by Unknown
Silence.
He held his breath and bent further in beneath the hawthorn. The thorns scraped and hooked his scalp. He took off his gloves and moved away a clump of leaves. The ground was soggy beneath his knees, water trickled nearby. He exhaled and took a deep breath of leaf mould and peat. It always touched him, this, the beauty of the human skull, still, after all he had done and seen. It was the back of the skull he could see, the face turned away into a pillow of mud, the collar of a woman’s coat along the jaw as if turned up against a bitter wind. Urban looked down at the toe of his boot. There, the white of bone, three fingertips curled up gracefully from the earth. He shuffled further towards her legs and uncovered a pair of feet, shod in brown leather, crossed at the ankles.
He drew himself away and sat back on his heels. A train thundered past like a jet fighter. When all was quiet again he rolled a cigarette and smoked. Compared to the corpses he had seen in the burnt hayfields and ruined towns of Chechnya, this looked to him like a good death. From what he could see, she had lain down and gone to sleep.
The handbag was stiff, mottled and blotched with mould. He lifted the flap and saw a packet of ten cigarettes, a lighter and a brown leather purse. He lifted it out: a fold of damp notes, no ID, a few coins but no cards. He held his cigarette between his lips and unpeeled a ten-pound note from the sheaf of three or four. He thought a moment, then unpeeled two more. That was a point of principle for Urban. He only took what he knew would not be missed.
KATHARINE KNEW as soon as she heard Jim clear his throat on the end of the line. She carried on walking, the tray of drinks and glasses chinking in her hands, the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. She made it as far as the middle of the oriental carpet; she saw Jane on the sofa next to Richard, saw Paul leaning forward to throw a log on the fire and beyond them, the thick red drapes glowing in the light of the floor lamps, the family photographs arranged in a line on the mantelpiece, a large one of Bea’s wedding taking pride of place.
She heard Jane say to Richard, ‘Oh, but it’s lovely, it’s enormous. Is that an original archway?’ And then she heard Jim speak.
‘We do have some news,’ he said.
She waited. A half smile on her face, afraid to show what she was about to hear.
‘I am sorry to break it to you this way but I knew you would want to be the first to know.’
She listened to the words then dropped the phone and raised one hand to her hair. ‘Oh, no.’
Richard leapt up and reached her before she hit the floor but not before she dropped the tray. Glasses bounced and rolled on the carpet but the chilled champagne hit the side of the low table and ricocheted on to the hearth, where it exploded, sending froth and spray up the wall.
Laura looked up from her magazine and took out her earphones. Adrian shut the fridge door quickly and, appearing in the sitting-room doorway, saw his mother lying across his father’s knees as if asleep. A colourless liquid leaked from the corner of her mouth. Their father cradled her head and Paul was talking into the phone. Jane sat where she was with her hand over her mouth.
Laura ran forward to Katharine and sank down beside her. She had never seen her mother this way – ashen, fallen, helpless. She crouched close but didn’t dare touch Katharine’s face. Something terrible had happened with her eyes. Just the whites showed between a sliver of half-closed lids.
Paul handed Richard the phone. ‘It’s Jim from the Missing Persons Unit,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell him to call back?’
Richard put Katharine’s head gently into Laura’s lap. ‘Keep her head low,’ he said. ‘Stay close to her.’
He stood up and took the call. Jim told him that a woman’s body had been found on Stourbridge Common near the railway line. Positive identification was not possible at this stage because the body had been there for some time, but it appeared to be a woman of similar height to Bea. A post-mortem would be carried out in the morning and they were awaiting the results of forensic tests from the site.
‘They’ve found her,’ said Laura.
‘They’ve found someone,’ Richard said, kneeling down and pulling her to him.
‘They’ve found Bea and she’s dead,’ said Laura.
‘Shh,’ said Richard. ‘We don’t know that yet.’
