How could someone who moved so beautifully not be able to walk again? When Mum came home I just watched her from far away, unbelieving. She just didn’t budge. She couldn’t. She was in a bed by the window in the sitting room. I watched her from the door, from the corridor, from the garden and she was always still. I tried to cry but I couldn’t. Part of me couldn’t move either. I wanted to give her my legs. I wanted to have an accident as well and bring my bed downstairs.
5th September
Suddenly my dad was there. I’d seen him mostly on television or heard him on the radio. My mum used to put him on and say, ‘That’s your dad.’ But he dropped all that. He was in the house. He watched my mum, too. From the door, the corridor and the garden, and I was watching him, though he’d no idea. He cried a lot. He’d put his head in his hands and pull at his hair. But with Mum he was completely different, never showing her what he felt. He read her stories and poems and he put films on. He called out to her a lot. It was like he just wanted to say her name.
12th September
I feel bad writing this. But it’s true. I was sort of angry with my mum. Because we didn’t speak to each other much any more. We didn’t have any of our chats. I know what it was, she felt guilty for being paralysed. She felt she shouldn’t be there, reminding me all the time that she wasn’t like all the other mums. But that’s not what made me angry the most. What got to me was that she spoke to my dad. He was there all the time at her side and I was sort of in the way. I felt left out so I’d listen to them from the landing.
19th September
This isn’t working. I’m putting down all these memories but I don’t feel any better. I feel bad again. Bad because I couldn’t make my mum understand how much I loved her. She was all wrong, thinking that she had to be like the others. I wanted her in any condition, moving or not. I don’t think she ever realised that nothing had changed for me, except that she couldn’t look me in the eye any more. That really did me in. It still does. It made me want to die.
35
After a fitful and feverish sleep Anselm mumbled his way through Lauds, not quite reading the words on his psalter but staring at the imprint in his mind of Nigel Goodwin’s chronology. Forsaking breakfast, Anselm snatched the keys for Larkwood’s Fiat, neglecting to fill in the register that recorded who’d gone where and at what time and when the car was likely to be back in the garage. Within minutes he was breaking the speed limit on the road to Newmarket. The trip seemed curiously well timed. On the day that Peter Henderson was released from prison, Anselm had set off to confront the person who’d probably killed his disabled partner.
A more careful examination of Nigel Goodwin’s chronology disclosed two points of substance, though only the second really counted. First, everyone except Helen had enjoyed a moment of privacy with Jenny on the night she died. Each had asked to see her alone – which, in the circumstances, was normal, because Jenny couldn’t move, so time with her alone had to be organised. Doctor Ingleby had carried out a short medical examination. The others had been with her for a matter of minutes, no more, save Peter who was, of course, resident. But – second – the last visitor to see Jenny alive was not a member of the family but an old and disappointed friend. He’d come back after everyone had left. Peter had let him in and he’d then spoken to Jenny for a long while … until she’d fallen asleep.
Anselm slowed down and released his grip on the wheel. He wanted to find his calm and review, yet again, the surrounding now significant details.
Logically speaking, anyone could have done something to Jenny earlier in the evening. Michael, Emma, Helen, Doctor Ingleby, Peter … they all could have had merciful plans known only to themselves. But that was all fantasy. Ridiculous. They could have hardly acted in concert or by coincidence. And remember Occam: keep things simple. And the last person to see Jenny awake was Vincent Cooper … a man who’d told Mitch that he’d come and gone before the others had even arrived. A man who’d failed to say that he’d come back.
A man, therefore, who’d lied.
Anselm parked in Newmarket and went straight to the narrow alley that led to the specialised business of Vincent Cooper: ‘Vintage Automotive Services’. Stepping onto the cold and empty forecourt, however, Anselm came to a troubled halt. The work bay shutters were down. Propped against the inside of a window was a large red sign belonging to Keegan’s Estate Agents (Commercial Division) which announced: FOR SALE.
With a growing certainty that he’d found his man, Anselm walked briskly towards the railway station and the street of Edwardian homes that had caught Vincent Cooper’s eye. He’d left Sudbury and bought himself a nice terraced house after Jenny had died. And now it was on the market again. Anselm paused at the gate by Keegan’s blue (Residential Division) placard. The windows were like dull slate. All the curtains were drawn. Anselm knocked on the door without conviction, recognising that the place had already been abandoned.
‘Where’ve you gone, Vincent?’ asked Anselm, kindly.
He didn’t want to condemn him. He didn’t want to chase him around Suffolk. He just wanted to talk to him. Help him recognise that Peter probably couldn’t keep the secret much longer. The breakdown in Manchester, if it meant anything, proved that Peter Henderson’s conscience was very much alive and well. This tragic story couldn’t remain buried much longer.
‘You killed her and then you told Peter what you’d done,’ said Anselm, staring up at the box room window. ‘You didn’t like the freezer bag and the rubber pipe and the gas bottle. I don’t blame you. There’s not much dignity in that … not what you’d want for someone you loved.’
Anselm turned away and ambled down the empty street, visualising what had happened next. Vincent had stepped away from the body. He’d called to Peter. He’d explained what he’d done. Maybe they’d cried together. But then Vincent had left because at this point, however shaken Peter might have been, there was a structure in place to be followed once Jenny had been helped to die. Friends and family were involved. A call was made to Doctor Ingleby. He’d come to the house. He’d examined the body. He’d spoken to Peter. He’d signed the death certificate.
