The Gardens of the Dead

1

Anselm faced Mr Hillsden. Between them, in a hospital bed, lay George Bradshaw, a frown holding one side of his face like a paralysis. Clippers had neatly removed his hair and beard, leaving a ragged stubble. The skin around his eyes was pale, as if he’d just returned from two weeks on a sunny alpine piste.

‘I don’t recognise him,’ said Anselm quietly. The man in the witness box had been tall and imposing. Where on earth had he been after he’d walked out of court? What manner of journey could so reduce a man? He said, ‘How did you find him?’

‘With respect,’ said Mr Hillsden, ‘I lodged at Trespass Place.’

‘All this time?’

‘Indeed, on the upper platform of a fire escape.’ He stood with both hands resting on the ornamental knob of his curtain pole. ‘He chose an agreeable location, if I may say so. South-facing and close to all local amenities.’ There was a heavy irony in his voice — that of the commentator who can’t adequately explain what he’s known and seen. His watery blue eyes never strayed higher than Anselm’s folded arms.

It transpired that Mr Hillsden had secured an ambulance by halting it on Blackfriars Bridge with his raised staff. He’d then waited at the hospital all night until the Vault opened, when a sympathetic nurse had made a telephone call to Debbie Lynwood. She had immediately contacted Anselm, who, in turn, had left a message for Inspector Cartwright. It was nine in the morning.

Anselm examined the twisted shape in the bed. According to his witness statement, David George Bradshaw was a married man with one child, a careworker by profession, in the employ of the Bridges night shelter. ‘When you wake,’ said Anselm, detached from his surroundings, ‘please tell me what I did wrong.

The sound of feet and bustle announced the approach of a consultant weighed down by a stethoscope and students. ‘Are you a chaplain?’ he asked. The tone was kindly but implied a treatable deviation from the norm.

‘No.’

His eyes moved onto Mr Hillsden. A relative?’

‘With respect, no.

‘If you don’t mind,’ he said hastily ‘I’ll proceed.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Anselm, stepping back.

The doctor flicked through the medical motes on a clipboard while his young audience formed an arc around the bed. Mr Hillsden did not move and stood among them, head bowed, hands on his staff.

‘Male, sixty-something,’ intoned the consultant. ‘First admitted after a beating at Waterloo Station. Multiple blows to the cranial vault. No patient history’ — he glanced towards an industrious young man with a pad and pen — ‘Edgerton, stop writing and listen. Just think. It’s far more difficult. Outcome: ruptured aneurysm. Louise, a definition, please.’

A sac in a major artery or vein that burst,’ said the young woman, ‘causing a leak of blood into the brain.’

‘Correct.’ The doctor hung the medical notes on the bedstead. ‘The required surgical procedure is rather like patching the inner tube on your bike, but rather more difficult. You may record that for posterity, Edgerton. In the instant case, no post-op complications. One hitch: short-term memory loss. Treatment?’

Glances fell on Louise.

‘In effect, there is none.’ The doctor eyed his patient with pity. ‘To anchor events a routine and supported life is essential. Unless he writes things down, the recent past will draw back like the tide on Dover Beach. In the circumstances, that may not be a bad thing. Last night someone found him soaking wet. He’s now got mild to moderate hypothermia. Treatment, Gardner?’

‘Cover with blankets at room temperature.’

‘Precisely’ he replied. ‘What you see now is a pandemic condition characterised by static posture and reduced but reversible sensitivity to external stimuli. Diagnosis?’

No one spoke.

‘With respect,’ said Mr Hillsden apologetically ‘the term “asleep” has the advantage of economy.

Outside the ward, by a door marked EXIT, Anselm and Mr Hillsden once again faced each other. This time nothing lay between them, save for the kind of awkwardness that might befit separated friends. Anselm looked at the lowered head, the green cagoule and the polished, split brogues. Casually as he might have done on a rather stiff social occasion, he said, ‘Might I ask, to which Inn do you belong?’

For an instant, Mr Hillsden’s washed eyes caught Anselm’s gaze. A faint smile moved beneath the grizzled beard. ‘The Inner Temple.’ The words were barely audible.

‘Which chambers?’ asked Anselm carelessly.

‘3 Vellum Square.’

‘An.’ Anselm knew it well. ‘Facing that glorious magnolia tree?’

Mr Hillsden nodded. ‘There’s a sundial, too …’

Footsteps echoed, moving swiftly Anselm glimpsed the magenta scarf of Inspector Cartwright at the end of the corridor. He called out and she paused, retracing a few steps. With a brief wave, she came towards them.

‘She will be as grateful to you as I am,’ said Anselm, turning back to Mr Hillsden … but he was gone. Anselm ran through the EXIT door into a stairwell. Leaning over a railing, he could see nothing but a shadow thrown across the steps, descending.

‘Come back,’ he shouted.

The staff sounded on the stone like the tapping of a patient carpenter. A door closed out of sight and Anselm found himself alone with Inspector Cartwright.

‘Who’s that?’ she enquired. A breath of lavender came with her approach.

‘Just another member of the Bar,’ he replied.

Anselm and Inspector Cartwright chose window seats in the cafeteria. Down below the Thames seemed not to flow It flickered with light around a reflection of Parliament and Big Ben. The sky was immense, cold and blue.

‘Did you make any sense of those accounts?’ asked the Inspector, stirring foam in a mug of hot chocolate.

‘No,’ replied Anselm. ‘No matter how hard I looked.’

‘I don’t suppose it matters, now that Mr Bradshaw has turned up.

Anselm examined his toast. This was soft, additive-packed, white sliced bread. None of your grains and nuts, like the breeze blocks at Larkwood. It should have been a moment to relish, but his appetite had gone — with Mr Hillsden. ‘The letter from Elizabeth has been destroyed,’ he said shortly ‘George’s clothing was binned at three in the morning. The waste disposal truck came at six. I arrived at half eight. I think that just about explains what’s transpired in our absence.’

‘We’re stuffed, then,’ observed Inspector Cartwright.

‘Not quite,’ said Anselm. He measured his words with care, sharing a thought that had come to him earlier that morning. ‘All manner of fowl are drawn to the monastic life. Some are very talented but for years these guys have to follow the same routine as the rest of us. And then one day … the Prior gives them a job. Suddenly all that unexercised talent breaks out on the laundry, or the kitchens, or — and I have a concrete example in mind — the priory’s accounts. It’s hell for the rest of us, of course, but in that one quarter we have levels of efficiency the Bundesbank couldn’t dream of. All of which persuades me we should send the accounts to Brother Cyril. This is a man who spends the night hours chasing pennies, and he finds them.’

Inspector Cartwright had the original papers: she would fax them to Larkwood as soon as she got back to her office. Anselm wrote out the number, explaining that he’d prepare the way with a call to Father Andrew ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I shall wait for George to wake up.’

What was Riley doing? The question was unspoken but it bound them together. Inspector Cartwright sipped her hot chocolate and Anselm nibbled his cold toast.

2

Riley glared at Prosser, at his felt hat, at the cigar jammed beneath a handle-bar moustache. They’d both set up their stalls in Beckton Park. The air was sharp and a frost had made the grass ribbed and hard. The ‘dealer’, as he called himself, had ambled over to Riley’s patch and was nosing through his goods. He stood with his hands behind his back, picking up this and that with a nod of approval.

‘Keep away from Nancy’ said Riley.

‘Whatever do you mean?’ Smoke came slowly from Prosser’s nostrils.

‘You heard me.’

Prosser stepped away but then hesitated. ‘Look, Riley were both men of business, so I’ll be honest. I’m interested in the shop, not your good lady. You’ve a prime location there. No offence, but I’d say the building requires the sort of investment you can’t afford.’

‘Push off.’

‘I’d give you a good price.’ He walked backwards, winking.

‘I’ll never sell.’

Riley held himself tight, arms wrapped across his chest. A chill had reached his bones and he squirmed, thinking of Wyecliffe’s questions. They’d burrowed into his head and eaten away at what was left of his peace of mind. He’d wanted the solicitor to weave his magic, to do something startling with the law that would protect him. But he couldn’t pull it off, not this time. Instead, he’d made it worse — deliberately — with that remark about the dead being on to Riley’s trail. For the first time, there was no Wyecliffe twitching by his side: he was on his own. Riley hugged himself more securely feeling more exposed than ever. Someone was after him. They were watching and waiting and they would come. A familiar racket began deep in the tissues of the brain: he heard bangs on the wall and screams on an upstairs landing. Riley covered his ears with gloved hands and stood to shake off the sound. Violence swirled inside, making his eyes glaze and dry out.

Riley blinked. Beckton Park appeared as if it hadn’t been there. Trees, grass and people became solid. Prosser was watching, legs crossed on a commode as if it were a throne, puffing on his cigar. Despite the cold, Riley felt sweat sting the corner of his eyes. When his head grew quiet, he sat down, slightly out of breath.

As if someone had turned on a radio by his ear, Riley heard himself talking to Nancy over his breakfast.

‘It was me,’ he said honestly feeling grubby ‘I oiled the wheel and I must have left the cage open.’

Nancy leaned on the counter almost dazed and unable to speak. Riley couldn’t understand it. She’d had three hamsters. When one died, she bought another. It was a routine. But this time it was different. She’d never been so winded.

Riley turned aside to escape the recollection. At once, his eye snagged on a billboard showing a smiling woman with a bottle of milk. Her lips were red and her teeth were as white as the sky There were lots of children in the background looking at the bottle, as if it would make them happy He swore and looked the other way But he saw a mother tabbing by a pram, and beside her a man, hungover, lean and yellow He closed his eyes to escape … everything. When he opened them he saw a newcomer thirty yards away He was reading the name on Riley’s van.

Major Reynolds had once said, ‘You’ve made lots of choices, and you can make others.’ That one idea had stuck to Riley like pitch. He’d never been able to scrape it off. All he’d wanted was a warm bed for the night, but the Major had given him words that burned. You can make other choices. The idea was horrendous …

The man drew close. He was middle-aged, dressed in a bomber jacket, jeans and a cap. Uncertainty made him fidget with the zip on his jacket. He moved it up and down, and said, ‘Can I buy a number?’

Riley charged his eyes with disgust until they stung. Did he really want to do this any more?

‘Sorry,’ said the man fearfully ‘I’ve made a mistake …’

Riley summoned him back with a flick of the hand and took out a notebook. He flicked through the blank pages until he came to a calling card, picked up from a telephone booth near Trafalgar Square. Slowly he read out the number.

The man seemed to wake up, patting his pockets, trying to be normal. He took out a crumpled envelope and a pencil.

‘I’ll read that again,’ said Riley his attention shifting to Prosser. The dealer had sidled from behind his stall and was watching every movement. He lit a new cigar and studied the glow of red ash.

After jotting down the number, the man said, ‘I understand it’s fifteen quid?’

‘We don’t talk,’ said Riley taking the money ‘It’s the only rule.’

The man walked quickly away between the trestle tables and the moochers, tracked by Riley’s contempt. When he was out of view, Riley went through the motions (his mind returning at intervals to the sight of Nancy winded by the counter). He selected a vase from his table marked for sale at ‘£15’. He wrapped it in newspaper and put it in a crate — for transfer to the shop in Bow Then he opened a pad labelled ‘Van Sales’. He made out a receipt to record a fictional transaction: ‘One Vase.

£30 received in Cash.’ Carefully he detached the original from the blue duplicate beneath. Ordinarily this would go to the customer, but since there wasn’t one, Riley tore it to pieces. He then opened another pad marked Acquisitions’ and wrote out a second receipt — for an imaginary purchase: ‘One vase. £15 paid in Cash.’