Yet
THE RESULTS of the post-mortem were slow in coming. CID and Forensics wanted to keep the site intact while they gathered evidence. Information leaked out, stories appeared in the papers and items on the television news – the body was badly decomposed and had been dead for some time; badgers and foxes had interfered with it; identification would be through dental records; the woman might have been a murder victim; she might have slipped and broken her leg; police were puzzled that the body had lain undiscovered so long; the woman might have killed herself; there was nothing left but bones. Three days went by and no results yet, but Katharine could not bring herself to ring Frank. On the fourth day Richard drove her up to Cambridge so that they could hear the news from the coroner in person.
She sat in the passenger seat, dark glasses on, anaesthetised with migraine tablets. She had nothing of substance left in her body. Richard kept his hand in hers as he drove. Every now and then he would say that it was unlikely to be Bea, she had only been gone five months, the decomposition was too advanced. Katharine said that it all depended. Water could do that. Fire could do that. She said the body might have been moved, didn’t the police think the body might have been moved? Who found her, that was what she wanted to know. Who were these people who came across dead bodies? What were they doing in a ditch by the King’s Lynn to London line, for God’s sake? In February? And in the rain? She blew her nose and winced at the rawness there. They passed a woman selling roses on a traffic island. She thought of Bea’s garden. Bea’s muddled and mixed-up garden, which Katharine had tried to put right but which still never got enough light and which the police had dug up again so that it looked like no one cared. Bea could have done with some help a while back; she could have done with a man on a digger to make her pond, an electric strimmer to strip the ivy, but all she had was fucking Frank. Perhaps he did it. Perhaps Frank did murder her, as the police seemed to think, hid her somewhere then threw her off the train as it crossed the common. Anything was possible. The police knew that. She could tell that Jim and Pete knew all kinds of things they couldn’t talk about. She knew things too now. She’d read enough about it.
The coroner’s was just round the corner from the registry office at Shire Hall. Jim and Pete were smiling and waiting for them outside. Pete had a tan that made her think of the ancient bodies they dug out of bogs, and both men had ties on and smart shoes. They shook hands and went inside, where Richard disappeared down a corridor while Katharine stayed where she was and listened to Pete tell her that the fog had delayed his flight back from his skiing holiday and he’d only got home at two in the morning but at least they’d had good snow out there in— Then Richard was walking fast back towards her; he was telling her the woman was a tourist who had gone missing in London a year before, he was saying the body wasn’t Bea’s, that the cause of death was unexplained, perhaps she had slipped and fallen then been unable to . . . Jim and Pete were herding her towards the door, they were speaking and shuffling to the exit, where Pete opened the door. They hesitated there, the pleasantries, the concern, the plans and next steps. Katharine longed to be away in the car, longed to be alone to cradle this newfound curdled hope. The deceased is not your sister. Bea is still out there. Still.
Snap
IN MARCH, Jane and Paul visited Katharine and Richard in London. It was their wedding anniversary, so Jane had booked them into the Savoy for the weekend. The Savoy! said Richard. Well, it’s where we had our wedding night, believe it or not, said Jane. They were having a romantic weekend for two, but first they wanted to visit their old friends. It wasn’t terribly convenient as far as Katharine was concerned. She and the family were leaving for Spain the next morning and they were taking Frank.
She didn’t want the awkwardness of Frank and an evening with Jane and Paul. Richard told her it would be fine, the children would be there and it might do Frank good.
During the evening, Katharine didn’t move from the sofa. She lay with her feet tucked beneath her and looked at the fire while Paul’s words flowed over her and she watched Jane help Richard with the drinks. She listened as Jane spoke to him in hushed, emphatic tones. Jane wanted him to know that she thought Katharine was going through a process, had adjusted to the loss the way an amputee adjusts to life without a limb. The ghost limb still pained her at times and always she was aware of Bea’s absence, but she adjusted herself and the rest of her life to fit around it in a way that she could manage. Jane thought the family holiday in Spain would be just the thing, but where was Frank? Wasn’t he coming too?
