The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  Ziverts was pathetically grateful for Jake’s small gesture of support. He fussed over him, gave him a glass of wine and insisted on entertaining him. ‘You must have Latvian hospitality,’ he’d said. He brought Jake rye bread and a cheese that he said was a Latvian speciality. ‘Janis cheese,’ he said. ‘We eat it on Midsummer’s Night.’ The local deli stocked it especially for him. He frowned as he opened the packet. ‘This is the last. I went there yesterday and they said they could get no more.’ He wouldn’t meet Jake’s eye.

  Jake had thought about writing a response to the tabloid article in Ziverts’ defence, but it would only have prolonged the media attention on the issue. The problem was there was no more proof of Ziverts’ innocence than there was of his guilt. ‘It will blow over,’ he reassured the old man. ‘As long as no one else picks it up.’

  ‘This already is happening.’ Ziverts showed Jake an article that had appeared in a small, right-wing magazine. Jake scanned it quickly with a sense of tired disgust. It dismissed the charges against Ziverts on the grounds that the stories of wartime atrocities were exaggerations spread by the victors. ‘Both sides have their guilt,’ the writer proclaimed. ‘We should not condemn a man for being a patriot.’ The writer was David Garrick-Smith.

  ‘I don’t think any mainstream papers will touch this,’ Jake said. Even the tabloids had been a bit leery of Garrick-Smith by that time.

  ‘There were killings.’ Ziverts’ eyes were focused somewhere in the past. ‘Some of our people followed the Nazis into the east and carried out their murders for them. I have never denied this. Maybe all of us were guilty in some way. And the accusation has been made. I am not “George” any more. I am not even Juris Ziverts. In the eyes of the world, I am the man who killed those women and children.’ His face was sad.

  Jake knew that he was right. For some crimes, the accusation was enough for judgement to be made.

  Ziverts stood up carefully. He had to push himself out of his chair. Jake saw that he now used two sticks to walk. ‘I have something to show you,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

  Jake followed the old man’s laborious progress through the house to the back door. Ziverts paused, breathing hard, then stepped carefully outside. The garden was tiny but lovingly tended. There was a greenhouse against the garden wall. He led Jake along the path and opened the door. A damp fragrance engulfed them.

  Flowers. They were surrounded by tropical flowers and the air was thick with their scent. He looked at Ziverts in amazement.

  The old man’s smile was almost wicked in his delight at having surprised Jake. ‘I am an old man,’ he said. ‘I spend a lot of time in my greenhouse.’

  Later that afternoon, as Jake was about to leave, Ziverts had given him the carving of the cat. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘I want you to have it.’

  That was the last time they met. It was a while since Jake had thought about it. Garrick-Smith’s name had reminded him. Garrick-Smith–Miss Yevanova had claimed this man as a friend. She had described Nicholas Garrick as ‘the son of a close friend’. It didn’t make sense. She had encountered the true face of fascism. She could never have been deceived by Garrick-Smith’s sophistry, his insistence on detachment from the consequences of his theories.

  And the son? How much was he his father’s child? It was interesting that he had changed his name. Was that distance or simply camouflage? And was it in any way relevant to the question of his guilt or innocence? Jake needed to talk to Nicholas Garrick. He wanted to see what his own instincts told him. He picked up his phone, and keyed in the number that Sophia Yevanova had given him, the number of the solicitor she had appointed.

  Ann Harley answered her phone at once, which was a relief. He’d had enough the previous day of talking to secretaries and listening to Vivaldi while he waited for someone to put him through. The solicitor didn’t seem surprised to hear from him, but she didn’t sound enthusiastic. Her voice was cool. ‘Miss Yevanova told me she’d given you this number.’

  ‘What’s happening with Garrick?’ he said. ‘Have they charged him?’

  ‘No. He’s being released.’ She didn’t elaborate.

  Released? Surprise silenced him. He’d expected her to say that Garrick had been charged. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s in Derby. They’ve had him in custody over there.’

  ‘I’d like to meet him,’ he said.

