The Bell Ringers (6 page)

Between deliberated sips from a pint of Old Speckled Hen, he told her that it had taken over two weeks for anyone to realise that Eyam had been killed in the explosion. They might never have known for certain if the hotel room key hadn't been found by construction workers near the spot where Eyam had fallen and matched with the room he'd occupied at the Hotel Atlantic until the day of the blast.

‘What about the hotel bill?' said Kate. ‘Surely the hotel reported him missing?'

‘Why? To whom? There was no need. They had his credit card details and authorisation for payment. I checked with one of the managers. There was a small amount of luggage in his room and after a few days they just put it in store, thinking he would collect it: they assumed he'd gone on a boat trip up the coast.'

A big man with a slow, amiable manner, Swift consumed a pie and chips while they talked, looking over his glasses to consider her questions. Why had he come to High Castle? What was he doing in Colombia? And how the hell had someone as smart and dedicated and charming as Eyam lost his job in government? The inquest had established the facts of Eyam's death but the fall, the calamity that pitched him into Mrs Kidd's exciting local arts scene was a mystery. Swift smiled at this but said he couldn't help her on any of these things.

The peal of bells was now abruptly replaced by the toll of a single bell. She stubbed the cigarette out, carried the butt to one of the waste-baskets, and walked to the main door where two policemen stood with weapons undisguised. A woman police officer searched her bag and patted her down and she was handed an order of service with Eyam's photograph and dates on the cover. She took a place halfway up the aisle. About two dozen people had already found places: Diana Kidd was at the front, fanning herself with the order of service. Kate read the short appreciation on the inside cover, recording Eyam's time at Oxford with all its honours and awards, his work in think tanks and the civil service – the Home Office, the Research and Analysis Department at
the Foreign Office, Number Ten and finally the Joint Intelligence Committee. It possessed no more feeling than an entry in
Who's Who
.

No mention of his two years in High Castle. No salutes to his intellectual distinction, the range of his interests, his flair, his largely hidden physical prowess. No colour, no observation, no humour. David Eyam was being sent on his way without love.

Just before noon there was a respectful rush of mourners and by the time the bell fell silent well over a hundred people filled the pews around her. The clearing of throats and murmurs ceased; people stopped nodding to each other as the presence of the coffin – of death – imposed an awkward hush on the congregation. In the front row was the actress Ingrid Eyam, David's stepmother and next of kin, who Kate concluded would inherit the entire fortune left by David's father a few months before. She had gone the whole distance with a fitted black two-piece suit and pillbox hat with a springy black mesh veil, from which peeked a dubious tragic beauty. Behind her the mourners fell into three distinct groups: the people from the centre of government, who included two permanent secretaries, the home secretary Derek Glenny, a large man in his fifties with male-pattern baldness and narrow eyes, and one or two political faces she recognised from reading the English newspapers; Eyam's friends from Oxford, most of whom Kate knew; and about thirty locals who, with unconscious respect for hierarchy, placed themselves in the pews at the rear. Mrs Kidd disrupted the pattern and was now looking anxiously about her, wondering if she was in a reserved seat.

The vicar moved from consulting some musicians in front of the altar to the centre of the aisle, and began to address the mourners. ‘This is not to be a sad occasion,' he said with a distinct whistle in his voice. ‘David's instructions were clear – we are to rejoice in life and the living of it. The music and readings are all his choice, apart from the passage from
Cymbeline
, which will be read by Ingrid Eyam, David's stepmother.'

She thought it odd that someone in his forties and in perfect health would think of planning their own funeral. Eyam was an atheist, incurious about his own death, and as far as she knew had no reason to expect his life was about to end. But he was also more organised than
anyone she had ever known and she could easily imagine him sitting down one Sunday night to put his wishes on paper. He had chosen well. A very good countertenor sang from Monteverdi's
The Legend of Orpheus
, there were readings from Byron and Milton, and Ingrid Eyam read from Shakespeare – ‘Golden lads and lasses must/as chimney sweepers, come to dust.' It was all perfectly pleasant but none of it was moving, and no one got near Eyam. When the tributes followed from a professor of eonomics at Oxford and the home secretary Derek Glenny, they seemed to her to be going through the motions. Glenny puffed himself out, fiddled with his glasses, gazed with satisfaction around the church and told them as much about himself as Eyam. He ended with, ‘David had that essential gift for a government servant: he understood power and he knew how to use it. This was a rare and good man. He will be missed greatly.'

