The Gardens of the Dead (12 page)

‘You
call yourself George, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘But
your first name is David?’

‘Yes.’

‘How
did you come to call yourself by your second name?’

‘I didn’t
like the first one.’

Most
barristers develop a keen sense of intuition — because they have failed to see
the obvious time and again. It’s a kind of hunting instinct, a sniffing for a
scent. And the dislike of an ordinary first name struck Anselm as unconvincing.
Without instructions or vindicating facts, Anselm decided to follow his nose.

‘People
change their names for all sorts of reasons?’

‘Yes.’

‘More
often than not it is to turn over a new leaf.’

‘Yes.’

‘One
life ends, so to speak, and another begins?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is
that what you did?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm
paused, letting his imagination loose.

‘It
meant, I suppose, David slipped quietly away?’

‘Yes.’

‘And
George stepped forward?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm
didn’t make the mistake of asking ‘Why?’ Instead he shifted ground completely,
still feeling his way.

‘You
are the manager of the Bridges night shelter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where
you have worked for twenty-three years.’

‘Yes.’

‘You
are there to serve the needs of a highly vulnerable client group, are you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Indeed,
as I understand it, you’ve had people in your care as young as nine?’

‘Yes.’

‘I
expect an employee in your position must be of the very highest character?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm
paused, watching every inflection on the face of the witness.

‘Tell
me, Mr Bradshaw, whom did the night shelter employ:

David
or George?’

‘I don’t
understand.’

‘What
name did you give on the application form?’

‘George.’

The
next amateur question would have been another ‘Why?’ Anselm avoided that temptation:
the important point to appreciate at this stage was that everything Bradshaw
had said might go in one of two directions: innocent or compromising. Roddy
often said that with an honest witness, the wider the question the better,
because they are disposed to impose relevance upon it —their consciences take
them to the crucial, unknown detail. Anselm needed to find out if there was a
link between Bradshaw’s dropping his first name and his taking employment under
the second.

‘Mr
Bradshaw, have you ever done anything that came to the attention of the police?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now,
would that have been as David or George?’

‘David.’

Now
Anselm had to make his final move. There was no other territory to explore.
Bradshaw was either going to exonerate himself completely by revealing an
unpaid parking fine, or he just might divulge something that could be used
against his integrity. He said: ‘What did David do that George wanted to
forget?’

The
courtroom makes everyone a voyeur. The witness is often stripped bare, way beyond
what clothing can conceal. It is darkly fascinating and can leave the viewer
stained with pleasure. These things Anselm had learned long ago. But as he
spoke to Roddy the electricity of this particular spectacle surged through him
as if this were the first, forbidden time. Bradshaw stared across the well of
the court, his face pale. The jury watched him — as did the lawyers, the
ushers, the reporters and the bystanders. Looking down on this exhibition, a
judge held his pen above a page. Not a shred of detail would be lost to the
official record. Then, as if someone had called his name, David George Bradshaw
stepped out of the witness box and walked out of the court. Half an hour later
Riley went through the same door, a free man.

Roddy kept his papers and
court dress in a tartan suitcase on wheels. It bounced and ratted after him as
he pulled it through chambers and onto the stairs that led to Gray’s Inn
Square. Anselm followed, convinced that Roddy’s close examination of the
revolver — an exhibit taken out of court with permission —had served some
useful purpose, but that the true reason was the commotion that would shortly
erupt when he tried to take it back in. Anselm, though, had other concerns. ‘Something
shot over my head in that trial.’

‘Isn’t
it always thus?’ He waddled along the pavement as if he were on the way to
Corfu.

‘This
time it was different. I’ve been wondering why Elizabeth kept the brief in the
first place.’

Roddy
bounced his valise over a kerb. ‘Sorry, old son. The question never entered my
head.’ He became studious. ‘Forgive me, I must now dwell upon triggers and
safety catches. Do you know, in certain circumstances, it’s rather difficult to
press one without putting pressure on the other? That ought to kick up some
doubt.’

They
parted and Anselm watched Roddy nod greetings to left and right as he trundled
down Holborn towards the Bailey The rogue never asked the question, thought
Anselm, because he’d always known the answer.

6

The
memory of Mr Wyecliffe ruined Nick’s cornflakes. It was like sour milk. He had
never quite appreciated the twilight world of compromise that his mother had
inhabited. Nick had woken troubled by three questions. He would deal with two
of them over breakfast. His father sat opposite him, examining a boiled egg.

‘I
wonder what Mum was doing with those spoons?’

‘Spoons?’
Charles tapped the egg as if it were the door to the MD’s office.

‘The
ones that were found on the passenger seat.’

‘Bought
them in a shop, I suppose.

Not on
a Sunday, thought Nick. He didn’t want to disturb any of the conclusions his
father might have framed about Elizabeth’s behaviour prior to her death. But
the spoons seemed innocuous and important at the same time. She had obtained
them, in all likelihood, shortly before her death. There was another incidental
detail that remained unexplained, which prompted the second question.

‘What
was she doing in the East End anyway?’

Charles
began dropping the egg on a plate. ‘She said it was work. A site visit.’

Nick
had in mind the autopsy photographs on his mother’s desk. They were part of the
last case she’d worked on. The victim had been killed in Bristol, not London.
Nick had checked the instructions to every case in the Green Room before they’d
been collected. None had referred to the East End.

