The Gardens of the Dead (15 page)

13

One of the great things
about Marco’s was the style of electric wall heater. They were high up and
old-fashioned — orange bars against curved shining metal. They hummed while
they worked, like Marco himself.

George
sipped hot chocolate, wondering what to do about his missing books. It would be
impossible to roll up, take his bag and disappear again. No, he couldn’t see
Nancy not until it was all over — when Riley had been arrested. Then George
could explain why he’d vanished, and why he’d deceived her. But that left open
the possibility that she might leaf through volume twenty, where her husband
made his first appearance. It was a risk he’d have to take. She wouldn’t look,
though.., she wasn’t like that. She’d been well brought up.

The
windows were grey and streaming with condensation. Through the glass door
George saw a dark figure swaying left and right in the cold. George stirred
milky froth and thought of Graham Riley.

It had
been one of the stranger things about the whole trial. Jennifer Cartwright —
she’d been a detective sergeant back then — had quizzed him very carefully
about Quilling Road. He’d drawn a plan of the house. He’d described the
wallpaper. He’d labelled each room with numbers and names. He’d told her of
Riley’s strange manner.., his never going up the stairs, his insistence on
meeting everyone near the bottom step. And DS Cartwright had written it all
down, smoking incessantly Months later he’d had a meeting with a CPS solicitor
called Miss Lowell. This time there’d been typed-up depositions and a
colour-coded floor plan. George had told his story all over again. The details
were cross-referred to other witness statements, confirming their coherence
with the broader picture. Finally there’d been a conference with a barrister
called Pagett, a tall fellow in a morning suit — the kind of thing you got married
in. George could almost recite his statement by now Again, he went over what he’d
seen and heard, and what he knew of Riley’s idiosyncratic behaviour. But the
strange thing was this: neither DS Cartwright nor Miss Lowell nor Mr Pagett
thought to ask George if he had met Graham Riley before. None of them wondered
why George had been so prepared to help these three girls in the first place.
They weren’t like the barrister Riley had on his side — the one who’d asked, ‘What
did David do that George wanted to forget?’ If he’d been at the conference with
DS Cartwright and Miss Lowell, he’d have rumbled George, of that there was
little doubt.

The
figure at the door swayed side to side. It had the bulk of a man. George
wondered why he didn’t step inside. The heaters were just out of this world.

14

Anselm’s predicament
illustrated the perils of the monastic path. Cyril had given him just enough to
cover the cost of public transport. So Anselm, freezing and wet, had enough
money to buy what he wanted, but only at the expense of what he needed. A cup
of restoring coffee was there, behind his back, but only if he walked to his
lodgings in the rain.

Anselm
brooded over the choice but finally surrendered his thoughts to a more serious
problem. Elizabeth had failed to anticipate something far more basic than
Anselm’s delay in using the key. She hadn’t given any weight to the reasonable
expectation that a man with half a memory might wander off and leave his dinner
behind, never mind his role in her scheme. How could he even begin to know
where to look?

A flame
of protest made Anselm restive. He shifted his weight from one foot to the
other, as if he were ready to leave his corner and fight. He recalled Mrs
Bradshaw when she dropped the paintbrush, mouth open and appalled at the
thought that her husband might come home. Her hope had become too terrible to
contemplate.

Anselm
blinked at the sodden sky. It was getting worse. He ran to the Underground,
dodging puddles and rivulets. In a livid fancy, he grabbed Cyril’s remaining
arm and chained it to a drainpipe.

15

Beneath Marco’s humming
heater, George wrote of waiting, a storm and a restless man at the door. (Once
George had committed the past to paper, Nino had told him to gather up the
present moment. ‘It keeps you in the here and now’) When the rain became fitful
he made his way back to Trespass Place.

The
recollection of Nino’s words made his stomach turn. There was something foolish
in what George was doing: sitting beneath a fire escape expecting a monk to
appear around the corner. It was like pretending that Elizabeth hadn’t died, or
that her death would have no consequences. In the here and now, Elizabeth was
dead. His recollection of all they had done together was a kind of grieving,
but also a running away because it lay back there in the past, when she’d been
alive. He shivered with cold and anxiety as if a harsh truth were creeping
across Trespass Place: accepting Elizabeth’s death meant accepting that Riley
would get away after all. They were the two sides of the one coin. Spinning it
in the air day after day was just an illusion.

Wrapping
his arms around his legs, he remembered that Elizabeth’s optimism had been
without limit. And it worked backwards as well as forwards: she’d said the past
is up for grabs.

16

When evening came, Nick
went to the Green Room and opened
The Following of Christ.
On account of
the hole it was impossible to read the first page, or indeed, most of the
following chapters. Why cut out the heart of a book, unless you knew it by
heart? While he tried to complete a broken sentence by guessing the missing
words, the telephone rang. Father Anselm was in London, and wanted to meet him
that evening. He said, ‘I now have at least one of the answers you were looking
for.’

An
arrangement made, Nick closed the book with the thought that his mother was a
comparable enigma.

Nick parked the yellow
Beetle facing the old stones of Gray’s Inn Chapel. Beneath a nearby street lamp
stood Father Anselm, his close-cropped head angled to one side as though he
were puzzled by the ingenuity of modern contraptions. Against the arched
windows, he would have cut a medieval figure, but for the shapeless duffel
coat. They crossed Holborn into Chancery Lane, heading towards the South Bank.
The afternoon’s storm had cleared the air, and the streets were shining and
wet. At the frontage of Ede and Ravenscroft, the court tailors, Father Anselm
peered at the wigs, the collars and the sharp suits. Afterwards he was quiet
for a while. In the middle of Hungerford Bridge Nick broke step and leaned on
the rail, arms folded. The swollen river beneath glittered at its banks, but
the central flow was black and mysterious, seeming deeper and magnetic on that
account. A small boat jigged on the surface. Nick watched its eerie survival,
and a monk’s voice sounded at his side.

