‘What about?’ May played for time. He had not lied so much as omitted details, but after all this time he knew that the inconsistency felt like deception.
‘Jane, your wife. Surely you couldn’t have lied to me about her?’
Any answer May could have made dried in his mouth. He stared helplessly back.
‘On more than one occasion you told me she was dead, or at least you suggested as much, but it was the way you said it. You meant dead to me, as if you had simply cut her out of your life after the divorce. That was how I phrased it when I was writing our memoirs. Of course, you’d been apart for quite a while by then, and I thought, Well, if that’s how he’s dealing with it, it’s his affair. Then out of the blue, you told me you’d take me to meet her, and I could only assume you were making some kind of off-colour joke. You really had led me to believe she was gone, hadn’t you?’
‘I wasn’t deliberately trying to mislead you, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I knew she’d had a breakdown. I assumed she’d died in the Broadhampton, and that Oswald knew about it, which is why he wanted contributions sent there.’
‘No,’ said May, shaking his head. ‘No, she didn’t die, Arthur. She’s still there.’
‘Then it’s true. My God. I don’t understand. Why would you keep such a thing from me?’
May felt the shame of a betrayer. ‘It was less a lie than an omission. You don’t know what I went through with Jane.’
‘You could have told me, I might have been able to help.’
‘Arthur, you have no patience with people. This was a private problem, something I couldn’t find a way to share with you. I had to find a way of getting through to her on my own. Mental illness is so terribly misunderstood and I wanted to see if I could help her.’
‘Even you can’t undo the past, John,’ said Bryant sadly. ‘How is she now?’
‘She has her black dog days. The death of Elizabeth will always stand between us, but the trouble began long before she died.’ May had good reason to sometimes think that his family had been cursed. First, Jane’s illness and their subsequent divorce, then the death of their daughter. Alex, their son, had left for Canada and would still not talk to his father. ‘I kept thinking that if I had understood Jane better in the early days of her illness, I might have been able to keep us all together.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘About four months ago. Oswald used to come with me to visit her. That’s why he wanted to leave money to the hospital.’
‘Does she recognize you?’
‘Certainly. But it’s difficult to hold a conversation with her. Sometimes you think she’s perfectly fine, but she’s very good at pretending that nothing is wrong. She’s in her seventies – hardly the age it once was, of course – but she hasn’t been right for such a long time that I can hardly recall a time when she was ever truly well. I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s tried to kill herself. Elizabeth’s death removed her reason for living.’
‘But what about April? Does she know about this?’
‘No, and I agreed with Jane that we wouldn’t tell her. She’s been through enough without finding out that her grandmother is still alive. What is the point in opening up old wounds? Jane is in no fit state to see her granddaughter, and April has only just made her own recovery. I don’t hold with all this stuff about closure and moving on. Sometimes I think it just causes more damage.’
‘Perhaps she needs to decide that for herself,’ said Bryant carefully.
‘Don’t you see? Once the subject is reopened it can’t be closed up again. April is not strong enough. I have to protect her.’
‘Nor is she a child, John. What happened to Jane?’
May sighed. ‘It was a long time ago, and we had a very sixties marriage. You must remember what she was like, how wild she could be. It’s a miracle we stayed together as long as we did. After the separation, I told you she went off with someone who was a bad influence on her, some kind of TV producer, so he said. I expected him to tell her lies, but not to give her drugs. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see she was not the sort of person – well, I was looking after the children, you were off in France sorting out troubles of your own with Nathalie’s family, we weren’t working together much, you and I – I meant to tell you what had happened, but the time never seemed to be right.’
‘You told me a little about the accident, but not much.’
