The Gardens of the Dead fa-2

by William Brodrick

  9

  Elizabeth’s taxi came along the cobbles chased by kids. George was at Lawton’s perimeter fence when he heard the racket. He stopped, one leg through the wire, and watched. These grubby vagabonds crawled all over the docks. They challenged intruders great or small. George had already seen them in action against a fire engine and had kept out of sight ever since. When the taxi pulled up, they danced around it clapping and shouting. The driver sped off, leaving Elizabeth in the street. Unabashed, she walked towards George, followed by a chanting crowd.., well, there were only five or six of them, but they took over the place… and yet he didn’t dwell on their antics. Elizabeth was jubilant.

  They went through the fence and picked their way towards the wharf. A couple of kids tailed them, but then vanished.

  ‘We’ve done it,’ said Elizabeth. A trial had taken her out of London, so they hadn’t met for three weeks. She sat on the remnant of wall, glad to be back, her heels tapping like a dancer’s. ‘He appears to be doing one thing, but hidden within the numbers is another animal. He keeps it right under Nancy’s nose.’

  ‘Would you write that down, please?’ George reached for his notebook.

  ‘In due course.’ Elizabeth fished in her bag for the whisky and the beakers. ‘There’s more to say, more that’s worth keeping; but now we celebrate.’ Out of a carrier bag she produced beef and horseradish sandwiches, and a tub of cherry tomatoes. The surface of the Thames ran upon itself with ripples. On the far bank empty barges hovered in a mist.

  ‘George, there’s something you need to remember… to dwell on, as I have. The stone you throw is small, picked from his own garden, but it will take away something he values above all else, and behind which he hides: a good character: the gift bestowed by the law upon the righteous, as well as the man who is never found out.’

  George frowned. ‘Have you got a pen?’

  Elizabeth laughed. She put a tomato in her mouth and took the notebook.

  ‘And lay off the stones and gardens stuff. I’d like it in black and white.’

  ‘I’ll give you both.’

  When she’d finished, Elizabeth fetched out some Greek yoghurt with honey George was reading the label when an envelope wrapped in plastic blocked his vision.

  ‘Put this in a safe place,’ she said. ‘Inside is a detailed explanation of Riley’s scheme. It’s complicated and by no means obvious.’

  ‘What am I to do with it?’

  ‘For now, nothing. Tomorrow he’ll be at Mile End Park for an early Christmas fair. In all we have done, I’ve reserved for myself a small part: to see him face to face once more, and to accuse him.’

  And what’s mine?’ He looked at the yoghurt pot. Nino had said the stuff was bad for the arteries.

  ‘You will deliver the explanation to Inspector Cartwright. It is the material upon which Riley’s conviction will stand. That belongs to you.

  George shifted with importance and pride. The moment had become solemn. He felt he should stand up and make a brief speech.

  ‘Have you got a spoon?’ he said.

  Elizabeth grimaced. ‘I completely forgot.’

  Elizabeth stayed late that evening. As night fell, lights appeared upon the river, shuddering.

  George said, ‘You asked me, once, if I’d ever thought of evil… whether it could be undone. I wrote it down, but I’ve been unable to forget the idea. It’s impossible. It’s greater than anything I can imagine.’

  Elizabeth was writing in George’s notebook (recording what would happen in the morning, and where they’d meet). Without looking up, she said, ‘Many years ago, a wonderful monk told me we could only undo evil to the extent that it has touched us. I can’t do it for you; you can’t do it for me. It’s a wholly personal quest.’

  George thought there should be a manual for this sort of thing – instructions with diagrams and a page at the back for troubleshooting. It would make life a hell of a lot easier.

  ‘I was told it’s more deadly than vengeance,’ she said, narrow-eyed, as if aiming.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The forgiveness of the victim,’ she muttered, making a precise full stop. ‘It goes right to the heart.’

  George wasn’t especially impressed. He’d expected a revelation, something to make you sit up.

  ‘I’m told it’s the only way evil can be undone,’ she said, closing the book. Becoming practical, she added sternly ‘Whatever happens, wait at Trespass Place.’

