Dead and Buried

by Anne Cassidy

  He ignored her and in moments was standing in front of the gates. She looked around, up and down the lane. It was deserted and yet she felt uneasy, as if someone must be around. She focused on the cameras perched on each side of the gates. Someone was watching, she was sure. She slammed the passenger door and walked towards Joshua.

  At the gates he was moving from side to side, staring up at each camera.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed.

  ‘I want them to see me. I want them to know that I am here. I’ve waited a long time for this.’

  ‘You can’t,’ she said, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket. ‘We have to hang on, to think this through. Remember that Munroe said they were working undercover . . .’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said, jabbing at the buttons on the entry pad.

  The rain was less heavy now but she felt it on her face. A voice came from the speaker and startled her.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  It was a male voice but it wasn’t Brendan’s.

  ‘I need to see someone,’ Joshua said, looking up at the camera. ‘I need to see the man who just drove in here.’

  ‘Can you give me your name and the nature of your business?’ the voice said calmly.

  Joshua hesitated. He swore under his breath.

  ‘What is your business?’ the voice repeated.

  Rose leant over and spoke into the speaker.

  ‘The car that just came in here? It almost ran into us. Further along the lane. Really inconsiderate. We would like an apology.’

  ‘I think you should just move on,’ the voice said and Rose was sure she could hear a hint of a laugh.

  ‘We’re not going until we get an apology. Face to face,’ Joshua said.

  He was still moving around looking agitated. Rose put her arm through his to try and anchor him. What did he think he was doing? Insisting on some face-to-face meeting when they simply weren’t ready for it? After five long years of waiting could they not have driven off and waited one more day?

  There was a crackling sound on the intercom and the voice spoke again.

  ‘Wait there. Someone will be down.’

  They stood together, staring at the wooden gate. She couldn’t quite believe it. Joshua’s hands were clenching and unclenching. Was this it? Were the gates going to open and reveal her mother and Brendan ready to be reunited with them?

  The noise of a car approaching made Rose look round. It had turned into the lane from the direction that they’d come from earlier. It moved slowly and in seconds she saw that it was another Mercedes, dark red with tinted windows. One minute it was moving and then it came to a stop a couple of hundred metres or so away from them. Rose couldn’t see who was driving. The windows were smoky like giant sunglasses. She felt herself holding her breath. Whoever was in the car was most probably staring at them, wondering what was going on.

  Was it Macon Parker?

  The wooden gates made a noise and began to open slowly. Rose tensed. She didn’t know what to expect. Joshua took a couple of steps backwards but she let her hold on him drop away and stood her ground. The gates shifted slowly and she peered through the gap wondering if Brendan would be standing there. From behind she heard the car along the lane moving again. The gates continued to open, creaking a little, and in moments the gateway was clear and she could see Brendan standing by the side pillar, staring at both of them in disbelief.

  ‘Dad!’ Joshua said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

  ‘Josh, don’t say anything!’ Brendan said sharply.

  The dark red Mercedes was beside them. Joshua hardly seemed to notice it. His face was twisted up. One of his hands was cupping his bandaged ear as if it was giving him pain. Brendan glanced at it and looked away. Rose swung round and looked beyond the gates to see if her mother was there. About a hundred metres up the driveway was the house. Her mother was not anywhere that she could see. Her eyes crept up the building, three storeys of it. The windows were too far away for her to spy anyone in them but she imagined that her mother was there at one of them, staring at the electric gates in shock.

  To see seventeen-year-old Rose knocking for her.

  From behind she heard the driver’s window slide down and she looked round to see a man’s face appear. The man in the photograph, Macon Parker.

  ‘Everything all right, Ben?’ he said.

  Brendan walked to the side of the car.

  ‘Fine, Mr Parker. Just a couple of young people who’ve got lost on the country lanes, I think.’

  Macon Parker nodded and the car window slid shut. Brendan put his arm out to edge Rose back from the pathway. The arm felt rigid and she realised that he hadn’t so much as made eye contact with her and he seemed to be ignoring Joshua completely. When the car glided past them he waited with his back to Joshua. He could have been a complete stranger.

  Then he turned to both of them.

  ‘What are you doing here? How did you find this place? My God, Joshua what’s happened to your face?’

  Joshua went to speak but Brendan shushed him.

  ‘This is putting Kathy and me in danger.’

  ‘Dad?’ Joshua said, a look of incomprehension on his face.

  ‘What happened to you? Rose, what’s been going on?’

  Rose couldn’t answer. Joshua seemed distraught. Brendan looked back at the house, at the gates. He was becoming agitated.

  ‘Listen, there’s a village near here called Great Dunmow. Find a pub in it called the Three Kings. It’s open all day. Go there and Kathy and I will come at four o’clock. Leave now.’

  He walked away from them without looking backwards. The gates began to close as though an operator had been watching the whole conversation and knew it was over. Rose walked across to Joshua and took his elbow.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  He didn’t move though. He was reluctant to leave. He waited until the gates had shut completely and they were faced with solid planks of wood slotted together, impenetrable.

