The Gardens of the Dead (21 page)

After
the trial, George hardly left his armchair in the sitting room. He faced the
window and the treetops of Mitcham. John was fourteen. Of late, he’d taken to
roughing up his hair with gel. His skin was raw, as if he scrubbed his cheeks
with a nail-brush. He kept coming into the room. He’d sit on different chairs
as if he were trying to get a fresh angle on his father. He reminded George of
those lifeguards at the swimming pool. They had a way of staring at people who
might be in difficulty. They were always young and athletic and confident. John
was a small lad, though, with thin arms and long fingers.

One day
John was sitting on the rest of an armchair, knotting his fingers together. He
was like a man preparing to jump.
Countdown
was on the television and a
cheery presenter was adding up numbers faster than George could think. He felt
John leaning towards him.

‘Dad, I
believe everything you said in court.’

The
local media had pulled George to pieces. The CPS was considering a prosecution
— for some unspecified offence.

‘Thanks.’
It sounded trite, but his heart had banged against his chest with a kind of
gladness.

‘You
mustn’t blame yourself, Dad,’ said John. He messed his hair up even more,
gathering confidence. ‘It doesn’t matter that Riley got off. He was just a
dogsbody. The police always get hold of the ones that don’t matter… That’s
not your fault.’

George
allowed himself to look at his son. It was hard, because of the lad’s
earnestness, the passion to save his father.

‘I
wonder who the Pieman might be?’ asked John coldly.

The lad
had been thinking hard, and he’d come to some conclusions. He’d decided who
the real criminal was, the one the police hadn’t arrested. George looked back
to the television as the scores were being read out. George, unthinking, said, ‘You’d
have to ask Riley’

The
remark must have landed like a pip in the mind’s soil, because the boy didn’t
do anything for years.

When George had walked out
of his own front door, he’d been turning away from that remark during
Countdown.
He’d also turned away from the ocean of memories that Emily evoked. But no
sooner had he met Nino, than the old man set him on course to face them again —
and not just in passing, but with all the detail he could summon to the pages
of his notebooks. The turning away however, had been essential.

And
now, with a similar kind of fortitude, he left Trespass Place, and ‘a royal
scheme to bring down the…’ or something like that; Elizabeth had often used
towering phrases to describe what they were doing. And he’d known why: she,
like George, had never accepted that Riley could not be brought to court for the
killing of John. All that — a trial and its aftermath — belonged at a still
point on the surface of the earth. George moved on, a plastic bag swishing
against his leg.

George must have been
walking for about half an hour when he noticed he was heading south, way off
his patch. He never went south. Mitcham lay down there. He wondered where he
was going; and he thought again of Nino, and what the old man had said when
they’d left the spike, the morning after the Pandora tale. ‘The street is the
place of stories,’ he’d intoned, leaning on a wall by Camden Lock. ‘Stories of
how you got here, and how you might leave.’ But he’d said something else —and
it had frightened George: ‘There are stories of how you might stay’

George
didn’t want that. All at once, his pace quickening, he wanted to tell the
extraordinary story of a man whose turning away had brought him back to where
he’d started from: the tale of a man who’d finally made it home.

9

‘You can leave everything
behind,’ the Major said, ‘but it’ll cost you more than you’ve already paid.’

He’d
come to the court off his own bat, or so it had seemed. He wore his cap as if
he were on parade. For the first time, Riley noticed the old shine on the
cloth, and the frayed lapels. The trial was about to begin. The witnesses were
lined up. The barristers were dressed in all that black. The Major had drawn
him into a tiny conference room. Guilt had been assumed, which cleared the air
like disinfectant.

Riley
played the fish. ‘Why should I do that?’

‘For yourself,’
he said, as if that were something worthwhile. And so that you can stop hurting
everyone around you.’

Riley
glanced over his shoulder. The conference room had large, misty windows from
floor to ceiling. On the other side he could see Wyecliffe. He was like a man
at prayer.

