The Light of Day

by Graham Swift

  No, Marsh, I didn’t think anything, I wasn’t thinking at all. While I drove away, in those ten to fifteen minutes, I’d stopped thinking, as if I might have been a dead man too.

  I was almost home myself. A man driving home too. Then I stopped. A tyre-squealing halt. There wasn’t a junction, no lights on red. Just clear road. I stopped. An intuition, Marsh, let’s call it that. As if something had hit me in the chest. The car seemed to turn itself round: a U-turn, more squealing tyres. As if the call had come straight to me. I should have switched on a siren, a flashing light, cop though I wasn’t.

  But that was already being done: two police cars (more to come) and an ambulance, already on their way.

  I drove back into Beecham Close. I might have been the even bigger fool. And rejoiced again? Or sat here—right here—with my head in my hands? Intuition? All would be quiet. Deepest Wimbledon. I’d have come to a halt again, heart hammering. Fool! Fool!

  But some things you know. It’s not detection, it’s not even intuition. You know.

  And the two police cars and the ambulance were there before me, like something I’d already seen (my job once, stuff like this). If I’d been five minutes earlier I might have been first to arrive.

  I should have stepped in.

  “Mr. Nash? You don’t know me but—I know your wife.”

  Or it might have been better, a thousand times better, if I’d watched them fly off together. Phoned to tell her. “Mrs. Nash?” Worse and better. What we’ll never know.

  Of course it would have been better. He wouldn’t have been lying in that pool of blood. And she wouldn’t have been sitting there, shaking. And it might have been just me—how many times have I imagined it, rehearsed it?—who came back that night, rang at the door, stepped in.

  Into the smell of coq au vin.

  I lurched to a stop. Leapt out. Rushed past the constable, only just posted outside. I didn’t explain, he didn’t stop me. I said, “Police! Police!” Apparently I also said, “I’m a detective, I know what I’m doing.” The front door was open, I burst through. Inside was the scene of a crime. I knew about crime scenes. The feeling of things going into deep freeze.

  But this was different, utterly different. It was warm. There was the smell of cooking, something wonderful cooking, wrapping itself round you like a hug. There was Bob on the floor in a pool of blood. There was a table, in the corner, with a candle. And there was Sarah sitting, shaking, in a chair. Her hair and her face were made up as if for a celebration, a pearl necklace, a clinging black dress. I’d never seen her like this. Ready for a lover. She looked at me amazed, as if she couldn’t believe it was me. But she looked amazed anyway, as if everything now could only amaze her, as if all there could be was amazement.

  58

  And the truth is, he had flown with her. Or he might as well. He was up there with her, I believe it (and Sarah would have seen it), up in the rescuing air. Only his lifeless body down here.

  And, up there, what did she know? Did she feel a sudden flutter: a chill, a warmth, an aura? How many ghosts have been reported on aeroplanes? But best not to know. The best place to be: where you won’t know. How her brother died, how her parents died. She was going back to find out? Some detective work. All the pools of blood. Forget Wimbledon, forget Beecham Close.

  Her plane was already coming down towards Switzerland. The lights of houses, of picture-book chalets scattered over mountain sides. A glint of moonlit snow, the shimmer of a lake.

  Did she ever learn? By accident or intent? Or had she closed that part of her life—was that the nub of it?—hardening her face (and heart?): going through to Departures with those minutes still to spare?

  And did she go back to Croatia, really? Is she there now?

  The lights of a big foreign city below her, rising to meet her. The high life, the good life. A qualified interpreter, a translator, a citizen of the world.

  I see her still in Geneva. I see her (it’s just a fancy) finding work with the UN. I see her, yes, going back to her old country—new country—but only as a member of some official team. A UN interpreter, an observer. Diplomatic credentials—but her own personal links. Post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation. The investigation of war crimes. Work that will never be complete.

  Working for the UN, the shambling, botching peacekeepers. The wise-after-the-event international police.

