It was the smile. People’s mouths were his first impression and how he judged them. He had wanted to disappear into hers.
Ivan turned from the mirror, his arms outstretched. It was his job to do what he could to keep her safe; he could say nothing of what he was thinking.
Her smile was warm, her teeth whiter than white and not once did she blink. Her hair was flaxen in the mellow candlelight as if bathed in summer sunlight.
The church bells struck eleven times. The night was young. After so long, neither of them needed to speak to communicate with each other.
Ivan knew what she wanted him to do.
62
Monday, 24 January 2011
Jack followed the instructions on the van’s satellite-navigation system until, coming out of Newhaven, he recognized where he was and switched off the relentless voice. He travelled the remaining miles in silence. At the sign for Bishopstone he checked his rear mirror but there were no headlights. Indicating left, he flicked down to sidelights and bumped slowly up the lane.
He was looking for the silver BMW four-wheel drive. On the seat beside him was a printout map of the area. After he had left Sarah Glyde’s studio, his instinct had been to come straight to Sussex but he had forced himself to prepare. He had returned to his parents’ house in St Peter’s Square and brought up Broad Street in Seaford on his screen. There it was, a silver four-wheel drive, fixed in time, making its way towards the Co-op supermarket in the sunshine, its driver a shadow behind the wheel. He had clicked the magnifying glass icon and enlarged the image; cropping the surrounding street from the frame, he pressed Print screen. He confirmed that the vehicle was the X3 model on a dealer website.
There was always a silver X3 outside the surgery when he came to clean and on his last visit it had been missing.
As he remembered from when he had come with Stella and from his journey in Street View, the lane wound for a long way, with no dwellings, hedgerows overgrown; the van’s sidelights accentuated the density of leaves and groping branches. Fullwood House was remote; Ivan Challoner did not want neighbours.
Outside the churchyard his phone rang, and he fumbled for it, sending a blue light over the dashboard when he hauled it out of his coat slung over the passenger seat. Stella had left another voicemaiclass="underline" ‘Jack? Stella. Where are you? Ring when you get this. You’ve taken one of the vans. Why were you in my flat?’
They were no longer a team. Jack told himself Stella had abandoned him. He had her van; she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. She had not answered his calls. He mounted the verge where they had parked last time and cut the engine. He would not tell her where he was; she would find out soon enough. Jackie would have told Stella she had spoken to him.
It was over.
He turned off his telephone and dropped it in the handbrake well between the seats. Stella would not call the police to report her van stolen. He felt a twinge: he was sorry that he would not see her again.
He found a torch in the glove box. He had not brought the clay cutter or the knife. Neither were suitable. Challoner would have plenty of tools that would do the job.
Shrouded by thickening fog, in his black coat and treading quietly, he was invisible but avoided the light of a single lamp-post as he surveyed a Gothic Victorian villa with a deep arched porchway beyond a twisted hedge. On the gravel outside, parked at an angle, was a silver BMW X3. He shone his light quickly on the number plate; it was registered in 2009.
Jonathan Rokesmith was as near to happy as he had ever been in his life.
63
Monday, 24 January 2011
The blinds in the surgery were shut and Ivan’s sitting-room window was unlit. He must have already left for the country. Stella was sorry for refusing the invitation to his family home and, jumping into Terry’s car, had driven down to Kew.
She deliberated whether to phone Ivan, but could not bear the idea of him not answering or not returning her call or, worse, putting down the phone. She had no idea where Fullwood House was so could not go there and surprise him, and besides Ivan was like her: surprising him was out of the question.
She was disappointed not to find Jack at the surgery, although he would have finished cleaning hours ago. She had left him a peevish message which now she regretted. More than not going to Sussex, she regretted not answering Jack’s earlier calls; there was so much to discuss.
She had perceived too late what it had cost Ivan to invite her, so intent was she on keeping her routine and not repeating her mistakes with Paul. Stella had not noticed that since Terry’s death she had no routine and, as for having space, well, she had plenty of that. She wished Paul were alive to get on her nerves. She tramped over melting snow to the front steps, the clinging fog chilling her to the core.
She had listened to Ivan’s account of the new kinds of treatments he was researching and in return described her new compact and easily manoeuvrable walk-behind scrubber-drier with attached cleaning system. Unlike Paul, Ivan did not hanker after owning her; she enjoyed his company.
Tonight she had found out what was precious to Ivan and rejected him; there would be no second chance. She stared at the sign: Ivan’s name and qualifications were solid in the lamplight suspended above the two brass-studded doors: ‘Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist’.
Strange that he wasn’t called by his first name, she thought. She tried Jack’s number again. No answer. She pictured him sulking because of her message about the van. Where was he?
Car headlights raked the steps, momentarily dazzling her. Ivan was back; it was all right – although ideally she did not want him to find her. She cast about with the crazy thought of hiding, but that would make it worse. She prepared a bright smile.
The headlights on full beam captured her in their glare and suddenly Stella panicked. Her first instinct had been right. She did not want to spend a night with Ivan in a house in the middle of the country, miles from anywhere. Terry would not have liked her to accept.
Sarah Glyde got out of the car.
‘It said in the case papers that you couldn’t drive.’ Something was very wrong.
‘I can now.’ Glyde slammed her car door and sloshed through the melting ice up the stairs. ‘Is Antony here? Are they inside?’
She shoved past and to Stella’s astonishment prodded a key into the front-door lock.
‘There’s no one there.’ Stella remained on the top step. ‘Who did you say?’
Sarah Glyde appeared not to have heard.
‘Jack’s a very disturbed young man. He was coming here when he left me. He had a knife.’ She rushed inside and, after jabbing in an alarm code, switched on a lamp in the hall.
Stella splashed after her. ‘How come you have a key?’ It was inconceivable that Ivan would be friends with a hayseed in ripped jeans and a filthy shirt too big for her. Sarah was circling the receptionist’s office, tapping and stroking the filing cabinet, the desk, the computer and its monitor; muttering incessantly as if casting a spell.
‘I rang to warn Antony but…’
‘Who the hell is Antony? What was wrong with Jack’s cleaning?’
‘You call him Ivan.’
‘Do I?’
Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist. Rule: never call clients by their first name.