The Diary of Timothy Henderson

It’s very quiet in the house. Except for the clock. There’s a clock in the sitting room that ticks really loud and I’m wondering why it carries on like that. It just keeps going as if nothing has happened. Tick tock, tick tock. My mum stopped breathing yesterday but the clock’s still working. It’s like someone walking past. Doesn’t even slow down. My mum’s dead. And the clock’s still working.

My granddad gave me this diary after my mum’s accident. He told me to write down my feelings because otherwise they’d get stuck like leaves in a drain. But they didn’t. Because my mum was still with me. She’s gone now, though. Everyone’s saying she died of cancer but that’s not true.

******

16th June

My granddad was right. He knew what was going to happen two years ago. I’m all blocked up, just like he said. I’ve been like this since the night my mum died and it’s getting worse. So I’m going to write down what’s happened and what I feel.

My dad was sent to prison last week because he threw a brick at a boy in a bread shop. They all reckon it’s because he feels bad about my mum’s death. They’re all wrong. He feels bad but he can’t tell them what he did and why. When I saw my dad in the cells before they took him away, I could see it in his eyes. He was glad. He wants to be locked up. It’s the only way he can get away from me. Because most days, there’s one of these moments. He looks at me asking himself just how much did I hear and see. I don’t say anything and he doesn’t say anything. We just look at each other and I can tell he feels bad. But now he’s in prison. He’s glad and I’m glad. My grandmother’s glad, too.

23rd June

My grandma doesn’t realise it, but she stares at me while she talks. She’s worried. She’s got questions but like my dad she’s afraid to ask them. She puts down animals at work. She’s no idea how many cats and dogs she’s killed. Must be hundreds. She doesn’t feel a thing when she does it.

My granddad never asks any questions, not any more. Instead I ask him and he doesn’t have any answers. I watch him avoiding the truth and I wonder if I should even stay and listen. He keeps two passports. Like the others, he’s two people.

Uncle Nigel wanted to know who saw my mum after he left on the night she died. He knows something happened but he’d never guess what it was.

7th July

I just want my mum back. I loved her and I still do. The paralysis and the cancer didn’t change her. She wasn’t any different, not to me. She was still my mum. Everyone else felt sorry for her and said she didn’t have much of a life. But I didn’t, not once, and I’m unhappy because she’s gone and I miss her every day. No one understands that even though she was ill, I didn’t want her to die. They all said, ‘She’s at peace now,’ as if that changed everything. Well, it doesn’t. She was given peace but mine was taken away.

11

Michael lay on his bed. He’d kept on his overcoat as a kind of protection, a thick skin against the awful cold he was about to remember. When he’d come back from Northern Ireland, Danny, the army psychologist, had told him to lie down on a bed and listen to some tapes – chimes from a Buddhist monastery, the sound of the wind in the trees, the sighs and murmuring of the sea. The idea – advanced for the times – had been to help Michael relax; to calm the anxiety so that his suppressed anguish could surface … in the imagined mountain air, in the dreamed-up woods, on a make-believe beach. He’d tried his best but with each foray into the subconscious he’d simply fallen asleep. When he’d turned up for the interviews, taking his seat by the table with the box of tissues, he could only yawn. But now he was savagely awake, his senses sharply attuned to the crash and sudden lull of real waves upon real sand. The tide was coming in. Michael let himself go back to that terrible late November. Eyes wide open, heart beginning to race, he watched Captain Michael Goodwin act and speak; watched himself as though he was a disembodied spirit observing the preliminaries to the unforeseen catastrophe. Everyone was acting normally, even though their nerves were frayed …

‘Where is he?’ asked Michael.

‘He’ll come.’

‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure. Relax. He said he’d come.’

‘It’s dangerous for me here … and for you; for us all. We should have met out of town, not here. For God’s sake, the place is crawling with Provos.’

‘I know, so, but he insisted.’

The doorbell rang. Twice, then a third time. The signal meant the caller was alone, as planned. Liam nodded, left the sitting room and went to unlock the front door.

Liam was small-time. He gave low-grade intelligence on well-known figures in the Belfast Brigade of the IRA. Just their movements. Where they went. Who they met. Registration numbers. Snippets of conversation from people who knew them. Pub talk. For all that he got paid a hundred quid a week. Tax free. He was just eighteen and very small-time indeed, which was why Michael was his handler. They were both new recruits to the long war. But Liam said he’d got something big this time. Real big. He’d met someone with a message. So he’d set up the meeting and Michael had turned up feeling sick with fear. He was sitting on the edge of a synthetic leather sofa in a council house in the Ballymurphy district of West Belfast. The sitting room door opened and Liam ushered into the wan light a haggard man in a long dark overcoat, black shoes and trousers, a black hat and a black scarf. Removing his hat, the man said, ‘How’s your ma, Liam?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘Her knees and ankles?’

‘Swollen again.’

The visitor brought his dark eyes onto Michael. Addressing Liam, he said, ‘This is your man?’

‘Aye.’

‘He’s Army?’

‘I am,’ said Michael, his mouth dry, wanting to stamp some authority on his rising panic.

The man shrugged off his coat and unwound the scarf from his neck. A white collar under the soft chin showed him to be a priest. Liam’s priest.

‘Get yerself upstairs now and look after your mother. I’ll call you when I’m done.’

Liam obeyed. The priest shut the door. He started speaking even before he’d turned around.

‘It’s my job to look after the living and the dying. Sometimes, I help them pass over. I put oil on their forehead … I rub it into the palms of their hands … I give them bread for the last time … we call it viaticum … which means “provision for the journey”. The moment of parting, after giving the oil and the bread … it’s always unforgettable.’

The priest sat on a shiny armchair near to Michael. He, too, sat on the edge of his seat, his arms wrapped around his overcoat and crumpled scarf. His hair was white. Thick black eyebrows bristled over his pale, lined face.

‘Last week there came a knock to the door,’ he said, looking at the ragged carpet. All the colour had gone. A loose weave of grey strands was all that remained. ‘It was after eleven. I opened up, and there on the step was a man I’d never seen before. A broken nose face. He didn’t even look at me, but I heard him well enough. “There’s someone needs you, Father. You won’t be long.” He walked off, into the dark, and I followed. Didn’t even get my overcoat. A car was waiting, engine running, a back door opened. The man didn’t speak. He just drove me half a mile to a house that had been half burned out the month before. I knew the family that had moved out … they’re decent folk.’ The priest paused to moisten his lips. ‘I went in, thinking I’d see one of the family, but there, at the end of the corridor, was a man in a denim jacket with a mask over his head. Roll-neck jumper. Corduroy trousers. He had a pistol in one hand. “Upstairs,” he said. “He asked for you. Make it quick.” Up I went and I stopped outside the bathroom … the floor was soaking wet, the bath full of discoloured water … and blood swimming round the taps. A short bulky man with thick arms appeared from one of the bedrooms and said, “Get on, will you. His time’s up.” He had a mask on, too … slits cut for the eyes and mouth. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he was drying his hands on a filthy towel. There were red washing-up gloves hanging out of a pocket. “It took us three weeks to get a confession. You’ve got three minutes.” I went into the room and there … I …’ The priest dropped his head and his shoulders began to judder. He made a strange squealing noise and Michael shrank back into the sofa, the worn material squeaking loudly as he moved. Looking up, facing the drab wall, the priest said, ‘I knew him … I’d known him from birth … I’d baptised him … and he was strapped arms behind his back to a wooden chair, dressed only in his underpants and socks. He couldn’t lift his head. There was blood all over his chest and knees … and he was shining … shining all over because of the water. This voice from the mask said, “Three minutes and no heroics. I’m warning you. I’ll shoot you as easily as I’m going to shoot him.”’

Michael’s mouth clacked for lack of spit. He was hot though the room was cold. The air was damp and his skin tingled with a sudden flush of sweat. The weak central light had no shade. There were no pictures on the walls. The gas fire didn’t work.

‘His name was Eugene … he was a father to four children,’ said the priest. ‘I had to kneel down in a pool of blood and water at his side. “It’s all a mistake, Father,” he said. “I’m no tout. But they think I am. They think I’m an informer. It’s a mistake and I’m done for. This lot are the Nutting Squad. They’re gonna shoot me in the head. They’re going to put my head in a plastic bag …” I took his hand … and I was about to speak when he spat out some blood and whispered, “Listen to me …” I leaned near to his breath and closed my eyes.’

But Eugene’s mind wasn’t on sins and a final cleansing. He had a message. Before they blew his brains out, he was going to do something big … something that would change the future. He was going to send a message that could help bring the Troubles to an end.

‘Eugene spoke quickly,’ said the priest after a short, sickening pause. ‘He said, “Ó Mórdha’s going to Donegal. Next Wednesday. He’ll be alone. Tell someone in British Intelligence … someone who deals with touts.”’

Néall Ó Mórdha. Michael knew of him from intelligence briefings. He’d joined up in the forties. Veteran of the fifties. Founder member of the ‘Provisionals’ when they split from the ‘Officials’ in 1969. Part of Southern Command. On the Army Council. A hardliner. Aged fifty-eight. Married to Bláithín. Keeps a dog. Irish water spaniel.

The priest stared at Michael expectantly, moisture shining on his upper lip. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Have you got the message?’

Michael hadn’t … not quite; but he nodded. Only the priest wasn’t to be fooled.

‘You don’t follow a damn thing, do you?’ he said, despairing. ‘You’re as lost as the boy upstairs. I’m talking to a greenhorn …’

The priest let his head drop onto his chest. After an age of slow, measured breathing, he looked up, his eyes dark with knowledge and purpose.

‘Eugene had always talked to me. Shared his doubts and regrets. I knew he was in the IRA. And I’d let him know my mind about political violence. Told him he couldn’t come to communion as long as he carried a gun.’

And Eugene, in turn, had fought back, arguing the moral case for the armed struggle; that innocent people get killed in wars, even just ones. By default, the priest had come to learn a great deal about the Republican movement and its masked soldiers. He knew how the organisation was structured. He’d been given a glimpse of internal rivalries and the disputes over tactics.

‘The IRA is run by a seven-man Army Council,’ said the priest, as if Michael didn’t know his left from his right. ‘They decide if there’s going to be a ceasefire. They could even stop the war.’

Michael nodded impatiently.

‘The last time I’d spoken to Eugene, he’d told me there was a struggle at the heart of the IRA between those wanting to shoot the Brits out of Ireland and the growing feeling among some that the only way forward was Sinn Fein and democratic politics, that an electoral mandate for a united Ireland could reach further than the gun and the bomb.’

Where was the war going? This was the big question. In recent years the INLA had killed Airey Neave outside the House of Commons. The IRA had murdered eighteen soldiers at Warrenpoint. They’d assassinated Lord Mountbatten at Mullaghmore. Ten Provisionals had starved themselves to death in the Maze. And the British troops were still in the North. Thatcher wouldn’t bow. The Saracens were still patrolling the housing estates. But there’d been a swing in a surprising new direction: following the hunger strike, Sinn Fein had emerged as a real force in local elections.

‘This is only last year,’ said the priest.

‘Yes,’ added Michael, asserting his authority. ‘And they’re still bombing London. Remember the summer? Hyde Park? Regent’s Park? Nine soldiers dead. Three civilians killed. Fifty injured.’

‘And Gerry Adams has just won a seat in Westminster,’ replied the priest, presumably for Eugene. ‘That’s national politics with international significance. He’s the MP for West Belfast. He’s my MP.’

‘Liam told me you had a message,’ snapped Michael. ‘Who cares if Ó Mórdha goes to Donegal?’

‘You should.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’ll never give up the armed struggle. It’s a religion to him. He’s the one man on the Council who stands in the way of change. The others can be persuaded. Eugene was saying that the debate between the gun and the ballot box can be tilted in the right direction … and now is the time.’

Michael leaned forward and the seat covering squeaked again. The priest’s head had dropped once more. He was holding his coat tight.

‘What is the message?’

The priest spoke to his knotted hands. ‘Ó Mórdha has a cottage in the hills. Few know the place even exists … Eugene was one of them. And he told me.’ The priest rummaged into the coat on his knees, finally pulling out a sheet of folded paper from a pocket. His hand was shaking as he passed it to Michael. ‘There’s only one house in the valley … by a stream and two trees. I’ve written down the details … you’ll find it easily enough on a map.’

Michael frowned and took the paper. ‘Did Eugene say anything else?’

The priest looked up with the waxy stare of someone who’s just killed a man.

‘Eugene said, “Get Ó Mórdha, and you’ll get a peace process. Let him go and the war will never end.”’

The priest had done Eugene’s bidding and an awful silence filled the room. It was as though they were both standing over the battered body of a tout. Looking into the space in front of the dead fire, the priest began mumbling confidentially. He’d heard the one confession in his life that he was meant to repeat. And it wasn’t quite over. The priest was back in that wet, burned-out council house.

‘A voice came from behind the mask. “Time’s up.” I reached into my pocket for the blessed oil … I always carry it with me, just in case … and I began to rub it into one of Eugene’s broken hands. I did them both, watched by this man with the filthy towel hung on one shoulder, and then I anointed Eugene’s forehead … and it was only when I stood up that I realised I hadn’t brought my bag. I couldn’t give him any bread for the journey … this man who’d never come to communion. You know, they dumped his body in an alleyway with an empty milk crate on his head. That was their message. Telling the kid who found him what’ll happen if he grew up to become an informer.’

The floor creaked upstairs and Liam’s mother called for help. He wasn’t by her side. Michael knew at once: he was behind the door, as if to earn his £100. After a glance at the ceiling, the priest stood up, wrapped the scarf around his neck, pulled on his coat and settled his hat low on his head.

‘And I’ve got a message, too,’ he whispered. ‘Let Liam go. Stop using him. He’s only a boy. You’ve played on his vulnerability. You’ve made him feel important, full-size and useful. For once in his life he thinks he’s not just another nobody. He’s got a job and a wage.’ The priest paused to study Michael’s pale face. ‘You’re scared, aren’t you? It’s no fun sitting in a hovel knowing the IRA are on the other side of the front door. Well, I wanted you to feel that fear, to sweat a bit, because this is where Liam lives. Far from an armed compound in Lisburn. He doesn’t even know when to shut up. He talks easily. Like he did when I pressed him hard about the money. Didn’t want me to think he was a thief. Just give it some thought before you go home: if I can find out in five minutes that he’s speaking to the Brits, how long will it take the Provos?’

Michael swung his legs off the bed. Wrapped in his overcoat like that priest, he walked to the bathroom to rinse his face. On turning around he thought again of Liam, as if the kid were kneeling on the floor, handing over the Browning. The boy had risked his life, knowing what the Nutting Squad had done to Eugene. He’d risked everything, trusting in Michael to do his stuff.

12

Anselm knocked on the door of a small bay-windowed house in the village of Long Melford, part of a row of seventeenth-century dwellings, distinguished by various shades of paint, but joined by tangled ivy and a gently undulating roof of auburn tiles. He’d decided to call unannounced mid-morning on the understanding that the unprepared witness was always more enlightening than the person who’d had time to edit and organise their thoughts. With best intentions, such people often left out the apparently trivial details that were, in fact, of critical importance.

‘Hello?’

The woman was smiling – almost professionally. But the greeting was genuine. She wore loose jeans and a flowery shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Gardening gloves and a trowel revealed what she’d been doing moments before. Her grey-brown hair was simply cut and carelessly ruffled. She’d aged without lines to the mouth or eyes.

‘I wonder if I might speak to Nigel Goodwin,’ said Anselm.

‘I’m afraid he won’t be back for half an hour. Is there some problem? I’m his wife … we share everything.’

According to Olivia, this woman had accompanied her husband to Martlesham, only to swallow whatever she might have said. Anselm addressed her directly, as if she were the sole object of his visit. ‘I don’t want to cause you any distress but I’d like to talk about the death of Jennifer Henderson.’

The woman’s sunny smile vanished instantly. One hand came to her neck as if to fumble with a necklace that wasn’t there.

‘I’ve been asked to make discreet enquiries,’ continued Anselm, reassuringly. ‘I understand the police didn’t take your husband’s concerns seriously. I do. Along with yours. That’s why I’m here. To listen rather than to speak.’

‘I think you’d better come in,’ she said, stepping to one side.

The sitting room was small and tidy. Prints of various cathedrals adorned the brightly painted walls. Three armchairs and a sofa hugged a round coffee table. Spread across the glass surface were a selection of books on gardening and an imposing volume on herbal medicine entitled Heal Yourself. It was a cheerful room for a cheerful couple. Sunshine streamed through mullioned windows. Taking a seat, Anselm explained his role as an investigator based at Larkwood, introducing Mr Robson as a colleague from his days at the Bar. He summarised the letter, observing that Detective Superintendent Manning had concluded that the anonymous author was Nigel Goodwin.

‘Your husband is a doctor?’ asked Anselm.

‘Of a sort, yes.’

‘He’s given up practice?’

‘No.’ Sensing Anselm’s misunderstanding, she added, ‘He’s a vicar. A doctor of systematic theology. Specialised in Karl Barth.’

‘Ah.’

Anselm suddenly decided to say nothing further at all. And not simply because he’d never fully understood Barth’s colossal Dogmatics. (Not a man for jokes, Barth, he’d thought.) It was, instead, a trick he’d learned from the Prior. Silence forces most people to speak. They begin with trivia and then, bit by bit, they start to reveal their deeper concerns. Helen Goodwin, proud of her husband, a partner in his ministry, kind and outgoing, had her own monumental thoughts. She was perched on the edge of her seat, glancing regularly at Anselm’s habit, wanting to share them with someone likely to understand. The charged quiet became gradually prickly and then unbearably painful. As if climbing gingerly onto a window ledge, she said, carefully: ‘Strange, really, that Nigel joined the Church and Michael went into the Army.’

