Skeleton-in-Waiting

by Peter Dickinson

  “One whopping diamond brooch and a Fabergé egg to keep it in. They must be worth a quid or two between them. She told me she’d burnt everything else or chucked it in the river. Any chance you can get this woman over? I’d really love to talk to her. I’d pay the air fare.”

  “I could put in a word at the consular department, but perhaps …”

  “Hold it. How far is Dushanbe from Baku?”

  “Several hundred miles, I should think. Getting on a thousand.”

  “Piers has got a conference in September—you’ve got it in the schedules. I’ve decided I’m going with him, whatever anyone says. I’ve made a five-day hole in my diaries.”

  Louise knew Sir Savile well enough to be aware of the sudden discomfort under the permanent light tan.

  “It’s really a matter between HM and HMG,” he said. “Are you aware that there is already a question of HM visiting Moscow next year? HMG are going to advise against it on the grounds that the Russian government have not yet acknowledged their guilt in the murder of the late Tsar and his family.”

  “But really because Mrs T. wants to screw them a bit more over human rights. You leave Mrs T. to me, Sir Sam. I dropped a couple of hints when I met her at that anti-litter beano. I think she’d quite like to let me go, partly because it’d be one in the eye for the FO, and partly to show everyone that not letting Father go really is a matter of principle, because he’s head of state. So I want you to deal with your pals at the FO for me. They haven’t got any real reasons—it’s just they want a quiet life. So you can tell them that if they make trouble not only will they have Mrs T. putting the boot in from the other side, but I’ll leak it to the hacks who stopped me.”

  This time anyone could have read Sir Savile’s expression. Louise had just broken a whole chapter in the Manual of Unwritten Rules.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “If it’s any help you can tell them it’ll be a private visit but I’m prepared to wave the flag for them a couple of time … hey, that might work … see if they can’t lay on something for me down that way … Oh, don’t look so bothered—I promise you they’ll cave in as soon as you let them see we mean it.”

  He managed not to sigh. Albert was right, she thought—time he went.

  “May I suggest, ma’am, that before we book the flight for you we attempt to check whether the woman is who she claims to be.”

  “Oh, she’s pukka. Even if she isn’t Down’s syndrome, she’s pukka.”

  2

  “Let’s hope so. Dad keeps saying it’s treatable, but that might mean anything. I just can’t see her going back to where she started.”

  “You wouldn’t want her to, surely. That would be the context she was in when she bolted off to Argentina.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant before. When everything was all right.”

  “Seemed to be all right, but already presumably containing the seeds of the breakdown. Her only hope is to go on from there.”

  “Yes, of course, only … I suppose what I’m saying is I just feel where she’s at now won’t work. It’s over the top still. Even something I ought to be happy about, like her being so lovey-dovey with Bert. I feel it just can’t last. It’s another kind of bolting … Did I tell you about poor old Sir Sam thinking I’m about to do a bolt too?”

  “Uh?”

  “I broke it to him I’m coming with you to Baku.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “I didn’t give him a chance to think about it. I told him I was going on from there to Dushanbe to meet Mrs Walsh’s daughter. Father’s had a letter from her asking why the money’s stopped coming Mrs Walsh used to pay her. I looked Dushanbe up on the map. It’s about two hundred miles south of Tashkent, right up in the mountains, almost into India. She must have been born up there, somewhere.”

  “How far is Dushanbe from Baku?”

  “A bit over a thousand miles, I think. I’ll have to fix for them to let me open a trade fair or something.”

  “You are proposing to sell Stilton and Paisley shawls to the inhabitants of the High Pamir?”

  “I thought I might get them to bring her a bit of the way to meet me. It doesn’t have to be an actual trade fair. Tashkent’s quite a big place, I think.”

  “It still seems to me that you are asking people to make very considerable concessions to satisfy a minor interest of yours.”