‘You
can still turn around,’ the Major continued, full of entreaty. Anything else is
an illusion. If you do, I’ll help you. I doubt if anyone else has the
inclination.’

Riley
laughed in a way that embarrassed him, because his voice squeaked. He saw the
lips of the Major harden; the red indentation of a cornet mouthpiece blanched
and vanished. He said, ‘I needed saving then, not now’

That
was meant to strike a nerve, but it didn’t. The Major was more switched on than
Riley had supposed.

‘We always
need saving now,’ he said. ‘Just stop running.’

Riley
shrank more from the repelling compassion than the idea. ‘I did. And I turned.
Now I do the chasing.’

That
hit the spot. The sight of the Major’s loathing thrilled him. But the man in
uniform still wouldn’t give up — Riley could see it in his eyes — he was
holding out for redeeming features; what Wyecliffe called ‘mitigating
circumstances’ for why Riley did what he did. And Riley thought, There weren’t
any But the Major wouldn’t have it. He refused to believe that anyone could be
rotten at the core — that a man might even want it. But who else was to blame?
Riley’s mother? Walter? None of them. Riley was sick to the back teeth of
sympathy that gobbled up his identity. The making of allowances — it was
daylight robbery. Of course, the family stuff could be used to his advantage in
a court, if he’d only plead, if he’d only grovel. But hold it there —Riley felt
pride burn the lining of some canal in his guts — I have self-respect. I’m me.
In the end, I’m pretty much self-made. He suffered a spasm of sour excitement:
this was the one thing no one could harm or take away: the core of himself, the
inedible part. A bitter fruit had grown from the dirt of his choices. No one —
and he meant
no one
— was going to give that back to his mother.

‘If you
plead guilty,’ the Major said mechanically ‘I might be able to say something on
your behalf.’

Riley
glanced at his cap-badge motto, ‘Blood and Fire’, as he’d done when they’d
first met. Back then, the Major’s compassion had made Riley panic. What had
happened? He felt nothing now He simply observed the man’s hopes and intentions.
On the face of it, he’d come to wangle a confession out of Riley urged on, no
doubt, by Wyecliffe, who was standing outside, biting his nails. But the Major
had his own reasons. He believed in the Lord of how things ought to be, of how
they might yet turn out. Riley stood, bringing the interview to a close. He
looked down from on high, with a remote, godless pity. The old soldier didn’t
seem to hear the tune of his own march: you couldn’t save a man against his
will.

Riley
walked out of that tiny room and never saw the Major again. Within minutes, he
was in the dock. It was only then, sitting in that box, flanked by guards,
that he realised he’d made another choice; that he could still have put his
hands up without blaming anyone but himself. It was an example of his actions
being one step ahead of his thinking. He hadn’t given a second thought to
pleading guilty because, in a feverish way he was looking forward to the trial,
to what might happen. No one could possibly know it, but Riley had set up a
reunion, and he didn’t want to miss it, even though for him, personally the
court process was an unimaginable ordeal. He wanted to see what George would do
when he saw Riley’s advocate.

Riley
was not disappointed. The trial ended exactly as he had expected, but not in
the way he’d foreseen. That David/George trick had been baffling.’ If Riley had
been the Major, he’d have thanked God.

On the
day of the acquittal, Riley pulled Nancy into the sitting room. He’d sobered
up, so to speak. The fever had passed, and he saw with terrible clarity that
Nancy had been an observer for years. And when it had been spelled out, she’d
fled from the courtroom, just like George.

‘Do you
trust me?’ He stood in front of her, holding her arms, as if she might slap
him.

‘I do.’

Nancy’s
eyes revealed a hard decision. Their light was gone, as if a screen had fallen
to stop a smash-and-grab. She seemed older and cut off from him — giving away
to Riley that they’d never really been attached.

I do.
It was like getting married all over again. It was
a second chance.

