‘Attractive lady,’ Frank remarked as Nevile came back in.
Nevile took the photograph away from him and gave it a wistful smile. ‘Yes. That was taken on Albert Bridge, in London.’ Pause. ‘We were supposed to be getting married.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Frank. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘No, no. Don’t worry about it. That was all a long time ago. Nine years and three months, to be precise. Her name was Alison. She was a very clever girl, great fun. She wanted to be a QC.’
‘What happened?’
‘An accident. A boat party, actually, on the Thames, for somebody’s birthday. I was invited, too, but I was working with the Sussex Police that day, trying to find two little girls who had gone missing on the South Downs. It was such a fine summer evening that I drove all the way back to town with the top of my car down.
‘I was driving through Putney when I heard on the radio that a dredger had collided with a pleasure boat close to Westminster Pier, and that a number of young people had been drowned. Fifty-two, as it turned out, in the end; and Alison was one of them.’
‘I’m sorry. Jesus, you must have been devastated.’
‘Well, I was. I haven’t really got over it, even now. I keep thinking of what she would have been like now, if she had lived. Sometimes I’m driving along the street and I catch a glimpse of her, disappearing into a doorway, or climbing into a taxi. I know it can’t really be her, but I can’t get her out of my mind.
‘In fact, it was two years after Alison drowned that I experienced automatic writing for myself, so that’s how I know how reliable it can be.’
‘Alison wrote to you?’
Nevile nodded. ‘I was sitting by the Thames one August afternoon at Boulter’s Lock. It’s very peaceful there . . . several miles upstream from the City. I was writing notes for a lecture on psychic detection, but I had drunk one two many glasses of wine over lunch and I started to nod off. My writing hand started to go into a sort of a spasm, rather like a cramp, but not so painful. It circled around and around my notebook, and then it made all kinds of squiggles.
‘I suddenly felt that Alison was very close by – that she was leaning over my shoulder. I tried to resist turning around because I knew that she wasn’t really there, but in the end I couldn’t stop myself.’
‘And?’
‘I was right. She wasn’t there.’
Nevile paused for a moment, smiling wistfully at the memory. Then he hunkered down and opened one of the drawers underneath the bookshelves. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘the very piece of paper.’
Frank took it and tried to read it. All he could make out was RO smmr AD tom FFG.
‘Incomprehensible if you don’t know what you’re looking for,’ Nevile admitted. ‘But most automatic writing is very personal. If you fold the paper in the middle, the letters RO and AD join together to form the word ROAD, and The Road by Edwin Muir was one of Alison’s favorite poems.
‘It’s all about passing time. “There is a road that turning always|Cuts off the country of Again.” And the verse that Alison was trying to remind me of goes: “There a man on a summer evening|Reclines at ease upon his tomb|And is his mortal effigy|And there within the womb|The cell of doom.” See . . . “smmr” is “summer”, “tom” is “tomb” and “FFG” for “effigy.”’
He took the piece of paper back and returned it to the drawer. ‘She was telling me that everybody dies. Even when we’re laughing on Albert Bridge, we’ll soon be dead. Even after we’re dead, though, we still journey on, although only the dead know where.’
Seventeen
On the six o’clock network news, Police Commissioner Marvin Campbell announced that he had received a new coded message from Dar Tariki Tariqat. They had called for a total ban within seventy-two hours on ‘all films and television programs that glorify salacious or ungodly behaviors.’ The consequence for disobeying this warning would be ‘Armageddon for Hollywood . . . Starting at twelve noon precisely on Friday, a series of eleven bombs will be detonated around Los Angeles at twenty-four intervals, with the intention of bringing to their knees all those who disseminate licentiousness and blasphemy.’
Commissioner Campbell said he had no reason to believe that the message was a hoax and that he was treating it with ‘the utmost gravity.’ At the same time, he tried to reassure the citizens of Los Angeles that public security precautions had never been so stringent. ‘Not only that, our anti-terrorist teams are very close to making some significant arrests.’
‘You believe that?’ asked Smitty, popping open another beer. They were sitting on the porch, watching the dog rolling on his back on the grass.
Frank shook his head. ‘Two detectives came around to Nevile Strange’s house this afternoon, when I was there. If they’re still asking a psychic for answers, they can’t have any solid evidence, can they? I’m not saying that Nevile’s not a good psychic. In fact, I think he’s probably the best. It’s just that communications from the spirit world are not exactly a substitute for fingerprints and DNA.’
‘You know what I think?’ said Smitty. ‘I think it’s the end of the world as we know it.’
Frank drove back to the Sunset Marquis. When he walked into the lobby, he found Margot waiting for him, alone, looking pale and pinched, her hair wound up in a pale mauve turban.
‘Frank,’ she said, rising to her feet, ‘we really need to talk.’
‘Sure, OK.’ He checked his watch. It was eight minutes of seven. He led her up to his room and opened the door. She walked in and circled around, her eyes flicking from side to side as if she were looking for clues.
‘You want a drink?’ he asked her. ‘I have Chardonnay, Chardonnay or Chardonnay. Or beer.’
‘No thanks. I simply think we need to work out what we’re going to do next.’
‘I don’t know. What do you think we ought to do next?’
‘Frank, we’ve been married for nine years. Doesn’t that count for anything?’
‘Of course it does. But it’s no use pretending that nothing’s happened.’
‘I can forgive you for what happened to Danny, I know I can.’
‘But not yet?’
‘I’m only asking for time, Frank.’
‘I know. And I’m not blaming you. If our positions had been reversed – if it had been you taking Danny to school when that bomb went off – I would probably be feeling exactly the same way that you’re feeling.’
Margot hesitated, then said, ‘The reason I came here today . . . well, I just wanted you to know that in spite of everything I still love you. You talked about divorce, but I don’t want to think that this is going to be the end of us.’
Frank took a half-empty bottle of white wine out of the fridge and poured himself a large glass. ‘I don’t know. I’m beginning to wonder if Danny was all that was holding us together. We’ve been eating at the same table and sleeping in the same bed, but we haven’t been talking to each other very much, have we?’
‘Was our marriage really so bad?’
‘No, it wasn’t. Most of it was great. But maybe we were both changing into different people and because of Danny we didn’t realize how much.’
‘All I want to know is if I made you happy or not.’
‘Jesus, Margot. That’s like coming up to somebody who’s just walked away from a plane crash and asking them if they had a comfortable seat.’
‘I need to know what you’re thinking, Frank. I need to know what you’re intending to do.’
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. Neither does anybody else in Los Angeles, until they catch these terrorists. The way things are going, we’re all going to wind up jobless and bankrupt.’