  From beyond the bed of broken brick, outside the fence, a horn beeped three times. Elizabeth stood and faced George. She gave him fifty pounds, and checked that he had understood all that would happen tomorrow, confirming that they would meet in the afternoon at Trespass Place.

  ‘George,’ she said, with a sigh, ‘even tonight will you not stay inside? How about the Bonnington?’

  He refused and she smiled fondly, placing a hand on each of his shoulders. As far as he could recall, she kissed him for the first time. Her hands remained there, heavy and reassuring. Perhaps it was the openness of her face that made George say what he hadn’t planned. It seemed to devastate her, on this the night of celebration.

  ‘John’s death had nothing to do with you. You didn’t bring Riley into court, I did.’

  ‘Yes, I know’ She spoke as if she were haunted; as if she didn’t mean what she said. Her arms dropped and she walked carefully along the edge of the wharf. At the far end she stopped and stared for an age into the black water. It chopped around the timber supports like a clock gone wrong, ticking in spasms.

  Three times more the taxi beeped its horn.

  10

  The smooth running of great schemes relies upon the small details. Elizabeth’s directions to Trespass Place were rather vague, so Anselm ran to a newsagent, where he checked an A to Z. The fact that Mr Bradshaw was waiting – and had been for over ten days – raised a spirit of urgency that made Anselm fumble and swear. He hurried to the Underground while the wind clutched at the umbrella as if to hold him back.

  The train was packed and damp. Wet coats pushed against him. He forced his way to a corner and unfolded Elizabeth’s instructions.

  Dear Anselm,

  Ten years ago I helped Graham Riley to leave the court as an innocent man. He was, I am sure, guilty. I now require your help to bring him back again.

  In the first place you needed to be reminded of the trial; to read the letter and the cutting. This prepared you, I hope, for the meeting with Mrs Bradshaw It was her place to reveal what happened after the Riley trial. It is mine to explain what I have done about it.

  Anselm read the first sentence again, not quite believing that an officer of the court would behave in such a way regardless of any crisis of conscience.

  No evidence is likely to emerge which would demonstrate how or why Riley killed John Bradshaw Something can still be done. George and I have set about taking away from Riley the one thing he does not deserve: a good name.

  Anselm ducked beneath an arm to check the name of a station. A territorial shove put him back in the corner.

  Riley has remained criminally active. The details are set out in a document retained by George. He keeps it in his inside left jacket pocket. His task is to deliver this, the basis of a future conviction, to Inspector Cartwright. Yours is to bring them together.

  You will find him waiting beneath a fire escape in Trespass Place, a courtyard off Blackfriars Road. On the street he is known as Blind George, although he sees further than you or me (don’t be troubled by the welding goggles). A senseless attack, however, has damaged his short-term memory He can only retain events by writing them down.

  Anselm wriggled into a tight space nearer the doors. Legs and bodies stiffened around him.

  This project is of the greatest importance to him. I hope that through its fulfilment he will recover sufficient self-respect to start the journey home. You might elbow him in that direction when you get the chance. He’ll need it.

  Best wishes,

&n
bsp; Elizabeth.

  Anselm folded the letter away His time at the Bar had taught him never to accept any document at face value – you had to scratch between the commas, and, in the final analysis, give the writer a going-over. That lost option was no longer available, and was, in these circumstances, unnecessary The letter corroborated everything Anselm had already concluded about Elizabeth: she had lost her confidence in a system that, perhaps, she had never questioned with sufficient vitality.

  Anselm sighed audibly – and not because someone had stamped on his foot. He’d felt an idiot when he’d seen Nicholas Glendinning. Now, at last, he knew what to say – well, sort of, only it was difficult to articulate with accuracy and nuance. How would he explain to him that Elizabeth had been changed by her encounter with Riley? Like a gift, Locard’s Principle came to mind. And Anselm, in the secrecy of his soul, felt modestly satisfied with himself, and not a little clever – an agreeable sensation instantly consumed by the recollection of Mrs Bradshaw standing harrowed in a doorway and that awful phrase: nothing comes of nothing.