Anselm pulled out of the car park, barely noticing the markings on the road, the oncoming traffic or the signs and lights. He now understood the reason for Peter’s confession.
Vincent had killed Jenny knowing that Peter couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d ‘helped her to die’ because, like he’d said, as a dancer he’d had a unique appreciation of Jenny’s psyche. Anselm saw him once more, leaning over the cluttered table, his eyes haemorrhaging a dark knowledge.
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.
But killing her, out of love, had cost Vincent Cooper everything. That’s why he’d left Sudbury. That’s why he’d left dancing altogether. He’d had to try and start his life all over again. And Peter, recognising the huge cost, had now decided to shield him from the cold scrutiny of the law. His old friend – the friend he’d displaced – had paid enough.
‘Where have you gone, Vincent?’ murmured Anselm. ‘I need to talk to you. And you need to talk to me.’
Back at Larkwood, Anselm went to the calefactory and called Keegan’s Estate Agents. Unfortunately (said Linda) the person responsible for both files – Trevor – was out and wouldn’t be back until six. So Anselm went to Saint Hildegard’s to check on Benedict and Jerome who were, in fact, trying to manufacture an improvised explosive device (a modest banger). But since (inter alia) the fertiliser lacked an essential ingredient – ammonium nitrate – Anselm left them to it. At the appointed hour, and once more in the calefactory, Anselm tried again.
Trevor was very helpful, but he couldn’t be charmed into disclosing the present location of the vendor. In answer to direct questions he said, no, the client would not attend any visit to the house or the business, yes, a quick sale was hoped for, and yes (to that end), an offer well below the asking price would be considered. Then came the one surprising aside: the vendor was sick of England and was heading off to the sun. Somewhere in Spain. Both sales would be handled through his appointed agent.
‘Which is me,’ said Trevor, with a hint of his influence and sway. He turned persuasive: ‘As to the asking price on the Edwardian bijou: frankly, between our good selves, I think if you came in at—’
Anselm put the phone down.
‘You haven’t gone yet, Vincent,’ he said, quietly. ‘And I’m going to find you.’
Anselm had never quite understood how his mind worked. He often failed to see the obvious. Lying in bed, listening to ‘Sailing By’, he’d suddenly recognise what had been plain all along, the insight appearing in his mind out of nowhere and prompted by nothing. It was a phenomenon he found more maddening than humbling. And it happened now, without the benefit of darkness and music. Stepping from the calefactory into the cloister, he suddenly stalled, staring ahead at the sunlight falling in the Garth. He felt sick.
‘Nigel’s chronology was based on information obtained from Timothy … Nigel had spoken to him very carefully … wanting to know who’d been with Jennifer on the night she died.’
Anselm blinked at the sharp green moss, bright with yesterday’s rainwater.
‘Which means that Timothy saw Vincent Cooper when he came back.’
And if he’d seen the late return, he’d seen everything else. Because he’d seen Vincent Cooper leave. The boy had probably seen or heard the conversation between Vincent and Peter. He’d probably seen or heard the call to Doctor Ingleby, along with his arrival and all that had transpired when it had been disclosed that Jenny was now dead.
‘Dear God,’ whispered Anselm. ‘I asked you for help, but I didn’t ask for this. I’ve stumbled onto the one secret observer … Timothy Henderson witnessed the killing of his mother. And he’s said nothing … to protect every single person in his family.’
The young boy had accepted his father’s whispered explanation that cancer had taken his mother away sooner than expected. He’d cried, no doubt, listening to all the other stuff about a quick and merciful end. And all the while he’d known the truth. He’d buried it … for the sake of Michael and Emma and Nigel and Helen. And his father. For the sake of family peace. For the sake of cutting back on everyone’s quota of anguish. He’d let them swallow Peter’s story, not knowing that none of them believed him.
‘You can’t carry that weight, Timothy,’ mumbled Anselm. ‘It will destroy you.’
Anselm went in rapid search of the Prior. He found him alone in the nave, sitting at a bench near the back as if he were a casual visitor rather than the Superior. That was his way. He shunned all the trappings of Office. He listened to Anselm’s explanation without interrupting, showing only his pained reactions.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ admitted Anselm, his voice echoing softly. ‘I’m stunned … my mind is frozen.’
The Prior closed his eyes. This was another of his ways. You got the impression you were no longer quite alone. After a peculiarly deep silence, he opened them.
‘Talk to Nigel Goodwin,’ he said. ‘He’s already questioned the poor boy and the boy will have sensed his purpose. If anyone should sit down and help Timothy go beyond what he’s been able to reveal so far, then it’s Nigel. This is his responsibility, not yours. He’s the one who’s received the boy’s partial trust, not you. It would be quite wrong for you to question him, however delicately, if you were relying on what he’d disclosed to Nigel.’
Anselm quickly left the church and was heading towards the plum trees when he heard heavy feet stirring up the gravel behind him.
‘You have the keys to the Fiat? The comm-u-nal car?’
Bede, softly panting, drew out the qualifier as if Anselm needed a firm reminder. The archivist stood legs apart, a plump hand on each hip.
‘I do,’ confessed Anselm.
‘You’re meant to put them back on the hook.’
‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’
‘And you didn’t fill in the register.’
