Out of the Sun Read online

“This gentleman’s been asking for you, Mrs. Brancaster,” said the concierge as he held out her key.

  “And you are?” said Hope in a Californian drawl. She was close enough to Harry for the headiness of her perfume and the flawlessness of her complexion to be abundantly apparent.

  “Harry Yenning,” he replied at once, smiling earnestly. Noticing a flicker of doubt in Hope’s eyes, he added: “David’s uncle.” The lie had been planned to get him as far as Hope’s room. Now, committed to using it face to face, he wondered if she might know for a fact that David had no such uncle. If so, he could be about to make a forced and ignominious exit.

  But his luck was in. Luck and something else he could never have anticipated. “You’ve got his smile. You know that?”

  “You think so?”

  “To the life. But it’s odd. I don’t recall David ever mentioning you.”

  “I’ve been out of touch with the family for quite a while. Doing my best now … to rally round.”

  “Yeh, right.” She rattled the key in her hand as if to signal his time was nearly up. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “I was hoping to talk to you… about David.”

  That could be kinda difficult.” She glanced ostentatiously at her watch. “I’m on a tight schedule.”

  “It really is rather important.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then said: “OK. But I need to freshen up. I’ll meet you in the bar in ten minutes.”

  Half an hour had passed, during which Harry had finished one extravagantly priced lager and started another, when Hope Brancaster deigned to join him. Her schedule, it seemed, was nothing like as tight as the PVC jeans she had somehow managed to wriggle into in the interim. There was a faint squeak as she descended into the chair opposite Harry, who could not suppress a pang of disappointment at how well her loose-fitting T-shirt camouflaged those remarkable breasts he remembered from the newspaper photograph. She ordered a Virgin Mary and cast a hostile glare at the ashtray, where smoke was still curling up from the remnants of a Karelia Sertika cigarette.

  “You smoke those things?” she enquired with no hint of irony. “Or cure fish with them?”

  “Sorry,” he said with a shrug.

  “Not as sorry as you should be. I dislike liars every bit as much as nicotine addicts.”

  That’s all right, then. I’m neither.”

  “Cut the bull. I gave Iris a call. She recognized your description. But not your name.”

  “Ah.”

  “Advised me to throw you out. Without listening to a word.”

  “Did she?”

  “Which is what I would do…”

  “Except?”

  “You really do remind me of David. Weird, I’d say, if you’re no kind of relative. Which Iris assures me you’re not.”

  “I’m his father.”

  “Your death was just an ugly rumour, right?”

  “Iris and I … had a brief affair… the summer before David was born.”

  “Well, well. Did you now?”

  “David never mentioned this to you?”

  “He never even hinted at it.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, I don’t. Haven’t you left it awful late to play the paternal card?”

  “I only found out about it myself a few days ago.”

  “Iris looking for an ally, was she?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “She’s in a minority of one in wanting to keep David alive. I’m guessing she thought you might back her up. But the way she talked about you makes me suspect you disagreed with her. Am I right?”

  “You think he should be allowed to die?”

  “It’s not for me to say, is it? David and I are ex in every way. But I went to see him in the hospital for old times’ sake and it looked pretty hopeless to me. I mean, nobody actually said so, but you could see that’s what they thought. It must be hard for Iris. Only child and all. But you have to face it, don’t you? For David more than anyone, life with half a brain would be infinitely worse than death.”

  “Why more than anyone?”

  “Because thinking’s what he’s spent most of his life doing. Resolving all those damned equations in his head. Searching for the answers to questions most of us don’t even know how to ask. Math, math, math. There never was room for much else.”

  “You’re not a mathematician yourself?”

  “What do you think? Do I look like a mathematician? Maybe if I had been… But you don’t want to hear about that.”

  “If it helps me form a picture of what David … what my son is really like, I do want to hear.”

  “Ask his mother. You’ll only get a biased picture from me.”

  Harry grinned ruefully. “Iris hasn’t exactly been forthcoming.”

  “Come to regret involving you, has she?”

  “She didn’t involve me. An anonymous informant told me about David. Any idea who that might have been?”

