TWENTY

It was eleven o’clock local time when Harding’s plane touched down in Nice. He retained little awareness of the journey that had filled most of the day. The train to Reading; the coach to the airport; the long wait in the terminal; the evening flight across France; they had been a blur somewhere at the margin of his thoughts, barely impinging on his consciousness.

Whybrow had declined to elaborate on his stark report of Hayley’s mercifully aborted attack on Carol. “I’ll give you all the details when we meet.” That had left Harding prey to as many dreadful speculations as his imagination could conjure up. Yet none was more dreadful in its way than the frightening realization that he had understood nothing as it truly was. He had been deceived. He had been manipulated. He had been made a fool of. And just how big a one he suspected Whybrow was going to explain with unsparing clarity.

Whybrow was waiting outside the customs hall. He appeared, as ever, cool and elegant, dressed in a dark suit and open-neck shirt. He was carrying a slim briefcase in one hand and a rolled copy of the Financial Times in the other. He had the fluent carriage of an athlete and the disconcertingly direct gaze of a powerful thinker. He kept his thinning hair bristlingly short and his chin baby-smooth. For all his undemonstrative, quietly spoken manner, there was something narcissistic about him, something faintly scornful of others. Whenever he had made up a drinking threesome with Harding and Tozer, he had always finished the soberest of them by some way with the least about himself revealed. Happiness was control in the world of Tony Whybrow.

“Bad business, Tim,” he said, tapping Harding on the elbow with his newspaper in greeting. “You don’t look so good.”

“I don’t feel so good. Think I’ll feel any better when you’ve told me exactly what happened?”

“No point pretending that’s likely.”

“Are we going to Barney’s now?”

“No. It’s late. And he’s been hitting the bottle. Go and see them in the morning. He’ll be more rational then. And Carol will be calmer. I hope.”

“It must have been a terrible experience for her.”

“Yes. It was.” Whybrow glanced in the direction of the exit leading to the car park. “I’ll drive you to your place. We can talk on the way.”

“OK. But-”

“Let’s go, shall we?” Whybrow cut him off, with a hint of impatience. There was much to say. But the time to say it had not quite come yet.

“You’re sure it was Hayley who did this, aren’t you, Tony?” Harding asked as they settled into Whybrow’s Lexus. “I can’t really believe she’s capable of threatening anyone with a knife.”

“How well do you think you know her?” The car started almost inaudibly and glided out of its parking bay with little apparent intervention from its driver. “You can’t have met her more than a couple of times.”

“I haven’t,” said Harding defensively. “Even so…”

“Here’s the deal, Tim. I only learnt the identity of Gabriel Tozer’s housekeeper after Barney had talked you into going to Penzance on his behalf. I wouldn’t have allowed the situation to develop as it has if I’d known sooner. There were simply too many risk factors. As events have resoundingly confirmed.”

“Hold on. Are you saying you knew Hayley… before?”

“Knew of her, yes. I’ll come to that later. Barney and I are in the midst of some particularly delicate negotiations at present. I may have taken my eye off the ball where his family problems are concerned. He certainly did so himself. Hence the impossible position he put you in.”

“Why was it… impossible?”

“Because you didn’t know all or even most of the factors that were in play. Before I explain them, though, I’d better tell you how last night unfolded.” They were clear of the car park now, heading for the main road into Nice. “Hayley rang the penthouse around seven. The phone had rung a couple of times before and Carol had answered, but the caller had hung up. Only when Barney answered did she speak. She introduced herself and confessed straight out to stealing the ring from Heartsease.”

“She said that?”

“She did. She also said she regretted what she’d done and was willing to hand the ring over to Barney and explain why she’d stolen it. She wanted him to meet her in Menton later that evening. He agreed. It was a nicely judged decoy. She said she’d be waiting for him on the promenade near the casino at eight o’clock. He set off, telling Carol he was meeting me to discuss some business emergency. Perhaps if he’d told her the truth, she’d have been more on her guard, though I doubt it. Anyway, while Barney was in Menton, stooging around the sea front as eight o’clock came and went, Hayley was in Monaco. She’d been there when he left, hiding in the shadows near the back gate. As he drove out and the shutter-door came down, she’d wedged a bar under it to stop it closing. Barney’s not the type to wait to make sure the door’s completely shut every time he leaves. You know that. Well, it looks like she did too.”

