Justyn Silver had suggested meeting at his trendy private members’ club in Mayfair. Grant had not seen him since Robert Vernon’s wedding over twenty-five years earlier, but he recognized him instantly. The old-rocker look still prevailed, although the long hair was now whitish as was the beard, and he was thinning at the temples. He had retained all his warmth and charm, greeting Grant as if they had met only recently.
‘How’s old Grantie boy? Still the backbone of the establishment, maintaining the fine traditions of the legal world?’
‘Yeah, yeah, all of that, thanks, Justyn, but I do live my life trying not to be too pompous or stereotypical – as you would view it.’ Grant recalled how Justyn had previously labelled him as a future defender of the Empire, implying he was that dreadful sort of individual to be in the early seventies – a square.
‘Good on yer, mate,’ continued Justyn, ordering herbal tea for himself and coffee for his guest. ‘So what’s this all about, Grantie boy?’ (Grant squirmed at this appellation, which he always put down to Justyn being a year older than him and feeling a need to emphasize this.)
‘Before I go into that, how’s life been with you?’ inquired Grant.
Over the years Justyn had abandoned the music industry, although he still played guitar, and was now a highly successful interior designer of hotels. ‘Well, pretty A-OK, as it happens. I have two big projects on at the moment: doing up a Russian oligarch’s new pad on the Bishops Avenue, and next month I’m off to Hong Kong to refurbish a hotel I designed in the early 1990s. There’s a budget of some 60 million dollars, and I’m going to have a lot of fun. My scheme for the lobby alone will be the biggest revolution to hit the island since the handover in 1997.’
Grant shifted his gaze to the elegant surroundings, a sea of empty brown leather chairs and dark mahogany Queen-Anne-style side tables. He was flanked by two walls of deep-red flock wallpaper and watched over by a rather vulgar lead-crystal chandelier. A man and his wife – or more likely his mistress – were the only other human life in the room, locked in intimate conversation in the opposite corner. The sight of them prompted Grant’s next question. ‘And how’s your personal life?’
‘Chaotic!’ said Justyn with a wry smile. ‘Clare and I finally split after the biggest on–off relationship since the Burtons. I don’t seem to do commitment too well. In the end we became like that couple in Noel Coward’s Private Lives: couldn’t live together but couldn’t bear to think of the other being with anyone else. We’ve both had therapy now and agreed to leave each other alone for six months, then it will no doubt start all over again.’
‘Seeing anyone at present?’
‘Yeah, I’m seeing to a few people at the moment,’ replied Justyn rather crudely, making Grant blanch. ‘Sorry – I’m beginning to move into the ranks of dirty old man. You see, to be truthful, Grantie, my old mate, I’m rather lonely. I adored Clare, but I’m impossible to live with, what with my job and my constant infidelity. How’s your life?’
‘You’ll think it very tame. Married Brigit, who was my articled clerk some twenty-five years ago. I’ve got two wonderful girls, now at university, have been a partner with Gilks and Silkin for fifteen years, specializing in corporate law. At the moment I’m taking a three-month sabbatical, which is probably the most radical thing I’ve ever done.’
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘To find out’ – Grant hesitated, then went for it – ‘who poisoned Tom Youlen in 1972.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Justyn spluttered. ‘Why don’t you find out who murdered poor old Hector “the Office” Wallace at the same time?’ His voice had risen inadvertently, and the two men glanced anxiously at the couple in the opposite corner. They needn’t have worried. The couple were embracing and kissing so fervently they were almost eating one another.
‘You don’t think Hector was murdered and that the two fatalities were connected, do you?’
‘Who’s to say? Bit odd just to walk into the sea, don’t you think? And didn’t they find some sort of message in a bottle on the coast somewhere?’
This was the second time Grant had heard about a message in a bottle in a matter of days, having spent over forty years completely unaware of it. ‘But Hector was seven sheets to the wind that night, completely off his head, as I understand it. And wasn’t he very depressed about returning to Torquay the following day with his aunt, thinking he would never return to his west Cornwall paradise?’