When he’d finished, Riley dropped the pads into a cardboard box at his feet. He looked at them, at the bones of his system. Not since his childhood had he felt so strongly the desire to run away: from the voices, the billboards, the sheer filth of his existence. But he’d learned long, long ago, there was a most unusual pleasure that came with the staying.

Prosser ambled along a path puffing smoke. He was pretending to stretch his fat legs, to get some heat into his toes. In fact, he was trying to work out what had taken place before his eyes … just as Riley that morning — feeling queasy — had tried to make sense of Nancy.

3

‘Don’t use wise words falsely’ quoted Father Andrew.

Anselm had rung Larkwood to forewarn the Prior that a fax would shortly arrive for Cyril’s kind attention — it was an unlikely outcome, admittedly but it was important not to hold a man to his past. In the background he’d heard a bell, and, feeling abruptly homesick, Anselm had opened his heart: he didn’t know what to say to George Bradshaw; he was ailing with a strain of guilt. And that had provoked the familiar quotation from a Desert Father.

Anselm put the receiver down. Thoughtfully mouthing the phrase, he returned to the ward, where a nurse informed him that George was not only awake, but in a chair and anxious to meet him.

Anselm paused at the entrance. From a tinny radio, Bunny Berigan was playing ‘I Can’t Get Started’. The trumpet soared while Anselm examined the bandaged feet and dinted legs. Then Bun gave it voice:

I’ve flown around the world in a plane,

I’ve settled revolutions in Spain,

The North Pole I have charted,

But still I can’t get started with you.

Remembering Emily Bradshaw in Mitcham, Anselm entered the ward.

George had been conducting, but instantly he rose, his wrists quivering on the armrests as they took the strain. ‘Elizabeth said you’d come,’ he exclaimed, hand outstretched. ‘Funny thing is’ — he laughed quietly at the coming joke — ‘I can’t remember why.’

Anselm smiled thinly and he flinched at the old man’s grip. Mumbling how nice it was to see him, he sat on the edge of the bed, still wondering how to approach what had to be said. He couldn’t look at George, any more than Mr Hillsden had been unable to look at Anselm. Something tied them together, though, because they were both held spellbound by Bunny Berigan’s trumpet solo.

‘Even Louis Armstrong wouldn’t touch that number,’ observed Anselm, at the end of the song. It was hardly wise, but at least it wasn’t false.

George gave Anselm a friendly shove, as if they were pals sharing half a pint of mild. ‘These days,’ he said, ‘I’ve no choice about what I remember. Tomorrow, if we meet, don’t expect to pick up where you left off. Begin all over again. With me, I’m afraid, you’re always starting afresh … That’s not so bad, is it?’

Anselm raised his eyes, suddenly aware that a kind of pardon had been given to him. George’s thoughts seemed to mark his face like stippling on a reef, as though one might understand him by watching. There were no barriers left: the surface was the depth. Anselm was staring at George — right into him — and there was no anger, no resentment, no pride, just a certain shining quality, which might be the brightness of the light … and yet, which might not. Fumbling for confidence, he said, ‘Mr Bradshaw, about the trial, I asked you a very particular question.’

George raised a hand. ‘I’m no longer troubled by anything I can remember,’ he said simply ‘I’ve let it fall away … like a stone in the Thames.’ He patted Anselm’s arm, signalling the end of that particular conversation.

Anselm was disorientated, for this broken man spoke an idiom whose meaning he could barely follow (he’d had a similar problem with a traffic policeman in Czechoslovakia). On the one hand, the forgiveness had been given quickly and comprehensively; but on the other, it had come from a spirit of detachment that Anselm had never met before, save in some of the older monks at Larkwood. Anselm had no time to ponder either mystery because George had already moved on.

‘We went after Riley and I got hold of the works, like Elizabeth told me to.’

‘Yes.’

‘And she discovered what he was doing — it was there, in the numbers, plain to be seen. Once she’d cracked it she went to see him.’

‘Who?’

‘Riley.’

This was not something Anselm had anticipated. ‘What happened?’

‘She died,’ replied George. ‘I’m not saying he did anything, it’s just that death follows him around.’

Tentatively Anselm said, ‘Did she explain Riley’s scheme to you?’

‘Several times.’

‘Do you recall what she said?’

There was no doubt about it: George’s facial expressions revealed his thoughts. And at this moment it was evident that he considered Anselm to be rather slow ‘What do you think?’

‘No,’ replied Anselm apologetically.

‘Exactly’ George, however, was not especially troubled. ‘Elizabeth wrote it down. It’s in my jacket.’

Gently Anselm explained what had happened to George’s clothing, and, therefore, the letter, but the old fellow just made an ‘Ah’. That, it seemed, was just another stone in the river. Anselm was astonished. He said, as though to comfort himself, ‘But there’s still hope. Inspector Cartwright received all the business records through the post.’ He was struck by an idea. ‘Did you send them?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Anselm fetched up a grin. ‘Of course not. Sorry.’

‘I doubt if I posted anything, somehow’ George rubbed a finger into his brow, trying to knead a splintered thought to the surface. It wouldn’t come. He shrugged at the deep itch and said, ‘Can the Inspector understand them?’

‘No.’

‘Ah.’

‘But someone with an eye for these things will be considering them shortly’

‘Very good.’

‘You’ve done your part,’ said Anselm, wanting to give something back to this man who’d given so much. ‘Now you can rest.’

George raised his legs, looking down at the bandaged feet. ‘I lost my shoes, somehow, and I got terribly wet and cold.’ He became confused, his mind in suspension; he seemed to have heard a noise, like a scratching behind the wall. Quietly he said to himself, ‘No … no … It’s gone.’

Later in the day Anselm would ring Inspector Cartwright to recount the conversation that revealed how little George knew, and how much. But first, there was something else to be done. He reached deep into the oldest part of anyone’s memory, saying, ‘Would you like to go home, George?’

4

Nick Glendinning sat in the sitting room at St John’s Wood twirling a piece of paper between his fingers. Written on it was the telephone number of the woman who’d asked about ‘her lad’, the woman who’d probably received his mother’s last words. She hadn’t rung Charles, or the police or the medical services. She’d rung this stranger. What had she said, before dying?

At first, Nick told himself that Father Anselm was handling Elizabeth’s final dispensations — she’d planned it that way — so he tried to forget the question: he signed up as a locum, and he tried to assume a normal life — until it dawned on him that he’d stumbled on another secret, his mother’s last; and that whatever she’d said was more important than the key or anything retained in its box. This realisation haunted him. It made him pick up the telephone.

‘My name is Nicholas Glendinning,’ he said. ‘I understand you know my mother.’

He pressed the receiver against his ear, to stop his hand from shaking. All he could make out was laboured breathing.

‘Can I meet you?’ said Nick, pressing harder.

The air whistled in his ear. ‘Did she tell you about me?’

‘No.’

‘What do you want?’

‘To talk about my mother.’

The breathing grew calm. ‘I’d like that very much.’

Having noted the address, Nick rose and swivelled on his heels. Framed by the doorway was his father. His arms were almost raised. He looked like one of those entertainers in Covent Garden who don’t move until you give them some money.

They looked at each other, both utterly still. Abruptly Charles grimaced and flicked a finger in the air, as if he’d remembered what he was looking for. Then he quickly shuffled upstairs.

Nick sat on the sofa adjacent to a low table in the Shoreditch flat. The old woman was dressed in a yellow floral dress as if she were off to church or a summer garden party She wore earrings, a necklace and creaking leather shoes. The room was conspicuously tidy but very cold, even though a radiator clicked with activity. She’d had the windows open, and an air freshener had been used. Nick found the assembly of images and sensations unequivocally surreal. He could not imagine his mother traipsing up that filthy stairwell, or sitting here, before this apparition with silver hair and tragic eyes.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said awkwardly.

‘Mrs Dixon,’ she said, clearing her throat at the same time. ‘Refreshment?’

‘Yes, please.’

The low table was covered with a white cloth. It had been laid for a small reception. Mrs Dixon poured tea into ancient china cups. ‘Milk or lemon?’

‘Milk, thank you.

A whole ritual unfolded, as if he were a vicar, or the squire. She offered Nick sugar, a teaspoon from the Isle of Man and a jammy dodger from a cake stand.

‘Your mother was my friend,’ she said proudly ‘The Council sent her along when I got lonely’

‘The Council’ had evidently explained that she was dead. The flat vowel in ‘lonely’ disclosed that Mrs Dixon was not a Londoner. Her accent had been softened, but the northern intonation in that one word was unmistakable. Before Nick could think of what to say Mrs Dixon spoke again.

‘She came here every week, on a Friday and we talked … mainly about me, and my family’ Delicately Mrs Dixon raised her cup. ‘She was full of questions, but it did me good to get things off my chest. It’s not good to keep things in, that’s what I say.

‘Absolutely.’

‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well done,’ she exclaimed.

Nick sipped his tea, wondering how soon he might reasonably make his exit. But Mrs Dixon’s confidence had grown. There was something predatory about her delight. A biscuit?’ she said, pointing at the stand.

‘Thank you.’

Mrs Dixon settled back in her chair, her teacup and saucer resting in the middle of her chest. Looking over the top, she said, ‘I told her so much about myself, but I never asked about her … Do you mind telling me a little?’

‘What would you like to hear?’ asked Nick.

‘Well … anything really. Something that explains where she came from … Like I did, with her.’

Nick surrendered to the circumstances, as his mother must have done, when she’d first realised what she’d let herself in for. Mrs Dixon’s question, however, was so broad that he didn’t know where to begin. And then he thought of the photograph.

‘We have this family portrait at home,’ he said thoughtfully ‘It shows my mother as a child with her parents.’

The picture was in the sitting room at St John’s Wood. As a boy Nick used to study the sepia faces of the solemn man and his proud, buxom wife. They were stiff and unsmiling, in a happy sort of way obedient to the formality of their time. His neck was bound in a wing collar, and she was packed into a polka dot dress. Elizabeth was in the middle, her long hair scraped back and held by ribbons. An affectionate hand from her father had strayed onto her knee, unnoticed by the cameraman. There was a clock in the background and a tall dresser. Elizabeth used to say that her self-understanding — where she’d come from, who she’d become, her dispositions and their provenance — had been captured in that one photograph, with one explosion from the flash. It was her way of explaining to Nick why as he’d grown older, she’d become more reserved; and why there was a melancholy even in her smile. As a teenager, her quietness, her lack of bounce, had sometimes irritated him and, being a teenager, he’d told her. It made him sad, now, to think he could ever have held her to account, given the tragedy that overran that prim family in the photograph.

Nick found himself explaining to Mrs Dixon how events had wiped clean his mother’s expectations before she was fifteen. That her father had died suddenly before her eyes.

‘What happened?’ asked Mrs Dixon, blinking over her teacup.

‘He just passed away like a light going out.’

‘But how?’

A weak heart.’ Nick understood now, because Doctor Okoye had made the diagnosis.

‘What was her father like?’ asked Mrs Dixon after a moment.

‘My mother rarely spoke of him,’ replied Nick. ‘She once told me that not a day passed without her calling him to mind.’ Nick sipped his tea — it had gone cold with his talking — and then he said, strangely moved, ‘She said I was just like him …’ In saying that sentence to this dolled-up stranger, Nick, for the first time, understood his own adolescence, and his mother’s anguish as a parent. She’d tried to tell him why they’d fallen out of kilter, but he hadn’t understood.

‘And what of Elizabeth’s mother?’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘How did she fare?’

‘Not very well.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ He paused, not wanting to divulge much more. ‘She died too — shortly afterwards, from septicaemia.’

Mrs Dixon seemed visibly shocked, and Nick felt a stab of irritation, fearing that his mother’s life had become an episode in a kind of soap opera.

‘Thank you for telling me what happened to Elizabeth,’ said Mrs Dixon, placing her cup on the table. ‘I now understand why she came to look after me.

