by Graham Swift
That question—that word “please”—like a confession.
He looked hard at me. The face of a tired teacher—the sort who, if you’re lucky, will let you off. But even tired teachers can catch you out. Even friendly-looking policemen can whip out the book.
It was the only way I’d see her—from then on: by permission.
“I can’t do that,” he said.
More than his job was worth, his job that would soon be done. A wife waiting for him to come home, for good.
“That’s not possible, you know the ropes.”
And Bob Nash was lying on a bed of stainless steel. I knew the ropes.
His last case. I might have tipped him over the edge.
It was me—I’ll come clean. Have me, take me instead.
What else is love for?
35
I start the car. Another funeral party, a large one, is dispersing, whole gaggles of mourners returning to their cars, and I get caught up in the queue of their departure, feeling vaguely in the wrong. No, I’m not with you. Just here to look at a grave. I’m here with someone else.
A little arrowed sign says “Exit.” There must be some system of traffic flow, even here—designed to stop a party leaving from obstructing a party arriving, from upsetting its slow but steady progress behind the hearse. So that on a busy day like today each party arriving can at least have its moment, can at least have the brief illusion that it’s the only one that counts, the only one with serious business here today.
Like my clients coming through my door.
You’re the only one who counts, the only one who counts for me.
How do we decide?
“Exit.” It’s a strange word, when you think about it, in a cemetery. It ought to be the word you see, the final word, as you come in. Everything here turned inside-out.
And where Sarah is it’s not a word that has much use: exit. No helpful arrows pointing. Everything there is just inside.
Before Sarah became my teacher I never used to think much about words—hold them up to the light.
“You can do it, George. Write it all down.”
More than just letters. A correspondence course, homework. Something more than just begging letters dropped into the dark. Please let me see you …
Special lessons, private coaching.
“Something for me each time.”
Not much good on paper, till now. Her eyes, her agent in the world. You have to have a motive. It’s the same with crime. You never know what you’ve got inside.
The day she said, about my latest effort (I’d wait for the verdict, like when Helen tasted my cooking): “I think you can do this, George, I think you’ve got something. You don’t need me any more.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said.
But I walked out that day—out of prison—my feet floating on air.
Look, remember, write it down. I carry a notebook, like every good cop. It’s like being on a special full-time case, the one and only case, the only case that counts.
The line of cars I’ve joined creeps along between cypresses and evergreens, then between the rows of gold-leafed trees, then comes to an unexplained halt. Gravestones glinting on either side. Here and there bright clumps of flowers.
I think of the girl in the florist’s. The way she moved in and out of light. Somebody’s daughter. They bloom (Helen seemed to grow thorns). And what are Sarah and me? Late flowerers, like chrysanthemums. Flowers in November—arriving from God knows where. Hothouse flowers. Jail-house flowers.
The sun through the windscreen, as if I’m a plant under a frame.
“Putney Vale.” It sounds like some lost paradise. And it’s true, there can’t be much trouble-making here. No need for police-work. Minor traffic snags. No breaches of the peace. One safe little patch of the world. So why are we all lining up to leave?
We move off slowly again towards the gates, where everything will change speed. The gravestones seem to watch us, as if they’re standing, still and silent, out of respect for us. Everything inside-out. Honouring the living as they leave, watching us depart like some doomed patrol.
Except Bob—if he’s watching. He’s not honouring me.
There he goes, the bastard, sneaking out with the others. Trying to look like one of them, the fraud, trying to look as if he’s full of grief.
That last strange quick lift of his head before he got in the car.
There he goes, the creep, with his flowers delivered and his conscience clean.
36
The word that got used was “corrupt.”
A strangely physical word. A black taste welling in your throat, a thickness on your tongue, as if you have a disease. As if they’ve rooted out some foul stuff inside you and it’s you, it’s yours now, you’re stuck with it for good.
I was found to be corrupt, to be party to police corruption. At another time, maybe, there would have been internal disciplining, reprimands, suspension. Shaming enough. But because the air was busy in those days with the word “corrupt,” because there was pressure from above and lack of public confidence and examples had to be seen to be made, I got the axe while Dyson walked.
Justice: another word.
And I’d have got nothing but commendation if (as I nearly did) I’d locked him away for a good long stretch.
Look what I haven’t done, I said. I haven’t used police powers to further my own ends, to line my own pocket. I haven’t turned a blind eye. I haven’t, for the sake of the tally, stitched up an innocent man.
No dice. Look at it this way, they said—or I could read it in their eyes—you’re being sacrificed for the good of the Force, a bigger thing than you, for the sake of its reputation, for the sake of keeping its grubby face clean.
And, by the way, you’re getting off lightly, you assaulted a witness …
Corrupt. A word with no half measures: you’ve got the disease. Pooled in with the worst. Like a criminal gets called a criminal, along with all the others, even if he only dipped his hand, once, in the till.
Not just a cop who’d overstepped the mark. I’d sinned.
The gravestones twinkle in the sun. And this place, when you think about it, must be riddled with corruption … Not such a sweet little community after all.
