Into the Blue by Robert Goddard

Author:Robert Goddard [Goddard, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Crime & mystery, Fiction
ISBN: 9780552545938
Publisher: Corgi Adult
Published: 2006-01-30T06:00:00+00:00

On the third day of his illness, Harry received his first visitor. Alan Dysart. Harry’s mother reacted to his arrival as if the Prince of Wales had called by unexpectedly. If she remembered he was the same man whom her son had once employed, there was no way of telling from the awed reception she gave him. Harry decided that the embarrassment this caused him was a sign he was getting better. As for Dysart, he simply pretended not to notice.

“Laid up again, Harry? You seem to be making a habit of it.” He looked exactly as he had on the day of their last meeting, the day of his departure to the United States: calm yet concerned, sensitive yet restrained, the perfect model of the thinking politician. Why Harry felt sorry for him he did not know. It could have been the comfortless chair he was sitting in. More likely it was the knowledge that, for all Dysart’s manifest charm and proven ability, he had a wife who was at best an adultress, at worst a traitor, either Minter’s dupe or his co-conspirator.

“How did you hear I was ill?”

“I didn’t. I got back from Washington on Friday. This was my first opportunity to find out what progress you’d made.”

“In looking for Heather, you mean?”

“Unless you’ve given it up.”

“No. I haven’t given it up.”

How much to tell? Dysart had been, over the years, as loyal a friend as any man could ask for. The least he deserved in return was that Harry should tell him all he knew. Besides, if he had been to Tyler’s Hard, he would doubtless have recognized Harry from Morpurgo’s account of a strange visitor the previous Saturday.

“I’ve tried to retrace some of her movements. She went to Tyler’s Hard with Nigel Mossop, a colleague at Mallender Marine, on the twenty-eighth of August. I went there myself last Sunday. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” Dysart smiled. “Willy did mention it. I was puzzled, I’ll admit, but now I understand. How did you know Heather had been there?”

The photographs were one secret Harry would not share. “She spoke of Mossop as a friend. I knew him as well, of course, so I contacted him and he told me about the trip.”

“I see.” Dysart nodded, but how much he saw was not clear. Nor did he ask the obvious questions which Harry would have found so difficult to answer. Why had Mossop been so cooperative? Why had Heather chosen him as a companion? “Did you speak to Mrs. Diamond, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you made of her.”

Harry had largely forgotten the woman as soon as he had concluded that her complaint about Morpurgo smiling on the day of Clare Mallender’s death was of no significance. Yet Dysart’s expression reminded him of something else she had said: that Dysart and Clare had been arguing immediately before the explosion; that there had been friction between them for some time. “Good-hearted, I suppose, but a terrible gossip.”

“Reliable?”

“As a witness—not very.”

Dysart smiled.

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