Authors: Catherine Sampson
There was a photocopy, in the dossier, of a brief note from the army, saying that the issue of the failed communications equipment
was being looked into. That note was dated two months after the death of Sean Howie. I looked for a subsequent document that
might give the findings of this investigation, but there was nothing.
There was, however, an extract from a letter Sean Howie had written to his girlfriend, dated just one day before he was to
die. The rest of the letter was blacked out.
“We’ve got a camerawoman with us,” Howie wrote. “She’s a bit standoffish, keeps herself to herself. Still, she likes the action,
her camera’s never off her shoulder. The only thing she’s ever interested in is where the shooting is, and whether that’s
where we’re going, and if not why not.”
That was the last word from Sean Howie. If he wrote again, there was no record of it among the papers I had been given.
The next transcript in the dossier came from a fellow soldier, Taylor Sullivan, describing the ambush in which Howie was killed.
We were on the road out of town when we realized we couldn’t raise anyone on the coms. We carried on and out of the town,
thinking we’d catch up with the others. We didn’t think we were lost, just that we’d got a bit behind. It’s so hot, we’re
all boiled up and we’re all on the lookout for trouble, a bit on edge. Mel, the camerawoman, is with us, we’re all crammed
up, and she’s always got her head stuck out because she wants to see what’s going on, and she says, “Look, there’s a bridge,
wasn’t there a bridge on the route?” And Sean, who’s driving, says you must be crazy, I’m not going over there without any
cover. I thought Sean was right. Melanie wants us to engage with the enemy, because that’s how she gets her pictures. But
we just wanted to get home safe. But Phil mutters something about Sean being too scared to move—it’s like if Melanie said
that’s the way to go, Phil thinks she must be right. He was a bit soft on her, although I didn’t see the attraction. Sean
gets all fired up, and they have a bit of an argument. Sean asks Phil to repeat what he said, and Phil says what’s the point,
you heard me, first you get us lost, then we’re going to get shot at while we sit here dithering. Sean is really pissed off,
and he’s got to show he’s up for anything, and he drives towards the bridge. There’s this whacking great pipe on the road,
and we have to drive around it at an angle to get onto the bridge. I know we should have thought about it, but it all happened
so fast. Once we’re on the bridge we realize the pipe blocks off a retreat because we can’t reverse at that angle. Sean, who
has sixth sense, says something about how it’s too quiet. Then he says, “Fuck,” and something explodes at the front of the
vehicle, knocking us sideways, and the Land Rover collapses and tips onto its side, and we fall on top of each other, and
the engine’s groaning and smoking, and we pile out, and someone’s screaming, and Phil’s wetting himself, and we’re under fire,
and we’re sheltering under the Land Rover, returning fire where we can, and then up rolls the Land Rover that was behind us
in the patrol, and I know they can get us out of there. But I don’t see Sean anywhere, and when I go and open the door of
our Land Rover, he falls out, and you can see he’s dead. I’m not going to go into details, obviously, but I want you to know
that he must have died instantly. The rest of us got out in one piece, but Sean didn’t, and I want you to know that he died
because of his bravery in the service of his country.
Taylor Sullivan had printed his telephone number at the top of the page, but when I called, it was a woman’s voice that answered.
I explained who I was and that I would like to speak to Taylor. But that, it seemed, was a problem.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she said in a voice so quiet, I had to strain to hear, “but my son was asked not to speak to anyone
about what happened, and although the investigation’s over it’s probably better for all of us if he doesn’t go over it all
again in his head. He should never really have written to Sean’s parents at all, although of course he felt he must. Anyway,
it’s all there. If you’ve seen the letter, you’ve seen all there is. He goes over it again and again, and it’s always just
as he wrote it.”
I tried to persuade her, but in her quiet and polite way she was unmovable.
I called Finney. I just wanted to talk. The misery of last night’s videos and today’s dossier was heavy on me. I was trying
not to rely on Finney for moral support, of course, trying to maintain my independence. But that all seemed trivial in comparison
with the world as I was seeing it through Melanie’s eyes. How, I wondered, could she not have needed Sevi to comfort her?
