by Graham Swift
The misery, the mockery, every time he returned. But a small price to pay, a small pain to endure. Not like this, now. And anyway the pain was only in that direction. It would leave him as soon as he let himself into that Fulham flat. The real pain, he knew it, was Sarah’s. So why had she gone on letting him back in, not kicking him out?
Only one reason, only one crushing reason.
So, if it ended, if it had to end, he might even feel that a weight was lifted off him, he could breathe again. He might even feel—saved.
A look about him in those last days, Sarah told me later, of strange composure. (Though that might only have meant there was a secret plan.)
But now he knew. He was still in that flat and wasn’t. He was high up somewhere in the night sky, not knowing, either, if he was really going home. He was the real Bob Nash and he wasn’t.
Fulham to Wimbledon. I followed him. Hadn’t he cottoned on by now? Always this same car behind.
At Fulham Palace Road he turned left towards Putney, and, like a fool, I might even have let out a cheer. Like a fool I was suddenly rejoicing—rejoicing for Sarah’s sake, for the moment when she’d hear his car in the drive. Yes, we’d all been saved.
Putney Bridge. The river, black and invisible, below. Putney High Street: the blaze of shops. Superdrug, Body Shop, Marks and Spencer. This safe familiar world.
Past the station, through the traffic lights, the climb up Putney Hill. Then the roundabout at Tibbet’s Corner and the turn for Wimbledon.
Less than a mile from Putney Vale.
Yes, he was going back. The long straight drive along Wimbledon Parkside. On the left, Parkside Hospital. No crazy stunts—another hospital, another old haunt where they’d cart him in. But I was watching, without knowing it, the last minutes of his life.
On the right, the Common, dark as a forest. Then the turn into the quiet, well-kept streets where the lights of houses loom like lanterns through the trees.
• • •
Now as I head back to Wimbledon myself, I know what I have to do. Another try. Now it’s dark, like then.
55
Can I ever tell her? That he went to the flat first? Not straight home. That I waited outside. Watched, waited.
The number one rule of police work: don’t get involved. Don’t let it get to you. The beauty of it: it’s a police matter, it’s got everything to do with you, but at the same time—it’s nothing to do with you. You’re only the cop on the scene, on the case—how else could you do the job? The beauty of it. That you might go untouched, protected. Your ticket for life: I’m a cop. I’m a cop, let me through.
Bob too, in his world. A necessary detachment, a necessary steel. I’m just the gynaecologist round here. And of course they trusted him—his women. The man for the job. In his hands. They’d tell him intimate things. And sometimes, given the situation and the way they were brought together, it might go—he’d know it—a bit beyond trust.
But don’t get involved.
They’d even thank him, too, when he told them bad news. Sitting there with his hands on the X-ray, the lab report. But he didn’t have the fall-back that an ex-cop, or a bent cop, has. This need go no further, this can stay right here. We can even destroy the evidence.
Some things are best never known.
I never told Mum: I always knew. She’d never have to know that at least. There was Dad breathing—gasping—his last. My own dad, dying anyway, but just for a moment I could have throttled him.
How can I tell her? That even after the thought occurred to me, I sat there waiting outside. As if a hand—someone else’s hand—was on my shoulder: stay right there.
Nothing to do with you. And you’re not even a cop any more. And no one need know you were here. No one’s watching you.
And even good cops can be too late.
How can I tell her? That I leapt out, and my heart leapt, when I saw him. “My heart leapt”: words. That less than an hour before she killed him I rejoiced to see him, to know he would soon be hers.
And, of course, sometimes the news—the X-ray, the report, the evidence—is good. The power you have then. The light that crosses their face. It’s okay, it’s all right, you’re being let go.
And what more could I have wished than to see it through, to be sure? Then to have flown away, like Kristina to Switzerland.
Rejoicing: at my own escape.
56
I drive into Beecham Close. As if I’m him, I’m Bob Nash on a night two years ago.
