There were photographs of Klimsky and Chen Yun, but not of the hired hand that Pitt had had to kill. The report was vague, almost disinterested. It was clear that this was not a domestic incident, or by the hand of someone that the general public need worry about. There was some speculation that it had been a gangland hit. The report made it apparent that Chen Yun had been involved in some sort of illegal activity, without going into specifics.
Three murders in one house in one night was interesting, and in many ways exciting, but the story had nowhere to go. Murder among thieves, and the public could move on unconcerned.
Pitt bought seven other national newspapers to see if the murders and proved interesting enough to attract attention outside of the South-West. They hadn’t.
He had slept well and early, and had woken at five-fifteen, very clear in his head what was to be done. He and Ju would travel to France, just to get away. Once there, they would have a decision to make. If she wanted to go, then he would send her back to China. Or else, she could wait and he could go with her.
He wondered if he should have given his own passport to Jenkins and asked for the fake Chinese visa, but somehow that had seemed a step too far.
No, it would be one step at a time. And that first step was out of the country and the short trip across the channel.
However it worked out, he knew now that he and Ju would be lovers. He did not wonder how long this would last, or what it would be like in practical terms. Given that he had spent so many years married to someone with whom he did not communicate, the notion of a life with Ju did not seem in any way fanciful.
He had also decided he would take a little bit of his vineyard with him. Three vines. Dig them up, roots and all, prune them, fit them into his suitcase. He would take pinot gris, a grape that was grown around the world. Wherever he ended up, wherever he chose to start again, pinot gris would grow for him, and he would forever have a little of the vineyard with him.
Perhaps, where he was going, it would be illegal to bring in vines, an unnecessary risk to accompany the risk of Ju travelling on a false passport, yet he woke with such certainty of mind. This was the right thing to do, and he would be hanging on, however tenuously, to a part of his past.
He returned to the vineyard not long after nine in the morning. Pitt had the newspaper inside a thin shopping bag, folded into his outside pocket. Walking from his car, he met Jenkins and Blain and Fothergill coming out of the farmhouse. He nodded to all three, then Jenkins stopped to talk while the other two walked off in the direction of the vines.
‘Not at breakfast?’ asked Jenkins.
Pitt shook his head. All he needed from Jenkins was Ju’s passport, then he could make plans.
‘I’ve got what you need,’ said Jenkins.
Pitt raised an eyebrow.
‘Seems quick,’ was all he said.
‘It’s not like going through the Passport Office,’ said Jenkins. ‘And a lot more expensive as a result.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Pitt.
Jenkins took the small brown envelope from his pocket and held it out. Glanced around him, aware of the furtiveness of the exchange.
‘It’s British, with the visa you asked for.’
Feeling uncomfortable with the situation, Pitt nodded and slipped the envelope into his pocket.
‘Fifteen hundred,’ said Jenkins. ‘’Cause it was so quick.’
‘All right. I’ll get it from the bank for you later.’
‘There’s no rush,’ said Jenkins. ‘Look, another couple of things too. We’ve got the DEFRA people coming in about an hour, and tomorrow there are a couple of the TV people coming over to speak to us. You know, part of the process on whether or not to use us for their show.’
Pitt was already thinking about what had to be done although in relation to neither DEFRA nor the television people. He needed to show Ju the newspaper.
Since he had bought it – although strangely not before, as the newspaper itself had not changed anything – he had wondered how Ju would react to him having committed murder in her name. For that was what he had done. Chosen to end the lives of three people in order to protect Ju, to free her from the slavery of the life to which she’d come, but without consulting her, without asking if she wanted that kind of extraordinary decision taken on her part.
Ju would not say anything, but perhaps she would be upset, repulsed by his actions, as much as she might have been by the ways of Chen Yun.
‘Boss?’
Pitt turned slowly. He had been staring at an indistinct point in the wall of the farmhouse. Jenkins may have been used to Pitt’s taciturnity and general reluctance to engage in any kind of dialogue, however, it was rare for him to completely switch off, to be thinking of something other than what was being discussed at the time.
‘You can handle those,’ said Pitt.
‘I think DEFRA will want to talk to you.’
‘They’re not going to arrest me, are they?’
Jenkins smiled curiously, shook his head. Pitt was looking at him quite seriously.
‘No.’
‘They don’t need me,’ said Pitt. ‘You’re quite capable. And, let’s be honest, if there are media there – and just the same as with the television people tomorrow – you’ll be much more proficient and make a better fist of representing the vineyard than I will.’
Jenkins nodded. That, at least, was something with which he could not argue, although he was still disconcerted with Pitt’s sudden departure. That was how he saw it. Pitt might still have been there, standing in front of him, but otherwise he seemed already to have gone, leaving the business of the vineyard in Jenkins’s hands.
Jenkins wondered how much Daisy Pitt had been involved in this discussion and presumed that she had not been involved at all.
‘I don’t think...’ began Pitt, ‘well, I don’t know, but I think the birds... the birds will be back. Maybe in a day or two. You won’t need to worry about the birds.’
