“Bloody hell!” Tony says. “Bloody hell, ladies.”
We block his path, quivering. He sighs and casts a quick look in either direction. And then, as though he is doing something noble for his country, he bends his beautiful head to kiss, first Em, and then me, on the cheek.
CHAPTER 19
AILING KNIGHT-AT-ARMS
I don’t know if it was Marcus or Darren I was hoping for when I went to the site. Which of them was the lesser evil. Darren probably. As I walked over, I imagined him looking up from his invoices, wearing a pair of reading glasses he’d bought from the supermarket. Look what the cat dragged in, he’d say. Then later, You always were a sharp one. There had been calls, over the years. More at the beginning. “Can you say I left in September if anyone asks? No, September of this year…” But we hadn’t spoken for the best part of a decade. The last time? Five years ago? Six? A project gone well. A raise. Dinner with Oliver, wined and dined, a car called to take me home. I’d dialed Darren’s mobile from the back seat. It was later than was polite, but the warm feeling—progress, recognition, achievement—was departing, and I needed to summon it back. He picked up after three rings.
“Who’s this?” Unmistakably Darren.
“It’s Andy. How are you? I just—”
“Who?”
“Andy.” There was the longest pause. “Can you hear me, Darren? It’s Andy. I know it’s late but—”
“You’ve got the wrong number.”
“No, I—” But he was gone.
The site office was in the same place, but the mobiles had been replaced by a smart brick building. I stood outside watching through the window as a woman I didn’t recognize answered the phone and tapped away at a computer, the sting I’d felt for weeks after Darren hung up on me warming my cheeks. In the end, I forced myself through the doors and asked for him. The receptionist was in her late twenties with ironed hair and bracelets that jangled against the keyboard.
“Mr. Fisher isn’t here.”
“When’s he back?”
“I mean he doesn’t come in anymore. He retired. Two, three years ago, I think.”
“And Marcus?” Marcus had gone to see a supplier in Devizes. He might be back after lunch.
“Is it business? Can I take a message?”
“No. I used to work here. Just came by to say hello. Well, there is something. Where can I find Darren? Is he still—” And I gave Darren’s last address. She shook her head. It took a bit of doing to get her to tell me where he was. I labored how good Darren had been to me, how he’d given me my start. It was funny, now that I thought about it. The interest Darren had taken, the support he’d offered to his nephew’s scrap of a girlfriend.
“He’s not been well,” she said. “He’s … well, he’s in a home.”
“But he’s only sixty-five!” She didn’t have anything to say to that. “Where is it then?”
“It’s a new place. Well, not exactly. You know the old manor, out by the new golf course? It was redeveloped a few years ago and it’s a residential home now. Not by us. Mr. Fisher wouldn’t put in a bid, Marcus, that is. Not Darren. He was already…”
“Right.” I walked to the door, then walked back. I wrote down my number. “Give this to Marcus. Tell him Andy came by. Tell him I need to talk to him.”
“Andy?”
“Andy.”
* * *
It was dry again, the clouds a vast white wall. I had nothing else to do, so I walked there, taking the Ridgeway as I had so often in the past. The track was muddy and rutted by dirt bikes, the puddles chalky so you couldn’t tell their depth. For a time, I forgot where I was going and why, losing myself in picking a path forward, here and there climbing up the slippery grassy banks to avoid soaking my shoes. There was hardly a breeze.
Reaching the ridge, I passed the copse I had always known to myself as Crow Wood. The trees were in leaf and on their branches the black birds were tied like bows.
A memory—my earliest? Throwing crusts to the birds in the garden. “Where do they all come from? How are they always there? Is it the same ones always?” Another time. “Where does the world go at night?” My mother held me against her chest and we looked out the window, over the fields, waiting for the fox to come. The love was harder to remember than the hurt, but I stayed with it.
