The docks were dying, but Riley survived. After he was made redundant, he found a job the same week at Lawton’s, where he met Nancy Dumpy Nancy with her hungry eyes. He first saw her from on high, looking down from his crane. He seemed to see her close-up for who she was. She walked timidly as if she’d been hurt. That’s when he first thought of selling Quilling Road. He seriously thought of packing up. But he didn’t. One lunchtime he went into the manager’s office intending to ask her out… because there was something about her that had stirred him, that had lit a small flame in his guts… But on the day when he opened his mouth, he’d asked her to stamp his card while he went AWOL to catch his rent. That sudden shift of intention, the deception of Nancy had thrilled him, as if it were a kind of arson. (Riley understood the excitement of a building on fire.) So that was another choice -an even deeper one, from a frozen place inside himself. Unlike getting married to Nancy. That happened as if it were inevitable. The courting went like a dream. He did everything that he’d seen in the films: aftershave, greased hair, a natty suit – the lot. He took Nancy to a big hotel, ordered high tea and paid with crisp bills fresh from the bank. He left a fat tip. He held out his arm for Nancy. On Brighton beach, he tossed his trilby into the wind. But when they got married, and they went home, and she was there first thing in the morning and last thing at night.., he felt sick. He didn’t know what to do in the day to day He scoured his past, lifting its slabs, jerking open its drawers, trying desperately to find something that would teach him what to do. But there was nothing there, except loathing and disgust, like a warm mist. And there before him, day and night, was Nancy Dumpy Nancy with her hungry eyes. She was a breathing accusation.
And then help came from a very strange quarter, although he didn’t see it that way at the time: a woman in black arrived on the wharf with a few heavies in uniform. Twenty minutes later he was arrested. From that moment, the focus of Nancy’s anguish shifted from who he was to what someone had said he’d done. And that gave him space. Not much, but space nonetheless.
Riley swept up the rat droppings and put the pan and brush back in a hallway cupboard. As he closed the door he heard that polished voice as if it were on the other side. He saw the scrubbed nails, the white cuffs, the starched trousers.
A man should think deeply; he should know himself.’
Riley had studied the Major’s cap-badge motto, ‘Blood and Fire’, in a panic, unable to comprehend why this man should care at all.
‘I know myself better than you ever will, Major. I’ve been places.., in here’ – he’d pointed savagely at his head, as if it were a distant continent – ‘that you’ve only heard about.’
‘I don’t mean what you’ve done. I mean who you are. The man behind the mistakes and the wrong turns.’ The Major leaned forwards, placing a hand on each knee, like the medic on a football pitch. He stared at Riley his eyes clean and unbearably merciful. ‘They’re not the same, you know’
They’re not the same. The strange words spiralled down forty years into an empty house in Tottenham. Riley’s mind grew dark – even his eyes seemed to drain of light. How could you separate a man from what he’d done? Like a flicker of flame in the grate, Riley remembered himself standing at the bedroom door, a boy in pyjamas, watching Walter punch and stab the air.
4
Anselm was drinking tea in a cafe ten minutes early for his meeting with Inspector Cartwright. Roughly ten minutes after the agreed time he saw a figure dodging between the cars on Coptic Street. A magenta scarf fluttered against a long black overcoat.
Anselm had first met Inspector Cartwright during the Riley trial. Afterwards he’d seen her once or twice smoking in the corridors of the Bailey. Their eyes had met; and Anselm, being the sensitive sort, had detected a measure of hostility. That expression, it seemed, had not left her face.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said sweetly sitting down, ‘three kids under five. Don’t do it.’
‘I’ll try not to.’ Each ear was weighted with a substantial holly-berry earring, irregular in shape, probably painful to wear and undoubtedly made by one of the under-fives. Her hair was a deep, rusty brown; it had been cut very short, leaving precise lines. ‘I think when we last met,’ she said kindly ‘you’d just opened the door to let Mr Riley out.’
And now,’ replied Anselm, ‘I hope to open another that will bring him back in.