“So, she got in by rolling under the door?”

“Yes. It wasn’t difficult. And it was even less difficult to get inside the apartment. The patio doors were unlocked. I expect she had some other way in planned, but that made it real easy for her. She crept into the kitchen and took a knife from the block on the worktop. Carol was in the lounge watching television. She never heard a thing. Suddenly there was a knife at her throat. She thought she was going to be killed. There and then.”

“Poor Carol.” Harding shut his eyes for a second, imagining how she must have felt in the moment when she realized her life might be about to end. “What did she do?”

“She was paralysed by fear. Probably just as well. But she wasn’t struck dumb. So, she talked, pleading for her life. At first, she didn’t know who her attacker was. Hayley stayed behind her. Carol reasoned with her as best she could. It was a monologue, apparently. Hayley never said a word. Then, suddenly, she threw down the knife and fled. It was only at that point that Carol recognized her.”

“But she’s never met her before.” It was a feeble objection. Hayley’s resemblance to Kerry Foxton made some form of recognition inevitable. As Whybrow emphasized in his own way by ignoring the point.

“Carol was in shock. She can’t properly account for what she did afterwards. Instead of calling the police, she locked herself in the bathroom, fearing Hayley might come back. She didn’t, of course. She was probably long gone by then. Meanwhile, Barney was starting to worry. He phoned home and got no answer. Then he worried some more. He didn’t want to head back in case Hayley was simply late for their appointment. So, he phoned me and asked me to call round. Carol was still in the bathroom when I got there. I had to do quite a lot of talking just to get her to open the door. I’d searched the apartment by then and was certain no one was hiding anywhere. The bar was still propping open the shutter-door when I arrived, by the way. Hayley hadn’t bothered to remove it. Or maybe she’d been too distraught at her loss of nerve to think of it.”

“How do you know she lost her nerve? Maybe she’d only ever intended to threaten Carol. Though why I can’t imagine.”

“She left something in the kitchen that convinced me she was planning to murder Carol. A pocket recorder, with a tape in it. I listened to the tape while waiting for Barney to drive back from Menton. I’d phoned him, but not the police. I don’t believe in acting hastily. And this is a good example of why that’s always a sensible policy.” Whybrow pressed a button on the dashboard. The radio and hi-fi panel lit up. A tape engaged in the player. And Carol’s voice echoed in the car.

Barney’s playing golf, so I thought I’d give you a call. What are you doing? Treating Humph to a cream tea? It’d be wasted on him. He doesn’t appreciate the good things in life. But I do. Our afternoons together are very good, Tim, very, very good. Shall we-

Whybrow’s finger hit the off switch. Silence reclaimed the foreground. Harding could not suppress a groan as he gazed out through the passenger window into the blackness of the Mediterranean. “That’s quite enough of that, I think, don’t you?” said Whybrow softly.

“Has Barney heard this?”

“Not yet. And there’s no reason why he needs to. As long as we can agree how to handle the… ramifications.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I believe Hayley’s plan was to frame Barney for Carol’s murder, leaving the tape to be found by the police when they responded to the anonymous 112 emergency call she obviously intended to make after killing Carol. She’d arranged for him to have no alibi that would bear examination, whereas I assume she had one standing by for herself. The tape would have supplied the perfect motive. It could plausibly have been obtained from your phone by some private detective, employed by Barney to check up on Carol. It was a good plan. We can only be grateful she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it. Barney’s denials wouldn’t have counted for much. I don’t know how I could have got him off. The beauty of it, from Hayley’s point of view, was that Barney would have understood very clearly who’d framed him and why, without being able to do a damn thing about it, except tell the truth and have it universally disbelieved. Sweet revenge, in Hayley’s mind. Better than murdering Barney, she’d have murdered his beloved wife and ensured he’d spend the rest of his life in prison contemplating that fact.”

“Barney might have understood. But I don’t. What would Hayley have been avenging?”

“Her sister’s murder-as she sees it.”

“What?”

“Her name isn’t Winter, Tim. It’s Foxton. She’s Kerry Foxton’s twin sister.”