He turned away.
‘And if you can get the television thing sorted out,’ he added without looking at Jenkins, ‘which you’ll probably have a good shout at without me to scare them off, then that should keep the bank off your back as well.’
He started to walk away.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he tossed over his shoulder, the words mixed with the crunch of his feet on the gravel.
Pitt walked to the kitchen. Jenkins watched him all the way until he had entered the house, then turned and walked off in search of Blain. They had planning to do, and it was time to tell the men that things were about to be a bit different.
*
Daisy was washing up. Mrs Cromwell was out for a walk. The kitchen was quiet, but for the sound of running water. Pitt had been hoping to find the room empty, giving him the chance to get some breakfast for Ju. He had an apple in his pocket.
Daisy turned at the sound of the door, rolled her eyes with disinterest at his arrival. She looked at him as if about to ask something, decided against it, turned back to the washing up. Pitt walked behind her, made himself a coffee. He was consumed by Ju; wanted to go straight down to the cellar and show her the newspaper. Giving himself ten minutes. Calm. Silence. Process the days ahead. He was rushing headlong into a new life, but it had been coming since Hardyman had died; it did no harm to stop and think every so often. A few minutes.
He sat at the kitchen table. He faced the back door, looked resolutely at it, as if waiting for someone to enter. Daisy glanced over her shoulder at him a few times. Pitt did not notice. Finally, against the sound of the running tap, she spoke.
‘What’s going on?’
Pitt did not look round. Despite the fundamental change to his life and outlook, his attitude to Daisy had not changed. He had nothing to say to her, and nothing she could say was of any interest to him.
He did not reply. He did not usually just completely ignore her, but, if there had been any evolution in the way he thought about Daisy, it was to judge her m
ore harshly; she had sucked the life out of him, slowly, for over thirty years.
She stared at him for a few moments. Her hand moved away from the running water, so that the quality of the sound changed as it ran straight onto the steel basin. Despite his general taciturnity, she was surprised that he had ignored her.
‘Are you just going to sit there?’
He wanted to be with Ju. He took a long drink of coffee. It tasted bitter. Too strong. Set the cup back on the table, pushed his chair back and got to his feet. Could not even sit in peace for a few minutes.
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ he said glibly, as he walked to the back door. He paused, some other throwaway comment on his lips, then he left and shut the door behind him.
Daisy Pitt watched her husband go, and, for the first time in several years, felt a sharp pang of genuine insecurity. It neither hurt nor angered her; instead, she felt the uncomfortable creep of fear crawl through her.
Pitt walked around the side of the farmhouse to the door to the cellar steps. He did not look around him. He did not throw a glance the way of the office, to see if Jenkins and Blain were looking out for him. He did not turn and stare over the vines. He did not look down the driveway, checking to see if the government inspectors, surrounded by hordes of attached media, would be arriving, witnesses to the execution. And he did not look into the grove of trees, where the bitter old woman sometimes took her walk in the mornings.
He paid no attention at all to his surroundings, and there was little for him to see in any case. However, he was noticed by one person. Mrs Cromwell was emerging from the trees as Pitt passed by, some fifty or sixty yards before her. It was not unusual for him to go to the cellar, his shoulders slightly hunched, his coat on; and so other than sending him her usual malevolent look across the driveway, she would likely have ignored him.
Then she saw the newspaper, folded in a thin plastic bag, sticking out of his pocket. She snorted. What was Pitt doing with a newspaper? He had never bought a paper, he did not go to the cellar to read, he had never shown any interest in the newspapers that she brought into the house. Quite the contrary, in fact. She had always held the opinion that Pitt considered himself superior in some way, because he did not give any time to the opinions of others, did not believe or was not interested in the things that other people wrote.
Now he was taking a newspaper down to the cellar.
She had been ruminating over the disappearance of Yuan Ju for over twenty-fours hours. The timing of her vanishing had not been accidental, of that she was sure. There were no coincidences in life; everything happened for a reason. It was not just that someone had tipped Ju off, for Ju might well already have known. Ju might well have been standing at the kitchen sink, taking it all in. Mrs Cromwell was convinced she had not the wit about her to flee from her surroundings. Someone had helped her, and the list of suspects was very small.
She had her eyes open for the slightest thing that appeared out of the ordinary. The slightest thing.
And Pitt had a newspaper in his pocket when he went down to the cellar.
44
Ju was hungry, but did not hope that Pitt had come with her breakfast. She merely hoped that it would be Pitt, and not someone else from the household, or one of the other employees.
She was not sure what Pitt had planned for her, but already she could feel the melancholy begin to lift, having allowed herself to hope that Pitt would not permit her return to Chen Yun the following Saturday. In itself, this filled her with a new fear; of what might happen when Ju did not arrive for work; of what might happen to her family back in China. Nevertheless, it was significant that, for the first time since she had left her home so many months earlier, Ju was allowing herself any hope at all.