‘I’m sorry, I was rushed.’
‘There are rules, Anselm. You can’t just forget them and run. They make the world go round. They stop an archivist killing a beekeeper.’
Anselm studied Bede with something like awe. He’d made it all sound so simple.
36
The mullioned windows of the cottage at Long Melford seemed to stare back at Anselm after he’d rung the bell. A figure moved behind the glass and, after a long delay, the door opened. There, on the hearth, was neither Doctor Goodwin nor his wife, but a boy Anselm had only ever seen in a photograph, excluding (of course) the fleeting glimpse at the upstairs window. Timothy Henderson spoke first:
‘They’re not in.’
Anselm began to introduce himself, stammering his surprise, but Timothy interrupted him.
‘I know who you are. I read the article in the Sunday Times. You’re a monk.’
‘Yes.’ Anselm was pleased the boy had opted for the primary designation.
‘And a detective.’
‘I prefer “puzzled explorer lost in the fog of human doubt and confusion”,’ corrected Anselm.
‘That’s a bit long.’
‘It is. But it’s true.’
Timothy flashed a sunny smile, its appearance so bright and unexpected that it bowled Anselm clean over. ‘Do you want to come in?’ he said. ‘They’ll be back any minute.’
Timothy was fourteen now (Anselm reminded himself). He’d been twelve when he’d lost his mother. His brown eyes still had their boyish simplicity, but the voice was breaking and his movements were slightly awkward. Adolescence made his body twitch with a kind of static electricity. Even his hair had been scrambled by the voltage. He’d gone into the kitchen, like a proper host, offering tea and something to eat. Anselm sat down, noting the Sunday Times folded on the coffee table. The bureau in the corner was open. Beside a pad of paper and a pile of envelopes was a diary, closed upon a biro. It had ‘T.H.’ scrawled all over the cover. Timothy had been writing when Anselm had rung the bell …
‘My aunt makes this fruit cake,’ said Timothy, entering the room. He’d balanced a plate on the top of each mug. On each plate was a slice of Nigel’s favourite nibble. ‘She’s been making it for years … since she married my uncle.’
Anselm helped Timothy by carefully taking the plates off the mugs. When they were both seated, Timothy continued his story.
‘And it’s always the same … dried out … sometimes burned … but never, ever moist. Isn’t that weird?’
Anselm agreed, watching the boy’s bright, brown eyes. What am I to say? he thought, anxiously. You are a witness to murder. I can’t talk about cake.
‘And do you know something else? My uncle – actually he’s not my uncle, he’s my great uncle – he always says it’s magnificent. Marvellous. Awe-inspiring. And it isn’t. What do you think?’
Anselm said it was rather dry.
‘Exactly,’ said Timothy, precisely. ‘It’s obvious. But my uncle can’t say it. Even though it is true, he can’t bring himself to tell my aunt that this thing she’s been bringing out of the oven for forty years is awful. And that he hates it. He’s made it something kind to say the opposite. Which is a bit odd, wouldn’t you say?’
Anselm said he would. The boy was on the edge of his seat, his crumpled jeans with washed-out white patches on the knees. His white trainers were new, with the laces left untied and shoved down the insides, between the shoe and the sock. The sleeves of his brown woollen jumper had been pushed up to the elbows.
‘He doesn’t speak to his brother,’ said Timothy, clipping the words. ‘But my aunt speaks to his wife. Yet, they never speak together, all four of them. That’s weird, too.’
Anselm agreed.
‘My grandparents don’t speak much to my father. And neither do my great aunt and great uncle. And from what I’ve heard, they didn’t talk much to my mother, either. So this is my family: my dad is sitting in a chair, sort of, and no one talks to him. And the people who aren’t talking to him aren’t talking to each other, except for my aunt and my grandma who only speak on the phone. Which is very weird.’
Anselm nodded. And you have done your best to stop things getting worse. You’ve accepted a dreadful burden so as to keep your family from falling even further apart.
‘But the weirdest part of all this, is that they’re all talking to me.’ He started eating his great aunt’s cake hungrily. ‘Or they try to, but … the thing is … they don’t tell me the truth. It’s as though they thought it might bite them. Or me, I suppose. You see, my uncle Nigel – and I really like him – he seems to think he’s doing Aunt Helen a favour. As if her life was worth living because he says her cake is divine. Worse, I suppose … she thinks her life’s important because of the cake. Why not tell her it’s really bad? Why not say it’s dried out again because she’s always doing two things at once? Why not throw it in the bin and kick the oven? If my uncle did that just for once in his life instead of patting her on the head … well, maybe Aunt Helen would get a life. Get one for herself, not him. Do you know she’s got a degree in botany? And all she’s ever done is make herbal tea for my mother. She knows everything about plants, what you can eat and what you can’t. In the Middle Ages she’d have been a witch.’
Anselm ate some of Helen’s cake. It was dry, lacking heart. He kept his eyes on Timothy who wasn’t expecting or wanting Anselm’s contribution … not just yet. This very clever boy was sick of listening. He wanted to be heard. But Anselm’s skin tingled with apprehension. He felt with uncomfortable certainty that Timothy was testing him. Playing with him, even. He was going somewhere with this voluntary narrative of family dysfunction. He was angry and curiously out of control. Seeming to enjoy himself while being unhappy. Anselm had seen this many times before, but in hardened criminals and usually the violent: they’d had too much to talk about. Too much to say. They’d been buried in unmanaged feeling. But he’d never seen it in a boy. But, then again, he’d never met a child who’d witnessed a murder.
