by Jane Johnson
‘“Smuggling?”
‘“We never use that word, mon cher. A little black market action. Sous le manteau.” Under the coat. “Some cigarettes here, brandy there, cheese, soap and coal. Guns. Whatever people want but can’t get hold of, we supply it.”
‘It didn’t sound too different to what I had been doing these past weeks in procurement. I thought, rather guiltily, of the large sum of money in my pocket, and swore one day I would return it to M. Duchamps, with interest.
‘For the next few months I worked with these contrebandiers, going up and down the French coast, making drops by dead of night in unlit harbours and secret coves, sometimes meeting other vessels at sea, sometimes transferring goods in caves or leaving them in crab pots sunk off the coast. My French improved considerably, and soon I was able to send Monsieur Duchamps his money, via relatives of my employer, and the same amount again back to my family. I thought I was the cat’s whiskers. I had a job, I had money, I had a tribe – that was how it felt working on the boats. We had esprit de corps. Forged by danger and the celebration of our survival day by day. I even found my sea-legs, but I never learned to swim. Luckily, there was never any need to, until…’
‘Until?’
‘Our operations took us further and further north. We were heading back to France one day with a load of Welsh coal when we hit a mine. My God, I thought I was dead. I thought we all were. I could not swim, I went down, but someone pulled me up, and I caught some wreckage. I was the only one who was fished out by the crew of the minesweeper that was clearing the waters for a British convoy. If it had gone through half an hour earlier we’d have sailed right through the eye of a needle. I don’t know what happened to the rest of my crew. I’d like to think some of them survived…’
He went quiet, took his prayer beads out of his pocket and played them through his fingers for a minute or two, while Olivia waited.
‘Our lives are in God’s hands.’
‘Entre les mains de Dieu,’ she echoed. Did she believe this? She hardly knew what she believed any more. But to have survived last night… Surely someone was looking out for her. Yes, someone was looking out for her: this man right in front of her. He was her guardian angel. He hadn’t had to come after the Nazi: he could have made his own escape and left her to her fate. He might be a foreigner – the most foreign foreigner she had ever seen, let alone met – but he had saved her life. She felt a powerful swell of gratitude towards him; a sort of awe. ‘So they arrested you and interned you,’ she finished for him.
He nodded. ‘I had no English then, they had no French, and I look the way I do.’ He shrugged. ‘My papers went to the bottom of the sea along with every other thing I owned. So now I am back to being Hamid again and here I am.’
Olivia leaned forward. ‘Thank you for coming here, and for doing what you did. If you hadn’t…’ She closed her eyes, thinking of Mamie.
‘They say there is no such thing as true evil in the world,’ he said, ‘but that man, Mikael, was the closest thing to pure evil I ever encountered. He boasted that he came from the same place as Hitler, that his family had supported him in his rise to power. He said Hitler is brilliant, a visionary leader who will purify Europe. He told them all this at the farm, telling them they would be safe under his rule. “You are all Aryans,” he told them, “the true Europeans. There is no good reason for us to be at war with one another: we are just the same. But the deficient” – and by that he meant that poor little girl – “and the foreign and dark-skinned” – and obviously by that he meant me – “they are no better than animals and will be removed. We are the master race,” he said, “and we will remake the world in our own image and take back control.” He flattered those boys up at the farm: they were lapping up his words like camels at an oasis. Wherever you go in the world, it seems to me, there are gullible people ready to be manipulated by those who are cleverer or more malign. They mould them into followers and do whatever they will.’
Olivia thought of how they had faced her down in the field above the Swingate Stones when she went to confront them, to tell Farmer Roberts what had been done to his daughter. Even him, she thought, even he was swayed – if not by the airman, then by the weight of opinion of all the rest.
For a moment it seemed as if the world shifted on its axis and she felt like a foreigner in her own village. They were so wrong, so dangerously wrong, and she had been right all along. They hadn’t believed her because she was just a girl, a silly female. But now they would believe Hamid was responsible for the death of Mamie. It suited the stories they told themselves about the dark-skinned man, the foreigner, the outsider, the Muslim.