  He followed her to the car, looking back from time to time. When he got in he sat very still for a minute as if he didn’t know what to do. He seemed to shiver a little as though someone had walked over his grave. She put her hand on his sleeve. It was damp just as hers was.

  ‘Just drive,’ she said. ‘We’ll find Great Dunmow.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Josh, come on. We have to go there now.’

  He seemed to pull himself together and started the car up.

  It took about twenty minutes to reach Great Dunmow. It was bigger than Wickby, the largest of the villages they’d visited. There was a shopping area and several churches. They drove slowly, looking for the pub. After several false turns they found it on a turning off the main road through the town. It was set back off the street and had a small car park. They pulled into it and Joshua turned the engine off. The clock on the dashboard showed 3.16. They had just under forty-five minutes to wait.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ she said. ‘Go for a walk?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Sit here? Or go into the pub?’

  He didn’t answer. She turned to him. His face was a blank page. She had no idea what he was thinking. He was hardly breathing, as if conserving his energy.

  ‘I’ll tell him about Baranski,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘And we’ll ask about Daisy Lincoln?’

  ‘I don’t think we should bring that up as well. Not this time. Let’s just make contact. We don’t want to overload the first meeting. There’s time for that stuff later.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘We might only have a short time. I don’t want to talk to them about something that might be completely irrelevant.’

  Rose sighed. ‘I need to get out of the car.’

  ‘Go for a walk. Clear your head.’

  He didn’t need her there. He wanted her to go away so that he could be on his own. She opened the door.

  ‘Will you be all right?’r />
  He nodded, laying his hands on the steering wheel, gripping it.

  She walked away from the car out of the pub car park and turned on to the lane. The rain had stopped but there was no one out. The street had houses on each side but no front gardens, just doors that opened on to a narrow pavement.

  The High Street was a single lane road and there were small shops and a couple more pubs. It didn’t look as though anywhere was open. Up ahead a man was walking a small black and white dog. He was talking on a mobile phone and stopping at shop windows. The dog was pulling at the lead but the man seemed oblivious. She could hear his voice from where she was. ‘So I said to him, “Why not buy second-hand? As soon as you buy a new one it depreciates. That’s a couple of thousand quid down the drain!”’

  She crossed the road. Pulling her phone out of her bag she saw that it had just gone three thirty. Half an hour until Brendan would come along with her mother. It gave her a jittery feeling and yet at the same time she felt a heaviness about it. It wasn’t going to be the big reunion she had sometimes fantasised about in the early days when they’d first gone missing. There was to be no happy ending here, no putting their lives back together or making up for lost time. They wouldn’t need to say ‘Where have you been? Why did you go?’ They already knew the answers to these questions.

  She ached for it to be different.

  To see her mother after so long.

  To be able to touch her, to hold her hand, to hug her.

  Rose found herself willing this. Forget about all the things they had learned. Forget that she and Brendan left without a word, without the whisper of a goodbye. Let that sit in the past if she could just have her back, the way it was when she was twelve years old. Even if it was only for a short time.

  She’d walked the length of the main street. She turned round to come back and saw the man with his dog still talking on his mobile, the dog still pulling on the lead.

  It was time to go to the pub and wait for them to come.

  At ten past four they were sitting at a table in the bar of the Three Kings. There were a number of other people in there but they were in a corner by themselves. The door opened and Brendan walked in. He let it close and Rose saw that he was alone. She was immediately thrown. She’d expected her mother to be walking behind him.

  Where was she? Had she not been able to come?

  He paused to look for them. A woman sitting on a bar stool turned round to see who had just come in. Her eyes stayed on Brendan.

  Rose looked him over.

  He’d lost weight. His hair was neatly cut and he had round glasses on that made him look like a college lecturer. He wore a leather jacket styled like a suit jacket. He looked smart. The woman at the bar thought so too because her eyes followed him across the room as he came to join Rose and Joshua.

  He looked so much younger than she remembered.

  He took a chair out and sat down opposite them. He pulled it back a little as if he didn’t want to be hemmed in. He didn’t make eye contact with either of them but looked around from side to side.

  ‘Dad . . .’ Joshua started.

  Brendan shook his head.

  ‘The name is Ben Markham. That is what you call me now.’

  Ben Markham. Another identity. Rose wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t like Brendan any more. He was a different person. Five years older and yet he seemed like a younger man altogether.

  ‘Where’s my mum?’

  ‘Kate Markham is outside in the car. She’s keeping an eye out for anyone who might be a bit too interested in our little outing. You can see her in a minute. We’ve agreed that I should explain things to you first. Then, Josh, you can tell me what happened to your face.’

  ‘You don’t need to. We know what’s been going on. We know why you’re working at . . .’

  ‘Enough. You have to listen to me, Josh. There’ll be plenty of time for full explanations later. I have two things to say to you. Number one: we did what we did to save your lives.’

  Rose frowned. Brendan’s eyes met hers and he faltered. For a second she saw the old Brendan, All right, Petal?

  ‘Because of Viktor Baranski’s death?’ Joshua said.

  Because of his murder, Rose thought.