‘Why doesn’t my grandfather tell his brother what went wrong in his life?’ asked the boy.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why doesn’t my grandfather try and sort things out with my father?’
‘Why doesn’t my grandmother give him a chance?’
‘I don’t know.’ Anselm brought the angry assault to a close. ‘I really don’t know.’
Timothy finished his cake, put the plate on the table and reached for his mug of tea. He slouched, involuntarily, looking at Anselm with that back of the classroom detachment. One of the bright lads who’d begun to see through everything around them and were giving cynicism a go. Only there was something advanced about this fourteen-year-old. He wasn’t acting to see what things felt like … he was already there, and he didn’t like what his eyes were telling him. He didn’t like the world very much or the people in it. They were all rather disappointing. Monks included. Even the one lost in the fog and claiming not to know.
‘I thought you’d be different,’ said Timothy, one foot pressing up and down, as if he were smashing a bass drum. ‘Just a little bit, but still different. And you’re not. There’s a lot of problems in my family and you know why.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘No, I don’t.’
In truth, Anselm was being evasive. He knew about the shadow from Northern Ireland. He knew about Peter Henderson’s impact on the Goodwins. He knew about the suspicions harboured in this very house. But it wasn’t his place to bring these elements into the open … at least not yet.
Timothy put a finger in his mouth to pick loose a hardened current or cherry. As if giving Anselm a second chance, he said:
‘Okay, why did my dad throw a brick at the boy in Manchester?’
He looked at Anselm from suddenly tortured eyes – the anguish appearing as swiftly and dramatically as the sunlit smile. The vast distance between the two emotions, suffering and jubilation, had been crossed with the snap of a finger and thumb. The boy needed help. He’d just stepped over a vast, yawning hole of complex, knotted feeling as if it wasn’t there. All he had were these two intense reactions, one light, one dark. If he was to be balanced and healthy, he needed the immense grading in between. Otherwise he’d love without depth and hate without remission. He’d hurt himself and others, only he wouldn’t feel much … except exhilaration and despair. He’d seek simpler feelings through excess alcohol and senseless sex, telling himself that he was living life to the full; that this was rock ’n’ roll. He’d end up with cuts to his face – they always did. He’d end up crying without knowing why. Which – given his intelligence – he’d turn into some kind of existential symptom because life was absurd and then he’d go the route of many people who want radical answers but don’t always want to study the primary sources: he’d say that God was dead and Nietzsche and Sartre had said it all.
Could things get any worse? The last words would go to the French and the Germans.
Seeing Timothy’s sheer … impoverishment, the confusion and the bile, Anselm was simultaneously convinced that the true story behind the killing of Jennifer Henderson had to be told. That Peter Henderson’s desperate attempt to protect his son from the truth was profoundly misinformed. Something had to be done … something had to be done.
‘I said, why did my dad throw that brick?’ repeated Timothy. ‘You’re a detective. You’ve been asking lots of questions. You must have found something out by now.’
After a moment Anselm said, ‘I’m sorry, Timothy, I wasn’t honest before. I do know why there are problems between your father and grandparents, and why there are problems between your grandparents and your aunt and uncle. But I don’t know for sure. I didn’t answer your questions because it’s not always appropriate to be brutally honest with people you’ve only known for ten minutes and when their aunt and uncle are due back in seconds. Sometimes telling the truth – and I can see that is what you like, want and admire – requires time. Planning. Cooperation from all the people involved. Your questions are too deep and important to be answered off the cuff – even honestly. I think you appreciate that, but I can see you’re sick of being messed around. In the present instance, however, I also think you know the answers to your own questions. You want to embarrass me, because you can’t embarrass them … because one of the strange things about being kept in the dark is that you get to like it after a while. It makes you powerful. Because you know far more than they could ever begin to guess. They feed you the party line and think they’ve got you on board whereas, in fact … you are watching them; knowing what you know. And that is one good feeling among all the bad. Am I right?’
Timothy seemed not to move. He was suspended between light and dark, happiness and misery and – Anselm sensed – doubt and certainty. Doubt about whether he should reply; certainty about what he’d say if he did. Finally, coming to his feet, he snatched the Sunday Times off the table. In almost the same action, he quickly rolled it up and then smacked it against an open palm, hovering between the coffee table and the chair as if he were trapped. There was no room to manoeuvre; he couldn’t pace back and forth; all he could do was shuffle on the spot.
‘These people who lie all the time,’ he blurted out. ‘They say he killed my mother. Not to me, of course, and probably not to each other. They’ve all got their reasons to blame him. So they say he’s a broken man. Did you know that?’
Anselm made no admissions. He watched the boy’s erratic feet movements.
‘They tell me it’s grief but they think he feels guilty,’ said Timothy, whacking the Sunday Times against his hand. ‘Well, I know he’s unhappy and I know he’s got nothing to be guilty about.’
Anselm looked at the white knuckles.
‘It’s why you’re here’ – Timothy slowed his arm motion as if the rolled newspaper were a piece of wood; he tapped his hand lightly, glaring at the Monk who’d Left it All for a Life of Crime – ‘it’s why you came to see my aunt and uncle. You’ve got a theory. Are you going to tell me what it is?’