She’d assumed knowledge of Jennifer’s father. She wanted to talk about him as much as her husband. This quiet man who stood at the back of every photograph.

‘Why?’ prompted Mitch.

‘Well, Nigel was the sporty one,’ said Mrs Goodwin, her hands working as if she were warming a ball of clay. ‘Played rugby for Suffolk. Climbed mountains. Jumped into rivers. He’d been in the cadets and loved the marching and the uniform and the chance to fire a real gun and scream his head off, whereas Michael was shy and retiring, hated any kind of confrontation. He was the peacemaker in the family. Always wanted to get people to sit down at a table and sort out their differences. Hated violence of any kind. Loved Evensong. You can imagine everyone’s surprise when he announced he wanted to join the Royal Anglian Regiment. We thought he saw the Army as a kind of peace-keeping force … not a fighting force as such, if you see what I mean. We imagined he wanted to build bridges in the Third World. But he didn’t build anything … he went to Northern Ireland instead.’

She made the statement as if it were charged with menace and meaning. She looked from Anselm to Mitch, her blue eyes inviting a reaction. None was given.

‘He was there during the Troubles,’ she explained, hopefully.

Still no response. After a moment’s further uncertainty, she seemed to make the final leap: ‘We don’t know what happened while he was over there … but when he came back he was a completely different man.’

Mrs Goodwin’s hands stopped moving. Having made this central disclosure – the significance of which was lost on Anselm – she appeared to relax, grateful to leave behind the habitual deference. She was used to milling around fêtes and fairs, listening to the entanglements in other people’s lives, but now, for once, it was her chance to talk. Few wanted to know if the vicar’s wife had had her own experience of hell.

‘He ended up with the Intelligence Corps,’ she said, and then abruptly changed tone. ‘Look, I’m telling you this because I have my own theory about Jenny’s death … but I can’t tell you in front of my husband, and you won’t understand why I think what I think unless you understand what happened to Michael after he came home from Belfast.’

Mrs Goodwin crouched forward. She knew her husband would be back soon. There wasn’t much time.

‘They were very close as brothers,’ she said, quietly. ‘Which makes what has happened all the more tragic.’

Always fighting, of course (she explained, smiling). As boys they pulled each other’s hair out. But as they got older – Nigel was the elder by two years – their individual characters began to emerge (the quiet and withdrawn as against the loud and extrovert) and the sheer difference between their outlook and behaviour brought them together rather than pushed them apart. It was a principle of complementarity. The one needed the other. Michael would quieten Nigel down while Nigel would draw Michael out of his shell. A mutual friend once said that when Michael joined the Army he was following a path opened up by his brother. And vice versa. When Nigel began studies in theology, the way forward had already been illuminated by his quiet, reflective sibling. They chose their careers out of personal conviction, certainly, but in a strange way they were indebted to each other. They’d bound one another into their radically different futures … Michael was involved in Nigel’s life of spiritual reflection and Nigel was involved in Michael’s life of military action. No surprise, then, that Michael asked Nigel to be Jenny’s godfather.

‘At the time Nigel was studying at Oxford,’ said Mrs Goodwin. ‘Michael had only recently left Sandhurst and got married. He was a lieutenant with a young wife still training to be a vet in Edinburgh.’

‘Emma?’ supplied Anselm, securing a bond between them; showing that he was familiar with some of the family history.

‘Exactly. She just plugged away at the books while Michael went to postings in Cyprus and Germany. After he was promoted to captain, Emma got a job in Sudbury, and he transferred to the Intelligence Corps. That’s when he specifically asked if he could go to Belfast.’

‘Why?’

Anselm was beginning to worry slightly. How this account of brothers in arms meshed with the death of Jennifer Henderson was beyond his imagination.

‘He wanted to make a difference. He said there was a deep sickness in the society that needed healing. Ancient wounds in Irish history that were still wide open. He wanted to help close them.’

‘Always the peacemaker,’ ventured Anselm.

‘Nigel’s own words, when Michael told him. Michael said something had to be done to bring about lasting change, regardless of the risks. We’re now convinced it’s why he’d joined up in the first place … it had nothing to do with building bridges in Africa.’

‘Why are you so sure?’ appealed Anselm.

‘Because, looking back, he went to Sandhurst the year after the pub bombings in Guildford and Birmingham. The carnage had spilled out of Northern Ireland onto the English mainland. And there were tell-tale remarks … He once said, “We caused the trouble over there, we’ve got to bring it to an end.” We think he picked a terrible intractable problem on purpose … and did his best to help resolve it.’

Mrs Goodwin looked at her watch and Mitch, as if picking up a signal, pushed her narrative forward. ‘You said he was different when he came home.’

‘Yes. He’d been four years at Thiepval Barracks. Lisburn, south of Belfast. We’d seen him on leave, of course, but he never spoke of his work. All he’d say was that he now worked for a special unit. It was all hush-hush and dangerous. Emma was scared to bits … she told me not to say but it was called the FRU, the Force Research Unit. Whatever the dangers might have been, with us, back home, Michael was his usual quiet self. There was nothing untoward. And then, in December nineteen eighty-three, he came back … traumatised.’

‘And he never spoke of what happened?’ asked Anselm.

‘Never. We knew that he was being treated by the Army doctors, but that was all we got from Emma. She knew nothing either … or if she knew, she wasn’t going to tell us anything. All we could do was watch Michael, locked up, deep inside himself. And that’s when his relationship with Nigel began to fall apart.’

Only it didn’t quite tumble, bit by bit. Michael just turned his back on Nigel. He didn’t talk to him any more. Didn’t call. Didn’t share his thoughts on politics. Didn’t even stay in the same room as Nigel for longer than a few minutes. Always walked off to find something he didn’t really need.

‘It was as though he blamed Nigel for whatever had happened,’ said Mrs Goodwin, trying to understand, even now, after all these years. ‘He severed the bond with his brother. The door was shut. There was no handle. He simply wouldn’t answer to the most gentle knock.’

‘Returning to this trauma,’ said Anselm. ‘Didn’t things improve as the treatment progressed?’

‘No. Something final had happened, for Michael, in relation to Nigel. He couldn’t even look at him any more. And as for the treatment, whatever it might have been, Emma as much as said the psychologists had given up … but then we saw something … miraculous. Michael’s face gradually began to shine. There was a terrible vulnerability in his eyes … and they were wide open, but only to Jennifer.’

‘How old was she at the time?’ asked Mitch.

‘Six or seven. She’d just started ballet with a Russian émigré in Stowmarket. Ex-Bolshoi and half crackers. Michael left the Army and worked part-time for a company run by a friend from Sandhurst days. They imported woollen cloth from Italy and Michael managed the office and translated all the faxes and letters. He’d done A level. That filled up the mornings and two afternoons. Whenever he could he went sailing on his boat, always alone. The rest of the time he did the shopping and looked after Jennifer. But, you know, it was the dance that soothed Michael … made him feel better. He went to all her lessons, all her performances … watched her practise.’

‘No words,’ said Anselm. ‘He didn’t have to speak.’

‘He just had to look … and he stared, at these beautiful, graceful movements.’

So much of ballet was about death, thought Anselm. Final flights of anguish. Harrowed eyes, heavily blacked with theatrical face-paint. The slightly opened mouths. The triumph of grace over brutality. All done through gestures, great and small. Michael had found a therapy that reached into his darkness without the pain of light.

‘We saw this change in Michael,’ said Mrs Goodwin, ‘but somehow, it pushed him even further away from Nigel, and from me. Jennifer became his life, and there was no room left for anyone else but Emma … and she did nothing to bring the two brothers back together again. I don’t blame her, but she seemed to accept Michael’s very private decision … as if she understood why he’d turned away from Nigel. Michael who’d always been a peacemaker effectively smashed the family to pieces. Or Northern Ireland did. Very, very gradually, we stopped visiting theirs. They never came to ours. Nigel went to a parish in Truro and then Carlisle … Canterbury, Bristol … a mission station in Zimbabwe … by the time we came back to Long Melford, the distance between Michael and Nigel was immense. The only link between them was accidental … Emma and I stayed in contact by phone; she let me know how things were going.’

Mitch looked up and said, ‘And what did Jennifer make of her absent godfather?’

‘Well, she had no idea what had gone on. How could she? No one told her. So she presumed he was too busy looking after other people’s families.’ Mrs Goodwin smarted at the unfairness; the depth of misunderstanding. ‘Children never really know what’s happened inside their parents. Why they think what they think and do what they do. The turmoil. The old wounds. The damaged love. All the confusion that can never be put into words. For Jenny, there was no shattered family. Just an adoring mum and dad, a distant aunt and an uncle who couldn’t care less … relatives you had to invite round when pushed … which is how we met Peter Henderson. Jenny insisted. And that day is—’

A key jangled on the pavement outside. A flash of anxiety and something like regret seized Mrs Goodwin’s face. She quickly left the room, and closed the door behind her. Voices sounded in the corridor. After some hushed insistence, someone went upstairs, their feet stamping reluctant cooperation. Intuition told Anselm another door had, in fact, been closed. Mrs Goodwin wouldn’t be explaining her theory of Jennifer Henderson’s death. And not just because her husband had come home. It was written on her face. She’d felt the sudden and appalling defencelessness that comes with complete honesty. The realisation that you can’t retract what you’ve said. She preferred by far the anonymity of listening to others in the church hall. It was safer. Open your mouth and people asked questions. Keep quiet, and you could think what the hell you liked and no one cared a hoot.

13

‘Sherbet lemons,’ said the old man, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Two ounces.’

It was not a question. The capped vendor was certain. He’d spent a lifetime memorising the needs of his customers.

‘You can read my mind,’ said Michael, reaching behind his jacket.

‘I can.’

The old man tipped the jar of sweets into a measuring dish on some metric scales, ignoring the red needle. He knew what two ounces looked like.

‘Still got the old gyp?’

Michael didn’t answer. Like a specialist in earthquakes consulting the Richter scale, he was quantifying the shake in his outstretched hand, asking himself if the tremors had reduced in severity. He smiled. There’d been some improvement. Deep down the tectonic plates were beginning to seize up.

‘Do you want some fresh veg?’ The old man had followed Michael to the door. ‘I’ve got some sprouts in this morning.’

Michael examined them. ‘Not if they come from Brussels.’

Taking off his cap, the old man sighed. ‘We know each other, you and I.’

‘We do.’

‘Half a pound?’

‘Just what I was thinking.’

‘Funny, isn’t it. I mean, with my wife, Christine, we’ve stopped talking to each other. No point in saying anything. We already know what’s going on up top.’ He tapped his head with a finger, not seeming to appreciate that the gesture was also code for ‘bonkers’. ‘Thirty-one years we’ve been married. We just sit there, happy as Larry, switching channels. I hold the remote control. She eats peanuts. I press the buttons. Hates her name. Says it’s old-fashioned. You married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Children?’

‘Yes.’ Michael took the proffered brown paper bag holding the sprouts from Bramfield. ‘We don’t speak any more either.’

The vendor tilted his head slightly. He wasn’t quite sure what Michael had meant.

After dropping the sprouts into a waste bin, Michael took the concrete stairs from the road down to the promenade facing Southwold Denes beach. Following the unforgettable route, he passed a string of huts and found the steps onto the sand. To the right, wooden groynes reached out into the sea like resolute black fingers. They had a fight on their hands. Longshore drift it was called … that action of the waves shifting sand along the coastline. The groynes arrested the process. Kept the beach in place as if they’d brought time to a standstill, made it splash back and forth in the palm of one’s hand.

‘It’s all I want to do, Dad,’ said Jenny, with the simple conviction of any other seventeen-year-old.

They’d come to Southwold in August. Madame Semiglázov, her teacher, had entered her star pupil for the Prix de Lausanne in January. If Jennifer won, she’d get a six-month scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in Covent Garden. Michael hadn’t been able to work out why Jenny couldn’t just take the train up to London and ask for an audition, but Semi-detached (as they called her) had her own strange ways of thinking. She didn’t explain herself. You were expected to trust everything she said, no questions asked. And prior to the competition she’d insisted on ‘Jzenni’ taking regular short holidays. Emma had gone shopping and Michael and his daughter had taken the concrete stairs and the steps onto the beach. They’d sat with their backs to the sea wall, as Michael did now, the barrel of the Browning hurting the bones of his lower spine. The pain drifted away, pushed along by another wave of anguish.

‘I only want to dance.’

Her hair was scraped off her face and tied in a knot at the back. On anyone else the style might have looked severe, but with Jennifer, it wasn’t really a style. It was what she did when she got out of bed. Her elegance was completely natural. Her fine black eyebrows contracted, drawing together her long dark lashes.

‘If I don’t win, it’s all been for nothing,’ she said, gazing out to sea. ‘I was never any good at school, never one of the clever ones, but I knew how to move … knew how to speak with my body. To put everything into the way I walk, stand, turn, run … and fly. I’ve learned how to fly …’

No matter what happens, it hasn’t been for nothing. You’ve reached into me, saved me from drowning without even knowing what you were doing.

‘… and if I can’t fly high, very high, I don’t want to fly at all.’ Michael said, very quietly, barely louder than the murmur of the surf, ‘Next year, Nimblefoot, you’ll leave home and move to London. You’ll be a student at the Royal Ballet School.’

‘How do you know? It’s up to the judges in Lausanne.’

‘Because you dance like a bird in a cage. They’ll know you belong outside.’

‘Oh Daddy.’ She leaned into him as if it were cold. The sun was high, a few clouds were clumped and low. Striped beach partitions flapped in the breeze. Parents and grandparents stood close to the breakers, their feet bare, trousers rolled over the knees, skirts tucked into a belt. They were bent forward watching the children cry with ecstatic terror. The sea was immense and they were small. It was the great unknown and there were monsters out there – prehistoric things with tentacles and yellow fangs. Jenny said, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have got off the ground.’

‘We’ve both learned to fly,’ said Michael.

I’ve flown far away from what I’ve done. Can’t even remember what he looked like. I used to try … as if I owed it to him … but he’s gone. There’s just a dark track in my mind and three closed gates.

‘I’ll dance for you, Dad,’ said Jennifer, pulling away.

‘No, Nimblefoot, you dance for yourself, and for all the people who can’t do what you can do.’

The cage door is open, darling. I only ever watched. I’ve never locked you in. You’re ready to go now. Fly, my little girl, fly.

‘Let’s go and wrong-foot that man in the sweet shop,’ said Jenny, rising. She looked down at her father, her face dark against the bright sky. Her features were lost, like those of the farmer in Donegal. There was just a sharp outline and the sound of a smile in her voice. ‘We haven’t tricked him since I was a child.’

Michael stood up. The pain from the gun returned to the base of his spine. Jenny had moved towards one of the groynes in his memory, those barriers that keep everything that’s precious within reach. Head down and forlorn, he hauled himself up the metal steps and concrete stairs, fleeing the weight of Jenny’s unfulfilled expectations. She’d won the Gold Medal in Lausanne. And at the end of her scholarship at the Royal Ballet School she’d joined the Royal Ballet itself. But that didn’t mean she’d always be able to fly. Neither of them had looked beyond the snow outside the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne. They’d given no thought to the brutally unexpected … the arrival of Peter Henderson, that later slip on a church hall stage and the bowel cancer. But who did? Actually, Néall Ó Mórdha did. He’d always been ready for a shock. And look what happened to him.

The vendor of sweets saw Michael coming from a hundred yards. He smiled. He was on familiar ground. He stepped inside his shop and had just brought down the jar of sherbet lemons when Michael swept into the shop, hand reaching towards the ache in his back.

‘Wine gums,’ he said.

The old man blinked and frowned. One hand pushed back the cap.

‘Hundred grams,’ added Michael.

Christine’s husband recoiled slightly. Something had gone wrong. Life wasn’t like this. Certain things were for sure. There was no room for doubt. He looked at Michael as if he’d unzipped his fair, English skin to reveal the beast within: a metric monster who’d trespassed upon his kingdom of hallowed certainties. He said, eyes bright with resistance, ‘Have we met before?’

14

‘I’ve read all about you,’ said the Reverend Doctor Nigel Goodwin, looking at Anselm with interest, his hands thrust into the pockets of a creased white linen jacket. ‘Remember, Helen? He was in the Sunday Times.’

‘Sorry, it never registered.’

‘But I read it out. The monk from Larkwood Priory – it’s just up the road. Remember? Well, well, well … you weren’t listening, were you?’ The specialist in Karl Barth shook his head knowingly, his lively features charged with lenience. ‘Talk to myself, half the time,’ he confessed, turning towards Anselm. ‘Sick of my sermons, I suppose.’

Sensing the muscular curiosity that comes from a man of the cloth faced with a confrère’s celebrity, Anselm deftly avoided any discussion about past cases by producing the letter sent to Larkwood’s Prior.

‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Helen, finding an excuse (Anselm thought) to leave the room. She needed a breather. She needed to work out how to escape a storm of her own making. Anselm knew about Michael and Northern Ireland. He knew too much. And if Nigel got going about Jennifer, he might raise a wind, inadvertently, because he didn’t know what his wife had been thinking for twenty years.

‘And how about some of that magnificent fruit cake?’ added her husband, merrily.

Doctor Goodwin was one of those challenging people who radiate energy with the smallest of gestures. He read with eyebrows raised, one foot quietly tapping the floor, his fine mouth following the shape of the words. Silver-framed glasses amplified the mood of concentration. Anselm could easily imagine the doctor, masked and determined, abseiling through a window of the Iranian Embassy, Heckler and Koch at the ready. Grappling with Barth in the quiet of the Bodleian seemed barely credible.

