The Gardens of the Dead fa-2

by William Brodrick

  After Nancy had gone to bed, Riley stayed up watching the fire decline. In the stillness of the night he took out the photograph of Walter from his pocket. Without looking he dropped it on the fading coals. He heard it snap into flame. When he glanced into the grate, all that was left was a curl of ash.

  Who posted it? Until that evening, Riley had confined his thoughts to the living, but the lawyer had turned to the dead. Who’d he been referring to? Or had he been having a dig, trying to tell him that he’d never believed him about John Bradshaw?

  Suddenly Arnold started running in his wheel.

  Years after the trial, Riley was doing a clearance when his mobile started the nerve-racking tune that he didn’t know how to change. He stabbed a button to make it stop.

  ‘Will you help me find the Pieman?’

  Riley was stunned. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Someone who knows you weren’t the only one to blame’

  Riley couldn’t reply He sank onto a thing the relative had called a fauteuil.

  ‘If you tell me,’ said the young voice, ‘I can inform the police. I’ll be like a cut-off. And when they’ve found their own proof, they can act without bothering either of us. You’ve nothing to fear.’

  In the corner, a budgie hopped from bar to bar, tinkling a little bell. He’d come with the job lot. ‘Who is this?’ said Riley again.

  ‘I’m the son of George Bradshaw’

  Riley watched the bird pecking seeds, its green-and-yellow head jerking like it was being shocked at intervals from the mains. Riley said, ‘Who else knows that you’ve called me?’

  ‘No one.

  ‘Will they find out?’

  ‘No. I promise.’

  Much later Riley concluded that some big decisions aren’t as simple as they might appear. Like a wall, they’re built from the bottom up. You stand on the top course, laying bricks, not daring to look at where you’ll end up if you carry on. Finally you’re too high and you can’t get down. And yet, from the outset, there was always a kind of knowing; and recklessly it was broken down into manageable bits, and put together.

  It was therefore without having reached a decision as such, but irresponsibly that he said, ‘I need to think. Call me back in six months.’

  The next day on impulse, Riley went to Lawton’s Wharf. Everything had been sold off or flattened. The whole place was falling into the dark-blue river. Suddenly moved, he stood on the cracked plinth that had held his crane and he searched the pale evening sky for Nancy’s window.

  What was he going to do about Bradshaw’s son? He gazed at the wharf, sentimental for the days he’d never really enjoyed. His eyes settled on the DANGER sign attached to a barbed-wire fence that blocked access to the main quay Farther on he noted a line of plastic bollards. The timbers on the other side were black and green.

  Four times over the next six months Riley came home late and told Nancy that his van had broken down. He complained about it to Prosser and the rest. He bought spare parts, kept the receipts and went through the motions of an unnecessary repair. He was getting higher and higher, never taking his eyes off what his hands and feet were doing.

  Arnold’s wheel rattled and raced.

  Riley had hoped that George’s boy would drop the matter but he rang back, as arranged. Wobbling, but keeping his nerve, Riley said, ‘Meet me on Lawton’s Wharf on Saturday night.’

  Why there of all places? It wasn’t just because it was secluded and dangerous. Riley hadn’t thought it out, but his instinct wanted to stamp upon the world of fluffed chances, to wreck it good and proper. Accordingly broken down into bits: Riley left a fair in Barking at six, cursing the rain. Half an hour later he rang Nancy and told her that the van had stalled. At seven he cut down the barbed wire. At ten past, he set about the bollards. (They’d been filled with concrete, so one by one, he dragged them to the edge of the wharf and tipped them into the river.) Since the planking was rotten, Riley crept along a supporting beam, and was at the end of the platform by seven-thirty. At eight a figure appeared.

  Riley never once looked directly at the boy He kept his eyes down and began a conversation that had no purpose because he was too high up to listen properly.

  ‘I only want to vindicate my father,’ said John Bradshaw The drizzle pattered on their shoulders.

  ‘Vindicate’. What a hauntingly strong word. This boy would never give up.

