The Gardens of the Dead

1

Anselm returned to Larkwood, weaving through the apple trees in Saint Leonard’s Field. The scooter skipped over tufts of grass, and Anselm bent his head, thinking of Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape. He could see the fence ahead. In a vivid reverie he saw himself soaring over the barbed wire, away from fiends who would cart him off to the cooler.

Whistling to himself, Anselm pushed the bike into the old woodshed, where he met Brother Louis, the choirmaster.

‘Hullo,’ said Anselm. ‘How was it?’

Appalling.’ He’d been on a ten-day residential counselling course. ‘I had to talk about myself Eye-to-eye stuff.’

‘Oh hell.’

Louis sat on a stump. He was tall and seemed to fold himself up. His eyebrows were copper and straight, as if they’d been electrified. Anselm rolled two cigarettes, obedient to a wink.

‘From the global perspective,’ said Louis, pensively ‘I found some relief’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. My parents aren’t to blame after all.’ He slowly pushed out the blue smoke. ‘I am.’

‘Don’t be deceived.’

Louis tilted his head towards the scooter. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Buying wood to bank the Lark.’

‘I hope you’ve got a receipt.’

Anselm had thrown it in the bin. ‘Why?’

‘Cyril’s gone round the bend. It’s that time of the year, I’m afraid. He’s doing the books and he can’t account for twenty-eight pence.’

As the cellarer, Cyril was responsible for the financial affairs of the monastery; he was the commercial brain behind various industries derived from apples and plums. An amputee after an industrial accident sustained before joining Larkwood, he had the appearance and character of a one-arm bandit chock-full of fruit and numbers.

‘Speaking of madness,’ resumed Louis, rummaging in a habit pocket, ‘the elderly Sylvester put this in my pigeonhole.’

Anselm unfolded the slip of paper: ‘Elizabeth called. Roddy is dead.’

Roderick Kemble QC, Anselm’s old head of chambers, a friend and guide from those half-forgotten days. ‘Oh, God.’

He ran to reception, where Sylvester struggled with buttons to get an outside line. Anselm hovered, itching to grab both the receiver and Sylvester’s larynx — it was a common problem at Larkwood — but shortly he made the call and a growing suspicion was confirmed. ‘I am still here,’ said Roddy ‘but Elizabeth is not.’

Anselm stepped into the sunlight. He looked towards Saint Leonard’s Field as if he’d been warned; and he thought of the key.

Anselm made for a quiet place beside the river — the place he’d brought Elizabeth when she’d turned up, all of a sudden, three weeks ago. A narrow flowerbed ran along a wall to an arch. Passing through, he turned right and sat on a bench of dressed stone — remnants of the medieval abbey, turned up by one of the tractors. The Lark splashed in front between the shoring of black timbers. Elizabeth had sat beside him. ‘I need your help,’ she’d said, quietly.

Thinking of that conversation now, Anselm recalled an earlier impromptu meeting ten years earlier — their last, in fact, before he’d left the Bar. Within a month he’d be at Larkwood. He’d been at home in Finsbury Park listening to Bix Beiderbecke knock out ‘Ostrich Walk’ when the doorbell rang (Anselm was a fiend for all jazz prior to an indefinable but tragic moment some time in the 1950s). It was Elizabeth, clutching a box of Milk Tray.

‘I don’t expect you’ll taste such delights in a monastery,’ she said. They sat in Anselm’s small garden eating chocolates, and reminiscing, while Bix moved on to ‘Goose Pimples’. They talked of the job and its strange compromise.

‘We always stand on an island,’ she said, ‘the cold place of not knowing, and not being able to care.’ Her hair fell forward: it was straight and black and cleanly cut, like a queen’s in the days of pharaoh. A silver streak marbled one side. It had appeared quite recently almost overnight. ‘We never know if they’re guilty, and we can’t care if they’re innocent. The terms are, of course, interchangeable. And yet, we do care; more than most. But we’re marooned from our conscience.’ She looked at her hands, checking the palms. ‘I’m sure there’s a trial out there for each of us, which could slip between the not knowing and the not caring and pull us off that beach.’

Anselm reached for the praline and Elizabeth smiled thinly.

Then and now Anselm was struck by her forcefulness, for Elizabeth, like many prosecutors, had been inclined to perceive guilt in anyone who’d been charged. It was a sort of infection, caught through excessive exposure to flimsy defences. ‘You’re lucky to be called away from it all,’ she said, adding cheekily ‘Did you hear a voice?’

A quiet one,’ replied Anselm. ‘I’ve had to learn how to listen.’

Her question had been a joke, but she’d become serious. ‘How?’

‘It sounds through your desires.’

Elizabeth thought for a while, as though examining the pointing on the yard wall. ‘You listen by heeding what you want to do?’

Tentatively Anselm explained what he’d learned. ‘Yes. But it’s deeper than any desire. It won’t let you go. And even then you need a guide who knows the ways of the heart, in case you’re deceiving yourself.’

Elizabeth seemed to snatch a thread. ‘Someone to help you understand a voice that won’t be stilled.’ It was as if she’d decided to become a nun. She knew the score already.

‘Exactly.’

‘And to ignore it would bring a kind of death?’

Smiling, Anselm studied the curtain of hair with its strands of silver. This was a wind-up, after all. She must have been reading a manual on the spiritual life.

Elizabeth went on, ‘So you don’t have a choice?’

‘Not really’ This was no prank. Anselm wanted to revive the cheekiness that had fled. ‘I get the impression God isn’t that keen on dialogue. It comes with the territory of always knowing what’s for the best.’

She took the praline from the second layer. ‘Are they a strict lot, these monks?’

‘Not especially… Well, they are.., but about things most people wouldn’t care about.’

‘So you can pop out on little errands?’

‘It’s up to the Prior.’

‘What’s he like?’

Anselm thought of the various things he could say: that he didn’t talk much, that he was always one step ahead of you, but he said, ‘He pops your illusions.’

At the door she kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘I shall miss our little chats.’

It was a truth neither of them had ever named: on a Friday they’d often been the last to leave chambers. For fifteen minutes or so, they’d sit, feet on the table in the coffee room, going over life, prodding its verrucas. But it showed up a peculiarity in Elizabeth’s personal relations. The different aspects of her life — the Bar, the family, the Butterfly Society, and so on — were screened off from each other like beds in a hospital ward. As far as Anselm was aware they were never brought together round the one table. He had only heard of the others. It had made their chats significant while keeping him at a distance.

Anselm went to bed uncomfortably sure that Elizabeth, like all examining barristers, had wanted to find out something, without letting him know what it was. And while he’d been talking, Anselm hadn’t been able to dispel the notion that Elizabeth wanted to speak herself, and that the inclination had ebbed away. For days afterwards he thought of that silver streak in her hair. She was, he concluded, very attractive. It was as though he’d never noticed before.

‘I need your help,’ she’d said, quietly, ten years later.

Again she’d come unannounced. Anselm brought her to the stone bench by the Lark. The long flowerbed was bright with planted daffodils and wild poppies. She’d hardly changed. Though she was in her late fifties, her hair remained jet black with that dash of silver, less bright now.

‘I once asked if you’d be free to do errands, do you remember?’

Anselm nodded.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a box of Milk Tray ‘You can have the praline in caramel.’ Bix seemed to be with them, blowing ‘Ostrich Walk’ in the distance.

Anselm said nothing. Monastic life had taught him this much at least: to know when to be quiet.

With a delicate gesture, Elizabeth placed the fall of hair behind an ear. Her profile was exquisitely drawn against the pink blur of Larkwood. Looking towards the river, she began to speak. ‘I’ve been tidying up my life. It isn’t easy But there’s always something we can do, don’t you think?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘We can’t be lukewarm. That’s the only way to mercy or reward.’

Absolutely’ He’d use that one on Sunday He waited, silent again. Elizabeth took an envelope out of her pocket, turned to him and said, ‘Could you do something for me?’

‘Of course.’

‘It holds a key and an address.’

Anselm took the envelope.

‘If I should die — it does happen — use it.’ She looked around, at the river, the herb garden, the arches of the old abbey ruin. ‘It opens a safety deposit box. Inside you’ll find what you need to know.’

She rose and walked to the bank of the Lark. Anselm followed, keeping slightly back, puzzled by her solemnity and his new responsibility. They listened to the chattering water. It was autumn. Aelred had lined up potted plants on the other bank, as if they might like the view, but most had turned away to face the sun. Quietly Elizabeth said, ‘You mentioned once that to ignore a voice would have left you bereft.’ She added, with regret, ‘You listened. I turned away.’

Lamely Anselm said, ‘It’s never too late.’ It sounded awful.

‘I hope not.’

‘We can salvage anything.’ That was worse. He didn’t even know what he meant, but it was encouraging. He tried a serious kind of joking. ‘Don’t be lukewarm.’

Elizabeth nodded thoughtfully, her gaze fixed on the Lark.

Lightly, she said, ‘You can’t always explain things to your children. If need be, will you help Nicholas understand?’

‘Yes, of course.

They walked side by side to the car park among the plum trees. The fruit was soft, ready to fall. Elizabeth quickly kissed him goodbye and rummaged for her keys to avoid his attention. Once again Anselm sensed she’d come to say something but had stepped back. After she’d driven away, he retraced his steps to collect the unopened box of chocolates.

Anselm stayed by the river brooding over these two encounters — impulsive actions, linked it appeared, despite the interval of so many years. Before he could trawl his imagination for the explanation, Larkwood’s bells began to peal, calling him to vespers. Nipping through the cloister, he saw a huddle of monks in the South Walk. He paused and listened to their muted conversation. A policewoman — someone called Cartwheel — had arrived a few minutes ago and was talking to the Prior. Sylvester had been putting out leaflets on the table near the door (that was always his excuse for eavesdropping) and he’d overheard the word ‘murder’. The considered view of everyone was that Sylvester had, yet again, got it wrong.

2

Nick Glendinning hid in the pantry.

The funeral had flown by but the reception seemed without end. Guests were still in the lounge and corridor, being sympathetic, asking questions about everything but his mother. A tubby executive high up in British Telecom (a client and friend of Charles, his father) was the last to tread the worn route:

‘I understand you’ve been in Australia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very nice. Hot?’

‘Tremendously.’