  ‘Then that solves my problem.’ Her voice was brisk. ‘Miss Yevanova asked me to bring him to the house, but I have a client to see. His train gets in at twenty to three. You can meet him at Piccadilly.’ She rang off.

  Jake looked at the phone and raised his eyebrows. Nice talking with you, Miss Harley…

  He finished his coffee, staring blankly into the distance.

  Despite all the evidence, the police had released Gar rick.

  Faith left work at three to go to her grandfather’s. It was an incongruously beautiful day, as if the rain from the day before had washed away the last of the winter and left the way clear for spring. The sun was low, and the fading sky was veiled with small, wispy clouds. It made her think of high summer, when the trees would be in full leaf and the warm breeze would stir the shadows, days when she could sit in her office with the window open, listening to the students as they idled across the campus and sunbathed on the sparse grass.

  Last summer, she had sat in Helen’s garden, watching Hannah with her friends in the paddling pool…She’s coming back on Thursday. Hannah’s voice spoke in her head.

  She turned into the road where Grandpapa lived, and pulled into the driveway. The overgrown front of the house banished other thoughts from her mind. She looked at the way the ivy had grown on to the roof and was creeping up the chimney stack. She could see places where the guttering was coming loose, and marks on the stone where water had run down the wall. It looked like a house whose owner had died or had gone away a long time before.

  She let herself in through the front door, calling out as she came in, ‘Hello? Grandpapa? It’s me, Faith.’ She was early, and didn’t want to alarm him, especially if he was worried about break-ins.

  There was no response. It was cold and the air felt damp. She touched a radiator. It was tepid. She sighed with exasperation, and went to the hall cupboard where the heating controls were. But the heating was switched on, and the thermostat set to reasonable level. Maybe the radiator needed bleeding. She added that to the mental to do list that was growing longer every day.

  Grandpapa was not in the lounge. The study? She pushed open the door. It was dark. The laurels that shielded the house from the road had grown high and no one had pruned them for a long time. She turned on the light, but it was feeble, and flickered as though the bulb was about to go, so she switched it off. She looked round the room in the gloom. It barely seemed to have changed from her childhood memories. The heavy armchairs, the dark wood cabinet, the bookshelves that ran up the wall like a ladder. The air tasted musty, as though it hadn’t been disturbed in a long time. Her memories of this room held the smell of leather and pipe tobacco, and the smoky fire in winter.

  Doreen had been in here a couple of days before, apparently cleaning. Faith could see no evidence of it. She ran her finger over the table. It was covered with a film of dust. The bureau was open and strewn with papers.

  ‘Grandpapa?’ she called again. She went out of the door again and let herself through the wooden gate that led to the back garden. As soon as she came round the corner, she could smell the bonfire. She went through the empty kitchen garden–where he had grown onions and cabbage and broccoli when she was small–to the area at the side of the house where he burned the garden rubbish.

  He had a fine blaze going, turning the cold day warm and the clear air hazy. ‘So this is where you are,’ she said, coming up beside him and slipping her arm round his waist.

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘Faith! You are early,’ he said. He didn’t like casual visitors, people dropping in–even with her, he preferred to keep to a sc
hedule.

  ‘I know. I wanted to avoid the traffic’ She picked up the hoe and began pushing half-burned sticks back into the flames. She’d wanted to tell him about Helen. But now as she watched him, she thought that he had enough bad memories. He didn’t need this one.

  ‘The garden’s looking good,’ she said.

  He looked round him, pleased. ‘I have plans for a pond,’ he said. ‘Over there, by the rocks. Water lilies in summer.’

  ‘But the house…’

  He held up a silencing hand. ‘I have done it,’ he said. ‘As soon as weather is better, builder is coming.’

  It was like standing on a step that wasn’t there. She’d braced herself for a long argument–she had never met anyone who could be as stubborn as he could. If he didn’t agree, he didn’t argue, he just distanced himself and remained as impervious to argument as granite was to water. But he must have listened after all, and her words had had some effect. He’d called the builder, and even though the house wasn’t exactly warm, at least the heating had been on. Maybe she was getting through at last.

