recovered now from his injury and extravagantly grateful to her for the extended excursion.
Automatically, when she got back to High lor, Carole went to the phone and checked 1471. Barry Stillwell had rung again. Again she didn’t call him back.
? Death on the Downs ?
Thirty
“I just feel story-telling is simplistic. There’s so much one can do with language beyond merely passing on narratives. Rather than opening up the potentialities locked in language, plotting can limit them.”
Sebastian Trent stood with an arm resting nonchalantly along the mantelpiece of his artfully lived-in sitting room. His unruly grey curls were reflected in the large arched mirror over the fireplace. He was dressed, with calculated casualness, in chunky brown brogues, loose-cut chinos, a slightly frayed button-down Oxford shirt and a shapeless grey cardigan into whose pockets his fists were pushed down.
On a shelf behind him, adjacent to the mirror – conveniently, had a photographer been present – were copies of his thin literary oeuvre. Carole had thought it politic to consult a reference book before meeting the author, and found that Sebastian Trent had published five novels. They had all been critically lauded for ‘playing with the concepts of magic realism and postmodernism and subverting both to produce a synthesis that is uniquely Trent’.
