The Gardens of the Dead (23 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Her
heart?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm
sat on a wicker stool. Unsuccessfully he tried to picture the exchange of
confidences. Glancing around, he noticed there were no pictures or clocks, no
postcards propped on the mantelpiece. Streaks of Polyfilla split the ceiling like
forked lightning dried out. A settee from a missing three-piece stood adjacent
to the coffee table. Elizabeth must have sat there, relating what the
consultant had said, before going home to gin-and-it with Charles and Nicholas.

While
he was half-French, the part of Anselm that was English emerged forcefully in
moments of strong emotion. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’ he said warmly.

Mrs
Dixon shook her head. Her mouth worked and she rearranged a salt cellar, a
napkin ring and a side plate. ‘She was my friend, you know’

Her
face crimped with emotion, as if there was something she wanted to say. Finally
she blurted out, ‘I’d been here for so long on my own and then she came along
out of nowhere.’

‘When
did you first meet?’ he asked ingenuously.

‘Just over
a year ago,’ she replied, finding a hankie in a sleeve. ‘I’d been on to the
Council about being lonely you know. But it feels like I’d known her all my
life.’ She became fervent. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’
He looked across at Mrs Dixon, remote behind her table, eyes tightly closed
with a tissue at her mouth. Her hand dropped and a lip twitched. She coughed. ‘Did
Elizabeth tell you about me?’

‘No,’
admitted Anselm. ‘She simply asked me to come here if she died.’

‘Wasn’t
there any other message?’

One of
her legs began to bounce on its toes. Anselm watched it, and he frowned.

‘Didn’t
she … say anything about my lad?’ Her eyes fixed on him.

‘Who?’
asked Anselm gently.

‘My
son.’ Mrs Dixon began to shuffle forward, her hands fidgeting. ‘He went missing
years ago, as a boy and Elizabeth said she might be able to find him, what with
all her contacts and all that … I’ve never known what became of him … He
was a good boy you know …’ The desperation had changed her face. She was
someone entirely different. Her voice became metallic. ‘Did she leave a message
for me?’

Anselm
moved to the sofa, within reach of this frightened, vulnerable mother. ‘In a
way yes.’ He spoke quietly ‘Elizabeth asked me to listen to you.’

‘What?’

‘Elizabeth
thought you might like to talk to me,’ he replied gently.

‘But I
don’t have anything else to say’ said Mrs Dixon, shrinking back in her chair.
Confusion and caution changed her features once more. ‘Has she told you
anything?’

Anselm
didn’t reply He searched her face, willing her to release what she was holding
back.

‘Did
she tell you?’ Mrs Dixon’s voice quaked and rose.

The
lawyer in Anselm would have done anything to discover what Elizabeth might have
told him, but something like mercy made him say ‘I know nothing. But you can
tell me anything in complete confidence.’

Mrs
Dixon looked as if she had been manacled. With sudden dignity, she said, ‘Would
you go now, please, I’m all upset. I never thought she’d not come back and I’m
too old for this … Look, just go, go …’

Anselm
explained that she had nothing to fear; that he would leave immediately and
never come back; that he’d write his telephone number down, in case she changed
her mind.

‘After
I’ve gone, please remember, I was sent by a friend — yours and mine.’

In the
hallway Anselm paused before a creased picture in a frame painted gold. It was
one of those nineteenth-century images found in sacristies and second-hand
shops: a man with beautifully sculpted muscles bearing the cross of Christ, his
head raised high, to something dark and wonderful in the watching clouds.

‘Simon
of Cyrene,’ said Mrs Dixon. Her composure was still fragile. ‘It was my mother’s.’
As Anselm stepped away she said, ‘Ask the Council to send someone else, will
you?’

14

Riley sped along
Commercial Road, up Houndsditch and into the City. He parked in a loading bay
on Cheapside, near Wyecliffe and Co.