A crow loosed itself from a tree, ribboning upward. It was not the same crow always. The adult knew it. But another self watched the crow in flight and knew its black eyes had seen the stones set at Avebury, the Roman legions marching, the invading Viking hordes. Seen every love and sorrow and tasted every death. All around, the Downs rose and fell. A little breeze blew, rippling the spring wheat. It was good for wheat up here; the rain filtered down through the chalk hills, deep into the earth. Of all that I had loved and cut myself off from, this had cost me the most dearly.
Forty minutes on, I reached the stile. A nettle lashed my wrist as I clambered over. This time of year, they were at their most vicious. I plucked a dock, spat on it, and rubbed it over the row of welts. There, on the tender skin, the stings burned, but by the time I reached the manor, the pain would be gone and I’d have forgotten all about it. Cuts scabbed, became scars and faded. Even broken bones knitted. I wished that the harms done to the parts of the self Peter’s father would have had no trouble naming—the soul, the spirit—could be made visible, so you could know when they too had healed.
* * *
There was nothing to mark where Em had died, only a sign a bit further on asking visitors to sign in at reception. The firs were gone, replaced by a neat fence, and where the outbuildings had stood, cars were parked on a stretch of tarmac. The staff parking was half-full, the rest almost empty. I surveyed the grounds. The lawn had been reseeded and the borders planted with low-maintenance shrubs. There was a smooth path, wide enough for wheelchairs, curving around the lawn, and benches were placed beside it at discreet intervals. The specter of Health & Safety hung over the manor. The windows and roof had been replaced, the pear tree cut down.
I made my way toward the main entrance and then stopped. I wanted to know what they had done to the lake. Turning back, I followed the path at the far end of the car park, leaving the manor behind. Ahead, the lawn rose to meet the wood. The day was still, my feet upon the path the only sound.
The lake was still there, but it had a fence around it too. Water rippled behind a small colony of ducks making their way toward a gravel bank. The temple stood where it had always stood, its white pillars catching the light. There was a figure there, on a bench, seemingly occupied with staring down at the surface. Something about their posture was familiar. I walked the last couple of hundred meters to the temple, to where Darren was sitting, rubbing his hands together, eyes fixed upon the lake.
“Hello, Darren,” I said. When he didn’t look up, I took a seat next to him. “How’s it going?”
He looked over. “Not too bad, thanks. Yourself?” He hadn’t stopped rubbing his hands, drawing one over the other as though washing them. The big blunt nails were clean. Even in my day, Darren hadn’t worked on the sites, but it’d never stopped him getting his hands dirty.
“Could be worse. Least it’s stopped raining.”
Darren’s eyes had settled once more on the gently rippling water. You could just make out the temple and two blurred dark marks. A mallard glided across the reflection, breaking it into blocks of light and color.
“Don’t suppose you’ve seen Peter, have you?”
“You’d have to ask at the site. They’ve got all the paperwork.”
“Right. Right.” Darren was hunched forward. He’d put on weight, but he seemed smaller, shelled, like a pea from its jacket. “Peter’s disappeared. I’m looking for him.”
“Trouble with the tax man, I ’spect.”
“Wanting an arm and a leg as usual.” It was one of Darren’s sayings and when I gave it back to him, he lifted his eyes to mine and gave me a small culpable smile. “How’s business then?”
>
“Coming along.”
“Whoever it was did a good job on this place. Was it the Devizes lot?”
Darren shifted in his seat. There was something wrong with how he was dressed. I realized what it was. He had a polo shirt on under his jumper and someone had done the top button up. Darren had always worn his shirts open at the neck. I reached over and undid it, but he didn’t react. It hurt to think that someone was dressing him. Opticians, doctors, hairdressers, he’d never been able to stand being fussed over.
“What is this place?” Darren asked.
“It’s a care home, Darren.” He nodded. “Right.” Then, “Why am I here?”
“Problem with the old memory, I think.” Points of light trembled on the lake.
“Don’t mind me asking something, do you?
“Not at all.”
“What is this place?”