Nothing stops me this time, no invisible barrier. And nothing stopped him, though it should have done. The cordons go up after the event.
Dark and quiet. Ten past five, but it might be the dead of night. The lights of windows, beyond the hedges and gates, seem to be backing away.
Is it remembered, noted—by the street at large? This night, this very night, two years ago. Number fourteen. Let’s lock our doors, not let anyone in—just in case.
But of course it wasn’t like that, it was the other way round. She was waiting for him—dinner was waiting for him—in that kitchen of theirs. You can’t lock your door against what’s already inside.
Or forgotten? Deliberately wiped from the record? A missing file. No, not here. You must be thinking of somewhere else.
Streets in Dubrovnik. In Croatian villages. Walls, yards, squares. It happened here.
And anyway, in two years, a street changes, people move in and out. Memory gets scattered. At some point, maybe, a new arrival gets told: Did you know …? But things carry on.
Even number fourteen itself. It’s not standing unoccupied, like a house condemned, like a house with a curse. It didn’t even take that long—I know this—to sell. A low price, for a quick deal—common enough. But this was a real snip, for a street, a location like this. The estate agent’s problem, how it was handled. Though months had gone by. And anyway: let the buyer beware.
But first a house has to be cleared: vacant possession. It wasn’t the usual sort of job, it wasn’t detective work (I never took a fee). But assignments, after all, come in all shapes and sizes. There’s no rule book. The things people ask you to do …
I posed, I acted, as her representative. Who cares if she was a convicted murderer? I was her agent—forget the estate agent—Mrs. Nash’s personal agent. Had been and still was (and always will be). I had my instructions: to be given a set of keys.
Yes, there was family. Just the one son, as it happens. In Seattle. He’d shown up to see his father buried and see his mother get life. Then he’d flown back. He was—what’s the expression?—washing his hands. Though what would you do? If your mother—
Bad enough if he’d just had to find out that his dad was screwing a Croatian refugee. But then he might never have had to know that at all.
But it was his house now, his to dispose of. With his mother’s stuff inside. She had his permission (a lawyer’s letter) and I had my instructions. I knew better than to say his name. Michael …
So, there was me. And a set of keys. And Nicholls from the estate agents. But he didn’t want to inquire too much. He wasn’t like Marsh. And there was Heywood, the solicitor—and solicitors and private investigators, well, they’re well known for rubbing along.
Not detective work? But it was, it was. And didn’t I know anyway—forget the bunch of keys—about secret entry and surveillance? All the skills of a semi-licensed thief.
Her house, her home once. I moved about it like some lodger. We had to meet, by special arrangement, somewhere else, but for a brief while I was a guest in her house. I floated through it like a diver in a wreck. The kitchen was as far as I’d got before.
You wouldn’t know now, you wouldn’t guess. Not a mark on the floor. Though every kitchen, if you think about it, contains about fifty lethal weapons, hanging on hooks, stowed in drawers. Here Bob had bled, the blood had spread. Here Sarah had sat, shaking and under arrest, and here, once, at the table in the corner, Kristina had sat …
The innocence o
f rooms, houses. Their discretion, their hush. A wonderful kitchen, wonderfully equipped. Winter light on copper pans. In the living room, in the dining room, a feeling of assembled, lived-in comfort—or luxury, depending on your scale. The good life, the sweet life. The way lives get furnished, belongings gather round. The innocence of carpets, cushions, mirrors, vases. Who must have lived here?
I felt like I felt when I first went, for Helen’s sake, to art galleries. As if I’d somehow intruded, stepped through the wrong door. The squeak of my shoes. No, you can’t touch.
And there were things here beyond me too, beyond and not beyond me—I had the keys. Pictures here too. As if mere walls were sad things. Perhaps they are.
And books, lots of books. Upstairs (up the stairs where Bob would have carried Kristina’s few pathetic possessions) was a room, at the back, completely lined with books. Sarah’s room, of course: her study. Where she worked, did her translation. This was her desk. This was her chair.