The tubby executive took a sip of sherry. His eyes couldn’t keep still and, as if to match, he had white curls above each ear that wouldn’t lie flat. Discomfort made him shuffle. ‘Did you see any kangaroos?’

‘Lots of them,’ replied Nick. ‘And koalas — funny fat little things that cuddle you.’

‘Good Lord. They live in eucalyptus trees, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Marvellous.’ He looked around, as if for help. ‘It’s unfortunate you didn’t get back in time, given… what happened.’

‘Yes.’

‘I must say your mother was a quite remaaarkable woman. He’d shaken his shiny head and Nick made for the pantry.

Where he also shook his head. He’d been away about a year. He’d planned to travel since he was eleven but hadn’t actually got on a plane until he was twenty-six. And he was already back, hiding in the family home in St John’s Wood from people he barely knew. The endless ceremonial of accepting sympathy required patience and gratitude and he had neither. He had a headache. It had been non-stop movement across time zones: the train to Sydney, the flight to Singapore, the long haul to Manchester, the hop to London — a crazy sequence to get him home as fast as possible. When he had finally embraced his father two days ago, his body was still in Queensland. He’d come home to a fantastic absence in the heart of the familiar. Sitting on a footstool, he wondered how he could ever have been drawn away.

The first impulse to travel grew by the fireside with his father who, on cold evenings, would read out tales of adventure, of expeditions financed by some committee dedicated to Humanity and Knowledge and Geography This was the world of men who’d grown beards for the journey who wore khaki and had machetes. The romance of entering the darkness had filled his boyish soul, and would not be displaced — even by education, an appreciation of colonial oppression and the advent of the aeroplane.

Perhaps it was the spirit of the great philanthropists that pushed Nick towards a career in medicine. In fact, while an undergraduate at Edinburgh, he had considered setting up (eventually) a clinic on the banks of the Amazon — a thought he kept to himself — which itself disclosed that ‘ordinary life’ held out few attractions for a man whose footing belonged in a canoe. Nick saw his future with Médecins Sans Frontières or at the side of Mother Theresa, and not in a high-street surgery.

The second impulse to travel came from an unexpected quarter: his dealings with his mother. As he’d grown an indefinable tension had crept between them, evident not so much through confrontation as a loss of assonance: that pliability, the willingness of children to rhyme with the lives of their parents.

As a boy Nick had rarely seen Elizabeth before nine in the evening, but she’d sit on the edge of his bed and they’d talk way past a sensible hour. They had no secrets. He would give his verdict on his teachers and she’d pass sentence — like consigning Mr Openshaw, the headmaster to a week at Butlins with a clothes peg on his nose. This was a time of alliance against Sensible and Prudent, and the Grown-Ups. Unusually the separation didn’t begin with a conflict of ideas — although that was to come — but with his size. It started when he began lumbering round the house and spilling things at the table because of the glut of adrenalin. As he filled out and rose above her head, she turned brittle. It was as if becoming a man had not been a foreseeable consequence of his infancy Nick couldn’t recall when it first came to pass, but she stopped coming to his room at night, and no comparable ritual took its place. It was what they both wanted, without saying so; perhaps without even knowing it. He’d lie in the dark simply aware that she was still in the Green Room, still between the papers of a brief. During breakfast he could see the courtroom looming in her face. At the weekends, she was forever tuning into conversations halfway through, getting the wrong end of the stick. As he moved towards manhood, her work expanded to meet the space created by his diminishing childhood. It was part of a symmetry that he didn’t altogether like. For while he wanted to build his own life elsewhere, he didn’t altogether appreciate her concurrence. The night before he went to Edinburgh, she cried: out of loss but with relief, he thought. Most of the friends he made told the same old story.

Comradeship, hangovers and exams were the landmarks of his growing independence. And from that new vantage point he began to see his mother’s awkwardness as an achievement, a mighty thing, purchased by little acts of selflessness. She’d managed to let go of her son, knowing that she would drift towards the waterfall. She, too, was an adventurer, he thought. She’d made the heroic sacrifice.

Just when this adult gratitude had shaped his outlook, Nick observed with surprise that his mother was hovering over the terrain she’d abandoned. At one point, he thought she’d lost her sanity. Just after Nick had qualified, she slammed the front door and practically ran into the sitting room. ‘You’ve never had a full medical,’ she said, as if he’d been reckless since childhood.

‘I’m fine.’

‘I don’t care.

They had argued a great deal recently, so Nick seized the opportunity for accord. ‘All right … send in the doctor.’

Nick had thought of blood pressure and tummy pressing from a buxom nurse. But his mother had other ideas. She wanted every organ screened. They argued some more; they bargained; and she paid. Nick had X-rays, ultrasound scanning and an ECG. Kidneys, liver and heart. When the results came back showing him to be without fault or defect, she burst into tears.

‘What else did you want?’ asked Nick.

‘Nothing,’ she sobbed, flushed and radiant. ‘I only wanted this.’ And they went to a restaurant as if she’d won a nasty case.

After that outburst she began to come at night and sit on the edge of his bed, but it didn’t quite work. She once asked about his intentions.

‘What will you do, Nick?’

‘Dish out prescriptions, hold the odd trembling hand.’

‘Whereabouts? I imagine London would be an attractive prospect.’

Without having said anything to his parents, Nick had already approached Médecins Sans Frontières, and various other agencies, all of which had suggested he obtain some practical experience. So Nick was thinking of a couple of years in a surgery, but not one so near to home.

‘How about approaching Doctor Ferguson in Primrose Hill?’ continued Elizabeth.

Primrose Hill was on the other side of the road from St John’s Wood. She wanted him back home. His mother had worked out how to swim upstream, away from the waterfall, and she was determined to survive. At that moment more than any other, Nick recognised that he had to put some distance between her need and his identity.

Nick’s father had observed this progression from medical-test frenzy to night-time enquiries after employment hopes with the calm attentiveness that he gave to bookplates and display cabinets. He’d been an unhappy banker for twenty-seven years until they’d got rid of him, an apparent humiliation that had set him free to study butterflies and beetles. He was a simple man who considered work a species of evil.

Avoid it,’ he said firmly.

Elizabeth had just gone to the Green Room. This was the day following the Primrose Hill proposal, and, as if on cue, Charles offered Nick the third reason why he should travel.

‘See things. Make notes. Be fascinated.’ He was leaning forward, whispering loudly ‘Look at that streak in your mother’s hair. That’s what work can do to you.’

It had appeared rapidly over two weeks when Nick was sixteen. In fact, as he subsequently learned, there was no medical explanation for the change. But Nick looked to legend if science was found wanting, and something similar had happened to Thomas More and Marie Antoinette before they were executed. He told his father.

‘Precisely,’ said Charles. ‘There’s no rush. Have you thought of Down Under?’

Nick hadn’t, but he liked the idea. It stirred his soul, for the phrase conjured up the ultimate voyage. He’d be able to wear a hat with corks dangling from strings. He could legitimately have a machete in his belt. A week or so later Charles phoned an old client in Brisbane who, it transpired, had a nephew with a surgery in Rockhampton.

‘Where?’ asked Nick.

‘Rocky’ Charles paused as if he were surveying millions of bleating sheep. ‘That’s what the locals call it.’

‘Oh dear, no …’ Elizabeth underlined a sentence in a brief She surfaced momentarily ‘Who?’

‘Not who,’ said Nick, with the relief that comes before a parting ‘It’s a place.’

‘Where?’

‘The land of Oz.’

She was stunned. She’d thought it was all talk. ‘Oz,’ she said, sinking.

Nick took off from Heathrow in the rain. The plane pushed through the cloud and it was just blue: a wonderful, clean, endless blue, as if he’d entered a sapphire. He caught a night coach out of Sydney, taking the front seat, and the headlights opened up the future. By morning they were cutting through oceans of high green sugar cane. For lunch he stood barefoot on the blistering tarmac drinking fresh pineapple juice. He could smell the sea. There wasn’t a sheep in sight.

The nephew was called Ivan and he laboured under the misapprehension that Nick’s father had bestowed all manner of financial blessings on his uncle’s business — which simply wasn’t possible — and so Nick received a sort of reward by proxy For a modest amount of work, he received immodest remuneration. The world was indeed a different place when things were upside down.

Nick did a weekly stint at a school in Yeppoon where there were fat cane toads in the swimming pool. A sub-aqua club shared the facility once a week. Nick joined them and duly signed up. He bought the gear. He took a course. And he discovered yet another world, but bigger and cleaner and deeper and more mysterious than any place he’d ever known. Out of sight, countless tiny polyps had built the biggest thing on earth: a reef, a barrier, a coral kingdom.

Then the letters from his mother had started to arrive, wistful things, not signed by his father. At first they looked back to his early school days — the time she’d missed. But then her tone became inquisitive. She wanted to know when he’d be returning. For some reason he couldn’t write back, so he lunged for the phone on the evening of his birthday He ‘let slip’ that he’d be staying another year — something he’d thought of anyway ‘What about Papua New Guinea?’ said his father. ‘The Bundi do a butterfly dance.’ His mother mumbled that Christmas was coming ‘The house is huge and empty without that awful music. Your trainers are still by the door, where you left them. I keep thinking of your feet.’

Then one day when he was diving off Green Island he understood. He was treading water. A queue of small brightly coloured fish was lined up before some sort of plant rising from the coral. It was like a car wash. The leaves, or whatever they were, opened up and a fish swam in. After a moment the leaves opened again, the fish left and the next one took his place. And there, at that depth, watching fish get themselves cleaned up, he realised that his mother wanted to tell him something; that she couldn’t write about it; and that she hadn’t mentioned it to her husband. Nick sorted out the flight.

A few days later his mother was dead in a parked car. She was sitting at the wheel, eyes closed, with a smile on her face. It was only when a pedestrian knocked on the window that anyone realised that anything was wrong. A paramedic found her mobile phone in the footwell. She must have dropped it as she tried to dial for help. Within reach, on the passenger seat, was a set of antique spoons, marked ‘£30’.

On the plane to Singapore Nick forced his head against the window. A most awful wave of emotion racked him. He cried desperately. The woman next to him asked for his yoghurt, and he couldn’t even face her to say ‘Yes’. His mother was out of reach. He’d travel now for twenty-two hours and he’d get no nearer. By the time he reached Manchester the impact of grief had been anaesthetised around a painful truth: his mother had wanted to tell him something, and he’d left it too late. In the churchyard during the burial, Nick recalled the childhood exchange that had often ended a day of revelations. She’d sit on his bed, stroking his hair:

‘No secrets?’ she’d whisper. ‘None.’