  “Somebody who knew more than me. Who cared more than me, maybe.” There was a hint of resentment in her voice.

  “You have somebody specific in mind?”

  Hope paused to sip her drink, then clunked the glass back onto the table with exasperated force. “Listen, Harry. You want to understand the son you never knew you had? Obsession’s the key to it. The man I married was charming, witty, good-looking, sharp as a nail and fun to be around. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place. But then there was his other side. His mind.” She tapped her brow. “Out of this world. Literally. Complex numbers. Higher dimensions. Quantum physics. And something wrapped up in it all that he was looking for. Something that always drove him on. You could say I never understood a word and that would be true. But then he didn’t deal in words. Numbers. Symbols. Equations. Formulae. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes he’d sit for hours, not speaking, not moving, just thinking. His “unwritten theorems”, he called them. After a while, I couldn’t cope. With Steve, I only have to worry about the latest actress who’s trying to get into bed with him. With David, things were more complicated. If you want to know what made him tick, look through his notebooks. He carried them with him wherever he went, page after page crammed with his damned mathematical hieroglyphs. Why, I’ve even known him bring them to the dinner table in a restaurant.” She sighed. “Yeh, you take a stroll through them, Harry. Iris should have the latest set. They’ll have been in his hotel room. Probably under his pillow. You’ll need a mathematician to interpret them for you, of course. And even then…”

  “Who would I ask?” Harry enquired, doing his best to suggest he was motivated by intellectual curiosity rather than an eagerness to glean as much information as he could about David’s circle of friends.

  “You’re serious?”

  Harry shrugged.

  “Well, the Dane, I suppose. Torben Hammelgaard. A physicist rather than a mathematician, but it comes to the same thing. He and David worked together at Globescope.”

  “On what?”

  “Forecasting, I guess. Isn’t that what Globescope do?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, forecasting covers it. Economic projections. Climatic predictions. How many more billions there’ll be to sell cheeseburgers to in 2020. It’s pretty big business. If David had taken it more seriously, he might never have ended up like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’d have been in Washington earning good money, not skulking in a hotel room at Heathrow wondering where his next fund-raising scheme was coming from.”

  “Iris said he’d secured the backing to set up some sort of research institute.”

  “That’s what he told her. Who in their right mind would fund research into higher dimensions? What you can’t see you can’t sell. It’s a lesson David never wanted to learn. But since he was fired from Globescope ‘

  Tired?”

  The way I heard it, yuh. Along with Hammelgaard. And David’s very good friend Donna Trangam.”

  “Who?
”

  “A neuro biologist An expert on brains who fancies herself as an expert on hearts as well. Funny how her friendship doesn’t seem to have extended to offering help with David’s treatment. Something of a specialist in comatose conditions, I believe. But nowhere to be seen when most needed. Odd that, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You mean… she really might be able to do something for him?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Then where is she?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Well, maybe not. She used to be at Berkeley. I’d lay money she crawled back there after Globescope fired her.”

  “Why were they fired?”

  “I wouldn’t know. In David’s case, he was probably spending too much of the corporation’s time on his own research. As for the others … I really can’t imagine.” She moved forward in her chair. “And I do have to be going, fun as this has been. If you want to do something for your son, Harry, persuade Iris to let go of him. He isn’t coming back. Not as he was, anyway. And that means not at all.”

  Tell me,” said Harry, holding her gaze for a moment with his own, ‘how do you think he came to take an overdose of insulin?”

  “I think he’s been going nowhere fast since leaving Globescope. And I think he may have realized that. But don’t take my word for it. Ask Adam Slade. From what I hear, he had dinner with David at his hotel the night it happened. If anyone can tell you David’s state of mind at the time ‘

  “Who’s Adam Slade?”

  “You’ve never heard of him?”

  “No.”

  Hope rolled her eyes in mock surprise. “I thought you’d only been out of David’s life for thirty years, not the world in general. Adam Slade the magician. Doesn’t the name mean anything to you?”

  Harry shook his head.

