‘She was guillotined,’ interrupted Vanessa, frowning. ‘Is the diamond cursed? Tell me the truth, Titus. I’ve read about jewels like that.’
‘Well, I don’t think you need to worry, my dear,’ said Titus with a smile. ‘What you’re wearing on your finger is a tiny fragment of the Regent. And besides, I personally think it is a lucky diamond. A hundred years ago the Empress Eugenie wore it set in a diadem to the opera in Paris. On her way, a gang of revolutionaries threw three bombs at the carriage in which she was travelling, and yet she and her husband were unharmed — even though the coachmen and the horses all died.’
‘I like it when you tell me about the past,’ said Vanessa, looking at Titus with love and admiration in her eyes. ‘You make it come alive.’
‘The great diamonds are magical,’ said Titus. ‘All I do is tell their stories. But you need to see them to really understand. I will take you to Paris for our honeymoon, and you can look at the Regent in the Louvre, see it glittering in all its iridescent glory.’
‘No, not Paris,’ said Vanessa, looking suddenly troubled. Paris was where she and Bill had gone together so often when they were first married, spending long summer afternoons wandering in the Bois de Boulogne or the Jardins du Luxembourg, listening to jazz bands in the outdoor cafes. Paris was in the past, and she needed to keep it that way.
‘No?’ said Osman, darting Vanessa a quizzical look. ‘Well, we can go wherever you like: Istanbul, Baghdad, Tierra del Fuego — you choose, Vanessa. But I don’t want to wait any more — tell me when you will speak to your husband.’
‘Soon. I promise,’ said Vanessa, feeling suddenly under pressure.
‘Will he agree — to the divorce?’
‘Yes, I’m sure he will — he’s a decent man. But I must speak to him in person. He deserves that much.’
Titus nodded, looking pleased, but Vanessa turned away, hiding the look of anxiety that had creased her face. The prospect of seeing her husband again filled her with dismay. She felt for a moment like a swimmer who had dived into a beautiful river and found it far colder and quick-running than she had ever anticipated.
CHAPTER 18
This was a new prison: Pentonville, in North London. But still there were the same high walls, the same barbed wire, the same iron bars as in all the other gaols that David had passed through in the two and a half years since he had first been incarcerated following Ethan Mendel’s murder. He had even been given the same prison number. And yet there was a change from before. He wasn’t just a number any more; he was also a name: he heard it being spoken in hushed voices as he passed by his fellow prisoners in the exercise yard or sat alone in the canteen eating his food, enduring their surreptitious glances. They were fascinated by him, and yet they avoided him like he had some kind of horrible infectious disease. And David knew why: he was charged with being a two-time murderer, and if the jury convicted him he’d swing. The Angel of Death was already hovering outside the door of his cell.
For the sake of administrative convenience, the prison authorities had assigned David as a cellmate the only other remand prisoner on a capital charge in their custody. Richard Toomes, he was called, and his trial had already begun. It seemed like a formality: one Sunday morning Toomes had gone over to the house where his wife of twenty years had moved in with her boyfriend and had dispatched the pair of them to kingdom come with two blasts from his shotgun. He’d then walked calmly round the corner to the local police station, deposited the gun on the desk, and made a full confession. Now he seemed resigned to his fate. When he came back from court in the evening, he read his library book on a stool in the corner, mouthing the words silently as he picked over them one by one, and then slept peacefully through the night, snoring quietly in the bunk above David’s head. Tombstone, as David had secretly nicknamed him, gave no trouble, and David envied him his peace of mind, because David did not sleep so easily. In fact, as his trial approached, he found he could hardly sleep at all. Instead he tossed and turned through the long prison nights, at the mercy of nightmares spun from his unconscious fears.
One repeated itself over and over again, coming back to attack him in the hour before dawn. He dreamt it was evening, after sunset, and he was alone in the twilight, walking along the narrow path through the woods that led from the road down to Blackwater Lake. The air was still and there was no sound, nothing except the noise of his footsteps on the ground. He could see the slender, silver-grey trunks of the pine trees arching up gracefully to make a canopy of branches overhead, but beyond them his eye couldn’t penetrate the shadows of the woods on either side.
Up ahead there was a light. It was where he was going, although he didn’t know why, and so he quickened his pace, frightened by the gathering silence. And now on his left he came to the lake, opening out black and wide and still under the darkening sky. He could hear the gentle lapping of the water against the stony bank, but he was looking the other way, over towards Osman’s boathouse standing on its wooden pilings, set back from the path, like a prehistoric creature marooned in the trees. That was where the light was coming from — bright and white through a shut uncurtained window at the side, and, standing still, he could hear sounds — a moaning or a wailing rising and falling and returning again clearer than before. He imagined it might be the sound of a night bird crying over the lake, but he knew he was deceiving himself: it was coming from inside the boathouse.