Katharine went to bed early. She climbed into their new, sumptuously comfortable bed and felt the relief of being alone. She longed for bed almost from the moment she got up and it was rare that she stayed up beyond nine thirty. Tonight, because of their friends, she managed to stay downstairs until eleven, but it was an effort, the smiles and the chit-chat, darting this way and that. The endless tales of winter holidays, neighbours, furnishings, schools. She couldn’t bear the sound of their voices. There was only one voice she wanted to hear. She had almost stopped hoping to see Bea again but she had never stopped longing for the sound of her voice.
Richard came up the stairs to say good night. He was flushed and bright-eyed from the wine and rare conviviality. ‘You seem more your old self today,’ he said, setting a cup of camomile tea down on the table next to her. He smelt of brandy and garlic. He told her that he thought perhaps she was adjusting to the loss of Bea the way an amputee adjusts to life without a—
‘Yes, I heard what Jane was saying, Richard. I haven’t completely taken leave of my senses.’
‘But still. She may have a point, don’t you think?’ He looked over at her. She was lying down and very still. ‘And you’ve not had a single night terror since we moved to Chiswick,’ he added, looking down at the pile of market reports that Claudia had prepared for him. She did most of the highlighting herself these days, just wrote him a little memo alerting him to key points.
Katharine was naked except for a pink satin eye mask, sequinned in black and quilted by Laura. Richard was quite keen on the eye mask. ‘I’m nervous about Spain,’ she said, stroking the feathery edges of it.
‘Just think of it as a holiday, darling,’ Richard told her. ‘That’s what it is. We’re going to Spain for a holiday and we’re going to enjoy the sun and the sights.’ He ought to get back downstairs to Jane and Paul before they left.
‘But we’re taking Frank.’
‘Yes. The children will look after Frank.’
‘And really, we are looking for Bea.’
‘Well that’s always going to be the case.’
She sat up and pulled the eye mask up on to her forehead. ‘But using Frank as bait. That’s never going to work.’
‘Frank’s a changed man, Katharine, thanks to you. New clothes, new decor, decent haircut. It’s a marvel what you and Wanda have done.’ He looked over at her. ‘Put your eye mask back on, darling, you must be tired.’
Katharine did as she was told. Then she said, ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have left the route plan to Adrian.’
‘It’s as good an idea as any other that we’ve come up with. We return to the places she visited in happier times, to the places she told the children she wanted to take them to: Vigo, Andalucia, Granada.
Katharine tried to empty her mind. She drifted for a moment, imagining a tranquil ocean and Bea on deck looking out to sea.
Richard patted her leg. ‘It’s going to be a tour of some of the most beautiful cities in Spain. Easter is the perfect time to go – almond blossom, wild flowers, oranges and lemons . . . Try not to worry.’ He glanced at the stock reports. The Asian market was definitely jittery.
‘But still, attempting Laurie Lee’s walk through Spain in reverse – Granada to Vigo – I can’t think it’s going to achieve anything. And there’s no way Bea would have walked that distance even if she’d got to Vigo.’
‘Of course not, but it’s helped the children a lot having a project to work on. Wanda seems suddenly sure that Bea has somehow got there.’
‘If Bea is anywhere, she’s making her way to Greece and to Patrick.’ Katharine sighed and ran her hands down her body. She wasn’t at all convinced.
