call he knew must come. He spent the time preparing himself by trying to remember what it was he was not supposed to know: that Aldous was in the house, that he was Patrice’s lover, that he was dead. There might have been a fourth detail he needed to appear ignorant of, and he was too fretful to recall it. There may even have been a fifth. It was not so easy to concentrate, for the venerable Library and its environs were not quite as hushed and serious as they once were. There were scores of kids, undergraduates, in the cafe. Their coats and backpacks were piled up in the spaces between the tables, and they wandered the public spaces, the wide staircases, laughing and talking at a relaxed, normal pitch. Perhaps this was some form of open day for schools. The atmosphere was of a student-union building in a modern university – a bar, a pinball machine, table football would not have been out of place. It suited Beard well to feel obscure among the crowds, but he almost missed the call when it came, an hour late by his calculation, and he still had not remembered the fourth and fifth things he should pretend not to know. He had to trust himself and assume they did not exist.
Patrice said, ‘Where are you?’ Her voice was flat, and despite everything, he could not restrain a certain foolish hope: at last, she cared about his whereabouts.
He told her, and then he said, ‘What’s up?’
‘The police are here. You’ve got to come home.’
He said, ‘Patrice, what’s going on?’
She had put her hand over the receiver. He heard the murmur of a man’s voice, and then she said, ‘Just come back now.’
‘Have we had a break-in?’
There were more voices around her. Dozens of people were in the house. She was starting to repeat herself in the same toneless voice when she gave out a sudden cry as if stabbed in the arm, and half shouted, half wailed, ‘It’s Rodney, he’s killed someone…’ and a man’s voice cut in over her saying, ‘Mrs Beard…’ and then the line went dead.
Beard went back to his carrel to gather up the notes he had taken the trouble to write out, then he hurried across the Library court, past Paolozzi’s Newton, and it was only when he was on the street, raising his arm for a taxi, that he remembered what he had decided hours before: it would look better to arrive home with his suitcase. He had the taxi wait in Portland Place while he went into the Institute to thank the administrator. On the way to Belsize Park, Beard wondered whether this – not dashing straight home, but making the detour to collect his luggage – was one of those items, that fourth or fifth thing he was supposed to remember. He could not think it through.
He was interviewed at length on four occasions, and his last account did not waver from the first. Under the sustained pressure of police interrogation, honesty is a fine, unassailable thing, and as a man of science, Beard had an automatic respect for internal consistency. The truth was impregnable. No need to remember what he had said last time when he could return to the source. So yes, his early flight from Oslo brought him into Heathrow at eight. He went straight to the taxi line, and then – this was his only fiction, the rest was mere omission – he was caught up in a long delay on the M4 and did not get to Portland Place until the mid morning. But he had taken many taxis from Heathrow before, and had been in many traffic jams, and memory was wax-soft, and soon his construction formed itself in his mind like any genuine recollection, both vague and certain. He really felt he had lost an hour in the traffic. What did he do during that long taxi journey? He read a paper for peer review. Total concentration. He did not look up to see the pile-up in the middle or fast lanes, or wherever it was. The rest was hard truth – his business at the Institute, his day’s work at the Library, interrupted at last by Patrice’s call when he happened to be taking a break. With painful honesty he acknowledged that he knew about and had been upset by his wife’s affair with Mr Tarpin. But he, Beard, had had many affairs himself, and that, regrettably, was the kind of marriage they had, and probably it was coming to an end. He did not stray from the truth as he described Patrice’s black eye, his Sunday-morning visit to Cricklewood, the confrontation and the slap in the face, and how he, unused to violence, had hurried away for his own safety. Though it embarrassed him, he gave the detective inspector a thorough description of the afternoon he introduced Tom Aldous to his wife, and no, he did not notice anything pass between them, and no, he never suspected that while he, Beard, was in the Arctic, and, who knew, perhaps months before, Patrice was making love to Aldous. And yes, of course he knew the boy, a brilliant young scientist who often picked him up from Reading station. No, not obviously likeable. Too self- obsessed, too narrow, too awkward in company. But many people were like that in his field.
Despite all this truth-telling, the interviews were stressful, and the very first terrified him, for he could not be sure that someone had not seen him arriving at the house at ten and leaving forty-five minutes later. But terror was easily translated into an appearance of understandable stress. Matters eased during the remaining three sessions, all of which occurred after Tarpin’s arrest, but still, a fair degree of concentration was required. One week into the affair, Beard read in a newspaper – the predictable storm was raging, photographers were by the garden gate all day and much of the night – that no one had seen Tarpin on the morning of Aldous’s death. The heavy rain caused the builder to stay alone at home, depriving him of workmates and an alibi. That at least was refreshing. And so were the leaks from the police station to the press about Tarpin’s threatening postcard to Aldous, and the two phone calls that the young man had so wisely recorded. Beard’s final two interviews were mostly formalities, a tidying up of loose ends, so he was smilingly assured. It seemed clear enough, the police had their man. Beard signed his statement with a flourish.
Out at the Centre, however, Jock Braby was not so pleased. Beard went out to talk to him on the eighth day, straight after his third interview. He decided to drive because he preferred not to be followed onto the Reading train by the press. He was the object of great interest, having been cast as the hapless victim, the unworldly fool and dreamer with a fast wife beyond his control. There was a gaggle of photographers and reporters by the Centre’s barrier gates, and the security guards in their peaked caps, deeply impressed and sympathetic, lined up to give Beard their smartest salute as he drove through.
The two men drank tea in Braby’s office and Beard told him the whole story, down to the last detail, just as he had told it to the police.
Braby frowned, and frowned deeper, and gestured through his wall in the approximate direction of the main gates. ‘This isn’t good,’ he said more than twice, and began a long, opaque speech with hesitations and fumbling repetitions, and allusions to ‘funding’ and ‘reputation’, to ‘standing back’ and being ‘helpful’, and it became clear, or less unclear, after ten minutes that what he seemed to want was for Beard to resign, and only after two references to ‘the domestic front’ was it apparent that Mrs Braby was being invoked and that what was at stake was the knighthood and a degree of hearthside tranquillity. The man was, in theory, his junior and he was asking Beard to step down! Must it be assumed to be his fault, when one of his wife’s lovers killed another? But he kept his indignation well hidden and pretended to misunderstand.
‘Jock, whatever they’re whispering around the Cabinet Office at the moment, you’d be a bloody fool to resign. I’ll put in a good word. Keep your head down for a month or two and it will all go quiet again, you’ll see.’
In the circumstances, there was nothing for Braby to do but change the subject. They talked about Aldous, and found common ground in their dislike of him, while acknowledging the loss to the Centre. The police had gone through his cubicle and found nothing of interest relating to the case. A few personal effects had already been dispatched to the distraught father in Norfolk.
Braby said, ‘Michael, there was a file marked strictly for your eyes only. I had a good look. A lot of inorganic chemistry, and maths, ramblings, I’d say, and probably done in company time.’ He handed across a heavy folder. Beard took it, then stood to indicate the conversation was at an end. He was, after all, still the Chief.
Braby walked him along the corridor a little way. ‘I suppose we can honour his memory by developing his micro wind-turbine thingy. We’re all deeply committed.’
‘Oh yes, that,’ Beard said. ‘Of course. It will be his monument.’
They shook hands and parted.
And what of the marriage? After the body had been taken away, the forensic team withdrawn, the house declared no longer a crime scene, the press gone from the garden gate, at least until Tarpin’s trial, and some workmen hired by Beard came in with sander and polisher to remove all traces of the