‘Really?’ asked Nick, curious now.

‘Yes … You see … I, too, have had my mishaps.’ She picked up a paper napkin. And I know what it’s like to lose someone and want them back. Of course, the Council had all this information in their files, and they’ll have told your mother. So when she knocked on my door, thank God, she didn’t bring just pity, she brought … herself.’ The napkin tore in her hands.

Nick was ashamed of his earlier irritation with this poor woman who was genuinely distressed. He would have liked to leave, but now was the obvious time to put the one question that had brought him here. He said, ‘Before my mother died, she made a telephone call … to you.’

Mrs Dixon nodded. Her mouth was set, and her eyes were suddenly vacant.

‘Do you mind telling me what she said?’

‘Not at all.’ Mrs Dixon appeared tragically isolated in her chair, the only one left at the garden party. ‘Elizabeth said … “I’m very sorry, but I won’t be coming any more.”’

Nick was dumbfounded. The latter part of his mother’s life had been devoted to a scheme wholly personal in its objectives and significance. But her last words had been said to a forgotten woman halfway up a tower block who dressed up for a cup of tea; to the person who probably needed her most.

5

At the mention of going home, George whispered, ‘Can I?’ Are you ready?’ asked Anselm.

‘Yes.’ His features showed both desire and dread. He shifted in his seat.

‘If you forget my going,’ said Anselm confidently ‘I’ll surprise you when I get back.’ No truer words, he thought, had ever passed his lips. He was sure that Emily Bradshaw would be with him.

More out of excitement than impatience, Anselm banged the knocker to the terraced house in Mitcham. A figure came to the door, fragmenting in a globe of dimpled glass.

Emily Bradshaw stood at the bay window while Anselm, by the arm of a settee, felt the rigour of hesitation. She’d walked to her post without a word, without offering a seat. When the past comes to an end, thought Anselm, you panic. He knew exactly what he was going to say He’d chosen his words carefully on the Underground. ‘You told me last time that nothing comes of nothing.’

Emily moved a net curtain with the back of one hand —just an inch. ‘I got it from The Sound of Music.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The Sound of Music. The Captain and Maria sing it in the garden when everything falls into place.’ Emily spoke with immeasurable sadness. The hand fell to her side.

Anselm became strong; these moments could be overcome. He sat down and spoke towards a happy ending. ‘I have seen George. He’s ready to come home.’

‘Yes, I know’

‘Pardon?’

‘He came back.’ She raised a net curtain once more, looking out hopelessly.

And he left?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why?’

The gate tapped shut and the front door opened. Anselm’s empathies dropped. They’d been tailored for a happy ending in Salzburg. He felt the coldness of real compassion. In the hallway feet stamped, shaking off the week. ‘Bloody hell, it’s cold. But it’s Frida-a-ay’ It was a reassuring sound, kindly and rooted. A zip hummed down its line.

Emily moved to the middle of the room. She did not sit, so Anselm remained standing. She said, ‘George’s place isn’t filled. Don’t think that, please. I can’t understand our life together, that’s all. And if you can’t understand something, it’s …’

A round freckled face, smudged with grease and surprise, appraised Anselm. ‘Oh, hullo, sorry about the swearing, like –’

‘Don’t worry. It is cold, I entirely agree.’

‘Peter, this is Father Anselm. He knows George.’

The man’s hand was large, stamped with work and decency Anselm reached over. It had looked like an anvil, but when touched it became a fat sponge.

Emily said, ‘Father Anselm was just about to go.

Peter stood in the doorway like a roadblock. His blue overalls were parted, revealing the V-neck jumper, the shirt and tie. A slight paunch stretched the patterned wool. He took a shallow breath while practical, no-nonsense eyes seemed to weigh up a fractured joint, something basic that couldn’t be fixed. Peering through a sort of spray he said, ‘How is he?’

‘Fine. Not so bad,’ said Anselm, trapped between honesty to Peter and sensitivity to Emily.

‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is .’

Anselm pictured the arrival of the big man, his ordered life folded up in cardboard boxes: a few pictures, his dad’s tin mug, some Corgi cars, mountains of underpants, a shoe-cleaning box. Anselm said, ‘George makes no claims.’ It was a strange announcement. He didn’t know why he’d said it.

Peter rested blue arms on each pillar, his head aslant. He was balding. The remaining hair had been creased by a regulation hard hat. ‘Emily let him in. Take him back.’ He drew up the zip of his overalls, as if he’d just emerged from the locker room. ‘It’s his home.’

Emily was crying. She pushed past Anselm and said, ‘Peter, would you make some tea?’

‘You’ll have one, Father?’

‘No, he won’t,’ sobbed Emily.

At the door, one foot on the flags, Anselm said, ‘Is there anything you’d like me to say?’

‘Yes.’ Emily searched her pockets nervously.

Anselm said, ‘I think I’ll be able to explain without saying anything.’ He was looking at Peter, out of earshot.

Emily said, ‘Tell him …’ Her face crumpled. She fetched out a biro that had leaked and a receipt. With a slap at the air, she threw them against the wall and slammed the door.

Anselm entered the ward. George was dressed, his knees crossed, one leg bobbing. He was like a granddad in a waiting room, ears cocked for an announcement. He’d been smartened up. The hair hadn’t quite taken to the parting, but the comb lines stood out. Someone had found an old blazer. It had a crest over the breast pocket with a motto: ‘Legis Plenitudo Caritas’. Love fulfils the law.

Before Anselm could move, George swung him a quick look and grimaced. His feet slipped, despite the shoes, and he locked his wrists on the armrests. Bony shoulders took the strain of standing. Before Anselm could stop him, George was upright, a hand outstretched. ‘Elizabeth said you’d come,’ he exclaimed.

Anselm felt the grip. It was reassuring; it was strong. He looked aside from cloudless eyes that revealed nothing but the sky.

‘Funny thing is’ — George laughed gently at the coming joke —’I’m not quite sure why’

6

Riley unscrewed the box casing that concealed the water pipes in the kitchen. Nancy stood behind him waiting for the news.

‘Not there,’ he said.

‘But he can’t get out,’ moaned Nancy ‘You said so yourself.’ Riley replaced the casing, thinking he shouldn’t have said that, because she’d latched on to it. He’d only expected a ten-minute look-around. But Nancy was ready to dismantle the building. She’d already made him check the washing machine, the dryer and the fridge. She wouldn’t give up. That glow of expectation in her cheeks was like the fog lights at Lawton’s.

‘I’ll check the bedroom.’ Her voice was tight with the strain. ‘This is a waste of time,’ he said, thinking of the dark around Limehouse Cut.

Nancy got down on all fours, one cheek flat on the carpet. Riley stood behind her, looking down. Her fastidious concentration was ridiculous to him.

‘Where are you, Arnold?’ whispered Nancy.

Riley knelt beside her, as if to drink from a stream. ‘Not there,’ he said. These were bitter waters. He tasted one thing, and she another. His stomach turned, like it did in his dream.

This charade was played out in every room until they returned to the kitchen and faced the empty cage. All at once Nancy slumped into a chair, pushing a hand through her hair, one elbow on the table. ‘He’s so small, and so weak.’

The phrase threw up the days when Riley wore shorts. He’d been a small lad. Everything was heavy, even the shopping. He’d hated his weakness. Coming round, he noticed that Nancy’s shoulders were shaking. She’s laughing, he thought, with relief, and it brought a nervous giggle out of him. Like a thing on a ratchet-wheel, Nancy slowly looked up, and showed her tears.

‘How could you?’ she whispered in disbelief.

Riley paled, thinking that she’d known all along; that she’d led him round the houses, giving him the chance to admit what he’d done. He panicked and sniggered again.

‘Go on, laugh,’ she howled, proud and defiant. ‘Join the rest of them who think that Nancy Riley’s such a joke.’ She hid her face with her hands.

Riley waited for her to stop, but she didn’t. She moaned gently into her fingers, shaking her head, and he watched her, as if his mind were on a shelf, while his body against him, still wanted to laugh. The more he listened to Nancy’s grief, the longer he observed her covered face, the more he seemed to become separate from himself. He was retreating from this awful sight — he’d never seen her cry like this — but his lungs were ready to explode. Unable to stop himself, he began to laugh.

Nancy lowered her fingers. Impassively she watched him — as he had watched her. With a pink tissue she dabbed each cheek as if she were putting on her make-up.

Riley’s laughter wouldn’t end. Shuddering and out of control, his voice grew loud. He tried to stop it with a cough and a whistle, but it was no use. It was like being stripped down, and Nancy could see him for who he was. She didn’t storm out; she just kept crying and dabbing her cheeks, watching him like it was a sad film, a tragedy It turned into a sort of game: who was going to stop first, him or her? The thought allowed him to recover, because he didn’t want to win: he couldn’t bear to watch her any more. The hysteria was over. And yet …

Riley didn’t know what was happening. He touched his cheeks … they were wet, like a rock on the beach. Nancy rose as if someone had banged at the door. She came towards him, curious and frightened, while Riley backed away His tears kept spilling out. The muscles all over his face ached terribly and yet part of him felt nothing, because he was distant, like a balloon, bobbing against the kitchen ceiling. Then, as if punctured by exhaustion and a will to resist no more, he felt himself sinking: coming down to a distraught man with a wet, contorted face.

‘It’s not your fault,’ urged Nancy appalled. ‘You only left the cage open.

Sobbing with a sound just like his laughter, Riley yanked open the back door. Cold air bit his face. He was still falling, but more quickly.

‘I’m here,’ said Nancy softly at his shoulder. ‘I’m always here, Riley.’

At those words, he caught himself up. He felt weakened —dreadfully — by the realisation that he wanted to live like other men; that he’d had enough of the twisting, the breaching and the wrecking of everything that passed before him. He’d gone out of his way to smash whatever might break. Nancy was in the yard, at his side, and Riley saw her as he’d first seen her at Lawton’s long ago, at their bleak beginning. She was still the same old Nancy still dumpy still hungry.

A frost had fallen with a faint mist. The yard was crisp with tiny crystals. It was dark and Nancy’s pile of bricks glittered with rime. Closing his eyes, and through a growing headache, Riley thought of snow … fields and fields of fresh fallen snow, as it’s seen at night, practically glowing from the inside — not a leaf, not a flower, just snow That was his wife. He knew it. And with a savage certainty, he knew that he didn’t want to spoil what he’d seen, not with a single careless footprint. Stunned, Riley recognised that he … loved her.

He looked up to the misty night sky. There were no stars, just this ghostly breath off the Thames.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. Nancy had fished out Uncle Bertie’s poison and filled identical tumblers.

‘To Arnold,’ she said.

They clinked glasses and downed their drinks in one.

Nancy coughed, and Riley’s lips ignited. To the blotches of purple light, he said, ‘I’ve had enough.’

Nancy nodded and put the bottle back in the cupboard.

Because the poison was illegal, she always hid it, even though no one would ever come looking. That was Nancy all over. He said, ‘I’ve got a Christmas Fair coming up.’

‘Where?’

‘Wanstead.’ Riley conjured up those fields of snow spreading out before him as far as the eye could see — beyond the Weald and on to the South Downs. ‘I’ll do this last one.’ He could do it; he could take a first step, as long as Nancy knew nothing of what lay behind.

‘What do you mean?’ Nancy stood with hands on her hips. Her face still blotched from the tears.

‘I’m going to pack it in.’

‘What, the business?’

‘Yes.’ He could walk away and keep going. Every step would be new He need never turn around. Riley’s eyes glazed before a sort of darkness. He didn’t understand his own thoughts. This was the Major’s country.

‘You’ve had too much of Uncle Bertie’s poison,’ said Nancy She smiled, and was, to Riley very pretty. ‘Your sort never give up.