DOWNSTAIRS, ADRIAN and Laura were explaining the trip to Paul and Jane, and Jane was saying quite often, ‘But where is Frank?’ They had it all mapped out, said Adrian. They had worked on the assumption that the future was a game of chess between the present and the past. Laura believed that the clue to the game of life was a game of snap. Frank, they suspected, didn’t have an opinion one way or another, but was relieved that someone else had a plan and that he was in it. On the map of the world spread out before them, they had plotted what they knew of Bea’s history so far. Laura was certain it was her at the station in Southampton and the mother of a friend of Laura’s had gone to a clairvoyant and been told it definitely was. Adrian had discovered that Southampton was the port that cruise liners left from on their way to Africa and the East. Frank had verified this and remembered it was where the ship they had met on docked. ‘Oh, the Oriana.’ Adrian was astounded that Frank knew this but hadn’t put two and two together, but then Frank was not that good at chess. When they looked at the routes for the Oriana and discovered Vigo was the first stop and had been Bea and Frank’s first date, Adrian got cross and said Frank was a tosser. Frank looked shocked and said Vigo was a horrible place, no one would go back there voluntarily, so that Adrian had to explain that Bea probably would whether she liked it or not, and anyway, they had been to Granada for their honeymoon, hadn’t they? She would just be drawn in that direction. ‘We are slaves to our pasts,’ he told Jane. ‘Nothing is a mystery. Not really.’ Paul felt bleary-eyed and looked at his watch. He wasn’t going to have the energy for a romantic weekend in the Savoy if they didn’t leave soon. ‘And her school book,’ continued Adrian, who was, inevitably, turning into something of a pedant, thought Jane. ‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning makes Vigo even more likely. It has a map of the route and everything. She would definitely go south.’
They were quiet for a while because each was thinking that she might well be on her way to Greece, especially when they looked at the map. She couldn’t fly because she didn’t have a passport but it was possible she could train and bus and ferry it. Paul said it looked a marvellous itinerary at any rate and that whatever happened they were sure to have a wonderful holiday. Jane wondered about trying to tell Adrian that you couldn’t map the human heart the way you could map the stars, but the doorbell went and Frank arrived, suitcase in hand and ready for the early departure in the morning. He appeared to be unaware that he was several hours late. Richard raced around the kitchen to get him a plate of something to eat. Paul poured him a drink and Jane insisted he sit with them because really the man looked like he could do with some human contact, and anyway, she wanted to get the feel of him. Paul’s theory that Frank was a murderer was plainly absurd. You needed presence to be a murderer, surely. Was it possible for a man to be any less present than Frank? she thought. Gently she said to the children, ‘But Bea’s been gone for five months. Even if she had followed this route, how can you be sure where she’s got to?’
Adrian cleared his throat. He had factored in the time element. Bea probably had to make slow progress because of the need to earn money. ‘Bar work, waitressing, anything casual that doesn’t require ID,’ he said.
Frank yawned operatically. He needed an early night.
‘The sort of thing that Wanda does,’ said Laura.
Frank stopped yawning.
‘But anyway, Wanda says she would slip into the ex-pat crowd, no problem. No one asks questions, they’re all running away from something apparently. So, let�
��s say she gets on the Oriana by looking like what the local paper described her as, “an unremarkable middle-aged woman”. She keeps a low profile on board and disembarks—’
‘You what?’ said Laura.
‘Disembarks. Gets off.’
‘Well why not say that, then?’
Frank was wondering whether one small Scotch would matter much. He had been extremely restrained of late. He had got up to page fifty-six of Close and Personal and so far he had written the whole thing entirely sober. It was an interesting experience. He sighed and thought that he ought to go to bed.
‘She gets off the boat at Vigo and visits the restaurant you went to on your first date.’
‘We’ll put posters up in there,’ said Laura.
‘We’ll put posters up everywhere.’
‘Yeah, show people.’
‘They’ll remember a woman dining alone because—’
‘Because it’s illegal.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘No it’s not,’ said Frank.
‘In the game of life it is,’ said Laura.
‘Anyway, in the five months she’s been gone she might even have made it to Granada, even if she spent several weeks working in four or five places on the way.’ Adrian flattened out the map of Spain and traced the route with his finger. ‘Somewhere on our journey between Granada and Vigo – maybe in Algeciras, Seville, Zamora – we’re bound to find some trace of her.’
‘Or she might see us and know we’re still looking and haven’t forgotten her, and she may see you, Frank, and just not be able to help herself.’ Laura snorted and flung herself backwards on to the carpet.