She laid the book on the ground beside her chair and looked up at Pitt. Still, her eyes did not quite meet his. He held the paper out towards her. She cast a quick glance up to his face and stood up as she took it from him.
He had no idea whether or not she could read the story. However, it seemed plain enough. There were pictures of Chen Yun and Klimsky, and there was a large picture of the house where Ju had been taken every Saturday; taped off by the police, several officers standing around, a bagged up body being wheeled out of the gate.
The paper started to shake in her trembling hands. He watched her face, the movement of her eyes. She was reading, or trying to read, the story. His stomach was filled with nerves, the like of which he had not felt in a very long time. His throat was dry.
He wanted to reach out and touch her; he wanted her to know that she was not alone. Now, however, although the desire was there, and perhaps even the confidence to be so bold, he was wary of her reaction. He was a murderer. She might not want him to hold her, she might not want to be pressed against him. She might not want to be locked in a cellar by a man who had murdered three people in less than five minutes with his bare hands.
His heart raced, he swallowed. Her gaze was still locked on the story, and Pitt began to find the wait unbearable. He had other things to do to help Ju, and perhaps now that he had given her this part of the news, he needed to get on with them.
A tear fell onto the paper, the sound excruciatingly loud in the silence of the cellar. Pitt could not move. A tear told him nothing.
The paper toppled out of Ju’s hands and fell to the floor. She looked up at Pitt, her lips pressed together, another tear running down her cheek. Still, he could not read her; still, his heart pounded and he was desperate to know if he had done right by this woman to whom he had found himself so intolerably drawn.
Her lips started to break, and then, with the tears beginning to flow down her cheeks, for the first time that summer, Pitt saw her smile. It was weak and it was confused, but the gratitude flowed from her like tears, and he could feel the relief rush around his body, his skin tingling.
She lifted her hand, her fingers still trembling, and touched Pitt’s cheek. His face did not break, he did not return the smile, but he did not have to. The gates had been opened, and suddenly the intimacy that existed between them had been made physical. He lifted his hand and touched the side of her head, felt the softness of her hair. And then he pulled her in towards him, and she put her arms around his back, and they held each other. Not too tightly, not a clutching desperate embrace. But tenderly, their bodies barely touching, both of them breathing in the other.
He pressed his cheek against hers. He felt the warmth of someone’s love for the first time. Eventually, they pressed their bodies together and held each other as tightly as they could.
Yuan Ju thought she could stand there like that for all of her life. The melancholy lifted from her like mist burned off by the sun. She pressed her head into Pitt’s chest and the horror of her long summer began to disappear.
Time passed. They held on to each other as if they might never get the chance to do so again.
*
Pitt was unused to finding his emotions in total confusion. He was set in his determination to take Ju away, and knew what he had to do, but it seemed alien to have his thoughts so entangled.
He wanted to get away before the government and their media entourage arrived, and so, eventually, he tore himself away from Ju. He had lost track of time. When she’d been in his arms, time had meant nothing. He’d had no idea how long he stood there. What insignificant movements the hands of a clock had made around a dial were of no consideration. Ju and Pitt had held each other for eternity. It had been a sixth sense that had made Pitt finally detach from her, to reluctantly leave her again, but his thoughts were of taking her away from the vineyard that afternoon and spending the night in a hotel at the airport, before flying out the following day.
He was not thinking erotic or even romantic thoughts; he just knew he had to be alone with Ju, and that she deserved to be more comfortable.
Pitt turned out of the driveway, just as three cars turned in. He ignored them. Some way further down the road he passed a white van with the markings of
BBC South West on the side.
He thought about Ju the whole way, driving to the nearest town, the nearest travel agent. He knew so little of the Internet that he could not regret being without the basic knowledge of how to book a flight online. It was something that he did not even know was possible.
He would book flights for the following day, he would go back to the farmhouse, he would pack a bag, collect and carefully pack a couple of vines, and be ready to go by late afternoon. He did not need to speak to Daisy. Perhaps he would say a word of farewell to Jenkins, officially hand the running of the vineyard over to him, and then he could be off. And if Ju was seen walking from the cellar door to the car, it would not matter. They would be gone.
As Pitt drove into town, feeling the sudden freedom that spontaneity and love had brought him, he tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that his plans, made in such haste, would somehow not work out.
*
Down in the cellar, Ju read her grandmother’s book. Where before she had read with sadness and longing, now she read with pleasure and a light heart, for she knew she was going home. Pitt had not been able to tell her that this was his intention, but somehow she knew it. She could smell home, she could see the hills. And she was not just going to China; she was not just going back to Hangzhou and the ugly apartment with her mother and father. She was going home, to the village where her grandmother had grown up. And Pitt would be with her, to protect her. She did not understand how that would work, and how Pitt would be able to come and live with her in her country, but she did not doubt that it would happen.
She had gestured for Pitt to take the newspaper with him when he left as she could not even countenance having the image of Chen Yun beside her in the cellar; as if the malignancy of the man might be able to creep from the pages of the newspaper and take hold of her once again.
A Room With No Natural Light Page 17