  The fire shifted, releasing a shower of sparks and a waft of smoke that swirled round her, making her cough. There was a pile of ashes in the middle of the flames that still held their shape, fragile leaves of paper that would crumble to a touch. She wondered what he’d been burning, and looked closer. Pictures. She could see pictures. Then she recognized the gold-and-black pattern of the box. He was burning photographs, the photographs that he’d shown Jake Denbigh.

  Instinctively, she reached with the hoe to pull them out of the flames, and they collapsed into dust. ‘Grandpapa!’ she said.

  ‘What is it, little one?’ His voice was mild, but he’d been watching her. He knew what she’d seen.

  ‘Those photos–why did you burn them? I’d have taken them if you didn’t want them.’ She’d at least have wanted the photos of him as a young man.

  He dismissed this with a wave of the hand. ‘Just dull, business, factories. They would have burned long ago, but I had forgotten about them.’

  She remembered the way he’d gone through them after Jake Denbigh left, one by one as though he were looking for something. ‘You should have asked me,’ she said.

  ‘If you had not seen them, you would not have known they were there. And then you would not have missed them. Now,’ he said briskly, ‘you must look at the camellia. It comes into flower.’

  He’d planted the camellia the year before, and had been eagerly anticipating its first blooms.

  He wouldn’t talk about the photographs again. As they strolled down the path together, he outlined his plans for the garden–the pond, new plants for the shrubbery, the progress of the established beds. She could see the place on the lawn where she had had her swing. The bare patch of soil had persisted for years after the swing had gone. She looked at the undergrowth among the trees that had made secret tunnels and hideaways. At the edge of the wild patch, a laurel–grown much larger now–stood. Its centre had died away, making a den where she used to play. The gap under the branches where she used to crawl in was still there.

  They were coming to the roses now. The rose bushes were his special pride. The bush whose blooms had ornamented her party dress all those years ago still flowered every summer.

  But there was something wrong. She let go of his arm and crossed the lawn to the rose bed. It was empty. The plants had been cut off at ground level, the discarded stems dumped on the lawn, their leaves still green and gleaming, as if they didn’t yet know that they were dead.

  His roses.

  She was aware of him standing behind her, aware of the thin sun barely warm on her face.

  ‘Grandpapa!’ she said. ‘Your roses…’

  He looked at the ruined bed in silence, then he turned away. ‘It does not matter, little one.’

  She watched him as he walked away. It could have been any of a hundred visits from her childhood, not this bright day with its bitter edge, a day when she knew that something she loved was coming to an end.

  10

  The main forecourt of Piccadilly station was thronged with travellers. The benches were full of people hopefully watching the orange lights of the departures board. Jake checked the arrivals and pushed his way through the crowd. Ann Harley hadn’t been quite accurate. The train from Glossop wasn’t due in for another five minutes.

  The trains were lined up on the platform, and travellers were wearily toting or wheeling their bags as if this last bit of walking was a length too far. Garrick’s train, to his surprise, was on time. Jake stood back from the alighting crowd, and watched until he saw a fair-haired young man coming along the platform, a rucksack on his back and a weary stoop to his shoulders.

  Jake stepped in front of him as he approached. ‘Nicholas Garrick?’

  He stopped. ‘Yeah?’ His voice was wary.

  ‘I’m Jake Denbigh. Miss Harley asked me to meet you.’

  Nicholas Garrick was twenty-two, Jake knew that from the background research he’d done. He looked younger. He was smaller than Jake, but well built. He still had the fresh-faced look of youth, and his fair hair was in need of a cut. His face had the tan of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors, but underneath, he looked washed out. There were shadows under his eyes.

  ‘My car’s in the multi-storey,’ Jake said.

  Garrick didn’t move. The crowds parted and flowed around the two men. ‘You’re that journalist, aren’t you? I saw you on the TV once.’ He hefted the rucksack he was carrying further on to his shoulder.