  “I think you’re being bloody unsupportive. I am absolutely determined to meet Rose Walsh somehow or other. It’s my turn to make a nuisance of myself, anyway. I’m tired of being everybody’s goody goody all the time. Besides, I’ve always wanted to go to Tashkent.”

  SEPTEMBER 1988

  1

  Standing on the dam, staring out at the enormous dun landscape, Louise recognised what she saw—a major ecological cock-up. She had seen the same thing before, in and around the Sahel, some grandiose scheme, billions of money, years of planning and labour, villages and tribes forcibly resettled, centuries-old ways of life wiped away, and nothing at the end but a useless dam on the edge of a new-made desert (nothing, that is, apart from spectacular up-wellings of cash thousands of miles away in a number of Swiss bank accounts).

  She kept smiling, kept asking the questions that wouldn’t embarrass. So this was Tashkent. The name had seemed pure romance, but so far the visit had consisted of officials and the wives of officials, more nervous even than those of home counties aldermen. There had been a motorcade along streets of cheap modern blocks, tattily flagged for the occasion. There had been a mosque converted to a museum, but none of the private houses converted to mosques, mentioned in Louise’s FO briefing. There had been parades of pretty and well-drilled children with dances to do and flags to wave and songs of unity and friendship to sing. There had been a walkabout through narrow-laned quarters refurbished and re-Asiaticised (Louise’s translator actually used the word) over the past few years to attract tourists, but today scoured clean of tourists and peopled with folk-costumed locals for her to walk about among—real people, these, under the fancy dress, grinning welcome, knowing who she was, exuding extraordinary waves of happiness that she should be there, as though her presence had an unknowable talismanic meaning for them. Of course to balance that plus there’d been the hacks, both Russian and imported, jostling and importuning, but mostly held at bay by phalanxes of security men, rougher and more obtrusive than the ones she was used to. By the end of the walkabout the conflict had become ugly. Louise kept smiling, kept looking the other way, but at the last stall she stopped and bought a pretty beaded handbag as a present for Inspector Yale.

  Then there had been the luncheon, endless with its speeches and toasts. And now this desert. Somewhere out beyond it were other deserts across which armies had conquered and fled, lakes and mountain ranges, vast dead cities, tombs of dynasties, sand-swallowed castles, a history older than Europe’s, none of which she was going to see but instead had to stand and smile at this boring and disastrous dam. Still, she could feel those other places and the peoples to whom they were home. Despite the drab western suits of the officials she was aware of being in a context every bit as alien as Africa.

  They were an hour and a half behind schedule—better than he’d expected, according to the cat-faced second secretary sent down from the Moscow embassy to help shepherd her around. It was late afternoon before the motorcade swished once more through the dreary suburbs, and dusk when at last she was settled into a courtyard near the heart of the city. There was a dry fountain, five dusty trees, iron tables and chairs fresh-painted in her honour, catenaries of coloured light-bulbs under the branches. Waiters brought beakers of delicious cold lemon sherbet flavoured with unfamiliar herbs, and flat mustardy biscuits to nibble. A space had been left vacant across the table from Louise, but no chair. After a short while a woman was led up and stood there, waiting.

  Louise was angry. She had expressly asked to see Mrs
Walsh’s daughter alone, and had been told it would be arranged. She turned and smiled at the secretary of the local Party, and saw from his answering twitch of a smile that he was unsure of his ground.

  “I’d like to talk to her in private,” she said. “I thought we’d got all that fixed. It’s been such a good visit—it’d be a pity to spoil it.”

  Carrie rose. The man from the Moscow embassy followed her lead. Louise kept her smile and her stare fixed on the secretary until the nastly little crook gave in, nodded, muttered to his gang and led them away. Louise turned to the woman.