Finney sounded cheerful enough, but there was something in his voice that made me realize I had no idea what he was doing
or who he was with. I pictured him at the other end of the line, in jeans and a sweater, dark, graying curls in need of a
cut. Finney’s wife left him even before Adam left me.
Finney is self-sufficient. He grew up in a children’s home. It was a kind place, but still he had to learn to look out for
himself. No one ever expected him to go to university, so he never expected to go. Instead he’s gone from one institution
to another, from orphanage to police force. I once met the woman who ran Finney’s orphanage—she had since retired—and she
told me that Finney was remarkably self-contained. She said that he spoke very little, yet he possessed a clarity of purpose
that led the other children to accept him as their leader even when he ignored them.
He is entirely familiar with the selection of ready-to-cook meals at his local supermarket and has mastered the art of the
two-for-the-price-of-one shop. He hates watching television. He reads rapidly, and for information, not for pleasure.
I imagine him, the sitting room window thrown wide onto his tiny yard to let in the sun, lying on his oversize sofa, remote
control within arm’s reach on the carpet, his eyes closed. He listens to a small selection of music that he loves. He has
a soft spot for gospel music—something I know only because I walked in on him one day and found him singing an improvised
bass harmony. He stopped as soon as he saw that I was there, and neither of us has mentioned it since.
He listens to the radio for hours, in particular to the news and to current affairs programs, although he is scathing about
journalists. And he likes silence. When I telephoned there was a woman’s voice in the background, and I didn’t know whether
it was the television, the radio, or a live woman.
“Do you want to come over?” I offered.
He sighed. “I’ve got a couple of things I have to do here.”
“Okay. I’m going to take a trip down to Mike Darling’s house on Saturday, do you want to come? No kids. We could have a pub
lunch on the way.”
Adam’s parents, Norma and Harold, were scheduled to come and take the children out for the day. There was a pause, and I fancied
I could hear Finney thinking. I guessed he wanted to warn me off Mike Darling again but that he didn’t dare.
“Can I let you know in the morning? I’m sorry, I’m just busy with things . . .” His voice was low and distracted.
I assured him that was fine. I put the phone down and stared at it, as though it could tell me more. It wasn’t like Finney
to play hard to get.
S
YDENHAM Hill Wood has absorbed the gardens of grand Victorian villas, so that amid the sycamore and the dog violet there are
small ponds and a ruined folly. The address Justin had given me was on the edge of the wood. I pulled up outside and peered
out at the house.
“Oh my,” I murmured. I was beginning to see why Justin was dreading his homecoming. Once upon a time—a hundred and thirty
years ago—this would have been an impressive home, tall, imposing, detached from its neighbors, and surrounded by lawns. Now
it looked like the shaky survivor of an earthquake, its redbrick walls propped up by scaffolding, windows gaping darkly on
the third floor, a slip of fabric taking the place of curtains on the second. On the ground floor, the original windows had
gone altogether, to be replaced by much larger panes of glass.
What I could see of the garden was crying with neglect. Much of the gravel drive was eaten up with weeds, and a large patch
of it had disappeared under a heap of building materials, bags of cement casting a powdery pall over the spiky grass. A battered
green Mini was parked outside, alongside a purple Polo. A pot of white paint was sitting open to receive rain and flies alike.
I observed all this and shrank from it. And this was in the kind light of a sunny summer’s day.
The house backed onto a wood—indeed, it seemed to be almost part of it, as though, if it were only allowed to crumble further,
the house would happily collapse into the earth and be digested by it. Already one side of the house was covered in ivy, as
though that process of absorption had already begun.
I got out of the car and approached the front door. There was a hand-painted plaque announcing that this was “The Tree House
Gallery” and more realistically, in small lettering, “Under Construction.”
There was no doorbell and actually no door, just a sheet of plywood shielding an unlit space. I shouted hello, but there was
no reply. So I walked around the edge of the house and was surprised to find that the garden at the rear, while wild, was
pleasant. Pleasant enough, indeed, that it was inhabited.
