by HRF Keating
But didn’t he say, too, that we must think about Graham’s funeral? As we have to. There has to be a funeral, and it’s up to us, I suppose, to say what sort of funeral it should be, where and when, private or public.
Oh God, I can’t do it. I can’t. It’s too much. Too much for me.
John came back in, a big steaming mug of soup in his hand.
‘Get yourself outside this. And I’ll fix you a whisky.’
Obediently Harriet took the mug, but found it too hot to drink from. In a minute or two John, at the little fridge where they kept the drinks, produced the whisky.
Well, he’s certainly made it a big one, she thought. And then she swallowed.
She felt the stinging presence of the supermarket whisky, generally drunk doused with ginger ale, flood into her. She took a second big swig and found only a thin amber drain remaining at the bottom of the glass.
‘OK,’ she said, half-resisting, half-embracing the heady glow that had taken possession of her. ‘OK, we have to talk.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, I am. But if we leave it much longer I’ll be incapable of anything.’
‘Take a sip of that soup then. It’s only out of a can — mushroom, I think it said — but whatever it is, it’ll steady you for a little.’
‘John, what would I do without you?’
‘You’d manage,’ he answered with a smile. ‘But, all right, let’s first decide on a time to go down to Malcolm. What if we set off, let’s see, in an hour or so. That should get us to St Mary’s by early evening. I don’t suppose it matters much to the nursing staff when we visit. And, if Malcolm’s asleep or anything, then, well, we can wait.’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s easy enough to settle on. But — but, John, didn’t you say they wanted at St Mary’s to know when the — the funeral …?’
She realised the whisky had ceased to do its work. Looking down at the soup mug beside her, she found a repulsive layer of wrinkles had gathered on its surface.
John’s still talking to me.
Must pay attention.
She heaved in a long breath, and found what John was telling her now, apparently, was something new.
‘Darling, you’re totally exhausted. Let me get you up to bed. Have a sleep for an hour, and if you’re fit after that we’ll set off. We can talk again in the car.’
*
She was fit enough, an hour or so later, to get up, wash her face, put on a different suit, and stagger down to the car.
But she was not fit enough to talk as they drove through the cold, clear, early Spring evening. Although she did not fall sleep again, she could do no more as the miles on the motorway slipped by than rouse herself occasionally to ask how far they had got. And, in some far part of her mind, she kept puzzling over who it could have been, just twenty-four hours earlier, who had sent those three, four, five ruthless professionals into Heronsgate House and up to the Director’s office where they had known exactly how to get hold of the CA 534.
And then, once again, she found they were outside St Mary’s, though this time John did not attempt — it must be past nine o’clock, she thought muzzily — to park illegally. Instead, he drove around and around until at last he found a possible space.
As he finally switched off the engine, Harriet found she was all but shaking with a suddenly arrived anger.
Why, why, are stupid regulations preventing us, the parents of a dead son and a terribly injured one, from going straight to his bedside? Malcolm may be on the point of death once more, and this absurd fuss about parking regulations is making it impossible for us to be with him.
‘John,’ she spat out, ‘why the hell are we parked in this godforsaken spot when — when — Oh, God, I don’t know what …’
‘When, you were going to say,’ John answered with a calmness that irritated her even more, ‘Malcolm may be on the point of death. But, you know, he won’t be, not now. Or, not unless something entirely unexpected has happened. I rang St Mary’s from home while you were asleep. You remember I told you as we started off? They said he was still wholly conscious, and asking questions.’
‘Oh yes, I remember. Or do I? I don’t know. And John … John, has someone told Malcolm about Graham? Did they say on the phone that they had?’
‘No. No, they haven’t told him. I asked, and they said it might be best if we were the ones to do that.’
‘Oh, John. John, how awful. How can — No. No, let’s hurry. Hurry.’
She took John’s arm, snatched at it, and they set off for the big HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother building deep inside the hospital complex.