Olivia was not used to feeling righteous – she was usually in the wrong – but now that also swelled up inside her, and with it a powerful determination. Whatever it took, she would keep this man safe and repay the debt she owed him. She would shelter him from the authorities, from the easily misled people who could not see past what was right before their eyes – people like Beryl who had been taken in by the airman’s handsome looks, his boy-blond hair, his piercing blue eyes, his clear-cut profile – and failed to recognize the dangerous predator in their midst. It would not be easy to keep Hamid out of their hands, safe and hidden, but by hook or by crook she would do it.
He broke into her thoughts. ‘We must get rid of the body. Do you have a pickaxe or something like it?’ He motioned working with such a tool.
Olivia saw him stifle a wince. ‘What, bury him here? In the cellar?’
‘I spent a fair bit of time out in the tunnel. There is a section between seams of rock where I think I could dig. I think the area is large enough to hide a body. And if it is not, then we will have to cut it up.’ He saw Olivia’s horrified expression. ‘I will have to cut it up. I’ve had to butcher hundreds of sheep and goats,’ he lied, making light of it. In fact, he had never butchered one. He knew them all by name, every single one of them; he had left the job of death and dismemberment to the butchers in the villages where he had taken them to be sold, and taken a little less for each animal as a result.
He knew Mikael by name too, but by Allah that would not stop him.
20
Becky
‘REBECCA? REBECCA, ARE YOU IN THERE? ARE YOU OK?’
The handle rattles, then the bedroom door opens, and Reda’s head appears. I stare at him but his gaze has already slid to the half-naked shape of Eddie beside me, soundly asleep amid the rumpled sheets. There is no ambivalence to this image, none at all. I have never felt so mortified in my life.
We speak at the same time. ‘Sorry, I—’ ‘No, oh God, I—’ and then he’s gone, closing the door quietly behind him.
For a moment, I lie there feeling as if I have been stripped not only of my clothes, my modesty, my dignity, and self-respect, but of everything that makes me me. Then I shoot out of bed, haul on my jeans and T-shirt – no time to struggle into my carefully constructed prosthetics bra – and hammer downstairs after him.
‘Reda, wait.’
When he turns to me, his face is a careful blank, the face of an artist’s manikin, waiting to have the features delineated.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I say lamely.
There is a thread between us, drawn hot and tight and painful. Neither of us can look away.
‘It’s my ex, he just turned up.’ Is Eddie my ex? It comes out automatically, not a conscious lie.
Reda shakes his head as if shedding my pathetic excuse. ‘It’s none of my business.’
‘I didn’t mean to sleep with him. I’m such an idiot.’ Just keep digging that hole, Becky. I can’t stop gazing at him piteously as if somehow I expect him to fix this horrible situation just as he and Mo have fixed the house. But his eyes are shuttered and distant. After all, what is he to me? A professional who’s come here to do a job, a job that is very nearly complete. One to whom I owe a significant sum of money.
I want to tell him he means so much more than that but I can’t even begin to
articulate it to myself, let alone to him.
I watch him turn away from me, mumbling something about a skirting board, and then the thread between us frays apart and he’s gone. I grip the banister, feeling on the edge of tears.
Oh, buck up, Becky, I tell myself fiercely, and for once it’s my own voice in my head, not Mum’s. Mum has gone: I know that now. I must rely on myself.
Leaving the problem that is Eddie to catch up on his lost sleep, I muster my determination and resolve, go out into the garden, dig up the disgusting rat corpse, clean the earth off it with a handful of grass so the full horror of its squashed and tortured state is revealed, and take several photos with my phone.
Then I take the path up through the woods to the old barn and stonehouse. Mo and Reda’s truck is parked in its usual space, considerately to one side, but a shiny red BMW has blocked me in. Some bloody tourist, I think, gone off to walk the coast path.
