Oliver’s hands and what I could see of his face were marble-white, the skin corrugated by long immersion. I clasped him under one arm and pulled him behind me as I struck back to shore, where Vivien was waiting.
She helped me turn him over as I dragged him out of the water. He lay between us, pale and still, his wet hair clinging to his brow. His eyes were closed and he looked, it struck me, entirely at peace. Vivien put a hand to his face and stroked him gently as if he were a sleeping child.
‘I’m sorry, Vivien,’ I said, longing but not quite daring to put my arm round her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She didn’t respond. Her attention was fixed on Oliver. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she stared at him, and went on staring, as if by sheer force of will she could bring him back to life.
A minute swelled into a frozen space of time while we crouched beside her dead brother in the silent bowl of the pit. Then she said, quietly but firmly, ‘Please go and fetch some help.’
The realization that Oliver’s death would leave its mark on the rest of my life seeped into me as I fought my way back up the slope to the road. I didn’t know whether he’d drowned accidentally or by his own design, though already I suspected the latter, but the fact of his death – the extinction of all his youthful promise – was unalterable. He was gone. And I was implicated in his going. He’d made sure of that. ‘You have to play the game in your head before you move a single pawn.’ His words – his very own, carefully chosen words. He’d foreseen this. I felt sure of it. He’d foreseen everything that was going to happen.
I asked to use the phone at the first house I came to. The elderly woman who answered the door was alarmed by my appearance – my saturated clothes were clinging to me and numerous twigs and leaves were clinging to them – and then shocked when I explained what had happened. Her late husband, it transpired, had worked for Wren’s. ‘Is the boy who’s drowned the son of Mr Foster, God rest his soul?’ she gasped. I had to tell her that he was.
The police said they’d be there as soon as possible. I was to wait for them at the end of the track leading from the road to the pit, which was the way they’d go in. They’d bring an inflatable with them to retrieve the body. I thought of Vivien then, sitting by her dead brother, alone with her grief, and decided to let the police find their own way. I had to get back to her as fast as I could.
But first I had to phone Wren’s and break the news. I got through to Joan Winkworth and asked to speak to Mr Lashley ‘urgently’, but she said the board meeting was still in progress and she couldn’t interrupt. Only when I told her why I was calling did she change her tune. And then I used the need to meet the police at the pit as an excuse to let her be the one to inform the family that Oliver was dead.
‘This is awful,’ said Joan. ‘Simply awful.’ And there was no disputing that.
It was only on my way back to the pit that I remembered the knapsack Oliver had been carrying, containing his camera, but not, it was my impression, just the camera. Where was it? It hadn’t looked too heavy to float, so maybe it was on the shore somewhere, some distance, perhaps, from where we’d pulled him out of the water.
But what about the camera? If Oliver had planned to drown himself, the photographs I’d taken of him on Goss Moor began to look like part of a calculated farewell. If they were, what story were the other photographs on the film intended to tell? I had to find the knapsack. It was probably my only chance of making sense of what had happened – and making Vivien understand that I was willing to do everything I could to help her cope with the loss of her brother.
When I finally struggled back down to the lakeside, however, I soon realized making Vivien understand anything was beyond me. I felt weak and light-headed, chilled by my wet clothes and what was probably delayed shock. But Vivien was afflicted by something altogether more profound. She was sitting on her haunches, with Oliver’s head cradled in her lap, smiling down at him and combing his hair with her fingers, humming to herself as she did so. She looked almost … contented.
‘The police are on their way,’ I said, crouching beside her. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
She didn’t so much as glance at me.
‘Vivien?’ I touched her shoulder. ‘Can you hear me?’
She very slowly turned her head to look at me. She frowned faintly. Then she returned her gaze to Oliver.
‘Oliver had a knapsack with him. The camera was in it. We should see if we can find it.’
No response.
‘Vivien?’
Another slow turn of the head. Another frown. But still she said nothing.
‘Speak to me. Please.’