  “Well, who’d have believed it? Not Adam, that’s for certain. He’s really quite big. Here and in the States. Claims to perform some of his tricks by manipulating higher dimensions. Hence David’s interest in him. Amazing how a brilliant scientist can be taken in by a crude con artist, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know what higher dimensions are.”

  “No. I don’t suppose you do.” Hope flashed him a smile of apparently genuine amusement. “Why don’t you see for yourself? Adam had the gall to send Steve and me a couple of tickets for tomorrow night’s show. He’s doing a short season of what he calls “Pure Magic” at the Palladium. We won’t be going, so you may as well be our guest.” She plucked a small envelope from her tote-bag and dropped it onto the table between them. Take a friend.” With that she rose and was gone, soft light shimmering on taut PVC as she strode swiftly away. Leaving Harry to realize, a second after he had lost sight of her, that he would have to pay the bill for their drinks. There was, it seemed, no such thing as a free ticket.

  EIGHT

  A measure of Adam Slade’s eagerness to ingratiate himself with the Brancasters was the excellent location of the seats Harry and Mrs. Tandy found themselves occupying at the Palladium the following night. The centre of the stalls, half a dozen rows back from the stage, could hardly have been bettered as a vantage point from which to admire the man’s magical talents. The admiration of a Hollywood luminary and his no less luminous wife was, of course, well worth such generosity. Adam Slade was not to know that the Brancasters’ tickets had been passed on to a part-time employee of the Mitre Bridge Service Station and his elderly landlady.

  On the other hand, Mrs. Tandy was unquestionably cutting a dash in aubergine organza and pearls. She had been delighted to accept Harry’s invitation, even though it had briefly and tearfully reminded her of theatrical outings with her husband long ago. But that was more than could have been said for Harry’s only previous recorded proposal of a social evening: karaoke night at the Stonemasons’ Arms. “Pure Magic’ at the London Palladium was definitely more to Mrs. Tandy’s liking.

  And to Harry’s, he would freely have admitted. Professional illusionism had clearly come on apace since his last exposure to it: a trip with Uncle Len to see the Great Caldenza at the old Empire Theatre in Swindon not far short of fifty years ago. Caldenza had not entered amidst deafening rock music and pink-lit swirls of dry ice. Nor had he been accompanied by a quartet of curvaceous blondes in diaphanous costumes. And he had definitely not embodied Adam Slade’s curious mixture of Mephistopheles and the boy next door.

  High-octane charm with a jagged edge appeared to be Slade’s stock-in-trade. Short and slightly built, with sharp features and a ready smile, he could have been every mother’s ideal vision of a son-in-law, but for the dark crew-cut hair and the carefully judged five o’clock shadow. Confident he certainly was, as well as slick, witty and hugely egotistical. His routine was fast-moving and entertaining. But come the interval Harry could not help feeling disappointed. Tricksy lighting effects, whizz-bang technology and calendar-girl assistants apart, Slade’s repertoire was basically the same old magician’s routine of disappearing and reappearing, levitating and predicting, card-sharping and pea-shuffling. True, he sawed himself rather than a leotarded lady in half. And, equally true, Harry had not the first idea how he did any of it. Nor, presumably, had the audience member whose birthday Slade guessed. Not to mention the nervous volunteer whose gold wristwatch Slade apparently smashed to smithereens before suddenly reassembling it. But that it was all a trick all a clever sleight-of-hand Harry did not doubt.

  And what of higher dimensions? They’ve not even been mentioned,” Harry complained to Mrs. Tandy in the bar.

  “You should have read the programme,” she said reprovingly. They’re billed as the highlight of the second half.”

  “Oh.”

  “And they’ll need to be. So far, I haven’t seen anything you couldn’t learn how to do from dear Selwyn’s Secrets of Houdini book. It’s somewhere in the attic at home.”

  The second half opened be musingly to subdued lighting and melancholic music. Slade entered unsmiling and alone, moved to a corner of the stage, advanced to the edge, sat down and gazed out at the audience.