‘I didn’t write this,’ he said, laying the letter on the table cluttered with books. ‘But I could have done. Each and every word. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who was troubled … deeply troubled by Jennifer’s passing. And I’m relieved to learn that someone like yourself, someone who can operate outside conventional channels, is prepared to look into it. You’re dealing with a closed universe. Finding a way into Peter’s world is not going to be easy. Even I couldn’t find a route, and I was Jenny’s godfather. How can I help?’

Somehow he was staring vigorously at Anselm.

‘In the first instance by telling me why you went to see Detective Superintendent Manning.’

‘Because there’s no one out there like you.’ Doctor Goodwin was being strictly factual, not complimentary. ‘I had an anxiety that I couldn’t in conscience keep to myself. I’d seen Jenny on her birthday, the day she died, and despite … despite her terrible condition … she was in fine spirits … a bit drowsy but otherwise … at peace. It was inspiring. But then, suddenly, she was dead. She’d recently had tests and as far as I know everything was fine. I spoke to her doctor and I sensed a certain anxiety … a compassionate anxiety. He smoothed away my imputations. Said he’d examined the body and she’d died of bowel cancer. The condition had been advanced. Devouring. Urged me to treat myself as I’d treat a distressed parishioner … to tell them that “death is completely natural … that it comes at the right time … that it’s we who rebel … that it’s we who cling onto life long after it’s time to let go”.’

‘What was the doctor’s name?’

‘Ingleby. Bryan Ingleby. He was a close friend of Peter’s. More of a father figure.’

‘Where was he based?’

‘Needham Market. He took over Jenny’s care just after the accident.’

The sitting room door opened and Mrs Goodwin entered pushing a tea trolley on wheels. Everything was beautifully laid on a white embroidered cloth: fine china, biscuits and slices of the famous fruit cake. She busied herself, like Martha in the gospel, only there were no complaints etched onto her smooth face. Anselm was right: she didn’t want to talk. She’d already chosen the better part: mute service, a role the merits of which the evangelists had singly failed to appreciate. Thinking of what she’d already revealed, Anselm said, innocently, ‘I would be greatly helped if you could simply tell me the family story … from the moment Peter Henderson entered Jennifer’s life’ – the place in the narrative when, in fact, Mrs Goodwin had been compelled to leave off – ‘because it seems to me that this is where the territory of motive begins. This is where we have to look. If Peter Henderson killed Jennifer, the rationale will be imprinted on a simple succession of facts … neutral from one perspective, but – I hope – revealing from another. In a case like this, one simply has to keep walking around the facts … like Cartier-Bresson before he took a photograph.’

The request snagged Mrs Goodwin. Perhaps she’d intended to slip out of the room to do the ironing. Instead she sat down, wondering – Anselm thought – how her husband would take up the tale. She looked worried.

‘I’d been moving around a lot,’ said Doctor Goodwin, stealing a cherry off the serving plate. ‘Parish appointments the length of the country, so I’d drifted out of touch with Jennifer’s family … my brother and Emma his wife. But we still shared a few important moments … and one of those was the day we all met Peter Henderson; a cold, unforgettable day in February.’

Doctor Goodwin edged forward as if to share a secret. ‘We’d been invited to Sunday lunch. My brother Michael, he’s a … quiet man. Conventional. An old-fashioned liberal. Shirt and tie decency. Never saw him without polished shoes. Loved Evensong … well, he used to … and then there’s Emma: vaguely theatrical, a vet who might have been a stage actress. Very proper, occasionally racy. But always correct. Knew how to use a line of knives and forks. Went down a bomb at the mess dinners with her panache and wit. An ideal companion for Michael. And both of them devoted parents. Now, coming from that background, you’d have thought that Jenny would be drawn to some quiet type with a bit of unexpected colour … whereas Peter … well, he was a sort of roadside explosion.’

Arrived in jeans. Hadn’t shaved. When Michael lit a cigarette, Peter said, soft spoken and reasonable, ‘No offence, but they’ll kill you. And possibly the rest of us if we hang around long enough.’ He sat with an arm around Jenny. A handsome man: clean lines to the facial bones; balding early; black tufts above the ears.

‘And Emma had made this beef Wellington,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘An immense fillet wrapped in pastry, and when she brought it in on a silver tray, Peter said, “I’m vegetarian.” “I beg your pardon?” says Emma. “I’m sorry but all the evidence suggests that animals are as loving, societal and emotionally complex as we are. They have rights. And one of the more basic is not to be eaten.” “I told you, Mum,” says Jenny, absolutely mortified. “Sorry, darling, I must have forgotten.” And then Peter says, as if to help out, “Emma, they’re as sensitive as you are,” which didn’t go down very well, so he threw his hands in the air and said, “I’m sorry, but the practice of meat-eating is one of the most serious moral questions of our time …” And so that was the first subject for discussion … over the beef … all the while no one daring to refer to the elephant in the room.’

‘Which was?’ asked Anselm.

‘His age,’ interjected Mrs Goodwin.

‘Peter was thirty-two and looked older,’ resumed her husband, ‘whereas Jenny was only nineteen and looked younger. She was still a girl … to me at least … and there she was, holding hands with a man who seemed old enough to be her father.’

‘Thirteen years,’ pressed Mrs Goodwin. ‘That’s a big age difference. Jenny was simply mesmerised by his confidence, flattered by his attention. A Cambridge don who appeared on telly had dedicated his latest book to her. Who could resist that?’

Me, thought Anselm. ‘What was the subject?’

‘Charles Stevenson. An American philosopher,’ said Doctor Goodwin.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Emotivist school. Held there could be intelligent disagreement over moral questions.’

‘How refreshing.’

‘And ironic, because emotions were running high. At least on the Goodwin side. Within a very short time it became clear that Peter was atheist, anti-monarchist and pacifist. Frankly, I was attracted to him. He was unnervingly honest. Said what he thought, in clear, dispassionate terms. Didn’t seem to appreciate that a social situation might require tact over conviction. Or at least moderation of argument. You see … Emma had gone to enormous lengths to welcome him; she was standing there, holding the silver platter, and he didn’t seem to realise that her generosity needed some kind of acknowledgement. He only saw the issue of meat-eating. In a way he was innocent.’

Perhaps he was annoyed, too, thought Anselm. Emma had forgotten Peter was vegetarian because she didn’t take the underlying argument seriously; didn’t consider his belief worth remembering. Wasn’t that the greater insult? He tried Helen’s cake and paused to think some more: it could not be fairly described, even tactfully, as magnificent.

‘How did Michael react to this challenge to his universe?’ asked Anselm. ‘You mentioned dinners at the mess and I imagine—’

‘Very observant,’ congratulated Doctor Goodwin, stealing another cherry. ‘My brother was in the Army. Royal Anglian Regiment. Served overseas. Cyprus. Germany. So he was uncomfortable with the jeans and so on. But he swallowed all that. The problem came when Peter turned his attention onto Northern Ireland. And I don’t mean the bravery of our boys in the fight against sectarian terror … I mean the scandal – his phrase – of collusion. British Intelligence feeding information about Republican targets to Loyalist murder gangs. The Army killing unarmed men before they could surrender. The whole “shoot to kill” controversy.’

‘I’d have thought Peter Henderson might have found a way to justify measures of that kind,’ said Anselm, dispassionately. ‘You know, a greater good requiring the moral destruction of the man who, in other circumstances, wouldn’t harm a fly. Doing a grave wrong to do a supreme right.’

‘But he didn’t,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘Peter’s point was that without legislative safeguards, anything could happen on the ground. Executive actions had to be subject to independent judicial scrutiny. You’d have thought Michael would have agreed. He’d never have sanctioned anyone doing anything outside the law. As it is, he was blown from his seat.’

Anselm had let his eyes drift from the doctor to the dried-out cake, to Helen, the reluctant architect of the developing moment. She was rigid in her seat, one hand on each knee, her gaze burning holes in the carpet. They both knew that Nigel had given his roving work as the explanation for his distance from Michael, rather than it being a consequence of Michael’s mysterious trauma. More particularly, Nigel had abbreviated Michael’s CV, leaving out the posting to Belfast and the shift to intelligence work. And Anselm, tingling with prescience, now wondered if Michael’s return to England – traumatised to such an extent that he’d left the armed forces to translate faxes from Italy – might just be linked to the subject into which Peter Henderson had stumbled: the scandal of collusion. That, at least, appeared to be Helen’s belief. And probably her husband’s, too. Why else had he left those two otherwise innocuous facts out of the reckoning? Husband and wife had finally got an insight into why Michael had come home shattered. Alone, it seemed, Helen had linked the Belfast experience to Jennifer’s later death – another such moment, perhaps. She’d developed a murder theory in the dark that she couldn’t share with the man she loved and served. She’d never told anyone.

‘Blown from his seat?’ queried Anselm.

‘Sent flying.’

‘By an argument?’

‘No, insensitivity.’ Doctor Goodwin stubbed some cake crumbs on the plate with his finger. ‘Peter said that to shoot an unarmed terrorist as if he was a stray dog could be challenged on a number of grounds, but the most devastating and intellectually accessible was this: it was simply wrong … and it was then that Michael’s chair went flying backwards. Bear in mind, the merits of Peter’s argument had nothing to do with it. He was having a swing at Michael’s identity. He knew damn well that Jenny’s father had once been an Army man. The Canary Wharf bomb had gone off the week before, ending an eighteen-month ceasefire by the IRA … and here was Peter complaining about British atrocities in Northern Ireland. Michael couldn’t take it. He stormed out of the room. I can still see Emma, smiling brightly, “Anyone for baked Alaska? Hot on the outside, cold in the middle.” And Peter – imagine this – he didn’t even flinch when the chair went back, any more than he’d flinched over the beef Wellington.’

Because he thought the issues were too important, mused Anselm. Poor Michael. Army pride to one side, he’d undergone every parent’s living nightmare. His daughter had hitched herself to a man he could never embrace as a son. Even so, Anselm hadn’t yet heard anything that warranted the description of a ‘roadside explosion’. Peter was different, yes. But wasn’t there something attractive about a man who couldn’t restrain his honesty? A man who actually had some beliefs, held them strongly, and was prepared to upset everybody in order to defend them?

‘Did Michael return to the room?’ asked Anselm.

‘Yes, he did. To apologise.’ Doctor Goodwin’s expressive face showed all the pain of that remembered humiliation. ‘He made a stumbling speech about his regimental tie and becoming an old bore. And then he held out his hand … that was so typical of him. He had to shake on it.’

‘And Peter took it?’ asked Anselm.

‘Oh yes. He even stood up. And that’s when Peter dropped the bombshell that no one had seen coming … only there was no uproar afterwards. Just a stunned silence. He said, “Jenny’s got something to tell you.” He made it sound as if he was blurting out the good news to smooth over any embarrassment. Jenny glanced at her mother and then her father and then her mother again … but we all knew already. She put on this hopeful, anxious, breaking smile … and then she said it. “I’m pregnant.”’

Abruptly Helen stood up, frowning and distressed. ‘He’d staged the argument on purpose. Nigel doesn’t agree’ – she glared at her husband, ready to meet any fresh challenge – ‘but I don’t accept any of that intellectual honesty claptrap … his so-called “innocence”. He knew damn well what he was doing. He’d had a good go at both Emma and Michael. He’d played us all into position so he could minimise any chance of reproach. He’d got a nineteen-year-old girl pregnant when he should have protected her, when all he’d had to do was take precautions … simple, adult precautions’ – she glanced at Anselm as if he might not know what they were or, at worst, might entertain doctrinal objections of the more unyielding kind – ‘and then, rather than take any responsibility, he staged a fight with her father over nothing and waited for Michael to apologise … for Michael to apologise to him …’

‘Did the ploy work?’ asked Anselm, doubting if it had, in fact, been a ploy; thinking that the shoot-to-kill issue might have been ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing’.

‘Of course not,’ snapped Mrs Goodwin. ‘Given the fait accompli, no one in that room would have rebuked him … we just kept our thoughts to ourselves, for Jenny’s sake.’

‘Even Michael?’

‘Especially Michael. He made another speech. Shook his hand again. Accepted Peter into the family. And Peter just smiled as if he’d pulled off a military triumph.’ Mrs Goodwin paused as if to gather in the prophetic significance of that remembered Sunday afternoon. ‘Poor Jenny … she’d found someone wild and exciting and he was going to take her to a strange and foreign land. And in time, he did. And poor Michael, not knowing what would happen, bowed his head and served the coffee, laughing and nodding by turns at everything clever Peter had to say. He put himself under Peter’s feet and that … that smooth-talking bastard just wiped clean his dirty trainers.’ Doctor Goodwin looked at his wife as if she’d come clean off the leash. He reached for one of her hands and squeezed her fingers tight. He wasn’t reproving or annoyed. Just grateful, Anselm thought. She had a way with words. Said the sorts of things he could never say from the pulpit.

‘How did we end up getting into all that?’ he said, helplessly, all his energy gone.

‘I don’t know,’ said Helen.

Yes, you do. Anselm nodded to himself. It’s because of me. I took your hint.

Doctor Goodwin let her hand go and he turned to Anselm. ‘I’ve more to say … about Peter and Jenny. I could do with some fresh air. Can I take you to where it all began and ended? There’s something important about place, don’t you agree?’

Anselm did. Gratified, Doctor Goodwin went to a bureau in the corner of the room. With quite extraordinary care, he took a letter from a drawer and transferred it to an inside jacket pocket.

‘I’ll stay here,’ said Helen, pushing the tea trolley towards the door. ‘I’ve lots of jobs to do in the garden.’

Of course you have, concluded Anselm. She had nothing else to add. In the end, despite getting cold feet, she’d done her bit for Jenny. With a little adroit nudging from Anselm, Nigel had completed Helen’s story about Northern Ireland without Helen having to open her mouth. It had gone without a hitch, for Nigel hadn’t quite known what he’d been saying – what the facts about Michael had meant to Helen. Anselm didn’t fully grasp them either. But it was only a matter of time. He just needed to brood upon the meaning of the suppressed information. Taking her hand at the door, he almost said, ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’ Instead he murmured, ‘Thanks for the cake.’

She smiled. They both knew it was dried out; that it should never be called magnificent.

15

Evening light saturated the long pier at Southwold. The clouds above were soaked an angry crimson. Softer yellow smudges and faint purple streams ran into the watery blue of the sky. Michael stood alone on the silvered wooden planking, hands in his coat pockets. He was looking at the Water Clock.

The clock was an amusing scrap metal sculpture, tall like the grandfather kind, only twice the size and made up of different objects in a welded open casing. Beneath the round face at the top were two taps. They were open and the water tumbled into an old Victorian bath. In the bath lay two recumbent figures with short tubes sticking out of the sides of their mouths as if they were biting on cigarettes. On a platform beneath the bath were two other figures – boys, Michael thought – standing either side of a toilet basin. Near the ground, in a line like targets at a fair, was a row of tulips.

The Nutting Squad had used a bath on Eugene. By the time he came up for air, he’d lost the will to resist. He’d told them what they wanted to know – what they already believed – even though it wasn’t true. There was nothing he could say to persuade them he was innocent. They’d gathered evidence from people who knew him backwards. It all pointed in one direction. Upwards. They knew he was a tout. But they were wrong. Just like the trader in the shop.

Michael looked higher at the hands of the clock and higher still at the blood in the sky.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, to get at the inner man, to reach what he was really thinking, they’d broken Eugene’s fingers and toes, burned holes in his muscles with cigarettes and placed a hot poker under his arms. Eventually, after a bath, he’d made a taped confession. They’d sent it to his wife as a kind of explanation.

Michael closed his eyes against the wet clouds. He almost heard Liam’s tread on the weathered planking. The priest had gone and the informer had come back into the room.

‘What will you do?’

Michael didn’t reply.

‘You’ll stiff him, won’t you?’ Liam knew the argot.

Michael’s stomach turned. The priest had done Eugene’s bidding: a Brit who dealt with touts had been told a secret worth dying for. Néall Ó Mórdha was the stumbling block to any peace process. He would never abandon the armed struggle. He’d be alone in Donegal next week, Wednesday night.

‘You’ll have to rub him out,’ murmured Liam, importantly, as if he knew about these things. ‘He has to go down.’

A priest had set up a man to be killed.

Michael’s mouth was dry, the spit on his lips crusting like a young scab. What else could the priest mean? What did he expect? That the Brits would frame Ó Mórdha? Engineer a charge on tax evasion to get him banged away for two years? What difference would that make? The man of God had come to Michael because Eugene had told him to speak to someone who dealt with touts: the people who, according to IRA propaganda, organised the execution of unarmed volunteers.

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ said Michael. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I fill in a CF, a contact form. Someone taps it into the computer. Someone else thinks and acts. And they won’t be sending the SAS into Donegal.’

‘You can’t do nowt?’

‘I said I’ll fill in the form.’

‘That’s not enough.’

‘It’ll have to do. I’m on leave from tomorrow.’

‘You heard what your man Eugene said. You can’t just type it up. You can’t just take a holiday, not now … look, I can help.’

Liam leaned back hard, shutting the door with his shoulders.

Michael appraised his first agent with dismay. Five foot ten. Eighteen years four months old. Thin. Brown greasy hair. Pasty complexion. Spots on the forehead. Black-framed glasses. Large brown eyes. Mouth sloping to one side. First contact: arrested for shoplifting. Charges dropped. Proposed to FRU by Special Branch.

‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’ whispered Liam. ‘I can help.’ The floor above creaked and Liam brushed the sound aside with an impatient, pasty hand. ‘I’m no small fry.’