More quietly: ‘You can always tell me anything.’

He would study her in the dark with a child’s careful eyes, absorbing this insight: his mother received much, but she did not give.

Why did he recognise that only now? Nick slipped out of the pantry. On entering the hall a discreet cough made him turn:

‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t know what to say Dreadful business, if you ask me.’

3

Anselm kept his socks in a wig tin. It was large and dinted, a thing from his days at the Bar. His name was painted in gold upon the side. The wig itself rested upon a bust of Plato, part of the miscellany of oddments that he’d kept on becoming a monk (the remainder being his books and a jazz record collection, both of which accrued to the benefit of the community). The tin was still in service. Anselm used it daily as he’d done in that other life.

After lunch Anselm joined the community for recreation in the common room. It was a relatively important moment because he was wearing glasses for the first time in public. He’d chosen what he thought were modest horn-rimmed frames, but the view of Bruno was that he looked a cross between a futures trader and an owl. He’d been told to wear them all the time. Colouring slightly, he put them on and picked up a newspaper.

No one noticed, perhaps because the alignment of chairs cut him out of three conversations. On his right, Wilf timidly observed that as an entertainer Liszt could reasonably be compared to Richard Clayderman, given his penchant for transcribing other people’s good tunes; on his left Cyril expanded (loudly) on the double-entry ledger system; and straight ahead Bernard tried to find a word that rhymed with ‘murder’.

‘How about “merger”?’

‘We’re not a company,’ said someone.

“‘Herder”?’

‘We’re not a farm,’ observed another.

‘“Murmur”’.

‘Ah,’ said Wilf, crossing over, ‘that is expressly forbidden in The Rule.’

Murmuring. Grumbling from the heart. It could kill a community Anselm hid behind the raised paper, his mind on the funeral and his wig tin. Elizabeth, he thought, would be buried by now. The key lay in an envelope covered by socks. He’d looked at it every day, until he almost didn’t see it any more. Anselm had fished it out that morning knowing the funeral was underway A brief note recorded the address of a security firm where the safety deposit box was retained. Elizabeth had chosen Sudbury, a town near Larkwood. He’d thumbed the key, pondering her courtesy Then he’d put it back, firmly closing the lid.

4

‘Dreadful business.’

Nick turned towards the voice. A short, oval man bulging out of a dreary suit scooped a fistful of cashews from a bowl and began popping them into his mouth as though they were sedatives. A grey tangled beard crept up his cheeks to narrow, moist eyes, suggesting a sociable mole on hind legs.

‘I’m Frank Wyecliffe, a lowly solicitor.’

‘Very nice to meet you.

‘I instructed your mother year in, year out. Family carnage mainly’ He rummaged for a business card. It was dog-eared.

‘Thank you.

‘I never knew she had a weak heart, though. Never.’

‘Neither did I.’

‘Really? You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

The mole popped some nuts, chomping quickly ‘Well, if I had known, I’d have thought twice about some of the stuff I sent her.’ He paused. ‘First and foremost she was a prosecutor, although she defended on some memorable occasions.’ The small eyes brushed over Nick. ‘I suppose you knew that?’

‘No.’

Ah.’ He sniffed. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow If asked, I’d have said your mother would have died — if you’ll forgive the bluntness of the term — on her feet, bringing down the wrongdoer.’

‘That would have been more fitting.’

‘The East End, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got family over there?’

‘No.’ Nick shifted uncomfortably ‘Why?’

‘Sorry. Silly question. That’s why I keep out of court.’

Nick backed away ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ The little man’s intense manner seemed to have filled the hall. Nick ran upstairs as if on an errand of practical importance. At the open door to the Green Room he paused. With one hand on the jamb he surveyed the familiar chaos.

This was her study Piles of paper lay scattered on the floor, held down by various paperweights — curious stones or chunks of wood picked up from the Island of Skomer. He saw her in outsized wellingtons, a torch in one hand … she cut the beam and called, ‘Hurry up.’ They’d stood and stared. He could still see the glow-worms and her eyes, wide with astonishment.

Downstairs a glass smashed. Nick stepped into the room, treading between heaps of transcripts and reports. As a child he’d always been picking things off her desk. Now he wanted to hold the fountain pen that had written those letters. By her chair, he stepped over a cardboard box and slipped; a hand flew out and he struck a line of small antique books on the desk — the kind you don’t read, but look good. He steadied himself and swore. By his foot was a dark glossy photograph, a shot of a smashed cranium, part of an autopsy report. He knelt down to gather the books. One lay open, its pages fanned against the floor. When he picked it up, a key fell out. Engraved upon it was ‘BJM Securities’ and a telephone number.

For something like ten minutes Nick sat at her desk, his mind blank. He flicked through the pages of The Following of Christ —a tiny volume by Thomas à Kempis, printed by Keating and Brown in 1829. Nick had written all over it when he was five.

She’d never said anything, as far as he could recall; but she must have noticed, even if it was years afterwards, because a hole had been cut into the text. He put the key in his pocket and left the room slowly like a man crossing a field.

Nick braved out the remaining hour or so, shaking hands and talking of Australian wildlife. When they’d all gone he tapped open the kitchen door and saw Roderick Kemble assaulting the cooker while crunching a mint. Good old Roddy in his red apron. He was swishing onions in a skillet. The cad had prepared for the moment no one had thought about. Nick leaned on the counter observing his father at the table: the jacket discarded, the rolled-up sleeves. Thin, silvery hair, usually combed back, had been ruffled. The red patches on his cheeks — a harmless liver malfunction — glowed as if he’d been slapped across the face.

He began to speak, and Nick listened, thumbing the key in his pocket. For some reason he felt like an intruder.

‘During the reception I nipped upstairs to the Butterfly Room. After a minute there was a knock at the door. Someone called Cartwright.’

Roddy banged the skillet with one hand and threw in something pink with the other. ‘She’s a police inspector.’ He tipped a bottle and threw in a match. The thing almost exploded, as in a pantomime when the genie turns up.

‘What did she want?’ asked Nick casually.

Charles searched the table, as if for crumbs. ‘She asked whether Elizabeth had been troubled by anything.’ He was ruffled and red. ‘Just kindness, you know Surprised that she’s gone the distance too soon.

Roddy banged the skillet on the cooker, as if it were a gong.

‘Plates, glasses and the amenities of joy if you please,’ he said solemnly ‘Even now, at this painful time, we cannot waver.

Nick woke in the middle of the night. He went to the bathroom for a glass of water. The mirror was too low because he was too big … that’s what his mother had said … so he stooped to look. Despite the sun, he hadn’t gone especially brown. But his skin was speckled and his eyebrows had turned to straw As if that bewildered face ought to know, he asked himself why a solicitor had quizzed him about the East End, rather than dingos; why an inspector had gone after a widower; and why a key his mother’s secret, had been kept not only from her husband, but also from him.

5

Father Andrew was fond of a saying from a Desert Father:

‘Don’t use wise words falsely’ Perhaps that explained why he was always cautious when he spoke. And why it was disconcerting when you sensed he was preparing to speak.

The day after the funeral, Anselm bumped into Father Andrew crossing the cloister. The Prior paused, eyeing Anselm with an expression somewhere between expectancy and deliberation.

‘Nice day for picking the apples,’ volunteered Anselm.

‘What?’

Anselm repeated what he’d thought was an amiable observation.

‘Eh?’ The Glasgow intonation suggested a coming scuffle.

Oh no, thought Anselm. He’s changing the community work rota. The Prior always lost a screw when he was planning to shift people from one job to another, because everyone complained. Father Andrew waited a moment and then strode off. In a flush of horror, Anselm thought of the new dispensation: he might face exile to the kitchen — a sort of limbo where no one approves of you, except on feast days. But then he settled upon the obvious: that the Prior’s ill temper was related to Elizabeth’s death, the coming of Cartwheel and … an unused key. They were of a piece. And the Prior was waiting for Anselm. He had something to say. But why not call him in? Why the glowering?

Anselm decided that he’d better go to BJM Securities sooner rather than later. First, though, he had to sift through some nagging memories that had gathered around the key Uneasily, Anselm made his way to Saint Leonard’s Field and the sweet ambience of manual labour.

The trees were already peppered with monks. Crates were stacked against a trolley Ladders and forked poles reached into the branches. There was a hum of contentment. Apple picking always did that, even when community nerves were frayed —which they had been since Cyril had started banging on about missing receipts. And Christmas was coming. That always wound the brothers up.

Anselm chose an unattended tree that was heavy with foliage. He found a wide limb, leaned back and rolled himself a cigarette. And he returned to Elizabeth’s remark about ‘not knowing and not being able to care’. It didn’t sit easily with the vociferous defender of the adversarial system whom he’d known at the Bar.

‘Look,’ she had said during one of their little chats, ‘it’s a court of evidence, not truth. We have to forget about the truth, for truth’s sake. The truth is out of reach. And we shouldn’t pretend when we stand up in court that the truth is what we care about. We don’t. We care about what our client says is the truth. I can live with that. It’s the only way to take innocence seriously when all the evidence points the other way. The truth? What’s that? It’s something the jury decided after I sat down.’

No discomfort there, thought Anselm, blowing a perfect ring. At the time, ruminating over a Jaffa cake, Anselm had baited her confidence. ‘But what if someone got off because the trial took a wrong turn and no one noticed?’

‘It can’t happen,’ she said, glancing at her watch. She was due back in court. ‘All the jury hears are competing versions of the relevant facts. Have you eaten the last one?’

‘Sorry.’

What quiet voice had seized her conscience? thought Anselm, picking an apple. And what could it seize upon? Every barrister accepted that justice was determined by winning and losing. If you lost, you swallowed disappointment; if you won, you got a pat on the back. As Elizabeth had said, ‘what really happened’ was whatever the jury decided. And if they convicted an innocent man? Unless you could fault the process or find new evidence, he’d languish in jail. And if a guilty man was freed? No one could bring him back to court. He could chant ‘Nemo debet bis vexari’ (or, to be patristic, ‘God doesn’t judge the same offence twice’). Either way the truth had gone like the dove off the ark.