‘Jane was driving the Volkswagen when it mounted the pavement right in the middle of Tottenham Court Road. Her boyfriend was killed instantly. She had no licence. They found LSD, cocaine and alcohol in her system. She was too fragile to deal with police and doctors. She suffered a mental collapse and was deemed unfit to stand trial. She wouldn’t see me, or anyone else for that matter, and although her doctor thought she would eventually recover, she seemed to slip away from us to some private place inside her head. She became a danger to herself and was admitted as a patient to the Broadhampton. I had to sign her papers. It was the worst day of my life. She showed little improvement, and seemed desperate to take up long-term residency. She wanted no responsibility for her own life. When you returned, I told myself I would talk to you when the time was right, but I kept putting it off. I visit her every once in a while, but she doesn’t always know who I am.’ May looked from the window as if searching for answers. ‘It seems I can help every family except my own. My son thinks I dumped his mother in a clinic and encouraged his sister to join the police. To think that I could have lost April as well . . .’
‘But you didn’t, John, you brought her back,’ said Bryant gently. ‘You should be proud of that. You know we have to go to the Broadhampton next, don’t you? Would you let me visit Jane?’
‘Wouldn’t you rather remember her as she once was?’ asked May, as the train passed across the glittering grey Thames on its approach to Victoria Station.
‘Yes, but I’d still like to see her once more.’
‘Then I should call ahead.’ May took out his mobile.
‘No, don’t do that. We need to find out why Pellew was released early, so let’s catch them on the hop. I don’t want any prepared answers.’
May tried to read the look on his partner’s face, but for once failed to do so.
The Broadhampton Clinic in Lavender Hill, south London, was an orange-brick Edwardian building with central columns of white stucco, pedimented wings and a small bell-tower. It possessed the aura of paternal authority common to civic buildings of the era, and made one feel vaguely diminished just by approaching it.
The detectives met with an apologetic young intern named Senwe who did his best to help, but was unfamiliar with the patient in question. After conferring with other nurses and registrars, Senwe returned to the office where he had left the detectives waiting.
‘There is a lady who knows about the release of Anthony Pellew,’ he explained, rounding his vowels with a crystal African accent, ‘but she is away on holiday. Her department have given me this for you.’ He handed over a single folded sheet of paper.
Bryant fiddled his reading glasses into place. ‘Let’s see, what have we got? “A. Pellew, thirty-seven years of age, adjudged by the medical assessment committee under conditions established by the Revised Mental Health Act of 1998 to be of such mental sufficiency that he may be released under his own cognizance conditional to regular examination and palliative care” – God, who writes these things?’
‘It looks like the board decided he met enough of their criteria to be placed in a halfway house, so long as he continued to take medication for anxiety,’ said May, reading over his shoulder.
‘So he was kept on the happy pills and packed off to a flat on the De Beauvoir Estate, off the Balls Pond Road in Islington. There’s an address here. We could nip back and get Victor.’
‘I’m not driving around town in that lethal hippie rust-bucket, thank you,’ May warned. ‘We’ll take my BMW. You shouldn’t be driving
.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk. Alma hasn’t forgiven you for buggering up her Bedford van.’
‘We were stuck in a snowdrift, Arthur, it’s hardly surprising the radiator cracked. Any next of kin listed?’
‘None, but there’s a social-services officer. Actually, it’s someone we’ve dealt with before, Lorraine Bonner, the leader of the Residents’ Association at the Roland Plumbe Community Estate. At least we know where to find her.’
‘Then that’s our next stop.’ He paused, uncertain. ‘Do you still want to see Jane?’
‘Yes, I’d like to.’
May led the way upstairs and along the cheerfully painted corridors, to a ward separated from the rest of the floor. Nodding to the duty nurse, he headed towards the corner room and gently pushed back the door.
‘Jane, it’s me.’ There was no answer. ‘I’ve brought somebody to see you. You remember Arthur Bryant, don’t you?’
Jane May appeared not to have heard. She pulled her grey cardigan a little more tightly over a long pleated skirt. Her white sneakers had no laces. She had kept her figure and removed any trace of grey from her auburn hair, but when she turned around, Bryant saw the tumult of the intervening years etched on her face, a topography of past torments that had removed the focus in her eyes, as though she was no longer interested in searching for answers. After a moment of composure, during which she absently touched a hair into place, she drew a breath and seemed to grow a little.