The frown deepened. Several long seconds passed. Then at last she spoke. ‘I asked you … to fetch help.’
‘It’s coming.’
At that moment, as if summoned by my words, there was the growl of a car engine from the direction of the jetty. I looked across the lake and saw a Landrover pull up at the end of the track leading in from the road. Two policemen, their uniforms black in the harsh light thrown up from the water, climbed out and walked on to the jetty. One of them raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the shore.
‘Here they are,’ I said, standing up and waving to attract their attention.
‘Everything’s going to be all right now,’ Vivien murmured. ‘You just wait and see.’
Looking down, I realized that she was talking not to me but to Oliver.
‘Everything’s going to be just fine.’
But it wasn’t, of course. Nothing was going to be just fine ever again.
EIGHT
THE PASSAGE OF events following the arrival of the police at Relurgis Pit that warm August morning are obscure in my memory. I can picture a WPC comforting Vivien and wrapping a blanket round her as she sat in the back of a patrol car; I can reconstruct the face of the officer who jotted my replies to his questions in a notebook between sucks on his pencil; I can still smell the diesel fumes of the inflatable that carried us across the lake, still hear the crackle of the police radios; and I will never forget my last glimpse of Oliver’s pale, peaceful face as the zip of the body bag closed over him: the rest is a blur.
At some point, Greville Lashley was present. He spoke to me, though what I said I have no idea. Oliver’s body had been removed to the mortuary by then, I think, and Vivien had been driven away. He was presumably anxious to follow. I was taken home by the police myself soon enough. My mother was dismayed by what they told her. It was doubtless more coherent than what I was able to tell her. She insisted I have a hot bath and consigned my clothes to the washing machine.
Lying in the bath at that unfamiliar hour, gazing up at the whorling reflections of sunlight on the ceiling, I tried to force my mind to review what had happened over the previous twenty-four hours and understand why it had led to Oliver’s death. But the effort was in vain. There was just so much I didn’t know. Only Oliver could have explained it to me. And he was never going to do that now.
Mum gave me soup for lunch, as if I was some kind of invalid – which I suppose I was. She’d taken a call from the police while I was in the bath. They wanted me to go to the station later that afternoon and make a formal statement. She’d said I’d be there at five. She’d phoned Dad, who was going to leave work early to accompany me. I didn’t have the strength to argue.
After dutifully downing the soup, I rang Nanstrassoe House to ask how Vivien was, but the line was busy, as it was each time I tried. I went into the garden and smoked a sly cigarette – Mum disapproved of smoking – then sat in a deckchair and listened to the birdsong and sniffed the creosote a neighbour was applying to his fence and wondered how life could be so normal for some when for others it had changed so utterly.
I was about to go in and ring Nanstrassoe again when Greville Lashley suddenly strolled round the side of the house. ‘Your mother said you were out here,’ he explained, a second before Mum herself appeared at the kitchen door.
‘Get the t
able and a chair out of the shed, Jonathan,’ she said. ‘I’ll make some tea.’ It was immediately apparent to me that Lashley’s arrival at the door had left her overawed and slightly flustered.
‘I was a little worried about you after our conversation out at Relurgis,’ said Lashley, as I fetched the wicker table and a chair. ‘To be honest, you weren’t making much sense.’
‘Sorry. I was … confused.’
‘Shocked is what you were, Jonathan. And I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m glad you’ve recovered, though. You have recovered, haven’t you?’
‘Pretty much, I think, yes. I’ve been trying to phone you, actually. How’s Vivien?’
‘Ah, Vivien.’ Lashley sat down and lit a cigarette. He offered me one and implied with a wink and a glance at the house that he quite understood why I didn’t accept. His stepson’s death hadn’t made the least dent in his sangfroid. ‘She’s in a bad way, I’m afraid. She was bound to take it hard, of course, seeing how close she and Oliver were. The doctor’s prescribed some sedatives. We’ll … see how it goes.’