I got up quickly, feeling something hard in my throat. I went to the stone head of Athena and ran my hands over her face. She had no diamonds for me today.
“We used to come out here when we were kids and muck about. Remember, when it was empty? Me, Marcus, Peter, and Em. There was someone else too, a boy, David. I think you turned a blind eye. I reckoned it was because we were Marcus’s mates. But then I didn’t know about you and Peter. It was you, wasn’t it? Peter came to you about Joe.”
“Little Peter?”
“The vicar’s boy.”
“That skinny little fairy. ‘Uncle Darren,’ he says, ‘you’ve got to help me.’ Never would have agreed if I’d known what was coming. The guy came at me with a tire iron. If it wasn’t for the kid … The grit in him. You just never know, do you?”
“No,” I said. “You never know.”
We walked back to the manor then. I took Darren’s arm. He didn’t seem to mind. The greenhouses were gone, but they’d replanted the kitchen garden. Onions and potato tops were coming through. We came across a bit of brickwork that needed repointing. Darren scratched at the mortar with his thumb.
“I’ll send someone to see to that.”
At the front door, there was a buzzer and I waited for a moment, looking into the camera till I heard the door unlock. At the desk, a Filipina care worker in a white uniform wanted to know where his nephew had got to.
“His nephew? Marcus was here?”
“Not Marcus. Another one. He took him for a walk, for fresh air.”
I signed us back in. It was overly warm inside, thickly carpeted and with a pervasive smell of kitchens. The interior had been completely remodeled, and I experienced a dizzying sensation. Had the piano once stood over there? Or in the other corner? The shape of the room had changed to accommodate a lift, and where the great staircase had been, there was a smaller set of stairs, boxed in with doors at the foot and glass walls going up.
“Lunch is nearly ready. Darren has it in his room.” She directed me through another set of doors. A sign read LANCELOT WING. I tapped in the code she’d given me. The library was now a sitting room. A flat screen hung on the wall but they’d kept most of the books. In various armchairs, the old and the very old were sat. None reading. One talking to no one. A woman, younger than the rest, was at the window. I had paused in the doorway, and she turned and cast me a furious look.
Outside each of the resident’s rooms, a pinboard displayed photographs and sometimes a few lines of text. I’m Terry. I like football and motorbikes. I was born in Liddington. I was in the infantry in the war, then worked at Lloyds. My glasses are probably in my pocket! It was the photos that got you, the smiling wedding picture, the one of Terry valiantly digging sandcastles with a little girl on a windswept beach, then the ancient in an armchair wearing a party hat, a badge that said 80 TODAY!, and a mystified expression.
We arrived at Darren’s door. Darren went in, but I lingered for a moment. Someone had tried. There were lots of snaps: Darren at school in his football kit, with a mustache and his arm around Marcus’s mum, wearing trunks on a Spanish beach in the early ’80s, next to the bride and groom at Marcus’s wedding, in front of a shiny new Beamer with his dogs. A laminated note read, I’m Darren. I have early onset Alzheimer’s. I like watching sport. Sometimes, if I am confused, I get angry. If possible, I like to do things for myself.
Too right, I thought.
Darren’s room was large and bright with an en suite. He was sitting in the armchair and as I came in, he looked up.
“Andy,” he said, and my heart flooded to the brim with love.
“Yes, Darren?”
“You figured out that program yet?”
“I did.”
“That’s my girl.”
I picked up the remote control and flipped through the channels. There wasn’t much on but I found some golf in the end, one of the opens. I sat with him and we watched it together for a bit. I could hear the trolley coming down the hall.
There was a notebook on the side. A pen lay next to it. I picked it up and flipped through. Each page was divided into three columns, one for the time and date, the second for the visitor’s name, and the third for a message. It went back over a year. Marcus came Saturday mornings. His messages were to the point. Me and Darren went to the game. Went to mum’s for lunch. There were other visitors too—Marcus’s mother, whose lengthy entries in rounded hand screamed guilt; Brian, one of the site managers; a couple of names I didn’t recognize.