I sat there, put my hands on the desk, ran my fingers gently across its surface. In front, a window looking over the garden. Bare trees. The lawn—where that photo was taken. Bob’s old jacket. But, all around, there were books. So many books. Books in foreign languages too.
The chair swivelled round. I felt dizzy. I looked at the books and breathed deeply. Ha—as if you could do it without reading, take in their contents, just by breathing. Not my thing, books, man of action, me. A cop, a thief-catcher. On-your-feet stuff.
But when it came to it, it was fifty per cent watching and thinking, fifty per cent in your head.
And would the person who’d used this room, these books, this desk—who must have lived a lot, clearly, in their head—would they, could they, have committed such an action? Picked up a knife—?
Detective work. Intuition.
I breathed in her books. I picked one up. The words blurred. A diver, out of my depth. But you never know what you have inside …
It hadn’t begun yet—I’d only discovered I could cook. But an old law-enforcer (weirder things happen) can take lessons from a murderer.
I moved along the landing. Marsh would have done this too, had a snoop round the whole house. Not that more evidence was needed. Just for his own satisfaction, to be thorough, for curiosity’s sake. A house like this, a home like this—that had pretty well everything?
And this would have been her room, Kristina’s room—at least up to a certain point. The “guest room” as they’d planned it, after Michael took off for the States. They’d had work done, a bathroom added on. This new phase in their life, when guests would come and stay.
Well, they’d had a guest.
Kristina would have taken showers here. Here she would have slept. One day—over three years ago now—after she’d dried her eyes, she’d have sat on this bed here, as if in some expensive cell. She came from Croatia. But this is where she was now, where she had to be. Wimbledon.
And this, along the landing in the other direction, would have been Sarah’s bedroom—their bedroom.
But I didn’t think of him, I didn’t think of him at all. I sat on the bed and breathed.
An empty house in winter. It was cold. I still wore my coat. Not detective work? But I hadn’t found yet what I was looking for …
I had my instructions, my clear instructions. To deal with the house contents. Not a small job.
“Get rid of it all, George. Sell it, chuck it. Get someone to take the lot, any price.”
As if what she wanted was a complete cancelling out.
“Even the private stuff, even the personal stuff?”
“Burn it all. Fucking burn it.”
But I disobeyed. I didn’t follow instructions. How could she check? And anyway, one day, some day, she might thank me. Something kept. It was what I was looking for: the personal stuff. In my job it’s often what you have to go for. Clues. Evidence. Not just of that other, cancelled-out life—before she took a life. But of that even more remote and extraordinary life: the life before I knew her.
And I found it. Albums, photographs, odds and ends—the things that get set aside, not to be thrown away. Evidence? More than evidence. Visible, precious proof. Including a photo taken in Chislehurst when she was five.
Who knows what’s in store?
Several visits. Not a small job but, anyway, I eked it out. Arrangements with removers, valuers, auctioneers. (No one need know whose it once was.) But I carried out boxes myself, cardboard boxes containing special selections, hugging them to my chest. And there’s a corner of an old warehouse in Southfields where I’ve put all her books and several box-files, of papers and small bits and pieces, in store.
“Vacant possession.” It’s a strange expression. If you look at the words. It’s what I have, I suppose: possession without possession. Possession with nothing to it: I don’t think so.
And it’s like she was, like her face was, in those weeks, fortnights, before she realized I wasn’t going to stop. Her face, but nothing in it, her face with nothing there. Until, one day—
Several visits. I’d sort of made it mine: number fourteen, my camp, my home-from-home. Neighbours peered. I didn’t care. An agent, a representative, with proper instructions.
Then one day I had to lock the door for the last time. I can’t go back in there again.
I cruise along slowly, as if I’m on patrol. Or up to no good. If they peered out now and saw me, could they possibly remember, guess?