Michael dropped his head into his hands and the armchair squeaked as if stabbed. The priest had come and gone, a messenger who enjoyed the luxury of not having to act on what he’d said.

‘I said I can help.’

Nigel … what do I do? Michael squeezed his eyes tight shut. You were cut out for this, not me. You’re the one who saw wars simply. What do I do? I’ve got a kid in front of me who wants to help me kill someone.

A flash from a sermon came to Michael’s mind. Nigel was in the pulpit at the Royal Memorial Chapel at Sandhurst, broad and strong, hands on the lectern. He’d been invited by the chaplain to address officer recruits destined for the Medical Corps. Michael had tagged along.

‘Life is short, the crisis fleeting, experiment risky, decision difficult,’ declared Nigel. He’d gone back to the Aphorisms of Hippocrates.

(Michael saw his brother’s roving eyes.)

‘Doctors – like soldiers – must respond, often quickly and with resolution. One day, you may find yourself alone in a fleeting crisis. The moment of hesitation will have passed and it will be your duty to act.’

For effect, Nigel let his gaze settle upon one individual – someone he’d judged timid and unsure.

‘On that awful day, my friend, be calm. Stare the fast approach of death straight in the eye. Look at the sickness and the suffering. And then get on with it. Take the risk. Make the difficult decision. Save a life, if you can. Don’t let hesitation slow you down. And afterwards, looking back on the crisis, you just might notice a Still, Small Voice – hidden at the time, but present in your anguish. You were never, in fact, alone.’

Michael dropped his hands and looked over at Liam; at his large, demanding eyes.

‘What did you steal? Before you were pushed towards us lot?’

Liam’s jaw dropped in astonishment.

‘Eh?’

‘Answer the bloody question.’

‘Pork chops … a cabbage. A carton of Silk Cut … menthol.’

‘What’s wrong with your mother?’

‘Nowt.’

‘The swollen knees and ankles?’

‘She’s too fat.’

‘She’s in bed?’

‘Couldn’t be bothered to come downstairs. I said I can help. I’m no eejit.’

‘Where’s your father?’

‘Never had one.’

Michael leaned forward and the armchair squealed. He was going to finish Liam’s days as an informer right there and then but Liam barked.

‘I’m holding guns for the IRA. Ammunition, too. And detonators. They trust me.’

Michael blinked at the nodding head.

‘That’s right. I’ve worked my way in. They think I’m small fry with a sick ma. An eejit.’

Michael’s seat yelped.

‘I keep the guns for two weeks at a time and then they move ’em. I’ve had a pistol and four rifles for a couple of days now I have. There’s a Browning automatic under your chair. And a silencer behind the boiler. You can use ’em and put ’em back and no one’ll know a thing. You can stiff the Army Council fella using one of their own tools. The ballistics will show the bullets came from a thing used by the IRA in other killings. No one’ll think it was the Brits or the UDA or whoever. And yous lot can then feed the results to the IRA through me and they’ll go crazy trying to find one of their own.’

Michael felt faint. The Army had sent him on a psychological training course to help him identify when an agent was slipping off the rails. Liam had developed none of the symptoms … but he’d obviously crashed through all the barriers without making a single noise. He’d acted outside the authority of his handler and he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

‘Father Doyle says as a people we’re in need,’ muttered Liam, adjusting his heavy glasses, his back still to the door. ‘We can’t get out of the cycle of violence and mayhem. Neighbours are killing neighbours. There’s no end to the funerals. The grief. Well, thanks to your man there, Eugene, we can do something. You can’t just fill in a bleedin’ form and leave it to some other fella. Father Doyle brought you the message, so. Now it’s over to you to do yer stuff.’

Stuff? Michael could no longer move: the cheap synthetic covering was silent. His first agent was out of control. Worse: Michael was sitting on an arms dump belonging to the Provisional IRA. The enormity of the situation crashed in upon him.

He’d been with the FRU six months. Liam had been recruited two months prior to that. They were both green though Liam was that smidgen longer in the tooth. But they’d been told some grade A1 intelligence with a fast-moving shelf life. Do your stuff? Liam – like Father Doyle – meant assassination. But that’s not the way it worked. Sure the SAS took short cuts and he’d heard rumours of a Rat Hole, a place where top handlers managed top agents, cutting corners every now and then … but no one he could think of was going to authorise the killing of Néall Ó Mórdha next Wednesday. And yet, the Republican zealot was going to be there. It was a moment of opportunity. To tilt the balance against violence. Eugene had said so, just before they shot him.

‘Are you going to answer me or what?’

Colonel Stauffenberg attempted to kill Hitler, thought Michael. He, too, was backed by a pastor … Bonhoeffer. If they’d succeeded, the war would have been cut short by a year. Thousands of lives would have been saved. If they’d killed him in 1939, there would have been no war, no holocaust.

‘Well, are you even breathing?’

Michael let his eyes come into focus. He saw Liam’s earnest face against the peeling wallpaper, his mouth half open. This petty thief was no backroom conspirator in the High Command. Father Doyle was no Bonhoeffer. And I’m no hero. Michael shuddered at the exalted grubbiness of his circumstances. The chair whined.

Nigel, what do I do?

Michael listened, still paralysed, aching to hear that Still, Small Voice.

At first he wasn’t paying proper attention. But then, in complete horror, he started tracking Liam’s words: his murderous advice, whispered just in case, for once, his mother had come downstairs and paused on her way to the kitchen.

‘You have to be calm, you know. They say a man’s life flashes before him just before he dies. Well, it’s not true.’ Liam came over and sat down in a chair by his handler. ‘He sees the future he might have had. His eyes are full of wonder … you can see it, just before you kill him. It’s the look of a newborn … and you can’t hesitate. You turn out his light.’

Michael stood up as if the devil himself had slipped into Liam’s skin. He stepped away, backing towards the dead gas fire.

‘You’ll have to practise,’ promised Liam. ‘Look into the eyes of someone you love. Try to …’

This wasn’t Liam speaking. His voice had changed. His syntax had altered. This is what the kid had heard at some other door. He’d heard an old hand teaching a new recruit how to be a trigger man. The evil had entered Liam’s lungs like Silk Cut, the poison and fumes stealing into his soul. He’d memorised the phrases, turning them over with the insight of a child learning Shakespeare.

Get Ó Mórdha, and you’ll get a peace process, sputtered Eugene from the torture chamber in Ballymurphy. Let him go and the war will just drag on.

Liam was still speaking. He’d tipped up the armchair that Michael had been using. On his knees, he felt inside the frame for the ‘tool’.

‘You can’t hesitate,’ he said, bending lower, proudly repeating to Michael what he’d learned from the master. ‘You move quickly. He has to go down … you do the job.’

Michael stared at the threadbare carpet, appalled at Liam’s metamorphosis. The weave had once been soaked in colours. Where had they gone?

‘There’s no other way,’ growled Liam, still kneeling, holding the gun by the barrel, offering the grip to Michael, his features blank and grey like the carpet. ‘All the thinking’s been done, hasn’t it? If you want peace, you’ll have to pull the trigger.’

In a kind of daze, Michael took the gun and asked for the silencer. Eyes narrowed as if he’d walked into a snowstorm, he told Liam there’d be no assassination and that they’d meet on Saturday of next week, when he’d return the weapon, modified with a tracking device in the handle. The rifles? Too big to hide. For the time being they would have to stay under Liam’s mother’s bed. His standing as an agent would be under review, along with the level of pay.

On reaching Thiepval, Michael sat down at his desk to fill in the CF but found himself staring at the page. His hand reached into his pocket and he took out the scrawled directions to a cottage in the Blue Stack Mountains. He watched his hand put it away again. He watched the other hand put the unmarked CF back in a drawer. All the while Liam’s Browning was lodged at the base of his back, the silencer standing like a stick of Brighton rock in the overcoat pocket that hung on the door.

During the night Michael tossed and turned. At one point he sat bolt upright … he could have sworn he’d heard a voice. But there was no other sound save the distant rev of a Saracen and the soft tick of his bedside clock. Instantly, as if carrying on where he’d left off, he thought of Colonel Stauffenberg, but it was Nigel’s words – the reference to Hippocrates – that came sharply to mind:

Take the risk. Make the difficult decision.

And then, mysteriously, he slept as if drugged.

By morning, when he woke, Michael wasn’t sure he knew himself. He was strangely cold, deep in his bones. The barracks – the whole of Northern Ireland – seemed a little far off; not quite within arm’s reach. Somehow he’d made a decision without articulating its content or implications. While shaving, he asked himself what lay at the forefront of his mind. It wasn’t the Troubles and the need for a solution, and it wasn’t the death of Eugene or his attempt to give it some clout. No, it was Liam Finnerty, spotty and callow. Michael wanted to change the direction of Irish history, so that people like Liam wouldn’t be needed to pry on rebels, hide their guns and take pocket money from the ancient invader. Michael dried his face, unable to see any further than the actions necessary to fulfil his objective. After dressing in casuals, he set about his duty.

First, he called Emma, saying he wouldn’t be coming home. Hush-hush. Then he put the Browning and silencer into his Billingham bag and took a train to Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, where he bought a jalopy for 450 punts, cash in hand, and left the gun in the boot. The next day, using his British passport, he flew from Shannon airport to Edinburgh, spent three nights in a hotel rehearsing his moves, and then came back again, re-entering the country on his Canadian passport. The whole back and forth was an expensive palaver. He wasn’t covering his tracks, as such, because a careful look at the plane manifests would reveal his name. No, the shift in location and identity was an attempt to separate himself from what he was about to do: to make the difficult decision, he would go away as a peacemaker and come back as a killer. The ruse helped him assume the role he’d never dreamed would be the ineluctable consequence of his coming to Belfast. And so, while the British Army officer was on leave in Scotland, the Canadian assassin headed north in a rattling Fiesta.

The Water Clock struck the hour, and Michael snapped out of his remembered holiday. After a moment’s clunking, the two figures in the bath sat up, spouting water from the pipes in their mouths. On the level below, the boys’ metal trousers dropped and they started to pee, each of them missing the toilet pan. It was funny, only Michael thought he might collapse. He turned away, thinking of Eugene and Liam, a man and a boy, both of them touts. They’d both relied on Michael to take down Néall Ó Mórdha and cut short the long war.

16

Crossing the road, Anselm and Mitch turned as one to look at the upstairs window. A net curtain fell. The monk and the musician shared a glance, each confirming to the other his strong suspicion: Doctor Goodwin did need to take a breather, but only because he wanted to move the conversation away from the person upstairs.

‘I came back to Long Melford a few months before Jenny died,’ he said, as the Land Rover juddered into life. ‘Early retirement. Zimbers hadn’t been the easiest assignment. I wanted to write and I’d been asked to do some tutoring at Cambridge. Turn right.’

Doctor Goodwin had given no indication of where he was leading them. He restricted himself to simple directions.

‘Straight on. We bought the house with family money before I was ordained. Stayed there in the holidays. Whenever I saw Jenny, I saw Peter and he never tired of asking me, when I left, how I squared a loving God with suffering. He was absolutely sincere, but I think, deep down, I, too, scandalised him, with my myths and incantations. I was a colluder … with ignorance. Stick to the A134.’

Anselm looked over the empty fields, meditating on collusion. It was a disagreeable word. The Force Research Unit. Shoot-to-kill. Stray dogs.

‘I would have liked to discuss faith with him,’ continued Doctor Goodwin. ‘Not its content, but its function as a kind of daring commitment to what we don’t fully understand, but I fear the very sight of me provoked him … to assert what he believed was true, as a man of reason and science. He didn’t seem to appreciate that so much of science rests upon a faith in evolving explanations, a readiness to question all our certainties. The recognition of doubt as shared ground in the search for truth … well, it could have brought about a very interesting discussion, for both of us. As it is, he preferred to set up things I didn’t believe and then knock them down.’

You provoked your brother, too, thought Anselm. Michael had to turn away, even after Jenny’s fall from grace. Why? Because he didn’t like Evensong any more? Or was it guilt, roused by what you represent?

‘Helen can’t forgive Peter,’ acknowledged Doctor Goodwin, careful (for professional reasons) to dissociate his name from the declaration. ‘She’s tried but one can’t escape history. There’s been no gathering in of all that’s happened. So the resentment lives on. And so it should. Because it’s honest. It’s the necessary precursor to any profound reconciliation. And, in our case, I doubt if that day will ever come to pass. He killed her, you know. We can’t prove it, but she was murdered. He knows it and we know it. Bear to the right.’

Anselm leaned on the shuddering, grimy window, thinking of Helen. She didn’t think it was Peter at all but she’d said nothing to disabuse Nigel. I have my own theory about Jenny’s death … but I can’t tell you in front of my husband.

‘What about Michael?’ asked Mitch, with a tap to the indicator. ‘Is he sure, too?’

‘I can’t speak for him,’ said Doctor Goodwin, perfunctorily. ‘As I told you, my work had kept us apart. After Jenny’s death he … he slipped further out of reach. I don’t know what he thinks.’

‘And Emma?’

‘She felt as I did, as Helen did … because there was only one person who wasn’t surprised by Jenny’s sudden death.’

‘Peter?’

‘Exactly. It was as though he’d known she was dead before she died.’

Anselm put the counter-argument, intrigued to know how Doctor Goodwin would reply: ‘But this is a man who’d argued for the importance of legislative safeguards. How could he come to kill a defenceless woman?’

‘Because when he found himself in a concrete situation that he didn’t like very much, his ideas gave out. High principles often collapse when they get in the way of a quiet life. And Jenny was the weight dragging him down. You’ll understand what I mean once I’ve told you her story … and this is where it begins, Polstead.’

Doctor Goodwin opened the farm-style front gate bearing a plaque that read ‘Morning Light’. He let Anselm and Mitch pass onto a gravel courtyard and then led them to an adjacent lawn and a neat arrangement of teak garden furniture. Ahead stood a thatched cottage, the clean lemon plaster pierced by white-framed windows of different sizes, randomly placed, it seemed, adding a capricious stroke to the builder’s seventeenth-century construction.

‘Jenny loved this place,’ said Doctor Goodwin, eyeing the warm, grey thatch. ‘She thought she had everything that was worthwhile and good … a home off a biscuit tin lid, a young son, a brilliant partner …’

Of course, there’d been no marriage. Church or civil. Peter – rightly – wouldn’t take vows or enter a civil contract inconsistent with his beliefs. But right from the word go, he’d protected Jenny financially, placing all the main assets in her name. House, car, even the contents of the house. That was his avowal of trust and commitment. His only property rights were set out in Jenny’s will.

‘Till death us do part,’ observed Mitch.

‘Absolutely.’ The doctor flicked a crisp, brown leaf off the table.

‘The career in ballet,’ invited Mitch. ‘She just let it go?’

‘Sometimes the big decisions make themselves.’ Doctor Goodwin glanced at his questioner. ‘Jenny had become a mother. Suddenly, without time to think or choose, she had this little boy in her hands. But make no mistake about this: even though she’d lived and breathed for dancing, she wanted this child and all he represented. And as the years went by, though she didn’t dance, I got the impression she was grateful; thankful for this very different life that had come with the birth of her son. She’d been surprised by contentment.’ Doctor Goodwin paused reflectively. ‘And, I’m sorry to say, distress.’

According to Emma – who’d told Helen – problems began to surface between Peter and Jenny within a year of Timothy’s birth. The age gap needn’t have been an issue, of course, but it was. Jenny was still very young, still growing up; whereas Peter was settled, mature, and knew his mind. There was a profound imbalance of experience. They were not equals – and couldn’t be. Before she could assert herself, Jenny had yet to catch up and become who she might be. But there was also the sheer intellectual disparity between them. Jenny wasn’t especially interested in the French Eighteenth-Century Argument. Or the English one. She listened to Peter’s valiant attempt to explain Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but had to cut him short to change Timothy’s nappy. Jenny had more important things to do. More pressing, at least.

‘So Peter found other company.’ The phrase was laden with meaning. ‘At the same time his media career was taking off and he was very much in demand, very much appreciated, and very much at home … when away from home.’

Some women – Doctor Goodwin supposed – can tolerate the affairs of their partner. They can even be an agreed course of diversion. But Jenny wasn’t like that; and parallel relationships, however fleeting, had never been canvassed as part of the balance of things. But this was the central problem: nothing had been canvassed or agreed. They’d been bound together by Timothy’s birth and were now trying to learn about each other and find an agreed way forward.

‘My view is that Peter simply lost sight of Jenny,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘He could no longer see the qualities that had once attracted him. She was no longer the thin, haunting beauty he’d met in a wine bar off Soho. He wasn’t interested in playgroup gossip and the tensions that come with relationships determined by children. He bought a flat in London because of his media commitments. Couldn’t make it home, especially if he was on Newsnight. In effect there was a separation, though it was never decided, never named, and was, I can assure you, the last thing Jenny wanted.’

‘And what of Timothy?’ asked Anselm.

‘Well, there’s a curious twist to the story. Because of Peter’s absence, Timothy became very close to his mother. And she to him. They were … friends. And because of the strength of this bond, I don’t think Timothy quite noticed that his father was busy elsewhere. If anything, he was proud of him … this man who was always on the radio and television with his face peering out of magazines and newspapers. The person who really lost out, of course, was Peter. He wasn’t there for Timothy in those very early years. He didn’t watch him slowly grow. He regrets that now, I suspect.’

For Michael and Emma, continued Doctor Goodwin, it was very difficult. They could only watch the years unfold. Emma was devastated. She saw Jenny lose her dancing career only to find herself alone while Peter stimulated some television producer’s assistant in White City (her phrasing). She found fault with all he did, especially his parenting after the accident, which set her apart – strangely – from Jenny. For throughout her ordeal – this sustained rejection – Jenny remained steadfast … waiting for Peter to come home.