7

Anselm slept fitfully waking at intervals to be tormented by George’s calm, and his own folly The old man’s repetition word for word of their earlier conversation had been a device of mercy but in the giving George had revealed the activity of his memory: he’d known that Anselm had been to Mitcham; and he’d understood that Emily wouldn’t take him back.

When morning came Anselm acted without hesitation: whatever Doctor Johnson thought of London, Anselm was tired of it. His life lay elsewhere, as now would George’s. He rang Larkwood to say he was coming home, and he asked Wilf — the guestmaster — to prepare a room for a weary pilgrim. At the hospital, George warmed to the proposal immediately volunteering that he’d never been to a monastery, and that The Sound of Music was his wife’s favourite film. On the train he kept breaking into ‘Doe, a deer’ while Anselm studied the badge on his blazer: Legis Plenitudo Caritas. It was a warning and a promise: the law would be fulfilled, but only by love. What would Elizabeth have made of that?

By early afternoon George had been installed in a room overlooking the valley of the Lark. The stream sliced through ribbed fields, drawing down the winter sun. On the far side, oaks and chestnuts crowded on the slopes. Anselm leaned on the sill, beside George, longing to get among the blue shadows, to kick the acorns and conkers.

‘I knew a strange man called Nino,’ said George, searching the treetops. ‘He told me that at the bottom of every box is hope. No matter what terrible things jump out, he said, we have to wait.’

The old man hung his hands on the lapels of his blazer and talked to the valley about this Nino, a guide who told stories that George had rarely understood first time around. It was a patchy reminiscence, of sayings uttered near Marble Arch or King’s Cross, on a bench or by a bin. His memory hadn’t held on to the parts that would have made the whole easy to understand. But as he spoke, Anselm thought of Clem, his old novice master, long dead, who’d taught through mysterious tales of the Desert Fathers. And slowly like warming up, Anselm felt close to George, as he’d been close to Clem, and yet — as with Clem — he remained so very far away For with every word, it became clear:

George understood Nino’s stories without being able to explain them. George had come to that point of stillness and detachment that Anselm was hoping to reach through monastic routine. This mendicant beside him was already home: he’d reached the same strange uplands stalked by two strange masters.

‘Here’s a small present with many pages,’ said Anselm, taking his leave. It was a notebook with Larkwood’s address and phone number inside.

He moved briskly down the corridor, intent on grabbing the Prior just before compline, when authority was both tired and indulgent, to beg that George might live out the remainder of his days at Larkwood. For the moment, another task required his attention.

Anselm went to the calefactory, a side room off the cloister with a huge fireplace, some armchairs and a telephone. In the Middle Ages, it had warmed up rude and ready monks; now it was one of the monastery’s many hideaways, a place in which to thaw and think. It was empty. Anselm sat by the inglenook and made what amounted to a preliminary call. .

The Provincial of the Daughters of Charity remembered him from his earlier enquiry about Sister Dorothy and the account of a hidden key Anselm wanted access to any records that touched on the background of Elizabeth. They were held in the congregation’s archives, he assumed, at Carlisle. Fearing a refusal if he approached the school directly he wondered if the Provincial might sanction his appeal for help.

‘Why exactly do you want to know?’ she said. ‘I don’t see how your question is linked to your objective.’

‘Because I think it’s only a matter of time before her son wonders why his mother cut a. hole into that particular book, which will bring him to Dorothy’ replied Anselm. ‘And as this business reaches its end, I fear everything will unravel. I want to get back to the first dropped stitch — if there is one — so that I might help him.’

The Provincial told Anselm to wait one hour and them he was to ring the school and ask for Sister Pauline.

When Anselm duly dialled the Carlisle number the phone was picked up instantly. And just as promptly they set to work. There was only one sheet of paper in the file, said Sister Pauline. ‘I’d rather not release a copy Father, but I can read it out. Is that all right?’

‘Yes.’

Laboriously she described the format of the page and the brief details recorded on it. Anselm listened, eyes closed, picturing the document in his head. When she’d finished, Anselm decided to repeat back the particulars that mattered for confirmation.

‘So, am I right, Elizabeth Steadman was born in London, not Manchester?’

‘Correct.’

‘No parental details are recorded?’

‘None.’

‘Her home address is given simply as Camberwell?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm wondered why such an important matter had been left so vague.

‘Because we know exactly what it means,’ said Sister Pauline. ‘Camberwell refers to our hostel. It means she was based there before being given a place at the school.’

‘Hostel?’ asked Anselm, thinking of the convent where he’d met Sister Dorothy.

Sister Pauline explained that the Camberwell hostel had been their biggest London project, offering accommodation and help to anyone and everyone, so long as they were female. The building had been converted years ago to provide affordable housing, a part of the ground floor being retained for the community. Anselm had already been there.

He could imagine Elizabeth’s journey north, far from the big city; but something was missing ‘If she came to Carlisle through the hostel, without parental involvement, then there should be a court order … a legal document that defines her status and yours. Are you sure there’s nothing else in the file?’

‘Absolutely.’

And that, he inferred, means it’s either been destroyed, or it never existed.

Anselm thanked Sister Pauline and put the phone down. His thoughts fell neatly into place: if no court order had been made, then Elizabeth’s presence at the school would have been with parental consent — that of Mr and Mrs Steadman. So why had no address been recorded? And why had Elizabeth been linked to the hostel? The only person who knew was Sister Dorothy and she, Anselm decided, would receive another friendly visit —only this time they’d get beyond the figures in a photograph.

The calefactory door swung open with a bang. Anselm bristled — a common enough experience in monastic life, for sensibilities were always colliding, especially on the little things, like how to open a door — and there, standing like a slot machine, was Brother Cyril.

At last,’ said the cellarer. ‘I’ve been looking all over.’

‘I’m sorry.’ That was another aspect of existence in a habit. With some people you had to apologise when you’d done nothing wrong. Guessing Cyril’s mission, Anselm said, ‘I’ve put all unspent money — with receipts — in your pigeon-hole.’

‘I know,’ he snapped, ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

Anselm prepared himself for a harangue on the theology of internal audit. ‘Do continue, he said wearily.

‘I’ve worked out what this Riley man is up to.’ Cyril’s one arm swung proudly.

‘Already?’ asked Anselm, astonished.

‘Yes.’

‘You’d better tell Inspector Cartwright.’

‘I have done. She’s coming here tomorrow afternoon.’

Anselm stood up, distracted by all that must now be done. He would have to tell George; and, instinctively he knew that this was the moment to draw Nicholas more closely into his mother’s doings.

‘Shall I explain the trick now?’ asked Cyril impatiently.

‘No, I’ll wait, thanks.’

‘Pah!’

Anselm almost ran down the trail that led to a narrow bridge over the Lark. The sky was clean and shining like metal — as it was, no doubt, over Marble Arch or King’s Cross. Anselm sensed he’d be going back to those bustling streets, but for now he wanted to be alone, to enter the far wood and pray among the acorns and conkers.

8

‘Nancy is that you?’

It was Babycham. She hadn’t changed. Well, she had, because of the hair extensions and a fur coat. And her lashes were false. And ten years had made a difference. Those pink cheeks had fallen a bit and the powder looked like bruises; or maybe it was the cold.

‘It’s been ages …’ The fur ruffled magically leaving windy paths like those corn circles. It was the real thing. You could tell.

Nancy had just got off the bus. With worked-up hope, she’d gone east this time, into West Ham, hoping for a glimpse of Mr Johnson. She’d sat by the buzzer, her eyes latching on to every uncertain step among the flow of jackets and prams; she’d checked a bench by a newspaper kiosk and a heap outside Currys. He was blind. He couldn’t have gone that far. She’d stepped out to buy some Polos, when that voice had made her jump.

Nervously Babycham said, ‘Lovely hat.’

Riley had found it in a drawer at a clearance. It was yellow polyester with black spots.

‘How’s things?’ asked Nancy When they’d last met, she’d told her she was full of wind and bubbles.

‘Altogether nice,’ said Babycham. She turned to a newsagent’s, to the paints and pens and toys with stickers on. The glossy mags were on display — happy faces, baring their teeth. Woman’s World had a couple of answers. ‘Take Control:

Tell Him What You Want in Bed’; and, in bigger letters, ‘How to Stop a Yorkshire Pudding Falling Flat.’

Nancy admitted, ‘I didn’t mean what I said.’

‘Course you didn’t.’

Nancy waited, but Babycham didn’t reciprocate. It was to be expected. She never dealt in returns or cast-offs. She’d always gone top drawer. Knew her mind. She’d told Nancy to run. They’d had a meeting.

Babycham looked hard into the window again. The glare from the shop made her cheeks redder. Forty-denier tights. All you had to do was tear a number off the bottom and ring up whomever it was. Only one had been taken.

Nancy said, ‘So what’s been up, then?’

Babycham pulled out a hankie. It had a blue ‘B’ on one corner and lace round the edge. ‘Well … I ended up with Harold … You know, the boss.’

‘Mr Lawton?’ Nancy’s surprise made it sound ridiculous.

‘Yes.’ She carefully touched the corner of one eye.

‘So it’s easy street for you then, Babs.’ Mr Lawton must have made a packet, what with the development of the docklands.

‘Well, he held on to his turf, so he could negotiate, sort of thing. That was the idea. And you?’

‘Antiques.’ Nancy felt a punch of self-hatred for the lie, for the lack of pride in what she did, for who she was.

‘Oh, very nice.’

‘Well, you know, second-hand. I’ve a small shop.’ Before Babycham could ask whereabouts, Nancy said, ‘I suppose you’ve got tons of kids?’

‘Three. And you?’

‘None.’

‘Sorry.’ She dabbed the other eye. ‘It’s arctic.’

Riley had said, ‘No children. No talk of it. It’s just the two of us.’ He’d spoken like it was a deal before they hit the sand. They’d make it out of this hell together. Confident and romantic, he’d ducked like John Wayne on Iwo Jima. Nancy had agreed, not knowing that Riley never changed, that he’d come out of the packaging ready made and complete, all the screws in place. There was nothing to add on, no expensive extras. Whereas she’d been incomplete, with gaps, so many gaps. She’d always wanted to be a mother, and the nearest she’d got was Arnold. Shame and a kind of hatred — again, of herself —twisted in her stomach, like when she’d been starving after a day on grapefruit, part of a diet that was meant to transform her shape in two weeks. It hadn’t worked.

Babycham said, ‘Harold didn’t sell up when he wanted, you know.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘He had to. After he got fined.’

‘What for?’

‘Health and safety.’ The hankie went up a sleeve. Her eyes were fine now, and her cheeks not so red. ‘Did you not hear? A lad drowned off E Section.’

‘No.’ Nancy shuddered as something fell inside her — like one of those metal shutters that could stop a car, never mind a smash and grab. Her voice failed.

Years back a woman had come to the shop and handled a mirror — checked her lower teeth and a spot on her chin. She’d been sociable and asked how business was going. Then she’d shocked her by using her name: ‘Nancy I’m not a customer. I’m a copper.

Feeling sick, she’d said, ‘What have I done?’

‘Nothing. Can we have a talk, just us two, going no further?’

‘Well, I suppose so.’

She’d tried to win her round, with talk of the poor mother, and that man Bradshaw, the father, who’d walked out of the court. Cartwright, that was her name. Jennifer. She’d made insinuations. It was like being trapped in Wyecliffe’s office all over again.

‘Where was he last Saturday?’

‘The car-boot fair at Barking.’

‘It rained.’

‘He went.’

‘What time did he get back?’

‘I was asleep.’ That hadn’t been true. But lying awake was her secret.

‘What time did you go to bed?’

‘Elevenish’

‘The fair would have wound up by six or seven?’