‘How
very nice to see you,’ said the solicitor, stretching a moist hand over columns
of paper. His face was dark and grey and hairy; his eyes glittered. It had been
years since Riley had entered this room, but Mr Wyecliffe seemed to be
expecting him. ‘Do take a seat. How can I help you?’ He was a silhouette
against a jammed sash window Like the Four Lodges, nothing had changed. Not
even the air. It was like a warm tomb, but Riley was shivering.

‘Someone’s
after me,’ he blurted out.

‘I
often have the very same sensation.’ He picked up a glass ball with a log cabin
and some reindeer inside. He shook it and snow began to fall.

‘I’m
serious,’ snapped Riley.

‘So am
I,’ Wyecliffe intoned, leaning forward, his chin resting on stubby fingers. ‘Tell
me what brought you back to this worrisome place.’

That
was Wyecliffe. He referred to things but never said them. Riley had last come
here when Cartwright was trying to pin the death of John Bradshaw on him. He’d
been sick with fear.

A guy
called Prosser keeps hanging round Nancy asking questions.’

‘First
name?’

‘Guy.’

Mr Wyecliffe
scraped his moustache along one finger. ‘So what?’

‘So
what?’
breathed Riley ‘He wants to know where I get
my stuff from, as if the business wasn’t clean.’

‘Is it?’

‘Completely.’

‘Well
then,’ said Mr Wyecliffe reassuringly ‘there’s nothing to worry about.’ He
paused. ‘Mr Riley we’ve known each other a very long time. Just hand over the
other pieces, I’ll look after the larger picture.’

‘Someone’s
trying to scare me,’ he whimpered.

‘In
what way?’

‘I
received a letter.’

‘Saying
what?’

‘Nothing.’
Riley couldn’t say any more, but he needed help. ‘It was just a photograph.’

‘Of
whom?’

‘It
doesn’t matter,’ said Riley his voice rising. ‘I thought it might have been
Prosser, that’s all.’

‘Most
unlikely’ observed Mr Wyecliffe confidently ‘Someone clever enough to let a
photograph speak for itself doesn’t blow their cover by asking stupid
questions.’

Pushed
by fear, Riley almost let slip what he’d held back for most of his life. ‘I
just want to know if you can stop someone digging around.’

‘That
rather depends,’ said Mr Wyecliffe. One of his hands covered the glass ball. ‘Who
else might be handling the shovel, so to speak?’

‘I don’t
know,’ barked Riley He’d asked himself day and night. If it wasn’t Prosser,
there was no one. John Bradshaw had come with a question and a promise, but he
never got an answer. Riley said, ‘There’s no one alive that I can think of.’

‘Anyone
dead?’ The lawyer shook the globe.

Riley
held his breath, feeling heat descend like a crown.

‘Don’t
play around with me, Wyecliffe.’

‘I’ve
never been more serious.’

Riley’s
temples began to throb. ‘The dead?’

‘Yes.’

Riley
couldn’t think straight. Only the living could reach him. He jerked his head,
as though to shake off some flies.

‘Very
well,’ said Mr Wyecliffe, with a long sigh of disappointment. ‘If you don’t
have any more names — likely or otherwise — I cannot act. You’ll have to wait
and see what they do with what they know.’

‘They?’

A
figure of speech,’ replied the lawyer. Hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat
pockets, he added, ‘That said, perhaps your correspondent has primed several
people to act on his or her behalf.’ He examined Riley with something between
pity and wonder. ‘You know, everything always comes down to facts.’

‘Facts?’
The change in subject threw Riley off balance.

‘Yes. Those
known and those not known.’ Mr Wyecliffe waved his palms over the desk as if he
were incanting a spell. ‘We lawyers assemble the known ones for the jury. You’d
be surprised how many different pictures a clever hand can make out of the same
pieces’ — he chuckled at the thought — ‘and if it were a game, I’d say that was
value for money But after forty years in the courts, let me tell you something.’
He was no longer merry and the lights seemed to go dim. ‘No one can change the
shape of a fact that makes sense on its own. It’s like a photograph.’