‘And Michael?’ asked Anselm, from afar, polishing his glasses on his scapular.

‘He bottled it up. Silence was the price he paid for staying close to Jenny’s hand. He moved quietly across the room, offering fresh coffee.’

Inwardly boiling, outwardly cold, thought Anselm. Baked Alaska the wrong way round.

They ambled down a lane flanked by trees coming presently to a church of flint. Sheep were grazing in distant fields. Scattered headstones leaned in various directions as if to resist the wind. One of them was upright, still strong. Purple tulips stood in a vase beneath an inscription:

Jennifer Goodwin

1977–2008

Dance, dance wherever you may be

The doctor’s voice came very low. He was harrowed, as if he could see his god-daughter’s upturned face: ‘I was in Bristol at the time of the accident. I came to see her. And she just said, “God has left me.” She was in bed staring down at her legs. There was going to be no cure for the lame. No miracle on the Sabbath. All I could do was listen.’

He reached inside his jacket pocket and he took out the precious envelope. Giving it to Anselm, he said: ‘I went to Zimbabwe ten days later. I wrote to her every week and never got a reply. It was only after I came back to Long Melford that she put pen to paper. It’s as though she was resuming the correspondence that had never taken place, referring back to my letters of encouragement. By this stage, she’d been diagnosed with bowel cancer. She’d been given a year to live. Five months had gone.’

Anselm removed the letter. Mitch came close so that he, too, might read Jennifer’s message. The writing was small and elegant. There was no ‘Dear Uncle Nigel’. She’d written directly from her concerns:

I cannot walk. I have cancer. I am going to die.

I’ve decided to stay at home.

I won’t have all those tubes and medicines.

I won’t have different nurses holding my hand.

I won’t be on the agenda when the night shift go home and the day shift turn up.

I might be alone.

It could be painful.

I’ll be very frightened. I’m frightened already.

I might hang around on the edge of living, held down by this body of mine that doesn’t work.

Things couldn’t be much worse.

You gave me the strength to write those words. You taught me not to be ashamed of saying that things are bad and awful, when they are. You said there’s a liberty in all honesty. You said, by the same token, that I should never give up on surprises. Well, as the end nears, I thought we might talk about that.

Anselm slowly folded up the letter.

Taking it back, Doctor Goodwin took a step towards him and said, his voice shaking: ‘I never found out what she wanted to say. The letter turned up the morning after she died. It had been written a couple of days earlier. When I saw her for the last time, on her birthday, she gave no clue about what she wanted to say. It was obviously going to be something very private. The fact is, she died that night. Seven months of projected life had vanished.’

A terrible dark clarity lay between Doctor Goodwin and Anselm. Mitch was standing apart now, head down. The family history was over and the doctor’s energy was back, bristling with grief and confidence: ‘After the accident, Peter lost everything he’d worked for, everything he’d enjoyed,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘He couldn’t stay in London any more. He couldn’t take that invitation to speak at the University of Milan. He wasn’t free for Have I Got News for You. In a way, his life ended. He was as stranded as Jenny, only he could still move about. He was trapped in the house staring at a future he hadn’t chosen and didn’t want. This is the critical turning point for everyone: what do you do, faced with the loss of what once gave meaning to your life? Do you accept it or do you hit out? What was Peter’s response? Emma’s letters to Zimbabwe told the story. He refused all help. Left his friends in London. Pushed Jenny’s friends out of the picture. Slowly and carefully he narrowed down her world until it was just the two of them. He was planning to kill her.’ Doctor Goodwin turned to Anselm. ‘We didn’t see what he was doing at the time. All we saw was Jenny in the sitting room, alone with Peter … where he could say and do what he liked.’

Anselm looked at the tulips by the grave. Their purple heads were drooping. ‘Was there a gathering for Jenny’s birthday?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied Doctor Goodwin, with feeling. ‘Peter called a meeting beforehand. I couldn’t make it. But Helen went. He said he wanted to give her a special night. They discussed how best to do it and everyone agreed to bring something. He’d got the family together so they could see her for one last time … that’s what he was doing.’

‘Who was present at the party?’

‘Peter, Michael, Emma, Helen and myself … and Vincent Cooper, he dropped in and dropped out when no one else was there.’

Anselm made a querying look.

‘A friend of Peter’s. Introduced him to Jenny. Emma couldn’t stand him.’

‘Do you have his address?’

‘No … but he manages a specialist garage in Newmarket. Classic cars.’

‘Six people, then. And you’re sure no one else came to see her?’

‘Yes. I asked Timothy … very carefully.’

‘Could you draw up a chronology for me?’ asked Anselm, coldly. ‘Leave aside the conclusion you’ve reached about Peter and simply put down who saw Jenny when. I want to know who spent time with her alone … even for a matter of minutes.’

Doctor Goodwin’s expression showed he thought the exercise professional but pointless. He took out his diary and jotted down Larkwood’s fax number.

‘Ask yourself,’ he said, with a click from the ballpoint pen. ‘Why did Peter lose his head in Manchester? He found out what happens when you break the biggest convention of them all.’

As the Land Rover trundled out of Long Melford, Mitch said, ‘The GP was something of a father figure.’

‘Yes, I noted that, too.’

‘So we see him next?’

‘No.’

Doctor Ingleby had to be at the heart of the matter. He was close to Peter and he had treated Jenny. If anyone knew the truth, it was him. Which is why Anselm didn’t want to meet him until he was better prepared; armed, hopefully with information that would help him crack open any shell of secrecy.

‘Tomorrow we go to Newmarket,’ he said. ‘We go to the man who started the ball rolling between Jenny and Peter.’

Mitch said he’d trace the address and … but Anselm drifted away, towards the last written words of Jennifer Henderson. She seemed to be whispering from the grave, telling him again and again that she’d kept waiting for a surprise. She’d held on while her body gave out.

After Vespers that evening Anselm grabbed Larkwood’s archivist by the elbow.

‘Could you do some research for me?’

Bede seemed to increase in size and get redder.

‘On what subject?’

‘The Force Research Unit. A part of British Military Intelligence. Operated out of Northern Ireland during the Troubles.’

17

The sun rose cold and determined, bringing little assurance of any future warmth. Under its indifferent gaze, Michael walked out of Southwold. His mind blank, void of thought or memory, he came to the mouth of the River Blyth, where he mooched around the fishing boats and wooden buildings that sold the night’s catch. Afterwards, he took the rowing boat ferry to Walberswick, the village where he’d urged Jenny to go back to dancing. He followed the dunes inland and arrived, finally, at the place where he’d stood with his daughter facing the vast expanse of shivering marshland and heath. He sucked a sherbet lemon. It was viciously sharp. His eyes watered and he could no longer see anything clearly. He almost felt Jenny’s hand in his.

‘You’re a dancer,’ said Michael. ‘So dance.’

‘I can’t remember how.’

‘Learn again.’

‘You’ve forgotten what it took out of me, Dad. Remember Semi-detached wiping the sweat off my legs with a box full of tissues? The injuries … the swollen knees and ankles? I couldn’t go through all that again.’

Michael turned to his daughter. Her lank hair was pulled tight off her face, as she used to wear it when practising her routines. But now the explanation was carelessness. She looked old, though she was still young. Twenty-nine. She’d lost the glow of expectation that had once made her run rather than walk. She’d been battling to find a foothold in Peter’s world for too many years. Only they didn’t talk about Peter. Or his interesting friends. Or the dalliances. They were both loyal.

‘I daren’t try,’ she said, without returning her father’s gaze. She was drinking in the loneliness of Tinker’s Marshes. Birds darted just above the ragged stubble of reeds and winter grass.

‘What have you to lose?’

‘Height,’ she laughed, ironically. ‘I won’t be able to get these hooves off the ground.’

‘Then fly low, Jenny. You can still fly low.’

With money from her parents, Jenny opened a small dance school in Sudbury. ‘School’ was a somewhat grandiose term for the upstairs floor of an abandoned bus station. But the premises enjoyed a convenient location and the tuition on offer came from a winner of the Prix de Lausanne and one-time member of the Royal Ballet. A trickle of children became a respectable flow. Within three months, Jenny had made links with local schools and an amateur brass band. And then, by chance, Vincent Cooper came back into her life.

Cooper had been to the same school as Peter. He’d gone into modern dance and found regular work on the West End theatre circuit. Jenny had met him after a performance of Cats in a wine bar off Soho, the fateful and future introduction to Peter being born over a glass of Bordeaux. Going by those light-hearted remarks that disclose painful truths, it seemed that Cooper had been drawn to Jenny but had kept his distance because he was so much older, which had made Peter’s sweeping entrance into Jenny’s life all the more poignant. The man who would have protected Jenny had honourably stood back, unaware that by so doing, he’d left her exposed to the whims of a joyrider. Michael hadn’t met Cooper often, but when he had done, he’d sensed guilt and loss in his eyes. But that was all in the past. Tired of city life, Cooper had quit London for Sudbury, finding work as a dance therapist with a mental health charity. In his spare time he’d restored other people’s classic cars. But then he’d bumped into Jenny. He’d offered to help for nothing.

‘You needn’t turn up every day, Dad,’ scolded Jenny, one Saturday morning.

Jenny glanced at Cooper who was limbering up in one of those leotards that had never been worn by anyone in the Royal Anglian Regiment, save predecessors in title during the war when Suffolk’s sons were compelled to throw a cabaret in the absence of women.

‘I’m fine now,’ she added, sincerely, reaching for his hand and finding his little finger. ‘You can go. I’m having lunch with Vincent …’

Michael didn’t mind the gentle push. He ambled out of the old bus station as he’d once ambled out of Covent Garden. This was the role of the father … to usher his child from one room to the next, to help them make the great transitions, to be there, by their side, right to the end of each new departure.

‘You’re a good father,’ said Emma, chiding. ‘Me? I’d pour the coffee over Peter’s head. And as for that Cooper, dear God, he’s got a lot to answer for. He knew what Peter was like.’

‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ replied Michael. ‘No one is responsible for someone else … for what they do, for the choices they make, for what then happens. And he cares for Jenny. Always has done.’

‘He should have warned her, then.’

Despite Jenny’s growing independence, Michael still made fugitive visits to the school, but within minutes of his arrival, she nudged him away. She was up to something. He’d find out, she said. You’re in for a surprise, he told himself. Once, when leaving, Semi-detached arrived, striding past him as if she was late for a meeting with one of the Romanovs, an heir to the lost crown.

‘Nothing would surprise me,’ said Emma, serving a Marks and Spencer chicken Kiev. ‘I’m preparing myself for the worst.’

The worst happened three months later. Michael and Emma were sitting in the front row, with Timothy sandwiched between them. Peter couldn’t make it. He was playing to the gallery on Question Time and, no doubt, would afterwards be playing the field or having a Scotch with the presenter. Jenny had booked a church hall with a stage. The Sudbury Brass Band had been retained. Semi-detached stood in the wings, severe, demanding and proud. After the young dancers had shown what they’d learned, Jenny came onstage, cheeks flushed, hair drawn tightly back, her eyes dark-rimmed and blazing. Funnily enough, the overstated make-up stripped her bare of any defences. The brutal contrast in shade magnified her vulnerability, revealing Jenny for who she was behind the day-to-day endurance: someone sad; someone faithful.

‘And now, a little surprise,’ she said, voice wavering.

You’d have thought she was standing before the judges in Lausanne. Two minutes later, Jenny flew right off the platform into the trumpet section. The kids were stunned.

Michael wiped his cheeks. That sherbet lemon had really pricked his eyes. He’d lost his vision. But now everything was coming back into focus. He looked around at the river and marshland. There were old wooden row boats beached on the orange silt. The heath towards Squire’s Hill was a cold, trembling green. The sky was vast with kinks of cloud like curled locks on the head of a sleeping child. The world, he thought, is a very beautiful place. But what madness had entered Jenny’s mind? She’d returned to the dance that had won her the Gold Medal in the Théâtre de Beaulieu when she was seventeen years old. Semi-detached had helped, scaling down the choreography to bring most of the steps within reach. But not all. There’d been one – just one – that had sent Jenny into a spin.

‘You danced for me,’ whispered Michael, the shock fresh upon him. ‘To thank me for helping you pass from one room to another … into the last room in the house; the quiet room with a door that opens onto the garden.’

18

On boarding the Jelly Roll, Anselm glanced instinctively at the noticeboard. All the photographs had been rearranged. They’d been in a line, but now they formed a circle. In the middle, like a hub, was a boy whom Anselm had never seen before.

‘He’s the explanation for everything,’ said Mitch.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Timothy Goodwin, Jennifer and Peter’s son.’

‘Where did you get the photograph from?’

‘I took it.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’ Mitch had snapped him coming out of Nigel and Helen Goodwin’s house in Long Melford. ‘I wanted to know who’d been sent upstairs while we talked of murder, so I went back and waited.’

The doctor – followed discreetly by Mitch – had driven the youth to a charming house near Lavenham, a medieval building that leaned to one side as if it might fall over at any moment. Emma Goodwin had come to the door, smiling wide and woodenly.

‘While his father’s in prison, the lad’s staying with his grandparents.’

So, thought Anselm, with sudden warmth, this is Timothy. Black hair, deliberately roughed up. No sadness or strain around the intelligent eyes and finely drawn mouth. No obvious vulnerability. You wouldn’t know that his mother had died and his father was locked up in Hollesley Bay. A face that hides inner turmoil, concluded Anselm.

‘He’s the explanation,’ repeated Mitch. ‘He’s the reason Emma defended her son-in-law – though, of course, we were wrong to assume that Jenny and Peter had married. Emma spoke up for him even though he’d reduced Michael to a dumb waiter holding a coffee pot, even though Peter had abandoned her only child and daughter. And Michael turned up, too, head down, doing his best. They swallowed their rage for Timothy’s sake. They’ve swallowed their belief that their daughter was murdered, because they don’t want their grandson to know that his father killed his mother.’

Anselm made a murmur of agreement. However, he was very much aware that a key element of this simple analysis was contested. One person, a subdued woman, saw things very differently. As much as she might detest Peter Henderson, she didn’t accuse him of murder.

‘What did you make of Helen’s unfinished theory?’ asked Anselm.

‘She thinks Michael killed his own daughter. That’s why she won’t tell Nigel. And Nigel, who didn’t tell us about Michael’s breakdown, thinks his brother just might have done it, too, but he can’t begin to say so to his wife. Maybe not even to himself. But he’ll be damned if Michael takes the rap for killing Jennifer, when the person who really killed her, slowly squeezed the life out of her, even before she fell off that stage, even before the cancer set in, was Peter, the decent guy who’d kept absolutely no property for himself.’ Mitch made a wry laugh. ‘He’s a good man, the doctor. He wants someone to pay for cutting short Jenny’s life, before they could have that chat. But he knows – if his worst fears are true – that the law would condemn his brother, leaving Jenny’s husband without a stain to his name. He knows that such a result would be unjust. He finds it ungodly. So, deep in the shadows of his mind – among the regret at losing his brother and the guilt at losing Jenny – he begins to see things simply. He closes his eyes to the complications. He cuts to the quick. He believes that Peter killed Jenny – because the chances are, he did – but he removes his doubts as a daring act of faith in Michael. He remembers the mediator of his childhood; and the man who’d do anything to bring about peace at home and abroad.’

This time Anselm was genuinely impressed by Mitch’s thinking. There’d been no flights of fancy. Furthermore, Anselm – brooding among his bees – had come to an identical conclusion. Strange, really: the one member of the family whose photograph he did not possess now stood clearest in Anselm’s mind. Listening to Helen and Nigel had summoned part of Michael’s soul.

‘He loved her, in a way, like no one else,’ said Anselm, quietly. ‘She’d been his salvation, though the girl probably didn’t know it, didn’t know that her grace and talent had reached into her father’s secret crisis.’

‘Which means that when Jenny stopped dancing, something must have stopped in Michael, too.’ Mitch meant the beating of the heart. Long before Jenny’s accident, Peter had brought the taste of dying to the young woman and, through her, to Michael. She’d stopped dancing; and he’d stopped healing. Neither of them had complained – Jenny out of love for Peter, and Michael out of love for Jenny. Which made subsequent events all the more unbearable. ‘Michael must have been devastated to see her paralysed,’ said Mitch. ‘Devastated again to be told of the cancer. And what could be more devastating than to watch her being cared for by Peter.’ Mitch turned away from the noticeboard and addressed Anselm directly. ‘Helen knows all that … knows that father and daughter were bound together … so why does she think that Michael might have killed his own child?’

As if in answer Anselm pulled at Mitch’s elbow. He wasn’t going to be led astray by an enquiry into motive. People really did do strange things for the strangest of reasons.

‘Let’s talk to a man who repairs classic cars, shall we?’

Mitch parked the Land Rover near the centre of Newmarket. Emerging onto the High Street, he strode ahead, purposefully.

‘Can I question this guy?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

‘Sure.’

At the Bar a QC often entrusts a minor witness to his junior counsel, so in giving his consent Anselm felt a sudden frisson of self-importance. It was the nearest he’d get to professional distinction. And Vincent Cooper wouldn’t have that much to say …

Mitch strode on, leading the way, finally entering a narrow alley that opened onto a broad forecourt. Ahead, beneath a framed wooden sign – graceful gold lettering on a deep navy-blue background – stood the specialised business of Vincent Cooper: ‘Vintage Automotive Services’.

The work bay was open and brightly lit. In centre stage, leaning into the gaping mouth of a sleek olive-green sports car, was a man in loose cotton trousers and a baggy white T-shirt. Like a surgeon on his rounds, he shone a lamp into a dark cavity tutting concern and mirthless know-how.

