I said,‘Also perhaps their husbands and wives, also perhaps even the witches.’
‘I don’t want to believe it,’ he said.‘How could I have put a murderer into the world.’
‘People do,’ I said.
‘Ian!’
The truth was that, apart from poor Robin, I didn’t know my half-brothers and half-sisters well enough to have any certainty about anyof them. I was usually on speaking terms with them all, but didn’t seek them out. There had been too much fighting, too many rows: Vivien’s children disliked Alicia’s, Alicia’s disliked them and me, Vivien hated Joyce and Joyce hated Alicia very bitterly indeed. Under Coochie’s reign, the whole lot had been banned from sleeping in the house, if not from single-day visits, with the result that a storm of collective resentment had been directed at me whom she had kept and treated as her own.
‘Apart from thinking,’ I said, ‘what have you been doing since Friday night?’
‘When the police had gone, I… I…’ he stopped.
‘The shakes came back?’ I suggested.
‘Yes. Do you understand that?’
‘I’d have been scared silly,’ I said.‘Stupid not to be. I’d have felt that whoever had tried to kill me was prowling about in the dark waiting for me to be alone so he could have another go.’
Malcolm audibly swallowed.‘I telephoned to the hire firm I use now and told them to send a car to fetch me. Do you know what panic feels like?’
‘Not that sort, I guess.’
‘I was sweating, and it was cold. I could feel my heart thumping… banging away at a terrible rate. It was awful. I packed some things… I couldn’t concentrate.’
He shifted in his seat as the outskirts of Cambridge came up in the headlights and began to give me directions to the hotel where he said he’d spent the previous four nights.
‘Does anyone know where you’re staying?’ I asked, turning corners.‘Have you seen any of your old chums?’
Malcolm knew Cambridge well, had been at university there and still had friends at high tables. It must have seemed to him a safe city to bolt to, but it was where I would have gone looking for him, if not much else failed.
‘Of course I have,’ he said in answer to my question, ‘I spent Sunday with the Rackersons, dined with old Digger in Trinity last night… it’s nonsense to think they could be involved.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, pulling up outside his hotel.‘All the same, go and pack and check out of here, and we’ll go somewhere else.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ he protested.
‘You appointed me as minder, so I’m minding,’ I said.
He gave me a long look in the dim light inside the car. Thedoorman of the hotel stepped forward and opened the door beside me, an invitation to step out.
‘Come with me,’ my father said.
I was both astounded by his fear and thought it warranted. I asked the doorman where I should park, and turned at his suggestion through an arch into the hotel’s inner courtway. From there, through a back door and comfortable old-fashioned hallways, Malcolm and I went up one flight of red-carpeted stairs to a lengthy winding corridor. Several people we passed glanced down at my torn trouser-leg with the dried-blood scenery inside, but no one said anything: was it still British politeness, I wondered, or the new creed of not getting involved? Malcolm, it seemed, had forgotten the problem existed.
He brought his room key out of his pocket and, with it raised, said abruptly, ‘I suppose you didn’t tell anyone I would be at the sales.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you knew.’ He paused.‘Only you knew.’
He was staring at me with the blue eyes and I saw all the sudden fear-driven question marks rioting through his mind.
‘Go inside,’ I said.‘The corridor isn’t the place for this.’
He looked at the key, he looked wildly up and down the now empty corridor, poised, almost, to run.
I turned my back on him and walked purposefully away in the direction of the stairs.
‘Ian,’ he shouted.
I stopped and turned round.
‘Come back,’ he said.
I went back slowly.‘You said you trusted me,’ I said.
‘I haven’t seen you for three years… and I broke your nose …’
I took the key out of his hand and unlocked the door. I supposed I might have been suspicious of me if I’d been attacked twice in five days, considering I came into the high-probability category of son. I switched on the light and went forward into the room which was free from lurking murderers that time at least.