Enigma

Whitehall exchange. As far as the operator could tell, Jericho was merely calling one London borough from another. He pressed four pennies into the slot and after a series of clicks he heard a ringing tone.
    It took fifteen seconds for a man to answer.
    'Ye-es?'
    It was exactly the voice Jericho had always imagined for Claire's father. Languid and assured, it stretched that single short syllable into two long ones. Immediately there was a series of pips and Jericho pushed the A-button. His money tinkled into the coin-box.
    Already, he felt at a disadvantage—an indigent without access to a telephone of his own.
    'Mr Romilly?'
    'Ye-es?'
    'I'm so sorry to trouble you, sir, especially on a Sunday morning, but I work with Claire . . .'
    There was a faint noise, and then a pause, during which he could hear Romilly breathing. A crackle of static cut across the line. 'Are you still there, sir?'
    The voice, when it came again, was quiet, and it sounded hollow, as if emanating from a vast and empty room. 'How did you get this number?'
    'Claire gave it me.' It was the first lie that came into Jericho's head. 'I wondered if she was with you.'
    Another long pause. 'No. No, she isn't. Why should she be?'
    'She's not turned up for her shift this morning. Yesterday was her day off. I wondered if she might have gone down to London.'
    'Who is this speaking?'
    'My name is Tom Jericho.' Silence. 'She may have spoken of me.'
    'I don't believe so.' Romilly's voice was barely audible. He cleared his throat. 'I'm awfully sorry, Mr Jericho. I'm afraid I can't help you. My daughter's movements are as much a mystery to me as they seem to be to you. Goodbye.'
    There was a fumbling noise and the connection was broken off.
    'Hello?' said Jericho. He thought he could still hear somebody breathing on the line. 'Hello?' He held on to the heavy bakelite receiver for a couple of seconds, straining to hear, then carefully replaced it.
    He leaned against the side of the telephone box and massaged his temples. Beyond the glass, the world went silently about its business. A couple of civilians with bowler hats and rolled umbrellas, fresh from the London train, were being escorted up the drive to the mansion. A trio of ducks in winter camouflage came in to land on the lake, feet splayed, ploughing furrows in the grey water.
    'My daughter's movements are as much a mystery to me as they seem to be to you.'
    That was not right, was it? That was not the reaction one would expect of a father on being told his only child was missing?
    Jericho groped in his pocket for a handful of change. He spread the coins out on his palm and stared at them, stupidly, like a foreigner just arrived in an unfamiliar country.
    He dialled zero again.
    'Operator speaking.'
    'Kensington double-two five seven.'
    Once again, Jericho inserted four pennies into the metal slot. Once again there was a series of short clicks, then a pause. He tightened his finger on the button. But this time there was no ringing tone, only the blip-blip-blip of an engaged signal, pulsing in his ear like a heartbeat.
    Over the next ten minutes Jericho made three more attempts to get through. Each met the same response.
    Either Romilly had taken his telephone off the hook, or he was involved in a long conversation with someone.
    Jericho would have tried the number a fourth time, but a woman from the canteen with a coat over her apron had turned up and started rapping a coin on the glass, demanding her turn. Finally, Jericho let her in. He stood on the roadside and tried to decide what to do.
    He glanced back at the huts. Their squat, grey shapes, once so boring and familiar, now seemed vaguely threatening.
    Damn it. What did he have to lose?
    He buttoned his jacket against the cold and turned towards the gate.

3

    St Mary's Parish Church, eight solid centuries of hard white stone and Christian piety, lay at the end of an avenue of elderly yew trees, less than a hundred yards beyond Bletchley Park. As Jericho walked through the gate he saw bicycles, fifteen or twenty of them, stacked neatly around the porch, and a moment later heard the piping of the organ and the mournful lilt of a Church of England congregation in mid-hymn. The graveyard was perfectly still. He felt like a late guest approaching a house where a party was already in full swing.
    'We blossom and flourish as leaves on a tree, And wither, and perish, but naught changeth thee
    Jericho stamped his feet and beat his arms. He considered slipping