Kate glanced at her watch and was just wishing the whole farce over when there was a commotion in the middle of the pew behind her as someone pushed past several pairs of knees without apology. A slender Indian man wearing a grey, chalk-stripe suit, red woollen gloves and a tightly knotted red scarf appeared in the aisle, stared about him with a wild, almost insane look, and made his way to the front, where he laid his hands on the top of the coffin. He stood for a full minute with his head bowed. Kate moved so she could see him better.

‘Darsh,' she murmured under her breath. She hadn't thought of Darsh Darshan for at least a decade. The first time she had seen him was in a church, a scrawny mathematics prodigy who arrived at Oxford on a scholarship and whom she found one dark winter evening sitting in New College chapel in an almost catatonic state. David took him under his wing and saw he was all right.

Without turning, he spoke. ‘In my culture we draw near to death. We hold the dead close and we comfort them on their journey.' He let his hands drop, looked over his shoulder then turned very slowly. His head was curiously oblong and his hair brushed forward so it curled above a domed, almost bulbous brow. His eyes burned with fierce self-possession that was new to Kate.

‘We are forgetting David,' he said. ‘Don't you see that? This is David, lying here! Can any of us doubt our guilt in that fact?'

The congregation looked at each other embarrassed, shrinking in their seats with the English terror of someone making a scene.

‘Even if we shy from death this is no time to forget who David was and what he stood for,' continued Darsh. ‘David was murdered. No one has used that word but that is the reality of his death. We still don't know who murdered him, and that is an important fact to remember today.'

The vicar stepped forward, looking flustered. ‘Thank you, thank you,' he said. ‘But if you
would
return to your place now.'

‘I haven't finished,' Darsh said quietly, then rubbed his gloved hands. ‘My name is Darsh Darshan and I was a friend of David's for twenty years. There was no one like him, but more than this simple declaration of his individuality and of my love for him I attest to his courage, his loyalty to high principle and the cause of decency. David played the long game and he was good at it. He was patient and he respected detail. Yet he was no machine. He took his bearings early and stayed true to his course: he knew who he was, where he was at any given moment and where he was heading. He was imperturbable, inspired, unbending, brilliant and funny. You could wish for no greater friend. His mind was truly clear. So often the answer came before your question was out because he had already asked it of himself, and on the rare occasions when he hadn't thought of the problem, he seized it with a delight that was a pleasure to behold. His brain was remarkable but his character was a glory. Such a man makes you think God is possible.'

He paused and swept the faces in front of him. Although the majority of the congregation were convinced that Darsh was out of his mind, one or two heads were now nodding encouragement in the curious aquarium light that spilled from the stained-glass windows on the south. He placed a hand on the lid of the coffin again and patted it possessively, throwing a smile of recognition up the aisle as though David Eyam's ghost had stumbled late into the church. Then his eyes drifted to Glenny. ‘And when our friend the minister here says that David understood power . . . Well, yes, sir, you are right. He did. But his purpose was not to have it for himself but to control it, to place obstacles in its way and to set up boundaries to restrain it.' Kate was not sure that was absolutely true but she nodded. Darsh stopped and walked
to within a few feet of the end of the home secretary's pew and stood in a shaft of light, apparently unaware of the bodyguards who had moved from somewhere behind the altar. He looked drawn and his skin was grey. A shiver passed across his shoulders.