Always, of course, the taint—that everyday, workaday taint. A dirty job sometimes. Things you have to clean up. A filthy job sometimes—and the police were sometimes just the Filth. And sometimes you’d bring it home with you (when they finally let you go home), like a smell in your clothes, in your hair. Home to your wife and daughter.
After a while it doesn’t wash away. You don’t even have the decent dutiful smell of a uniform. It gets in your plain clothes, the clothes that let you mingle and blend with the enemy. Then you go home.
So it had really been brewing all along, with Rachel? She’d had enough, and this was just the final crunch? Or put it another way: she’d grown sick of my smell. And I thought I’d managed it, mostly, that work-home thing, that difficult trick, that crossing a border every time you opened the front door.
At least in that direction. Going back to the nick, as often as not, with a bruising from Helen.
But at least with Rachel. Okay, so sometimes I was a pain, a big pain. Bruisings all round.
But now she had the chance to make it all my fault. The taint was me. Not Mr. Right but Mr. Wrong. And not my wife, my judge.
My queue of cars reaches the gates, files out, rounds the roundabout, still like some stately procession, then turns, gathering speed, onto the A3 slip road. Then, one by one, we launch ourselves back into the world.
I think Rachel never really gave up her god, that’s what I think. I mean, the big stern daddy part of him.
I never had a god like she did, I wasn’t brought up (thank God) like her. Though my dad would go to church often enough—to snap the happy couples.
I used to think of how it must have been for Rachel when she was small. God looking down on her,
and her looking up, being obedient and scared. Then one day, when she was bigger, her deciding: no, there’s no one up there at all. Just me.
I wasn’t brought up like Rachel. But you pick things up about God. You pick up his scent, like the smell of church. And I remember some passage being read out somewhere, that there’s no sinner so bad, so worthless, that God will ever let them slip through the net of his love.
Rachel never quite gave him up, that’s what I think.
And whether he’s up there or not, and whether he’s got a net, I don’t know. But I think it’s how it ought to be just among us. There ought to be at least one other person who won’t let us slip through their net. No matter what we do, no matter what we’ve done. It’s not a question of right or wrong. It’s not a question of justice.
There ought even to be someone for Dyson, even Dyson. I don’t know who it is. I know it’s not me.
I turn onto the slip road and put my foot down. I’m on my way now, I’m on my way. I whizz out onto the A3.
No matter what we do, no matter how bad. If we’re found to be corrupt. Even if we do the worst thing ever, even if we do what we never thought it was in us to do, and kill another person. Even if that other person was once the person for whom we were holding out a net.
37
Marsh looked at me for a long time. His face was tight and hard as if he had me at his mercy.
Even tired teachers can make you squirm. Even kind-looking cops can give you a rough time. The power policemen have (why some of them join). The power that leaves them when they leave the Force.
Your last case. You can run with it any way. You’ll be out in the clear soon.
Then his face went soft. It had that look of someone who needs to make a leap.
It must have been about one in the morning. My statement was still resting on the table, under his hands. He pushed it towards me.
“Okay,” he said, “I think that’ll do. Sign.”
38
I park the car in the usual spot. Not quite one-fifteen. Over two hours to spare. But it’s a lengthy process, they don’t make it easy for you. You learn to build in time. The Parcels Office first, always a performance, then the visit itself. Report to the Gate and wait. Allow a good hour. And if you want to eat …
You learn to make a day of it. It only comes once a fortnight. Plenty of times when (without a grave to visit first) I’ve been earlier still, and gladly. Just to be near.
And never a time when I don’t think, locking the car: one day I’ll do this for the last time. One day I’ll walk away from the car and when I walk back I won’t be alone.
These routines that become part of us, like a sleeve, a skin. Climbing the stairs at the office. Rita with the kettle already boiled.
When you have a subject for surveillance, you have to learn their habits, their regular routes, so as to know when they step out of line.
Though this hasn’t always been my route. For nine months it was Essex—day trips to Southend. Then, by a fluke, back here. And she could be shipped out again, we know, at any moment. No rhyme or reason.
But if it happens, I’m ready. I’ll go. I’ve learnt where they all are, the ones that take female lifers, second stage, third stage. The points on your map.
I slip off my seat-belt and reach under the dash. A large brown envelope, unsealed. It’s been there all day. My latest offering, my fortnight’s work—to be opened and examined, of course, before it’s passed on. I don’t mind. I’m used to it. They can read every page, every word if they want. They’re not love letters, not exactly. Twice-monthly reports from the world.
They can chuckle and think what they like. The female screws—screwesses, screwardesses.
Georgie-Porgie, coming back for more.
And an envelope, usually, to pick up. Drop and collect. My previous delivery, with my teacher’s response. But Sarah doesn’t have so much to report. The routines of prison—they go without saying.
Besides, she’s writing something else: the Empress Eugénie.
(Was there a problem? Apart from the unfortunate—delay. She had a contract with a publisher, she’d already begun—and she waived any further payment. Not gainful employment. And did anyone need to know? The person who translated this book was a murderer. Murderess.)