  59

  Sarah will finish her translation soon. I don’t want her to, nor does she. A lifeline. My project too. Sometimes on my visits we talk about nothing else.

  It’s like it was in Gladstone’s, two years ago, except it’s the Visits Room now. And I thought, then, it could never be: we meet to swap notes—there’s nothing more urgent in our lives—on this stuff that happened long ago.

  It all came to grief at the battle of Sedan. 1870: Eugénie was a mere spring chicken in her forties. Napoleon III got beaten hollow by the Prussians.

  Disaster, downfall. Exile to Chislehurst.

  Not a military genius, like his uncle—the Napoleon—but he led his own armies into battle and once in an earlier war, against the Austrians in Italy (whatever they were doing there), he’d won two big battles: Magenta and Solferino. He could have driven the Austrians clean out of Italy but, the thing was, at Solferino he called a halt, and one reason, the story went, was that he’d simply got sick of blood.

  I looked them up for myself. Homework. Magenta, Solferino. Like I looked up Sedan. Like once I looked up Dubrovnik. And I found out the other story.

  There was this Swiss businessman with big schemes, looking for backers, who thought he’d go to the very top: the Emperor himself. And since the Emperor wasn’t at home but fighting a war in Italy, he went looking for him there. But instead of finding the Emperor he stumbled on the aftermath of the battle of Solferino, and this changed his big schemes and his life.

  He did what he could, there and then, for the wounded and dying. Once back in Switzerland he made it his new business to relieve the miseries of war. He founded what became known as the Red Cross, and this led to the Geneva Convention, which led to the League of Nations, then to the UN.

  The Red Cross. Everyone knows it’s not there to take sides, just to give first aid. A neutral set-up: charity and mercy. And the Geneva Convention isn’t a peace recipe, it just says—it’s almost absurd—that if wars have to be fought and people have to kill each other then at least they should do it according to certain rules.

  Switzerland itself—where I’ve never been—is famous for being neutral and safe, a place where the rest of the world goes to sort out its troubles. A place of clean air, clinics and lots of snow. And banks and chocolates and wristwatches. A civilized country. The snag, they say, is that it’s just a bit boring. A safe, unexciting place.

  I’ve never been, but I think about Kristina who has—and who might still be there.

  Who would want the whole world to be like Switzerland? Though isn’t that how the world is, wherever there’s civilization and peace? The lights of houses through trees, quiet streets where nothing happens. Napoleon and Eugénie, after the battle of Sedan, might have fled to Switzerland: some villa by a lake. Instead they settled in Chislehurst, on a future golf course.

  So what do we really want? Peace? Really? Excitement? Really?

  Helen, I think, doesn’t understand me any more, not these days. She was there to help me through, to be the Red Cross (but she took sides) when the chips were down. But this, this now, can’t be what she would have imagined for me, what she would have wished. This woman in my life. That I’d be going, once a fortnight, two years now, to see—this prisoner. This killer.

  She worries about me maybe. It’s strange how things have turned out. My fight-picking daughter: the two of us at war. I never understood. Now it’s the other way round. It’s undercover love, of a kind: it’s no secret, but it can’t exactly come out into the open.

  And I did meet Clare, eventually—when they set up in business at last, the two of them: in
terior design. How could I not get an invite to their little launch? And the first thing I thought when I met her was: she’s the wife and Helen’s the husband. You shouldn’t think such thoughts, maybe, but that’s how it was.

  A small office in Notting Hill, small but well kitted-out. I suppose, if it’s interior design … Wine and things on trays. People I didn’t know. You could see it at once: Clare was the hostess, the people-person—a ready smile, an easy sparkle—Helen was the business brain.

  A year or more ago now. Maybe I hadn’t met Clare till then because (the thought occurred to me) Helen thought I might fancy her. And given that I was free, and even, for a certain period, putting it about …

  I might have been an embarrassment.

  But now, of course, I was fixed. And to Clare, at that little party, I must have been just a curiosity: Helen’s dad, an ex-cop (kicked out for some reason), a private detective who’d been involved in that—episode. A murder! And formed this—attachment. The Nash Case.