‘Who says, Grant?’
‘Well, the perceived wisdom was –’
‘Perceived wisdom, piss off!’ This time the couple did look across, their intimate canoodling suddenly arrested, their faces projecting disgust in the direction of Grant and Justyn. The latter now lowered his voice. ‘A poisoning and then a fatality on the beach a few days later – and you think they weren’t connected. Who are you? Inspector Clouseau?’
‘How do you know about the message in a bottle?’ asked Grant, bridling a little.
‘Jenny Charnley told me.’
‘When?’
‘Last week, as it happens. I phoned her to ask why you wanted to meet me after all these years and what was going on. Besides, it’s never a good idea to lose touch with the old back catalogue – even if some of the entries are in yours, too.’
Grant refrained from showing any reaction to this rather off-colour remark and told Justyn he was heading down to Cornwall the following week to try to find justice for Tom Youlen.
‘Well, don’t forget Hector. I don’t think he was particularly depressed. His Aunt Agatha – “Aunty Aunt” as he called her – gave him carte blanche, and who do you think was going to be the beneficiary of her estate?’
‘You really don’t think it was an accident, do you?’
‘No, and I’ll tell you why. The week after Hector drowned, Robert Vernon and I returned to Cornwall – just about making it in my clapped-out old Peugeot 204 – and we headed to the Office. My pub band were playing an August bank holiday gig, and I persuaded Robert to come down and help us out on drums, as our regular guy had overdosed the previous weekend. I told the guys it would be my last performance, which I don’t think devastated them too much! Trevor Mullings, the fisherman who reported Hector’s death, was in the pub that night. I asked him if Hector had left on his own after his very long final session in the Office. Trevor told me that he himself was under the table by then – as the publican had closed the pub and allowed drinking to continue into the early hours. However, Trevor did recall that Hec, as he called him, had left with someone he didn’t recognize.’
‘How odd,’ said Grant. ‘Why didn’t you say something at the time?’
‘Robert told his old man, Mark, who contacted the police only to be told that it was an open-and-shut case, that the coroner had released the body, there were no fingerprints on him and the incident room had been closed down within days with a verdict of “accidental death by drowning” recorded. Mark was told that the CPS had no interest in the case as there were no suspects. Looking back, perhaps we should have gone to the Old Bill directly, but Mark’s dad seemed so respectable – owning that private bank off Trafalgar Square that had been in the family for centuries – whereas we thought we’d be dismissed as unreliable, long-haired juvenile hippies.’
‘Well, it sounds like a botched job all round – and Hector Wallace never got justice either.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. I had a soft spot for old Hector. I know everyone thought I was some sort of druggie flying with the teapots, but it has really bothered me all these years that Hector left the pub with someone who was never identified and who has never come forward.’
Grant saw that Justyn was genuinely upset about Hector, and the years had diminished neither his anger nor his sense of injustice. ‘Then come with me to Cornwall next week,’ he suggested hopefully. ‘I’ve booked into a B&B near Zennor to try to establish what really happened, to set the record straight for Tom – but now also for Hector.’ Prior to this conversation Grant had always thought of Hector as the hopeless drunk he had described to Brigit, but Justyn had provoked in him a radical reappraisal.
‘I can’t, old mate. My schedules with clients are tight, and I am very focused and structured these days,’ Justyn replied with a slightly self-conscious smile.
‘Fair enough, but I will try to find Trevor Mullings – although it may not be easy. There are too many unanswered questions.’
Such had been the intensity of their conversation that neither had noticed that the lounge had filled up around them.
As they parted they high-fived, agreeing to speak soon, both pleased to have rekindled an old friendship. Grant now shared Justyn’s view that Hector Wallace’s drowning forty years ago was no accident. He was encouraged, even uplifted, by Justyn being the first of the younger generation of former holiday-makers to show any enthusiasm for his belated sleuthing. Grant hailed a cab and jumped in, feeling sprightly and thinking for the first time that he was not alone in his mission to seek out the truth.