The Bellwether Revivals (46 page)

The police came for him at Cedarbrook. It was a dreary Tuesday afternoon in May, and he was in the parlour, doling out teacups and digestive biscuits, when he saw the squad car parking in the drive. There were no sirens, no flashing lights, but the younger residents—always hawk-eyed around that time of day—noticed the flare of luminous paintwork, and gathered at the window to watch the two uniformed policemen striding up the ramp towards the front door. The bell rang and Jean went to find out what they wanted. There was a brief, murmured exchange, and she came back into the parlour to say: ‘Can you come with me for a minute, Oscar?’

The policemen asked for somewhere private to talk, so Jean showed them into the staff room and closed the door behind her. Oscar leaned on the counter while one of constables—the shorter of the two, but the stockier—took out a notebook and a biro. He said his name was PC Towne; the other man’s name was PC Walsh.

‘Don’t worry, sir. You’re not in any trouble. We’d just like to question you in regard to a friend of yours, a Mr Eden Bellwether. Can you confirm that you know him?’

‘Yeah. I know him.’

‘You’re friends?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of?’ said PC Walsh. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘We hang round together, but whether we’re really friends, I don’t know. I’m going out with his sister.’

‘Yes, we’ve already been informed about that.’ PC Towne licked the nib of his biro, and left it poised on the paper. ‘Mr Bellwether’s parents reported him missing last night. Seems he’s been gone for a few weeks, though.’ Towne turned to his partner. ‘When was it, end of April?’

Walsh nodded, keeping his eyes on Oscar. ‘We’re making initial inquiries, that’s all. Just a few questions. Won’t take long.’

It took less than fifteen minutes.

Their questions were basic: ‘How long have you known him?’ ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ ‘Was that the last time you heard from him?’ ‘Any idea where he might be now?’ Oscar gave brief, courteous answers and PC Towne wrote them down with little movements of his pen, while PC Walsh just stood there, arms folded. He didn’t mention his theory about Hamburg; it sounded stupid in his head, and he was sure it would sound twice as stupid out loud. There were many things he didn’t mention, in fact, because he knew they’d be too difficult to explain to a couple of small-minded constables who were clearly just going through the motions, and besides, where would he even begin?

‘Okay, thank you, sir,’ Towne said. ‘That’ll do for now. If you hear anything, call the station. We’ll find you if there’s anything else we need.’

They only had a couple of hours together that evening, and they wasted the first part of it arguing over where they should have dinner. Iris insisted it had to be somewhere central, because she couldn’t walk far, and her father was coming to pick her up from the gates of Downing at seven thirty. It had been nearly three
months since they’d last eaten alone in a restaurant. They had a nice table on the veranda at Galleria, overlooking the river, but all through dinner Iris sat with a glum face, picking at her food. She drank two glasses of Chardonnay and made three awkward trips to the ladies’ room with her crutches, leaving him sitting there every time, looking down over the water. They talked a lot about her last exam—the big Pathology test that she’d been dreading all year. The confidence and bluster of a few days ago was gone now; despair had set in. Oscar was sure that she was exaggerating when she told him her mind had blanked halfway through the multiple choice section, that she’d forgotten the most basic information, simple facts that even a nine-year-old could learn, and he listened, not really taking any of it in, just watching her lips moving. He knew that it was good for her to talk like this, to get it out of her system. He tried to comfort her by telling her it was perfectly understandable if she failed her exams, given the duress she’d been under lately, with all the night calls from the police, all the questions she’d had to answer, all the anxiety that surrounded her brother, but she didn’t seem to hear him. He told her that, in the grand of scheme of things, her exams weren’t really that important anyway. She looked at him, annoyed. ‘
What?
’ He knew it was the worst thing he could have said, and when he tried to take it back, she got impatient. Her voice turned into a whine. ‘
Not important?
How can you say that? I mean, it’s only my whole bloody life, my whole future on the line. Do you know how much pressure that is? Sometimes I feel like we’re a million miles apart.’

