With lighter heart Bentley moved forward into the belt of trees, stepping carefully – as he had trained himself to do – to avoid leaving footprints on the ground. The sky was pink now, the beach beyond a cloth of gold edged with white lace. He stared and sniffed the salt air, and stood puzzled because the unfamiliar experience had made his thoughts wander too far.
He was not alone on the beach. Further along there was a figure near the water’s edge laying out a structure – surely an enormous kite – whose coloured and segmented surface rippled in the wind. He crept closer, safe behind the grassy dunes that fringed the sands. Slowly, confidently, the kite-surfer negotiated himself into the water. Bentley shivered at the thought of it and with his hand brushed back the wisps of his hair caught by a fresh gust of wind. Then, quite suddenly, the kite rose up, dragging the figure across the surface of the water, the feet describing a perfect and sparkling arc that reminded Bentley of the necklace that, with seconds ticking away, he had decided to retrieve from the last of the cabinets. He shivered again, but this time for a different reason. Then, as the wind dropped, the kite came down, as quickly and silently as it had risen.
When the kite went up for the second time, Bentley’s coat began flapping against his legs in a violent gust that drove the kite both upwards and towards him. The suspended figure was snatched high into the air, then fell back awkwardly onto the sand amid the spent folds of material. From behind the dune Bentley contemplated the crumpled form, clinically, dispassionately. Then he walked towards it.
It was not the first time Bentley had witnessed the contusing violence of death. But on such occasions, in his own world, there were seldom decisions to be made. Others, not he, would do what had to be done – to clear, to tidy, to hide, then to deny. He looked into the clear morning air, at the sky and the sea, and along the beach. There was no movement, except for the swell of the surf.
It was not enough. The residues of a lifetime of crime and bitterness could not be expunged this easily. There were no mechanisms for imparting sympathy or explanation to others, and it was too late to learn. He saw no other course, no means of grasping the line that was offered, or even of telling whether it was a lifeline or a snare.
Turning away, he began to retrace his path. Then he picked up a piece of driftwood from near the water’s edge. As he made his way back to the car he dragged it behind him, obliterating his footsteps in the sand. Looking back, he was pleased that the tide seemed to be coming in. He reached the car with quickening steps. Establishing that he was alone, he hurled the stick into the trees and scrambled into the car.
A plan was hatching in his mind. A slow smile began to contort his thin, pursed lips.
He was going back.
TREXLER’S ORCHID
Dusk was approaching and still Bloomfield had not arrived. From the table in his study Martin Trexler peered through the open doors and the grey-green gloom of the conservatory to the orchid house in the garden, where the last rays of the sun were painting the glass with golden brush strokes. He stroked his beard, half expecting to see his rival skulking there in his usual aggressively inquisitive manner. But he knew the man was too subtle for that.
Perhaps the visit had something to do with the vacant position of Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew and Bloomfield, who already worked there, wanted his support. But even if Trexler did not know the reason for this unexplained wish to see him – and Bloomfield had given nothing away when the telephone suddenly went dead – he was sure that his adversary had no inkling of the revelation that he, Trexler, was about to deliver. On this day of all days, there were more important things to think about than Dr Ray Bloomfield and his ambitions.
Trexler’s study was the product of a bygone age. Visitors usually needed a moment or so to convince themselves they were still in suburban London and not a faraway museum dedicated to the relics of colonial rule. Around the walls, Victorian stalwarts in antique frames posed trenchantly against impenetrable jungle backdrops reflecting expeditions of unspeakable hardship. They looked down upon a miscellany of hideous masks, barbarous weapons and wood carvings littering the room that were the spoils of Trexler’s own wanderings. High above the central table, drapes of threadbare linen cloth drooped tent-like from the ceiling rose to the upper walls. On the table’s carpeted surface an assortment of academic botanical volumes were stacked as if for no other purpose than to gather dust. For Trexler, this room had the cosiness of a womb.
He swivelled in his seat and looked up at the most impressive of the figures, his grandfather, his idol. He was reassured by the approbation that he chose to see in the piercing eyes. Gerhardt Trexler, the doyen of collectors, the chief of Sander’s team, the leader of men praised in that heyday towards the end of the last century as vigorously as they were now reviled by those who understood the despoliation of the jungles of the world.
Of course Trexler understood all that, but it was not how he saw his grandfather. From early childhood Gerhardt’s exploits had fired a rampant imagination and fuelled an unquenchable urge. Of these deeds one had held a special place in orchid lore, ever since a tantalisingly cryptic note in Curtis’ Orchid Magazine had referred to a species of Cyprepedium quite unrivalled in its distinctiveness and beauty that no-one besides Gerhardt himself was destined ever to see. Until today.
With Bloomfield quite forgotten, Trexler rose from his chair and entered the conservatory. He re-emerged carrying a small grass-like plant with curiously spotted leaves and bearing a single slipper-like bloom that, with unbearable slowness, had developed from the ripe bud of the previous day. He set the pot beside Gerhardt’s notes that lay open on the table. As he had done repeatedly throughout the day, he again compared the features. There was no longer a need to convince himself. The two flowers were undeniably the same.
The paper he had written on this assumption lay pristine and complete on the table beside an envelope addressed to the editor of the Orchid Review. For the moment it was all that was needed to establish his claim to the species, which he had named Paphiopedilum trexleri.
While he was absorbed with the plant a young Asian woman, twenty years Trexler’s junior and with straight black hair to her slim waist, had entered noiselessly through the open door. She stood behind him, waiting patiently until he should notice her. She spoke only when he acknowledged her with a slight turn of his head.
‘Is it ready?’ she said.
‘If you must know, it is ready.’
‘I can post it for you?’
‘Thank you, but I’d prefer to do it myself.’
‘Of course,’ she said, leaving the room.
He had been distracted by his wife’s entrance. But his spirits quickly returned. Perhaps he had been harsh. After all, without her, more or less, there would have been no cause for celebration. And there was always a way… But no, he would not sully his success with black intentions that could safely lie dormant. Besides, did not the manner of his discovery have the makings of a legend just as potent as the scientific one he had just made? No, caution must prevail and he must bide his time. He began to speak, addressing an imaginary audience: ‘Ladies and gentleman, when my grandfather left Siam for the last time, his fever having subsided, no one could have guessed…’