  ‘Yes. You need a hand with that?’

  ‘I’m okay. I don’t need anyone to meet me.’ He made to move past Jake, but Jake stood his ground. He intended keeping an eye on Garrick.

  ‘Miss Yevanova wants you at the house,’ he said. ‘I promised her I’d take you.’ Not strictly true, but what the hell.

  Garrick looked at him, chewing his lip, trying to decide.

  Jake could understand Garrick’s edginess. He’d been ill, then he had been put through the mill by the police and dumped on a train more or less penniless and probably unfed. ‘Hungry?’ he said.

  Garrick’s eyes were still cautious. ‘A bit,’ he conceded, then, in a further unbending, ‘It’s pig-swill they give you in there.’

  ‘Well, it’s not meant to be the Hilton,’ Jake said with an easy grin. Garrick’s mouth twitched in an unwilling response.

  Jake took Garrick to a greasy spoon that he’d passed on his way from the car park. It smelled of steam and frying. Jake had a cup of surprisingly good coffee which came in a thick white mug. Garrick ordered an all-day breakfast and the plate arrived piled high–egg, bacon, sausages, beans and fried bread. He didn’t speak to Jake at first, or meet his eye. He just concentrated on the food.

  ‘Look,’ he said, his voice muffled, ‘I didn’t mean to be funny with you, but a journalist, you know, talking to Miss Yevanova…’

  Jake, who was reserving his judgement, was favourably impressed by this evidence of Garrick’s concern. ‘That’s okay. I don’t write that kind of stuff.’

  Garrick stared at him as if he was preparing to challenge that statement, then his eyes dropped. ‘Okay.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘They’ve let me out for now,’ Garrick said. ‘The solicitor reckons they’re still after me, but I’m okay for the time being. It depends if they find anything else.’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘Will they what?’

  ‘Find anything else.’

  Garrick’s return to hostility was instant. ‘There isn’t anything else to find.’

  Jake held his gaze. ‘I’m taking you back to Miss Yevanova. Before I do, I want to know what happened.’

  For a moment, it looked as though Garrick was going to walk, but he subsided. He looked weary. ‘Okay. I get that. Look, it’s like I told the police. I left her in the library. I fell asleep. When I woke up it was morning and I realized I hadn’t seen her out or locked up or anything. And I
found her. It was bad.’ His eyes met Jake’s defiantly, then his head slumped on to his hand and he rubbed his forehead. ‘I liked her. She was nice, friendly, you know? I feel like I let her down.’

  ‘You fell asleep?’ Jake didn’t attempt to keep the scepticism out of his voice.

  ‘What are you? The FBI?’ But Garrick’s anger seemed manufactured now. ‘I’d been drinking,’ he said. Then, as if he realized this cast him in an even worse light, he said, ‘Look, Miss Yevanova, I’ve known her since I was born. My mum liked her…’ Jake filed that bit of information for later consideration. Maybe it wasn’t Garrick-Smith who had been Sophia Yevanova’s ‘close friend’. Maybe it had been his wife. He tried to remember what he knew about Judith Garrick-Smith. She’d always been a rather colourless figure in the background.

  Nick Garrick was still talking. ‘She’s kind of like my gran, you know? She got me this job. She knew about it because her son’s a big wheel, a professor…’ The hostility returned briefly. Garrick-Smith, Jake remembered, had been a professor. ‘She said it’d give me a bit of space and a bit of quiet. And I’d be earning something.’

  ‘I thought you were a student,’ Jake said.

  ‘I was. I dropped out after the accident.’

  Something about Garrick-Smith’s death was nudging Jake’s mind. ‘Accident,’ he said neutrally.

  ‘Yeah.’ Garrick stopped eating, and pushed his plate away. ‘Three months ago. I was taking my parents to the airport…’ He wiped his hand across his face and shook his head as if to get the memory out of his mind. When he spoke again, his voice was flat. ‘My father was killed outright and my mum died a week later.’