‘Jaguar, E-Type,’ said Mitch, nostalgically. ‘Simply beautiful.’

The man hung the light on the bonnet and stepped away from the vehicle. His hair was straw blond, his eyes china blue. Oil stained his forehead. Wiping his hands on a rag, he glanced uncertainly at Anselm’s habit.

‘Elegance itself,’ continued Mitch, admiringly. ‘Yours?’

‘Wish she was.’

The man looked powerful without being muscle-bound. His voice was rich and moist, like cake, his tone careless, reminding Anselm of a silk who’d been expelled from Eton. He’d worn the disgrace like a pink carnation.

‘Nothing compares with her shape,’ declared Mitch, one hand drawing the shape of the long bonnet with a reaching paw.

‘No.’

‘Thing is,’ said Mitch, slipping his hands into his back pockets, ‘she wasn’t that good at taking corners. Not at speed. Something wrong with the design, there. Came off the road too easily.’

‘Depends on your idea of beauty,’ objected the mechanic. He roughed up his hair with a practised flourish. ‘Depends on how you handle the wheel. You can’t separate shape and movement … they complement each other. They make style and poise and grace.’

‘You talk like a dancer.’

‘I was, once …’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Really?’

The man laughed as if preparing himself to receive a compliment – some accolade for a past performance – but then the moment of communion snapped because Mitch’s voice turned rich and careless: ‘Yes, but – no offence – we’re not that interested in your career. We’d like to talk about Jennifer Henderson’s.’

The man continued to wipe his hands on the rag, but his face was still.

‘Yes, that’s what I said, Vincent,’ pursued Mitch, scratching the back of his head. ‘The woman who once danced for a living. Like you. My friend here has received a letter saying she was murdered. We’re not policemen. But we’ve still got questions. Questions for you, because you were there the night she died.’

Vincent Cooper kept wiping his hands, though the activity was, by now, quite without purpose. He stared at Mitch, unblinking.

‘Sure, we can talk,’ he managed, finally. ‘Let me get my coat, okay?’

‘Absolutely, I’ll just admire the Jag. Always wanted one, but in the end, I went for something strong and sturdy, just in case I hit a rhino.’

Cooper retreated to a door at the end of his workshop, throwing the rag on the floor as he stepped out of view.

Anselm didn’t know what to say. He looked at Mitch rather like Doctor Goodwin had looked at Helen. He, too, had come off the leash. After a few long, drawn-out moments Mitch checked his watch.

‘Where is he?’ asked Anselm.

‘He’s done a runner.’

‘Where to?’

‘Home, I’d imagine. We’ll just give him another couple of minutes. Time to unearth whatever he’s hidden away.’

‘You know where he lives?’

‘There’s only one Vincent Cooper in the telephone book. I tailed him from home to work this morning, just to make sure. I’d like to get there just when he thinks he’s safe and sound.’

Mitch walked briskly out of the garage. All the way back to the Land Rover he kept a few steps ahead of Anselm, a man who knew where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there.

19

Jenny was smiling to herself, toying with resistance, putting up a show. Go back to dancing? You must be crazy. But she’d listened to Michael. She’d given in. She’d found excitement and hope in her father’s mumbled suggestion. The recollection of that timeless wavering was burned into Michael’s soul. If he’d said nothing, Jenny might never have walked onstage again. There would have been no paralysis.

No one is responsible for someone else … for what they do, for the choices they make, for what then happens.

Michael had often said that to Emma, but it wasn’t always true. Michael felt responsible for Jenny’s fall. Because not so deep down, in the asking, he’d been thinking of himself, too. He’d wanted Jenny to dance again because from her first tentative steps, he’d been at her side … and being there had taken him far away from Eugene and Liam and Ó Mórdha: the ugly universe of brutal, heartless movements. He’d found some grace in a graceless world and he wanted it back.

After taking the rowing boat ferry once more across the Blyth, Michael tramped towards Southwold. But he didn’t hear the distant breathing of the sea. He didn’t see the trembling heath and wetlands. He was driving a Ford Fiesta into the Blue Stack Mountains. It was the last place he wanted to be. But he had no choice. He was preparing himself to relive another moment heavy with responsibility – this time not for what he’d said, but for what he’d done.

Michael stopped the car at the side of the road about a mile from Ó Mórdha’s cottage. He’d thought of driving closer but it was a clear night and the engine seemed eerily loud among so much silence. Once the quiet had returned to its overwhelming grandeur, Michael stepped outside. He looked up. The stars seemed to shout out their presence. The moon, reserved and full, stared down upon the butterwort and sundew. He listened and looked harder … there was no still, small voice up there. Just light. An unearthly watching light. Michael set off. The Browning was in his left jacket pocket, the silencer in the right.

There was no path, so Michael trotted through the flora, stepping on tufts of shadow as if they were stones across a deep, green sea. There were no sounds but the fall of his feet, the sigh of the grass and the suck of the bogland’s moisture. He only stopped to rest when he saw a fine strand of blue smoke spiralling high into the night sky. He’d reached dry ground. Ahead lay the cottage, this side of a molten stream. A dull orange light described a small window. There were wooden fences, marking out the land for grazing. A path wound its way towards a string of three gates. Without thinking about his next move, Michael climbed the first and ran to the second, vaulting it in a single movement. He paused, listened and took out the Browning. On clearing the third, he withdrew the silencer and screwed it slowly onto the gun. Then, like an expected guest, he walked slowly to the farmhouse. Drawing close, he could hear the stream licking the turf and stones of its banks. The sound, hungry and insistent, drowned out his approach.

Oddly enough, Michael’s meticulous preparations hadn’t included what to do once he’d reached the door so, on impulse, he simply knocked and stood waiting while his heart pumped tension through his veins. Mechanically, his thumb released the safety catch above the pistol-grip. He spread his legs, pointing the weapon at chest height in expectation and a sort of screaming readiness.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway.

The handle turned.

The door creaked open and for an instant Michael thought he was going to vomit, but the bile didn’t rise; it turned away, falling back.

Low-wattage light rolled over the hearth like a worn-out carpet.

And there was Ó Mórdha peering into the darkness, a hand shielding his eyes from the shocking power of the moon.

Time slowed. A dog was watching from the end of a musty corridor, alert and curious. A grandfather clock was ticking heavily like an old dripping tap. A tin kettle was rattling on a stove. During this absurd, drawn-out delay, Ó Mórdha’s eyes got accustomed to the shift in light. He saw the gun. The man who wanted to blow the British out of Ireland was looking at the great reckoning, come a bit too soon.

‘Can I help you?’ he said, in a childlike voice – the words that had run through his mind before he’d opened the door.

For a brief second Michael’s eyes met Ó Mórdha’s: and he saw that look of the newborn passing like candlelight behind the wide pupils, flickering with hope and naked supplication.

‘You’re dead,’ whispered Michael.

But just as Michael’s finger began to squeeze the trigger, he heard a very quiet voice … very quiet indeed, sounding within himself, its insistence more terrible than the heavy tick of the clock and the moan of the kettle:

‘Michael, Michael, Michael …’

It was a call … a voice in the night, as if to wake him … but from what? He didn’t want to know.

BAM-BAM, BAM-BAM.

Michael was running as fast as he could, racing along the dirt path back to Southwold. He stumbled and tripped over his own feet. He moaned, chased by a dreadful presence inside himself.

He’d heard that voice again.

In passing through those three gates again, one after the other, Michael hadn’t simply remembered what had happened in Donegal. He hadn’t simply relived the sensations. He’d approached, in stages, the enormity of what he’d done, passing through the barriers that separated a man from brutality – upbringing, fellow feeling, the commandments. And, in so doing, he’d opened another kind of door … and from the other side, within the darkness of his mind, he’d heard that voice as if for the first time. It had been fresh and urgent and utterly of the moment, addressing him here and now, by the Suffolk marshes, speaking to him from the pit of a numbed soul. And – to his complete horror – he realised that there was more to come than just his name. He’d almost heard the first imploding word when, desperately, he’d pulled that curtain down once more, blocking out any other sound but the staggered report of the gun.

BAM-BAM, BAM-BAM.

Michael came to a halt. He was still terrified of what he might have heard. He looked around at the bare marshland, feeling sweat cool on his brow and itch upon his back. He felt hunted and exposed. There was no escape. The voice hadn’t finished. It was going to say something else. If Michael persisted with his plan to kill Peter Henderson, then that voice was going to deliver its message.

Michael began to run again, stumbling once more in a panic. Danny the shrink had said nothing about this kind of thing. He’d encouraged Michael to talk about the past, because the past was dead and it could no longer harm him. He’d never remotely suggested that the past was very much alive; that it might speak to him. That it was more dangerous now than ever before.

20

Anselm was forced to admit that the sensation was unpleasant. He felt like a junior to Mitch the QC.

Having walked silently to the front door of Vincent Cooper’s home – an Edwardian terraced house near Newmarket railway station – Mitch took a key from his pocket, slipped it into the lock and gently pushed open the door. With caution and determination, he walked slowly down the corridor. Anselm, too late to make any protest at the conduct of his leader, shut the door and followed Mitch to the entrance of a back room. Cooper was on his knees by a hastily lit fire, prodding what appeared to be burning letters with a bold finger.

‘I wouldn’t bother, if I were you,’ said Mitch. ‘I’ve already read them.’

Cooper made a jolt and turned.

‘What the—’

‘I made copies,’ interrupted Mitch, his tone all reassurance. ‘Just in case. But carry on, if it makes you feel any better.’

Anselm was quite sure that wasn’t true, but Cooper was utterly convinced. He rose in one perfect movement, his features drained of all emotion save fear.

‘How the hell did you get in here?’

‘I opened the front door.’

‘Get out, now, or I call the police.’

‘Ask for Detective Superintendent Manning. She thinks Jenny died of bowel cancer. Maybe you’d like to tell her why she’s wrong. Why you ran away from a monk and a layman. And why you made a fire.’

Cooper swallowed hard. He looked down at the grate and the soot on his hands.

Mitch entered the room, sauntering towards a bookcase to the right of the chimney breast. Volumes on dance, ballet and theatre gave way to a silver-framed photograph of Cooper and Peter flanking Jennifer, taken long, long ago. Mitch stared at the three of them. Two men and a woman. He had that look of reckless anticipation that preceded every improvisation.

‘Did you sleep with her?’

Cooper’s jaw tightened. ‘No. We were just friends.’

Mitch angled the picture to the light.

‘Why did you leave London?’

Cooper made no reply. Mitch continued. ‘Why come to Sudbury of all places?’

No reply.

‘Why leave town shortly after Jenny died?’

No reply.

‘You were there. At Polstead.’

‘I came and went before the others even arrived.’

Mitch seemed to speak to the photograph: ‘You loved her, didn’t you? Only Peter Henderson got there first. You knew things hadn’t quite worked out and you came to Sudbury hoping to make up for lost time. Only time, once lost, can’t be found again. You ended up killing her, didn’t you?’

Cooper moved sideways with slow strides, his eyes fixed on Mitch. One arm reached out for a chair at a cluttered dining table. Slowly he pulled it back and sat down, nodding at the other side of the mess, the heap of books, the bills and unopened mail.

‘I did nothing,’ he said as Anselm and Mitch took their places. ‘Only what Jenny asked of me. No more and no less.’

The emails started coming a month or so after Jenny had returned home from hospital – sometimes during the day, at others during the night, often more than once in the same hour.

‘She asked me to kill her,’ he said, addressing Anselm. ‘Sent me a key to the back door. She wanted me to come during the night and end it all for her. Said Peter couldn’t change a lightbulb. Said I was the only person she could trust. Only person who knows what it feels like to be a dancer who can’t move her legs, can’t feel them any more … to be attached to limbs that …’ Cooper had drifted into quotation, revered territory. He stopped himself, spitting, contemptuously, ‘You know what she said. You read them.’

Anselm’s eyes moved onto Mitch, and he was quite sure that Mitch hadn’t. But Mitch wasn’t surprised in the least.

‘I stopped replying to the emails and then I got the letters.’ Cooper sat back, arms folded tight. ‘Always the same thing. Please come and kill me. In the middle of the night, when she was asleep.’

Anselm spoke quietly, like Cooper at the outset of his story.

‘Did you visit her?’

‘Yes, course I did. And it was worse … said the same stuff, wanting me to push her under.’

Cooper’s throat was enflamed. A bulging vein snaked along his neck. He seemed to swallow a stone, nodding his head to get it down.

‘Why print off the emails?’ asked Anselm. ‘Why keep the letters?’

Cooper stared back in astonishment. ‘What else could I do? She was saying to me what she couldn’t say to anyone else … not even her father … I couldn’t throw them away. This was Jenny, stripped naked. This was all that was left of her … she’d given herself to me. Those letters were all I had.’

‘Then why set light to them today?’ asked Anselm, again very low.

‘Because your friend here thinks that in the end I went and did as I was asked.’

Cooper, too, had spoken softly, his voice charged with pain and injury.

‘Well, what did you do?’ Anselm glanced at the black curls of paper in the grate. ‘You told us a few moments ago that you’d only done what Jenny asked.’

After about six months, the flow of emails and letters dried up, explained Cooper. Jenny never mentioned the subject again. She just lay there, not exactly peaceful but abstracted. Peter read her stories. They watched films together. Prior to Jenny’s accident, Peter had pretty much ignored her … not maliciously … he just didn’t see her; didn’t recognise who she was. But afterwards – in the front room of the cottage where the bed had been placed by a window – he was like a nurse and friend, a sad man, devoted to this woman who kept saying sorry. Sorry for holding him down. And then, unexpectedly, an email went ping on Cooper’s inbox. Jenny wanted to see him. She had a special favour to ask of him.

‘As soon as I arrived, Peter left the room,’ said Cooper, one hand easing the tightness in his throat. ‘And then Jenny explained … she was sorry for having asked me to kill her – she was speaking completely calmly, as if suicide was the same thing as changing the sheets or doing the washing up. She said that it wasn’t right to have asked me because it could never have been my job. The law wouldn’t help, she said. And it wouldn’t help Peter either. So they’d made a decision … a big decision, and I wasn’t to tell anybody.’

Cooper glanced at Mitch and Anselm as if wondering who deserved the focus of his attention. He settled on Mitch, the accuser.

‘They’d made an agreement that if things got so bad that Jenny couldn’t take it any more, then Peter would help her to kill herself. Their doctor was a guy they could trust. No one would ever ask any questions.’

‘When was this, in relation to the cancer?’ asked Anselm, removing his glasses to blink at the mess in front of him.

‘A few months before the diagnosis.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know … three, four.’

Anselm spoke to himself, his eyes raised high. ‘A long time after the paralysis.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Cooper, unthinkingly, not caring about dates or times. ‘She was completely resolved. Relieved, even. Like someone who can hear a train coming on the Northern Line.’

‘What did she ask you to do?’ asked Mitch.

‘Make an Exit Mask.’

‘A what?’ interjected Anselm, still brooding on the timings, still looking upwards.

‘An Exit Mask. She’d researched it on the internet. She’d seen videos on YouTube showing you how to make one … and a demonstration by an Australian on how to use it. I looked, too, later. Couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like Blue Peter for grown-ups … “Here’s one I made earlier.” Peter had printed off the assembly instructions and put some money in an envelope.’

In accordance with Jenny’s wishes, Cooper had bought a helium gas cylinder from Amazon (designed to fill kids’ balloons), some electrician’s tape from B&Q, a roll of large freezer bags from Sainsbury’s and a long rubber tube from a home brew centre.

‘The idea is that you put a bag on your forehead, fill it with helium and then …’

Cooper looked helplessly at his two inquisitors. The anger had gone. He didn’t look so strong any more.

‘You made this thing?’ asked Anselm, nonchalantly, restoring his glasses.

‘What else could I do?’

‘Refuse.’

‘They’d have made it somehow. I just helped them do what they didn’t want to do … not what they couldn’t do. And anyway, Jenny wasn’t committed to using it, just having it ready … a parachute, she called it.’

‘Okay, having made the mask, what did you do with it?’ asked Mitch.

‘Just a moment,’ interjected Anselm. ‘Did Jenny say anything else about her motives for planning her suicide, apart from things getting too bad?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Cooper as if he’d left out something obvious and important. ‘The son. Her boy. Timothy. She felt she had nothing to offer him any more. She didn’t want him to watch her get frightened and struggle.’

‘No,’ said Anselm, ponderously.

‘That’s why she didn’t want to go to Switzerland or Holland, where they pull the plug and it’s all legal. She’d have to explain to Timothy why she had to end it all. She didn’t want to … she couldn’t. So I did as she asked.’

‘Odd that, really, when you wouldn’t do it before.’

‘Because before she was depressed, whereas this time she’d thought it through, carefully. Like I told you: she was real calm. Completely sure of herself. All the thinking had been done.’

Anselm made a nod. ‘So off you went to B&Q.’

When Cooper brought the completed Exit Mask to Jenny, she told him to leave it in a small potting shed at the end of the garden. The plan was this: if Jenny ever made the final decision to end her life, Peter would simply collect the mask and help Jenny to use it. Afterwards, he wasn’t to worry about getting rid of the evidence. All he had to do was put it back in the shed. When Cooper heard that Jenny had died, he was to come the same day and collect the mask, tube and cylinder and dispose of them.

‘She was protecting and helping Peter,’ explained Cooper, pushing aside more of the mess, and leaning on the table. ‘The doctor would look the other way, but if someone still had concerns they’d never find any evidence. The shed would be empty. Peter hadn’t bought anything. No one in the home brew centre would remember his face. Amazon hadn’t sent him any helium. It had all been kept simple, for him. He didn’t have to make anything; he didn’t have to dispose of anything. All he had to do was open that door on a plane that was losing height and falling to pieces in mid-air.’