*
When Harriet had seen Malcolm late at night, on the day he had been the horribly injured victim of the bomb that had killed his brother, she had hardly been able to look at the bandaged body on the other side of the intensive-care ward window, at his nose, mouth and arm, tubes and wires that seemed barely to be supporting life. Now, though he was still in intensive care, she and John had been allowed into the ward.
And the first thing she took in was Malcolm’s eyes, dark brown like John’s and his brother’s, looking up at her, glowing with the understanding of who had come in.
‘Malcolm,’ she said. ‘Well, here you are.’
It was all she could manage.
‘How — how’s it going?’ John put in, almost as tongue-tied.
‘OK.’
The word was feebly pronounced, but it came to Harriet as the drawing of a bung from an immense barrel of anxieties. Her words in response poured out.
‘Oh, Malcolm, Malcolm, we’ve been so worried about you. We thought — we thought, well, we couldn’t help asking ourselves at every minute whether you, too, were going, like —’
She came to choked halt.
The words she had been about to utter presented themselves in her head as if they were written in bright, pulsing red letters: you, too, were going, like Graham, to die.
How — how could I have had on my lips that cruel phrase? How could I have been about to give this son of mine, his head and his arms on top of the coverlet still bandaged, with, hidden below, God knows how many other injuries, how could I have been on the point of blurting out that his brother, his twin, is dead?
Then from the bed came a few more weakly pronounced words.
‘It’s all ri’ I know. Or — or I suppose … I must somehow … Graham died, didn’t he? When that … He couldn’t have sur —’ A long patch of silence. ‘’Vived. He is dead, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, darling,’ she said quickly, before tears came. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it’s so. That bomb killed him, they believe, instantly.’
‘Malcolm,’ John said quietly. ‘Don’t think more about it now. Let it gradually sink in. That’s the best way. What you’ve got to do now is get yourself better again. Just concentrate on that, old chap. Getting better.’
‘Yes.’
The word was scarcely audible. The brown eyes slowly drooped closed.
They waited there for a few minutes more, but Malcolm seemed to be solidly asleep.
Eventually John spoke again, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘Perhaps we’d better go. Leave him to recover.’
‘Yes.’
*
Once again, passing the reception desk, John spotted a copy of the Banner, evidently left there routinely by whoever was accustomed to read the very early edition. For a moment he stood looking down at it indecisively. Then he picked it up and turned it over.
There was a front-page headline: ‘Foreign Bombers Claim Responsibility’.
Harriet watched as, for the second time in such nightmare circumstances, he read, eyes skimming, the text below.
He looked up.
‘Apparently,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t al-Qaeda, but some Indian terrorists. They say they’re fighting against all forms of Western imperialism, and this is the first warning they’re giving that everything Western must be taken out of India. God knows what they can mean by th
at. The English language? All those British buildings? Hollywood films? They must be mad. Mad.’
‘They’ve killed Graham and made Malcolm into a cripple for life, and they’re claiming responsibility. What responsibility? I ask you. What is responsible about planting a bomb?’
‘God knows. I don’t. But — but I suppose we ought to have expected something like that.’
‘Yes,’ she answered dully.
‘But it looks, it really looks, as if Malcolm’s going to survive.’
‘Yes.’
Suddenly John thrust his face close to hers.
‘Is that all you can say? “Yes”, “Yes” and “Yes”?’
She turned towards him, the anger that had spurted up in her as they had got out of the car, the senseless, ill-directed rage, boiling and bubbling up with renewed force.
‘For Christ’s sake, what do you expect me to say? What else is there to say but “Yes”? Yes, Malcolm is still alive. But will he be alive tomorrow, or the next day, or next week? For God’s sake, that was an intensive care ward we saw him in. Don’t you know what that means? It means he’s on the edge. On the edge. On the edge of following Graham to death. To death, death, death.’
Then she saw in John’s face a red rage, every bit as overwhelming as her own.