  They’d probably fetched her from the mountains days ago and now kept her hanging around since dawn, but you couldn’t tell. She had that look of someone who could wait for years, patient as a rock on a hillside. The patience wasn’t humble or cowering. She returned Louise’s look directly, as if entirely immune to the mystic rays of royalty which made almost everyone else Louise met so jumpy. She was wearing a heavy black dress and a black shawl wrapped round her head and under her chin. She was indistinguishable from the dozens of local women Louise had seen that day. She wasn’t the snub-nosed Tartar Louise had imagined, but had a bony, beaky face, black eyes deep set, and a weathered, yellow-olive skin. Probably with the flatter features of a baby she had looked more nearly Mongoloid.

  “Hullo, Rose,” said Louise. “I’m so glad you could come. Do sit down.”

  “Ullo, ducks,” said Rose, at the same time spreading her skirt and doing a perfectly controlled curtsey.

  “Please sit down,” said Louise again. “I hope you haven’t forgotten your English after all these years.”

  “Yes. Been years,” said Rose.

  She sat and waited.

  “I thought you’d like me to tell you how your mother died,” said Louise. “And I was hoping you’d tell me something of what you know about her, and your father, and anything else you can remember.”

  “Ah, she was a bad ’un,” said Rose.

  Louise smiled encouragingly, but Rose hesitated and then asked what was clearly a question in a foreign language.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Louise. “Is that Iranian?”

  “Tadzhiki Irani,” said Rose hopefully.

  Louise glanced across the courtyard. The interpreter was sitting with the officials, all of them pretending not to look in her direction. The interpreter had spoken both Russian and Iranian, but had flattened things out, making them nuance-less, lifeless. He had slowed everything down, too. There wasn’t that much time now, after the long delays.

  “Let’s see how we get on,” she said. “I’m sure it will come back.”

  “Never learned me, my mum,” said Rose.

  She paused, assembling forgotten words. Louise smiled, understanding.

  “Irani she learned me … Fred, he’d of learned me … He was that scared … They learned me a bit at the home … clean them toilets, Maria … scrub them steps … only when I come to the works … got talking with a few mates … found I wasn’t a loony … learned a bit off my mates … not much cop.”

  “I think you’re doing very well. There’s so much I want to know. Fred? Was that your father?”

  Rose shook her head.

  “Khan Kalun, my dad was. Back here. Mum made out as it was Fred.”

  “Yes, I see. Then how did you get out here? How did you find your way? Did she send you, in the end?”

  “Not her. Didn’t want to know me. It was the Party done it. Had this strike, see. I was in it. Looking for workers been done wrong, they was, so I told them, see? Put me on to Mr Grindle.”

  “He was a lawyer? A solicitor?”

  “Right. Got me out of the home. But he couldn’t find Fred. Lot of blokes called Walsh, he says. But there was this march, see. Up in London, it was, into this park place. Knew it at once, I did. Gone off and looked for the house. Copper won’t let me by, see. But I tells Mr Grindle and he tries again. Nother bloody big house, nother copper won’t let me by. This man comes up, he’s old, walking with a stick, see. ‘That’s him,’ says the copper. ‘Fred,’ I says. Cor, did he jump? He was that scared. Sat in this garden, we did. ‘Go away,’ he says. ‘Go away or she’ll do us. Back of the head, like she done the others. Go to Ura Tyube where you belong’. Wrote it down, he did. Got it here.”

  She reached in among the folds of her dress and took out a small soft leather wallet from which, carefully, she removed a rectangular object and passed it across. It turned out to be a flattened cigarette pack, Capstan. Just readable on the creased and softened cardboard was a line of pencil writing in shaky, sloping capitals. Louise handed it back.

  “Mr Grindle, he fixed about the money with my mum,” said Rose.

  “And then you just came out here, like that?” said Louise.

  Maria shrugged.

  “There was the camps, a-course. Dunno how long. Years. I come when they let us go. Took a bit of asking. Then someone says about this khan, got himself shot by this foreign woman what he found. Back of his head, just like Fred said. Run off with the other bloke. Didn’t want to know me, first off. Wrote to Mr Grindle and he started sending the money. After that it was all right. Got a lot of nevvies now. Nevvies and … and …”

  “Nieces?”