Inspector Cartwright was, of course, wholly unaware of Elizabeth’s hope to ‘take away Riley’s good name’ and her contingency plan should death overtake the fulfilment of her project, so Anselm related what had transpired since the day he received the key.
‘Unfortunately’ he said, in conclusion, ‘I came to my responsibility a mite later than she anticipated. When I got to Trespass Place, George had gone.’
Inspector Cartwright had listened with fixed attention, a hand at intervals repositioning an earring. She glanced at the cake selection, saying, ‘I’ve already played a part in this business, only I didn’t realise it until now Would you hang on a moment?’ She waved at the counter and asked for a date slice. ‘Kids. I need sugar.’ The waiter returned with a small plate and a small cake. After reflecting for a moment she began to speak.
A few years ago a friend of mine put a file on my desk. He has an informant in the field called Prosser who trades in antiques at the bottom end of the market. He goes round the fairs and fetes. He’s on a retainer to tell us what he sees and hears. Usually it’s handling stolen goods – stuff being moved on for cash without a receipt. Sometimes it’s drugs. It happens that he’d filed three reports on Riley’ She leaned on the table, one hand on top of the other. ‘Prosser said Riley was up to something, but he couldn’t pin it down. But he was sure that people came to Riley’s stall, handed over cash and left with nothing.’
‘A payment?’
‘Apparently.’
‘The same people?’
‘Not always, but often.’
‘Paying protection?’
‘We had him watched but he does nothing but empty dead men’s houses and sell on what they’ve left behind.’
Anselm called up the sorts of questions that were once basic to his trade: ‘Is the profit margin too high for his kind of business?’
‘No. And the accounts are perfect – all filed on time at Companies House.’
‘Is he funding a lifestyle beyond his earnings?’
The Inspector shook her head. ‘He’s got a tatty bungalow, no car and never goes on holiday. So we dropped it.’
‘But people still give him money for nothing?’ said Anselm.
‘Yes, they do.’
Anselm waited.
A couple of years ago I was at the Bailey for a trial,’ said the Inspector. ‘One morning I was in the canteen and Mrs Glendinning took a seat right in front of me. Without saying hello, she asked if I’d heard about the death of John
Bradshaw I said I had. And then, like a timetable enquiry, she said, “Will you get Riley in the dock for the killing?” I shook my head and she just made an ‘Ah,” as if a train had been delayed. And then she said, “I wonder if he’s gone straight?” That’s when I told her about Prosser, but she didn’t seem that interested.’
Anselm smiled to himself. With two straightforward questions, Elizabeth had learned what she wanted to know: the state of the police inquiry into John’s death, and whether Riley was still believed to be involved in crime. Armed with this information, she’d tracked down George and begun her scheme. In a reverie, Anselm saw afresh its crucial antecedents: her troubled visits to Finsbury Park and Larkwood, where she’d worked out the framework for her actions.
Inspector Cartwright tapped her plate with a teaspoon. ‘Hello.’ She seemed to be peering into a pipe. ‘I’m a police officer. Put your hands up.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Anselm, blinking. ‘I was distracted by a kind of vision.’
‘Really? What did you see?’
‘That Elizabeth drew you forward; as she drew my Prior; as she drew
me.’
For a time neither of them spoke.
‘I suppose that makes us comrades,’ Inspector Cartwright said at last. She held out her hand. As their palms met Anselm saw Elizabeth leaning over a box of Milk Tray – when it had all begun. Her hair had fallen like a curtain. In his imagination, Anselm peered behind it, and caught her faint smile. ‘I’ve been tidying up my life,’ she’d said.
‘I never heard from Mrs Glendinning again,’ resumed the Inspector. ‘On the day she died, she left a message on my answer machine. She just said, “Leave it to Anselm.”‘
They both now understood what that meant. But Anselm wanted to know something else. ‘How would you describe her tone of voice?’
‘Supremely confident.’
Standing outside the cafe, Anselm said, ‘Out of interest, did you ever take the Pieman seriously?’
‘We ran the name past all our contacts in the field,’ said the Inspector, ‘and we pushed it through the computer, but nothing came up. When I interviewed Riley he wouldn’t answer a single question, but I kept coming back to that name.’
