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Josephine gave him a doubtful look. “I’m thinking about something
the two of you shared. Do you know one end of a ski from the other?”
“I think the bit that curves up goes to the front,” he said with almost a straight face. “But I take your point. He would choose to communicate with me through something I would see, or at least understand when I saw it.” He tried to think back to when he and Stoney had been young men, excited by the world of thought, the vast and ever-expanding exploration of the physical universe; by the beliefs of past ages, wonderful minds that embraced, that created the curious and the beautiful. At Cambridge, they had seen dawn over the River Cam, the spreading of light, both outside and within their minds. Lucas looked back on it and remembered the sense of brotherhood that had never completely left him. He remembered one clear night when the stars seemed close enough for him to stretch out and reap with a casual hand. How had he left Stoney alone when he so much needed someone who believed him, when he couldn’t explain himself?
Something danced on the edge of his imagination, something only he and Stoney knew.
He pulled into the drive of Stoney’s house, then put his foot gently on the accelerator and continued round to the far side of the garage, out of sight of the road.
Josephine glanced at him questioningly.
He knew what was going through her mind. “No,” he answered. “I would just rather not explain myself to the local police, or have inquiries filter back to MI6.”
She bit her lip but did not answer.
They had the keys now. Lucas was executor of Stoney’s estate. They had been back a few times, but still, it felt strange to let themselves into someone else’s house, as if they had the right to intrude without even calling out a greeting.
The hall was tidy, exactly as they had left it. There was no sign that anyone else had been there, until Josephine stopped suddenly at the entrance to the beautifully carpeted dining room. It was a formal room, probably very seldom used.
“What’s the matter?” Lucas asked. The house was not cold, yet he felt a certain chill. “Josephine?”
“There’s not a mark on the carpet,” she replied. “Not a footstep, nothing. No one’s walked across it since it was vacuumed.”
“Well, surely, no one—” Then he understood, and the slight chill he felt turned to ice. “We were here.”
She looked back at him. “I walked over to the side table. I looked in the drawers. It’s a thick carpet; my footsteps showed, and they have been erased. That was yesterday, Lucas. Someone was here overnight, someone who removed all traces of themselves…and of us.”
“It wasn’t the police,” he said, almost as if he were hoping she would contradict him. “No policeman would bring a vacuum cleaner with him.”
“No one with any right to be here would,” she added. “It must be worth a lot, whatever it is this person is looking for.”
“At least to him,” he agreed. “The question is, did he get it? Stay with me, Josephine. No wandering off alone.”
“Do you think this person might still be here?” she said incredulously, but she did not move, and her hands were shaking very slightly. “There was no car anywhere around, and I don’t imagine he came on a motorbike.” She stopped.
Lucas smiled. “With the vacuum cleaner strapped to the passenger seat? No, neither do I. All the same, we’ll do this together.” He said it resolutely and was relieved to see that she understood.
They checked the house to make sure no one else was there, then began methodically going through all the places of easy access first, on Lucas’s assumption that there was something that Stoney had intended him to find.
They searched slowly and carefully, piling things as they went, ready to move them. It made Lucas feel uncomfortable, even though he knew Stoney would mean him to do exactly this. It was still an intrusion into the man’s life: all of his present-day habits and his passions of the past. He had been orderly in some things, those daily necessities that were important: his toiletries and clothes, the good tie he liked, his favorite jams and the Seville orange marmalade he always had with breakfast. The bills that were paid up to date.
Did he know that he would die soon, or at least believe it was likely? Had he even recognized his killer when he rang the doorbell and stood waiting on the steps until Stoney answered? It was a terrible thought, and Lucas did not speak it aloud.
Then there were things from Stoney’s past, all of which Lucas had seen before. But had he seen all that they might mean? A couple of seashells, which were ordinary enough, but in this case absolutely perfect, still—pink shaded into blue and gray, washed by the sea, but unblemished. There were pebbles from a mountain stream, found when they had gone hill walking in Scotland. They were worth nothing, except the memories of laughter, endless windy spaces, and a horizon lost in shadows of a mountain shielded by mist.
On the shelf below were packets of loose photographs, black and white, an interesting evocation of what seemed another lifetime. Lucas picked them up and started looking at them. He could recall most of the places. Had anything happened there? Had Stoney told him something then that had bearing on the present? Lucas stood there, still holding them in his hands, trying to think. He turned one over and saw what must be the date it was taken written on the back. Except it wasn’t a date, it was far too long. In fact, it was too long for anything he could think of. “Josephine.”
She was on the other side of the room, leafing through books. She looked up.
“What do you make of this?” he asked.
She came across and took the photograph from him, looking carefully at both sides. First the picture, then the numbers. “Where is it?”
“Scotland, the Cairngorms. It wasn’t one of the higher peaks, but much like that. What do you make of it?” he repeated, passing her the whole pile of pictures. There were about two dozen, many very similar.
She studied them for so long that he finally lost patience. “I don’t think the place mattered, except to me,” he said. “Nothing special happened there. It was just a particularly happy memory. We felt free, kings of the world.” It sounded ridiculous now, but a shred of the old invincible feeling came back, even as he looked at what was a very ordinary hillside, rendered bland by the lack of space that the camera reflected, missing so much of the width of it. It was shades of gray, rather than the luminous veils of lavender, and indigo, white into silver that he could remember, or thought he could.
“Did you pick them out because of a memory?” she asked, meeting his eyes with startling intensity.