‘I’m just trying to support you.’ He knew that she wasn’t really upset with him—she was upset with her brother, her parents, her whole situation—and if she needed somebody to vent all of this resentment towards, he was happy to be that person for a while. She shook her head and finished off her wine. ‘It’s bad enough having to study every hour of the day without having to brace myself every time the bloody phone rings, in case it’s my brother, or the police, or, I don’t know, the bloody coast guard. You
should’ve seen the looks on those policemen’s faces when I was telling them about everything with Herbert. They were just smirking the whole time I was talking. And I said to them:
Look—you asked! If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, that’s your problem
.’ She exhaled—one long protracted huff from the deepest reaches of her lungs. ‘God Almighty, I’m so bloody sick of this. Why can’t things ever just be simple? Why can’t I just have a normal life with a normal family?’

‘That’s what everybody wants,’ he told her. ‘There’s no such thing.’

‘I don’t believe that. Somewhere in the world, somebody has to be living a normal, happy life. Maybe those monks in Tibet are happy. They look peaceful whenever I see them on TV. Maybe I’ll become one of those.’

‘Did you ever ask your mum about that church in Florida?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t seem to find the right moment to bring it up. She’s too tightly wound.’

‘Maybe ask your dad.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’ She checked her watch.

‘Better get the bill,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be late.’

‘Okay. But I’m serious—I’m going to Tibet and you can’t stop me.’ It was the first time she’d smiled all evening. She gathered up her crutches and he caught the eye of the waiter.

They got to Downing College around six fifteen. Yin and Jane were already waiting for them on the cool green lawn by the Fellows’ garden. It had been a long, miserable afternoon, and although the sun was out, it seemed weak, phlegmatic, and there was a listless kind of breeze in the air that hardly stirred the roses in the flower beds. Jane was sitting shoeless and cross-legged with her hands in the bow of her dress. She saw them coming and waved. Yin was lying on his side, pulling grass out in clumps. As they arrived beside him, he peered up at Iris and said: ‘If that face is anything to go by, your exams are sucking as much as ours.’

‘Urgh, don’t get me started.’ She ditched her crutches and lowered herself carefully to the ground. Oscar sat down next to her.

Yin smiled at him. ‘Times like these you should be thankful you’re not a student.’

‘I suppose.’

‘I mean it, man. Look at this.’ Yin lifted his hands. Nearly all of his fingertips were covered with plasters. ‘Paper cuts.’ He guffawed. ‘It’s the new textbooks that get you. The older ones are made of sturdier stuff, but the new ones? Edges like razors. I swear, I’ve lost a pint of blood.’

Iris straightened out her leg. ‘Where’s Marcus, anyway? Aren’t we technically trespassing without him here?’

‘He went to get the beers,’ Jane said. ‘Exams are nearly over now for him, lucky sod.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Only one to go,’ said Yin.

‘I’ve still got four.’

‘Yikes. That’ll teach you to do medicine.’

‘Yeah, and I hear it doesn’t get any easier,’ Jane said.

Iris threw a clod of grass at them and it broke apart in the air. ‘You lot were supposed to be cheering me up.’

Yin lay back, grinning. His shirtsleeves were rolled up tight around his biceps. ‘So I guess you all had the visit from the Keystone Kops by now, huh?’

‘They came for me at work,’ Oscar said. ‘I’ve never seen so many old people so excited.’ He tried to make a joke out of it, not wanting to bring Iris down; she was only just starting to brighten up again.

Yin said: ‘They were waiting for me outside my room after my exam. Just what I needed.’

‘Came for me this morning,’ Jane said. ‘I was still in my pyjamas.’

‘Oh, I bet they liked that!’ Iris said. It was good to hear her laughing.

‘Yeah, that taller guy—what was it?—Walsh?’ Yin said. ‘He was giving me the fish-eye. Marcus said he called him
sunbeam
. I don’t think he liked that so much.’

‘Actually, I thought the small one was quite nice,’ Jane said. ‘He had a kind face. And he drank Earl Grey with a slice of lemon, which I thought was funny, you know, for a policeman.’