‘No, Timothy, I am not,’ replied Anselm, very calmly. ‘Because I do not have a theory. I’ve had several and they’ve all turned out to be wrong.’ Imprudently, he added, ‘How about you? Do you have one?’
‘No.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, like I said, you don’t behave like someone who’s really in the dark or lost in the fog … you remind me of your father. You both know something you don’t want to talk about.’
This was the moment of enquiry that should have been left to Nigel, but what could Anselm do? The Prior always said that the truth reveals itself in the concrete circumstances of our lives. You have to respond, as if to a voice. And this moment of opening mutual sincerity could not be slowed, postponed or avoided. It was happening. Timothy was sitting down. He’d thrown the newspaper on the floor. His voice, no longer splintering high and low with adolescence, became quiet and even.
‘They buy me books to make me laugh. They suggest I climb trees. Sky-dive. Would you believe that? Learn some tricks. They talk to me as if they were scared I might speak. And they’re right there, only they don’t know why they should be worried. They haven’t got a clue what I might say.’
‘Because they think you’re in the dark.’
Timothy nodded, one arm massaging the muscle of the other, his nails leaving white scratch lines on his skin. ‘They tell me all these lies when I could tell them I know the truth. And I look at them all, one by one, and I keep thinking …’
Anselm couldn’t help but frown slightly. Timothy was crouching forward, feet bobbing, hands rubbing his forearms.
‘Thinking about what, Timothy?’ asked Anselm, quietly.
‘About the night my mother died. I was there. I know it wasn’t cancer.’
Anselm held his plate still as if a bird had landed on the rim.
‘I know she was killed,’ said Timothy.
Anselm didn’t even nod.
‘It’s not what you think … it wasn’t one person, not really … it was a team thing.’
A team. Anselm felt the blood slow in his veins.
‘Friends and family … you know, acting together.’
Peter, Michael, Emma, Helen, Cooper, Ingleby? It simply wasn’t possible … unless this was some incredible attempt to share responsibility. To share the strain, equally. Had there been another, wider agreement … unknown to Jenny? Decided upon during the planning of her final party? They’d had a meeting; everyone had decided to bring something.
‘I know how it was done,’ said Timothy, seeing Anselm’s disbelief. ‘I was there …’
37
Michael took the call in his room at the Southcliff Guest House. He’d sat there waiting all day. Immobile, as if he’d been asleep; alert, as if he’d been waiting for Liam to knock on the door. At intervals he’d let his eyes scan the three photographs of Jenny: child, girl and woman. She was healthy in all of them. It was as though there’d been no fall. No illness. He was looking at the woman, the dancer, as he listened and spoke.
‘He’s back home,’ said Emma. ‘And he likes the book.’
‘Good. Did you make the fire?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s kerosene in the shed?’
‘Yes.’
‘He called Timothy?’
‘Told him everything’s going to change for the better. “For you and for me.” ’ Emma breathed so much tension into the receiver it almost burned Michael’s ear. ‘Bring Jenny with you.’
‘I will.’
Michael put the phone down.
It had been decided weeks back that Timothy wouldn’t go home immediately. That way his routine and schooling wouldn’t be disrupted and Peter would have time to settle down in Polstead. With Timothy away from home on the night of his father’s release, Michael was free to … do his stuff.
So everything was now in place.
After killing Peter, Michael would wrap the body in the tarpaulin, fold the edges over and fix them down with the stapler. He’d take the body to the Citroën using the wheelbarrow by the back door. He’d then set fire to the house with the kerosene … a wild act of vandalism, destroying all trace of Peter’s life and Jenny’s death. Nothing of their time together would remain. Within an hour, Michael would be on the lonely quay at Slaughden, hauling Peter onto Margot. After dumping him far out to sea, beyond the tug of the tide, Michael would drive to Harwich, cross to the Hoek as a Canadian, head north to Harlingen and come home as a Briton in a Volvo hatchback. He’d leave the gunman exiled on the continent, never to return to England. That whole other persona, the ruined FRU man who’d made the difficult decisions, would simply evaporate, like mist off a window. The police would come to Morning Light and find Peter’s second act of uncontrollable violence and self-destruction: the razing of his own home. But they wouldn’t find Peter. Peter, like the mist, will have simply disappeared, leaving behind words that now made sense: ‘Everything’s going to change for the better. For you and for me.’
The room was completely silent.
Michael found himself listening … listening to his own heartbeat.
It pumped gently … soft-hard, soft-hard, soft-hard …
How did I come to this? he thought, with a sudden last-minute gasp from his soul. And for one grisly moment, Michael thought he was going to hear a still, small voice. But he turned away, taking his mind to the last time he’d seen his daughter. She, too, had a voice … and it had been still and small …
There was to be a party at Morning Light on Jenny’s birthday. It had been Peter’s idea. After a long, tense discussion, it had been decided that everyone was to bring something. So Michael made two lemon drizzle cakes: a small one for Jenny and a big one for everyone else. When Emma came home, they set off, arriving at Polstead just after Nigel and Helen.
‘What’s that?’ asked Emma, lightly, pointing at a small paper bag in Helen’s hand.
‘Herb tea. My own. Jenny loves it.’
Nobody else did. Her hands were trembling. Michael noticed that kind of thing.