Mitch then said, ‘But she was being smart, too, in asking for your help.’

‘Unless it was Peter’s idea,’ interjected Anselm, who’d reached the same conclusion on smartness.

‘How?’ snapped Cooper, resenting the hint of manipulation.

‘You already knew what Jenny was thinking and why,’ explained Mitch. ‘If she’d suddenly died, you might have said something to the police. You’d wanted to keep her alive. So you’d have told them your suspicions. And that would have led to an investigation and maybe Peter’s arrest. By involving you in the planning she tidied up those previous emails and letters.’

‘Or Peter did.’ Once again Anselm politely completed the diagram of due inference.

‘Jenny didn’t use me,’ explained Cooper, wearily. ‘She came to me because she knew I understood her. More than anyone. You name them … Peter, Emma, the doctor and, yes, even Michael, her father, none of them could even begin to understand her like I did, to understand what she felt like after her legs had been taken away from her. She didn’t need to explain a damn thing to me. Not a thing.’

‘Because you’re a dancer?’ offered Anselm.

‘Because I’m a dancer.’

‘Not now you’re not,’ threw in Mitch, dousing Cooper’s emotion. ‘You’re a mechanic who fixes second-hand cars that run on four star. What did you do with the mask after Jenny died?’

Cooper appeared suddenly stunned.

‘You kept it, didn’t you?’ whispered Mitch. ‘Like the emails and letters, you couldn’t get rid of anything that had come from her mind or hand. No wonder you couldn’t throw away the bag that contained her last breath. Where is it, Vincent?’

A flush of grief and surrender changed Cooper’s face. He stood up and left the room. A door opened and closed. Moments later he returned holding a white plastic carrier bag from Curry’s. He laid it warily on the table among the detritus of his life offstage.

‘You can’t prove she used it,’ he said, barely audible. ‘You can’t prove it killed her. Not now. You’re too late. You can only prove that I made it.’

‘Quite right, Mr Cooper,’ agreed Anselm. He stood up and gingerly opened the carrier bag, gazing intently at the homemade suicide kit: a crumpled freezer bag for those tasty leftovers, an orange rubber pipe to siphon off the young beer and a small gas cylinder with a picture of balloons on the side. ‘You’re all as safe as houses.’

‘A piece of advice, though, Vincent,’ added Mitch. ‘Don’t hide your spares under a plant pot. You’ll only invalidate your insurance.’ With a wink, he tossed the front door key high over the table.

Cooper didn’t move at first. He just glared at the thief who’d stolen Jenny’s secrets. Then, without even blinking, he snatched the key from the air, his arm following the sharp and savage arc of a punch.

Anselm sat in the passenger seat of the Land Rover with the carrier bag on his lap, astounded by Mitch’s performance. He’d sensed that Jenny’s friend was disconsolate. He’d seen into a grieving man’s vulnerability and then stunned him, brutally and without hesitation. It’s what QCs did. It’s why Anselm would never have made the grade. He looked at the plastic bag with distaste, wondering if the mask would fit Bede. For the time being he’d store it in the shed by his hives and later he’d—

‘I think we ought to go to the club,’ said Mitch, puncturing Anselm’s meditation. ‘I’d like to talk to you. On my patch.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

Anselm looked aside. Mitch wasn’t simply proposing a night of merriment. Far from it, he was showing more purpose and determination, still very much a man who knew where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there.

21

Michael ran and ran. The wind brought the sound of the sea over the Denes. Heavy tufts of grass struggled against the grip of the sand. Seagulls swooped low, skimming the track ahead, their wings outstretched and long and still …

‘She’ll never walk again,’ Emma said once more.

She’d murmured the phrase repeatedly ever since she and Michael had left the ward. Down the hospital corridors and stairs, she’d been speaking to herself, and then to Michael and then, it seemed, to God. She’d moved from recognition to shock and then complaint; from disbelief to anger and despair.

‘She’ll never walk again.’

All the consultants had agreed. They’d all come in with that quiet, careful tread, guiltily moving one foot in front of the other. They’d all spoken in that soft reassuring voice when they might as well have shouted out the shattering implications of their message. They’d all taken occasional refuge in technical language, trying to distance themselves from the meaning of their own words, to soften their impact on Jenny … wide-eyed Jenny, lying absolutely still, visibly crushed by the weight of their knowledge and certainty. Then, one by one, they’d walked out again.

‘Why on earth did she go back to dancing?’ pleaded Emma.

Michael gripped the steering wheel and kept his eyes on the rear lights ahead. It was raining hard. A misty spray obscured the camber of the road. Headlights appeared like dull moons. Emma knew very well that a return to the stage had been Michael’s idea. He’d told her. And now she wanted to be angry with him, only she knew that wouldn’t be fair. But that left her rage and unhappiness internalised and without direction. It could only harm her. Without for one second minimising Jenny’s situation, Michael realised that everybody was gravely injured now. That everyone was paralysed in some way, unable to move into the future.

‘She’ll never walk again.’

Emma spoke as if she hadn’t said it before. They were silent for a while, appalled by the words. The tyres hissed upon the bitumen. The wipers flapped back and forth. The red lights flickered in the haze.

‘Michael … did you hear what Jenny said?’

Emma didn’t need to say any more. Michael knew what she was talking about. Jenny had grabbed her father by the arms and almost hauled herself upright, straining forward, bringing blood to swell her face and lips. The hospital bed had creaked and clanked.

‘My life is over … I’ve nothing left … I can’t move … I’ll never take Timothy to school again. I’ll never collect him … or put his meals upon the table. I’ll never put him to bed, or get him up. I’ll never go to him if he gets scared in the night. What can I show him about life? What can I teach him? What special message have I got for him … something to recite and remember me by … after I’m gone?’

Michael had said, ‘No, no, no, no, no …’ gently lowering her onto the bed. Choking and inadequate, he hadn’t been able to reach her desolation. He’d had nothing honest to say. Jenny’s head had turned to one side upon the pillow. Life and warmth had ebbed away from her fingers. In an awful parody of her legs, they’d seemed incapable of further movement. Her long black lashes had slowly closed and opened again, closed once more and opened again. She’d been staring at the rest of her life.

‘The thing is … Jenny’s right,’ said Emma, her face averted to the misted window. ‘Her life is over. What has she got to live for now? If she was an animal, I’d gently put her down. It would be the right thing to do.’

‘But she’s not,’ whispered Michael. ‘She’s our girl.’

Emma just looked at the spray from the oncoming traffic. But her comment – brutal and sincere – worked like leaven between them. Everything that neither of them would ever dare to think or say foamed quietly in the darkness of their minds. It was true: no animal would ever be left to suffer like that. Emma always told a crying child that putting a whimpering pet to sleep was part of loving; that ending a life was sometimes the only way to be compassionate. But, paradoxically, those words of comfort just made Jenny’s situation all the worse, for she was worth so much more than any wounded spaniel. And, being worth so much more, she would have to accept the suffering that comes with being human. She was entitled to a very different kind of compassion … only for the moment, in the aftermath, Michael didn’t know what it was; and neither did Emma. They were driving home in the pouring rain, desperately asking themselves what could be done and what they might do. Neither of them dared to say what they were thinking … that the answer might be ‘Nothing’. ‘We’ll find a way,’ said Michael, through his teeth, refusing to give up. ‘We’ll help Jenny get to the other side of what’s happened … somehow. We’ll do whatever’s necessary.’

Michael had found something honest to say, even though it didn’t quite mean anything. But he’d expressed all his fervour and protest and love. This accident would not defeat his hope.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Emma, reaching out and taking one of Michael’s hands. She was crying now, hating herself for being angry with the man who’d only ever wanted the best for his daughter. ‘We’ll find a way and do what’s necessary, regardless.’

Michael ran and ran while the gulls screamed high overhead, gliding across a cloudless sky. Emma had spoken about killing as a duty. She’d spoken of animals, but Michael, privately, had known all along that in certain circumstances, it could apply to a human being. He’d learned that lesson from Eugene, long before Jenny had fallen off the stage. Every so often the configuration of events called out for radical action – the type of action one would never dream of taking; but it was necessary, to resolve a crisis. Sometimes you had to think beyond the troubled voice of your conscience.

The wind brought the sound of the sea over the Denes and the thick grass struggled against the grip of the sand.

22

Mitch’s club was situated in a long narrow cellar beneath a hairdresser’s and, appropriately, an office belonging to an insurance company. The walls were red and the ceiling, supported by narrow iron pillars, was black. Small tables huddled side by side, cramped between the low stage at one end and the glittering bar at the other. Anselm had not walked down those basement stairs for years. The last time he’d paid at the door as a barrister; now he was a monk, who got in for free. Inside, nothing had changed. Not even the decor. It had, in fact, become suitably tatty. All that shone were the bottles and glasses and the instruments under the bright lights. It was going to be a good night. The place was crowded. A couple of sax players were knocking out Anselm’s kind of tune.

‘Never thought I’d see you here again,’ said Mitch, smiling.

‘Me neither.’

The Prior had approved of the outing because Anselm felt sure that Mitch had something to say about the missing £287,458.16; that his foray into truth-finding had already prompted a desire to confess. Anselm wasn’t entirely surprised. After a couple of weeks all novices tend to break down and spill out the life story they’ve never told anyone before. It’s part of the reconstruction process. And Anselm was ready to listen. They were sitting at Mitch’s private table in a corner by the wall. He was leaning forward, confidentially.

‘I know who wrote that letter to your Prior.’

‘Do you?’ replied Anselm, surprised. He’d expected a different kind of opener.

‘Yes. Helen Goodwin.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘She claimed not to have remembered the article in the Sunday Times. Nigel had told her about it. It’s memorable. You’re memorable.’

Anselm shook his head. ‘The letter blames Peter.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Mitch nodded. ‘She set you on the path. She knew you’d go to the police. She knew Manning would tell you about Nigel’s allegations. She knew you’d come to Long Melford. She was expecting you. Gambled you’d come when Nigel was out. Told you what she’d never write down … only Nigel came home and cut her short.’

‘Blaming Peter was just a lure so she could hint it was Michael?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm was impressed again. Mitch’s improvisations were getting better.

‘But that means the letter wasn’t written by Peter Henderson’s accomplice.’

‘True.’

‘Which would also mean that no one is setting out to kill him.’ Mitch thought for a long moment … and then smiled. Anselm had been right all along: it wasn’t that type of case. But he didn’t say so. He was thinking some more, watched expectantly by Anselm. The sax duo was playing ‘Quiet Please’, a Sidney Bechet curtain-raiser.

‘So …’ began Mitch, ‘Helen says Jenny was killed by Michael and Cooper says Jenny was killed by Peter. Either way, it’s a mercy killing and not a murder.’

Anselm understood now.

This was Mitch’s concern. Not the theft.

This was why Mitch had tailed Vincent Cooper and questioned him with ruthless persistence, lying about the private letters he hadn’t in fact known about. On reading Jenny’s desperate note to Nigel the day before, Mitch had come to a few stark conclusions and he’d decided that Anselm should know them, because they had certain implications.

‘If you proceed with this investigation,’ he warned, ‘you’ll bring the house down on a family that’s managed to build a fragile peace. No one needs to know what Jenny decided. It was her life … and we have to respect her choice.’

Anselm nudged his glasses. He was, of course, aware that assisted suicide was a substitute explanation for the allegation of murder. He’d been surprised that Mitch hadn’t mentioned the matter upon leaving Nigel Goodwin. It had been an obvious inference to make. Rather than speak his mind, though, Mitch had charged after Vincent Cooper, evidently intending to bring the investigation to a sort of crisis point … between himself and Anselm.

An ambience of contentment had taken over the club. The sax players had stopped for a quick break and everyone was chatting and drinking, the hubbub creating an envelope of privacy around Anselm and Mitch. No one was listening to them. No one spotted their seriousness.

‘We don’t know what Jenny was going to say to Nigel,’ said Anselm, quietly.

‘We can guess. She’d lost hope. She was scared of dying. She’d given up on surprises. She wanted out.’

‘Wrong, she wanted to speak to Nigel,’ insisted Anselm. ‘And she didn’t … because someone killed her first.’

‘With her consent.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Vincent Cooper said so.’

Anselm came closer to the table. They were eye to eye now.

‘What if Peter made Jenny want to die? What if suicide was his solution to her problem? What if Jenny didn’t have the wherewithal, intellectually and spiritually, to defend herself? What if Jenny was bullied into dying?’

‘We’ll never know.’

‘What if Peter made it look as though Jenny had chosen death, when in fact she’d longed to live?’

‘We’ll never know.’

‘What if this fragile peace rests upon the most serious of crimes?’

‘Maybe it doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Well, I think it does.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if Jenny wanted to live then she was entitled to live. It was her life … a messy, broken, failing life, but it was hers and no one else’s. If someone took it away, then Jenny was simply executed. No family can live with that kind of secret, not in the long run. Windows get broken in Manchester and children end up in hospital.’

The two sax players had threaded their way back to the stage, drinks in hand. They were smiling, enjoyed the friendly acclaim. Someone called out for ‘After You’ve Gone’. The melody struck up and feet began to tap out the beat. It was a great song, one of Anselm’s favourites; it turned him suddenly wistful and Mitch couldn’t help but soften.

‘It’s the letter to your Prior, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely. It’s the stumbling block. The author spoke for Jenny. That’s why we have to listen. It’s why we have to keep going and find out what really happened.’

‘Maybe they got it wrong … maybe they didn’t know what she was really thinking and feeling, deep down inside.’

‘And maybe they did.’ Unable to stop himself, Anselm turned away from Mitch towards the stage, drawn by the delicious hint of melancholy in the refrain. ‘Maybe they’re the one person who knew the secrets of Jenny’s heart … why else would they write to a monk rather than the police? It’s their patch, isn’t it?’

To loud clapping, Mitch raised his trumpet. The three musicians looked at each other, wondering what they might play. In the end, they took turns to choose, and Anselm had to smile because Mitch kept sending him messages through the song titles, warning him about the investigation. ‘There’s Going to Be the Devil to Pay’ … ‘You Won’t Be Satisfied’ … ‘Don’t Blame Me’. They were at ease again, speaking for the first time about the meaning of life and death; keeping well away from the deeper questions on bop, bebop and the avant-garde. At intervals a young woman with a pierced nose and tattooed fingers brought over bottled beer until, towards midnight, the club closed. The guests left. The musicians got paid. The bar staff went home. But Mitch remained, and so did Anselm. They sat at the corner table, sipping soda water, talking of their very different lives: Anselm of the monastery, Mitch of the club. They found common ground on the subject of oddballs, be they monks or musicians. There were only two truly sensible people left in the world, and they were both seated here in a deserted jazz club.

‘It’s not just the letter, is it?’ asked Mitch. ‘There’s something else. Why are you so determined to look beyond the evidence of Vincent Cooper?’

Anselm was too tired to resist. ‘Because I met her once.’

Mitch gave a slight start and Anselm nodded, ready to explain.

‘I was filling in for a hospital chaplain. She was in for some routine tests. A nurse suggested I drop by. I did.’

‘You met Peter?’

‘No.’

Anselm hadn’t stayed long because it was late. ‘She told me she had cancer. What can you say?’

And Anselm, sipping his soda water, told Mitch how cancer had eaten into his mother’s life and those of her husband and children. No one had been equipped to deal with the strain. The illness had shown up everybody’s failings; placed them under pressure and helped them fail one another. There’d been a lot of confusion because no one had been prepared to accept the future. Anselm, however, had tried and been surprised.

‘I was nine, very young, like Timothy. I didn’t resist. Helped her go, if you like. We talked about life, how good it was, how each morning was mysterious and wonderful … but that now it was evening and the succession of days would come to an end. Because we were honest with each other, we survived. I was shattered and she was shattered. But she didn’t try to hold onto life and I didn’t ask her to stay. Each remaining moment became charged with meaning … there were even times of ecstasy, impossible to anticipate … they just came like a hot flush … which is why I feel for Timothy. We’ve both stood by a bed wondering what to make of death, wondering what to make of the confusion downstairs …’

Mitch was turning his glass in circles on a beer mat. He smiled sadness and gratitude for having been trusted. But there was a focus to his stare, something objective and dispassionate.

‘You can’t make this investigation into Jenny Henderson’s death an attempt to reproduce your own history.’ Mitch waited, letting his words sink in. ‘You can’t save this other family by … imposing your understanding of what it is to face a crisis. Maybe Jenny saw things differently to your mother. Maybe she wanted to help Timothy differently.’

Anselm sipped some water. He knew there was more to come; and he knew already what Mitch was going to say. The musician had come full circle, arriving at the point he’d wanted to make when suggesting they meet ‘on his patch’.

‘Anselm, I have to be honest. I think the investigation should stop right now. I’ll stay on board for as long as I can. However … if Vincent Cooper’s story is broadly confirmed, then I’m off. You’re on your own. You see, I, too, feel for Timothy. I, too, have stood by a hospital bed. I, too, know about accidents. And I’m not going to destroy the peace that was achieved just because it rests upon a crime, committed because the law didn’t recognise the scale of the predicament. I’m not going to help you make a criminal out of someone who did what you’d never dream of doing … just because you once discovered ecstasy when they’d only found despair.’

Mitch pulled into Larkwood just as the bell for Lauds was ringing. They’d been up all night. Curiously – perhaps because each had spoken their mind – they were very much at ease with one another, even though their working relationship was now tenuous. So when Anselm said he proposed to meet Doctor Ingleby alone, Mitch knew there was no cloaked rebuff. Handling Peter Henderson’s alleged accomplice would be a delicate matter and two onto one could only be confrontational.

