The Gardens of the Dead (31 page)

Everyone
turned to Mr Bradshaw During Brother Cyril’s explanation, he’d been kneading a
temple, but nodding with increasing conviction. Nick couldn’t expel the notion
of a gentleman chairing a team of selectors for the England XI.

‘Elizabeth
thought he was hiding it from Nancy’ he said, both hands straying to the lapels
of his blazer. ‘And himself.’

Nick
just caught Father Anselm’s half whisper,
‘Himself?’

‘George,’
said Inspector Cartwright, ‘is this system all about information?’

‘Yes …
Something Elizabeth told me has come back, while I’ve been listening.’ He
pulled at one of the short sleeves, trying to lengthen it. His mouth sagged,
and purplish shadow crept up to his eyes. ‘She said Riley had gone back to
where he’d started from, that he was selling … introductions.’

The
long banners of light faded with a movement of cloud, and the stone vaulting
seemed to contract. No one spoke. Almost everyone, except Brother Cyril, was
leaning on the table, arms folded.

And
that,’ said Inspector Cartwright finally ‘is called living off immoral
earnings. However convoluted the system, and whatever his motives, it’s
illegal.’ She thanked Brother Cyril and Mr Bradshaw and then said, ‘I shall
arrest Riley tomorrow morning. He, in turn, will want representation from
Wyecliffe and Co. All things being equal, the interview will begin at two o’clock’
— she looked to George — ‘I’ll have to reveal how I obtained this paperwork, so
Riley will know that you’ve brought him down. There’s an observation room with
a mirror-window, so you can attend unseen, if you wish — in fact, any of you
can. Father Anselm coughed deliberately ‘Cyril, you said if he’d set this up
properly he wouldn’t pay any tax … What’s the turnover? How much are we
talking about?’

‘Peanuts.’

‘I’m
thinking of a likely sentence when it gets to court,’ said Father Anselm,
turning to the Inspector. Reluctantly he said, ‘A judge may think the offence
is not the most serious of its kind.’

‘I
appreciate that,’ she replied. ‘But in my book, it could hardly be worse. Do
you know why? Because he doesn’t give a toss about the money;
he only cares
about what he’s doing.’

Outside
the monastery, Nick made hasty goodbyes and set off down the track for the car
park. Father Anselm came running after him.

‘Nick,’
said the monk, out of breath, ‘you didn’t speak in the meeting … Are you all
right?’

‘There’s
nothing to say’ he replied. Nick didn’t want to linger; he didn’t want lunch in
the guesthouse; he didn’t want a chat with Mr Bradshaw His mind was on his
lonely troubled father, a shifting shape behind a tall window.

‘Will
you attend the interview?’ asked Father Anselm.

‘No.’
The whole sordid business had thrust him back into Mr Wyecliffe’s fetid burrow
He faced the kindly worried man.

‘When I
first came to Larkwood you said, “Don’t turn over old stones. Let them lie
where they were placed.” You were right. I should have left things be. And now,
I just want to go home.’

It was late afternoon when
Nick cut the ignition in the back lane at St John’s Wood, thinking of his
mother, not wanting to diminish her achievement. But he couldn’t help himself:
a key in a book, a letter to a monk, a parcel for the police and all the conspiring
with Mr Bradshaw: such effort expended to the moment of her dying, but for
what? A fixation with a two-bit crook peddling a two-bit crime. In a liberating
moment of self-realisation, Nick let the whole matter drop, as if it were
someone else’s suitcase. This was his mother’s life, not his. He was free. He
always had been.

As he
reached for the key Nick’s eye caught on a small orange triangle. A paper
dog-ear had been trapped in the closed ashtray He tugged out a flyer for an
antiques fair. The various participants were listed beside their phone numbers.
Towards the bottom, circled in biro, he saw a name that he knew:

Graham
Riley

Nick
pushed open the back gate, remembering Mrs Dixon, who shared one thing in
common with his mother: they both knew what it was like to lose someone.

10

Nancy was bewildered.
There was a spring in Riley’s step like she’d never seen before. Over breakfast
he’d rung Prosser and offered him the business, there and then, if the price
was right. That had led to a bit of swearing, but the two men had agreed to
meet.