Anselm was certain that Elizabeth’s crisis had lain in this system, devised over a thousand years to deal with the corollaries of frailty and wickedness. How that was connected with tidying up her life, he hadn’t the faintest idea. Having finished his cigarette, he turned his attention to the apple. Organic principles, incompetently followed, meant that most of Larkwood’s fruit was technically blemished. He examined a wormhole, feeling a small hankering for the old struggle in the corridors of the Bailey.

In one of those glancing thoughts, seemingly irrelevant, Anselm recalled that he’d only ever done one case with Elizabeth. In many respects it had been an allegory for the law’s uneasy accord with the truth. Forensically, it hadn’t been anything special. But the client had been awful … Riley. That was the name. She’d called him ‘a ruined instrument’. Gradually a presence materialised in Anselm’s memory: a shaved head, small ears and sunken wounded eyes.

6

Nick went to the Green Room and rang BJM Securities. While waiting, he studied an open trial brief on the desk. A big man had been murdered in Bristol. ‘The cranial vault comprises eight bones that surround and protect the brain.’ Autopsy photographs reduced him to a one-inch bundle of close-ups.

A Mrs Tippins answered the phone. Nick explained that his mother had passed away and that he wished to collect what had been stored at the premises. She, in turn, described which documents would be required for access to the deposit box.

‘Without the probate certificate,’ she said, ‘you can only look.’

‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘Where are you?’

‘Sudbury.’ She gave the Suffolk address. After a pause, she said, ‘At first I thought you were the monk.’

‘A monk?’

‘Yes. He’s the other keyholder.’

Nick made another call to check train times and then he wrote a note for his father, saying he’d be back late. On rising he looked at the red and blue photographs. His mother had often quizzed him on the building regulations of the body — how it was put together, what would happen if you did this or that to an organ, a tissue. It was an incredibly fragile structure, despite the bones; a staggering, miraculous unity.

‘The design is perfect,’ he’d once said.

‘Not quite.’ She’d sounded disappointed.

To Elizabeth, in this chair, the body had been an exhibit, something numbered and sewn up with stitches. Her wonder had been reserved for worms that glowed.

Nick waited in a small room without windows. The only furnishings were a table and one chair. The door opened, and Mrs Tippins entered, pushing a large aluminium box on wheels. She said, ‘People bring things here when their houses are full up.

Her skirt seemed to have been made from abandoned hotel tablecloths and the blouse from net curtains. ‘It’s hard to get rid of things, isn’t it? Stay as long as you like. Here’s a list of attendances.’ He glanced at the single entry, made about three weeks earlier.

Left alone, Nick opened the box. Inside was a single item: a battered red case — a dainty valise for a weekend trip. A seam was split and the gold had flaked from the clasp. He put the case on the table and lifted the lid. Inside it was a ring binder, an envelope and a newspaper cutting.

Nick began with the first. It was wrapped in the characteristic red tape that he’d seen for years on his mother’s desk. Typed in the centre was the case name: Regina v Riley The left-hand corner bore an endorsement:

Coram: HHJ Venning

Prosecution: Pagett

Defence: Glendinning QC

Junior: Duffy

Not Guilty on all counts.

‘Duffy’ had come to his attention a few moments ago from Mrs Tippins. It was the surname of the monk who’d been entrusted with the second key Nick had met him, long ago. ‘Larkwood Priory isn’t that far off, but he’s never been here. I’ve heard that once you’re in, you can’t get out.’ She’d grimaced like a seasoned potholer. Nick considered the name of the instructing solicitor at the bottom of the page. He’d met him at St John’s Wood, chomping nuts and thinking twice: Frank Wyecliffe Esq.

Nick untied the tape and opened the binder. The front page was entitled ‘Instructions to Counsel’ and contained a single paragraph:

Mr Riley maintains that the witnesses, his former tenants, have fabricated a case against him following their eviction for rent arrears. No doubt counsel will be able to advise the client upon the complexion of the evidence.

Nick turned the page and skimmed the typed witness statements. Three young women had said Riley was a pimp. Scattered here and there was another name: the Pieman. The last deposition was that of David George Bradshaw, the manager of a homeless people’s night shelter to whom, it seemed, the girls had turned for help. The final page was the defendant’s police interview. There was only one reply, ‘I’m clean. ‘Something in Nick’s concentration failed and he tied up the brief. It was difficult this: doing what she had done, in the same way.

He picked up the cutting. It was taken from a south London daily newspaper. The paper was dirty and the ink smudged. A coroner’s court had returned a verdict of accidental death regarding John Bradshaw, seventeen, whose body had been recovered from the Thames. The report quoted the anger and grief of his father, George — evidently the witness in the earlier trial, even though he went by his middle name. Nick cross-checked the date of the inquest with that of the trial: an interval of five years had elapsed.

Nick turned to the envelope. It was addressed to both his mother and Anselm Duffy The letter inside was from Emily Bradshaw, the mother of John and the wife of George. It condemned Riley’s defenders and blamed them for the destruction of her family Again Nick checked the date, and then he quickly put everything back in the red case. After a moment’s calm he pencilled a chronology to make clear the sequence of events:

End of trial.

Death of J Bradshaw (as per cutting): 5 years after the trial.

Letter from Mrs Bradshaw: 8 years after trial.

Opening of account with BJM: 10 years after trial.

Nick wheeled the aluminium box back to Mrs Tippins. Her look of permanent curiosity prompted him to remark, ‘Just some old papers.’

‘It’s funny what people hang on to, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

She opened a desk register for his signature and then changed her mind. ‘Oh, probate’s on the way … go on, take them. The monk won’t be coming, will he? I mean, he’s all but locked up, I shouldn’t wonder.’

On the train back to London Nick gazed at the evening fields, his mind focused on a small puzzle: how did Elizabeth obtain a cutting from a local newspaper far from where she lived and worked? She was a woman of meticulously clean habits, and yet the paper was dirty and ragged. The only sensible conclusion was that someone had given it to her; and the most likely candidate was either Mr or Mrs Bradshaw It was unlikely to have been the latter because the cutting didn’t fit the envelope, and in any event, the letter itself was in pristine condition, so that left David George Bradshaw But how could Elizabeth have met him? She had been defence counsel, representing Riley They’d been on opposing sides. How could they meet without one or the other, in effect, crossing over? And given that Elizabeth was the one with the suitcase, she was the likely traveller, so to speak. That being so, there was a further curiosity: why would Mr Bradshaw give such a cutting to Elizabeth? Not only did that imply a binding of his mother to the tragic event, it revealed an intimacy that could not have prevailed at the time of the trial: for if Elizabeth had already known Mr Bradshaw, she would have had to withdraw from the case. And, since she didn’t, the implication was that Elizabeth had sought him out afterwards, perhaps prompted by the letter from his wife.

So, thought Nick, watching homely lights spread across the fields, you made a friend of your opponent, you stored what you found in secret, and you gave the key to a monk. He felt acutely awake, though tired. He forced his mind to plod on one or two steps and, like a reward, he came to the real mystery. He gazed ahead, as if he’d stumbled on the source of the Nile: Elizabeth had started this collection at the conclusion of the trial, when she could not have anticipated the death of John Bradshaw, or the letter from his mother. Why then, had she kept the trial papers in the first place?

At Liverpool Street Nick took the Underground to St John’s Wood, musing upon a chain of intuitions: there was a link between the evolution of Elizabeth’s secret and her desire to keep Nick close to home; at the same time, Nick’s father had been urging him to visit Australia. Did he know of his wife’s subterfuge? Nick had little doubt: he did not. His father was guileless. His unthinking candour had compromised numerous commercial transactions spanning several continents — the last of which had led to his enforced retirement. He could not be relied upon — least of all with the truth. It made another question all the starker: how might anything be so important to Elizabeth that she could not share it with the man she trusted most?

Once home he walked straight to the Butterfly Room determined to confirm his father’s exclusion from the meaning of the key Charles looked up from an armchair as if he’d seen a well-loved moth. He had an empty glass in his hand.

‘Where’ve you been?’ His face was flushed and he was tipsy.

‘I just went walkabout.’

‘Me too.’

‘Whereabouts?’ Nick noticed the bow tie, a remnant from his father’s banking days. He’d worn a bowler hat to work. His suits had been cut from heavy cloth that made him perspire. But he’d looked the real shilling — as if he were hot with responsibility.

‘Regent’s Park. And you?’

‘Sudbury.’

‘Where?’

‘Suffolk.’

‘Good God.’

Nick studied his father’s wounded face. The dear man knew nothing. What had he thought about in Regent’s Park? It was easy to surmise: his wife’s evasiveness and stealth, which, of late, he had noticed; the manner of her going; and consolation from a police officer whom he did not know He was bewildered and Nick could not help him — because he held the key It gave him knowledge, but of a kind he couldn’t share.

Nick woke and listened to the rubbish truck and the antics of the binmen. He swung his legs out of bed and reached for his mobile. After considerable hesitation, he rang a monastery.

7

Blind George, as he was known, woke up on a traffic island. He was lying on a bench. Marble Arch towered huge and white behind a litter bin. A flag fluttered, its line slapping against the pole. Above, the sky was misty blue. An aeroplane crossed in silence, like an ant on lino. George sat up, with a groan, and opened his notebook. A thumb with a cracked black nail smoothed back the pages. He read out loud:

I am going to Mile End Park to confront Riley.

Wait beneath the fire escape in Trespass Place.

The explanation for Inspector Cartwright is in your left inside jacket pocket.

There’s fifty pounds in your right trouser pocket.

Elizabeth.

For years George had kept a record of days gone. Nino, a former traffic warden, had insisted upon the practice. It had been part of his instruction when teaching George about life on the street. Since leaving the world of parking tickets, Nino had moved around the libraries of London, still clutching a floppy pad. He had his own chair in most of the reading rooms. One of them had his name on it — stuck on with tape by the management. He had a habit that drove them to distraction, and kept him on the move: in one place he’d put in a request for a book that was held in another. So all these books were flying about London after Nino, when all he had to do was keep still.

‘Don’t think,’ he’d said. ‘Just write, starting at the beginning, and keep going. You’ll only understand the story looking backwards. If you start thinking, you’ll write the story you want, not the story you’ve got.’

‘Oh.’

‘The street is the place of stories,’ he’d concluded gravely Black, tangled hair covered his face and his skin was grey ‘Stories of harm and stories that heal.’

