He wanted to fill his lungs with fresh air before finding a table in the library. Such a gorgeous summer afternoon was too precious to squander. A path curled past a yew hedge to the rear of the building. Beyond a neat lawn and a fountain with a cherub lay a walled garden. A wooden door in the middle of the stone wall was kept open during daylight hours. Gertrude Jekyll had presided over the planting, and the bulk of the garden was devoted to dozens of rose cultivars, sequenced by colour from red, through pink and white, to yellow, apricot and orange. Where the cross paths met in the centre stood a rondel of timber posts covered in climbing roses and clematis, alongside a tiny pond inhabited by fat goldfish.
Daniel inhaled the fragrance of the blooms. The garden was deserted, and he imagined himself striding out like Sir Milo Hopes of Mockbeggar Hall, taking a morning constitutional around the monument he had built to celebrate his love of literature. Sir Milo, who fancied himself as a man of letters, had compiled an archive of memoirs and other family papers, as well as trying his hand at fiction. Having skimmed a couple of the historical romances which the squire of Mockbeggar had privately printed and expensively bound for display in the library, Daniel understood why Sir Milo was remembered for his munificence, not his plodding prose.
‘Daniel!’
He spun on his heel. Above the wall, the upper part of the building was visible. On a narrow parapet, outside a first-floor window, a tall lean man with a wild mane of thick black hair and a flowing beard stood. His arms were held aloft, forefingers pointing to the sky. He might have been a demagogue in mid rant, intent on whipping up a frenzy in a raging mob. Or a zealot about to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Jesus, what is he doing?
The man’s dark eyes stared down and met Daniel’s.
‘Aslan!’ Daniel bellowed.
He burst into a run, desperate to avert disaster. The man on the parapet stood motionless, as if deciding what to do, before relaxing, as if the tension had been squeezed out of him like paste from a tube.
He shook his mane, and let his arms fall.
‘Sorry!’ he called. ‘Did I give you a scare?’
‘How did it go?’ the voice on the phone asked.
Hannah switched off the ignition of her Lexus. Even though Terri was her closest friend, it had been a mistake to confide, in a moment of weakness, that she was planning to make the break with Marc.
‘We talked, which is progress.’
‘And?’
‘We’ll talk again, I suppose.’
‘So he’s fighting to keep you?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘It’s taken long enough for him to realise what he’s throwing away.’
Hannah’s head was starting to hurt. She hadn’t realised how much she’d been building up to this face-to-face encounter with the man she’d loved for years, the man she thought had loved her. It shouldn’t be a spectator sport, and she wasn’t in the mood for a bout of post-match analysis.
‘Listen, I’ve got to go. Sorry, things to do.’
‘You’re still OK for tomorrow?’
Hannah had forgotten they’d arranged an evening out together, listening to a folk band. The last thing she needed was a bunch of amateur troubadours serenading her with songs about heartbreak, but Terri was not to be put off.
‘Sure.’
‘Try not to be late for once. You never know, that hunky Polish barman might pick me up, and you’ll wind up listening to the band on your own while Stefan and I make wonderful music in his bedsit.’
‘Be careful what you wish for.’
‘What was all that about?’ Daniel demanded.
They were outside the rear entrance to St Herbert’s, in front of the mullioned windows of the deserted dining room. Aslan Sheikh had shinned down to the ground by way of an iron drainpipe. Shades of Spiderman; agile and fit, he’d not even broken sweat. The sight of him standing on the ledge had left Daniel’s stomach weak and his knees feeling like mush. A flashback took him to the day his partner Aimee fell from the Saxon tower in Oxford’s Cornmarket. Daniel had arrived too late to save her, but he was haunted by a picture in his mind of the young woman, teetering on the brink, before she took a last breath and jumped.
Aslan was not to know that. He was indulging in high spirits, not twisting the knife.
‘It began as a fag break, would you believe? I came out for a smoke, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t climbed for years. I was curious. Wondered what the view was like from the parapet.’
‘Curious?’ Daniel shook his head. ‘You could have borrowed a key and taken a look from inside one of the offices up there.’
‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Aslan pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jeans, and lit up. ‘Hey, I’m a creature of impulse. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. A break, a chance of excitement.’
For a creature of impulse seeking excitement, choosing to work at St Herbert’s was pretty counter-intuitive, Daniel thought. Aslan’s shock of hair, beaky nose and swaggering gait, coupled with his olive skin and handsome cast of features, suggested he was cut out for somewhere much more exotic than St Herbert’s. But he worked here as a part-time conference and events organiser. He’d explained to Daniel that he was half-Turkish, accounting for his unusual first name, and that he’d spent the last few years travelling, working in tourism and on cruise ships as well as having a spell in the United States. His late mother had once worked in a Keswick pub, and although they had deserted the Lakes for Istanbul when he was a baby, he’d vowed one day to make a pilgrimage back to the place of his birth.
‘So was the view worth it?’
‘Need you ask? You can see Mockbeggar Hall, the farmland owned by Orla’s father, and the fells in the distance. The caravans are the only blot on the landscape. They are supposed to blend in with the landscape, and priced to match, but it doesn’t quite work. The Hall is due to reopen any day now as a leisure complex, would you believe? Old Sir Milo must be revolving in his grave.’
‘Speaking of Orla Payne, I didn’t see her car. Is she around today?’
Aslan clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. ‘It was my day off yesterday, but Sham tells me she didn’t show up then, either. Yet she hasn’t called in sick. AWOL two days running, naughty, naughty. The principal won’t be a happy bunny.’
‘I bet.’ Professor Micah Bridge could never understand how the conscience of any member of his staff allowed them to show less dedication to the library than his own. People management gave him palpitations. ‘She hasn’t been in touch?’
‘Sham hasn’t heard a peep from her. Nobody has any idea what’s up. Let’s hope she isn’t lying behind a pile of garbage down some back alley in a drunken stupor, eh?’
‘I thought the two of you are friends?’
‘We’re not seeing each other, if that’s what you mean.’ Aslan sniggered. ‘As communications manager, she showed me the ropes, and we went out to a pub in Keswick once or twice, nothing heavy.’
An unexpectedly brutal denial. Orla was a nice-looking woman, but perhaps Aslan had his eye on Sham Madsen, with her anything-goes grin and very rich parents.
‘Uh-huh.’