The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

and her mind. When she had dressed he handed her a small cloth sack of food, some dried meat and fruit, an extra portion of rice. Ny was never quite sure whether it was a payment or a penance, for afterwards, passion spent, he always seemed embarrassed. She took the sack without a word and hurried back to the hut.

Serey heard her coming in, felt the warmth of her closeness as she leant beside her and filled her bowl with half the contents of the sack. Serey feigned sleep, as she always did. Nothing was ever acknowledged between them. The shame would have been unbearable.

CHAPTER SIX

I

David tutted irritably. ‘Well, why didn’t you answer?’

‘I was in the attic,’ she lied.

‘But I let it ring for ages.’

‘Oh David, never mind! I want you to look at these.’ She had the contents of the trunk spread across the table in the dining room. She opened the wedding album.

‘Wedding photographs,’ he said, without enthusiasm. He was tired. He had only come off the night shift at seven that morning, and she had phoned him at home at eight. He should have been asleep by now. But there had been an urgent quality in her voice. So he had driven over and found her in a state he could only describe as near-euphoria. Sometimes death affected people that way. Down one minute, on a high the next. He had been prepared to play the role of comforter, but had not been prepared for this. She stabbed at a picture of the bride and groom.

‘Look,’ she said.

He recognized her mother. Very young, quite pretty, not at all like the haggard, pinched woman he had known. He shrugged. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s your mother.’

‘Not my mother! The groom!’ She could hardly contain her impatience.

He looked at the groom without interest. ‘So, it’s your father, I suppose.’

‘Don’t you recognize him?’

David almost laughed. ‘How could I recognize him? He’s been dead for years. Look, Lisa, you didn’t get me all the way down here just to look at old wedding photographs, did you?’

But she was insistent. ‘Look again, David, please!’ He sighed and looked at the face more closely. And, oddly, there did seem something familiar about him, now that he gave the photo more attention. Lisa saw his frown. ‘See, you have seen him before, haven’t you?’

He was reluctant to admit his doubt. ‘It’s not possible.’

‘At the churchyard yesterday. The man under the trees. The one with the scar.’ She was desperate for confirmation, needed to know she wasn’t imagining it. He frowned uneasily as he recalled the face of the man he had seen standing in the rain. And his sense of unease deepened as he remembered the way the man had looked at Lisa.

‘This guy doesn’t have a scar,’ he said.

‘Oh for goodness sake, David! That photograph must be twenty years old.’ She paused. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

‘Are you trying to tell me we saw a ghost?’

‘Did he look like a ghost to you?’ His silence spoke for him. ‘He’s alive,’ she said.

‘But it doesn’t make sense, Lisa. Why would your mother have told you he was dead? And if it was him, why didn’t he come over and speak to you?’

Lisa shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’ They were questions that had been rattling around her head all night, a night without sleep, a night of so many questions and so few answers. She slumped wearily into a chair. ‘I phoned my mother’s lawyer first thing. I’ve made an appointment to see him at twelve. Will you come with me?’

David saw a day without sleep, and a long, tiring night ahead of him in the newsroom. But he nodded. It was as well to get all this out of the way as soon as possible. ‘Well, I suppose if anyone can tell you the truth he can.’

Lisa closed her eyes, a wave of relief and fatigue sweeping over her. At least with David there she wouldn’t feel quite so alone, quite so vulnerable.

‘Lisa . . .’ Something in David’s voice made her open her eyes sharply. He had been leafing idly through the bundle of old newspapers. He held one up. ‘Have you seen this?’ It had never crossed her mind to look at them. There was a group photograph of four men in army uniform. A headline: VERDICT IN ADEN MASSACRE. She felt the blood rise on her cheeks as she recognized one of the men as her father.

II

Wiseman was in his sixties, with more than half an eye on retirement. His life had been one long succession of conveyancing, divorces and wills. Long gone were the heady ambitions of the student lawyer; the Bar, the Old Bailey, the triumphs and intrigues of criminal law. Instead, life had brought him to this small, seedy office in an insignificant south London legal partnership. He was the senior partner now, but it was little consolation. Nothing was more difficult in life than coming to terms with your own limitations.

This, however, was something rather different. He examined the young lady seated at the other side of his desk, a desk piled with conveyances, divorces and wills. Her thick blonde hair was cut short, swept back from a strong-featured face. Full, sensuous lips, a fine straight nose and clear blue eyes. She wore no make-up and there were deep shadows under her eyes. He supposed he wasn’t seeing her at her best, having just buried her mother. But he could see she was a good-looking girl, slim, her blouse tucked loosely into her jeans. She wore a long dark jacket which hung open, a leather satchel slung from her shoulder. Her hands were clasped between her thighs as she sat slightly forward listening earnestly. She was not at all like her mother – a bitter, brittle woman whom he had never liked.

Her young man sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, listening with a sort of grim