Translators, they’re shadow-people, halfway people anyway.
And anyway it’s kept her afloat. A raft: the three of us. Her, me, and the Empress Eugénie. Not forgetting Eugénie’s old Emperor husband. The four of us. We talk about them like people we know.
“How’s the Empress today?”
I put on my coat. Inside the envelope, as well as my pages, there’s a fresh pad of blank A4 paper. She needs as much as she can get.
I slip the envelope under my arm, lock the car. I walk in the wrong direction—away from the prison. Time to spare, time to eat. The main road is five minutes away. If not a sandwich on a bench, leaving crumbs for the dead—then Snacketeria let it be.
A street of houses, houses with a prison handy. Left at the end, then right. Then I emerge into shops and traffic and crowds. Safeway, Argos, Marks and Spencer. The sun flashes off cars. There’s a tinge, a touch of coppery fire to its light. People’s faces pass like flares.
Snacketeria is packed. It’s like entering an engine room. The hiss and snort of the coffee machine, a gabble of orders being repeated. Lunches to go. A queue shuffling forward—six or seven in front of me—but I don’t mind.
Something I see in myself these days: I don’t mind waiting. I can wait. I’ve lost the knack of impatience, I don’t mind queues, procedures, jams, delays. To leave a graveyard, to buy a sandwich …
When you stand in line you can watch, you can notice things. When you stand in line you can think of all the other lines you could be in, all the terrible shuffling lines.
Is there a life anyway which isn’t half made of waiting? Studded with detentions? “Worth the wait.” “Give it time.” Nothing good can be hurried—like cooking. Though they’re working flat-out behind the counter in this place.
Besides: a detective’s virtue. If you don’t know how to wait, to lie in wait …
They know me here, by now. A regular. Every other week. And sometimes I make separate trips, just to the Parcels Office. Clothes, bits and bobs, things they’re allowed. Door-to-door service.
I reach the counter. I get a nod, a word of recognition. Whether they could guess my story is another matter.
That one? Him—with that packet under his arm? He’s just been to stand by a murdered man’s grave. Now he’s going to see the woman who killed him. In between he buys a sandwich and a cappuccino.
Chicken, rocket and roasted red pepper. They’re Spaniards here, the management. Sarah could speak their language. “Snacketeria,” a good old Spanish word.
There’s a seat free—a stool by the window. The Café Rio. This international world.
How does she get through this day? Half-past one. In my mind’s eye I see a gravestone—coppery light, the flecks in the granite like sparks—where no one will go for another year.
In twenty minutes or so I’ll head back the way I came, take a slightly different route and join another queue.
39
The Saab pulled out. I followed. Maybe a thirty-yard gap. When it turned into the busy Fulham Road I was almost nudging its bumper, anxious not to lose contact at the very start.
At night it’s not so easy to follow a car. If you slip back, all you have are the tail lights—looking like anyone else’s tail lights.
By the same token, of course, it’s harder to tell if you’re being followed. If that ever entered their minds …
Lillie Road … Fulham Palace Road to Hammersmith. Then the A4 for the M4: the route to Heathrow. Five-thirty: heavy and slow traffic to Hammersmith, which meant I could be close enough, often, to see the crowns of their heads.
And read their thoughts? If they were heading off into the night together—if they were about to make their escap
e—there would surely be a tingle, a pulse between them detectable even in the attitude of their heads. Whereas if they were about to say goodbye …
Fulham Palace Road. Past Charing Cross Hospital, where he worked—where he saw his women.
And would still work? Did his head turn, just for a moment, in spite of himself, or did he make himself look rigidly ahead?
When you follow two people—when you follow anyone—and they don’t know you’re there, it’s hard not to feel a flutter of power. As if you can decide their fate. Your foot over the scurrying beetle.
The mysterious urge to protect.
The roundabout at Hammersmith. They swung left onto the A4. Now the traffic quickened: harder to stay close. But he didn’t drive fast, he kept to the slow lane—two steady red lights. He didn’t drive like someone eager to be far away.
I think I knew it even then. She was going. She was going to leave. Some things you piece together, some things you know in your bones. He hadn’t told Sarah any lies. He was eking out the moments.
The A4, then the M4.
Even so, even so. The thing was still in his power, there behind the wheel. He might do something mad, as the exit for Heathrow approached. He might step on it suddenly. He might put his foot down, exceed all limits, for the sake of not letting her go.
A last wild hope. His hope? Mine? He was brooding on it, I was brooding on it—an ex-cop who’d done six months, once, on cars. Okay, sonny, if you want a race … Not a surveillance, a chase (wasn’t that why you really joined?). In the end it’s just hunting, it’s the lawlessness of the hunt.
Dyson’s face when I had to tell him: I’d exceeded limits.
And Kristina was going back—if she was going back—to where they’d ditched all the rules.
Three exits, on the motorway, before Heathrow—not counting the one for Terminal 4. The options close off rapidly, the moments whittle down. Then you get sucked into the mesh of a huge airport.
