next one sailed at six. His description of Chantelle rang no bells.
The timings proved nothing anyway. It was equally possible Chantelle had
taken a bus to the Airport and flown out. Umber had to assume she would do
as he had told her and make for London. If so, she would contact Claire. He
decided to call Claire himself and forewarn her.
But all he got on her practice number was the answerphone. And her mobile
was switched off. He got no response from Alice's home number either. He
left a message on none of them; there was no telling who might end up
hearing it. Then he went back to the car and headed for the Airport.
* * *
He knew the BA flight times to Gatwick, having phoned an information line
before leaving Greve de Lecq that morning. He was too late for the 1.30,
though Chantelle of course would not have been. The next flight was at 5.30.
There was no way he could be in London before early evening.
* * *
It was a quiet and orderly afternoon at the States Airport. Umber parked the
car, heaved his bag and box of notes out of the boot and carried them into
the terminal building. He dropped off the keys, then made for the BA desk.
There was no queue and the woman on duty was chatting with a female
colleague as he approached. One of them had a newspaper open in her
hands. The name 'Jeremy Hall' reached Umber's ears an instant before they
noticed him and he peeled off to inspect a rack of leaflets, remaining within
earshot as their conversation continued.
'The coffin was on the one-thirty flight. His mother was aboard. I saw her in
the club lounge waiting for take-off. Like a ghost, she was. So pale.'
'Was the father with her?'
'Not sure. There was a man. But he didn't look like this picture of Oliver
Hall.'
'The second husband, then.'
'I suppose so.'
'It must be dreadful for all of them. Just dreadful.'
Umber had heard enough. He interrupted and booked himself onto the 5.30
flight. His eye strayed to the newspaper they had been reading. It was that
afternoon's Jersey Evening Post. He could see photographs of Jeremy and
Oliver Hall beneath the headline MURDERED GIRLS' BROTHER TO BE
BURIED IN ENGLAND. It seemed that in one way at least he had had a
narrow escape. But what about Chantelle? Was it possible she had been on
the same flight as her mother — and her dead brother? He felt sick at the
thought, unable to imagine what the consequences of such a coincidence
might be.
After checking-in his box of notes as hold luggage, Umber headed back to
the news stand and bought a copy of the paper. He sat down and read the
article through.
An inquest was opened and adjourned yesterday into the death last week of
Jeremy Hall, proprietor of Rollers Sail & Surf, St Aubin, and brother of the
two girls slain in the infamous 1981 Avebury murder case. Jeremy was
found dead at the Waterworks Valley home of his father, Oliver Hall, who
told the Post after the hearing that he was very grateful for the many
messages of sympathy he had received since the news broke. Mr Hall said
Jeremy would be buried next to his sister Miranda in Marlborough, Wilts, in
accordance with his mother's wishes. Mr Hall also said he knew of no
connection between his son's death and the arrest in St Helier earlier last
week on smuggling charges of a retired police officer said to have been
prominently involved in the 1981 murder inquiry.
The article only heightened Umber's fears, formless though many of them
were. He made for the payphones and called Claire again. It was the same
story: recorded messages at the practice and Alice's house and no joy on
Claire's mobile. Nor did the story change at the second, third, fourth or fifth
time of trying. Eventually, he gave up.
* * *
The flight, short as it was, felt agonizingly protracted to Umber. Several
drinks failed to quell the whirl of his anxious thoughts. It was too late to
expect an answer from Claire's practice by the time he made it through
baggage reclaim and Customs at Gatwick. But she or Alice really ought to
be answering on the Hampstead number. Except that they were not. And the
mobile was still switched off.
* * *
Umber's only recourse now was to head for Hampstead and hope to find
them in when he arrived. Even if he had not been in a hurry, he would have
taken a taxi after the Gatwick Express had delivered him to Victoria; the box
he was carrying seemed to weigh more every time he picked it up. Even so,
the journey contrived to take longer than the flight from Jersey and it was
gone 8.30 when the taxi pulled up outside 22 Willow Hill.
The hall light was on, but the ground and first-floor rooms were in darkness.
Claire's TVR was not parked nearby. The auguries were far from good.