George had obeyed, because traffic wardens have a peculiar authority. When one notebook was full he’d start another. They were numbered on the cover. He had thirty-eight of them. George’s whole life was laid out in order, all sixty-four years, as best as he could remember them. Almost every day he’d sat on a park bench or in a café, and he’d scribbled with haste, not pausing to choose his words. Once he’d got something down, he was like an archaeologist with a toothbrush: he gently brushed away the dirt; he’d change a word or phrase, cleaning up what had been saved. It could take months to get it right.

George’s earliest memory was of an outing in a pushchair. He was sitting behind an improvised cover to keep out the rain. His mother had made it. There was a polythene window sewn into a sort of waxed cotton tent that covered his upper body His protruding legs were warm, covered by a blanket; but he couldn’t see anything because of the condensation. He could hear only the rain and his mother’s feet on the path. They were on their way to see Granddad, whose first name he bore. David. He’d stopped using it a long time ago, out of shame. He’d become George. That burst of anguish took up the first pages of book one, which now lay with all the others in a plastic bag. All them had been filled with a similar, honest desperation: to preserve both the good and the bad. That was something else Nino had said:

‘Don’t decide what to keep. It all counts. Sometimes it is the worst things that turn out to have delivered what is best.’ He’d been solemn again. ‘It only appears when you write it down.’

Filling up these notebooks had a dramatic effect on George. It made him a compassionate observer — not just of himself, but of everyone he’d known. But the scribbling had also made him uneasy about the spoken word, because he’d gone through hell choosing the right ones to keep on paper. Ultimately, the precision had brought him close up to his more recent failures, but without the distortion of self-pity. And then, clear-eyed and calm, he’d scrambled into a skip.

He’d seen two black discs among the wood and bricks: a pair of welding goggles. Instinctively he put them on and pretended to be blind. On the face of it he’d gone mad. But it made sense to George. There were things in his life he could not look upon, and he didn’t want anyone else to either. The street might be the place of stories, but his was going to remain untold. Once the goggles were in place, hardly anyone spoke to him any more. It was as though he wasn’t there. They called him Blind George.

So at first George wrote down his life in order to understand it; but the time came when he did so to keep it together. Long after Elizabeth had found him, and when their project to trap Riley was well underway George got his head kicked in. His memory was sent flying over Waterloo Station like a cloud of pigeons. The details, with Elizabeth’s help, were set down towards the end of book thirty-six. That was after he’d woken to discover that a kind of lake had entered his mind: on the far shore everything was clear, up to the week he’d fallen under those swinging feet; but on this side, where he played out his life, events were like globules of oil. If he didn’t confine them on paper, they could separate, drift off and come back when they felt like it — heavily familiar but incomprehensible. He could hold on to faces, geography and snippets of talk, but he’d found himself in a world where everyone else knew all the missing pieces. People would speak, expecting him to understand. And sometimes he did, but often it was a lottery in which he could make no choices. But it was the keeping of the notebooks that saved him and held everything together. Every page helped to bridge the lake. He just carried on plotting the course of each completed day.

Elizabeth had written a great deal in books thirty-six to thirty-eight. She’d recorded everything they’d said and done after his mind went loose. He’d watched her while drinking hot chocolate or whisky. She’d always been careful. She’d treated words like coins. And in her last entry she’d told him to wait.

After Elizabeth had gone to Mile End Park in the morning, George had sat in his sleeping bag beneath the fire escape at Trespass Place. He’d waited until nightfall, counting the hours, his eyes on the arch at the end of the courtyard. But she hadn’t come. Then, like a bubble popping at the surface of his mind, he’d heard something she’d said more than once: ‘George, if anything should happen to me, don’t worry. A monk will come.

A what?’ he’d said, the first time.

‘An old friend. He’s forever puzzled, but he gets there in the end.’

George had read his notebook again. She’d written ‘Wait … not ‘Wait for me.’

The next morning, George looked to the arch, hoping to see a different shape, perhaps someone fat with a white rope around his waist. He watched and waited, through the day and through the night. But when another morning broke, George rose and hurried through the streets. He crossed the river and crept like a thief into Gray’s Inn Square.

George stood outside Elizabeth’s chambers reading the list of gold names on a long black panel. Men and women slipped past him, flushed and serious. He became paralysed by the grandeur of it all. Then through the glass of a door he saw a round man with an orange waistcoat. The eyebrows rode high above piercing, kind eyes. He stepped outside.

‘I’m Roddy Kemble, who are you?’

George panicked. ‘Bradshaw, sir.’

Mr Kemble thought for a moment. He didn’t move, but he looked like a man rooting through a cardboard box, lifting this, lifting that. Abruptly he said, ‘May I ask your first name?’

‘George.’

The man’s arms fell by his side. He seemed to have found what he expected and didn’t want. Quietly, he said, ‘Elizabeth is dead.’

George adjusted his goggles. His mouth went dry and he nodded appreciatively.

‘In any other circumstances,’ said Mr Kemble, ‘I’d offer you a cigarette. But I’ve given up. Would you like a Polo?’

George nodded again.

Mr Kemble peeled back the silver paper. ‘Her heart gave out.’

For a while they stood awkwardly crunching mints, then Mr Kemble said, ‘Have you seen Elizabeth since the trial?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Frequently?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mr Kemble looked like a man whose house had just been burgled. He put a heavy hand on his shoulder and said, ‘It’s time to forget everything, George. Move on, if you can.

‘I stopped going anywhere a long time ago, sir.’

George backed away clumsily Mr Kemble raised an arm, as if he were giving a blessing or launching a ship. If it weren’t for the orange waistcoat, George would have thought he looked sad.

George stumbled up High Holborn and then found his way to Oxford Street, bumping into people and things, until he reached the roundabout and Marble Arch — where he’d last seen Nino, months back, in the summer. They’d sat on a bench and his guide had told him a strange story about right and wrong. George went to the same bench, looking hungrily at the monument, wanting his friend to emerge from beneath one of the portals, his blue and red scarf trailing in the wind. Sleep crept upon him. He woke and saw the arch, the flag and the ant crawling across the sky, and he reached for book thirty-eight.

George left the traffic island and began the long walk to Trespass Place. He thought of Elizabeth, whisky in hand. She’d foreseen her dying and had prepared for it. George had to wait because a monk would come. Another of her phrases floated by; it filled him with hope: ‘No matter what happens, Riley can’t escape.

George made haste, and he beckoned Nino’s story about right and wrong, but it wouldn’t come. All he could recall was the end, because Nino had spoken it with such force. His gaze had been wide as if he were waiting for eye-drops. ‘Don’t be lukewarm, old friend. That’s the only way to mercy or reward.’

When he’d told Elizabeth, she’d scribbled it down on the back of an envelope.

Beneath the fire escape George picked up a sharp stone. On the wall he scratched a few neat lines, one for each of the days he’d been waiting. By extension it was another lesson from Nino: to diligently keep an account of anything that might easily slip away.

8

Perhaps Anselm’s sensibilities had been over-roused, but he could have sworn that the woman at BJM Securities viewed him with both fascination and terror.

‘You’ve never come before,’ said Mrs Tippins, as if he’d let her down.

‘I’m sorry, was I expected?’

‘No.’

Anselm couldn’t imagine the foundation for reproof ‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘I can see that, but you’re too late.’

Mrs Tippins explained that the son of the deceased had taken possession of a small red valise.

‘That’s fine,’ said Anselm. He was convinced it was nothing of the sort; that this was not what Elizabeth had wanted. ‘I’ll just go back home.’

Mrs Tippins seemed uncomfortable, as if the static of her clothing was giving her tiny shocks. She opened the door for Anselm and then seemed to leap at an opportunity. ‘Do you mind if I ask … but are you allowed out?’

‘Every ten years.

‘Never. How long for?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Honestly? You better be making tracks, then.’

‘I’m joking.’

Mrs Tippins narrowed her eyes, reluctant to abandon deep-rooted convictions.

Anselm berated himself all the way back to Larkwood. Nicholas Glendinning had opened the box while Anselm had been hiding in an apple tree. It would have appealed to the author of Genesis: Nicholas now knew what he was not meant to know.

Mothers, sons and secrets, he thought. They were an unhappy combination but often found together. As if nudged, Anselm recalled the death of Zélie, his own mother, and the secret he carried. Oddly enough, the circumstances had captivated Elizabeth when he’d told her shortly after joining chambers. That was almost twenty years ago.

They were sitting in the common room on a Friday night. The wind kept triggering a car alarm that seemed to pause when sworn at from a nearby window.

‘She’d been in hospital for an operation,’ said Anselm. ‘Before she was discharged, my father called us all together. He said that she wouldn’t be getting better and that we weren’t to tell her. I was nine. A few days later she came home. I took her a cup of tea, and she said, “I’ll be up and about before you know it,” and I replied, “No you won’t. You’re going to die.”‘

‘Did you tell the others that you’d broken rank?’

‘No. They would have seen it as a betrayal.’

‘Betrayal?’ Elizabeth repeated, as if she were talking to an invisible third party.

‘Yes, but from that moment my mother and I were free. We could grieve while she was still alive. We could face what was coming in the absence of lies. I hadn’t even realised that obeying my father would have left us trapped.’

‘Trapped,’ echoed Elizabeth again.

She was talking to an imagined presence, but Anselm hardly noticed because turning over the stone had uncovered forgotten emotion. His eyes prickled and he couldn’t speak without his breath staggering. ‘Don’t get me wrong … this is no fairy story about life winning out. Shortly before the end, she said, “I can hear the sounds of a playground.” A kid was kicking a ball against our fence. She was drifting off to sleep. But she let slip a confession. “It’s been a school for death and I’ve hardly learnt anything.”’

Elizabeth had been spellbound.

Anselm parked beneath the plum trees and wiped his eyes, astonished by the power and freshness of remembered grief. The siren faded, along with the protestations from an upstairs window Presently Larkwood’s bells found their strike and birds scattered over the valley.

While the loss of his mother remained painful to Anselm, it had opened his child’s heart to a very adult truth: what you would cling on to will pass away, like grass. Several times Elizabeth had returned to this subject with a sort of fugitive hunger, but only abstractly and when they were alone. They’d spoken of honesty between parents and children, of loving by letting go, of this day’s importance. Half the time, Anselm was lost in the forest of ideas, but it seemed to help Elizabeth. He sensed she wanted a distant companion while she made a very private passage. She’d always been one for conceptual clarity.

