I phoned Schneider Mackintosh from my office first thing Monday morning. Peter Rossington proved elusive, being out of the room or on another line each time I tried and showing no inclination to return my call. Eventually, around four o’clock, I struck lucky and was rewarded with a brief conversation. He sounded young, cocksure and faintly patronizing. He also sounded distinctly suspicious when I said I wanted to talk to him about Paul Bryant. Well, I couldn’t blame him for that. But jumping to the conclusion that I was some kind of headhunter keen to check Paul’s suitability for prestigious employment was quite another matter. Since it was an idea I’d done nothing to plant in his mind, it seemed only fair to make the most of it. Especially since lunch at my expense in a restaurant of his choice was the fancy price I had to pay for whatever information he was prepared to dispense. I suggested the following day, but he pleaded pressure of other commitments and we finally settled on Thursday.
By then, Bella had been in touch, eager for news of my progress. But a description of my visit to the Bryants didn’t seem to qualify under that heading. “You didn’t get anything out of them at all?” she complained, contriving to imply the reason lay in some deficiency on my part rather than the dismal truth that there was nothing to be got. “Well, you’d better be more persistent when you meet Peter Rossington, hadn’t you?”
But I doubted if persistence-or any other kind of interrogative ingenuity-was going to reveal a flaw in Paul’s account of his activities in the summer of 1990. Cheryl Bryant had told me I was wasting my time and, as far as I could see, she was absolutely right. But Bella wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d wasted a good deal more of it.
Another difficulty weighing on my mind when I travelled up to London on Thursday morning was how to question Peter Rossington about Paul without revealing the real reason. Posing as a headhunter was only going to carry me so far. And it was a pose I knew an astute young advertising executive would see through in pretty short order.
It transpired I needn’t have worried. Not about that, anyway. Rossington was waiting for me when I reached The Square, a light, airy and punctiliously staffed establishment in the heart of St. James’s. He was a pencil-thin pasty-faced fellow with haircut and suit so abreast with the fashions that he looked even younger than I reckoned he was. More like nineteen than twenty-five. His smile was broad but cool, his eyes frankly appraising. A keen brain was apparent behind the braying voice and sneering air. I disliked him at once. And I had the distinct impression that the feeling was mutual. But neither of us was there to indulge our feelings. Though the senses were evidently a different matter, as his call for a second glass of champagne immediately revealed.
“Cards on the table, Mr. Timariot,” he said straightaway. “There was something ever so slightly fishy about your invitation. So I decided to check with Paul. One of the reasons I put off meeting you until today. I wanted time to take the temperature.” He raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice. “Turned out to be a lot hotter than I’d ever have imagined.”
“Right,” I said, my mind racing to accommodate the consequences of what he’d said. My cover was blown, of course. But worse still, Paul now knew I was digging around in his past. It was something I might have avoided if I’d been honest with Rossington from the outset. But it was too late to repair the damage. “So… You know what this is about, do you?”
“’Fraid so. Wish I didn’t, as a matter of fact. Sounds hideously messy. But that’s Paul’s problem, isn’t it? And yours, apparently.”
“Have you seen Paul?”
“Yeh. We met yesterday. He told me the lot. It was a real shaker. I mean, we were never close friends. Never friends at all, come to that. Paul wasn’t the matey type. He didn’t let you see inside his head. And now I know what was going on inside it, I can understand why. But even so…” He lit a cigarette, without troubling to offer me one. “Even so, it takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? Being acquainted with somebody capable of…” He shook his head and sent up a plume of smoke. “Bloody hell.”
I smiled awkwardly. “Sorry to have misled you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeh. Well, so you should be. Perhaps you’d like to explain why you did. It’s the one thing Paul couldn’t enlighten me about.”
“I’m simply trying to confirm his story before the police become involved.”
“They already are, according to Paul. He warned me to expect a visit. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”
“Why not?”
He frowned. “Because nobody likes being mixed up in something like this. Murder’s bad enough. Especially with a sex angle. But…” He made another effort to speak softly. Clearly, it didn’t come naturally to him. “But a miscarriage of justice makes it worse, doesn’t it? Big headlines. Mega-coverage. And my name in there somewhere. Where colleagues are bound to notice it.”
“So you’re worried about a little… professional embarrassment?”
“You bet I am. Some swine’s going to suggest I should have tumbled what Paul was up to, aren’t they?”
“And should you have?”
“Of course not. He never gave me any hint-” He broke off to order his meal. Unprepared, I ordered the same. Wine wasn’t mentioned. Something rather stiffer might have hit the mark. But that wasn’t mentioned either. “Like I told you,” Rossington resumed, “Paul was and is a closed book to me. I suggested we tag along together on the trip to Europe because I didn’t fancy going alone. Simple as that. He gave me no inkling of an ulterior motive. Well, I suppose there wasn’t one at the time. That came later, didn’t it?”
“Did you notice a change in him between fixing up the trip and setting off?”
“I’ve never noticed a change in him. He seems the same to me now as he did then. Cool, calm and collected. Absolutely his own man.”
“And you split up in Lyon?”
“That’s right. Because he wanted to spend a week in the Alps and I was keen to press on to Italy before my money ran out. I didn’t have a lot of it then. I had no idea he meant to go to Biarritz. How could I have? Paul isn’t the sort to drop clues in your lap.”
“But what would he have done if you’d agreed to divert to Chamonix?”
“How the f-” Rossington calmed his irritation with a long draw on his cigarette. “How would I know? He’d have dreamt up some other excuse, I suppose. He was always good at thinking on his feet. I actually saw him off at the station in Lyon, you know. On the train to bloody Chamonix. My train left later, you see. Do you know what he did, the cunning bastard? Got off at the next stop down the line, waited till he could be sure I’d be on my way, then doubled back to Lyon and caught the next train to Paris. Simple, really.”
“On what day did this happen?”
“Can’t remember. Paul told me yesterday it was Wednesday the eleventh of July. Well, that sounds right to me. It was certainly towards the end of the week when I hit Rome.”
“And the next time you saw Paul?”
“Was back at Cambridge in October. I’d heard about the Kington murders by then. Knew Sarah Paxton’s mother was one of the victims. Well, everybody was talking about it. Even Paul. But he played it bloody cool, I can tell you. You’d never have guessed. Not in a million years. He even set up a sort of alibi for himself with me. Boasted about some Swedish sex-bomb he’d picked up in Chamonix. Made her sound so real he had me drooling with envy. But it was all a lie. He admitted as much yesterday. A lie to stop me thinking he might have been somewhere else. Like Biarritz, for instance. Or Kington.”
Our meals arrived, leaving us to contemplate each other across the same succulent dishes neither of us had an appetite for. Rossington extinguished his cigarette and cocked his head, examining me critically.