‘And you?’ ventured Nigel, rocking on his heels, hands in his pockets.
‘Cake,’ said Michael, simply. ‘Lemon drizzle.’
‘Ah, that’s the business,’ enthused Nigel. ‘Lots of tang. But, if I’m honest, you can’t taste the sponge, can you?’
He really had no idea. The distance between them was vast.
‘It’s the lemon that counts,’ replied Michael. ‘Jenny loves the lemon.’
They all looked at each other, frozen, except for Nigel, bobbing back and forth.
‘Well, let’s get going, then,’ sang Emma, smiling brightly. ‘We’re here for a party, aren’t we?’
They all trooped inside, hale and hearty, greeting Peter woodenly, embracing Jenny warmly, and roughing up Timothy’s hair. Poor boy, he’d no idea either. Thankfully, Peter put on some music to fill the void.
‘Let me see her on my own for a moment,’ said Michael, with weak entreaty. ‘I’d just like to have a …’
‘You don’t have to explain yourself, darling,’ said Emma, bright and stiff. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Michael tiptoed into the sitting room. A wood fire rustled with contentment. The lights were low. He simply followed suit, coming quietly to the chair by the bed near the darkened window.
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ said Michael.
Jenny was smiling, looking at her father with affection. A deep affection. The affection of travellers on the road.
‘I made this for you,’ he said, quietly.
‘Oh thanks, Dad.’
‘It’s the nearest I could get to a lemon drop.’
She took the cake and bit it, wincing suddenly at the tang. ‘That’s what I call sharp.’
Michael nodded. She loved the taste; always had done; ever since she was a child.
‘Don’t try and persuade me to go back to hospital,’ said Jenny in a forestalling voice. ‘I’ve had the last tests and now I’m home. I want to stay here, surrounded by what I know and those I love … I don’t want to be visited.’
Michael nodded again, unhappily. Why wasn’t there a medicine? He’d pottered about the garden all afternoon handling plant food and fertiliser. Chemicals that kept plants alive. And he’d thought it awful: there’s nothing for Jenny.
The fire murmured.
‘Dad,’ said Jenny, quietly, finishing the cake. ‘Will you call me Nimblefoot again?’
‘What?’ He reached for her hand, but Jenny didn’t need any of that understated support, those many gestures of understanding that had taken the place of words and tears. She almost seemed to push him away, but then took his hand, as if asserting herself.
‘You haven’t used that name since the accident,’ she said, smiling again, a tone of reproach in her voice. ‘We both know why. It would make us both sad. But every time you’ve spoken to me, I’ve expected to hear it … and it never came. Only now’ – her smile seemed to spill over from her mouth, lighting up her face, like one of Timothy’s sudden flashes of feeling … only Jenny’s wasn’t a rush of emotion, it was deep, something more than a sentiment or sensation. She seemed profoundly contented – ‘only now, I want to hear the name again. Because it’s me. It’s me in relation to you. Say it, please … now.’
Involuntarily, Michael cast an eye over his daughter, taking in the prostrate figure covered by blankets, her toes raising two small mountains at the base of the bed.
‘Nimblefoot,’ he said.
‘Again.’
‘Nimblefoot,’ stammered Michael, feeling emotion wrench his throat, the throat that had been wrenched so often that he was staggered he could still feel anything at all; stunned that the grip to his neck always felt like an awful, new experience. ‘Happy birthday, Nimblefoot.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ replied Jenny. She was nodding, as if to remove doubts he hadn’t expressed. ‘From now on, you think of me as Nimblefoot … like in the old days.’
Michael held his daughter’s hand in both of his, struck by an alarming, foreign wonder. ‘Why, Nimblefoot … why?’
‘Because the tide has come in.’
Michael blinked uncertainly, remembering the stranded boats on the Orwell at Pin Mill. The red sails. The ropes drooping towards the ochre sand. The green rumpled sheets of algae. You asked me to untie your laces … to let you go …
‘You said the tide always comes in,’ repeated Jenny, ‘and it has done. The tide, at last, has come in.’
Emma’s heels echoed on the tiling outside the kitchen.
‘How’s my birthday girl?’ she sang, an ache in her voice. And before Jenny could reply, Emma pulled up a chair, talking ten to the dozen about a male Rottweiler with a urinary tract problem. She’d carried out a radical surgical procedure corresponding to a sex change. His many problems were over. Before the story was out, Bryan arrived with his old leather doctor’s bag that he never opened. Except this time he did, pulling out some party poppers. After a quick medical examination, they all trooped back into the room and everyone stood around the bed, all of them firing the multi-coloured streamers over Jenny’s blinking, radiant face. It was like a send-off. Folk yelling and waving from the quayside after the champagne had been smashed on the prow. Michael watched her from afar, as if he’d walked to the end of a lonely pier. He ate a slice of cake slowly, his eyes smarting from the bite of zest and syrup. They welled up with a deep and secret relief: the tide had come in. At long last, the tide had come in for his girl.
Helen had eventually made a herb tea for Jenny and she sipped it appreciatively, though Michael was convinced that she – like everyone else – hated the stuff, and would have preferred to pour it down the sink. An hour or so later, Nigel and Helen left, followed by Doctor Ingleby.
‘I’ll speak to Jenny on my own, now,’ said Emma. Her eyes were heavy with summoned cheer, the sparkle she’d once brought to the officers’ mess.