Number ten, number twelve … And there it is. Occupied, of course. Lights on. So what are they feeling tonight? A shiver, a shudder? A shrug? Or is it just possible they don’t even know? It could be a different lot now from the ones Nicholls sold it to. Their name was Robinson, but they could have gone. And the whole street might have conspired. Some things are best not known. Like Kristina, in Geneva, stepping off her plane …
Don’t mention it, not a word. Let them find out. Their problem—if it is one. We don’t want to rake up that old business again. Carry on as if it never happened. And isn’t that just the point? A good street: things like that don’t happen here.
When Rachel and I bought our house, our first decent house—Fairacre Road—there was that flicker of a look, I remember, on the faces of neighbours. Behind the smiles and the obvious jokes. You’d think it might be reassuring, a cop on their street. And I was a DI by then. Plain clothes, suit and tie—just like them. You needn’t have known. But this was ’78. Who loved a cop? And anyway it wasn’t me, so much, George Webb—George and Rachel Webb, and little Helen, number twenty-nine—but all that stuff I dealt with, all that stuff that came with me, so to speak, that stuff out there. Not wanted round here.
Fairacre Road!
And, here, it could be a million miles from the Callaghan Estate. It’s actually less than ten. But a million. The whole idea.
And we never wanted that—refugee girl either. And weren’t we right?
I park the car opposite. They might not even know, even tonight. I should tell them maybe. Knock on the door. I’ve come to inform you … Like we had to do in the Force. Someone has to. No real training for it: handling distress.
It might have happened on that night too. Not a key in the lock. A cop car, yes—but just a knock on the door.
I turn off the engine, switch off the lights, sit. A familiar situation. As if I’m on a case, keeping watch—always ready, if needs be, to slip down off the seat, under the steering wheel. It’s not comfortable, it’s not dignified, but it goes with the job.
But, of course, there’s nothing to watch. As if, because it’s the same night, something should happen all over again.
I’m just here, on duty, on the spot.
He turned in there. I saw him. I hadn’t followed, but I could see him from the end of the road. He turned between those two square brick pillars, against the hedge on either side. Each with a little outdoor light built in, behind glass, like the plates of glass you break in case of fire. Lit up then, like now, to guide him in. I watched his red
rear lights slip between the two white ones. Then I turned and drove away.
I sit in the dark. The black taste. I knew it would come.
There’s one thing no one in this street is thinking tonight, I’m prepared to bet. Where is Sarah Nash now?
On the grass verge under the street lamp you can almost see the frost beginning to form already, stiffening each little blade. In the morning, another crust of white.
At night, walking the beat, or cruising around in the Panda, I used to get the feeling, like a dream, that I was the only one on watch. As if I’d personally put the world to bed and it wouldn’t see another day if it weren’t for me. Absurd.
All the houses, fleets of them, forging through the night. And, look, in the morning, all still there. Just because of me.
All the houses. A night watchman, that’s me. Lift off the roofs of houses, lift up their lids, and what would you see? What would the aggregate be? More misery and hatred than you could begin to imagine? Or more secret happiness, more goodness and mercy than you could ever have guessed?
But no one can do that, can they? So how do we know? Lift off the roofs of houses, peer inside. Except the police.
Police—open up.
57
All my fault. I could have stopped him, stepped in, I had enough chances. At the airport, in the terminal, in the car park. Outside the flat.
“Mr. Nash? A word.”
Like a fool, I’d even rejoiced.
I didn’t think. I watched him turn into Beecham Close. Eight thirty-five. My job done.
Or not done. Since the job includes a report. There never would be one of those. She’d wanted to know how they said goodbye (if they said goodbye): I was to have been her eyes. As if her own eyes wouldn’t see for herself, now.
But I didn’t think.
I watched him drive into number fourteen. Then I drove away. As if my instructions might have been: my husband, dead or alive. As if I was already standing over his grave, mouth full of blackness.