  Fear played its part, for sure – not the kind that gripped Riley in his childhood, but something organic, a condition that he could feel all the time if he’d checked for it (like an irregular heartbeat). It pumped ink into his intentions – and he shoved with all his might… hoping and not hoping that it would happen; that he could console himself afterwards by saying he didn’t really mean it.

  The boards cracked. A whole section of planking gave way and Riley was abruptly alone. There was a cry, but after the splash, there was no noise… none at all… just the slapping of the river and the patter of the rain.

  Riley waited for half an hour, checking the side of the quay. Then he went home and thrashed Nancy at dominoes.

  The following morning, as usual, he went to work. The weeks passed and he did the things that he always did. But just as Arnold’s whiskers got wet every time he licked the milk, so a kind of suicide happens with a murder. Sitting opposite the Major, Riley had been bitterly proud of his home-made identity. He’d sought no mitigation. He’d scorned salvation now, never mind the hereafter. But with the death of John Bradshaw all that posturing fell slack. He felt strangely sick of himself, in a new way and of the world. He tried to doubt that he’d shoved him. Some big decisions might be made up of small choices, but what Riley couldn’t work out was why in another world, he wouldn’t have chosen the end result in the first place. Why he recoiled from it in this one? And with that insight, Riley teetered towards an abyss of self-pity, for he wondered if he’d been acting freely if he’d ever been free; if he ever would be. Within a couple of months, after years of clean living, Riley began his new scheme.

  And then, out of nowhere, came an envelope containing a photograph. The image sent Riley flying back to the times he’d done his best to forget. He was overwhelmed by his powerlessness – either to annihilate that face or to hinder whoever it was that had sent it. Stranded, he felt a need for Nancy far stronger than anything he’d known since the trial. It seemed incredible, but it was true: standing in his way was a hamster. It was humiliating.

  The spool fell silent. Arnold had been running for ages. If he’d been a man on the road he’d have reached Penzance.

  Riley went to the kitchen, bit an apple and threw it in a plastic bag. Still chewing, he opened the cage and dropped Arnold onto the fruit. Then he followed the lane that led to Limehouse Cut. The bins were out. A crowd of polystyrene pellets skittered along the pavement, white and vibrant in the darkness. He swished the bag across his trouser leg, like a boy with sweets from the corner shop – sticky things out of tall jars held out by Mrs O’Neill. She’d only ever been kind to him -but with a pity that had guessed everything, that had stripped him down to the contusions. ‘He has tempers.’ That’s what his mother had said of Walter. Tempers. It sounded like something Babycham would have ordered with lemonade and a cherry. ‘Not to worry, son,’ his mother once said. She wiped her own split lip as if she’d just finished her fish and chips. ‘You fell off your bike, all right?’ Her eyes had dried like a desert, centuries before.

  When he reached the canal, Riley halted. The bag swung by his leg. Hesitating, he began to think. In a way Walter, John Bradshaw and Arnold belonged together. Each of them, in very different ways, had been so much stronger than Riley And with that terrible thought, he let go.

  18

  Despite expectations that he would sink quickly under the weight of wet clothing, George had remained afloat. An action somewhere between swimming and treading water led him away from his point of entry He felt a colder current around his feet; the smack of small waves made him spit. He was be
ing pulled now, towards the full flow of the river. The final supporting pillars rose out of the shadows to meet the abrupt ending of the wharf’s run. George turned into the water.

  In so far as this moment had received any planning, George had intended to give his final thoughts to John. To his surprise he found himself upon the tracks of his own childhood, running down a winding path, at the back of a string of council houses in Harrogate. It was a sunny day; the ground was ribbed and dry underfoot. To his right were fences and small gardens with sheds… windows framed white in walls of red brick… A shining cat lay sprawled upon warm slate; to his left there were trunks and branches, screening a tennis court of orange grit… and then a bowling green… a velvet stage for men in white coats with bald heads or big caps… He was skipping and hopping, for the sheer joy of being alive, feeling his heart ache with the strain. He was ten. And he wanted to stay that age for ever. At the end of the path was a thick patch of dock leaves at the base of a tree by his home. George began to sink, just as he remembered kneeling down, panting and curious, to taste a bright, crisp leaf as though he were a rabbit.

