Robert Goddard - Long Time Coming

A LSO BY R OBERT G ODDARD

Name to a Face

Beyond Recall

Past Caring

Never Go Back

In Pale Battalions

Sight Unseen

Into the Blue

Borrowed Time

Hand in Glove

Play to the End

R OBERT GODDARD was born in Hampshire and studied history at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and labyrinthine plotting. His first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue, was winner of the first WH Smith Thumping Good Read Award. He lives in Truro, Cornwall. Bantam Dell will publish his next novel of historical suspense, Found Wanting, in 2011.

Malcolm MacDonalds mission to Dublin in June 1940 is a matter of historical record, as is Eamon de Valeras subsequent rejection of a deal which might, just might, have secured what he claimed so passionately to desire all his life: a united and independent Ireland. But the Long Fellow, as his political career clearly shows, was a man who liked to say no.

A man who delights in saying yes, however, is my good friend Chris Allen, a style icon to all who know and love him, who generously shared with me his memories of a fags life at Ardingly. I am also very grateful to Sven Lommaert for schooling me in Belgian police procedure. My thanks to them and to everyone else who helped me during the writing of this novel.

M Y MOTHER SURPRISED ME WHEN SHE ANNOUNCED THAT MY UNCLE was staying with her. It was the first of many surprises that were shortly to come my way. But of all of them it was probably the biggest. Because Id only ever had one uncle. And Id always been told hed died in the Blitz.

I D PHONED HER FROM H EATHROW, to give her an idea of when Id be arriving. I didnt have the change for a long call. Well have to make this quick, I said. Maybe that was what prompted her to spring it on me. Wed spoken a couple of times over the previous week, while I was still in Houston. Shed said nothing about Uncle Eldritch then. Maybe her nerve had failed her. Maybe shed doubted if I really was abandoning what she regarded as my glamorous existence in Texas. If not, I could be spared the revelation, at least for a while, that the old man wasnt dead after all. But Id gone ahead and left. So now I had to be told. And the lack of immediate opportunity for cross-questioning was a bonus.

I ought to have mentioned it sooner, dear. Your uncles come to stay.

My uncle?

Eldritch. Your fathers elder brother.

But hes dead.

No, dear. Thats what your father always insisted we should pretend. But Eldritch is very much alive.

How can he be? Where the hells he been all my life?

In prison. In Ireland.

What?

Ill explain when you get here.

Hold on. But already I was talking over the pips. Lets just

See you soon, dear, my mother shouted. And then she put the phone down.

P ERHAPS I SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRATEFUL. But for Mums bombshell, Id probably have spent the journey down to Paignton, as I had the overnight flight from Houston, wondering just how Id allowed a disagreement with the corporate finance director at Sanderstead Oil to become a resigning issue, with disastrous consequences for my engagement to his daughter. Because Id wanted to would have been the honest answer. Because the job and the engagement were both too good to be true and I was young enough to find worthier versions of both. But naturally I had my doubts about that. Part of me was gung ho and optimistic. Another part reckoned Id been a damn fool.

I was pretty confident, nonetheless, that Id be able to get back into the oil business whenever I chose. With the North Sea fields coming on-stream, there were plenty of openings for a geologist with my qualifications. First, though, I planned to spend a few weeks in Paignton, unwinding and taking stock. I hadnt seen as much of my mother as I should have in the two years since my fathers death. The guesthouse kept her busy, at least in summer, but I wanted to reassure myself that she was coping as well as she claimed.

After the news of my uncle, all such thoughts went out of my head, of course. My mothers matter-of-fact tone couldnt disguise the enormity of what shed actually said. Eldritch Swan of the exotic Christian name and raffish reputation had not been among the thousands of Londoners killed by the Luftwaffe in 1940. His death was a lie. And it soon occurred to me that his life might be a lie too. Nothing Id been told about him accounted for several decades of imprisonment in Ireland. Evidently my father had decided I was better off not knowing the truth about his brother.

Or maybe hed decided he was better off by my not knowing. A dead relative is more socially acceptable than an imprisoned one. I might have shot my mouth off to the neighbours about dear old banged-up Uncle Eldritch. And that would never have done. Grandad might have insisted on blanking his son out of the family, of course. That was a distinct possibility. But hed been dead for more than twenty years. And the record had never been set straight. Until now.

M Y PATERNAL GRANDFATHER, George Swan, was an engineer who rose to the higher echelons of management with the East African Railways and Harbours Administration, first in Kenya, then Tanganyika. His eldest son was christened Eldritch on account of his mothers maiden name. His second son, my father, received the more conventional Neville as his label in life. The difference turned out to be prophetic, since Eldritch racketed around Europe, according to Dad, until the outbreak of war forced him to return to his homeland, only for a German bomb to score a direct hit on the Mayfair gambling den where he happened to be hunched over the baccarat table one night in the autumn of 1940. Meanwhile, my father, favoured, hed often point out, with a less expensive education than his brother, worked for a shipping agent in Dar es Salaam and fought for his country with the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he transferred to the agents London office, where my mother was working as a typist. Courtship, marriage, parenthood, and suburbia duly followed.

My earliest memories are of our house in Stoneleigh. It backed onto the railway line, and on fine mornings Mum would take me into the garden after Dad had left for the station so we could wave to him as the Waterloo train rumbled past. The scene changed for good when Grandma and Grandad died within a few months of each other the summer I was eight. Dad inherited what hed never describe more specifically than a tidy sum. It was enough for him to quit the shipping business and buy a guesthouse in Paignton, the seaside resort where wed spent several summer holidays. He needed a lot of persuading by Mum to take the plunge, though. She was always the more enterprising of the two. My father was a cautious man, fretful with the slightest encouragement. But deceitful? Id never have said so. Until now.

P AIGNTON WAS A WONDERFUL PLACE to be a child. Zanzibar, as Dad named the guesthouse, was only a few minutes from the beach. Sun, sea, and sand were my summer-long companions. The sideshows on the pier; travelling fairs on the green; open-top bus rides to Torquay; rock-pooling at low tide: The real winner from the move to Devon was me.

Ordinarily, Id have needed to fix that thought firmly in my mind when I got off the train in the middle of a chill grey March afternoon. Torbay Road, running between the station and the Esplanade, is a depressing drag to the adult eye of bucket-and-spade shops and slot machine joints. A walk along it, rucksack on back, suitcase in hand, had promised to test my spirits. Never were the oily charms of Houston likely to seem more bountiful.