‘Yes, but his van broke down.’

‘Where?’

‘How would I know?’ These police and their daft questions.

Babycham said, A lad went through some of the planks. Harold had put up a notice, a fence, bollards, but they’d all been moved. Dumped in the river.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He’d checked them on the Friday at seven o’clock, but they’d gone by Saturday night.’

Nancy said nothing. Babycham stepped closer. Fur tickled Nancy’s wrist.

‘And that was when the lad drowned, the Saturday They said he was a trespasser.’

‘And Mr Lawton got fined?’

‘Because of the holes in the fence and the missing bollards.’ Like she had an itch, she repeated. ‘They said he was a trespasser.’

‘I suppose he was, then.’

‘Well, I don’t think so. And neither does Harold.’

A slow-moving HGV had snarled up the traffic. It crawled past, heaving a trailer with a huge shed on it, more like a fairy-tale doll’s house, painted red and white. There were two windows and a door in the middle. Someone’s moving home, joked Nancy to herself, her eyes smarting. The idea stung everywhere at once, as if she’d crunched a nest underfoot; wasps, angry and purposeful, swarmed around her.

Jennifer had said, ‘Where was the van fixed?’

‘On the spot.’

‘Who by?’

‘He does it himself … He keeps everything he needs in the back.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it’s been breaking down a lot recently’

‘For how long?’

‘Six months.’

And he always does the work himself?’

‘Yes.’

At the side of the road?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you seen him do it?’

‘Once.’ She’d said it with a gusty success, as if she’d swatted a big one.

‘When?’

‘At home. About three months back.’

Jennifer had looked inside a wardrobe and checked the joints. ‘Does he always tell you when the van breaks down?’

‘Well, if he doesn’t tell me, there’s no way I’d find out, is there?’ These police. No wonder they didn’t catch anyone. ‘We’re man and wife, you know. That’s why we talk.’

‘Of course, Nancy … But there are people who say things … and your husband won’t help himself, you know that. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

‘Saying what sort of things?’

Babycham said, ‘We think it was deliberate.’

The doll’s house had gone, and Nancy hadn’t noticed. She hugged herself, gripping her elbows. ‘Deliberate? You mean the lad jumped in?’

‘No. I mean someone pushed him. Or let him fall. Got him out there. When it wasn’t safe.’

‘Why do that?’

‘I wonder.’

‘Who’d do a thing like that?’

‘There’s no knowing, is there?’ It was a real question. Nancy stepped back, away from the tickling hairs. ‘Then Mr Lawton should’ve fixed the fence.’

Babycham dug out the hankie and prodded the corners of her mouth. A matey tenderness from the yard made her voice suddenly hoary — like when they’d told Carmel Pilchard to get knotted, that she couldn’t join in — ‘You haven’t changed.’

‘Neither have you.’ For one brief, terrible moment they were both barelegged in knee-high socks, with bruises on their knees. Pilchard’s main had one eye and her dad was doing time. ‘Serves him right with a name like that,’ Babycham had said. Nancy had thought that a bit on the harsh side.

‘Best be off,’ said Babycham, checking her watch — it was small and gold with trinkets dangling off the strap: a horse, a pig and a penny ‘I’d stay but I’ve a plane to catch. Winter break.’

‘Very nice.’

‘Who’d’ve thought there’d be an airport between the King George and the Royal Albert. The place was dead.’

With a quite awful longing, Nancy wanted to go back to those days of heavy morning mists … when they’d first arrived at the docks, when she’d tramped up the iron stairs to the office with a view of the river. On some days, you wouldn’t be able to see it until lunchtime. As the sun burnt through the sodden cloud, the waves would appear, here and there, like silver chains. She wanted to wind back time some more, into the yard, by the toilets, when they’d changed their mind about Carmel. They’d felt sorry for her main. Exclusions weren’t so bad, then, although it had felt like it. She said, And who’d’ve thought you’d be cooking dinner for Mr Lawton.’

Babycham pressed a button on a key and a nice car winked. It was like magic.

Nancy said, ‘I’ll see you around, then.’

‘No. You won’t.’ She didn’t deal in returns, Babycham. And she always spoke her mind.

‘Ta-ra, then.’

‘Yes, ta-ra.’

When the bus pulled into the depot, Nancy changed numbers and followed another route, her face set against the window It was useless, but she kept looking for Mr Johnson, while her mind kept turning to Arnold. Her breath steamed up the glass. She gave it a rub with the sleeve of her coat … and out of nowhere, she remembered seeing her man at the top of their street at two in the morning Nancy knew it was him from his walk, and the way his arms swung like loose ropes.

9

As Nick drove through the pinks and thatch of Suffolk, he continued to brood upon the tall figure at the window of the Butterfly Room. Charles had been watching as Nick pulled away on yet another solitary jaunt in the Beetle.

Ironically since Nick had left Australia, a great distance had fallen between them. Nick had been making short expeditions: from Larkwood, to Mr Wyecliffe, to Dr Okoye, to Mrs Dixon and now, coming full circle, back to Larkwood again. And he had said nothing to his father — not since he’d concluded that the dear old buffer hadn’t the faintest idea what his wife had been up to. Driving through the monastery gates, Nick resolved to buy some red mullet and white Burgundy He would cook the meal that his father had planned on the day Elizabeth had died. And, when they were warm and tipsy he’d tell him all that had been happening while they’d both been far away on different continents.

Nick couldn’t take his eyes off his mother’s accomplice: a solemn man in a school blazer that was far too small for him. The white cuffs of an ample shirt stuck out from the sleeves. A blue-and-yellow-striped tie suggested membership of an exclusive cricket club. His eyes were dark, like rings in pale saucers.

Apart from Nick and Mr Bradshaw, seated round the table were Inspector Cartwright and three monks: the Prior of Larkwood, Father Anselm and Brother Cyril — a man whose pinned sleeve would have evoked Admiral Nelson, had it not been for his defining squareness. He seemed to have lost his neck, never mind an arm. They assembled in a cool room of thick white stone. Arched windows threw sunshine across the old flags like banners of yellow cloth.

‘It’s all very simple,’ said Brother Cyril, as if it were a complaint. ‘In a nutshell, it’s a scheme to sell information, but it’s hidden within a legitimate business. I became suspicious because if you look at the receipt numbers and the dates and the description, on one and the same day Mr Riley sometimes sells an object but then buys it back again. I’ll give you an example. Let’s take that ashtray Imagine it’s on Mr Riley’s stall. There’s a little sticker on it marked ‘£15’. But he sells it for £30. Then he buys it back again for £15. It’s a crazy way of accounting for the fact that he’s made £15 and the ashtray hasn’t left the table.’

‘But that isn’t what we’ve been told,’ said Inspector Cartwright. ‘Our understanding is that people arrive, give him money and then leave.’

‘Of course they do, because that’s exactly what happens: they buy some information.’ Brother Cyril scanned his audience. ‘The shenanigan with the receipts is done afterwards. It only occurs on paper. The ashtray doesn’t even move. But the receipts show that a different kind of sale has occurred. They prove that Riley pocketed £15.’

‘But why do you think he’s selling information?’ asked Father Anselm tentatively.

‘Because otherwise,’ snapped Brother Cyril, ‘someone’s giving him money for nowt.’

Nick was amazed. Neither of the other monks was in the least discomfited by the ill temper of their confrere.

‘And why go to such lengths?’ added the Prior. Each eyebrow was like a chewed toothbrush, and his glasses were lopsided, with a paperclip on one side for a screw He had received Nick with surprising warmth.

‘There’s only one explanation,’ said Brother Cyril, raising a thick index finger. ‘If he got rumbled, he could trace every transaction, just like I’ve done. He can account for every penny received. There’s no cash in hand. So he can show that when all’s said and done, he’s paid tax on the lot. In fact, he’s in breach of all manner of accounting rules because this is a completely separate business — and he wouldn’t pay any tax at all if he’d set it up properly And that brings me to the heart of this completely barmy system.’ He laid his arm flat on the table, fingers splayed. ‘On the one hand, he must think that what he’s doing is legal, because he could have sold his information over a pint of beer. Instead, he fills out all this paperwork to demonstrate what he’s doing. On the other hand’ — he shrugged the shoulder with the missing arm — ‘he’s obviously hiding something. And that suggests it’s an illegal activity.’

‘But who, then, is he hiding it from?’ asked Inspector Cartwright.

‘Nancy’ replied a husky voice.

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.

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?’

It was meant to be an introduction to what Nick had prepared himself to reveal. He was seeking a small piece of common territory upon which to build.

Charles carried on laughing and dabbed his chest with a napkin. Lining up his knife and fork, he replied, ‘I’ll thank you kindly never to mention that name in this house again.’

The laughter had ceased, and Charles’s face was bitten, his lips pursed. He moved his plate an inch.

‘Is he for real … this bogeyman?’ asked Nick, incredulous.

‘This conversation is over.’ Charles had that pale, helpless look that must have driven them all mad in the bank when explanations were in demand. He said, ‘You don’t need to know. Your mother’s dead. It’s over.’

They both became completely still, hands on their laps, concentrating on a half-eaten fish. This, I suppose, thought Nick, is what passes as a moment of truth. He’d been convinced that his father knew nothing of his wife’s crisis; but in that opening Edwardian rebuke he’d shown that he must know everything, that he always had done, and that he’d held back even the barest of explanations from his son. He’d watched Nick scuttling around in a yellow Beetle; he’d stood at doors and windows clocking that a parental secret had been breached: and he’d said absolutely nothing — and never had done, except to commend the merits of a trip to Australia … and Papua New Guinea.

Something like rage and love and fear swooped upon Nick: anger at the antics of his parents, passion for their protective concern, but a certain dread at what had driven them to behave like that in the first place. His mother had wanted to bring him home, to tell him; but his father hadn’t agreed: he’d been scared. ‘The Bundi do a butterfly dance,’ he’d said.

And Charles was still scared. But of what? And who? And why?

Nick folded up his napkin and went upstairs to the Green Room. This was where she’d planned it all, and this was where it would end — for him and his father. The only person who knew what the hell was going on was a half-wit crook, whose grubbing around had demolished Elizabeth’s self-respect.

Nick took the orange flyer out of his pocket. The wine had made him foolish, he knew, but also perceptive. Colours were slightly brighter than usual — like his insight; things wouldn’t keep still — like his resolve.

He dialled the number and listened.

He’d been a fool. He hadn’t seen the true crisis, even though he’d found the key and opened the box. The ‘not knowing and not being able to care’, Locard’s Principle (as applied), the ‘responsibility without blame’ — it was all good stuff, but these had only pointed towards a rarefied conscience. And yet there’d been something else in the box, right from the outset.

An answer machine clicked into action. Nick stubbed the button and dialled again. He waited, getting jumpy.

Nick had actually hit upon the critical question long ago, in a dingy pub near Cheapside. He’d ignored it, wanting to turn away from the idea that Elizabeth’s compassion had been a commodity for the client, a bonus thrown in with the brief fee.

But now he wanted to know what had really happened when his mother had risen to cross-examine Riley’s pitiable victim. For Anji, who’d had the guts to step into a witness box, the Pieman had been a dread presence, a reality that still exercised Mr Wyecliffe’s fascination ten years later. And what had Elizabeth done? She’d skilfully — and compassionately — made the Pieman into a figure from Anji’s tormented mind; she’d explained him away she’d made him a dream …

The phone was answered.

It had to be the wine, but Nick shrank from the voice, for it was otherworldly in its harshness. He pictured his father before a half-eaten tench … It was safe downstairs … and there was another half bottle of Mâcon Lugny waiting … but he wanted to know the answer to his question.

‘Who was the Pieman?’

Nick had to ask because he felt, obscurely that his mother had known all along, even as she’d taken Anji by the hand; that he had found the secret spring of Elizabeth’s disgrace.