  “What you’ve seen so far this evening,” he announced, ‘has been an illusion. I design my tricks for your enjoyment and mystification. But they are only tricks. Yet I find they prepare me better than solitude or meditation for the execution of genuine magic, which is what you’re about to see. Unlike my fellow illusionists around the world, I possess the ability to manipulate objects in dimensions other than those of length, breadth and depth. It’s an ability I inherited from my great-grandfather, Henry Slade, an American who visited this country in 1877 and was convicted of fraud on the basis of the demonstrations he gave of his hyper-dimensional powers. His conviction was unjust, as my grandfather and father both maintained throughout their lives. But only now, with the reappearance of his powers in my generation, can that injustice be proved. I shall perform this evening variations of three of the hyper-dimensional demonstrations Henry Slade gave. And I will add a couple of my own.”

  The music gathered pace. The lights came up bright and clear. Three of the blondes, more conservatively costumed than before, brought on the props: a tray bearing a silver coffee-pot and a cup and saucera pair of wooden hoops about six inches in diameter and a length of rope, which they arranged on a circular pedestal table. Volunteers were asked for and a forest of hands shot up, Harry’s among them. He was not one of those chosen, but the view from his seat was distinct and unobstructed. Whatever hyper-dimensionality was, he would soon see it in action.

  Slade welcomed the volunteers two men and a woman onto the stage, elicited their names, cracked a few mood-lifting jokes, then picked up the rope. “Professor Zollner of the University of Leipzig set my great-grandfather several tests of hyper-dimensionalism, all of which he passed, though not necessarily in the way Professor Zollner had asked him to. The Slades, it seems, have always had a sense of humour.” He grinned, handed one end of the rope to each of the men and asked them to stand just far enou
gh apart for it to hang between them in a semi-circle. “Who can tie a figure-of-eight knot in this rope without Mark or Neil letting go?” Nobody responded. “For those bound by three spatial dimensions, it’s impossible. For those who are not, it’s as simple as fastening a shoelace.” He reached out, ran his hand round the bottom of the loop, hooked his index finger over it, performed a sudden twisting movement and… hey presto, as the Great Caldenza would probably have said, there was a well-formed figure-of-eight knot in the rope, tied without either end being released. And there too was a storm of applause.

  “Coffee for the lady,” said Slade, swooping over to the table and filling the cup. He handed it to the woman and, when she had taken a sip, said: “How long have you been married, Amanda?”

  “Eighteen months,” she replied hesitantly.

  “And you’ve worn an engagement ring as well as a wedding ring all that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Always the same way round wedding ring first, engagement ring second?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Until tonight.”

  “What? No, I But when she looked at her wedding finger, she so nearly dropped her cup in surprise that Slade had to take it from her.

  “Which way round are they tonight, Amanda?”

  “The… the other way.”

  “If I’d tried to slide them off while handing you the cup, you’d have noticed, wouldn’t you? Besides, it’s quite hot in here, so they’d probably stick a bit. But not if you simply lift them up and swap them over.”

  Amanda seemed as genuinely shocked as the audience was genuinely impressed. Harry did not know what to think. But, before he had the chance to ponder the point, Slade had moved on.

  “It’s OK, Amanda. Your rings are completely unharmed. Finish your coffee. It’ll calm you down.”

  She took the cup from him, raised it obediently from the saucer to drink, then stopped. “It’s empty,” she said in amazement.

  “So it is,” said Slade. “Now, what did I do with that?” More applause.

  “Never mind. I’ll pour you another.” Amanda by now resembled somebody in a hypnotic trance. After filling the cup and giving it back to her, Slade ambled over to Mark and Neil. “You can let go now, gentlemen,” he said, taking the rope away and handing them each one of the wooden hoops. “It’s time for a little healthy competition. The coffee-pot’s solid silver. And it’s yours if you can toss your hoop over it. Fairground stuff, eh? In fact, a piece of cake. Test the hoops first. Make sure they’re solid. Stretch them. Twist them. Bite them if you like.” When Mark and Neil had tapped and strained to their satisfaction, he stepped back and waved them into action. “Fire away. Would you like to go first, Mark?”