‘Jane, do you remember Arthur?’
She raised a finger at him and tried to smile. ‘Yes, we’ve met, but I’m afraid I don’t know where – ’
‘I came to your wedding,’ said Bryant gently.
‘My wedding. How nice. Of course you did. You were always so kind.’ The smile held, the eyes even twinkled, but her concentration was disturbed by the movement of branches beyond the window, the scrappy flight of a magpie, a murmur of conversation in the corridor. ‘I wonder if – ’ She stopped, a cloud of anxiety crossing her features. ‘We could go to the coast. I’d like that, John. On a day when it’s sunny, a day like today. I’d like to walk on the cliffs. But it must be warmer.’
‘I know you don’t like the cold, Jane, but spring will be here soon. I’ll come for you then.’
‘You’ve always been so good to him, Arthur.’ She reached out for Bryant’s arm, gently plucking a thread from his sleeve. He glimpsed the scribble of scars whitening the flesh of her arm as she did so. ‘I felt sure you would have both retired by now.’
‘Oh, no, we’re in this together right until the bitter end.’ There was indulgent gaiety in Bryant’s chuckle, but he could see a lasting winter in her eyes.
‘Well, I feel terribly special today. It’s good to see you both. I’m very privileged. Perhaps you’ll come back another time. Come and see me again.’
The audience was over. Her attention had started to diminish, like a boat pulling away from the shore. She turned away. ‘I’m quite happy here. I know everyone. You needn’t rush back, not if you don’t want to.’
‘Jane, did you meet a patient here, a gentleman called Tony Pellew?’ Bryant could not stop himself from asking.
Her waning interest was suddenly checked. Here was something she could grasp, someone she could recall from recent days. ‘Of course I did. He spoke to me.’
The answer had come too quickly. He doubted she was telling the truth. ‘Really? You knew him?’
‘Long brown hair, slight, undernourished. They let him out.’
‘That’s right.’
‘He seemed decent enough, very bright, but such a mother’s boy. There was something too soft in his eyes. He talked about his mother all the time. He told me that when she died, all the clocks in the pub stopped at two minutes past eleven.’
‘What pub?’
‘Where she lived. They let him leave. He wasn’t well enough, in my opinion. You can tell which ones are well enough to go.’ She pulled her cardigan a little tighter. ‘How is my little girl?’
May looked guilty. ‘She’s well, Jane. Much better than she’s been in years.’
‘You must take very good care of her. She’s all I have now.’ She looked away, touching a finger beneath her eye. ‘Perhaps one day you can bring her here.’
‘We discussed this, Jane. If the doctor feels you can cope – ’
‘I know, I know, it’s a stupid idea.’ Her features set in a smile of practised hospitality. ‘Well I must go now, or I’ll miss my lunch.’
Bryant looked back once as he walked away, and wished he had not seen her. The tiny, hunchbacked figure framed against the window bore no resemblance to the woman he remembered laughing between their linked arms. The tragedy of losing those she loved had robbed her of the right to happiness.
29
* * *
WRAITH
Lorraine Bonner was a broad black woman with a laugh like someone unbunging a sink and enough courage to make the surliest delinquent think twice about disrespecting her. They found her surrounded by cardboard files in the chaotic first-floor office of the council estate’s main block.
‘I didn’t think I’d see the two of you again,’ she said, pouring thick brown tea from a steel pot the size of a bucket. ‘I thought that thing with the Highwayman was all over.’
‘It is, Lorraine, but Mr May and I have a new problem,’ said Bryant, ‘and we wondered if you might be able to help us.’
‘Can you walk with me while I do my pensioners?’ Mrs Bonner delivered meals to the mobility-challenged seniors on the estate every lunchtime. When their own relatives could not be bothered to look after them, she was there to dispense patient kindnesses that had sophisticates sneering, while offering such practical help that they felt ashamed.