Twenty minutes later Nick was at the wheel, over the limit, and driving east towards Hornchurch Marshes. He’d expected a reluctant conversation, not a demand for a meeting.

14

The Prior frequently reminded the community in chapter that, as the Rule made clear, there are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.

With this counsel in mind, Anselm guided George to the Vault, saying very little. Before withdrawing, Debbie Lynwood led them to a simply furnished bedroom away from the bustle of the day centre. On a sideboard was a selection of games and puzzles in battered boxes. George studied the lids meditatively ‘Riley knew I was there,’ he said. ‘He was speaking to me.’

Anselm nodded at the rounded back of this lean, honourable man in his honourable blazer and tie. Adam’s sin, said Genesis, was that he wanted to be like God, to direct the great arrangement of things into which he had been wonderfully born; to know why good was good, and why evil was evil; maybe to make a few discreet changes. There are occasions, thought Anselm, when I would like to be God: long enough to understand this man’s fall, and to do something about it.

George chose a jigsaw — a medieval map of the known world. Anselm left George and took a bus to Camberwell. Once more he was directed to the garden and the corridor of chestnut trees. Sister Dorothy was in the same place, at the far end. Tartan blankets kept her warm; the brown pakol had been pulled down to protect her ears. She glanced at Anselm as he sat down beside her on a stone bench, and said, ‘She was a very clever girl, but naughty. Didn’t take to the rules at first. She spent her first months in detention every Sunday afternoon. I used to visit her with parcels from the tuck shop.’

‘I take it you mean Elizabeth Steadman, and not Elizabeth Glendinning,’ said Anselm.

‘What a very silly mistake,’ she replied, closing her eyes. The fracture in her nose caught the low, slanting light, and it appeared dark and grotesque.

‘I was completely fooled,’ said Anselm.

Sister Dorothy might have admitted defeat, but she was shrewd enough to wait and see just how much territory had been lost. Anselm smuggled an arm into each wide sleeve, taking hold of his elbows. It was cold. Three ravens watched him from the branches of an oak beyond the convent wall.

‘I imagine that it was in the evening,’ said Anselm, ‘and that it had grown dark outside. Elizabeth was alone in the Green Room at St John’s Wood. She opened The Following of Christ — a book that went back, perhaps, to her last meeting with you —and she cut a hole in the pages deep enough to hold a key Much later she came to Larkwood with a duplicate and asked me to use it if, by chance, she were to die. Her last words to me were, “You can’t always explain things to your children. If need be, will you help Nicholas understand?” At first, I thought she meant help him come to terms with grief. Then I thought she wanted me to explain that you couldn’t be a lawyer without a sort of innocent compromise. But now I fear she meant something very different –’

Sister Dorothy made a low groan of surrender. ‘Mr Kemble said you might come.’

The ravens hopped onto higher branches, and then flew off in different directions.

‘You know Roddy?’ Anselm had the sort of sensation that might occur if you turned a corner in a familiar street, only to find you were in a different country.

‘Oh yes, we’re old friends,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘I met him during a prison visit. My veil charmed him. In those days it was like a marquee. He wanted to know how it was fixed, whether it was comfortable. I rather thought he was jealous.’

‘He’s never mentioned you.’

‘I should hope not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that is what we agreed.’

Anselm tried to stop his intuition racing ahead of his questions. ‘Sister, did you introduce Elizabeth to Mr Kemble?’

‘Not quite.’ Sister Dorothy seemed proud of her own machinations. ‘I told Roddy all about Elizabeth when she began her studies for the Bar. He wangled several accidental meetings and eventually urged her to apply to his chambers. Elizabeth never found out.’

Anselm’s inkling was like a rush of blood. He said, ‘You didn’t meet Elizabeth in Carlisle, did you? You met here in Camberwell … This is the hostel where you were based … before the architects put in those corridors …’

Sister Dorothy gazed high above the convent wall, as if she could see ridges, peaks and snow ‘Wheel me inside, please, and tell me about the key’ she said.

As happens in November, darkness had come like a thief, and quickly.

15

When Riley got to Hornchurch Marshes the light was dwindling. Gingerly he trotted down a sloping path that led to the Four Lodges. Years back, a cooling tower had been demolished and all that remained were these rectangular pools. The Council had put some fish in and left them to it.

On the site of the old tower, Riley scoured the grass. Whimpering and swearing, he kicked free some rocks and a blackened two-by-four with rusted nails protruding like a row of buttons. Then he sat on the remnants of a wall, hugging himself, his eyes fixed on the path. He was up a height, feeling nauseous, watching his actions run ahead of him, like they’d done with John Bradshaw At his feet were the weapons, and a torch.

This was only the third time Riley had been here. The last was after the trial, and before that he’d been a boy.

Very early one morning the man Riley wouldn’t call Dad had put the remaining kitten in a sack. The other eight had found good homes. ‘Put your coat on, Graham,’ he said. There was a smell of aftershave — something brash and fiery.

Without speaking, they walked through Dagenham’s empty streets towards the pale light over Hornchurch Marshes. Presently the flats of the Thames opened out like a damp blanket and there, in the middle, were four panes of water, framed and criss-crossed by slippery bricks.

They walked to the edge and Walter’s arm began to swing. His chest blew up and his mouth went firm. Sick at the idea of unwanted life, Riley grabbed the big man’s sleeve, but a backhand sent him flying He was on his hands and knees for the splash, with blood on his lip. The bag turned in the water and sank. Riley watched, transfixed. He’d expected a scream — not from the bag, but from above and all around. But there was no sound … none at all. After the ripples had run off, the surface carried nothing but colour snatched from the brightening sky.

That evening, they came back to the Four Lodges. Midges clung like hats around the fishermen. They sat on boxes and stools, maggots on their bottom lip. That’s how it was done: you warmed it in the mouth. When it hit the cold water the thing wriggled on its hook, attracting the perch and the carp. Walter kept his supply in a Tom Long tobacco tin.

‘Go on, Graham,’ he said distantly.

Riley wanted to please Walter, so he did as he was asked, and Walter looked on, midges circling his head. Riley gazed into his high, tormented eyes: the big man didn’t really want to be like this, but he couldn’t stop himself. However, there and then, Riley’s understanding shrivelled up. Somehow, this couldn’t be right … feeling this thing writhe between his lips. It was the taste of decay.

Riley didn’t trouble himself with questions like why the man he wouldn’t call Dad did what he did — he already knew the answer: Walter had a child of his own; Riley was in the way The big man had lost his job and his self-respect. He wanted a life different from the one he’d got. Those huge lungs were bursting with complaint. The braces weren’t strong enough to hold it in. When Riley lay awake that night, after two visits to the Four Lodges, such thoughts didn’t even ruffle the surface of his mind; no, Riley was more confused by the senseless parade of death: in one day he’d seen a fish taken out of water, and a cat thrown in.

When Riley next came, after the trial, he thought of the Major, who’d never lost faith in the boy who’d turned up at the hostel, who’d seen someone else behind the flesh and blood in front of him — someone lost to Riley’s eyes. Leaving the conference room, Riley had glimpsed something like agony on the old soldier’s face. The Major was asking himself how this beast had turned out the way he had. It was a good question, but who’d have thought that the die was cast when Riley still a boy couldn’t make sense of a brightening sky?

On that glorious day of acquittal, midges gathered around Riley’s head; and he wept as a man on the grass where he’d wept as a boy.

The temperature was dropping fast with the light and Riley shivered. Before him lay the Four Lodges and, on their far side, coming down a sloping path, was a big lad … a lad who was on to Walter.

16

Nancy stood in the yard by the pile of bricks that she’d been collecting for the herb garden.

‘You could have gone places.’

Mr Lawton had said that because Nancy saw the connections between things. It was insulting, she’d thought, because he was implying she’d wasted her life, when all she’d done was work for him and marry Graham Riley.

‘We’ve had a meeting.’

Babycham had been fiery and protective and a friend — her oldest friend, in fact. There’d been a meeting of the clerical staff and everyone was ready to support her. ‘Run for it, girl,’ she’d said.

‘I once had a son.’

Mr Johnson had steamed like a tea bag on the draining board and Nancy had listened with a hand over her mouth. She’d been desperate to know what had happened, but her friend in the goggles had never been able to put words on it.

‘Our son was killed by a bad man.’

Emily Bradshaw had said that to Nancy not knowing who she was; just as Nancy had spoken to George Bradshaw not knowing who he was. She’d listened to neither of them. She’d run out of Aspen Bank chased by the sound of tapping on the window.

‘Maybe your constancy will save him. But what about you?’

That kind man had refused to give up. He’d circled the house, knowing she was inside. He’d come with a cake from Greggs. He’d left his phone number.

They’d all come — even Mr Wyecliffe, with his quip about tossed coins and their tails — but Nancy hadn’t seen any of the connections. No, it was worse than that, far worse. She had seen them. And she’d turned away in the name of trust.

‘My life rests on a heap of lies,’ said Nancy She felt no emotion whatsoever, though she was crying all the same. Her soul was like an arm gone dead, as when you wake up at night and find this heavy thing, limp by your side. All you can do is wait for the tingling to come and bring it back to life.

Nancy knelt down and started counting the bricks, to see how many more were needed.

17

Nick paused at the bottom of the slope. It was almost dark and extremely cold. In the distance he could see the Thames like a black vein. Above it and beyond glowed the lights of south London. To the west stood the motor works, immense and silent. Directly before him, like pools of oil, were the Four Lodges. On the other side, stamped against the skyline, sat Riley He was utterly still; his breath appeared as a coarse mist.

Skirting the water’s edge, Nick suffered a primal desire to run away He subdued it, because the hunched figure had scared his father and possessed his mother. He stopped by the end of a pool, well back from Riley but close enough to hear his words.

A low voice came out of a small fog. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you about me?’

‘No.’

Riley’s elbows were on his thighs. His face and body were completely blacked out. ‘Who gave you the photograph?’

Nick angled his head, trying to see into the dark shape ahead of him, the moving arms. The questions seemed planned, as if they were a test.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Did you post it?’

‘No.’

After a few moments Nick heard something fall to the ground near Riley’s feet with a thump. A long exhalation of mist came from the lowered head. The voice became curious and quieter. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-seven.’

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m a doctor.’

A doctor …’ It was as though he’d never met one, but had heard of them from magazines and television programmes. ‘What’s your father called?’

‘Charles.’

‘What does he do?’

A banker.’

A banker …’ They were another species from the same glossy pages, off the same screen. Riley stood up and purposefully crossed the five yards between them. As he passed Nick he slowed, saying, ‘Forget about the Pieman.’

Nick turned on his heel, watching the stooped figure tread quickly along the lodge bank, towards the path. ‘Where are you going?’ he called stupidly.

‘Brighton.’

Nick stumbled after him, unable to see where he was going, aware only of a sheet of glinting black water to his left. He grabbed Riley’s shoulder, sensing the sheer physical difference between them. Nick was a big man, towering over a bantam. ‘Tell me what I came here to find out.’

‘No.’ Riley pulled free with a swing of his elbow.

‘Who was he?’

‘Go home … just go home; go back to your patients.’ Riley began to trot, heading up the slope, towards the night sky.

Nick gave up. He cast an eye around Riley’s chosen meeting place: at the cold marshes, the scattering of small lights, and, upstream, the brooding hulks. A spasm of rage made him rebel against this embodiment of his mother’s conscience — at the thought that she felt responsible for Riley’s twisted actions.

‘Before you came along, she was happy’ he bellowed. ‘You shattered what was left of her life.’ His voice bounced off the motor works, falling quiet as if the air had soaked it up.