‘Forensic
scientists say that every contact leaves a trace. ‘Father Anselm was also
looking down into the silent waters. ‘It’s called Locard’s Principle. The idea
is that if you touch an object, you leave behind something that wasn’t there in
the first place — a little of yourself. By the same token, you take away
something that wasn’t on you when you came — part of the object. It’s an
alarming fact. We can’t do anything without this interchange occurring.

Out of
the darkness, Nick perceived a rope between the small craft and a buoy His
mother’s attachment had been to Saint Martin’s Haven. The wind and rain had
cleansed her mind for what she had to do. He recognised that now A busker’s
flute began to whistle in the distance.

‘Locard
wasn’t thinking of lawyers,’ continued Father Anselm thoughtfully ‘Had he done
so, had he applied the Principle to conduct, rather than contact, they’d be the
exception to the rule, because nothing sticks to their robes. They can prosecute
the innocent and defend the guilty and they remain — as they should —
altogether blameless. In a way, their sincerity is determined not through
principle, but by accident. It can’t be otherwise. They stand urging you to
believe one thing, whereas, if the other side had got there first, they’d be
persuading you to think the opposite — with equal fervour, regardless of any
price differential. It has nothing to do with what they might actually believe
or, despite popular opinion to the contrary, what they’re subsequently paid.
Their allegiance is to the evidence and the instructions of their client. For
this many would risk life and limb. As for themselves, when they go home..,
they’re an island people, isolated by not knowing and by not being able to care.
The Riley trial changed all that for your mother. The contact left a trace.’

The
monk wormed a hand into a pocket beneath the duffel coat. He passed Nick a
letter, and said, ‘Having helped Riley to escape, she set out to bring him back
to court.., to take away his good name. In the event of her death, she’s asked
me to fulfil what she began.’

Nick
read the instructions, his mind swimming. Why had she not shared this crisis
with him? Why had it remained so very private? He stared at the neat sentences
as Father Anselm explained his understanding of events: Elizabeth’s faith in
her professional identity had collapsed; this was the defence case that had
brought down the ardent prosecutor; she’d kept the brief at the time because of
what it represented; but then she’d learned of John Bradshaw’s death, a killing
with a connection to Riley that could never be demonstrated. He paused, and he
seemed to reach out to Nick without moving. ‘I think she wanted you to
understand that she was culpable but without blame.’

They
both gazed into the dark river, towards a lonely boat.

‘But I
would never have accused her,’ said Nick.

‘Me
neither.’ Father Anselm seemed melancholy ‘I sometimes wonder if conscience
calls us back to a world very different from this one, making us strangers.’

Nick
found his eyes filled with tears. She was so remote, now: not only in death but
also in life. And, despite his confusion and distress, Nick felt disappointed.
He’d anticipated a spectacular explanation for his mother’s behaviour — withholding
evidence or misleading the court; something that would account for her secrecy
her outlandish actions and the troubled letters that had brought him home. But
it had all turned on acute sensibilities.

Nick
pulled away, and together they walked back to Gray’s Inn.

The orderly streets of St
John’s Wood were empty. Nick parked the Beetle and sat in the darkness
rehearsing Father Anselm’s last words. ‘Get on with your life,’ he’d said, ‘I’m
looking after your mother’s.’ They’d laughed, even though his task seemed
pretty hopeless with Mr Bradshaw astray Idly, Nick slapped the dashboard: he’d
forgotten to ask about the relief of Mafeking.

Something
rattled… his mother’s mobile phone.

Either
a paramedic or the police must have put it back on its stand.

Slowly
Nick detached it. He looked at the face. There was a thumbprint on the glass.
It could be the last mark his mother had made; all that was left of her. He
pressed the redial button and listened.

A
knocking sound cut the ringing tone… in the background a buzzer rang.
Instantly there was applause and cheering.

‘Hello?…
yes?’ It was a woman’s voice. ‘Who is it?’

Nick
flushed with heat. But he couldn’t reply.

‘Are
you there?’

The
woman waited, and Nick listened, unable to cut the line. She was old, her tone
wavering. Nick could hear her breathing. He could imagine a hand shaking.

‘Wait…
is that you … is that my lad?’

Nick
looked at the phone’s screen. The thumbprint was like an etching. Behind it was
the dialled number. He fumbled for a pen and jotted it down upon his palm.

 ‘Say
something…’ The voice was far off and desperate. Nick pressed the off button.
His mouth was parched.

17

Anselm caught the last
train to Cambridge, where Father Andrew met him on the station concourse. Since
the Prior had never quite come to appreciate the relationship of co-operation
that prevails between the clutch and the synchromesh gearbox, Anselm offered to
drive back to Larkwood. Thus the Prior was free to study, by the light of a
pocket torch, Elizabeth’s brief account of moral upheaval and her attempt to
make amends. When he slowly folded up the letter, Anselm explained what had
come to pass with Mrs Bradshaw, how she’d used a terrible phrase: nothing comes
of nothing He concluded by saying, ‘And when I got to Trespass Place, her
husband had gone. Elizabeth’s scheme is already in ruins, within two weeks of
her death.’

The car
trundled out of the city and it was only after several miles that Anselm, from
the smell, realised he’d left the handbrake on. Discreetly he released it, and
dropped his window by an inch. Apparently’ he said, ‘Elizabeth had a heart
condition that meant she could die at any moment. It must clear the mind
wonderfully to know that each breath could be your last…’