Not in the best mood to begin with, I stomp over and stare into it. Strewn on the back seat are an old panama hat and a big black Dunhill umbrella and a striped toiletry bag suspiciously like the one I bought for Eddie at TK Maxx. My suspicions are confirmed by the presence of a reusable ceramic coffee mug with a rubber top that I last saw on our kitchen counter, now jammed into the cupholder between the front seats. There is a Hertz sticker in the window, and the hire leaflet left upside-down on the parcel shelf is printed with a London phone number.
What the—? Why on earth would Eddie have lied about taking the sleeper train?
Anger makes me all the more determined. I get into the Clio and although it takes twenty minutes of sawing back and forth, widening the angle by tiny increments with each manoeuvre, at last I manage to squeeze past the BMW, leaving a small but distinct dent in its rear passenger door. I can almost hear Eddie telling the hire company it wasn’t me, I’ve no idea how it happened – and then I’m off up the lane, onto the road that winds through the village of Sheffield, past the turning to Chyenhal and St Pol de Leon, and down the long hill into Newlyn and thence to Penzance.
Just as I am parking at Greenmarket the heavens open, soaking me to the bone. Drenched, I dash into the bank to check the balance in my account on the indoor cash machine, surreptitiously wringing out my hair and T-shirt. At least James has kept one promise, even if he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I go to the counter and take out half the money as cash, stuff the thick envelope deep into my bag, and run back to the car with my handbag over my head as cover from the rain, convinced that someone will mug me for it. Then I make my way to the police station.
There isn’t anyone available for me to make a statement to – ‘So many cuts,’ I am told by the young man at the counter, who is clearly not impressed by my dishevelled appearance. ‘You have to go to Camborne now if you want to report a crime in person.’
‘But that’s miles away!’ I remember coming through Camborne on the train. It seems like months ago.
He nods lugubriously. ‘Eleven police front desks have gone. It’s a nightmare. You can call 101 if it’s not an emergency, or fill in a form online.’
I look at him askance.
‘Yeah, I know. Sorry. You could talk to one of the community support officers?’
‘Can they do anything, like arrest someone?’
He makes a face. ‘Not really.’
I scroll through the phone, show him the rat. He recoils. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘It was shoved through my letter box; then last night they were in my cellar—’
‘Rats?’ he says dubiously.
‘No. Two men. They were doing something in the cellar, stashing something, or,’ I think about it, ‘taking something away.’
‘So… is it a theft you want to report?’
‘No! It’s intimidation and… well, I don’t know exactly. Maybe smuggling. And I think their mother may have pushed my elderly cousin down stairs. So it’s the whole family, really. The Sparrow family, from Newlyn.’
It’s as if a shutter has come down in his eyes and I wonder if he knows them, or whether he’s beginning to see me as a bit of a nutter. He hands me a leaflet. ‘Look, here are the details you need. Just call in your concerns or go to the address online and fill in the form there. Sorry I can’t help any more.’
Feeling deflated, and dreading a return to a house with Eddie still in my bed, I drive to the auction house on the edge of town, pull up in the car park out front, and ring the bell. The rain is just coming down in random scatters now, flung drops as from the leaves of a windswept tree. I stand as close as I can to the door to shelter under the tiny porch.
There is a long delay and I’m beginning to think there is no one here, when a tall young man in chinos and a crisp pink shirt appears on the other side of the glass door. His curly dark hair is in disarray; I wonder what he has been up to amongst the antiques.
‘Hello, hello,’ he greets me. ‘Awfully sorry to leave you out in the rain, I was cataloguing some stuff that’s just arrived. What can I do for you? Are you here to check the lots? Come in, come in.’ He has a delightfully casual manner despite his cut-glass accent and expensive clothes.
I follow him up a flight of stairs into a chaotic office, where he clears a pile of papers off a chair and gestures for me to sit down.