  A curiosity. An oddball.

  And I did fancy Clare—so far as it went. A good-looking woman. A quick-eyed, quick-lipped woman who drew her face close to yours. The kind of woman who does the talking and charming while the husband takes a happy back seat, smiling to himself, knowing he’s being envied. Though sometimes he’s a little anxious too.

  There wasn’t a husband, of course, but I saw it was like a marriage. I might have said to Helen (but how could you say it?): Congratulations, you pick your women well.

  Clare steered me about, refilled my glass, cupped a hand under my elbow, as if I’d come in from the cold, from some far-away land. This mystery guest.

  And of course there was no possibility … On more than one count. It was entirely safe.

  “Helen says you’re—quite a cook …”

  • • •

  Interior design. Interior designs. They would have “clients” too. I thought: it’s all the same game. You get an office, you cater for needs. My dad’s studio, next to the florist’s, in Chislehurst. My own little set-up, over the Tanning Centre. Except it’s a little different, maybe. A place of last resort.

  And I’m a little different. In the end it’s a hunt. Two eyes in the dark.

  Fabrics and fittings, curtains and colour schemes. The good life, the sweet life, windows lit at night. What became of my outlaw daughter? My art-loving daughter?

  Peace? Excitement? What’s civilization for? Matrimonial work: that’s my game. It’s not always nice but I’m not the Red Cross. And in my time of doing matrimonial work I’ve seen quite a few couples who’ve come to grief, who’ve gone to war, for no other reason, so far as I can see, than that over the years of being safe and steady and settled, something’s got lost, something’s gone missing, they’ve got bored.

  60

  I sit outside, watching. God knows what I expect to see. Houses don’t stir. A thousand things might happen in them but they don’t raise an eyebrow, not even a flicker. “The Emperor Napoleon died here.”

  But surely they know, the people in there right now—whoever they are. This was where, and this was the night. And this was where, once upon a time, it all began, with the best of intentions, all three of them, Bob, Sarah, Kristina. A fairy-tale, a mini-Switzerland.

  Before I came in on the picture.

  Curtains drawn. An amber glow. How many times have I sat like this, watching but not seeing, guessing but not knowing. How do we know what’s inside?

  I might have lived my life and never known it. A blow to the chest. Though what does it have to do with knowing? I hardly knew her. I’d met her three times. A cup of coffee, a drink. Sarah Nash, a client. I didn’t know her enough to know what she could do. And yet I did, I knew it, I spun the wheel round, turned the car. I didn’t know her, like she didn’t know herself.

  It’s not having or keeping—it’s not even knowing. This one is not like the others who go into the files. The file in the cabinet, the file in the head. Photo, fingerprint, distinguishing marks. In this one’s case the file will always have been lost. It’s not fair, it’s not just, it goes beyond the law, but it works the other way too. Whatever you are, whatever you do, there’ll always be this someone for you who won’t let you disappear.

  A going beyond the law. I never knew who I was, either, I never knew myself. I spun the wheel. I sped through Wimbledon, up Wimbledon Hill. I might have been falling through space.

  I stopped right here. I charged past the constable. The bobby, the rozzer, the ploddie, the boy-in-blue. “Police.” And there I was on the scene of the crime, all eyes on me, as if I was the perpetrator come back to announce, to confess: it was me.

  Sarah was sitting in a chair. She looked—in her own home—like she too had shown up from nowhere, from another world. A policewoman was standing beside her. In different circumstances, in a different story, the policewoman’s arm might have been around her. And if I hadn’t known it before (but I did), I knew it now. If I hadn’t felt it before, I felt it now. A stab to the heart.

  Bob’s body was between us. We looked at each other, amazed. I might have sworn it aloud, there and then, in front of police witnesses. Ends of the earth. Beyond.

  61

  Rita said, “But she didn’t have to do it, did she?”