Riley seemed to strike a wall. Slowly he turned around, and came back along the brick ledge beside the water. When he was close, he halted, treading the ground, his head bent and angled. Gusts of fog escaped his mouth as if he’d just run a race.

‘Let me tell you something you don’t know’ He seemed to be struggling, as if a shred of pork were jammed between two teeth. A faint light touched his face, and Nick finally glimpsed his features, judging the man to be not just ill, but profoundly sick. ‘Before she met your father,’ said Riley as if he were forcing out the words, ‘before she got her chance, she was on the street. I might have kept the money … but she earned it.’ Riley looked up with pity, a far-off emotion gathering like water on limestone. Quietly almost gently he said, ‘She was no better than me.’

Riley stepped back and groaned.

All at once a bright light struck Nick’s face. Terrified, he raised his hands … Slowly he let his arms drop. Stunned, feeling light-headed and sick, Nick glared back at the unseen presence behind the torch. Riley must have been observing him intently because he didn’t cut the beam, and, for a very long time, he didn’t move. Then, after a snap, it was dark again.

The last that Nick saw of Riley was of a sunken head, and limp arms against the sky on the brow of a slope.

18

‘When the university term was about to begin,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘I drove Elizabeth to Durham. We strolled down a cobbled lane near the cathedral and she stepped into a charity shop and bought a picture. I thought it was the frame, but I was wrong.

As in many religious houses, the living room seemed to have been furnished exclusively from the type of place where Elizabeth had bought her picture. A mismatch of chairs were grouped around a fifties glass-top table. At its centre, having a status somewhere between that of a relic and an ornament (said Sister Dorothy), was an ashtray that had once been used by a pope. The carpet was hard, without a pile, creating the durable look of a car showroom.

‘We found a bench on Palace Green,’ said Sister Dorothy pushing stray silver hair beneath her pakol. ‘There was a market with people milling all around, but Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the three people in the picture. Rather sadly she began to imagine who they were, and what their stories might have been. I joined in. Elizabeth came up with the mad inventor dreaming of a smoke detector, and I added the wife, with her one joke about a fire extinguisher. We both laughed … among all these real people, with real lives.’ She sipped a glass of milk, resting it on her lap and the tartan blanket around her legs. ‘And what of the little madam in the middle? I said. Elizabeth touched the girl’s hair … as if she might reach through the glass to the ribbons … and she said, “She’s got the whole of her life ahead of her.” Even then, I didn’t see what she was planning. It was only when we reached the gates of her college that she told me her decision … that we could never meet again.’ Sister Dorothy sighed. ‘She wanted a fresh start. The story we’d made up would become hers, because she could live with its tragedy She would take the girl’s life and make something wonderful of it … Those were Elizabeth’s words … something wonderful.’

With permission, Anselm rolled himself a cigarette. Licking the paper, he said, ‘And what of the girl whose tragedy was too painful to bear?’

Sister Dorothy nodded knowingly She recognised the unlimited scope of the question, Father Anselm’s plea to be told everything.

‘I met her shortly after I came to Camberwell.’ She paused while Anselm’s match flared. ‘In those days this place was a hostel for girls, an open door with no questions asked. But it was one step removed from the street, and I wanted to reach the kids who would never look in our direction, who might not know we were here. I wanted to change the world with … acts of mercy’ —she sang the phrase with a raised fist — ‘so we tried something different. I’d jump in a taxi — driven by Mr Entwistle, a friend of the community — and he’d drop me off at Euston, so I could keep my eye out when the trains pulled in … You see, there were lots of kids coming down to London from up north, to the pavements of gold, to a better life … and we hoped to get them off the street as fast as possible.’ She dropped her little fist and sipped her milk. ‘So, Mr Entwistle would come back after half am hour and take me to King’s Cross, and then Liverpool Street, and so it would go on, to all the mainline stations. I’d mooch around, plucking up the courage to approach anyone I thought might have nowhere to go. I confess in those days, we had our eye out mostly for girls. And yet … Elizabeth’s story begins with a boy I met at Paddington.’ She glanced sideways and said confidentially ‘Would you roll me one?’

‘Of course.’ While Anselm made the cigarette, Sister Dorothy finished her milk. Then she lit up with the panache of Lauren Bacall.

‘I saw this boy in a man’s trousers stealing fruit from a barrow,’ said Sister Dorothy sternly ‘I called to him, and, strangely I suppose, he came. We got talking and he explained that he’d just left a burnt-out bank round the corner, a squat run by a lad, a hard lad. When Mr Entwistle turned up, I took the fruit thief to an hotelier I knew who kept a bed free, and then I went back to Paddington, to a lane that ran by the tracks.’ With determination, but control, she slowly blew out the smoke. ‘I stood beneath a street lamp watching these garden statues at intervals along the pavement. That’s what I thought at the time. They were like ornaments that could no longer spout water in the grounds of … a terrible place. One by one, they drifted down the road, but none of the cars that came ever stopped. So I remained there, too scared to step forward and too angry to move back. A lifetime later, Mr Entwistle took me home. I went to the police. They told me that so long as I frightened off the business, the kids wouldn’t work, and without any evidence, there was nothing they could do. It was a terrible irony All the same, I put myself beneath that light every evening, from eight until ten, and that was how I met her.’

Sister Dorothy reached for the ashtray on the coffee table and placed it between them, on the arm of Anselm’s chair. ‘That’s how I met Elizabeth’, she repeated. At night, a fifteen-year-old with white legs, long black hair and no socks … bare feet in black, boardroom shoes. She was the only one who came anywhere near me — about as far away as that chair. Close enough to deter any business, and far enough to catch my voice. Every night I came to that lamp, and every night she hovered within talking distance. That’s how I learned her name. She taught me to smoke. Can you picture it, the two of us, by the kerb, sharing a cigarette? We talked of the weather —anything, except why she was there and where she’d come from. When Mr Entwistle arrived, I’d open the door, and she’d just look at me and shake her head. And then, one night, she came.’

Anselm felt his mind crowding with images of Elizabeth, none of them remotely similar to the description he’d just heard. He saw himself as a pupil in chambers, sharing a box of Jaffa Cakes with the best silk in her field. She’d picked him out, in a way and started their conversations …

‘She was standing closer to me than usual,’ said Sister Dorothy leaning towards Anselm. At her feet was a small red suitcase, like you’d take on a weekend break. And over her shoulder I saw someone edging along the pavement. He was neither boy nor man, a wiry thing with his hands in his pockets. At that moment the taxi pulled up … Elizabeth turned around, as if she’d known all along that this creeping thing was there. “I’ve paid you in full,” she said, very deliberately “and now I owe you nothing.” I opened the door, and she picked up her little suitcase and climbed in. That hollow, haunted thing on the pavement was Riley When I came back the next night, the street was empty and the squat had been abandoned.’

Anselm rolled fresh cigarettes for them both, fumbling with the paper. He could hardly keep up with Sister Dorothy’s rolling narrative. She’d gathered speed, speaking towards the empty chairs in the common room. Elizabeth had stayed at the hostel for months. Refused to go home. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t talk. Finally she was prepared to let Sister Dorothy act as a messenger. But she was very clear that if steps were taken to send her home, she’d disappear once and for all.

‘So I knocked on the door,’ said Sister Dorothy slowing as if she’d just tramped across London. ‘I told Mrs Steadman that her daughter had run away but was safe’ — she glanced at Anselm, her eyes narrowed and moist — ‘I did this kind of work for years, and I always had to manage hysteria and anguish … the lot … But this time, and neither before nor since, I met with instant and complete resignation.’

She motioned for a light, because the cigarette had gone out. Anselm struck a match. ‘What of Mr Steadman?’ he asked, after a short silence.

Accidental death,’ she replied, through a breath of smoke. ‘Mrs Steadman wouldn’t speak of it, but the coroner’s certificate was required when the authorities were convened to plan Elizabeth’s future — that’s how I found out. In all the years to come, Elizabeth never referred to him. Not once.’

With court approval, it was agreed that Elizabeth would attend the Carlisle school, and Sister Dorothy would act as a go-between to Mrs Steadman. The court order was kept in an office upstairs because, technically speaking, Camberwell became Elizabeth’s home address.

‘After she went to Durham, I never saw her again,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘but I received a postcard when she decided to become a barrister.’ With the cigarette between her teeth, she wheeled herself across the room to a sideboard. She returned with a breviary on her lap. Wincing at the smoke, she leafed through the pages until she found her bookmark.

The picture showed Gray’s Inn Chapel on a summer’s day beneath whose tower Anselm had waited for Nicholas. Written on the other side were these brief words:

Tuesday week I shall be called to the Bar. Thanks to you alone, I am happy The girl we found in ribbons shall spend her days on the heels of the wrongdoer.

With my love,

Elizabeth

‘That same day I gave Roddy a cold call,’ said Sister Dorothy taking back the card. ‘I hoped he’d remember me from my veil.’

‘Did he?’

‘Oh yes.’

They both smiled, quiet for a moment at the recollection of Mr Roderick Kemble QC, who’d wheedled his way into Elizabeth’s aspirations, and fulfilled them.

Darkness had fallen completely outside. The rush of traffic on Coldharbour Lane sounded like the tide, sure but fitful. When George had accused Riley thought Anselm, Riley had turned to Elizabeth. The three of them met in court. The symmetry was appalling. And I stood among them, unseeing.

Sister Dorothy stubbed out her cigarette and said regretfully ‘I’ll tell you now about the boy who sent me towards that street light.’ (Anselm had wondered about him. A sympathetic hotelier had given him a bed for the night.) ‘He was named after his grandfather — a revered man in the household.’

‘To use the language of the day’ said Sister Dorothy wearily ‘the lad discovered that his namesake had interfered with a neighbour’s child. It was the word he used when he told his mother, who didn’t believe him … and when he told his father, who couldn’t … so the lad went to the police. The victim denied it, so the lad was ostracised. Then, one morning, Granddad took a train to Scarborough and walked into the sea, leaving his medals on the beach.

‘That’s why he left home,’ mumbled the old nun, ‘why he had to.’ She was heavy with remorse, not wanting Anselm to see the place into which he’d stumbled (the place where, unknown to her, Anselm had found the lawyer’s grail: a win against the odds). ‘He wouldn’t tell anyone who he was,’ she admitted, quietly ‘It’s Elizabeth’s tale all over again. Start afresh, I said. Use your other name. I’ve often wondered what became of young George.’

19

Charles Glendinning’s interest in Lepidoptera did not extend to catching examples for display. They belonged out of reach. And because they rarely kept still, occasions of extended observation were rare, always unforeseen and thereby on each count, prized. Perhaps, then, it was out of respect that Charles had acquired several antique collections: long, shallow boxes lined with green baize, fronted with glass. The specimens were laid out in neat rows, each with a label bearing a name in brown copperplate. These cabinets lined the walls of Charles’s study. It had always been known as the Butterfly Room.

After parking the VW in the back lane, Nick moved through a dark and silent house to find his father. His lungs were tight, as if they were too small for the job. With a shaking finger he pushed open the door to the study Charles was leaning over a display cabinet, hands behind his back, his face artificially bright from phosphorous illumination.

Nick let the door clip shut. He wanted to be a child again, to sit on someone’s knee, and to be told it was just a dream; to be ushered back into a world without demons. The leather armchair was cold to the touch.

‘That tench was nauseating,’ said Charles, without shifting his gaze. ‘The wine, on the other hand, was divine.’

‘Dad,’ said Nick, ‘I’ve just met Graham Riley’

Charles placed an arm on either side of the cabinet under review His knuckles turned white. The examining gaze, however, remained intact. He is a man preparing himself, thought Nick, wanting him to be strong and bigger than his own revelations.

‘That,’ said Charles faintly ‘was a remarkably foolish thing to do.’