Umber had wheedled an undertaking out of Claire to dissuade Alice from
going to Monte Carlo to grill Michel Tinaud. But it was beginning to look as
if they had both overestimated her powers of dissuasion. Or perhaps she had
simply tired of waiting to hear from him. He had asked for a few days' grace
and, technically, that is what he had already had.
The lights were on in the top-floor flat. It was occupied by an articled clerk
called Piers. Alice had made several references to him, though Umber had
not actually met him. Telling the taxi driver to wait, Umber clambered out,
hurried to the door and pressed the bell next to the neatly printed label
PIERS BURTON.
There was no intercom system and consequently no way to tell whether
Piers was going to respond or not, until, just as Umber was about to give the
bell a second prod, the door opened. A sleepy-eyed, curly-haired young man
in fogeyish casual wear regarded him through owlish, black-framed glasses
and ventured a wary hello.
'Piers, right?'
'Yes. I —'
'I'm David.' Some instinct deterred Umber from volunteering his surname,
sharing it as he did with a deceased former tenant of Piers's flat. 'I'm, er… a
friend of Alice's. I was staying here at the weekend.'
'I was out of town.'
'Well, we'd probably have bumped into each other if you'd been here.'
'Probably.'
'Look, the thing is —'
'Alice isn't here.'
'So I see. Has she gone away?'
'Yes. Last-minute decision, apparently. There was a note waiting for me
when I got home this evening. She's taken off with her friend Claire. She's
been staying here. I know that.' There was a hint in his tone that Claire's
presence in the house was something he could vouch for, whereas Umber's
was altogether more debatable.
'Did the note say where they'd gone?'
'No. Maybe she didn't want to make me feel envious.'
'What about for how long?'
'Open-ended, apparently. A few days. A week. She wasn't sure.'
'Right.' Monte Carlo it had to be. Claire's mobile had probably been
switched off during the flight. If Chantelle had tried to contact her, she
would not have succeeded. The fail-safe Umber had supplied her with had
proved to be useless. 'Well, thanks.'
'No problem.'
* * *
No problem to Piers, perhaps. For Umber the situation was much more
complicated. He went back to the cab and climbed in.
'Where to now, guv'?' the taxi driver prompted, when ten seconds or so had
passed without a destination being supplied.
'I…' Umber thought of what Chantelle had done after fleeing Tinaud's rented
apartment in Wimbledon five years ago. It was possible — just — that she
had done the same after trying to speak to Claire. 'A hotel near Euston
station.'
'There are quite a few, guv'.'
'Near as in opposite.'
'There's a Travel Inn on the other side of Euston Road. That'd be more or
less opposite.'
'Then that'll do.'
* * *
It was a long shot and Umber was disappointed but not surprised to be told
there was nobody called Fontanet — or even Hedgecoe — staying at the
Euston Travel Inn. Fast running out of options, he booked himself in for the
night. He thought about trying Claire's mobile again, then thought better of it
for reasons that had only just begun to take shape in his mind.
He did some more thinking in the large and noisy pub a few doors along
from the hotel. There was nothing Claire could do for Chantelle in Monte
Carlo. If she and Alice were intent on confronting Tinaud, it might be better,
in fact, if they knew as little as possible about his errant former girlfriend's
whereabouts.
But that conclusion left Umber alone and resourceless. If he was no better
placed come Friday, the roof would fall in on all of them. He had to do
something. He had to seize the initiative. But how? With what? There was
nothing: no answer; no hope. Then, quite suddenly, around the time a
tsunami of cheers burst over him following a goal in the football match
splashed across the pub's widescreen TV, the glimmer of an answer came to
him. And with it a sliver of hope.
* * *
Junius held the key. Chantelle had said as much and maybe she was right.
Wisby believed Griffin had been done away with by Tamsin's abductors. His
special edition of Junius's letters had ended up in the hands of Marilyn Hall.
Did that make her one of the abductors? If so, it was a chink in the armour of
whoever she had been acting for — the juicy-voiced man in the car for one.
If Umber could pin Griffin's murder on her, it would give him a bargaining
chip, maybe a decisive one. It was a tall order. It required him to trace the
previously untraceable Griffin. And that brought him back to the hunt for
Junius himself, a hunt in which he had made only faltering progress. But
something had changed now. Something had been returned to him. And it
was time to remind himself what it contained.