  “Right.”

  There was a pause.

  “Do you want to know what happened to your mother?” said Louise.

  “She’s dead. Made her pay for what she done to me, didn’t I? Done to me and Fred? Right up to the end I made her pay. Ah, she was a bad un.”

  “Yes, I think so too. But she saved my son’s life, I think, just before she died. Shall I tell you about it?”

  Rose shrugged again. The officials were watching now, beginning to move restlessly on their chairs. No wonder, if Rose had been in the camps, there had been such obstacles to this meeting. Louise explained as simply as she could what had happened that day at Hampton Court. She wasn’t sure how much Rose understood.

  “I still don’t know why she did it,” she said. “She may have been madder than I realised. She had made her life the way she chose, and she wasn’t going to let anyone change it, not even terrorists with guns.”

  “Only thing she knows. You’re in her way. Bang. Shot Fred, did she?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. He was a good deal older than she was. I imagine he just died of natural causes. Look, I brought this for you.”

  The officials had risen and were moving towards them as Louise took the old blue box from her bag and passed it across. Rose pressed the catch and gazed, nodding, apparently unastonished. She lifted the jewelled egg from its velvet nest and turned it over.

  “Ah,” she said, in a tone of recognition.

  It had taken Louise twenty minutes to find the secret catch—you twisted the head of an agate leopard—but Rose seemed to know what she was looking for. The egg separated into its two halves, joined at the hinge. By now the officials had reached the table and crowded round, craning as Rose lifted the brooch out and held it up. The coloured lights of the courtyard were caught and reflected by the facets. One of the officials spoke.

  “Is it genuine? he asks,” said the interpreter.

  “Yes,” said Louise. “It belongs to Rose here. It was her mother’s.”

  She was not at all certain about this—there was a strong probability, she thought, that Mrs Walsh had stolen it with the rest of the jewels after the last of the Belayevs had died on their terrible journey. In that case it would probably belong to the state, and finish up unbecomingly on the bosom of the local secretary’s wife. She was determined to hand the jewel over as publicly as possible, to make sure that didn’t happen.

  “’Sright,” said Rose. “My mum’s that was. Got it from her mum—some nob give it her.”

  “How did you know?” said Louise.

  “Me uncle, he tells me. Dead now. Always on about that there egg.
Me dad took it off her. Her wossname? When a girl gets married, see?”

  “Dowry, you mean?” said Louise.

  “Dowry,” said Rose. “’Sright. Then my mum run off with it when she done my dad in, see?”

  “I had it valued,” said Louise. “It’s a very good stone, but the egg is probably worth as much. It isn’t Fabergé’s own work, but it does come from his workshop. I’ve often wondered why your mother didn’t sell it and make herself more comfortable. Anyway, it’s yours now.”

  Rose put the jewel back into its nest, closed the egg and laid it back in the box, which she shut and pushed back across the table.

  “Ta, but no,” she said.

  “You could sell it,” said Louise. “Build yourself a nice house—or use some of it to help with your nieces’ dowries.”

  “Dowries are no longer permitted,” said the interpreter in the deadpan voice of one announcing the official line regardless of its relationship to facts.

  “She was a bad un,” said Rose. “Made her pay, long as she lived, I did. Wasn’t for the money. It was for what she done to people. Don’t want nothing from her now. She was a bad un.”

  She pushed the box emphatically towards Louise.

  “You have it,” she said. “Won’t look daft, you wearing something like that. You’re the sort.”

  Louise shook her head. The protocol of gifts to royalty was far too complex to explain now.

  “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to take presents from people,” she said. “It’s against the rules.”

  “Give it someone else, then,” said Rose.

  Now that the leather box was closed the almost magical power the jewel had exerted was lost. Louise could sense the anxiety and impatience of the officials. Carrie did her double cough, the signal that the schedule demanded a move. Louise took the box and stood up. Rose stood up too.