Robert Goddard - Found Wanting

Praise for Robert Goddard

One of Britains finest thriller writers.

Time Out (U.K.)

AND HIS SPELLBINDING NOVELS

Too good to gulp These books have more twists than a box of macaroni, all rendered in Goddards clear-eyed prose. You discover a guy whos doing work on such a high level, and the disturbing question occurs: Who else have I missed thats this good?

Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

A masterly piece of storytelling combines the expert suspense manipulation skills of a Daphne du Maurier romance with those of a John le Carr thriller.

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

An engaging mystery novel with a literary angle that will make comparisons to A. S. Byatt and P. D. James inevitable The twistings and turnings of the plot are cleverly executed and entirely satisfying, right up to the last line.

Valerie Martin, The Washington Post Book World

Reminiscent of Dickens in its scope, huge cast of characters, and evocative descriptions, and of Conan Doyle in its richly layered plot Goddard has constructed a marvelously complex and tightly woven tale of betrayal and mistaken identity. Goddards elegant prose and intelligence propel this novel beyond mere entertainment and place him in the company of such masters of historical suspense as John Fowles and Daphne du Maurier.

Andrea Barrett, San Francisco Chronicle

Robert Goddard regularly produces the best, as well as easily the most intelligent, thrillers being published today.

Sunday Denver Post & Rocky Mountain News

BY ROBERT GODDARD

Found Wanting

Long Time Coming

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

Found Wanting is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks Original

Copyright 2008 by Robert and Vaunda Goddard
Title page and part title photograph copyright 2010 by Daniel Wildman

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2008.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goddard, Robert.
Found wanting : a novel / Robert Goddard.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90818-3
I. Title.
PR6057.O33F68 2011
823.914dc22 2010027207

www.bantamdell.com

Cover design: Carlos Beltran
Cover illustration: based on a photograph by Yolande De Kort / Trevillion Images

v3.1

The sky over Whitehall is doughy grey, the air chill and granular. It is a Monday morning in early February, yet winter has seemingly only just begun after a dank, extended autumn. The cold is almost a tonic for Richard Eusden as he emerges from the Churchill Caf, mug of strong black coffee in hand, and sits down at one of the pavement tables. He drops his briefcase beside his chair, sinks his chin within the sheltering collar of his overcoat and lets the warmth of the coffee seep into his palm as he surveys the familiar scene.

The traffic is thinner than usual, but slow-moving nonetheless, thanks to the pelican crossing adjacent to the caf. It beeps and blinks in service to the dark-suited men and women crossing in both directions who are bound for their desks and workplaces in the ministries either side of Whitehall. Many already have their security passes dangling round their necks, their identities surrendered and declared, their working weeks about to begin in variations on an institutionalized theme.

Richard Eusdens security pass is still in his pocket. He will take it out only when he is most of the way down King Charles Street and turning into the Foreign Office staff entrance. The delay is a small assertion of his individuality, pitifully small in all conscience, but one of the few open to him. A civil servant closing fast on fifty with an index-linked pension no longer an unimaginably distant prospect cannot afford to cock a snook at the government machine he is undeniably part of. But there is no need to rush to take his place within it this morning. It is not yet 8:30. His train was neither late nor overcrowded. He is feeling less than usually travel-worn. He sips his coffee and tries to savour the moment. He knows he should put it to more obviously practical use, if only for the benefit of any of his colleagues who may pass by. There are file notes in his case he intended to studybut did notin the course of the weekend. He could profitably cast an eye over them now. Staring into space is perhaps not the wisest image to project in the ever more image-conscious culture that has engulfed his profession. But still he goes on staring, through the plume of steam rising from his coffee.

The truth, he recognized long ago, was that he should never have become a civil servant. Deep within his soul he lacks the vital capacity to think the conventional thoughtand to believe it. Having become one, he should have quit once he realized his mistake. He should have dropped out, travelled the world, searched for something elseanything elseto do with his life. But he had just married then and assumed he would have children, who would need the comfort and security his career could supply. And by the time that and a number of other assumptions about his marriage had been confounded, he had persuaded himself it was too late to make the break. More accurately, it was too easy to refrain from making the effort. Now it really is too late. Life, he is well aware, is what you make of it. And this is what he has made of his. He is smartly dressed and well-groomed. He is not losing his hair or running to fat. His blue eyes still glisten. His brain is still sharp. By most peoples standards, he leads an enviable existence. He tries to remind himself of this as he contemplates the predictable day and unsurprising week that lie ahead of him. He needs a change, but he does not expect to get it. He takes a deeper swallow of coffee and sets the mug down on the table.

His fingers are barely free of the mug handle when three short blasts on a car horn snap his attention to the other side of the street. A pea-green Mazda is cruising slowly through the pelican crossing as the light flashes amber. The drivers window is opening and a face coming into view that Eusden senses he is on the brink of recognizing, only for a dirty red slab of bendy bus to cut off the view.

The bus slows for traffic ahead and merely crawls forward. It is an open question to Eusden whether he will see the Mazda again. It may already be past the Cenotaph and heading towards Trafalgar Square. He knows nobody who drives such a car. He has no concrete reason for supposing the horn was sounded for his benefit. The incident seems about to despool into the ebb and flow of the morning.