On the
strength of that vow Riley put Quilling Road up for sale. Then he drove to a
place he hadn’t seen since the age of eleven: Hornchurch Marshes. He walked
down a path of flattened grass until he reached four rectangular ponds, laid
out neatly like a window, with a frame made of bricks. It was known as the Four
Lodges. His breath grew tight, hurting his chest. Nothing had changed. He wept
uncontrollably looking at the men on stools and the clouds of midges.

10

Anselm passed through the
ornamental gates of Gray’s Inn Gardens. Here, as a young man, he’d dreamed of
standing in the Bailey of being an old hand, a grumpy legend in a tattered
gown. Lying on the grass, he’d cross-examined imaginary foes, breaking them
with imperial courtesy Phantom judges had looked on, mystified by such talent
in one so young. Not much later, he’d found himself walking the same gravelled
lanes, with their unexpected turns, thinking of a flickering space above a
nave, and an attentive silence.

‘Good
afternoon, Father,’ said Inspector Cartwright pleasantly.

Anselm
looked to his right, quickly as if he’d been caught. She was sitting legs
crossed on a bench eating crisps. On her lap was a manila envelope. Her ears
still carried the weight of a child’s affection.

‘Have a
look at these,’ she said. ‘Mrs Glendinning is either playing a game or she’s
being very careful.’

Anselm
sat beside her, one hand searching an upper pocket for his glasses. Relieved by
the unaccustomed sharpness of things, he withdrew a bundle of papers from the
packet. To leave him undisturbed, Inspector Cartwright wandered a short
distance away.

In fact
there were four bundles, each stapled into a kind of booklet. The first was
entitled ‘Nancy’s Treasure’, the second ‘Riley’s Junk’. Both of them comprised
annual returns, covering three successive years, as submitted to Companies
House. Nothing had been flagged or underlined. Anselm flicked through the other
two enclosures. Each was made up of photocopied receipts. Again they were
labelled with the different business names; again the pages unmarked. He
glanced at the dates, noting that each pamphlet spanned the same period framed
by the formal accounts. Puzzled, he checked the envelope again and then said, ‘Isn’t
there a covering letter?’

Inspector
Cartwright licked salt off two fingers and said curtly ‘No.’ She dropped the
crisps packet in a bin and came back to the bench. She modified her answer. ‘Well,
there was a signed compliments slip. The explanation of the figures must be
with George Bradshaw’

‘But
why separate the evidence from its meaning?’ mused Anselm.

‘My
guess is that Mrs Glendinning didn’t trust the person she asked to send it.’

‘Then
why approach whoever it was in the first place?’

‘Maybe
he or she — like you and I — was involved in the original trial.’

Anselm
took off his glasses and returned to a universe that was faintly and agreeably
blurred. ‘But why send the packet at all? Why not give the lot to George
Bradshaw?’

Inspector
Cartwright replied instantly: ‘Maybe she foresaw that a man with half a memory
might get lost before he was found.’

That
sounded rather biblical, a thought that might have slowed Anselm down, but he
was suddenly close upon Elizabeth’s heels and his mind lurched forward. ‘Which
means that the figures you’ve received should speak for themselves.’

‘I
agree, but they don’t — at least not to me. I’ve seen the Companies House stuff
already so I assume the trick is in the receipts.

Anselm
turned the pages with an air of deep concentration. In fact, without his
glasses, he couldn’t quite make out the numbers. He grimaced significantly.

‘Would
you examine them?’ asked Inspector Cartwright, checking her watch. ‘You might
have one of those visions.’

After
she’d gone, Anselm wondered why he hadn’t told Inspector Cartwright about the
letter he’d received himself. There had been nothing to suggest that the visit
to Mrs Dixon should be confidential. But he knew that he should say nothing.
Why? He took a pleasant path between the Georgian buildings where, as a
student, he’d dreamed of greatness, and he came to the strange conclusion that
he was entering Elizabeth’s mind; that he was beginning to sense her will, if
not the reason for her calculations.