‘You see, David found all that repulsive and wrong. He resisted and then he lost. He came up against an enemy and was beaten, not because of the superiority of mission or of mind, but because of the sheer, overwhelming, implacable weight of his foe. David tripped up. He was shamed . . . mortified. And he was forced – I mean forced – out of government. For that mistake he paid with his life. Responsibility for his death lies with the people here, in this church.'

The priest was having no more. ‘I think you've made your point. Now, please go back to your seat and we can continue with the service. You don't want to spoil this occasion for others here, who I am sure you will understand grieve as much as you do.'

Darsh moved a step closer to the home secretary, who was now looking extremely uncomfortable. ‘This man and all of them sitting here with him know what I am talking about. We don't have the details yet but they put an end to David's life as surely as if they had set off that bomb.'

Someone behind Glenny leaned forward and spoke in his ear.

Darsh continued, ‘It's the truth – and you all know it. David was killed. He was murdered.'

At this point two of the protection officers closed in and, with a nod from the priest, descended on Darsh. He dodged the first officer and managed to aim a blow at the home secretary's head, at which a gasp of horror came from the back pews. Kate saw Diana Kidd's hat rise up like a fishing float and Ingrid Eyam slump back in her pew with a look of social horror. Darsh was seized and thrown to the ground like a rag doll. His face was pressed into the two figures etched into medieval brass a few feet from where Lockhart sat. One officer held him down with a hand placed in the middle of his back while the other searched him for weapons.

A man got up and attempted to interpose himself. ‘Is this really necessary? I know him: He means no harm.' But they took no notice. Darsh was picked up with the same contemptuous ease as he had been floored. ‘I was going to say a prayer,' he shouted out. ‘It's a Christian prayer.' He began speaking in a high, panicky voice. ‘Though our
outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. While we look not at the things which are seen but the things which are not seen.'

As he was frogmarched towards the door he yelled out, ‘For the things . . . which are seen . . . are temporal; the things which are not seen . . . are ETERNAL.'

A moment later he was propelled from the church. A kind of reverence was restored and the service limped to its conclusion. Then it was time for David Eyam's remains to be borne from the church and taken to a crematorium where the job of incineration would be completed. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor were played on a clattering, wheezy organ and after a moment of introspection the congregation filed out, led by Ingrid Eyam on Glenny's arm.

Kate waited, looking at the faces that passed her, and became aware of Kilmartin, the man from the inquest, watching her from the other side of the aisle with candid interest. When their eyes met he gave her a little bow of his head then looked away. The crush of people in the aisle meant she could not leave immediately. Her eyes fell to some verses on the back page of the order of service, which she had not noticed before.

The Death of Me

Carry me over floods, sister!
Carry me to the other side!
And I'll wait for you here, sister,
'Til we cross the swelling tide.

I may be gone for now, sister,
For others say I've died.
But I'll wait for you here, sister,
'Til we take the waters wide.

I lost my heart to you, sister;
Then death became my bride.
Carry me over floods, sister;
Carry me from where I hide.

Carry me over floods, sister;
Carry me to the other side.
And I'll wait for you here,
sister
,
My truly beloved guide.

Anon: nineteenth-century
American folk song

She read it twice, smiled, put the booklet into her bag and left the church.

Instead of following the other mourners to the hotel for the wake Kate went to the Green Parrot cafe and bar at the top of the square, where she was eyed without enthusiasm by a teenage waitress with two-tone hair and a stud punched through her lower lip. The place was almost empty. She sat down at a table in the window, ordered a brandy and a black coffee, tipped the first into the second and wondered about taking an earlier train back to London.

She watched the square blankly as though it were a scene between moments of action in a film, then without warning was struck by the scale of her loss. It was the verse at the end of the order of service that did it, the memory of when he called her Sister for the first time. Sometimes he reduced it to Sis, a joke referring to her past in SIS, but mostly he called her Sister, as though to underline the dangers of violation. He must have delighted in finding those verses. They had been put there for her – a final message, perhaps of true love. A tear had made its way down her cheek, which she hurriedly dispatched with one of the paper napkins held in the beak of a green plastic parrot on the table.