‘I came to ask you about a painting by a local artist,’ I say carefully. ‘I wonder if you know anything more about it than I’ve been able to find out.’ I reach across the desk and show him a photo of The Sea Gate on my phone and watch as he scrutinizes it, zooming the screen in and out, peering at it closely, then flicking to the next image – ‘Do you mind?’ I do not: the next photo shows the auction house label still attached to the back of the painting. I see his eyebrows shoot up, then he returns to the original picture and looks at it again for a considerable time.
Then he runs a hand through his mop of hair and regards me solemnly. ‘Good lord,’ he says. ‘Where on earth did you find it?’
‘So you remember the painting?’
‘Of course. It came in to us about…’ he looks off into space, calculating, ‘oof, ten, twelve years ago, I think. I was helping Pa, learning the trade, you know, and at the time I didn’t think much of it – just an old gate, rather pretty, a little romantic in style for my taste, not my sort of thing, really. I was a callow youth back then.’ He flashes me a grin. ‘But Pa knelt down in front of it and looked at it for, I don’t know, ten minutes? I thought he was having some sort of episode – an absence, or something, he was so still. I was babbling away, asking all manner of nonsense, and he just held a hand up and said, “Do shut up, Stamford, and pay attention: this is special.”’
‘Did he know the artist?’
Stamford shakes his head. ‘Honestly? No, though we’d sold a couple of previous paintings and they went for more than expected.’
The Girl in the Orchard and The Pilchard Fishers, I think, remembering the article I’d come across. I decide against mentioning them: don’t want to alert him to the fact I know about the OK Painter.
‘Do you have any idea who brought it in?’ I ask innocently.
He lets out a big breath. ‘It’s a long time ago. What I do remember is it was a surprisingly hot day, at the end of the summer, and I only had a couple of weeks left before going back up to London. I remember being frustrated – it would’ve been a great day for going to the beach with Peter. So…’ He leaps out of his chair and goes to the bookcase, unwinding his long frame to its full height to reach a morocco-bound volume from the top shelf. He blows a cloud of dust off it, sets it down on the desk and riffles through the pages. ‘Aha! I remember that table, hideous thing, went for a fortune, some people have no taste… Thursday… Paintings, Female nude by Gillian Jenks, The Gaps by Tom Davies, The Sleeper and Trereife House by Henry Rook… Ah, here we are, The Sea Gate – no artist attributed, but there’s a signature…’ He examines it for a long moment. ‘Nope, can’t make it out.’
He passes the ledger over to me, his finger still marking the
place.
There is an elaborate scribble in the vendor’s column as if someone was trying to disguise their handwriting. But when you know what you’re looking for no amount of disguise can hide the truth.
‘Thank you,’ I say grimly. ‘Do you mind if I—’ I snap a photo of the page before he can stop me.
‘Oh I, well, I’m not sure you should—’
‘It’s fine, I know the auction house has done nothing wrong,’ I assure him.
‘It went missing,’ he says. ‘An hour or so before the auction.’
‘Someone broke in?’
‘Well, not exactly.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘People come to view lots they’re interested in before the auction starts formally and well, there was this chap, I was showing him some of the French mirrors, nineteenth century, quite expensive; he was keen and I thought I was going to make some good commission… and he was rather good-looking.’ He grins, remembering. ‘And then I took him to look at some chairs I thought he’d like and when I came back…’ He spreads his hands.
‘It was gone?’
He nods. ‘Tell you what though, we were just making our way back downstairs when I passed the window and saw this awfully swanky old car pulling out of the gates with an elderly lady at the wheel. Proper antique – the car, I mean, ha ha! Definitely pre-war, whatever it was. And I remember thinking, I bet that’s worth a fair bit.’ He taps his lip thoughtfully. ‘You don’t think she could have been the thief, do you? Where did you come upon the painting, remind me?’
Sneaky old Cousin Olivia, I think.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you, not right now. But I promise I’ll explain if everything works out. You don’t happen to make house visits for valuations, do you, just in case?’
He is puzzled but polite about my refusal, and gives me his card. ‘Not as a matter of course, but I have to say you’ve piqued my interest. I do love a good mystery.’