Now he wanted to run away back the way he’d come, but the dream wouldn’t permit him to turn around. Instead he was forced forward like a moth toward a flame, until, standing on his tiptoes, he looked down through the dusty window into the interior and saw what he’d seen before: Katya and Ethan naked, coupling like beasts on the floor under the unshaded electric light, turning and writhing and thrusting at each other, oblivious to the world around them. But this time it was different — they were changed somehow in a way that at first he didn’t understand: their faces and their bodies were pale white and their hair was lank and they moved like automatons, and there was blood, thick dried blood, on Katya’s forehead and all down Ethan’s lower back.
David cried out, but his cry did not wake him from his dream; rather it alerted the dead lovers inside the boathouse to his presence. He turned to run but tripped on the uneven ground just as he regained the path, and, picking himself up, he could hear the door of the boathouse opening behind him; he could hear them on the steps coming down. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey his command. He could feel them behind his shoulders now, holding him, forcing his neck down with their clammy hands. And as he fell into the cold black water of the lake, felt it close above his head, and started the struggle to breathe that he knew he couldn’t win, he sensed their voices inside his head, telling him he was going to die because they were dead and that there was no coming back, no coming back at all.
Each time the dream was worse. He’d wake panting and gasping in the half light, wildly warding away his unseen assailants until, after a few moments, he’d realize where he was, hearing the steady rise and fall of Toomes’s breathing above his head and the footsteps of a night guard walking on the metal landing outside their cell. And then, wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he understood why he dreamt like this about dying, why he woke before dawn with his hands encircling his neck. It was because soon now men he didn’t know would come for him at just this time; they would pin his arms behind his back, tie a noose around his neck, and kill him, put an end to David Swain once and for all. And however much he struggled, there would be nothing he could do about it — nothing at all.
The days passed and his fear grew, and on the day before the start of his trial David was called from his cell for a visit. He felt nervous as he crossed the exercise yard: apart from his lawyers, it was the first visit he’d received since the policeman, Trave, had come to see him in Brixton Prison more than a year earlier, and he could not imagine who his visitor might be. His face lit up when he saw that it was his mother.
He
kissed her clumsily and sat down, taking in the novelty of her appearance. Instead of the pale blue housecoat she always wore at home, she had on a charcoal-grey dress with smart shiny black shoes. David had only seen the outfit once before — at his father’s funeral, when he had been too grieved to really take it in. It suited her, he thought, and he realized with a jolt that his mother had been pretty once and had a life of her own beyond caring for an unreliable husband and an unrewarding child.
He saw that she’d pinned a small brooch close to the lapel. It was nondescript — a small flower of some sort, but David found it oddly touching to think of his mother sitting in front of her dressing table at home and digging in a drawer to find this silly brooch so that she would look better for her reprobate son when she went to visit him in his London gaol.
She sat rigid and erect in her hard-backed chair but kept her eyes down, fastened on the empty square metal table between them. David noticed how she was holding on tight to the small black handbag in her lap, and he understood with a wrench how much it must have cost his mother to come to see him in this God-forsaken place when she had spent so much of her life struggling to stay respectable.
‘How was the journey?’ he asked, saying the first thing that came into his head in order to break the awkward silence that had begun to build up between them since he sat down.
‘It was all right,’ she said nervously, putting out the half-finished cigarette that she’d been smoking when he came in. ‘I haven’t been to London for a long time. It’s bigger than I remembered — more people.’
David saw how she darted quick looks at the other couples sitting at the adjacent tables — the men in their drab prison uniforms, the women decked out in their Sunday best. He wondered whether his mother had ever been inside a prison before — he doubted very much that she had.
‘Well, thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘I know it can’t have been easy.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ she said, glancing up at him for a moment before she lowered her eyes again. ‘But it’s the right thing to do. I should have come before. I’m sorry.’
‘So you’re only here because it’s right, not because you wanted to come?’ asked David, suddenly irritated. He had his dignity too: he didn’t want to be an object of pity.
‘I’m here because I want to be here,’ she said quietly, holding his gaze this time. ‘I told you I’m sorry.’
‘All right, I’m sorry too,’ said David, mollified. ‘I’m glad you came. Did you tell Ben?’
‘Yes; I don’t tell lies. You should know that by now.’
David nodded. ‘So what did he say?’ he asked.
‘He was angry. Shouted and swore. But he calmed down when he saw that I’d made up my mind.’
‘He hates me. You know that?’
‘It doesn’t matter what he thinks.’
‘That’s not what you thought before though, was it?’ said David, unable to leave the past alone. ‘Why did you change your mind?’
‘Because I saw you, because you came home…’
‘And waved a gun at Ben, stole his car, terrorized Max…’
‘Max wanted me to come,’ she said. ‘He wants to know that you’re going to be all right, and I don’t know what to say.’
There were tears in David’s mother’s eyes, and they tore at David inside his chest. He held on to the table hard, resisting an impulsive longing to get up and run back to his cell and shut his mother and his family out of his mind forever, because he had no words of comfort to give them, and he didn’t want to think about the future or his lack of one.
