The Gardens of the Dead (32 page)

When Nancy got back to
Poplar there was a policeman at the gate. The hems on his trouser legs were far
too high, but he was very polite. A radio kept talking on his shoulder.

‘I was
hoping to go to Brighton,’ said Nancy distantly when he’d finished.

‘I’m
sorry, madam.’ He gave her a note with an address on it. ‘Inspector Cartwright
would like to speak to you as soon as possible.’

After
he’d gone, Nancy crumpled the paper, thinking of constancy and that kind man
tapping on the window long ago.

11

Anselm sat beside George
facing a tinted window Ahead, through the weak bluish haze, were a table, four
chairs and a tape machine. A door banged shut. Inspector Cartwright walked to
her place, followed by another police officer and Mr Wyecliffe — more aged to Anselm’s
eyes, but still in his brown suit. Suddenly Riley appeared at the window, his
nose against the glass. He checked his teeth as if in a mirror and he smiled
rage and impatience and … Anselm thought it might be exhilaration.

Inspector
Cartwright began the litany of warnings prescribed by the Codes of Practice,
while Riley searched the window with the flat of his hands, his face wet and
sallow Unblinking, he backed towards the table.

‘Now
the preliminaries have been completed,’ said Mr Wyecliffe, twitching, ‘there’s
the technical issue of intentional trespass and the theft of my client’s
property, grave matters which –’

‘Belt
up, will you,’ said Riley He slouched in a chair and smiled. ‘Hurry up, Cartwright,
I want to go to Brighton.’

Step by
step, the inspector presented the system disclosed by the financial records.
She invited Riley to confirm her explanation, but he turned aside, gazing back
towards Anselm and George. His fingers tapped erratically on the table, and he
said, ‘Come on, get on with it.’

Judiciously
Inspector Cartwright said, ‘I suggest that you are receiving remuneration
arising from prostitution.’

Riley
crouched, angry and bored. ‘Correct.’

Mr
Wyecliffe, who’d been absorbed in the blank pages of a yellow notepad, put down
a chewed biro, and said soothingly ‘Can we just pause there for one moment …’

‘Shut
up, Wyecliffe,’ whispered Riley.

Inspector
Cartwright said, ‘You have a list of telephone numbers?’

‘Correct.’

‘You
provide contact details in return for a payment?’

‘Yep.’

‘How
long have you been doing this?’

‘Yonks.’
A frown displaced the resentment and laughter. An agony of confusion seemed to
hold him. He shouted towards the ceiling light, ‘I should be on the Brighton
road by now’

‘You’ve
had a long enough holiday.’

‘Have
I?’ The swing from euphoria to despair was complete, and menacing.

‘Graham
Riley you are charged with living wholly or in part on the earnings of
prostitution contrary to section –’

‘It’s
all legal.’

Inspector
Cartwright turned on Wyecliffe, ‘Can you enlighten me?’

‘Certainly
not. How dare you.’

Riley
stood up, looking down upon his interviewer, ‘I get the numbers from magazines
and phone booths. They’re already in the public domain. I sell them to people
who think I have a special connection.’

‘That
is still an offence.’

‘Is it?’
Riley seemed to rise higher. He appeared mighty over a domain of dirty facts.
This was his patch. He didn’t take lessons. ‘I sell numbers that anyone could
find if they knew where to look.’ He swaggered on the spot, bony hands on his
hips. ‘Whoever’s on the end of the line doesn’t know me. I don’t know them.
They don’t know I’ve been paid. They don’t know
nothing.’
He spat out
the word as if it were a failing, something that should be punished. ‘They just
do what they do, and I get paid … for
nothing.’
Glaring outrage and
disgust, Riley swept Mr Wyecliffe’s papers off the table.

‘Sit
down,’ ordered Inspector Cartwright.

‘No. I’m
off to Brighton. You can check the law’

‘I
will.’