‘And Mrs Lashley?’
‘Not too good either. This is an awful thing for the family. Bloody awful.’ I couldn’t help noticing that he referred to the family as if he wasn’t quite part of it.
‘You all have my … sincere condolences, sir.’
‘Thank you.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘You’re a good lad, Jonathan. I’m sure you’d have done anything you could to avert this tragedy.’
‘Yes. I would.’
‘I never doubted it for a moment.’ Something in his narrow-eyed gaze suggested, nevertheless, that the issue was in doubt.
This was the moment Mum chose to deliver the tea – and a plateful of biscuits. She stammeringly added her condolences to mine as she manoeuvred the cups and saucers and sugar bowl. Lashley soothed her nerves with his earnest appreciation and then, when she’d left us alone again, slipped a silver flask out of his pocket and poured a slug of whisky into his tea and mine.
‘We both need this, I reckon,’ he said, taking a sip. ‘The police gave me a fairly garbled account of what you told them, Jonathan. Drownings aren’t that uncommon in these pits, you know. Steep sides. Deep water. Lads larking about. So, their first thought was it was an accident. But they said you seemed to think Oliver killed himself. And that he was being followed by a former Wren employee called Strake. Have I got that right?’
‘I don’t know how Oliver died,’ I said, drinking some of my tea and tasting mostly whisky. ‘But, yes, Strake had been following him. I’m fairly certain about that.’
‘And you were with Oliver yesterday evening?’
‘Yes. I was.’
‘I’d be grateful if you could fill me in … on exactly what happened.’
‘I’ll try.’
And so, for the second but not the last time that day, I recounted as much as I knew of the final hours of Oliver Foster. Repetition didn’t reveal previously hidden significance. It was as bewildering in retrospect as it had been to live through. Lashley listened intently between sips of fortified tea and draws on his cigarette. His furrowed brow suggested he was seeking what I was helpless to supply: the true meaning of all that had occurred.
‘I’m sorrier than I can say,’ I concluded, ‘that I just … drove away and left him there.’
‘It’s what he asked you do, Jonathan,’ said Lashley consolingly. ‘And if he was planning to do away with himself, you couldn’t have stopped him. He wasn’t the kind of boy you could stop doing anything he was set on.’
‘Even so …’
‘This business with Strake is baffling. I persuaded George to let me get rid of him last year. The fellow simply wasn’t pulling his weight. I believe Francis took him on originally. They were in the army together. When Francis left, Strake stayed on – far longer than he should have been allowed to. If he really was following Oliver, it’ll have been because someone was paying him to. But who’d do such a thing? And why?’
‘I asked Oliver that. He wouldn’t say. He called it the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’
‘The photographs are equally baffling. Oliver was unhealthily obsessed with his father’s suicide, as we know. But why pose for pictures at the site now, nine years later?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘There was no sign of the knapsack at the pit?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘It’s a gruesome coincidence, I have to say.’
‘Coincidence?’
‘Ah, perhaps you don’t know that Ken’s briefcase went missing at the time of his death.’ I did know, of course. Vivien had told me. But till now I’d forgotten. ‘It was never found. Odd. Damned odd. Like Oliver’s knapsack. And his choice of Relurgis Pit.’
‘The first one Wren’s ever worked, according to Vivien.’
‘Exactly. Ancestral ground, you could call it. If you had a mind to.’ He drained his cup and poured himself some neat whisky. ‘The police will simply go through the motions, Jonathan, take my word for it. They don’t suspect third-party involvement, so they’ll leave it to the coroner to decide whether it was an accident or suicide. They won’t waste any of their time, as they see it, looking for Oliver’s knapsack. That’s why I’m wondering …’ He broke off and cleared his throat, then leant across the table towards me. ‘I’d do this myself if I weren’t so damnably busy. The board approved the takeover by Cornish China Clays this morning just before your message reached me. There are all manner of legal arrangements to be set in train and discussions I have to have with CCC management. Quite frankly, this couldn’t have come at a worse time. The knapsack, Jonathan. Do you think you could go out to Relurgis and see if you can find it? Not today. You’re done in. I can see that. But tomorrow. Don’t bother about work. I’ll tell Maurice Rowe not to expect you back before Monday. Our best hope of learning why Oliver did whatever exactly he did do is laying hands on that bag and its contents. Can you give it a go?’