Yes, it was, thought Nick. And now I know what I do not want to know. It did not belong in the garden of their shared memories. Every year they’d gone to their cliff-top cottage at Saint Martin’s Haven, facing the Jack Sound and the island of Skomer. As a boy he’d follow his father in the dark of summer nights, shining his torch on the island’s protectors, a militia of toads. They’d sat on the paths, fat-necked and smiling. Once, his mother had come. They’d gone looking for these lazy squaddies but had halted, awestruck before a patch of heathland lit by glow-worms.

‘He said Mum was no better than him …’ Nick was pleading for the innocence of Skomer, the Barrier Reef, Christmas Day … all of it. He wanted the lot restored. He wanted his father to tell him something that would put things back into position.

Charles had closed his eyes. He was like a man praying, horribly fervent and yet strong. Nick had always seen the duffer — the gentleman with raised eyebrows in the provincial museums of half-term holidays — but never this. This was a different kind of strength, and it was not the kind he was looking for or wanted.

‘Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?’ asked Charles ingenuously.

‘Of course,’ said Nick, wanting to scream. Charles’s employer had retained Elizabeth to bring a claim for money paid under a mistake of fact — that is to say Charles had authorised payment of a cheque to an individual notwithstanding the countermand of the person who had drawn it. Elizabeth won on a technicality. The same day Charles rang her chambers, he sent her flowers … he did all the things that he’d thought he was constitutionally incapable of doing. Such was the transforming power of forgetting yourself, and being unable to forget someone else. Such was the received wisdom.

‘Well, let me tell you another version,’ said Charles. He motioned to his son with his hand — warmly like he’d done upon the heath on Skomer.

Nick came to the display cabinet and looked down at the specimens, lined up and labelled. His father’s arm was suddenly heavy on his shoulder.

‘See this one, top right?’ With his free hand Charles pointed through the glass to a butterfly with large, dark reddish-purple wings trimmed with a buttery gold. Reserved but ardent, he said, ‘This lady came to be known as White Petticoat and Grand Surprise. The labels suggest that she’s naughty … a shameless gal, a trickster. She’s had lots of names. They tell you something, but they never quite capture her.’ He glanced at Nick, as he used to do in those fusty museums. ‘She’s not a city girl. She likes the woods … willow, birch and elm.’

‘Where’s she from?’ Nick scarcely heard himself, because he thought his father had gone raving mad.

‘Another land, far away … she’s a rare vagrant.’ He looked more closely drawing Nick down with him. ‘She has another label: the Mourning Cloak. But when she was first sighted in Cool Arbour Lane’ — his voice dropped, as if he’d come to the secret — ‘she was called the Camberwell Beauty.’

Charles was holding his son tightly across the shoulder, but all the time he looked down into the cabinet of phosphorescent light. His grip was almost fierce. There was no escape.

‘Your mother was a Grand Surprise,’ said Charles, confidingly ‘She moved warily as if she’d been netted once … and was forever mindful of where she’d been. When I first saw her at court, I had to follow her. There was something about her eyes, the movement of her arms. So I tracked her progress. Nothing could keep me away neither nettles nor thorns, and I went through the lot, barelegged without a net, never wanting to trap her, only hoping to be near by That’s how it was when we got married. I had to keep my distance, all scratched and swollen.’ His grip on his son eased, but only slightly ‘But when I least expected it — many years later — she came to me … I could barely breathe; I could only look at her broken wings with wonder, with astonishment, that she could still fly and that she had deigned to rest on me.’ His blue eyes began to move, checking labels. ‘Nothing Riley told you could come between me and the love I have for your mother.’

Gently Charles pulled Nick round, placing a hand on each of his son’s shoulders. ‘The mother you knew has vanished, I know, and I grieve for you. But if you just wait’ — he was distressed, but strong in this newly discovered way — ‘the labels — those tabs that hang on what we’ve done, that can never sum up who we are —they’ll all fade and find their place. And then someone infinitely more wonderful will appear.’

Charles strode across the room to a drinks cabinet and poured two glasses of scotch. ‘Will you drink to that?’ he asked.

20

At any one time,’ said George distractedly ‘there were roughly ten of us living in that squat.’

He picked up a jigsaw piece and angled it towards a small lamp. The map of the known world was almost complete.

‘News of a place to stay travels on the street,’ said George, ‘and that is how I met Elizabeth. I first saw her huddled by a fire in the manager’s office. On her lap was a small red suitcase with a gold lock. We became friends, though I never heard her story, and I never told her mine. Riley was kind … helped her settle in … he watched her. At that stage, he seemed no different to anyone else. But then a change occurred.’ George knitted his fingers on the table. ‘I don’t know whether Riley started it, or whether he moved naturally with the downward drift, but talk moved from cold and hunger to quick money Either way Riley became a leader … feverish … and, in a way ambitious … and that’s when I left. For reasons I will never understand, Elizabeth refused to come with me.’

Anselm sat very still, arms folded on the edge of the table facing George. The room was dark, save for the pool of light thrown between them.

‘After Sister Dorothy found me a place for the night,’ George continued, ‘I came back to Paddington. What I saw, I’ve never forgotten. There she was, beneath a street-light, completely still. Ahead, and to the left, in shadow, stood the squat. On the right, behind a wall topped with broken glass, ran the railway line. Against the sky I could see a footbridge leading from the station. The street was empty. And then I saw some movement on the bridge … two people … one larger than the other. They paused midway and I knew it was Riley looking over towards Sister Dorothy Even back then, he was bony and stooped, strangely angular. He was leading someone by the hand. They came down the steps and onto the road. Again he stopped, facing Sister Dorothy … with Riley holding a hand, and carrying a bag. Slowly with side-steps, he moved into the squat, tugging the arm of another runaway.

George returned to his jigsaw, tapping edges that wouldn’t stay down. He wasn’t concentrating, because some pieces became detached and he left them misaligned. Remotely he said, ‘It was … awful … you see, Riley went to the station because Sister Dorothy had come to the street. It’s as though he’d taken her place on the platform, and, coming back to the squat, he’d let her see the consequences of her choice.’ George found Anselm’s troubled gaze and said, ‘That night I vowed that if I ever got the chance to name Riley for what he was, to bring him down, then I’d seize the day’

The room grew darker, and the lamplight grew harsher. The walls seemed to have vanished. All that existed was this table, this jigsaw and an old man with careful fingers. Anselm sat back, almost in shadow, listening to what had happened to a boy who’d made a solemn promise.

George had got a job at the Bonnington and there he’d met Emily They saved pennies in large bottles and ‘did without’ until they could afford two rooms in a boarding house. Emily went to night school, did a typing course and landed a job with the National Coal Board. George couldn’t forget the quiet street that ran by a railway line in Paddington. When he got the chance, he started work at the Bridges night shelter, first as a helper, and finally as manager. It played havoc with married life, because George was out four nights every week and permanently on call: no one seemed to know the system quite so well as George; no one seemed to solve a crisis quite so deftly But, as Emily well understood, this wasn’t ‘work’ for George. The Bridges was his way of reaching back to where he’d come from. It was therefore fitting, observed George, that he should have heard the name Riley from the mouths of children: Anji, Lisa and Beverly ‘But I let them slip over the edge,’ he said.

Anselm stared at the map’s illustrations. Monstrous creatures of the imagination inhabited the extremities; radiant apostles stood upon the lands to which they’d brought the Good News. It was difficult to conceive how such a chart could have served any navigational purpose. He let his mind study the robes: he knew that the unfolding narrative was moving inevitably towards his cross-examination.

‘After leaving Paddington, I never saw Elizabeth again,’ said George. ‘Not until that day at the Old Bailey We’d been told to address our replies to the jury, so I hadn’t noticed her … and it had been over twenty years, so a glance told me nothing. It was only when you began your questions that a glance became a stare. And then I realised: Riley had picked Elizabeth to silence me.’ He breathed heavily through his nose, and leaned back into the obscurity behind the light. A slight agitation raised his voice and his hands began to move with his words. As you were asking your questions, I was trying to work out what was happening. I was sure that this confrontation was a threat … If I stuck to my evidence, then Riley would expose Elizabeth. She was gazing at me, pleading with her eyes, but telling me what? To spare an old friend who’d made a new life? Or to get on with it and condemn Riley … to bring him down while she was watching?’

Anselm knew the answer, because Elizabeth had told him the night before. ‘Do you think Riley is innocent?’ she’d asked him, feet on the table. And when he’d said no, she’d invited him to cross-examine Bradshaw the next morning. ‘This is your chance to do something significant.’ Outwardly Elizabeth had been mildly bored. But inside she’d screamed with fear that George might fail, without dreaming that Anselm might succeed. He stared at the map, with its strangely beautiful but false proportions, and said, ‘And before you could determine if it was mercy she wanted, or sacrifice — for it would mean her public humiliation — I asked you the one question you could not answer.’

George did not reply.

‘Because if you told the court about David,’ said Anselm, ‘it would undermine your own evidence.’

George still did not speak.

And, of all people, it would fall on Elizabeth to argue that the word of George Bradshaw could not be trusted, because he’d made false allegations once before.’ Anselm paused. ‘It must have been a dreadful moment, George, when I pushed you out of that witness box. I’m far sorrier than I can express, all the more so because I gloried in not knowing what I’d done.’

The sounds of feet and low voices were at the door.

No one is more familiar with the varieties of forensic disappointment than a police officer. Sometimes she knows that a man has committed a crime but she can’t bring him to book, either because a witness won’t speak out (unlike Anji) or the assembled facts wouldn’t convince a jury of guilt (as in the case of John Bradshaw). And even if she rolls him through the court door, a wheel can still fall off (as happened with George Bradshaw). But, curiously the greatest disappointment of the lot is the one reserved for objectionable conduct that falls short of an offence.

These sunless thoughts settled upon Anselm as he greeted Inspector Cartwright, noting that she did not smile or look at George, and that she kept her coat wrapped tight despite the rampant efficiency of an institutional heating system. They formed an apprehensive triangle. The main light had been switched on, but the bulb cast a weary glow, as though it were fearful of what might be revealed.

‘There is a simple legal problem,’ said Inspector Cartwright bluntly ‘Riley’s scheme doesn’t constitute a recognised criminal activity. He’s no different to someone using a telephone directory. He sells a number, that’s all. And in his hands, it’s neutral. If there was an arrangement between Riley and the girl, then it might be different. But there isn’t.’

With the back of his hand, George brushed unseen dust off his sleeve. Anselm gazed again at a schoolboy’s motto: the law will be fulfilled by love.

‘Even if charges could be framed,’ continued Inspector Cartwright, ‘it would be a weak case, a case that we couldn’t reasonably pursue.’ She slowed her delivery, hating her role, her obligations. ‘George, this means that Riley is out of my reach, and yours. I’m sorry to say this, but it looks as if he always was, even before you and Elizabeth set out to catch him.’

It struck Anselm that the last observation belonged to the category of things that need not be said, even though true.

‘Would you mind writing that down for me?’ asked George appreciatively as if he’d received complex travel directions. ‘I’ll need to remind myself in the days to come.

With a frown of concentration, he tapped his blazer pockets, not quite sure where he’d left his notebook.

Anselm had foreseen that the lateness of the hour might preclude a return to Larkwood. Accordingly after Inspector Cartwright had gone, George was left in place poring over a table, and Anselm was directed to a narrow storeroom with a camp bed that snapped shut when he sat in the middle. Surprisingly — and in the morning, he thought, indecently —Anselm fell asleep easily He began compline, but didn’t get beyond the first verse of the opening psalm. When daylight came, he knocked on George’s bedroom with all the worry and regret that he’d thought would keep him awake. The door was ajar and swung a little at his touch. Entering, Anselm found the bed unused and the jigsaw completed.

David George Bradshaw had gone.