Oscar hadn’t seen Jane and Yin since the night they’d all cleaned up the mess at Harvey Road. Jane had been so quiet and ashen-faced back then, and she’d thrown herself into the task of washing the bedsheets and scrubbing the carpets to keep her mind off things, the way his mother used to do. Twice that night, he’d found her crying in the kitchen with the lights off and the tumble-dryer whirring. But now she seemed a little happier, or maybe she was just resigned to things. For the last two weeks, she’d been applying herself to exam revision the same way she’d applied herself to cleaning up that house—with a determination to continue until someone told her to stop.

There was a gentle sound now in the distance. It was like the noise of people throwing glass into the bottle bank, an erratic clinking. Oscar looked across the courtyard, across the patterned lawns. A man was running towards them, as fast as his legs would take him. He was holding two stripy carrier bags that swung with each frantic stride he took across the shingle path, hitting his knees and thighs. The nearer he got, the louder the sound became.
Clink-clink, clink-clink
.

‘Hey, that’s Marcus,’ Yin said. He sat upright. ‘What’s the big hurry?’

‘He’s fizzing up the beer,’ Jane said.

Marcus was sprinting as hard as he could, stones spewing under his feet. He was only a few yards away now. His face was almost purple; his shirt was soaked with sweat. ‘Germany!’ he shouted. The word rebounded between the college buildings. ‘Germany!’

Yin stood up. ‘What the hell?’

Marcus came tearing into the Fellows’ garden. He dropped the carrier bags and stooped, panting, his hands on his knees. He couldn’t find enough breath to speak. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone, jabbing at the keys. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘he’s in Germany. Look!’ and he thrust the phone at Oscar. The screen displayed a text message:

Theo rolled down the window as far as it would go. ‘Speak up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t quite hear that last part.’

Oscar raised his voice over the traffic that was inching along the road outside the college gates. He picked another dried-up cherry blossom from the roof of the car, and looked down at Theo in the driver’s seat. He’d already been talking for so long that his throat was beginning to itch. The others were standing around him like security guards, listening. ‘I said he was telling me about this organ he was going to build—when all of this is over, that’s how he put it. I didn’t know what he meant. He showed me this drawing he’d done. And that’s when he mentioned St Michael’s—something about getting the pipes from Germany, how he was going to do something special to them, I can’t quite remember what.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything about this before?’ Theo said.

‘It was only a hunch then. I didn’t know if it was right. But now that he’s sent this text to Marcus—and after everything I found in his books—it seems more definite. Mattheson was buried in Hamburg. His organ is in Hamburg. It makes sense that Eden would go there, don’t you think?’

For a long moment, Theo said nothing. He sat there, fidgeting with the key-ring dangling from the ignition. He jogged his knee up and down, combed his beard with his fingernails. Then he looked through the window at Jane. ‘You agree with this?’

Jane nodded emphatically. ‘He used to talk about Hamburg all the time. It does make sense that he’d be there. And I really don’t have much faith in those policemen we saw.’

Theo lifted his chin at Yin and Marcus. ‘How about you two?’

‘Worth a try,’ said Yin. ‘We don’t have much else to go on.’

Marcus shrugged. ‘It’s not a lot, I know, but it’s something. He speaks the language. If he’s
somewhere
in Germany, why not Hamburg?’

‘Hmm.’ Theo twisted round to look at Iris. She was sitting in the back of the car with her leg across the seats. ‘I suppose I don’t have to ask if you’re on board?’

She pushed herself upright. ‘It feels right to me, Dad. We need to do something.’

‘Okay. I think I get the picture.’ Theo took a breath in through his nose and gulped it down. He started the engine. ‘Thank you, everybody. I’ll handle it from here.’ There was such a confidence and finality to the way he said it—the consummate surgeon taking over from his interns.

‘If you’re going out there, I want to come with you,’ Jane said, gripping the window as it rode up, stopping it dead.

‘I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet.’

‘Please, Theo.’

He tightened his lips. ‘I’ll think about it. In the meantime: study. All of you. Don’t let your hard work go to waste.’

Jane stepped back from the car and Theo reversed and drove towards the gates. As they waited to turn onto Regent Street, Iris blew kisses from the rear window. Oscar waved back. The car moved off, and the reflection of the dimming sky came sweeping over the glass to vanish her.