‘I’ll wait outside,’ replied Michael.
He kissed Jenny on the forehead and then went outside and looked up at the stars. But he saw the sandy mouth of a river. A wind was blowing life into the red sails. The ropes were lifting on the tide.
Michael packed, paid his bill and set off for Polstead. The Browning and silencer were in the glove box, the Billingham camera bag in the boot, along with the tarpaulin and the stapler. On the passenger seat, fitted with new batteries, lay Father Doyle’s tape recorder.
When Michael had first come to Southwold he’d learned pretty quickly that if he was to shoot Peter, he would have to follow Jenny’s story all the way from her accident to the night of her death. It was the only way to summon the anger he felt at Peter for his treatment of Jenny, throughout her life. No party could make up for what she’d lost.
That painful journey was now complete.
Similarly, if he was actually to pull the trigger with a steady hand, he’d realised that he’d have to go back to Belfast and the interrogation of Eugene; he’d have to cross the border and face everything that he’d never told Danny Carpenter, the joiner who put people back together. That second journey was almost over. He was almost there.
It was time to press PLAY. Time to hear the clang of a spoon on a pot or a pan.
Night was falling fast. Anselm drove slowly, his mind blank and heavy, like saturated blotting paper, incapable of holding another thought or idea. When the door had opened at Long Melford, he’d been trapped by a suspicion that he couldn’t reveal. Now he’d been empowered. In this most difficult of cases, he’d been given strength by a child.
‘Timothy,’ Anselm had said, a warm hand on each of the boy’s shoulders. ‘Leave this with me, do you understand?’
He’d nodded.
‘I’m familiar with this kind of thing.’ Anselm had smiled confidence. ‘I know what to do and what to say. I know when and I know how. There is a right time.’
A nod.
‘When Aunt Helen and Uncle Nigel get back, tell them I called, but I think it would be best if you kept our conversation between ourselves. Remember what I said about handling the truth? That sometimes it requires cooperation? Well, that is how I’m going to move forward. I’m going to speak to the ones who don’t like truth as much as you do.’
Anselm parked in a lay-by just outside Lavenham. Set back well off the road stood a medieval house, leaning dramatically to one side. Outside lighting revealed white window frames, grey timber supports and plaster washed a deep, salmon pink. The front door, a sequence of bolted planks, stood buckled within arched shoulders that held up a covered entrance. Anselm knocked hard, his heart beating violently. More so than in any case he’d ever handled at the Bar, when he’d really known what to do and say – along with the when and how.
‘Terribly sorry, but we’re Anglican,’ said Emma Goodwin, looking down as if to check whether Anselm was holding a collection plate. ‘Haven’t got a penny on me.’
‘I’m not here to talk about ways to God,’ said Anselm. ‘Oddly enough, that’s not my strong suit. Neither is the cost. I’m here to speak about your daughter.’
Emma Goodwin frowned, one hand rising to grasp the join on her white blouse.
‘I know who you are,’ she said, paling. ‘You’re that monk … the detective.’
‘I’m something else, actually. But may I come in? I think we need to talk.’
Emma Goodwin didn’t offer tea or cake. She brought Anselm into the kitchen, drawing back a chair at a long table, and then walked to the far end of the room. Spot lighting from between the beams lit the polished distance between them. She stood with her back to the sink, arms folded. You are guilty, thought Anselm, instantly. This is what the first-timers did when they’d been banged away on remand – the ones who fancied their chances in court. They rarely sat at the table in the prison visiting wing. They got up and walked as far away as possible, talking to their advocate from a safe distance, as if he might smell the lack of moral hygiene. A light directly over Emma Goodwin’s head cast a shadow beneath her brows, hiding her eyes, blacking out the sockets. Her mouth was slightly open. She looked terrified and terrifying. Anselm sat at the proffered chair. He didn’t speak immediately because he was waiting for Michael to arrive. When he didn’t come, Anselm said:
‘If at all possible, Mrs Goodwin, I’d like to talk to your husband as well.’
‘Will he be back?’
‘No.’ She’d snapped the word as if it were a lid on a box. She continued, as if to explain what she was hiding: ‘Not today, anyway. A few days off. A holiday.’
Anselm thought for a moment, calibrating his mind to the incongruity. A holiday? On the day Peter was released? When Timothy would need his family around him. When—
‘Why are you here?’ Emma Goodwin’s voice was abruptly shrill. She wanted him to go – just like the first-timers when told they didn’t have a cat’s chance in hell. ‘What do you want?’
Anselm knitted his fingers and leaned his arms on the table. In a friendly, don’t-worry voice, he said, ‘May I call you Emma?’
‘What on earth for?’
‘So we can talk about Jenny,’ replied Anselm. ‘It might be easier if we’re on first-name terms.’
Anselm stared compassionately at the figure by the sink. She was hunched, clutching her arms as if she were totally naked.
‘Mrs Goodwin,’ began Anselm, cautiously. ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me?’
‘Absolutely not. Never. Ever. Are you finished now? I think it’s time you went.’
Anselm stood up and shuffled to the door, head down, like he did when he was brooding in the cloister. When he’d stepped outside, beneath the beamed portico, he turned around, driven by an impulse he could not contain: a certitude that now was the time to be mercilessly direct.