  The train roared into Elephant and Castle and Anselm burrowed between steadfast shoulders. He stood on the platform hot and wet but triumphant. Through a window he saw a head pressed against the glass examining the handle of Mrs Bradshaw’s umbrella.

  11

  Trespass Place normally protected George from the elements. The fire escape was vast and constructed of sheet metal. But there was a problem when a wind blew It whirled around the tiny courtyard, throwing the water onto a horizontal plane. George had been wiping his face for ten minutes when he decided to head for Carlo’s. He clambered to his feet and grasped his two plastic bags.., and then he paused, looking down.

  In one of them, beneath his rolled-up scarf, was an old carton of milk, a loaf of greenish bread and some tins. This wasn’t his bag. He checked the other and immediately understood. He’d picked up Nancy’s shopping, misled by the sight of his scarf. He must have put it on top, not noticing. And that meant that he’d left behind volumes one to twenty-two. With growing dread, George checked number twenty-three, to locate himself in his own story. There was no doubt about it. He’d left behind half his life: a childhood in Harrogate, hitching to London in his teens and, of course, his tangled relations with Graham Riley.

  The wind moaned and wrested with the bins and sacks. George grabbed his sleeping bag and the carrier that held the other half of his life. He ran to Marco’s and took a seat in a far corner, beneath one of the heaters. Without his having to ask or pay, a plate of toast presently appeared, alongside a mug of hot chocolate.

  12

  Anselm had forgotten the plan on the A to Z, so at Waterloo Station he went looking for another newsagent. He studied the map, committing to memory the rights and lefts. Then he nipped back into the rain.

  Five minutes later he surveyed Trespass Place: its towering walls; its back doors without handles; its signs that read KEEP CLEAR. He walked towards a mammoth fire escape at the far end. To thwart the burglar the bottom section was raised on a cantilever – a measure defeated by the attachment of a long chain that twirled slowly on its axis. Beneath this shelter stood a queue of green plastic sacks with yellow ties. Cardboard was propped against the wall. A shopping bag lay open. The milk was clotted and the bread was furry with mould. Anselm checked the sell-by dates. This lot had been bought before Elizabeth died. George Bradshaw hadn’t waited long at all. And who could blame him? Anselm looked at the drainpipes, the tangled tape and the wheelie-bins. A client had once told him that hell was Sunderland Magistrates Court. He was wrong. Anselm moved under the raised steps and pulled back the cardboard. Upon the wall, neatly scratched, was a block of short vertical lines.

  Anselm walked briskly out of the courtyard, his head bowed against the rain. Further up the road he saw the bright lights of a cafe He ran and sheltered in the doorway, wondering what to do next.

  13

  One of the great things about Marco’s was the style of electric wall heater. They were high up and old-fashioned – orange bars against curved shining metal. They hummed while they worked, like Marco himself.

  George sipped hot chocolate, wondering what to do about his missing books. It would be impossible to roll up, take his bag and disappear again. No, he couldn’t see Nancy not until it was all over – when Riley had been arrested. Then George could explain why he’d vanished, and why he’d deceived her. But that left open the possibility that she might leaf through volume twenty, where her husband made his first appearance. It was a risk he’d have to take. She wouldn’t look, though.., she wasn’t like that. She’d been well brought up.

  The windows were grey and streaming with condensation. Through the glass door George saw a dark figure swaying left and right in the cold. George stirred milky froth and thought of Graham Riley.

  It had been one of the stranger things about the whole trial. Jennifer Cartwright – she’d been a detective sergeant back then – had quizzed him very carefully about Quilling Road. He’d drawn a plan of the house. He’d described the wallpaper. He’d labelled each room with numbers and names. He’d told her of Riley’s strange manner.., his never going up the stairs, his insistence on meeting everyone near the bottom step. And DS Cartwright had written it all down, smoking incessantly Months later he’d had a meeting with a CPS solicitor called Miss Lowell. This time there’d been typed-up depositions and a colour-coded floor plan. George had told his story all over again. The details were cross-referred to other witness statements, confirming their coherence with the broader picture. Finally there’d been a conference with a barrister called Pagett, a tall fellow in a morning suit – the kind of thing you got married in. George could almost recite his statement by now Again, he went over what he’d seen and heard, and what he knew of Riley’s idiosyncratic behaviour. But the strange thing was this: neither DS Cartwright nor Miss Lowell nor Mr Pagett thought to ask George if he had met Graham Riley before. None of them wondered why George had been so prepared to help these three girls in the first place. They weren’t like the barrister Riley had on his side – the one who’d asked, ‘What did David do that George wanted to forget?’ If he’d been at the conference with DS Cartwright and Miss Lowell, he’d have rumbled George, of that there was little doubt.

