He picked up the phone and dialled.
‘It’s me, Jerry... the stalker’s wife was right, he has forgotten everything... he doesn’t recognize me.’
He listened.
‘No... no... no, we’re fine, I’m sure of it. He definitely doesn’t remember me pushing him down the stairs.’
9
Tuesday 16 March 1999, Wyvis
The old man woke up early. His brain had had a busy night, dreaming frantically, as if it was trying out a whole series of connections to find one that worked. People from his past, his whole life, had come and gone in a bewildering swirl of locations: Brimham Rocks in Nidderdale, Oxford, Tiberius’s villa, Wyvis, a low bungalow amongst tall trees which he assumed must be his house in Australia. Clémence was with him all the way through, except sometimes she changed into Sophie.
He woke up totally disoriented.
He looked out of his window at the loch and the flank of Ben Wyvis, more brown than white now that the snow melted. That was familiar. He decided to get out and go for a walk before breakfast.
Clémence was awake, but not up; he could hear the radio on in her bedroom. He set off along his familiar route: striking out on to the hill and then down to the loch beside Wyvis Lodge.
The fresh air, the exercise and the familiar landscape comforted him. It was cold, the breeze carried a damp chill and clouds were pressing in over the top of Ben Wyvis, promising rain later, or perhaps snow. Over on the other side of the loch, an eagle was soaring to a height just below the cloud base. A group of hinds threaded their way up the hillside from the water. They were only a quarter of a mile away, and it took them a few moments to notice him before they bounded off.
The isolation, the desolation, the emptiness, lifted his heart. Up here on the moor he could see for miles, but in those miles there were only three signs of habitation — the empty Wyvis Lodge at the head of the loch, Culzie, and the cottage of Corravachie further down.
And yet the moorland was teeming with activity. Birds bustled and twittered, melted snow hustled down the hillside in hidden gullies, bogs and unseen burns. The mountain was alive with skylarks and water.
His walk took him down to the shore of the loch and then along the track towards the boathouse, where a pair of swans were calmly floating. He stopped and stared at the wooden structure.
Eventually, Clémence would read about what happened to Sophie there; her death must be the Death At Wyvis of the title. And when Clémence read it, she would hate him. He already hated himself; despised himself. Perhaps somehow a still-functioning part of his brain had tried to erase the unpalatable past from the other damaged part. Helped the amnesia along a little. Was that possible? It seemed unlikely, but he would ask the doctors. Although that would mean admitting that he was a murderer to them. He really didn’t want that.
He was ashamed to be who he was.
He decided not to walk past the boathouse that morning, but to take a narrow path through the woods directly back up to Culzie. It was hard work, the path fought its way uphill through large boulders and small stones, and leafless branches reached out and tugged at him. Twice he nearly slipped.
He paused and sat on a mossy log, ignoring the dampness on his arse. He could do it. The balance was the tricky bit, and his right knee was stiff, but he was still physically fit for an eighty-three-year-old.
Which was lucky, because dredging his memory was exhausting. Things were coming back. He could visualize that big house in Deauville. And he could almost see Nathan and Alden. Stephen was taking shape. He could hear his voice. He saw a tall young man, grinning in a leather armchair. Oxford. That was his room at Oxford.
Stephen. There was something he had to tell Stephen. Or give Stephen. What the hell was it? It was something really important. It wasn’t that he had killed Sophie, but it was something like that. Another matter of life and death.
Of death.
He groaned out loud. What the hell was it?
Frustrated, angry with himself, he set off up the rough path through the woods back to Culzie.
Jerry put down his binoculars when he saw the old man turn off the lochside track before the boathouse and head off up into the woods. The silhouette was familiar — the lopsided gait, the slight stoop. He was a sprightly old guy, Jerry would have to give him that.
Only the roof of Culzie was visible from outside the woods, but Jerry had spotted the old man on the open hillside. He had found a good vantage point behind a boulder by the shore of the loch, from where he could track the old man’s movements. But now the old man was in the woods, he would be out of sight all the way back to Culzie.
Jerry stared at the woods, and the rooftop in their midst. What the hell should he do?
Jerry, too, had had a bad night. His initial relief that the old man couldn’t remember him at all had subsided. The old man’s memory might return. From what the girl had said, the doctors expected at least some of it to come back over time. But how much? And over what period?
There was a library in Dingwall, there must be some books in there about amnesia. Maybe even access to the Internet. He would check, but the most likely result was that he would remain uncertain, that recovery from head injuries was inherently unpredictable.
There seemed to be two options. Wait and see how much the old man remembered, and just hope that he didn’t remember anything important. Or act now.
He had acted before, and it had nearly worked. He should have checked the body more carefully; he could have sworn that the old man wasn’t breathing as he lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs, blood dribbling out of the back of his head. Why hadn’t he banged the old man’s head into the floor a couple of times to finish him off as he had originally intended?
Because he didn’t want to leave any incriminating forensic evidence if he didn’t have to. But that part of the plan had worked perfectly. No one was in the slightest bit suspicious about an old man falling down the stairs and hitting his head. Why should a forensic scene-of-crime technician go anywhere near him?
Perhaps Jerry should try something more certain. There was an axe at Corravachie, which he used for splitting firewood. And the rifle locked in the gun cupboard.
No. Once the police suspected murder, a house-to-house inquiry around Loch Glass would turn up two houses and one suspect. Him. An accident was much better.
Jerry had an idea. He picked up the binoculars and examined the track near the boathouse.
It was a good idea.
Clémence heard the stairs creak as the old man descended them, followed by the slam of the front door. She turned off Zoë Ball — Radio 1 was the only half-decent station she could get — and extricated her hair from the straighteners. She went downstairs to the phone in the hallway. She hesitated before dialling; these international calls would blow a hole in the old man’s phone bill. So what? He deserved to pay. She dialled the Vietnam country code and the number in Ho Chi Minh City.
The school secretary took some persuading, but after a wait that seemed like half an hour but was probably only five minutes, she heard the familiar voice of her father.
‘What’s up, Clémence?’ He spoke in English. They used to speak to each other in French, but somehow they had switched to English after he had left Hong Kong. ‘Are you all right?’
He sounded worried. He sounded as if he cared. That was nice.
‘I’m OK, Dad. But I’ve got a couple of questions to ask you.’
‘Is it urgent?’ His voice was sterner now. ‘You told the secretary it was urgent.’
‘It is. It is. I’m at Culzie cottage on the Wyvis estate. With Alastair. Alastair Cunningham.’