Anselm had recovered by the time he reached the cloister. He always saw things clearly after he’d cried. And he was now convinced that it was back then, on a Friday night, that Elizabeth had decided, one day to seek his help — long before the ‘not knowing and the not being able to care’ had become an accusation.

9

Elizabeth had found George before he got his head kicked in. He still didn’t know how she’d traced him, though he had his suspicions. The only person who knew about Trespass Place was Nino. And everyone near the Embankment knew Nino. So George had pictured Elizabeth beneath the bridges, tapping arms, lifting blankets, seeking the whereabouts of a man named Bradshaw She must have been sent Nino’s way; and she must have told him a great deal to make him reveal where George had gone to ground.

A pinprick of light had jigged in the distance, exposing the cobbles like scabs in the asphalt. It grew larger, making her outline darker than the darkness. She lowered the torch and he saw gold buckles on expensive shoes. The beam was cut and she said, ‘You walked out of court, George.’

He replied to the shadow ‘Yes, and I let Riley go.

‘We both did.’

Elizabeth sat down on the cardboard beside him. They looked out on the courtyard, the drainpipes and the bins. She produced a flask of whisky and two silver beakers. It started to rain. The drops pattered on the fire escape landing. They didn’t speak; they just sipped the warming malt.

She came frequently after that, always in the evening. They fell to talking of old times. George told her what he’d done before the trial: baggage boy at the Bonnington, then one of a team in a night shelter for the homeless, and finally becoming its manager. He’d lost that job for gross misconduct after Riley was acquitted. Elizabeth’s story couldn’t have been more different: boarding school, Durham University and Gray’s Inn. After the trial she was made a deputy High Court judge. Her life had gone up, his had gone down. She too had married; they’d both had a son. Hers was called Nicholas; he was planning a trip to Australia.

‘What for?’

‘To get away from me.’ She laughed. ‘He’s grown too quickly’ Distantly she added, ‘He’s the very image of my father.’

Elizabeth never urged George to find a hostel; she never asked about the home he’d left behind, and the wife who couldn’t face him any more. She seemed to understand that sometimes there was no going back; or at least, not until one’s connections with the past had been changed. They just sat side by side beneath the fire escape sometimes chatting, sometimes silent. Then she’d go home.

One night she turned up with her work. It brought the ambience of the Old Bailey into this, his hideaway While she read, marking the page and swearing, he was sure she was ahead of him, waiting. Tension made him fidget. She asked him to keep still. Suddenly he blurted out, ‘It couldn’t have been any different.’

‘I know.’ She carried on reading.

‘Not after I was asked about my grandfather … the dropping of my first name.

‘I know’

‘I never saw that coming.’

‘No one did.’ She put her files and coloured pens in a bag and pulled out the whisky and the beakers. After they’d drunk several shots, she spoke of John’s fall on Lawton’s Wharf. The subject had hung in the air while she’d spoken of her own son. George opened out a newspaper cutting of the inquest and gave it to Elizabeth.

‘How did Riley do it?’

George couldn’t answer because — in truth — it was his fault. He’d sent his son to his death with an aside uttered during Countdown. He saw the smiling presenters; and he saw his boy fearful, stooping through a hole in the wire. He was only seventeen.

‘I suppose there’s no evidence.’

‘None.’

She turned, drawing the fall of hair behind an ear. A diamond sparkled on the lobe. ‘I’m implicated in what happened, George.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘I let Riley escape far more than you did.’ It didn’t sound condescending, just private and adamant.

‘You can keep the cutting.’ It was all he could do to reach her. She had almost left the planet.

When Elizabeth next came to Trespass Place she said her back couldn’t take it any more. She was very specific. The problem was degenerative changes at L5 and L6. ‘There’s a café round the corner.

They found a table in Marco’s by the window Then Elizabeth went to the counter without having asked him what he wanted. When she came back, he paled. She’d bought hot chocolate and toast. She’d done it on purpose. She’d remembered.

Three girls had given evidence against Riley It had taken guts, because they’d been terrified of the Pieman. But George had persuaded them to come forward. It had taken three attempts. And he’d done it over toast and cocoa. They’d said so in their witness statements.

‘Eat up,’ she said gravely.

George looked at the plate and mug in horror.

‘Go on,’ she repeated. ‘Take a sip.’

When he started eating, she said, ‘Have you ever wondered how evil can be undone?’

He nodded.

‘Me too.’

And that was it. George waited for the follow-up, but they just sat and ate toast and drank hot chocolate.

Elizabeth came back about two weeks later. She stood beneath the arch into Trespass Place and waved. George got up and followed her to Marco’s. By the same window they ate more toast and drank more hot chocolate.

Elizabeth said, ‘Do you remember Mrs Riley?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nancy is her name. She listened to the prosecution opening and then left the court, rather like you.’

George remembered the hat — yellow with black spots —pulled down as if it were a steel helmet.

Elizabeth explained that Riley’s solicitor, Mr Wyecliffe, was a highly intelligent man. She had asked him to interview Nancy with a view to obtaining a witness statement upon Riley’s good character. The difficulty was that no one knew what Nancy might say under cross-examination. Ultimately it was agreed that Nancy would not go into the witness box: she would only reveal Riley’s anger towards women.

George said, ‘She’s crackers.’

‘She trusts him, that’s all,’ said Elizabeth reprovingly ‘Maybe she sees a trace of something, a remnant of what’s been lost.’

Neither of them spoke for a while.

‘When I first saw you under that fire escape,’ mused Elizabeth innocently ‘I didn’t recognise you.

‘I’ve been sleeping rough for years. It changes you.’

‘Even in daylight you looked different,’ she continued. ‘Something’s gone, something you can’t catch and put in your notebook. Riley wouldn’t recognise you either, if you bumped into him.’

George looked up quickly.

‘He’s still a criminal, as he always was,’ she said, collecting toast crumbs with a manicured finger. ‘Nancy is the way to proving it. Maybe we can all make amends. How does that sound to you?’

When Elizabeth had gone, George went back to Trespass Place and wrote it all down in book thirty-five. There’d be one more volume before he got his head kicked in.

George sat beneath the fire escape, his goggles in his hair, reading his account of that meeting It was the beginning of a calculated scheme — although Elizabeth’s plans were already formed. They just required his cooperation. From the moment he’d written down her invitation it was as though every ill that had come to pass since the trial might all be transformed by a greater conclusion. Elizabeth had said, ‘If we get the ending right, we’ll change everything, right back to the beginning. It’s almost magic. A monk told me.’

The monk who hadn’t turned up, thought George, looking towards the arch at the end of the courtyard. He hadn’t slept for days now. Giddily he counted the scratches on the wall. Then he hauled himself upright, positioned his goggles and tramped into the sunshine. His shoes were split and the laces frayed. They fell off as he walked. On Old Paradise Street, he slumped forward onto the pavement, one leg in the gutter. He heard the tread of feet: frantic high heels, the measured clip of some army type, the squelch of trainers. Some slowed, some stopped, some spoke; but the river of feet moved on, drawn towards a sea of pressing obligations.

Among the flowing George heard the steps of someone familiar, a dawdling coming close … a pat-patting of small red sandals. He was dreaming. The ankles came into view: white skin upon fine bones; blue veins summoned by a wind that lifted off the waves. The boy’s copper hair danced. George lifted a hand off the pavement, reaching out, and said, ‘Oh, John.’

The waking dream unfolded. It was like watching a family video.

George took his son by the hand on Southport Pier. It was a blustery day with gulls thrown around as though attached to the railings by string. Occasionally they dropped like stones, but landed lightly on discarded crusts of bread. George found a bench, and John clambered beside him, banging one of his knees.

‘What’s for lunch, Dad?’

George pulled a tin from the plastic bag prepared by Emily ‘Salmon.’

‘That’s a treat, Dad.’

‘You’re right there, son.

They sat side by side, watched by the passers-by George kicked his shoes off and wiggled his toes. John pedalled the air.

The cold sun tilted towards the west. George checked his watch: it was time to get back to the hotel. Emily was waiting. ‘Come on, lad,’ he said despondently He didn’t want these moments of happiness to end.

John refused to budge.

‘We have to go.

John leaned away arms entwining round part of the bench.

George pulled him free and roughed his hair. The boy stomped ahead, along the silver timbers. His voice flew on the wind, ‘I like Southport, Dad.’

‘We’ll come again, son.

Blind George rolled over onto his back and said, ‘But we didn’t, did we?’

A passer-by knelt down and placed his hand under George’s head. It was a young man. His hair was gelled and spiked like a sea urchin. He wore a T-shirt with WINGS written on it. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘You’ve no shoes.’

‘I must have left them at Southport.’

The young man sat down and took off his trainers. ‘Put these on.

George couldn’t speak or protest. He just watched this prickly helper struggle to fit the shoes onto his feet. They were white with bright red stripes. Seconds later the figure walked briskly away as if he were embarrassed. Written across the back of his T-shirt were the words: WORLD TOUR.

I wonder where he’s off to now, thought George. He jogged back to Trespass Place — with sporty things like that on each hoof, he’d have looked stupid walking.

10

Nick drove to Larkwood Priory in his mother’s lemon-yellow VW Beetle. Her red valise lay on the passenger seat. By late afternoon, after several wrong turns, he came upon a line of oak trees straggling towards a set of colossal gates. They were jammed open. Above an incline topped by rhododendrons he saw a spire and patchwork tiles.

The reception desk was unoccupied, although a phone was off the hook. A tinny voice came out of it yelling, ‘Hello?’ Nick peeked down a corridor but jumped when a hand touched his shoulder.

‘Were you ever in the scouts?’

The monk was ageless and aged, dressed in a black habit and a white scapular. A length of frayed plastic twine was tied with a bow round a thin waist. His cranium, while angular, seemed soft as sponge, with a haze of shaved white fluff.

‘I was a Sixer,’ said Nick proudly.

‘When I was a lad,’ said the monk, hooking his thumbs onto the belt, ‘Baden-Powell told me a secret about the relief of Mafeking.’

‘Really?’

The telephone shouted, ‘Hello?’

The monk looked at the receiver as if it were an unusual fruit and put it back on the console. ‘The Boers were at the gates, armed to the teeth.’