  Looking at me cagily but keenly at the same time, softly but sharply, as if she was a version of Marsh—Marsh in a pale-pink top—and my office had become a nick. My own office, but Rita had hauled me in for a session.

  “Stick a knife in him. Take her revenge—like that.”

  Looking at me cagily but with a small glint of triumph. Well, George, you got in right out of your depth there. But you’re back on shore now, safe back on shore with me.

  Tea, sweet and strong. Not even bothering to ask. Not even bothering to ask if she could step in with her own mug of tea and park herself by my desk. The morning after. She knew about mornings after. Remembering maybe, right then, her own little mission of revenge, or whatever it was. Me waiting outside, looking at the windows of a house. Wish me luck.

  “It wasn’t revenge, Reet.”

  My own office at nine in the morning. Familiar and utterly weird. I’d been up all night. Nothing odd in that—an occupational hazard. But not under investigation myself.

  And now under Rita’s.

  “It wasn’t revenge.”

  “No?”

  This might have been the moment for it all to come out. You can tell Rita, you can tell Rita everything. In your own words, take your time. But I stared into my tea, gripping the mug tight like people do in a state of shock. Why, except for some old, mad sense of duty (duty?) had I even bothered to show up?

  I looked up. Rita looked as if she could pounce.

  Back again and not back again, George and not George. More like some strange unpredictable animal in a zoo.

  George, she might have said, you look a bloody mess.

  And suppose on that night, years ago, when she strode up that front path, things had taken a different turn, got out of hand? She’d come back a wild, changed, glaring thing, holding up her spread hands?

  “No? Not revenge? So what was it?” she snapped. “An accident? Self-defence?”

  She checked herself, bit her lip, but I pictured it—the whole picture: Sarah in the dock, Rita in the jury—the jury a whole jury of Ritas. No discussion: put the bitch away.

  I think she saw me seeing it. She looked at me suddenly as if I was floating away. Her face went soft again—scornful and soft at the same time.

  Out of his depth, the fool, and still out there, flailing in the current.

  My interrogator, my rescuer.

  “If it was revenge,” I said, “would she have gone about it like that? Involved a detective?”

  (Involved!)

  “When I phoned her, from the airport, she sounded so—so—”

  Something, at last, uncontrollable in my voice. Rita put down her mug of tea. What she was waiting for—like the waiting tray, with clients. Nurse Rit
a.

  “—so glad.”

  My office. The oatmeal carpet. The two-tone filing cabinets, some black, some sealing-wax red. All Rita’s work. The vase of flowers. The framed photos on the wall: scenes of Wimbledon a hundred years ago. A horse and cart outside the Rose and Crown. Why this should put clients at their ease I don’t know.

  Helen had come once and glanced quickly round. I think she sussed Rita straight away.

  I caught myself, collected myself.

  “So who knows?” I said. “Who knows how it happened?”

  I looked, steadily enough, into Rita’s eyes.

  “Who knows?” I said.

  She might have given a snort. Who knows? What kind of language was that for a detective? I was supposed to know, supposed to find out. My job. And—so it appeared—I’d been there, I’d been at the bloody scene.

  But I did know, of course. And Sarah knew that I knew. And I knew that.

  A sort of professional snort. But she moved her head, instead, just a shade, from side to side.

  In deeper than he bloody knew. As if I’d been done for just as surely as Bob Nash, as if I’d had it coming too.

  She picked up her mug.

  “Well,” she might have said, “we’ll see. We’ll see how the wind blows in a month or so.”

  She picked up my mug. “More tea?” It was almost like a threat. Nurse Rita. A beast of a patient.

  She held the mugs as if they’d just been confiscated.

  “Well, anyway, you’re in no fit state, are you, to do anything round here? You’d better let me take over.”

  She couldn’t keep it in. “A piece of work, if you ask me, that Mrs. Nash. A nasty piece of work.”

  62

  Of course there was only one possible outcome, one possible plea. Marsh didn’t have to waste his time with a side-issue like me.