‘Why?’
‘I noticed it made him sweat.’
Anselm left Inspector Cartwright on the understanding that he would contact her as and when he heard from Mr Hillsden. Watching her walk down Coptic Street, Anselm recalled Lamb’s question to the old benchers of the Inner Temple: ‘Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled?’
5
One freezing morning Nancy had walked from Poplar to her shop. Dumped across the entrance was a pile of cardboard marked FRAGILE in red. She reached over with her keys, glancing down to keep her balance. That’s when she saw the finger poking out. She gasped, thinking it must be a body from a gangland war. She tapped the surface with her foot, wondering if the man had been cut up into bits, but the finger moved and a flap opened like a trap door and there was this man, his face black and hairy, his eyes hidden by goggles. She’d thought he must have been a fighter pilot from the First World War.
This man rolled onto his side, drawing up his knees. Then he felt his way up the door, using the handle to lift himself out of the cardboard… It was packaging for a fridge.
‘Am I in the way?’
‘Not at all, but you’re nearly in the road. Can’t you see?’
‘No.’
It was arctic and the man’s hands were a dirty blue. Cars whipped over the hump in the road, making them scrape and bang. Nancy said, ‘Won’t you warm up inside?’
‘May I?’
Mr Lawton used to say things like that. May I? She opened up and dragged the cardboard through to the back room. It wouldn’t feel right, throwing it out. When she came back he was standing inside, his hands on what Riley had called a figurine lamp – a woman with scarves all over and a light socket sticking out of her head. His fingers moved so gently building the thing in his mind, that it became beautiful.
‘I’m Mrs Riley.’
‘I’m Mr Johnson.’
Who would have believed it? Over the following months they became friends. He was her one secret from Riley And then he disappeared. In one sense it was for good, because a very different man eventually came back. He seemed frail and uncertain. He sat down with shaking arms.
‘What happened?’ asked Nancy anxiously.
‘I got my head kicked in.’ His goggles moved on a rumpled nose. ‘I can’t remember much of the present. This morning, last week… they’ve gone down the plughole.’
Nancy lit the gas fire, and she thought of the entertainment Uncle Bertie used to kick off when they were in Brighton. It was called ‘Silly Secrets’. Cheerily she said, ‘Shall we play a game?’
‘All right.’
‘You tell me a secret, and then I’ll tell you one.’ The idea was that people confessed to daft things they’d done. (Once, in a shop, Uncle Bertie had used a toilet, only to find it was part of a mock bathroom for sale.)
‘That’s not fair,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘I won’t remember and you will.’
‘I’ll tell no one.
Mr Johnson said, ‘I once had a son.’
Nancy covered her mouth. He leaned forward, vapour rising off him, his goggles full of condensation, and he talked about summers in Southport with the same longing that she had for Brighton. And Nancy waited, sensing that something awful had happened to his boy but he never said what. The next day Mr Johnson turned up and Nancy tipped out things she’d never said and thought she’d never say – how she’d met Riley the life she’d lost at Lawton’s, the children she’d never had.., the trial. And Mr Johnson listened, warming his grey-blue hands: a gentleman who would remember nothing.
Nancy glanced at the sputtering fire. On her lap was a plastic bag. She’d found it a couple of weeks ago when she went into the back room to pick up her shopping. It was full of notebooks, each neatly numbered on the front. They belonged to Mr Johnson, the gentleman who could remember nothing. Nancy had waited for him to come back, but he’d vanished in the mist, just like Riley on his way to Tottenham. She glanced towards the door… and reached into the bag. It was wrong, she knew, but ever since that barrister had died, the trial had returned. Sensations from that time had been prickling her like pins in a doll. The only way to numb the pain was to fill her mind with something else, and the puzzle book was full – she rooted around for number one. On the front was written ‘My Story’.
Her mouth was open and her hair tingled. This wasn’t right.
I call myself George.
She hadn’t known that. He was just Mr Johnson.