‘Yes!’ he shouted out, oblivious of the man at the desk looking at them both. ‘And you know why Malcolm’s on the edge of death, why Graham’s dead? It’s because of you. You. It was you who went on urging them to go into the police. They could have done anything. They were bright, bright boys. They could have been lawyers, top-class civil servants, in business, anything. They could have even been with the Majestic at this moment, have jobs there with plenty of prospects. But no, what did you hammer and hammer at them to be? Police officers. In the danger zone. Every minute of their lives in the danger zone. And you put them there. Yes, you. You!’
She felt as if, in this bright cubicle of light, she had been totally, unexpectedly assaulted. A rain of blows from nowhere.
Is he right? she asked herself, cowering from those bludgeon strokes. Has John been harbouring such thoughts all along? And did I in truth force the boys into the Met? Is this all my fault? I did want them to join the service. I did. But — but it’s a good job, a necessary job. It is. But did I all the same press them too hard, show them too much how pleased and proud I would be?
She wanted to clutch at something, some corner or projection of the building behind, to stop herself falling.
But she rejected doing so.
No, damn it, he’s wrong. John’s wrong. And I’m not going to let him ride me down like this.
She straightened up, ready for battle.
And then realised what had happened.
John, my John, is as crushed and beaten down by what I heard on the telephone on Tuesday as I am. But he’s fought against it all. Until now. Until he read that piece in the paper, that claiming of responsibility, and thought of Malcolm, lying there above us now, alive but barely able to speak. And it was too much for him. Too much for him, of course.
So what did he do, what could he not stop himself from doing, when I, like a fool, gave way to my feelings of despair and horror? His rage at the senseless thing that happened had to burst out somewhere, and he just attacked the nearest target. Me.
‘John,’ she said, ‘no.’
She took in a long breath.
‘No, we must cling together now. For Malcolm’s sake, if nothing else. We mustn’t let this force us apart. I — I had no idea you were feeling what you were. I thought you felt as I did. I thought you were proud of what the boys had decided to do, something so worthwhile. I never thought …’
She saw the blood was draining from John’s cheeks, from his forehead.
‘No,’ he said with growing leadenness. ‘No, 1 didn’t ever think that either. I don’t know what came over me just now. Everything I said just formed itself in my mind as I said it. Of course I never wanted to see the boys sitting there in the Majestic offices somewhere, doing nothing but arrange the fiddling terms of policies. All right, insurance is necessary. We’re realising that now after the ruins of Hasselburg, of all the other places in the world that terrorists threaten. And I’m happy I made insurance my career. But, if I’d had any choice when I left university, other than to take the first decently paying job that came up — my mother a widow, don’t forget, and a poor one — I’d have almost certainly looked around for a job I could be proud of doing. But I didn’t have the time, and I’m glad, enormously glad, that the boys did. And of the choice that they made.’
Chapter Seven
It was a quiet drive through the cold night back to Birchester. Neither of them spoke much, but they could, it seemed, each feel the warmth that crossed from one to the other. The warmth of steady confidence.
And Harriet, just every now and again, turned her mind to the task the ACC had, so unexpectedly but so sensibly, given to her.
Waking next morning, rather earlier than her usual time, she found that in sleep her subconscious had gone onwards to shift her back into being, not the mother of two young, bomb-victim police constables, but a senior officer charged with an important and urgent investigation. She lay there, her mind clicking through the tasks ahead. First, she thought, as she grasped with both hands the top of her separate duvet, ready to push it off — leaving John beside her with twenty snug minutes extra — first it may be most useful to take another look at Christopher Alexander, now that I know more about him.
Night thoughts, dream thoughts, had mysteriously brought Dr Lennox’s PA to the forefront of her mind.
