Robin Pritchard

That Murderous Tree Robin Pritchard

Allenby's life has suddenly become a car crash - literarily. His wife swerves off the road, hits a tree and is killed. An accident, surely? Then into his life walk a variety of characters, some fresh like Mr Jahr and Gretchen, and others from his past at Durham University. And when somebody tries to kill him, he clings to the nearest - Gretchen. Gretchen is a mother of a small boy, newly pregnant and, it turns out, a spy like him. Whereas he has sat behind a computer screen for his working life at GCHQ, creating and breaking codes, she has been in the field, working against the neo-Nazis. Allenby is soft and vulnerable from his bereavement and Gretchen is intriguing, beguiling with strength and vitality from her pregnancy, with the right sort of humour and sang froid to carry them through. Yet it is a downward slope. The situation becomes worse and worse as he falls into a series of surreal incidents that come around more than once with increasing intensity. First he is mock tortured as part of a sting that unknown hands behind Gretchen are organising, and then he is tortured for real. More than once he barely escapes with his life from a further assassination attempt. Even his house is burnt down. At each step the veracity of Gretchen shifts, as time and time again she owns up to a different version of the reality he find himself in. So she draws him on with her projected innocence at what is happening to them both and her erotic charm that makes a sexual relationship inevitable in the face of danger. At key points the mysterious Mr Jahr reappears, pressuring him and hurting him until he is not sure what to believe. Is this to do with the neo-Nazis, or is it connected to the contract for a dam in India, or is it to do with the recovery of a body of one of the rowing team at Durham? After each distressing incident Allenby is toughened, and each time there is cogent reason to forgive Gretchen's duplicity. In a final showdown Allenby is manipulated into telling the lie by which Mr Jahr is able to rid himself of the troublesome Durham crew who stand in the way of his ambitions. And just when Allenby is prepared to take a deep breath of relief, he discovers that the death of his wife may not be an accident and that Gretchen has one more terrible lie to confess to.