Charles
picked at the battered egg with a nail, his face reddening. ‘What are you
doing with yourself when you’re out of doors?’ He laughed weakly ‘Going here,
heading there. You’re getting like your mother.’

‘Oh,
just friends and unfinished business.’

Charles
picked up a knife, eyes narrowed. He looked bullish.

‘That’s
what she said.’

After breakfast Nick went
to the Royal Brompton Hospital in Kensington to deal with the third question: a
heart condition that had killed his mother. Its presence and gravity had been
unknown to him. ‘She didn’t want to worry you,’ Charles had said the night
before the funeral. He’d tweaked his tie. ‘I’d no idea that she might collapse
without warning… that the end could come like a bus mounting the pavement.’

There
was no point in pressing his father for details. The anatomy of a butterfly he
could grasp, but that of a human being left him dazed. Too many pipes. So Nick
contacted his mother’s consultant cardiologist. He didn’t mention it to his
father.

On the
desk before Doctor Simbiat Okoye was a slim bundle of medical records.
Pensively she leafed through them. Her hair was tightly braided into thick
strands and rolled into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. When she spoke,
her eyes studied the listener’s face. ‘Your mother had hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy.’

Nick
let the words settle. This was a hereditary disorder of the heart whereby its
muscles become thick and stiff. In turn, this affects blood flow and valve
function. There is no cure; and it’s hereditary with a fifty-fifty chance of
passing it on to your children.

‘You do
not have the condition,’ said Doctor Okoye. Her eyes were dark with a flush of
rose around the whites.

‘She
had me screened before I went to Australia, without me realising it?’

‘Yes.’

Doctor
Okoye explained the history and outcome of his mother’s consultation. Elizabeth
had first developed breathlessness and chest pain about ten years ago. She’d
put this down to stress at work: she’d recently found herself frightened of
court —not the usual nervousness, but a debilitating anxiety that could make
her sick. This had been unknown before. Palpitations and light-headedness were
placed at the door of the menopause. And then she’d had a blackout about a year
ago. A visit to her GP prompted an emergency referral.

‘Surgery
wasn’t required,’ said Dr Okoye. ‘I prescribed beta-blockers and
anti-arrhythmias. The drug therapy was effective but—’

‘__with
a small number of patients there’s a risk of sudden death… like being hit by a
bus. My mother was one of them.’

‘Yes.
Would you like to see my notes?’

‘No
thanks.’ He asked the question for which she was waiting ‘How did my mother get
it… I mean.., which parent was affected, her father or mother?’

‘There’s
no way of knowing now,’ said Doctor Okoye. ‘From what I was told, it may have
been her father. I understand he died in an armchair with a glass of milk in
his hand.’

‘Yes,’
said Nick. ‘He went out like a light.’

Nick’s
grandmother had followed her husband shortly afterwards, from septicaemia. He’d
never known them. And there were no other siblings, so there was no one else in
the hereditary tree.

Doctor
Okoye rose and walked to the window With a gesture she drew him beside her. ‘Look
down there, in the courtyard.’

A
copper sculpture stood in the centre of a pool. Two adjacent basins channelled
a watercourse. Exotic plants with fronds like open scissors stood in tubs
positioned along the sides.

‘It
represents a hidden aspect of heart rhythm,’ said Doctor Okoye. Apart from
muscular contraction, blood movement results from surface waves created by the
inflowing stream. It’s as though after an initiating shove, circulation could
go on for ever, the required energy coming not from a heart, which will one day
tire, but through the configuration of cavities and the momentum of blood.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. As you can see’ — she pointed towards
one end of the sculpture — ‘art and nature require a pump.

Nick
looked at the grove, his head against the glass.

‘Your
mother and I stood by this window,’ said Doctor Okoye. ‘She had been
distressed. But the heart carries a greater mystery than any frailty.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a
wonder that it ever worked at all.’

On his
way out of the hospital, Nick paused in the courtyard to watch the tumble and
splash of water between two scoops of metal. He wasn’t thinking of possible
worlds but of the inscrutability of this one: his mother had gone to the East
End, obtained a set of spoons, and her heart had stopped.

7

As far as George was
concerned, after he got his head kicked in he woke up in a very nice garden by
the Imperial War Museum. In fact, a lot happened in between. Much of it came
back of its own accord, and Elizabeth filled in some of the gaps, as best she
could. Her voice released other memories and together they’d put a shape to
what had happened.

The
preliminaries were straightforward.

George
didn’t like the docks: the warehouse seemed to wake at night with groans in the
bricks: it was resonant with lost activity. More to the point, it wasn’t his
patch. His territory was south of the river, round Trespass Place. So, a few
days after Elizabeth had asked for the receipt books, George walked to Waterloo
after nightfall. He was only a few minutes from the fire escape when it
happened.

There
was no reason for the attack. George didn’t go down defending an old lady or
tackling a thief. He was just sitting on a bench eating popcorn. Out of the
corner of his eye he saw a gangly youth in a padded jacket… and then another,
with a shaved head. They were laughing and elbowing each other like kids on a
school trip. Mischief always ran high when the master wasn’t watching. The one
with the jacket asked for some popcorn. George handed it over. The shaved head
tipped it over George as if it were a massive salt-cellar. When he stood up
they began the kicking, like it was a dance, or a new sport. They panted and
grunted and sighed.