  ‘Justice for Baranski left a lot of German gangsters short of money.’ Brendan’s voice lowered and he looked around the bar. ‘Two million pounds. They thought that your mother and I knew where this money was. They would have done anything to get hold of it – kidnap, torture, murder and they would have started with the things that were dearest to us, our children. Your lives were in danger if we stayed. Our disappearance had to look completely real, that is why we had to abandon you. You and the pain you experienced was evidence to them of our deaths. No parent abandons their child. That’s why they believed in the car in the reservoir at Childerley Waters. Munroe’s story wasn’t just made up for you and Rose, it was set up years ago to be leaked to the Germans. We still had to lie low of course.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘No, Joshua. No more discussion.’

  Rose frowned at Brendan’s coldness. Here was his son who he hadn’t seen for five years and yet he wasn’t even touching him. His hands were firmly placed on the rough wood table, his palms down.

  ‘Number two. If you continue to interfere this mission will fail and Kate and myself could end up dead. In five days’ time this will be over. There is a party for our employer’s birthday up in London. After that we will be gone. Our work finished. We will relocate to another country and then we will send for both of you. It will be up to you whether you come or not.’

  Joshua didn’t speak. He was holding his glass, his fingers woven into each other. Rose felt herself disorientated by Brendan’s delivery, his tone of voice, the lack of emotion in his words. Over by the bar she noticed the woman on the stool was still looking at him from time to time. She appeared to be in her early twenties and yet she was clearly attracted by Brendan. Rose thought of Daisy Lincoln, five years before. Had she too been attracted by Brendan?

  ‘You should go and see your mother, Rose,’ Brendan said, the words low.

  Rose got up and left her seat without a word. She walked towards the door, her heart seeming to stiffen in her chest. She went slowly. She was steeling herself for a meeting that was similar to the one she had just had with Brendan. Her mother would be firm. Wearing her new heavy-framed glasses she would say the same things that Brendan had said but use slightly different wording. She might number her points. ‘Firstly’ she might say. ‘Secondly’ she would continue. She might slice the air with her hand emphasising the fact that Rose and Joshua should keep out of what was happening.

  She pulled the pub door open and looked around. Their Ford was parked by the entrance to the car park. There were two cars on the other side. One of them was the black Mercedes they’d seen earlier. Rose saw her mother in the driver’s seat. She walked towards it. She imagined herself opening the passenger door and getting into the car and sitting tightly, her hands sandwiched between her legs, waiting to hear what her mother had to say.

  She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t be emotional.

  She would nod and show her mother how grown-up she was.

  She neared the car. It had stopped raining and the sky was crammed with bright white clouds. It hurt her eyes to look at it and she squinted and then looked at the windscreen. Her mother’s face stared back at her. She headed for the passenger door but at that moment the driver’s door swung open and her mother got out and began to walk towards her. Rose froze. She didn’t know what to say. Her mouth opened but no words came out. Her mother came round the bonnet of the car, straight up to her and raised her arms and then she was hugging her fiercely. Rose’s arms were clamped to her side and she couldn’t move them. Her mother’s face was on her shoulder, she felt her hair at the side of her cheek. Her arms were tight around Rose’s body and then she felt the trembling, the shaking, as her mother began to cry silently. With heaving sobs she held on
to Rose and Rose’s eyes filled with tears as she stood awkwardly by the side of the Mercedes. After a few moments her mother’s arms slackened and she stood back and Rose realised with surprise that she was the taller one. Her mother was thinner as well and seemed lost in a billowing mac, her glasses looking like they were made to measure for someone much bigger.

  ‘Rosie,’ she whispered.

  ‘Mum,’ Rose said, her voice trembling.

  ‘You’ve heard everything that Ben said?’

  Rose nodded. Her mum meant Brendan.

  ‘Just another few days and all this will be finished. We will contact you. Be ready for us. I long to see you, to explain . . .’

  A door opened from behind and Rose heard raised voices, people laughing from inside the pub. Brendan and Joshua walked out. Brendan didn’t look over to her mother but headed for the Ford. Joshua pointed the keys at the car and the sidelights flashed on and off.

  ‘When will I see you?’ Rose said.

  ‘Soon. I promise it will be soon.’

  Her mother stepped forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek, her hand grasping on to the fabric of her jacket. Then she stepped away. Turning back to the Ford Rose saw that Brendan had hooked his arm around Joshua’s neck and given him a hug. Then he headed back towards the Mercedes. Rose walked past him and as she did she felt his fingers brushing hers. She approached the car and got in. Seconds later, before they’d even got their seat belts on, the Mercedes shot forward and swept out of the car park.

  They didn’t move.

  Joshua’s hands rested on the steering wheel and he stared out the front of the car. Rose crossed her arms.

  This was what they had dreamed about – finding their parents.

  This should be a moment of celebration and yet she felt a sense of desolation. For years she had felt adrift, floating here and there, searching for land. Now they had found it they weren’t allowed to dock, to step on to it, to rest. She turned to Joshua wanting to say something but he was lost in his own thoughts. The search for their parents had brought them together. Now that they had found them it seemed to edge them apart.

  ‘I told him about Baranski,’ Joshua said. ‘I told him to be on the lookout.’