  Something made of metal hit George on the head. Instinctively his arms flailed and he surfaced with a gasp. Bobbing in the water was a tin can. Looking up, he saw a boy sitting at the end of the wharf, his legs idly dangling. A small shaved head cut a fine serrated hole into the sky Suddenly he vanished. Rage ran hot through tired old veins. ‘The little brat…’ George was panting now Cold had seized him as though it were a weight. Panic gripped him. The boy appeared again at the edge of the wharf. George shouted for help. A thin arm swung out, and something angular swiftly cut a fine arc against the sky like a shooting star without light. It struck the water with a deep thud. The arm flashed again.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ yelled George. In a frenzy he shook off his coat. Enraged, he began moving towards the side. The boy relaxed, followed the swimmer’s progress, walking along the rim of the wharf, tossing chunks of broken masonry. They landed around him casually George hauled himself up the rusted ladder and collapsed, spewing water, onto the quay His teeth worked in unison with a vivid memory, and he began to weep. The sun was warm upon his neck, and he was a lad again, on his knees at the foot of a tree, tasting a leaf. It had been surprisingly bitter, when he had wanted it to be sweet. He arched his head, opening his streaming eyes: the boy was sauntering towards the perimeter fence, hands in his pockets.

  George tried to shout, but nothing came from his throat. He clambered to his feet and stumbled after his persecutor. Several times he fell, cutting his hands and knees. The pain quickened him. Frantically George continued his ridiculous pursuit, driven by a senseless desire to express an elemental, livid gratitude. Beneath the radiance of a street lamp, the boy stooped, working his way through a hole in the netting. By the time George stood dripping in the road that ran adjacent to Mr Lawton’s fallen kingdom, the assassin had gone.

  A couple of hours later George swayed beneath the fire escape and was stunned to find his bed made. As consciousness became pain and a deep, immense shivering, delusion eased away his last waking moment: he could have sworn he saw a figure coming down from the steps above.

  19

  When Nancy had gone to bed, leaving Riley in his rocker, she’d tossed and turned, annoyed by questions as if they were lumps in the mattress. Where was Mr Johnson? What should she do with his notebooks? Who was the man in the photograph? With this last, Nancy had, in fact, made some headway: it might be Riley’s father, she thought, because he never spoke of him. Or maybe his mother had sent it: he didn’t speak of her either. That was Riley He was so different, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’d never had parents. She laughed at her own joke, changed sides and plumped her pillow. Listening to Arnold, she finally became drowsy.

  Nancy woke up. Something in the house was slightly different, but she didn’t know what. Riley wasn’t beside her… but she could hear him in the kitchen. The back door opened and closed. A tug of sympathy took Nancy out of bed and to the window: her man couldn’t come to bed; he had to walk himself like a dog, until he was so tired that his mind couldn’t worry him. This is what British justice had done to her man – to a man who’d done nothing wrong.

  She moved the curtain an inch or two. At first she couldn’t see anything. Some of the windows on the other side were lit round the edges… and the bins were out. Her breath steamed the glass. She gave it a rub with the sleeve of her nightie, and then she saw him. Riley was at the top of the street. She knew his walk, by the way his arms swung like loose ropes.

  Nancy climbed back into bed and twenty minutes later, Riley slipped between the sheets. She didn’t stir and he didn’t move. Almost at once, he began snoring with his hands behind his head. Nancy couldn’t get back to sleep because she was distracted: something had been altered in the house, and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  20

  In his sleep Riley was running down a dark corridor towards a window, its frame blurred by light. His footfalls were silent. All he could hear was the breathing of the Thing behind him. Blinded, he broke though the glass as though it were tracing paper. His stomach spilled out and he began to fall.