‘It’s
going to happen, Nancy’ said her man, heading out. ‘We’re off to Brighton.’

‘For
the weekend?’

‘For
good.’

He’d
driven to Wanstead Park laughing at the wheel. That had never happened before. Nor
had the stunning experience of the night before. They’d been lying in bed, side
by side, discussing Uncle Bertie’s liver. Nancy’s arm had strayed into the
narrow corridor between them. Still talking of poison, Riley’s hand lightly
touched her fingers, and then her wrist; he’d held on, like in the films when
someone tumbles over the edge of a boat or a cliff; but there was no panic or
hollering, he just carried on talking in a husky voice about percentage proof
and damaged organs. He let go as he fell asleep, and he didn’t dream.
Intuitively Nancy was worried. She’d always seen her man as a barrel, wrapped
with iron bands, and wondered what might happen if they fell off. And, in a way
they had … and there had been no explosion. Somehow, it wasn’t quite right.

That
said, the notion of a house in Brighton made Nancy excited beyond measure. But
there were two hiccups, one small, the other large: Arnold hadn’t turned up,
and neither had Mr Johnson. The bigger problem took her to the plastic bag in
the shop that would soon belong to Prosser. For once she had a reason to leaf
through the pages — to find the address of Emily Nancy would give her all the
books that her husband had written. What else could she do with them?

Sitting
on a stool, listening to traffic fly over the bump, Nancy flicked through some
pages, until her eye caught on a name. She caught her breath and read from the
top:

… wouldn’t
believe me. She said Grandad was a war veteran. He’d survived the Atlantic
convoys. He’d been given a brass lamp by the shareholders when he’d retired.
You carry his Christian name. You’re David George Bradshaw What could I say?
That was all true, but it had nothing to do with what I’d found out. So I told
my father. He kept puffing on his pipe. After a while I noticed, that his neck
was red. He was like that when he was angry or frightened. For a good ten
minutes I didn’t know which it was. In the end he said, ‘Have you any idea what
you’re saying? What it means?’

George Bradshaw The man
from the trial. Nancy went dreadfully still. She’d been played upon …
something had happened, under her nose, and she didn’t know what it was. But
that’s not what made her breath pull short. No, it was Mr Johnson. He’d been
genuine.
Their times by the fire had not been make-believe — she knew that, in her
bones. She’d made friends with an old gentleman who’d lost his son, and half
his mind. The man in goggles who’d stumbled out of a cardboard box had been homeless,
for real: it was in his skin, that deep grey with black speckles like asphalt.
But he was still … that other man
Bradshaw.
Her head began to beat,
and she hastily checked the other books, getting nowhere, until she paused at
the inside cover of Book One: there it was, an address in Mitcham.

When the front door
opened, Nancy held up the plastic bag as if she were making a delivery for
Tesco. ‘Your husband left these in my shop.’

The
woman made no response. It was as though she had been anaesthetised.

‘Are
you Mrs Bradshaw?’

The
woman nodded, staring at the bag.

‘I know
George,’ said Nancy all friendly but wanting to shout and cry. ‘I sort of
looked after him.’

‘Come
in,’ said Mrs Emily Bradshaw ‘I’ll make some tea. ‘What a nice house, thought
Nancy There was a faint smell of fresh paint. All the wallpaper was new —
expensive stuff, too … a soft corn yellow with silver lines, straight as
cheese wire. None of it had been scuffed yet. Pictures had been hung close
together, not one of them askew: a cathedral rising out of some trees, a field
with cows by a river, someone praying by a windmill, ducks taking off. The
settee had matching armchairs. Nancy sat down, noticing that the covers were
stiff and the cushions were firm. Yes, it was very nice and new But something
was missing. There was an immense hole that the catalogue hadn’t been able to
fill or paint or cover.

‘Milk
and sugar?’

A cloud
and two lumps,’ said Nancy It was very quiet, like a dentist’s waiting room. ‘How
is he?’ asked Mrs Bradshaw automatically ‘Not so bad.’