A gentle cough robbed Nick of the disclosure. ‘Thank you, Sylvester.’

Father Anselm led Nick outdoors. The monk seemed much younger than the barrister he remembered. As with Baden-Powell’s confidant, a life of denial appeared to have disarranged the normal ageing process. He was probably in his forties. They’d met a few times in the corridors of his mother’s chambers. A slight hesitation in his gait made him look shy and boyish, as if he were on his way to the podium to pick up the diligence prize after all the clever children had returned to their seats. Short, ruffled hair and round glasses magnified a look of permanent surprise. His black habit was frayed; the white scapular flapped like a long serviette.

‘My mother kept a secret,’ said Nick. They faced each other across a table in a herb garden. He placed his mother’s case between them. ‘She wanted to reveal it to me. When I turned to listen it was too late.’

The monk took off his glasses like some patients remove their trousers. He seemed strangely vulnerable.

‘By chance,’ said Nick, ‘I found a key hidden in this book.’

He passed over The Following of Christ. ‘I’m afraid the scrawl is mine. Biro practice when I was five or so.’

Father Anselm opened the cover and looked intently at the open space. Apparently deep in thought, he closed the book and opened it again, looking at where the key had been kept. Then he turned to the front and read out the dedication:

‘To Elizabeth, from Sister Dorothy DC hoping that this small and great book will always be a friend to her.’

‘Do you know her?’ asked Nick. His mother’s faith had not been a shared field. It was more of a parallel continent with strict border controls, imposed by both sides.

The monk shook his head.

‘I think that whatever my mother wanted to say is tied up with this case. So I opened it, and I’m none the wiser.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ replied Father Anselm. One arm rested on the table, reaching towards his guest. ‘When your mother gave me the other key she asked me to help you understand what she wasn’t able to explain.’

Nick felt a surge of relief He waited for the account that would make sense of the secrecy and the planning. But the monk just kept smiling benignly Then Nick realised that he was waiting for the case. Surprised, Nick said, ‘Don’t you know what’s in here?’

‘Not at all.’

‘She just gave you a key?’

‘Precisely’ said Father Anselm, quietly sagacious. Nick had cultivated a similar manner to assure the terminally ill. He pushed, the case across the table. Father Anselm placed the contents in an orderly line and then frowned. ‘Riley’ he muttered with distaste. Then he started with the ring binder. Without his glasses, he seemed to be wincing. Slowly he turned the pages. At one point he said, ‘Cartwright … not Cartwheel.’ Then, with a shrug, he read the newspaper cutting, glancing at the trial brief, making the connection. Finally he opened the letter, saying, ‘I’ve never seen this before.’ Leaning his head back, he read out loud:

Dear Mrs Glendinning QC and Mr Duffy,

I thought that if I ever began writing to either of you, I might never stop. There’s no beginning or end to what I want to say But then I thought, why don’t I just tell you what happened when the trial was over, when we went home and you went to a restaurant?

We lost our son. My husband fell to pieces. For what it is worth, along the way I lost myself.

Mr Duffy asked, ‘What did David do that George wanted to forget.’ I suppose you thought that was very clever. He had no right to ask that, no right at all. Don’t think that wearing a wig means you had nothing to do with what went wrong. You’re mistaken.

I don’t know what type of conscience you must have that lets you walk out of doors. How can you sleep at night having stood up for a man like Riley?

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Emily Bradshaw

Father Anselm placed everything back in the case.

‘Well?’ asked Nick.

Father Anselm put his glasses back on and said apologetically.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what your mother wanted me to say ‘Then why did she give you a key?’

‘I assume because I was involved in the case. ‘But why hide it from me and my father?’

‘I don’t know’ Father Anselm tapped the lid of the case, perplexed but silent. Another monk passed through the gate carrying a wicker basket. He waded into the tangle of herbs and began cutting leaves with a pair of scissors.

‘Herbal remedies,’ said Father Anselm weakly ‘I’m not sure they work.’

‘Who was Riley?’

‘He was a docker.’ He snatched at random details as if they were flies. ‘He was a crane operator. A docker. An alleged pimp. Three witnesses said he worked for the Pieman.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Just a name in the papers.’

Nick glanced towards the other monk, who was humming and snipping. A confusion of scents drifted over them. ‘Father, what was so special about this trial?’

‘Nothing.’ He frowned, showing that this was his own question. The monk smuggled each arm into the sleeve of the other until he made a sort of sling across his chest. He looked away towards a wilderness of healing plants. ‘The only memorable aspect of the trial was how it ended.’ He fell silent.

‘What happened?’ prompted Nick.

‘I cross-examined the main witness, a man called Bradshaw He used his second name, George, rather than David, which was his first. In a rather elaborate way I asked him why and the case collapsed.’

‘How?’

‘He just walked out of the court.’

‘Because you asked him about his name?’

Father Anselm nudged his glasses. ‘It looked like he was refusing to answer for his past. David’s past, if you like.’

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know’

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘I couldn’t think of anything better.’ As though he’d won an unwanted prize, he added, ‘It’s what’s called a good performance.’

Father Anselm’s attention shifted to the quiet work of his brother monk. The herb garden was extraordinarily still. It seemed to give emphasis to speech, as if the land and its many plants were listening.

Nick left the case on the table and followed Father Anselm to a path of mulch between a stream and an ancient abbey wall. At precise intervals slender pillars climbed from the stone, but most had been smashed at head height. By a pile of black railway sleepers, the monk halted. The creosote was sharp like smelling salts. He breathed deeply and exhaled. ‘Something is missing,’ he pronounced.

‘Like what?’

‘Instructions.’

‘If that were the case,’ replied Nick, ‘she’d have given you a letter and not a key’

And that,’ replied the monk, ‘is a rather good point.’ His eyes blinked at a mark on the ground, as if Andre Agassi had walloped something from behind an arch.

Nick felt sorry for this puzzled man with tousled hair and flashing glasses. His life among the ruins appeared to have blunted what was once a sharp mind — how else did you win a case by quizzing a witness on nothing more than his choice of name? That was impressive. But now, he felt sure, he needed a little help. Nick said, ‘Father, it’s a strange story Of all the trials my mother ever conducted, she kept this one. It just so happens that five years later the son of a witness drowns. My mother finds the grieving father, and it seems they both connect the death to the trial, apparently not accepting the coroner’s verdict. Two questions follow: did they suspect foul play? And what did they do next? But I’ve another: why keep the papers of this particular case? What was so special about Mr Riley?’

Father Anselm’s head was angled. Perhaps he looked like that when he listened to sins, or whatever people usually told him. The monk discreetly produced a packet and began to roll a cigarette. He removed a shred of tobacco from his mouth and said, ‘She told me she’d been tidying up her life.’ The match sputtered like a damp flare.

They retraced their steps past the great wall with the shattered columns.

‘Father, when I was diving on the Barrier Reef,’ said Nick, ‘I watched fish getting washed by a plant. It was wonderful. They lined up and took it in turns. Somehow, they just knew what to do. There was no need for any instructions.’ He looked aside at the troubled monk. ‘Maybe my mother thought you were in the same queue, that you’d understand without thinking. Don’t worry if you can’t help in the way she wanted.’

When they reached the table in the herb garden Father Anselm picked up the case; from there they walked to the car park where the yellow Beetle seemed to quiver against the purple canopy of plum trees. Fruit lay splattered on the windscreen.

A mad Gilbertine idea,’ said Father Anselm awkwardly. ‘We forgot that fruit falls when it’s ripe.’ It sounded like a warning. He asked for time to understand the contents of the case and for Nick’s telephone number; and he concluded, ‘Don’t turn over old stones. Let them lie where they were placed.’

Nick drove down the lane of loitering oak trees, away from Larkwood and the smell of aromatic plants. And as he did so, he reflected, painfully, that he’d never been able to share his mother’s deep faith. He leaned more towards his father, who, while adherent, was passive, his true fervour lying in the open fields. When cross, Elizabeth had called him a heretic; in better tempers, she settled for pantheist. Nick had grown up beneath the quirky arch formed where these two types of belief met. He eventually crept away, not quite making sense of the open sky At university he saw the chaplains and the students, half resenting the consequences of his own choice (if that is what it was), for he would have liked to belong. He eventually found a working credo in science — the purity of facts and verification. His mother had quietly grieved. They’d argued — hopelessly, because he didn’t ask her questions, and she didn’t want his answers. He could follow loose talk about God, but not to the point where all that type of thing mattered— at the meshing of life and ideas.

Shortly before Nick had gone down under, she’d said, ‘We should settle on beliefs that are worth the hazards of the race.’

Mildly irritated, because they were watching Ben Hur and it was the exciting bit when the chariots were crashing into each other, Nick said, ‘Would you fight for yours?’

‘I really don’t know.’ She spoke as if the crowds were waiting, but this was St John’s Wood not the Colosseum.

Thinking now of his mother on the edge of the sofa, eyes glued to the screen and worried, Nick decided to ignore the parting advice of a monk. He pulled into a lay-by and fished out Mr Wyecliffe’s business card. It was stained with oil from the cashew nuts. He dialled the number on his mobile. The solicitor’s surprise was forced and his charm predatory, as if he smelled business. An appointment was made for the next day and Nick resumed the journey home, wondering about the relief of Mafeking.

11

It was odd, but George could remember in his sleep. Sometimes his dreams were like the old films shown at Christmas. He watched with recognition. So when George was slipping away, he would try to switch on what was lost to him while awake. Most of the time it worked. But when he snapped upright it was with the horrible fear that he’d made it all up.

With the sharp stone, George scratched another day of waiting upon the wall. It was early evening. Sheets of polythene wrapping flapped in the corner. He turned on his pocket radio and Sandie Shaw sang ‘Puppet on a String’. He became drowsy, drugged by the waiting and the cold. Elizabeth’s voice rose in his memory. They’d often sat in Marco’s listening to the radio echo from the kitchen. Songs like that were always being dug out. Quite deliberately, George held himself at the line between sleep and wakefulness.

Elizabeth bought more cocoa and toast. ‘You really have changed. I barely recognised you.’

‘You keep saying that.’

‘I’m sorry.

Elizabeth picked up a triangle of toast with dainty fingers.