‘Make
sure it’s a silk—’

He bit
his lip, not finishing the jibe, and Anselm’s mind reeled back to that first
conference when Elizabeth’s poise had failed. Instantly — and horrified — he
understood: Riley’s system had grown from the seed of Elizabeth’s words: she’d
said that if he’d received payments linked to the girls’ activity, but without
them knowing, then there would be a technical defence …

Anselm
heard a soft noise behind him. The door opened and a woman entered wearing a
peculiar yellow hat with black spots. Her red, trembling hands were crumpling
and reopening a small piece of paper. Timidly she checked the room, until her
attention settled on George. Then, her mouth open, she looked into the blue
haze.

‘If I
can help in any other way’ said Riley ‘don’t hesitate to contact me.

He made
to leave, but halted before the window. Confused and deliberating, his eyes
shot towards the door, as if the cry of gulls had carried from the seaside,
calling him to another life of deckchairs and ice cream. Instead Riley turned
back to examine his reflection.

It was
an awful scene, because Anselm knew that Riley had sensed their presence — at
least George’s — and he was staring through the image of himself at what he
thought was on the other side: but, in fact, he was looking directly at this
haunting woman in her yellow spotted hat.

‘When
you came, Inspector,’ said Riley faintly eyes on the glass, ‘I thought it was
about John Bradshaw’ His face was a like a mask, thick and oxidised.

‘I’m
bringing this interview to a close,’ said Inspector Cartwright. She rattled off
the date and time and the names of those present and hit the tape machine,
turning it off. She walked up to Riley’s shoulder, seething, ‘You have blood on
your hands.’

They
were both staring towards the poor woman who was crumpling a scrap of paper.

Very
clearly Riley replied, ‘Yes, I know.’

Inspector
Cartwright blinked a few times, not quite believing what she’d heard, and
George, who did, stepped towards the window, pressing both hands to the glass.
The woman moved beside him and together they watched what was about to unfold.

Inspector
Cartwright switched on the tape machine, reamed off the necessary details, and
said, ‘I would like to confirm the exchange that has just taken place. You have
blood on your hands?’

Riley
circled the room, his arms swinging like chains. ‘Yes, but not much.’

‘Does
the quantity matter?’

‘No. It
was still innocent.’

Mr Wyecliffe
patted his hands on the table, as though to calm a family spat. ‘Stop the tape
please. I’d like to discuss matters with my client.’

‘Forget
it,’ said Riley falling into a chair. ‘It’s too late now’ Anselm had seen this
sort of thing before: it was part of the psychology of wanting to be caught.
Conscience was elemental: a small quantity could produce an explosion of truth
that could obliterate a lifetime of deceptions. The change in Riley a moment
ago strutting and now cowed, was shocking.

Inspector
Cartwright said, ‘How did you kill him?’

‘I knew
he couldn’t swim.’

‘Go on.’

Riley
leaned on his knees, his head angled down, showing the spine bones of his neck.
‘In the middle of the night I put him in a plastic bag with an apple.’

‘This
is no time for jokes.’

Riley
shook his head. ‘Then I threw him into Limehouse Cut.’

‘Who?’

‘Arnold.’

‘Arnold?’

‘Nancy’s
hamster.’

Cartwright
turned off the tape, without the usual formalities. ‘You are a bastard,’ she
said.

Riley
looked up and said, ‘Inspector, that’s the first thing you’ve got right today.’

The
hands of the woman crumpling paper became still and George said, ‘I’m sorry,
Nancy.’

She
nodded and quietly left the room.

The door behind Anselm
swung open and Inspector Cartwright entered, saying, ‘I’m sure he’s wrong,
George, but I need to check this out, all right?’

‘Of
course.’ He coughed like a patient who didn’t believe in doctors.

‘Is
there anywhere you could wait?’ she said to Anselm. She was weary and angry and
upset. ‘It could take the rest of the day.’