May explained their mission as she manhandled her protesting trolley into the corridor.
‘A lady from the Broadhampton phoned Islington Council to add Tony Pellew to my roster,’ she told them. ‘They’d got him a one-bedroom apartment on the De Beauvoir estate. He didn’t want to live in south London. His family was originally from around here. Normally we try to return home, don’t we? It’s only natural. You’ll want the address of his flat.’
‘How can we get that?’
‘My filing system’s in my head, love.’ She took a card from May and wrote on the back of it.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Well, I got him settled in and popped over a couple of times during the first week, but then he went missing. He didn’t have many belongings, just enough to fill a backpack, but the wardrobe was emptied out and the bed hadn’t been slept in.’
‘How do you know he wasn’t staying at a friend’s?’ asked May.
‘Both pairs of his shoes were gone. You don’t take all your shoes unless you’re not coming back, do you? I had to make a report to his probationer.’
‘What was he like?’ Bryant wondered, intrigued.
‘Very quiet and sad, needed fattening up. The sort of man an older lady would like to take under her wing, you know? I heard he’d had a difficult upbringing. I’m not trying to excuse what he did, you just want to understand, don’t you? Well it’s only human nature, isn’t it?’
‘Do you have any idea at all where he went?’
Mrs Bonner gave a shrug. ‘They come and go, these lost souls, can’t settle, don’t feel comfortable in themselves, do they? Just take off one day. London can be so lonely. He can’t leave the country because he hasn’t got a passport. And I don’t think he wants to go far from where his old mum lived, even though she disowned him. He’ll turn up in a shelter somewhere, if he hasn’t already.’
Tony Pellew’s apartment had an air of abandonment. Its resident had moved on, taking his clothes and the few personal belongings he possessed. Beneath the smell of dust and damp carpeting was the musk of stillness and solitude. The flat had been used by dozens of short-term residents who had passed their time here, seated forlornly on the candlewick corner of the single bed, or pro
pped at the square Ikea kitchen table, staring from the window into an unforgiving future. Discoloured edges on the carpet mapped furniture phantoms. Pale squares on the wall left ghosts of old picture frames. Pellew had left no mark on the apartment.
The first thing to do was check that he had not tried to return to his former home. Bryant pushed back the door of a kitchen cupboard with the tip of his walking stick and peered inside. The few tins he found were the kind of staples stocked by someone with no interest in food. ‘He must have left something behind. Everybody who moves house leaves some faint trace. I want to know this man’s history. The bloody cheek of the Broadhampton, palming us off with a bit of paper.’
‘It’s not their fault,’ said May defensively. ‘They provide some of the best care in the country. Someone there has been stepped on by the assessment committee. Get April on the phone and have her call the clinic on the half-hour until someone gives her the full story.’
While May made the call, Bryant wandered from room to room, wrinkling his nose in the stale, dead air. They were about to lock the place up and head back to the unit when Bryant saw the newspaper cutting that lay pressed behind a sheet of glass on the kitchen table. Withdrawing his reading glasses, he read through it and called May in.
‘It looks like he was going to frame this, John. It’s his mother.’
The photograph was of a blonde crop-haired woman with a hard, almost perfectly square face. Her son’s grainy photograph was inset, and showed a boy with a bowed head emerging from court, his features in shadow.
‘She sold her story to our friends at Hard News just a few weeks before her death. WHY MY SON MUST NEVER BE FREED. Looks like she used the article to envisage what he would do if he was ever granted his freedom. Do you think she’d heard he was being assessed for release? my godfathers!’ he sat down and peered closely at the page. ‘It reads like a blueprint of his activities over the last week. In his state of mind, it’s hard not to think that he’d have seen this as some kind of fateful prediction. “Mrs Anita Pellew, the manager of London’s famous old Clock House pub in Leather Lane.”’
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