After the trial Riley sold Quilling Road.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yes. And he left the Isle of Dogs. In fact, he was sacked. With the money from the sale he set up a house clearance business.’

‘Did he?’

‘Stop asking if he did something, when I just said that he did.’

‘Fair enough.’

Elizabeth licked her thumb and forefinger. ‘He set up two companies. One of them is a shop run by his wife, Nancy, whom you saw at court. I don’t suppose you met?’

‘No,’ said George. ‘It wasn’t that type of party.’

Elizabeth dabbed the corners of her mouth. ‘The second business is Riley’s own concern. He runs it from a transit van, selling odds and ends at fairs and bazaars.’

‘Stuff from the house clearances?’

‘Yes. So when he buys a job lot, everything is somehow or other divided between this shop and his van.

‘So what?’ George wasn’t interested in Riley’s commercial habits.

‘Aren’t you ever inquisitive?’

‘Not really’ His eye fell on the last triangle of toast. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘He has to file accounts at Companies House. I’ve read them.’ Elizabeth pushed the plate towards George, as if it were a donation. She said, ‘I’m reliably informed that this business isn’t what it seems.’

George threw down a crust. ‘You’ve just said that he’s gone straight.’

‘No I didn’t. I said he’d gone into business.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘All the figures add up perfectly’

George couldn’t understand lawyers. How could they see a weakness that wasn’t there? Mind you, that was what the other one had done. How had he known to ask about David Bradshaw? Duffy was his name. He’d got lots of pages all to himself in book thirty or so.

Elizabeth said, ‘To find out what he’s really doing we need to see more than a balance sheet.’

‘We?’

‘Sorry,’ said Elizabeth with a smile. A slip of the tongue. But now you mention it, I’ve an idea.’

‘Have you?’

Elizabeth glowered at him. ‘Yes. Both companies are registered at Nancy’s shop.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s their official business address. Riley is obliged by law to keep all financial records for seven years. I doubt if he keeps a filing cabinet at home.’

‘So what do you suggest?’

‘Nancy is the key. She must have turned aside from so much to have seen so little.’

‘Your idea… it wouldn’t be me knocking on the door and introducing myself?’

‘Not far off, George. Imagination and subtlety would have taken you the remaining distance.’

‘Would it?’

Elizabeth glowered again and refused to answer.

A loud flap from the polythene nudged George into wakefulness. The present moment gathered density, becoming prickly; he had pins and needles along one arm. The conversation was still complete, like an echo. He listened to the aftershock, understanding — for that moment of rebounding — all that had happened over the following months. But then an awful doubt came over him: had it all been a dream? With a torch held under his chin, he fumbled through his notebooks. He turned the pages quickly, his mind growing dim, Elizabeth’s words fading… until he paused to smooth out a dog-ear at the beginning of book thirty-six. There was the heading. It brought back her voice: ‘George, this is what you are going to do.’

12

After compline Anselm knocked on the Prior’s door. It was the Great Silence, but Father Andrew never let a rule, however ancient and secure, take primacy over an insistent worry. A fire had been made. Two chairs had been placed in front of it. The Prior was already seated, arms on his knees. Light flickered upon broken glasses that had been repaired with a paperclip.

Anselm took his place. ‘You know of the key?’

‘I do.’

By the hearth was a life-size statue that he’d never seen before. Such things turned up occasionally in the fields, or by the Lark near the abbey ruin. Once cleaned up, they stood in for garden gnomes in the grounds. This one had lost its head and an elbow. Whoever it was stood like an observer of sacred things long gone.

‘I suspect you know everything else,’ said Anselm, grateful to have an ally.

The Prior shook his head. ‘All I’m sure of is this: in the nicest possible way, we’ve been set up.’

They looked at the wrangle of impatient flames. The wood was wet and hissed and steamed.

While Larkwood was a deeply impractical place, its traditions were very ordered when it came to talking — because of the Rule’s insistence on listening. Back-and-forth dialogue wasn’t the norm with serious matters. You took turns. At a nod from Anselm, the Prior kept the initiative.

‘Elizabeth asked to see me — in confidence — the week before you came to Larkwood, which is to say about ten years ago. Inadvertently it seems, you had given me a favourable recommendation. Or, at least, the kind that spoke to her.’

Anselm had said that the Prior pops illusions… it was all he could remember saying.

‘She made an appointment. She came all the way from London. But she couldn’t speak. We just looked at each other. And something surfaced while I was watching her… anger, helplessness… and finally she said, “How can evil be undone?”‘ The Prior scratched his scalp. ‘We spent the next hour exploring this territory, never approaching a specific issue. And yet I was talking to a haunted woman.’

Anselm remembered his own conversations with Elizabeth on those dark Friday nights: she’d been intellectually tireless, searching out the implications of every nuance. When she’d come to Finsbury Park, she’d told of a voice that would not be stilled and Anselm had said that to understand the ways of the heart you need a guide…

‘Years later she asked to see me again,’ resumed Father Andrew, eyes on the fire. ‘She didn’t want you to know of her visit, so we met while you were away In many respects it was a re-run of our first encounter, only this time the anger and helplessness had been replaced by despair. As before, she did not speak. So I asked her a question, “Why are you unhappy?” Almost whispering, she said, “I’m implicated in a homicide.” And then she seemed to slip away, leaving her body behind. I said, “I think you need a solicitor not a monk.” She replied, “It’s not the law that has a claim upon me. It’s my “‘

‘Conscience,’ Anselm interjected. The Prior nodded.

Kierkegaard had called it ‘an affair of the heart’. Anselm’s rebelled. He’d been in the same position as Elizabeth: they’d both defended guilty men before. And if Riley were connected to the death of John Bradshaw, conscience could not hold either Elizabeth or Anselm to be responsible. There was no link between anything they had done and that outcome. So how had the discomfort become anguish? Mechanically, Anselm surmised that this particular visit to Larkwood must have occurred shortly after Elizabeth had received the letter from Mrs Bradshaw.

‘We sat in silence,’ continued the Prior, gazing into the fire. ‘Gradually, as it were, she came back, and we talked of her work — of revenge and fair dealing, of injury and restoration, of judges and juries: these ideas, and their connections, seemed to fill her mind, and she sifted through them as if she were doing a jigsaw whose picture it was desperately important to complete… and keep out of view.’

The Prior leaned forward and threw another log on the fire. Flakes of orange ash burst free and rose and turned instantly to grey.

‘The last time I saw her was a month ago. She wanted to talk to you, but only after a meeting with me — which was, however, to remain confidential. She was neither angry, nor helpless, nor desolate. I found her composed; you might even say at peace. He took off his glasses and fiddled with the paperclip. ‘Going back to the jigsaw, I think the gathering of the pieces was over. She said, “I’ve thought a great deal about our previous discussions and, as a result, I’ve been tidying up my life.” I waited, expecting her to tell me what this had all been about, but she confided nothing. So I said, “If ever I can help again, don’t hesitate to ask.” She smiled, saying, ‘Actually, I’ve a small favour to ask.” And at that strange moment, I felt like the first domino in a queue.’ The Prior repositioned his glasses and looked to Anselm, as if inviting the next in line to relate the fall.

Anselm said, ‘She wondered if I might be free to run an errand on her behalf.’

‘She did,’ said the Prior. ‘And I agreed.’

‘She then said, “May I give him a key to be used in the event of my death?”’

‘She did. And I agreed.’ The Prior pursed his lips, thinking. ‘What you will not know are the instructions she then gave me regarding what should happen after you had opened the box. They were precise. As regards myself, I was to wait, otherwise you would not understand what I was to say As regards yourself, she said, “Firstly Anselm should visit a Mrs Bradshaw She wrote to both of us many years ago. She deserves a reply” Does that mean anything to you?’

‘I’ve just read it.’

While Anselm explained what had been written, the Prior went to his desk and opened a drawer. ‘She then said, “Secondly please give him this letter. He should open it when he has left Mrs Bradshaw After that, everything should fall into place.” And she added, ‘A police officer called Inspector Cartwright will one day thank you, as I do.” I’d have called a halt to this drama, if it hadn’t been for her resolve and.., her pain.’

Anselm took the envelope. It bore his name in her small, painstaking hand. ‘And then, to evoke the past, she sought me out with a box of chocolates.’

The Prior sat down with a sigh, rubbing the back of his head — a gesture possibly from his younger days in Glasgow ‘Tell me all about it; from when you first met her.’

From when you first met her. The Prior, like Anselm, was already looking further back than appearances would warrant. Accordingly, Anselm began with a conversation on a Friday night long before the Riley trial, a talk about parents, children and dying.

It was late when Anselm finished. Larkwood’s owl — heard but never seen — had taken flight, and was hooting round the spire, permanently baffled by the fearlessness of the partridge weathervane.

‘I suppose Sylvester told everyone that Inspector Cartwright came here?’ asked the Prior.

‘Not quite, but the bulk of the message got through.’

‘She believes that John Bradshaw’s death was a revenge killing linked to the Riley trial, although the mechanics were beyond proving. We decided that Elizabeth must have come to a similar conclusion, because this was undoubtedly the homicide to which she’d referred. This, however, was not the only matter we discussed. It transpired that in the seconds before she died, Elizabeth had made a telephone call to Inspector Cartwright.’

‘Really? What did she say?’

“‘Leave it to Anselm.”‘

Anselm frowned and repeated Elizabeth’s last words with incredulity. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘She hadn’t a notion. Presumably you’ll find out after you’ve visited Mrs Bradshaw and read the letter.’ The Prior rose, indicating that the interview was over. ‘Inspector Cartwright would like you to call her in due course.

The cry of Larkwood’s owl began to fade as it flew west over Saint Leonard’s Field, leaving behind a charged silence, a sense that something strange occupied the night sky above the monastery.

Anselm went to his cell and threw open the window The night was cool and sharp, softened by the smell of apples. The community had been peeling them before compline, and the skins were in sacks by the kitchen door.

Leave it to Anselm. Was that wise, Elizabeth? What did I say that made you choose me? Or is it something I’ve done?

Anselm breathed in deeply wondering why he’d put the key back in his wig tin. Generously, the Prior had not enquired. Perhaps it was that word ‘murder’, and the hopeless search for a rhyme. Whatever the cause, Anselm was altogether sure that the consequent delay would complicate things considerably Elizabeth had foreseen many things, but Anselm’s hesitation wasn’t one of them.