‘I couldn’t help noticing you refer to him in the past tense.’
‘He’s disappeared,’ the professor said. ‘I sometimes wonder.’
‘What?’
‘Whether he was ever here, Mr Seaton. I passed the coach house the other day. Drove past it deliberately and stopped. And it’s derelict, you know. It doesn’t look as though anyone has lived in it for years.’
Seaton, who thought the descriptions of Antrobus and Marthe uncomfortably close to those of two people he’d seen looking back at him that morning through the glass frontage of Perdoni’s, thought it best to refrain from comment.
He looked again around the professor’s office. At the books he’d written and the framed citations. At a triptych of family photographs taken at a barbecue, with a playful Labrador dog in their foreground. Nothing, really, remained to be said. He stood and shook hands over the Coleman lantern and he left.
He was tired when he got to Whitstable. And it was later than it should have been. He got there shortly after seven, unable to explain to himself quite why the journey had taken so long. He came down the hill on to the high street and in the persistence of rain and a strong gust of wind off the sea the town looked shuttered and dismal. The wind rocked the car on its springs in blasts of exposure where high-street buildings were breached by the narrow lanes to his left leading to the water. If there were lights lit on Whitstable’s high street, Seaton did not see them. The buildings were mostly shops, all closed, a dank, dumb procession of two-storey facades. The windsurfers and dinghy sailors who gave the place its summer life had long departed. Through the condensation and rain on his nearside window, he thought he saw the wood portal and battening sign of a pub. But he knew it wasn’t the Pearson’s Arms. He had precise instructions on how to get to the Pearson’s Arms. Just then the radio began to play, making him jump, as John Lennon launched into the plodding piano introduction to ‘Imagine’. Seaton scrabbled for the controls and found the ‘mute’ button, wishing he owned the Saab, because if he owned it he’d tear the fucking radio right out of the dashboard. Maybe he’d get lucky and some desperate Whitstable fucker would steal it. He hadn’t seen a single pedestrian so far. Much less a skulking thief. With the ‘mute’ button pressed, the ghost of Lennon singing was a just-audible nasal whisper as he pulled up and parked. Then he switched the engine off and there was silence until he opened the car door and heard the rain thrum on rooftops and the ground, and the sound of waves smacking on the granite buttress of the sea wall in the freezing darkness a few feet away. And he smelled it, too. He smelled the sea, inhaled the foam-flecked swell.
Mason was seated at a corner table in the basement area of the pub where people came to eat from the menu proper. Even in the basement’s artfully limited light, Seaton knew him immediately. There were only seven or eight people in the basement. Four of those formed couples. He had studied the picture of Sarah Mason in the file given him the night before by Malcolm Covey. Nicholas Mason shared his sister’s high cheekbones and brown, deep-set eyes. His clothing and hair were nondescript enough. But he couldn’t do much to disguise the bone structure. He was slim, slight even, but he had taken off his coat and had his sleeves rolled to the elbow. His forearms were sinewy and strong, rising to the curve of solid biceps under his shirt. There was a packet of Rothmans on the table, Seaton saw, as he sat opposite Mason. Mason had one of them, unlit, between his fingers.
‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Does it make the blindest bit of difference if I do?’
Mason smiled and lit his cigarette. ‘Jesus. A Paddy. I wasn’t told you’d be a Paddy.’
‘You’ve no liking for the Irish, then.’
‘Not much, no.’
Seaton sighed. He made to get up.
Mason blinked.
‘He’s disappeared,’ the professor said. ‘I sometimes wonder.’
‘What?’
‘Whether he was ever here, Mr Seaton. I passed the coach house the other day. Drove past it deliberately and stopped. And it’s derelict, you know. It doesn’t look as though anyone has lived in it for years.’
Seaton, who thought the descriptions of Antrobus and Marthe uncomfortably close to those of two people he’d seen looking back at him that morning through the glass frontage of Perdoni’s, thought it best to refrain from comment.
He looked again around the professor’s office. At the books he’d written and the framed citations. At a triptych of family photographs taken at a barbecue, with a playful Labrador dog in their foreground. Nothing, really, remained to be said. He stood and shook hands over the Coleman lantern and he left.
He was tired when he got to Whitstable. And it was later than it should have been. He got there shortly after seven, unable to explain to himself quite why the journey had taken so long. He came down the hill on to the high street and in the persistence of rain and a strong gust of wind off the sea the town looked shuttered and dismal. The wind rocked the car on its springs in blasts of exposure where high-street buildings were breached by the narrow lanes to his left leading to the water. If there were lights lit on Whitstable’s high street, Seaton did not see them. The buildings were mostly shops, all closed, a dank, dumb procession of two-storey facades. The windsurfers and dinghy sailors who gave the place its summer life had long departed. Through the condensation and rain on his nearside window, he thought he saw the wood portal and battening sign of a pub. But he knew it wasn’t the Pearson’s Arms. He had precise instructions on how to get to the Pearson’s Arms. Just then the radio began to play, making him jump, as John Lennon launched into the plodding piano introduction to ‘Imagine’. Seaton scrabbled for the controls and found the ‘mute’ button, wishing he owned the Saab, because if he owned it he’d tear the fucking radio right out of the dashboard. Maybe he’d get lucky and some desperate Whitstable fucker would steal it. He hadn’t seen a single pedestrian so far. Much less a skulking thief. With the ‘mute’ button pressed, the ghost of Lennon singing was a just-audible nasal whisper as he pulled up and parked. Then he switched the engine off and there was silence until he opened the car door and heard the rain thrum on rooftops and the ground, and the sound of waves smacking on the granite buttress of the sea wall in the freezing darkness a few feet away. And he smelled it, too. He smelled the sea, inhaled the foam-flecked swell.
Mason was seated at a corner table in the basement area of the pub where people came to eat from the menu proper. Even in the basement’s artfully limited light, Seaton knew him immediately. There were only seven or eight people in the basement. Four of those formed couples. He had studied the picture of Sarah Mason in the file given him the night before by Malcolm Covey. Nicholas Mason shared his sister’s high cheekbones and brown, deep-set eyes. His clothing and hair were nondescript enough. But he couldn’t do much to disguise the bone structure. He was slim, slight even, but he had taken off his coat and had his sleeves rolled to the elbow. His forearms were sinewy and strong, rising to the curve of solid biceps under his shirt. There was a packet of Rothmans on the table, Seaton saw, as he sat opposite Mason. Mason had one of them, unlit, between his fingers.
‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Does it make the blindest bit of difference if I do?’
Mason smiled and lit his cigarette. ‘Jesus. A Paddy. I wasn’t told you’d be a Paddy.’
‘You’ve no liking for the Irish, then.’
‘Not much, no.’
Seaton sighed. He made to get up.
Mason blinked.
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