I could see a woman sitting in a deck chair, her head thrown back so that her face was warmed by the sun. Her hands lay in
her lap, her fingers touching the edges of what looked like a blue airmail letter. Her long black hair twisted in heavy curls
over her shoulders. I knew her from Justin’s description: Anita, her skin the color of wheat, the inheritance of a Sri Lankan
mother. She had a soft fullness to her, no longer the lean lines of youth, but she was beautiful.
Cross-legged in a yoga pose, the soles of her feet facing upward, her head bent over a book, was the girl I had last seen
on the stage as Finney dozed beside me. Jacqui, the twenty-year-old dancer, Mike and Anita’s daughter. She was tickling Christopher,
her baby brother, who crawled around on a blanket on the grass next to her. He was one of those babies who would have the
same face at forty that he had at ten months. There was no baby fat on him. He scarcely seemed to notice his sister’s attempts
to make him laugh. But he kept butting her with his head, and crawling onto her, and curling up against her as though he craved
contact.
Jacqui looked up and watched as I approached Anita, who opened her eyes but made no attempt to emerge from the deck chair.
I wasn’t sure that her eyes were focusing.
“I’m Robin Ballantyne. I came to see Justin.”
Anita nodded at me, her eyelids barely lifting. Then she seemed to doze off again. Her face was sad even in sleep. She looked
fragile, as though if we woke her again, she would burst into tears.
Jacqui scrambled to her bare feet and came over, and immediately the baby boy crawled over after her and wrapped his arms
around her leg.
“I saw you dance last week,” I told her.
“Yeah?” She smiled. “It went okay, or so I was told.”
I told her that I had enjoyed the evening, which was true up to a point.
“Christopher was in the wings,” she told me, bending to touch the baby’s nose with the tip of her finger. “We snuck him in
in his pushchair, and he was good as gold. He loves to have music around him.”
Jacqui’s hair was plaited and beaded, and there were flashes of metal at her nose and at her belly, which was bare between
low-slung trousers and a high-cut sweatshirt. She had her mother’s bone structure, and it was that which made her more than
pretty. There was something about the set of the jaw and the cheekbone that would, for the rest of her life, send men like
Justin to the ends of the earth for her. Her eyes were her father’s, observant and restless, never still.
I glanced back at Anita, and her eyes followed mine.
“Mum’s a bit strung-out,” she said defensively. As she spoke, she stroked Christopher’s head. “She’s not sleeping at night,
so she dozes off during the day.”
“I was hoping to see Justin.”
“He’s still at the hospital, his physio got delayed. He asked me to look after you until he got back. I don’t know . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and her eyes went to her mother again. “Do you want to look around?”
I bit back what I felt like saying, which was that I was happy to wait in the car, and instead followed her as she picked
her way through the long grass in bare feet. Her toenails were painted a deep gold. She had swept Christopher up into her
arms, and he was clinging to her like a koala bear. I glanced back, but Anita was still sound asleep, and her mouth had fallen
open. She looked twenty years older, like the grandmother rather than the mother of this child who sat so comfortably on his
big sister’s hip.
“Is your dad back from Cambodia yet?” I asked.
She shook her head and looked sideways at me. “He’s keeping out of the way,” she said. “It’s what he does best.”
So much, I thought, for a man trained to face any enemy.
“He’s good at schedules and equipment and expeditions and orienteering, and all that stuff, but he’s crap when it comes to
his wife being pissed off at him. Or his friend. Or me, actually.”
“So you’re all pissed off with him?”
Mike’s daughter gave me a hard look that, had she but known it, mirrored her father’s almost exactly. I found myself wishing
that I had a camera with me now. The rules about the use of hidden filming are strict—there’s got to be a clearly demonstrable
reason to invade people’s privacy. But it’s the only way to truly be a fly on the wall. As soon as you lug a full-size news
camera into any situation, you might as well be directing a Broadway musical for all the reality you’re going to get on film.
“I mean hypothetically,” she said.
“Has your father spoken about me?” I knew I was pushing her on the subject of Mike, and it didn’t surprise me when she just
gave me a cool glance and shook her head.