I’m a Harrogate boy a Yorkshire lad. There’s a little lane that runs by a bowling green and a tennis court of orange grit. On the other side are houses with mown lawns. At the end of the lane there’s a clump of trees and a fence with a gate. It seems that the sun is always shining here and the flowers are taller than me. Foxgloves, I think they’re called. But my earliest memory of this place is in the rain. My mother had made a canvas shelter for my pram.
Nancy snapped it shut. This was wrong. But she reached in and opened another number, wondering what had happened to Mr Johnson when he’d grown up.
I’d seen her quite a few times, and always at night. She stood beneath a street lamp, hands behind her back like Dixon of Dock Green. The most amazing thing was her white headdress. It was like a tent without guide ropes.
The doorbell sounded.
Nancy dropped the book, composed herself and presently sold a mirror to Mr Prosser – a dealer in quality second-hand. He was always mooching around, asking how her man found such good stuff. She told him nothing. When he’d gone she tied a knot in Mr Johnson’s bag and pushed it into the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
But that left her exposed. She fell back in her seat, eyes clenched and hands over her ears. In that inner darkness, she sensed the patient ‘attendance’ of Mr Wyecliffe. It was a word he’d often used. She’d thought he was a sorcerer. How else did he pull off the impossible?
After being charged, Riley was hauled before a porky magistrate with a runny nose, who, between sneezes, sent her man to Wormwood Scrubs on remand. But Mr Wyecliffe got him out within a week. No special keys or dodgy chains. ‘Just words, well used, ma’am,’ he said, waving a grey handkerchief. ‘All that requires my attendance now is the trial.’ He sniffed and blinked, as if he hadn’t worked out how to do it yet.
The solicitor had brought Riley home and stayed for a ‘preliminary conference’. They sat in the living room, drinking Uncle Bertie’s ‘poison’. Riley was humiliated and speechless and couldn’t look in Nancy’s direction. He was quaking.
‘We’ll use counsel,’ said Mr Wyecliffe significantly to break the silence. ‘I’ll get the best.’
‘I know who I want.’ It was the first thing Riley had said. He glanced at a spot near Nancy’s feet and asked for some sandwiches.
When she came back, Mr Wyecliffe was making notes, and Riley appeared deathly calm. The shaking had stopped. He spoke under his breath while the solicitor stuffed his f
ace as if he’d had no breakfast. Her man stared at the carpet and said, ‘How the hell am I to know what the tenants get up to? I’m hardly ever over there. Ask the wife.’
‘I will, in due course,’ promised Mr Wyecliffe. ‘In the meantime, might I have another sandwich?’
Nancy gave him hers.
It turned out the tenants had all been in arrears. Eventually Riley had shown them the door. That’s why they’d set him up, he said.
Mr Wyecliffe nodded slowly stubbing the crumbs on his knee. Licking his fingers, he said, ‘But what of Bradshaw? He’s your real problem.’
‘I’ve thrown his girls onto the street. Now he’s trying to make me pay.’
‘That’s a guess.’
‘Why else would he lie?’
‘Bradshaw is of good character.’
‘So am I.’
‘Indeed.’ After a moment, as if he’d just finished reading the instructions that had come with a gadget from Japan, Mr Wyecliffe said, ‘Okey-dokey Bradshaw is the pimp.’
Nancy had hated the sound of that p-word. It had been used in her own living room, leaving a heavy stain on the air that she couldn’t wipe away It was still there, even though Riley had been acquitted, even though all those terrible people had been lying. Something ghastly had entered her home. It was like waking to a burglary. The tidying up made no difference.
Thoughtfully Mr Wyecliffe said, ‘The claptrap about the Pieman allows them to say very little about you, makes the story shorter, easier for three of them to learn by heart’ – he looked at his empty plate, his features tangled up in his beard – ‘but counsel will not advance a guess at trial.’
Riley leaned back, genuinely calm now – Nancy could tell. ‘Who said anything about guesses?’
Mr Wyecliffe put his papers in his tatty briefcase and said, ‘I ought to observe that no one can save you from the truth or a lie that hangs together. It is a sad fact of life, but the two are often interchangeable.’
The Gardens of the Dead fa-2 Page 13