  The figure at the door swayed side to side. It had the bulk of a man. George wondered why he didn’t step inside. The heaters were just out of this world.

  14

  Anselm’s predicament illustrated the perils of the monastic path. Cyril had given him just enough to cover the cost of public transport. So Anselm, freezing and wet, had enough money to buy what he wanted, but only at the expense of what he needed. A cup of restoring coffee was there, behind his back, but only if he walked to his lodgings in the rain.

  Anselm brooded over the choice but finally surrendered his thoughts to a more serious problem. Elizabeth had failed to anticipate something far more basic than Anselm’s delay in using the key. She hadn’t given any weight to the reasonable expectation that a man with half a memory might wander off and leave his dinner behind, never mind his role in her scheme. How could he even begin to know where to look?

  A flame of protest made Anselm restive. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if he were ready to leave his corner and fight. He recalled Mrs Bradshaw when she dropped the paintbrush, mouth open and appalled at the thought that her husband might come home. Her hope had become too terrible to contemplate.

  Anselm blinked at the sodden sky. It was getting worse. He ran to the Underground, dodging puddles and rivulets. In a livid fancy, he grabbed Cyril’s remaining arm and chained it to a drainpipe.

  15

  Beneath Marco’s humming heater, George wrote of waiting, a storm and a restless man at the door. (Once George had committed the past to paper, Nino had told him to gather up the present moment. ‘It keeps you in the here and now’) When the rain became fitful he made his way back to Trespass Place.

  The recollection of Nino�
��s words made his stomach turn. There was something foolish in what George was doing: sitting beneath a fire escape expecting a monk to appear around the corner. It was like pretending that Elizabeth hadn’t died, or that her death would have no consequences. In the here and now, Elizabeth was dead. His recollection of all they had done together was a kind of grieving, but also a running away because it lay back there in the past, when she’d been alive. He shivered with cold and anxiety as if a harsh truth were creeping across Trespass Place: accepting Elizabeth’s death meant accepting that Riley would get away after all. They were the two sides of the one coin. Spinning it in the air day after day was just an illusion.

  Wrapping his arms around his legs, he remembered that Elizabeth’s optimism had been without limit. And it worked backwards as well as forwards: she’d said the past is up for grabs.

  16

  When evening came, Nick went to the Green Room and opened The Following of Christ. On account of the hole it was impossible to read the first page, or indeed, most of the following chapters. Why cut out the heart of a book, unless you knew it by heart? While he tried to complete a broken sentence by guessing the missing words, the telephone rang. Father Anselm was in London, and wanted to meet him that evening. He said, ‘I now have at least one of the answers you were looking for.’

  An arrangement made, Nick closed the book with the thought that his mother was a comparable enigma.

  Nick parked the yellow Beetle facing the old stones of Gray’s Inn Chapel. Beneath a nearby street lamp stood Father Anselm, his close-cropped head angled to one side as though he were puzzled by the ingenuity of modern contraptions. Against the arched windows, he would have cut a medieval figure, but for the shapeless duffel coat. They crossed Holborn into Chancery Lane, heading towards the South Bank. The afternoon’s storm had cleared the air, and the streets were shining and wet. At the frontage of Ede and Ravenscroft, the court tailors, Father Anselm peered at the wigs, the collars and the sharp suits. Afterwards he was quiet for a while. In the middle of Hungerford Bridge Nick broke step and leaned on the rail, arms folded. The swollen river beneath glittered at its banks, but the central flow was black and mysterious, seeming deeper and magnetic on that account. A small boat jigged on the surface. Nick watched its eerie survival, and a monk’s voice sounded at his side.