There’s a lot about him that’s still to be discovered. Why, really, did he ditch a highly promising academic career for a spaniel job looking after the Heronsgate Director’s trivial wants, keeping his diary, fetching and carrying, escorting visitors like me safely off the premises? All right, he told me he saw a career in science administration before him, and, yes, he indicated he had somehow feared the DLitt examiners he would one day have to argue his case in front of.
So, if, as may be likely, timid, unsure of himself Christopher has managed to get himself a live-in journalist girlfriend, might it not be a good thing to pay him a call, not at Heronsgate House, where presumably he’ll be arriving at much about this time to supervise the cleaning lady, but at his new love-nest?
Well, that will have to wait until he’s back there.
So, first, go and see Inspector Skelton, Special Branch. He should have been given whatever information it was that caused the Faceless Ones to name Professor Wichmann. Skelton, a curious, reticent, buried-in-himself man, had been until recently virtually the whole strength of Birchester’s Special Branch, as if he was living in late nineteenth-century London at the time a special branch had been formed at Scotland Yard to combat the Irish dynamiters. Now, with the whole country under the highest level of alert short of imminent attack, he must have as many detectives on call under him as he could ever have dreamt of.
*
There was little sign of them, however, when, after spending a quarter of an hour briefing ACC Brown, she arrived at Skelton’s office, tucked away in the basement of the headquarters building.
She knocked on his door.
‘Who is it?’
The question, she thought, was typical of the man who, after a grudging pause, had allowed it to escape his lips. No ‘Come in’ or even a brusquer ‘Enter’. Just this suspicious demand.
Well, presumably suspicion is his business. Even more, and more permanently, than it’s mine.
‘Detective Superintendent Martens, wanting a quick word.’
And then she got her ‘Oh, come in, come in.’
Skelton, dark-faced — does he shave only every other day, so as to keep that black look? — was sitting at his desk, its surface heaped with dossiers and piled paper. Behind him stood a long row of filing cabinets, reminding her, with a jab of urgency, of the single vandalised cabinet behind Dr Lennox’s desk
.
‘So, Superintendent, what can I do for you? It’s a busy time for me, you know.’
Then, as perhaps the fact of her double loss came into his ever-preoccupied mind, he managed to mutter a ‘Sorry to hear about …’ and look down at the papers in front of him.
‘A busy time for all of us,’ Harriet said, to hoist him over his embarrassment. ‘Do you think a day will come when there’s nothing ominous coming our way?’
Skelton glanced up and gave her a ‘what’s this?’ look.
‘The ominous has been with me from the first day I was appointed to this job,’ he said. ‘And I’ve no doubt it’ll be with me when I hand over to some other poor idiot. You can’t have any conception, Mrs Martens, of the mass of possibly dangerous people whose dossiers come in to me every day of the week.’
‘It’s one of those that I’ve come to ask you about,’ Harriet nipped in before more black thoughts could spill out over her. ‘A man called Wichmann, Professor Ernst Wichmann.’
Inspector Skelton pushed himself to his feet, turned and nosed his way along the rank of his green filing cabinets. At last he reached the one that would have been labelled ‘W’, had his sense of security not left each cabinet unmarked.
He opened one of its two middle drawers, flipped through the files there.
Is each of those without any identification sticker? Harriet mischievously allowed herself to wonder.
But, no. In a moment Skelton pulled out a file, a noticeably thin one, darkened with age. He opened it, peered in.
‘Well, he is here,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘Arrived from Germany in 1939. Noted then as a possible infiltrator, a sleeper perhaps.’
‘Yes?’
‘That’s all.’
Harriet could not hold back her astonishment.
‘You mean, he, that seventeen-year-old boy, a refugee from the Nazis, has been kept on file as a suspicious individual ever since 1939?’
‘It’s my duty to keep that file until I receive information that the person named is freed from suspicion, or dead.’
She managed a smile.
‘Well, I don’t think you’ll have Wichmann’s file cumbering up your records for very many years more,’ she said. ‘He’s in his eighties. Fit though he looks.’