‘Max is a good kid,’ he said, trying hard to keep his voice steady. ‘He’s a credit to you, Mother.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘You know I’m not,’ said David, bowing his head. ‘But for what it’s worth, I didn’t do what they say I did. Like I told you before, I only took that gun with me to protect myself. Fat lot of good it did me,’ he added bitterly.
‘That’s what the policeman said,’ she said, nodding. ‘He said you didn’t commit either of those murders.’
‘What policeman?’
‘Inspector Trave: the one who was in charge of your case and then got taken off it when he didn’t think you were guilty.’
‘The one who got me caught, you mean. If I hadn’t gone to meet him in that bloody cricket pavilion I wouldn’t be here,’ said David angrily.
‘They’d have found you in the end. You know they would. And it wasn’t that inspector’s fault. He didn’t know they were following him when he went to St Luke’s: he told me that. They’ve suspended him from duty for what he did. He’s probably going to lose his job.’
‘Well, at least he’s not going to lose his life,’ said David furiously, and then immediately regretted his words as he saw his mother blanch and grip on to the table for support.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, reaching out and touching her clenched hand for a moment. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’m innocent, remember,’ he added with a thin smile, trying to provide his mother with a reassurance that he didn’t believe in himself. She nodded wanly in response, struggling to regain her composure.
‘When did you talk to Trave?’ David asked, changing the subject.
‘A few days ago. He came to the house when Ben was out at work. He said he couldn’t come and visit you because prosecution witnesses can’t talk to a defendant but that he was going to do everything he could to help you. He wanted me to tell you that. He said he believed in you and told me that I should too.’
‘Oh, so that’s why you changed your mind,’ said David with a knowing smile.
‘No, it wasn’t just that. It was seeing you too. I already said I was sorry about not coming before.’
‘I know, I know,’ said David, holding up his hand. ‘I’m glad about Trave. Perhaps he’ll find something out.’
But David wasn’t holding his breath. Tomorrow his trial would begin. In two weeks or even less he would know his fate, and he couldn’t see any jury acquitting him on the evidence as it stood. In less than two months he could be dead.
‘I brought you clothes for your trial — a suit and two clean shirts,’ said David’s mother. ‘They said they’d give them to you in the morning.’
‘Thank you,’ said David, biting his lip. He remembered his mother ironing his school uniform before the start of term at St Luke’s, and now she was buying him clothes for his trial at the Old Bailey. It was too much, too painful. He was grateful to his mother for coming, but now he wanted her gone so he could escape back to the impersonal safety of his cell. He shuddered with relief when the horn sounded for the end of visits and hoped that his mother hadn’t read his mind.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, standing up. ‘Thank you for coming. Safe journey home.’
She looked at him hard as he spoke his inadequate words and then silently leant forward and took hold of both sides of his head with her hands and, reaching up, kissed him once on the centre of his forehead.
‘I made you,’ she said. ‘They’ve got no right to take you away.’
And then, without another word, she turned and walked away down the hall. He watched her until she disappeared from view, but she didn’t once look back.
Toomes was still at court when David got back to the cell. He lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes. His mother’s visit had unsettled him, and images from the past came floating unbidden into his mind. He tried to drive them out but one remained. It was a winter afternoon nine years earlier, and he was standing by his father’s open grave in a far corner of Wolvercote Cemetery. His mother was beside him wearing that same grey dress that she’d been wearing for her visit. It was cold, and a slow, heavy rain had begun to fall out of a grey, overcast sky. David was getting wet but he hardly noticed. Instead his eyes were fixed on the light brown coffin in the hole below his feet, on which the raindrops were falling one after the other — tap, tap, tapping out a steady staccato beat. Each one that fell exploded on impact, addi
ng to the pool of water already spreading on the lid of the casket. David knew that his father was underneath that lid, dressed in a thin black suit, the same colour as David’s own, and he wondered if his father was getting wet too, if he was feeling the cold.
There was a small brass plaque screwed into the centre of the coffin bearing the legend john david swain 1900–1952. John David Swain, father of David Swain, lying in a box in a hole in the ground with the rain coming down, while his relatives looked down on him from above. This is it, David had thought at that moment. This was the truth — not shops and cinemas and cafes, not fleeting sensations of love or happiness, but this — rain falling on a box. Everything else was nothing more than a pretence, worse than a lie.
He’d stood there beside the grave after the funeral was over and the mourners had drifted away, until in the end there had just been him and his mother standing there side by side in the rain. Finally she’d taken his hand and tried to pull him away, but he’d silently resisted, staying where he was, until eventually she’d given up and walked round the mound of earth at the bottom of the grave and away down the path toward the car. And he’d stayed there alone with his dead father in the gathering gloom until he could hardly see the coffin any more and one of the sallow-faced undertakers had had to lead him away.
CHAPTER 19
Trave sat bent over the kitchen table with his head in his hands and ignored the telephone, which was ringing again for the third time in ten minutes. He felt like throwing it at the wall — he needed some outlet for the anger and frustration that had been boiling up inside him ever since he’d left the disciplinary hearing the day before.
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