  Even as he fell, he knew this was the old dream – the dream that had begun the day of his acquittal. And even as the stairs appeared, he recognised that this was the development – like a turning of the pages in his mind – that had started after he’d received the photograph. He was observing himself, and yet experiencing the rise of terror.

  All at once the nightmare cut location. Riley was no longer falling. His stomach was in his belly He was walking along a small corridor in a silent terraced house. Upstairs there were three bedrooms. Outside, at the back, there was a small garden with a gate that led to three trees. He didn’t know why he knew all this, or why he was aware that the front door was green, or that the kitchen floor had been laid with fake marble. It was simply part of the sensation of being in this empty house. He moved slowly like an underwater diver. Sunshine lit the floating dust. To his right, through a doorway he saw an iron fireplace. The grate was clean. By the hearth were a pan and brush on a stand; the poker was missing. A kind of barking started in Riley’s guts – a juddering sensation brought on by the recognition of his surroundings: this was home. He noticed that he was not a man, and not a boy; that he was in between the two. Ahead and to the left he saw a hand on the carpet. It hung off the bottom step of the staircase. The bystander in Riley vanished. Riley became Riley in his entirety. Slowly bravely his eyes moved along the arm, up the shoulder and onto the matted hair.

  A lifeless, loveless face looked back. So great was Riley’s horror at the sight of himself that he didn’t even scream.

  PART FOUR

  a girl’s progress

  1

  Anselm faced Mr Hillsden. Between them, in a hospital bed, lay George Bradshaw, a frown holding one side of his face like a paralysis. Clippers had neatly removed his hair and beard, leaving a ragged stubble. The skin around his eyes was pale, as if he’d just returned from two weeks on a sunny alpine piste.

  ‘I don’t recognise him,’ said Anselm quietly. The man in the witness box had been tall and imposing. Where on earth had he been after he’d walked out of court? What manner of journey could so reduce a man? He said, ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘With respect,’ said Mr Hillsden, ‘I lodged at Trespass Place.’

  ‘All this time?’

  ‘Indeed, on the upper platform of a fire escape.’ He stood with both hands resting on the ornamental knob of his curtain pole. ‘He chose an agreeable location, if I may say so. South-facing and close to all local amenities.’ There was a heavy irony in his voice – that of the commentator who can’t adequately explain what he’s known and seen. His watery blue eyes never strayed higher than Anselm’s folded arms.

  It transpired that Mr Hillsden had secured an ambulance by halting it on Blackfriars Bridge with his raised staff. He’d then
waited at the hospital all night until the Vault opened, when a sympathetic nurse had made a telephone call to Debbie Lynwood. She had immediately contacted Anselm, who, in turn, had left a message for Inspector Cartwright. It was nine in the morning.

  Anselm examined the twisted shape in the bed. According to his witness statement, David George Bradshaw was a married man with one child, a careworker by profession, in the employ of the Bridges night shelter. ‘When you wake,’ said Anselm, detached from his surroundings, ‘please tell me what I did wrong.

  The sound of feet and bustle announced the approach of a consultant weighed down by a stethoscope and students. ‘Are you a chaplain?’ he asked. The tone was kindly but implied a treatable deviation from the norm.

  ‘No.’

  His eyes moved onto Mr Hillsden. A relative?’

  ‘With respect, no.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said hastily ‘I’ll proceed.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Anselm, stepping back.

  The doctor flicked through the medical motes on a clipboard while his young audience formed an arc around the bed. Mr Hillsden did not move and stood among them, head bowed, hands on his staff.

  ‘Male, sixty-something,’ intoned the consultant. ‘First admitted after a beating at Waterloo Station. Multiple blows to the cranial vault. No patient history’ – he glanced towards an industrious young man with a pad and pen – ‘Edgerton, stop writing and listen. Just think. It’s far more difficult. Outcome: ruptured aneurysm. Louise, a definition, please.’

  A sac in a major artery or vein that burst,’ said the young woman, ‘causing a leak of blood into the brain.’