‘Oh.’
She kept her head down, eyes in her mug ‘Well,’ said Nancy ‘he’s blind, and he
wears these massive goggles, and he can’t remember much because someone bashed
his head in.’

Nancy
hadn’t wanted to speak so bluntly She’d planned a few nice phrases, but here,
before his wife, she abandoned niceness. It seemed more kind.

Mrs
Bradshaw didn’t drink her tea, and she didn’t look up. She was stuck on the end
of her chair, her knees held tightly together. Nancy liked the checked slippers.
One of them had a hole in it, near the big toe.

‘His
memory works, mind you,’ said Nancy The plastic bag of notebooks was on her
lap. ‘He talks of his days in Yorkshire, of the Bonnington, of you, and your
son. All that is bright and clear. He can recall your white pinafore … even
the frills. It’s what’s happened recently that he can’t hold on to. He once
said that he wished it was the other way round. But he didn’t mean that for a
minute. He’s a clown, your husband.’

Nancy
had seen wine tasters once, on the television, and they looked just like Mrs
Bradshaw: a frown, concentration and a mouth barely moving. Any second now, she’d
spit.

‘What
happened?’ asked Nancy She shouldn’t have asked; it was prying. But this woman’s
husband had played on her, despite his battered brains, and she didn’t know why
he’d done it. And she was confused. She’d come to Mitcham thinking she might go
mad, because this was George Bradshaw’s house, the man who’d played on Riley
But she’d found an ordinary home, with a big hole in it, and an ordinary woman,
who was empty.

Mrs
Bradshaw said, ‘Our son was killed by a bad man.’ She held on to the mug like
it was a rope on a winch, wanting to get away from Nancy and her simple
question. ‘But I blamed George.’

An
obvious fact hit Nancy like a swipe from a rolling pin. The son Mr Johnson had
spoken about was indeed lost: he’d died off Lawton’s Wharf, and Inspector
Cartwright had made insinuations, and Babycham’s husband had been fined by the
Health and Safety, and Riley’s van had broken down. Nancy too, wanted to
escape. She stood up, putting her mug on the shiny table, but something in her
soul held on to the memory of Mr Johnson, steaming by the fire, his hands
raised in surrender. ‘Here’s your husband’s notebooks,’ she said generously ‘He’s
written everything down, from his birth onwards. I hope you don’t mind me
saying, but if you dip in, as I’ve done, you’ll see him as he was: the brave
boy who left Harrogate and made it to Mitcham.’

Nancy
walked quickly along Aspen Bank, hounded by noise. It came from the hollering
in her mind, and a low voice that shoved hers to one side. ‘Some men are like a
coin,’ yawned Mr Wyecliffe confidentially at the Old Bailey ‘He shows you his
head. But give him a spin and, if you’re lucky you’ll find his tail.’ Nancy had
gone cold, because he could have meant Bradshaw, or her man. She’d left the
building half an hour later.

At the
end of Aspen Bank she broke into a run, because an even quieter sound was
growing louder: a tap-tapping at the window.

Having
left the court, she’d hidden at home and wouldn’t answer the bell. Then the
tapping had started, moving round the house. On and on it went, like someone
needing help, until she’d opened the door to a smartly dressed man from the
Salvation Army.

‘I’ve
got no money’ she’d said through a crack.

‘Have
you a plate?’ He’d held up a cake from Greggs. ‘I’m Major Reynolds.’

He knew
Riley from way back. They talked of Lawton’s and the loss of jobs left, right
and centre. He’d been watching her, giving her the chance to cry. But she’d
kept a good grip, taking note of things that didn’t matter: that his uniform
was smart but old; that his polished shoes had split, that the laces were new At
the door he shook her hand and wouldn’t let go. ‘Nancy maybe your constancy
will save him. But what about you?’ He waited, his black eyebrows knitted with
worry. ‘If you ever want my help, call this number.’ She’d taken the slip of
paper and thrown his cheek in the bin.

‘Constancy’.
She’d looked it up in the dictionary, knowing that with every second the trial
was unfolding. While all those dreadful things were being said out loud, she’d
folded back the corner and marked the definition in red biro.