As Anselm got out of the Land Rover, Mitch said: ‘There’s just one thing that puzzles me about you.’

‘Is that all?’

‘You’re reluctant to accept Cooper’s evidence that Jenny wanted to die, even though we’ve got the Exit Mask … and yet you believe what he says about Peter … that he was involved in killing her. Why? Why not reject Cooper’s story altogether? Why not drop Peter from the frame and forget the letter to your Prior? What about Michael?’

Anselm wrapped his cloak around his shoulders, considering the matter. It was a good point. There was, indeed, a glaring inconsistency in his position.

‘Instinct, I suppose,’ he replied, aware that his explanation was on the thin side. ‘I just can’t imagine a father killing his daughter. It’s … unnatural. And anyway, he adored her. It’s inconceivable.’

The thought remained with Anselm as he shuffled into his stall. The bells fell silent, leaving a deep echo to swim through the nave and over the fields, linking the Priory to the world with a fading call to rise from sleep. Into the emerging silence, Father Jerome’s hesitant voice intoned the ancient words that greeted every dawn at Larkwood:

‘Deus in adjutorium meum intende.’

O God, come to my aid. After the communal response, the rest was in English, but Anselm didn’t get that far. He was no longer that which in days of old moved earth and heaven (to quote Tennyson). He’d lost his stamina. Before the short refrain was even complete, Anselm had dropped oars and fallen fast asleep.

23

Michael could feel the capped trader watch him with interest. The old man sidled from behind the counter, coming closer to see if he could believe his eyes. The customer was checking the sprouts; pressing them with a thumb to see if they were soft inside, like a ripe melon.

‘They’re all nice and firm,’ he said, confidently.

‘I can feel that,’ replied Michael, sinking a nail into the skin.

How much can someone take before he tells you what you want to hear? Michael was thinking of Eugene. How much pressure is necessary before a man begs you to kill him? Before he chooses death?

‘Did I tell you about my supplier in Bramfield?’ asked the trader. ‘He talks to ’em. Swears it makes a difference. Can’t see the point.’

‘Me neither.’

‘They’ll never answer back.’

‘No, they won’t.’

‘And if they did, what would they say? “Please don’t eat me.” That would make life very complicated … for him, for me, for you. Best thing would be not to listen, but then you wouldn’t feel right when you threw ’em in a pan of cold water. Turned the heat on.’

‘You sure wouldn’t.’

‘Best thing is not to think about it. What you don’t know can’t harm you. Of course, if you do think about it, a sprout looks like a brain, a very small one, but that’s as far as it goes. You can talk till the cows come home and it won’t understand a thing. Mind you, it just shows you how important appearances can be. My Christine, she can’t eat ’em. Can you guess why?’

‘They look like brains.’

‘Exactly. Can’t shove her fork in without saying “Ouch”.’

Michael picked two sprouts and dropped them in a brown paper bag.

‘The IRA didn’t like them either,’ he said, in a far-away voice.

‘What?’

‘Brussels sprouts.’

The old man took off his tweedy cap and wiped his brow, thinking hard.

‘The Irish Republican Army hated sprouts?’

‘Yes.’

‘What … the whole lot of ’em? All those bombers and gunmen?’

‘Without exception.’

The old trader slapped his thigh with his cap, knitting his brows in consternation. Christine had nothing in common with Irish terrorists. She was from Cardiff. So a sprout having the appearance of a brain had nothing to do with it. Then he had a flash of English imperial insight: the Irish … they weren’t that clever.

‘Because they thought sprouts might talk back?’ he suggested, not too sure of himself.

Michael moved along the trestle to a crate of large green cabbages. He glanced back at the old man, pitying his confusion, charmed and wounded by his simplicity.

‘I think we’re beginning to understand one another, you and I,’ said Michael, envying his innocence. ‘“Brussels sprouts” was rhyming slang for “touts”. Informers. People who fed intelligence to the British Security Services. When the IRA caught them they weren’t very nice about it. Tied them up and told them to talk. If they confessed, they were shot; if they kept quiet, they were tortured to death. Not much of a choice.’

‘That’s what I call hot water.’

‘No, cold, actually.’

Michael handed the cabbage to the trader, along with the two sprouts in the paper bag.

‘In fairness, sometimes they made an exception. They’d let someone go … a kid for example. But you’d need a pretty convincing story. How much for the veg?’

The old man’s face showed his fresh bewilderment at his customer’s latest bout of mysterious words and strange choices; the growing enigma of a man he’d thought to be one of the remaining Few: a simple Englishman.

‘Anything for the back?’

‘No thanks.’ Michael paused. ‘You won’t be seeing me again.’

‘You’re off?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where to?’

‘The continent.’

The old man nodded as if he should have known all along.

‘The cabbage is forty-five pence,’ he said. ‘As for the sprouts, you can ’ave ’em.’

Michael put the vegetables in the boot of his Citroën and then took the A12 towards Ipswich, crossing the River Orwell south of the city. He then made for Pin Mill, the riverside hamlet where Arthur Ransome had situated We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea and where Jenny had calmly asked Michael to kill her. Having parked the car by a pub, he went to the exact spot where the conversation had taken place: an isolated grassy bank overlooking the salty, winding river. Then, as now, the tide was out. The Orwell had withdrawn. A group of barges with brick-red sails, all huddled together, had been lowered onto the soft bed of ochre sand. Ragged sheets of green algae lay around them like skins, sloughed off by some strange sea creature. Michael listened to the breeze: Jenny was speaking again.

‘Seeing them there, tied together, ropes hanging in the sand … makes you wonder if the tide will ever come back.’ She was pointing at the barges, sitting in her wheelchair. ‘Or will they stay like that, waiting, waiting, waiting, sinking slowly into the sand, slowly falling apart.’

‘The tide will come in, Jenny,’ said Michael, eyes squeezed tight shut.

He was sitting on the grass beside his daughter in the shade of wide oaks and slender alders. They’d come for a jaunt after a follow-up consultation at the hospital, six weeks after Jenny had returned to Polstead.

‘And when it does, they will float again,’ said Jenny. ‘They will rise slowly off the sand. They’ll drop their sails, catch the wind and sail out to sea, away from the wrecks and rusting—’

‘The tide comes in,’ interrupted Michael. ‘It always comes in.’

‘But not for me, Daddy. Not for me. Because I can’t move.’

Michael ground his teeth, screaming inside his exploding mind.

‘Even if I ever felt better again, wanted to smile again, I’m still stranded. And so is everyone around me. None of the barges with their big sails can head off anywhere without having to head back here again. Someone always has to stay behind, moored to me.’

‘I’ll stay, my darling.’

‘I know, Dad. You’re always there. But it’s not enough. You’re not enough. I’m sorry, but you’re not. I want to go out to sea again, on my own. That’s what it is to be alive, to feel alive and love living. It’s to be free, moving in and out with the tide.’

They were both crying – the most awful, calm, brutally simple tears. Michael’s hand reached out for Jenny’s and when she took it, he realised, with shame and self-hatred, that it was she who was keeping him afloat and not the other way around. She was by his side in this moment of unbearable anguish. He was going under and Jenny was holding tight, leaning over the edge of her wheelchair.

‘Dad, do you remember when I was a child, I sometimes tied my laces too tight?’

Michael sniffed and nodded.

‘I couldn’t undo the knots and my feet were swollen?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘You’d carefully pull the laces apart?’

‘Yes, by a basin of cold water. And when you were free, you’d stick both feet in and sigh.’

‘That’s right. It felt lovely, really lovely. A relief.’

Jenny looked down at Michael from her chair, black hair held loose in a bun, her strong black eyebrows arched with a curious knowing. She had a slightly tilted smile.

‘Would you do it now?’

Michael frowned. He didn’t want to say what had almost tripped off the end of his tongue – ‘But you can’t feel anything’ – so he deepened his frown as if this unsettling exchange were some parlour game of wits and illusion.

‘I don’t mean here, this minute. But some time when I’m not looking.’

‘Darling, I’m just not following you.’ He shifted around onto his knees.

‘Untie the knots, Daddy. Let me go. No one will miss me.’

Michael gazed into his daughter’s slightly open mouth, not believing that he’d heard such words, words that had entered the pulp of his soul with the heat of a radiant poker.

‘No, no, no, Jenny, no, no, you can’t think like that … ever, never, not now, not tomorrow, not—’

‘Daddy, I’m trapped in here’ – she touched her legs as if they didn’t belong to her – ‘like I was trapped in those shoes. Take them off, like you used to; let me feel that cool, refreshing water. Let me walk away.’

She nodded at Michael as if she were reassuring a frightened child just before she turned out the bedroom light. Then she moved her serene face towards the family of boats. It was as though parent and child had made some sort of pact, only Michael hadn’t had his full say. Which was how it was meant to be. He had no say. None at all. Nor did Emma, or Peter. Or Nigel and Helen. Not even Timothy. This was about Jenny’s life. Her independent, sovereign existence. All at once, his heart seemed to tear open and a hole appeared, vanishing into some darkness of unimaginable dread: if he didn’t do what Jenny was asking, then someone else might. Out of a love and kindness seen to be greater than his own.

The rigging and cables rattled against the tall masts. Small triangular flags fluttered. The sea wind was bringing home the tide.

On the way back to Southwold, Michael purchased a box of toothpicks from a corner shop, surprising the girl on the counter when he asked for a plastic bag. Half an hour later he bought an old armchair from a second-hand furniture dealer whose shabby goods had spilled onto the pavement. After a lot of manoeuvring, he managed to fit the chair in the back of the car, on top of the tarpaulin, the cabbage and the sprouts. The garrulous dealer gave Michael some string because, try as they might, they couldn’t quite shut the boot.

24

Securing an appointment with Doctor Bryan Ingleby was easier and quicker than Anselm expected. The mention of Jennifer Henderson’s death no doubt accelerated matters because after a long, freezing pause, the general practitioner proposed they meet the following day when he would be visiting the Grove, a hospice in Leiston. He suggested they convene at the nearby abbey ruin – a place where they were likely to be afforded both seclusion and privacy. That arrangement in hand, Anselm put down the phone and settled his gaze upon the expectant Sylvester.

‘How’s it going, then?’ said the old man, with a conspiratorial grimace.

‘What?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do.’

The Nightwatchman beckoned Anselm closer with a bony finger. ‘I’m the only monk in Larkwood who knows how to load, fire and clean a Lee Enfield .303,’ he confessed, his frail white hair almost standing on end with menace. ‘The kickback’s a real shock first time round. Almost knocked my shoulder out of joint. But you get used to it. You have to lean into the bang. Left foot forward, head down and lean—’

‘It’s not that kind of case, Lantern Bearer,’ said Anselm, in a calming voice. ‘But if I need armed protection, I’ll come to you.’

‘I know about knives, too.’

‘I know.’

‘And hand to hand.’

‘Like I said, it’s not that sort of investigation.’ Anselm regarded the man fondly. If he’d ever fired a .303, it was in his imagination; the knives and hand to hand had been boy’s stuff under canvas. ‘The battle is in the mind, Leaping Wolf,’ he said. ‘The dangers are in the shadows. Among what people think or might have thought. Whether the light should be shone towards the darker corners.’

Larkwood’s Doorkeeper sniffed.

‘Doesn’t sound much fun.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Well, remember what Baden-Powell used to say: “Be prepared.” Anything can happen. And it usually does. Especially to the unwary.’

Anselm made a low bow of obeisance and shambled off, heading along the West Walk side of the cloister. Reaching the end, he tugged open the arched Processional Door that led to the church. Entering the cool of the nave, he breathed in the scent of wax and fading incense.

‘Be prepared,’ he said, dryly.

It wasn’t a bad motto. Pulling up his cowl, Anselm slid onto a bench.

He hadn’t been prepared. Either for Mitch’s warning or his ultimatum. The jazzman seemed to speak again, this time out of the vast silence.

What if Jenny chose to die … why should you expose the fact and expose the man who helped her? Think of the son, Timothy. Does he need to know? And even if she was murdered, pushed under before the cancer took her to pieces, does it matter any more? What’s the point of finding out? Because life’s sacred? Because someone always has to pay if a rule gets broken, regardless of the circumstances?

These were Mitch’s questions and Anselm would have to reply at some point. But it wasn’t now. His approach was to find out the facts first and then appraise the implications afterwards. Mitch was operating the wrong way round: working backwards from what he feared; he didn’t want to know the facts. But those very facts, never presented to the court, had put Peter Henderson behind bars. They couldn’t be ignored, even if Mitch thought it best to look the other way.

‘Help me.’

Anselm listened to the quiet echo of his voice in the empty nave.

‘Help me find out who killed Jennifer Henderson.’

The smell of beeswax was warming. Incense lingered from the night before. Colours of evening streamed through the stained glass, sending paths of red and blue light along the shining flagstones.

‘Help me find out what happened and why.’

Jenny had wanted to talk with the pastor in the family, a man whose job it was to speak out for hope in the worst of situations. She’d died before she could open her mouth.

‘Exauce-moi.’

Anselm often slipped into French if he wasn’t sure he’d been heard. His voice was so quiet it barely sounded outside his cowl. He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

A door opened and shut.

Someone tiptoed up the nave. A heavy presence sat down beside Anselm. A man coughed secretively.

‘The Force Research Unit,’ came a dark whisper. ‘Shady outfit according to some of my sources. Pay attention. It’s complicated.’

Anselm let his head fall back in disbelief. He looked at the horizontal beams, great wooden arms extended across the benches far below. He’d asked for help and it had come in the form of Bede. He should’ve been prepared.

‘Undercover work in Northern Ireland was carried out by the SAS, 14 Intelligence Company and the FRU. The first two were controlled by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. But not the FRU. Got it?’

Bede waited for Anselm to react. Getting nothing, he came slightly closer.

‘The FRU worked outside the normal structure of command. Minimal operational control. Few restrictions. Underhand and under the carpet, some might say. They handled informers. Mainly from within the Republican community. Recruited people to infiltrate the IRA itself. To keep one step ahead of the bombers. Only it gets a bit murky. D’ye hear or what?’

‘I do, Bede.’

‘Pull your cowl down, then.’

Anselm obliged and turned to face the wrath of the archivist.

‘Do you know what their motto was, these handlers?’

‘I don’t.’

‘“Fishers of Men”. Matthew chapter four, verse nineteen.’

‘“Come follow me and I will make you …”’ cited Anselm, quietly.

‘That’s the one. The weight of opinion, scholarly and otherwise, is that some of these fishermen got carried away in the eighties. Sacrificed one agent to save another. Set up killings.’

‘Authorised assassinations?’

‘Well, once you’re inured to violence and killing, you can see the logic of it in a grubby war, can’t you?’ Bede dried his top lip with a quick swipe from a habit sleeve. ‘If the Army would shoot a certain bloke if they caught him armed on the street – because they know he’s already shot one of ours and will shoot another as soon as he gets the chance – then why not skip past the rules of engagement every once in a while? Why wait until he’s tooled up? The IRA did just that, all the time. No hanging around on their side of the fence. I’m not saying I agree, I’m simply telling you how some minds in the FRU must have been working. Seems a few handlers passed on information to interested parties, knowing the details would be used to organise an ambush … end someone’s life. All it took was a leaked address, a location and a time. After that the fishermen sat back and let some other crew chuck their nets overboard.’

Bede stared at Anselm, trying to see past his mask of cold concentration.

‘It’s all part of the madness of killing for a cause,’ he continued, giving his voice a driving whisper. ‘If one group intends to kill the other anyway, then why not give ’em a helping hand if it suits your own purposes? Saves time, money and manpower.’

Anselm didn’t respond.

‘What do I think?’ said Bede, as if in reply. ‘I think well-meaning people got sucked away from a simple understanding of right and wrong. Thought the rules didn’t match the situation on the ground, so they dumped ’em. Believed they could act outside of the law for the sake of a greater good. I think the fishermen forgot that one day the lion would lie down with the lamb and that the sheep would be separated from the goats’ – for a split second Bede faltered, like Noah wondering what the hell he was going to do with all the animals, but then he got back to the Role of Man – ‘which, I imagine, is where you come in. It’s judgement day, isn’t it? You’re the Terminator.’

Bede waited for Anselm to confirm his suspicions, but Anselm looked ahead, thinking of the broken man with his head lowered in all the photographs. This, then, was Helen’s theory that she couldn’t bring to Nigel: his brother, the Army man, shattered by his FRU experience in Belfast, had killed his own daughter. How could he have done such a thing? Because he’d done it before. He’d crossed the line once already. He’d been involved in killing for the greater good twenty-five years earlier. Faced with Jenny’s final crisis, what had he done, this man who knew how to make impossible decisions?

‘Does that help?’ ventured Bede, crouching forward, sending a rush of blood to inflate his round, conspiring face.

‘A great deal, thank you.’ Anselm was remote, following Vincent Cooper’s ghost into the blurred area between the red and blue.

‘You’re investigating collusion?’ asked Bede, as if he promised not to tell.

‘Yes,’ muttered Anselm.

‘Well, you’d better be careful,’ murmured the archivist. ‘I’ve done the reading and I’ll put the books outside your cell. The people who were involved in that old game are still capable of anything. Wouldn’t think twice of setting up another ambush if they thought it would tilt things in their direction. You might need to start checking under your car. An “up and under”, that’s what they called them. A bomb in a Tupperware with a magnet. Under the car and up into the seat well. Should have been called an “under and up”. That’s how they got Airey Neave.’

Anselm returned to himself, blinking at the shadows.

‘I’ll be fine, Bede. It’s not that kind of case.’