She didn’t want to tell Ed how she had failed so dismally to respond to Connie’s plea for help, though she reckoned he’d probably already guessed.
‘I was going to call back,’ she finished lamely. ‘But... but then it was too late... So I wondered if you knew what was bothering her. She mentioned something about the lab being put under pressure. She was afraid there were plans to close it down.’
‘Close it down?’ Ed sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘There’ve always been plans to get rid of RECAP. Nobody has ever succeeded though...’
The sentence tailed off as he realized what he’d said.
‘Did Connie talk to you about it at all?’ Jones asked.
‘No. Not really. Well, she was always grumbling about lack of resources, that sort of thing. That’s all.’
‘What about Paul?’
‘Oh you know Paul. If the lab were going to close he wouldn’t have noticed until he was actually physically thrown out of the place. All he was ever aware of was his work, particularly after Gilda died.’
Jones tried again.
‘Ed, have you really no idea at all what may have been troubling Connie?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he responded immediately.
‘Well, she was troubled. I’m sure of it.’
‘OK, but even if she was, what has that necessarily got to do with the explosion?’
‘I have no idea,’ Jones replied. ‘But I sure as hell would like to find out. I’m convinced there’s a connection.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. What do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘Knowing Paul and Connie, the explosion could well have been some kind of accident. Not connected with anything. For a start she still smokes...’ Ed paused, remembering. ‘She still smoked in the lab. She and Paul weren’t exactly hot on health and safety, were they?’
‘The health and safety people had just been in, Connie told me. Fitted sprinklers.’
‘So what?’
‘Ed, it really could have been a bomb, you know.’
Ed shrugged again. ‘Or a gas leak. You can choose whatever you like to believe at this stage, can’t you?’
‘Yes, so can you think of any reason why RECAP would be a target for a terrorist attack?’ Jones persisted.
‘I don’t think it was. Even if some terrorist group was responsible for the blast, then surely it would have been just a matter of hitting another high-profile target. Princeton is a major Ivy League university, after all.’
‘Yes. And RECAP was an obscure half-forgotten research lab tucked away deep in the bowels of the campus.’
‘Sandy, what are you trying to prove?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. But, look, Ed, I let Connie down. And it wasn’t for the first time.’
‘So that’s what this is all about. Your fucking guilt. Well, you damned well should feel guilty, that’s for sure.’
He spat the words at her. Angry again. She was startled, and recoiled at once.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ he responded quickly. ‘I’m just, so, so on edge—’
‘It’s all right. I understand,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t suppose either of us is thinking straight. I’ll go now. Maybe I’ll phone tomorrow, if that’s OK?’
‘OK.’
They both stood up. The dog started to bark again, demanding attention.
‘No, Jasper, it’s not time,’ said Ed, scratching the dog’s head affectionately.
‘Does he want to go out?’ asked Jones, in an effort to make normal conversation.
‘I take him around the block every night, but not yet, or he’ll only want to go again.’
Jones attempted a smile. Ed just looked at her. No smile. No comment.
‘I’ll call tomorrow,’ she repeated.
He nodded curtly. She deserved it, but it still hurt. She felt not only bereft, but a little surprised. She suspected Ed’s anger was rather more because of the way she had treated him, than because of her neglect of Connie and Paul. And that had been twenty-one years ago.
Either way, on that awful day, it was irrelevant. And Ed had said nothing at all to shake her growing conviction that the explosion at RECAP had been neither accident nor random.
Outside a man wearing a hooded anorak, quite unnecessary on such a balmy evening, was walking up the path towards Ed’s apartment block when the front door opened. Ed had escorted Sandy downstairs, possibly to make sure she left the premises, she had thought wryly. He opened the door for her, stepping momentarily outside as she departed. Intent on dodging the shaft of light emitting from the building, the man dived for cover in the shrubbery to one side of the picket-fenced garden area.
Crouching there, he watched Sandy Jones walk down the path, open the white-painted gate and step out into the street.
Jones was at first silhouetted against the lights of the building as she headed almost directly towards the man in the anorak, and then had her back towards him as she proceeded down the street.
The man had been unable to see her face. And he had no idea whether or not he would have recognized her even had he been able to do so.
Once Jones was out of sight the man emerged from the shrubbery, approached the apartment block again, and without hesitation pressed one of the row of doorbells set in a panel on the wall. Very soon the man would know who Ed MacEntee’s mystery caller had been. He would make it his business to do so.
Jones had no idea that anyone had observed her leave Ed’s home. She strolled slowly into what passed for the centre of Princeton. It seemed extraordinary that she had never returned to the place. Not once since 1998. Yet it was still so familiar. Little seemed to have changed, visually at any rate. Nassau Street, the main drag on the edge of campus, continued to house a number of bars and cafes. But as it was now after nine o’clock at night the place seemed pretty much deserted, and Jones didn’t think that necessarily had anything to do with the explosion. Princeton had never been hot on nightlife.
She walked across Palmer Square, past the life-size bronze of a boy sitting reading, until she reached the Nassau Inn, where she had already reserved a room. She checked in, then went straight to her room where she immediately showered and washed her hair, which her boys insisted on calling her ‘Claudia Winkleman’. She still wore it in a long bob, and it was still an exceptionally glossy black. Keeping it that way was probably her biggest vanity. Although she had also developed a liking for designer clothes, albeit favouring a casual look. And she had retained her penchant for jeans and unfussy shirts.
After her shower she ordered wine and sandwiches on room service, and channel-hopped the television for a couple of hours before trying to sleep. However, although she felt bone weary, sleep did not come. She was besieged by unwelcome thoughts, and disorientated by jetlag.
Somewhere around four a.m. local time, and God knows when by her body clock, she gave up trying. She couldn’t lie there any longer. She just had to do something. She dressed swiftly in the black jeans she had worn on her journey, and her black DKNY hoodie, let herself out of the front door of the Inn, as quietly possible, and started to walk towards the campus.
It was a dark night. No moon and no stars. In the dim glow of the streetlights and the occasional lit-up shop window Princeton looked even more unreal than ever. At one point a lone police patrol car drove slowly by, drawing almost to a halt alongside Jones, who became acutely aware of being closely scrutinized. One of the few examples of the power of human consciousness experienced on a regular basis by almost all of us, she reflected. As Connie had always pointed out to her critics, we often know when the eyes of another creature, human or animal, are fixed upon us, even when we cannot see them. How can that be, Connie would ask, if there is no link between our minds?