The last entry had today’s date. Mr. & Mrs. Wilde. Took Darren to a historic point of interest. Not a soul about. The time, 12, was underlined.
I knew the handwriting as well as I knew my own. It was a message from Peter.
Mr. & Mrs. Wilde. That was us, of course. And a historic point of interest was Saint Helen’s. That was how the vicar had always described it. At the heart of community, and a historic point of interest …
Twelve. It was past twelve now. But there were two twelve o’clocks in a day, and I thought I knew which one Peter was referring to.
CHAPTER 20
CHURCH
Not a soul about! Not a soul about!
At half past eleven, I crept out of the Castle & Ball and made my way down to the river. On the footbridge I stopped, listening to the Kennet, but heard nothing but the running water, the willows stirring, and distant traffic on the market square. A footpath led through a kissing gate into a field, and from there to a muddy paddock that bordered the far end of the graveyard. I hid for a while in a hedge, trying to keep my feet in and my breathing quiet. In the dark, I could hear horses cropping the grass, but the moon, sidling over three stunted oaks, was the only watcher.
I climbed up and over the crumbling wall, slipping over the top, and down into long weeds, fighting the urge to laugh, as I so often had during my childhood games with Peter, in the face of all the terrors—vampire bats, marsh monsters, enemy agents—we had conjured. Of course, this was real, but then my games with Peter had always felt real. The laughter was a fountain, coming from somewhere deep, and for a moment I gave into it, with my back against a crooked headstone, one hand over my mouth. Through my clothes, I felt the scratch of lichen, the chisel cuts upon the stone. Everything would be absurd to those safe within the ground. Then the laughing fit abated, like a bell that had ceased to chime, and I crept forward, over the dead, avoiding the path, until I reached the darker shadows of the yew trees on the east side of the church.
Not a soul about! When I was sure, I checked my phone, hiding the screen under my jumper and peering down the neck hole to obscure the light. It was time. The vestry door was unlocked and I pushed it open a crack and made my way in. To the left were the choir stalls and the altar, to the right the aisle and pews, leading to the font. At the pulpit I waited, inhaling the familiar smells, enveloped by a hush accumulated over a thousand years. A pew creaked.
“That you, Peter?” I tiptoed forward, ready to flee if I was wrong.
“Here.” He spoke barely above a whisper. I moved closer, but it was so dark I couldn’t make him out, could only shuffle forward with
my arms outstretched, until a hand caught my wrist. Peter drew me down until I was sitting beside him on the hard pew, knees pressed against the tapestry cushion hanging from the back of the row in front. I put out my hand and found Peter’s cheek, giddy with relief, with victory.
“Found you.” Peter’s cheek was cold. When he didn’t reply, I said, “Not in the States then? Not having a spiritual crisis with the lay brothers?”
“Forgive her. I think she heard about them on Radio Four.”
“They know you’re here then?”
“I shouldn’t have come, but I wanted to see them. To explain.” He sounded tired, like someone at the end of a long, hard-fought race they hadn’t won.
“What’s going on, Peter? What is it you have to explain? What have you done?”
* * *
What Peter—tight-lipped Peter—had done was talk. Or more accurately, he had downloaded files, financial statements, client information, and internal memos from the company he worked for, from the corporate service provider with the half-foreign name. Like me, Peter had been playing detective. In his case, he’d been matching offshore accounts with shell corporations, detailing transactions, logging the money as it flowed upstream and downstream, from the Gulf and China, from Russia and Mexico, from the hands of politicians, public officials, and oligarchs into shell corporations in tax havens. Corruption. Bribery. Tax evasion. Money laundering. Money siphoned from aid projects, environmental protection projects, public services. Profits from illegal deals, from violated trade sanctions, the vast sums of the arms and drug trades. Then he’d leaked it, drip by drip and then finally in a gushing flood, to a pair of journalists from the Guardian.
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