After a
phone call had been made to Debbie Lynwood, it was agreed that they would meet
that evening at the Vault Day Centre. Anselm took George’s arm. He felt as if
he were guiding a man who was so much older than before, a man who could no
longer see.

12

Riley pushed open the
swing door, leaving Wyecliffe flapping behind. At the end of a corridor he
kicked another and strode past the custody desk, barging aside people and
things to reach the pavement. There, in the street, he saw Nancy.

‘What
are you doing here?’ His jaw began to work.

‘An
officer came to tell me you’d been lifted.’

‘Have
you been inside?’

‘I’ve
just arrived. What’s happened?’

He
groaned with relief. ‘They’ve been chasing me again. For nothing.’

‘What
do you mean?’

‘They’ve
never given up, not since that trial. Come on.’ He pulled Nancy’s arm and they
walked down the street. He turned a corner, any corner. He didn’t know where he
was going. He swung on her, ‘Cartwright’s been looking at my business, but I’ve
done nothing wrong.

‘What
did she say you were doing?’

‘The
same as last time.’ Riley didn’t use the words that would hurt her.

‘Oh
God.’ Nancy sat down on a low wall. The railings had been cut down during the
war, leaving black stubs in the stone.

‘But it’s
nothing, Nancy Nothing.’ Riley plucked at his jacket and shirt. Sweat itched
his stomach. Inside, behind that wet lining, he was ruptured with anxiety and
rage. The lot of them had put Nancy through the mill for nothing. That was
meant to be all gone. He’d put himself out of reach. He said, ‘Look, we’re off
to Brighton, right?’

Nancy
pulled off her hat, disarranging her hair. She looked faint. ‘It’s too late,
far too late.’

Riley
watched her, as he’d once gazed into the waters of the Four Lodges. If you kept
still, you could see the perch dart around in the green-black water. They were
like torn scraps of aluminium foil. Something seemed to move in Nancy’s face. ‘I
really wanted to go to Brighton’ — she looked down at the flagstones, the
weeds in the cracks, the fag ends — ‘I really fancied the sound of the sea. A
walk on the beach. And maybe a stick of rock. It wasn’t too much to ask, was
it?’

 ‘No,’
urged Riley taking her hands, ‘and it still isn’t. We can still make it.’

‘Can
we?’

‘We’re
selling up, we’re moving out. We’ll leave this place behind.’

Nancy
normally didn’t stare. She’d always been demure, one step back, a bit scared.
At Lawton’s her shyness had kept her head to the page, even when he’d tapped on
the counter. Now she faced him with wide, tired eyes. They were like polythene
bags from the tackle shop, full of clear water. Something orange flickered,
wanting to get out.

‘Nancy
head off home, I’m going to see Prosser.’

Riley moaned as he ran. He
knew that Elizabeth had worked out what he was doing when she turned up at Mile
End Park. She held up a set of spoons and went through the same routine as
Cartwright.

‘But
you taught me how to do it.’ He was mocking her.

She
frowned — a bit like Nancy a few moments ago — while he reminded her of that
conference in her chambers. ‘You can keep the spoons,’ he said, and she sagged
as if he’d squeezed her heart.

He ran
even faster. All that manoeuvring, that hunger to win back something, belonged
by a stream of deceit — the one he’d tasted with Nancy He just didn’t want it
any more. It lay behind him — with every stride. ‘I’m going to Brighton,’ he
shouted, knocking into some codgers by a newsstand. His arms flung out: they
were in his way. The whole world was in his way He crashed against a bin, and
spun, thinking Nancy had dropped a notch: she wasn’t in the usual place, and it
terrified him.

13

There were no red mullet
left, so the fishmonger at Smithfield Market suggested tench, a freshwater fish
which, when duly cooked at St John’s Wood, turned out to be utterly disgusting.
But they’d already drunk a bottle and a half of Mâcon Lugny so it didn’t
matter. Charles was laughing like a schoolboy because he’d spilled half a glass
on his tie when Nick said abruptly ‘Did Mum ever mention the Pieman?’