Riley
tugged at his top button. Wyecliffe hadn’t changed subject at all.

‘Tell
me the name of the man in the picture,’ said the lawyer soothingly.

‘I
never said it was a man.’

‘Quite
right.’ He nodded a compliment.

‘If I
tell you, can you help?’

The
scratching began again, high on his hairy cheek. He sighed and whispered, ‘That
rather depends.’

Riley
kicked back his chair and yanked at the door. Everything always ‘depended’.
Wyecliffe had been like that last time, hinting and sighing and never looking
surprised.

On
Cheapside, Riley found his van clamped. In a frenzy he kicked the huge yellow
bracket and tore the notice off the windscreen. He nearly cried. Someone was
after him, and he couldn’t get away. Then, in a moment of sickening calm, the
obvious hit Riley like a backhander: whoever it was already knew what John
Bradshaw had wanted to know.

15

George wasn’t sure, but he
probably followed the exact route back to the river that he’d taken when he’d
first left Mitcham. As he walked, Nino’s story about right and wrong came to
mind. Elizabeth had loved the ending, but George had never been able to catch
the beginning. And now, after she’d gone, it had popped to the surface.

‘I’ve
had a very odd dream,’ Nino said, while they sat on a bench near Marble Arch. ‘I
was standing on a road between heaven and hell writing parking tickets. A
reporter came along. “What are this lot waiting for?” I asked. “Nowt,” he
replied. “They can’t go to heaven because they didn’t do anything good, and
they can’t go to hell because they didn’t do anything bad. Hardly a scoop, but
it’s still a good story.” He showed me the headline on his pad:
“They lived
without praise or blame.”’

Nino
didn’t say anything else.

‘What’s
that supposed to mean?’ asked George.

Nino
became resolute, as if he had been quizzed about the value of double yellow
lines. ‘Don’t be lukewarm, old friend. That’s the only route to mercy or
reward.’

George
had told Elizabeth, and she’d written it down, asking him to repeat every word.

But to
what end? Where was she now? And where was he?

George
crossed Blackfriars Bridge with a glance towards Trespass Place. On the north
bank of the Thames he turned east, following the road to Smithfield and Tower
Hill — the route to the Isle of Dogs, and a wasteland of padlocks and chicken
wire. The river flowed oily and magnificent on his right; traffic swept along
to his left. George’s mind tracked back to the night he’d pulled open a
wrought-iron gate at three in the morning. He’d given no thought to praise or
blame.

Three made-up girls stood
shivering on the other side.

‘Come
on in,’ he said. ‘I’ve a kettle and a toaster.’

He
followed them down the alley to the door he’d left ajar, looking at their bare
legs, the blue veins and the goose pimples. This was late November, the month
of biting rain and short days, the month when shop fronts twinkled with the
approach of Christmas. George made cocoa. He didn’t tell them that all the beds
were taken, that they’d have to leave.

Let
them have the length of a hot drink, he thought, it’s not much. George left
them so he could make the usual telephone calls. Every project was full,
although the Open Door in Fulham could see them at half eight: that was five
hours away; five hours to lose heart. George had learned long ago that with
some kids you only got one chance to offer them a hand, and even then they didn’t
take it. But some did — that’s what brought him to the gate night after night:
some did. While waiting for the toast to pop up, George overheard the first
name: Riley and then he caught the second: the Pieman. When he appeared around
the corner they stopped talking. He said, ‘After this lot, you’ll have to move
on.’ There was no protest.

He
followed them back towards the gate. Their shoes clattered on the flags like
dropped marbles and George felt — as he’d often done — like an accomplice to
murder. One of them — the youngest — had a tattoo of a dragon above one ear.
Her head was shaved. The three girls must have been a good fifty yards up the
pavement when George came running after them.