‘It’s just what I was thinking of doing anyway, sir. I mean, the knapsack has to be there somewhere.’
‘The police are happy to assume it sank.’
‘I don’t believe Oliver would go to the bother of posing for those photographs if he didn’t think they’d ever be developed.’
‘Neither do I. So, be as thorough as you can. It’s pretty much a jungle round that pit, but there’s a good chance that not far from where you found him …’
‘I’ll find the knapsack – with the camera inside.’
‘And maybe more besides.’ Lashley polished off his whisky and stood up. ‘I appreciate this, Jonathan, I really do. Sorry I have to dash off. There are a lot of calls on my time today, as I’m sure you can imagine. Thank your mother for the tea. Let me know how the search goes, won’t you? Phone me at the office. Joan will see I get the message.’
I got up out of the deckchair and he shook me by the hand. ‘I’ll miss Oliver,’ I said.
‘So will I. He could be as infuriating as all hell, but … you had to love him.’
‘Perhaps tomorrow I could … call round and talk to Vivien.’
Lashley grimaced. ‘Best leave it a little longer. These sedatives have really knocked her out. And Muriel … Well, I wouldn’t want her saying things to you in the heat of the moment, if you know what I mean. In situations like this, people tend to look for someone to blame.’
Yes, I supposed, they did. And in the eyes of the Wren family I was the obvious candidate.
‘One step at a time, Jonathan. That’s how we should play this.’ At least it sounded as if he wasn’t about to blame me. ‘And the first step is: find that knapsack.’
It’s a measure of how shaken I was by the day’s events that I didn’t insist on going to the police station on my own. There was little my father could contribute to the proceedings, after all, but I knew he wanted to do his best for me and I was grateful for his support, though, naturally, I didn’t tell him so.
The completion of my statement was a l
ong-winded and at times tedious process. I mentioned the knapsack and extracted grudging confirmation that it hadn’t been found. I also mentioned Gordon Strake and, when I pushed the subject, was told he’d be questioned in due course. There was no sense of urgency and it was generally implied that as a mere witness – and a young lad to boot – I should be supplying information, not seeking it.
Dad took much the same view, predictably enough as a defender of the establishment in all matters. ‘Let the police get on with their job, Jonathan,’ he advised me on our way home. ‘They’ll do what needs to be done.’
‘Mr Lashley doesn’t seem confident they will.’
‘Then it’s for him to challenge them, not you.’
‘I can’t just … do nothing.’
‘Yes, you can. What’s happened is a tragedy for the boy’s family, of course, but you’ll be off to university in a month. New friends. New horizons. You’ll soon put all of this behind you.’
Poor old Dad. I think he really believed that.
I headed out early next morning, shortly after Dad had left for the bank. I told Mum I was going to kill some time at the beach and play tennis with a schoolfriend at the Lido, a diet of harmless fresh-air fun she heartily approved of.
In reality, of course, I was going nowhere near the Lido.
I entered the pit the way Vivien and I had the previous day. There was no way of walking round from the entrance track to where we’d found Oliver. The slopes above the lake were simply too sheer to allow it. So, it took another scramble down through the trees and undergrowth from the bank near Scredda to reach the shore.
There was nothing to indicate what had occurred there just twenty-four hours previously. The police had amassed what evidence they wanted, which I suspected was very little, and gone on their way, leaving Relurgis Pit in peace. The lake shimmered opaquely in golden sunshine. A buzzard circled on a thermal high above. And nothing more than a gentle breeze stirred the greenery.
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