‘Mrs Goodwin,’ he said, talking to the cowering woman at the entrance to the kitchen. ‘I know how Jenny was killed.’
Anselm had skipped all the preliminary stages required before such a brutal declaration could be uttered. He’d made a number of assumptions about Mrs Goodwin’s character – that she was as intellectual as she was emotional; that she was skilled at ending conversations she didn’t want, using mock hysteria, if need be, to fend off the dull-witted; that she wasn’t scared of a crown court judge or reporters or a monk who’d appeared once in the Sunday Times. That she was an inconsolable mother. Anselm’s ruthless announcement brought them both back into the kitchen, Anselm to a chair, and Mrs Goodwin standing far off, arms folded by the sink.
‘You know?’ she asked, after fumbling for a cigarette.
‘I do.’
She struggled with a box of matches and lit up, swinging her head away as the fumes burned her eyes. After a pause, she breathed in deeply, and then appeared ready to faint, her mouth dropping open as the blue smoke burst out of her lungs.
‘I said I know, Mrs Goodwin,’ asserted Anselm, evenly. ‘I’m not guessing. I’m not adding up bits of evidence. I’m here to talk about the truth you’re hiding.’
Mrs Goodwin’s features began to work. Her nerves were out of control.
‘Your husband isn’t here,’ said Anselm, as if that might give her some reassurance. ‘You can speak freely. I’m not here to condemn you, or him. Or anyone else.’
Their eyes met along the length of the room. After holding Anselm’s mild stare for as long as she could, Mrs Goodwin looked askance, drawing smoke through the stub so fiercely that her cheeks became hollow. She glanced back, with a flash of confusion and defiance.
‘You can’t prove anything.’
‘I can. And I might. But I would prefer your cooperation.’ Suddenly, Anselm thought of the ill-timed holiday. He coughed lightly – a bad habit picked up in the Old Bailey when he’d sensed blood.
‘Where is your husband, Mrs Goodwin?’
‘None of your damned business.’
‘I would like to talk to him, too.’
‘He’s abroad.’
‘Abroad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Holland.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Harlingen.’
Anselm appraised the desperate, dejected woman. How was he going to help her? How to persuade her to stop this very serious fooling around?
‘Where is Timothy?’
‘You’ve no right to barge in here. You’re a trespasser. You’re a—’
‘Mrs Goodwin, I’m very much on your side. Where is Timothy?’
‘Upstairs.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Asleep.’
‘Would you wake him?’
‘No.’
‘Of course you won’t. Because he’s at Nigel and Helen’s.’
Mrs Goodwin dropped the cigarette on the floor as if she’d burned her fingers. A hand came to her mouth. Instinct controlled Anselm’s response. He sensed something more alarming than a hidden truth.
‘Now, let’s forget about Harlingen,’ he suggested, kindly, feeling his heart stab against his chest. ‘Where is your husband?’
Mrs Goodwin began to shake. She dropped her arms to her side, her whole body shivering as if she’d been pulled out of the freezer. She was gabbling quietly and shaking her head. Anselm rose slowly and approached her very gradually, one hand moving from chair to chair, coming closer as he spoke. A blue thread of smoke spiralled from the floor.
‘I know the burden you carry,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Put it down, now. It’s far too heavy. Let me help shift the weight.’
He’d reached the end of the table. Mrs Goodwin was mouthing sounds, her oval face drained of blood, her eye sockets hideously blue as if she’d been beaten.
‘Let me talk to your husband,’ he murmured, holding out his hand as if to show he meant no harm.
Mrs Goodwin replied so quietly that Anselm didn’t hear. He came a step closer, leaning his head to one side. He could smell her perfume and her stale, naked terror. His foot crushed the tiny smouldering stub.
‘Speak up,’ he whispered.
‘It’s too late.’
‘It’s never too late.’
‘He’s going to die.’
‘Who is?’
‘Peter.’
‘When?’
‘Now … tonight.’
Anselm raised a darkened eye.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s got a gun.’
‘Who has?’
‘I can’t contact him, he’s on the road …’
Mrs Goodwin didn’t finish her sentence. She was blinking erratically, her eyes glazed with complicity. Slowly, she reached for the packet of cigarettes. Unseeing, she placed the filter between her lips and felt for the box of matches. Anselm didn’t even hear the strike of phosphorus along the sandpaper. He was outside, running down the dark lane to the car parked in a lay-by.
Michael drove slowly along the shadowed lanes, the hedges black against the allure of darkness. The day was over. People were heading home. Heading back to their families. An unremarkable routine, played out everywhere, today and tomorrow, just like yesterday. Everyone did it. Except some. They never return. They disappear. Sometimes they vanish without trace. Others, they turn up in the back of beyond. Like Liam. They’d taken him to South Armagh where the IRA had a dedicated interrogation centre. A cow shed. They’d have stabbed him with a needle in Belfast and he’d have woken up in the middle of nowhere. A farm with prison cells. Quiet, rolling hills. Animals tearing at the bleak fields. They did that when the security people thought the tout had a lot of explaining to do. They wanted to take their time and get to the bottom of things. There’d been no point really. As Father Doyle had prophesied, Liam sang like a canary as soon as he’d smelled the cow dung and silage. The big lads hadn’t even had to string him up. They’d known from experience when a tout had told them everything. He’d still been a kid, caught with his trousers down.
Michael’s right hand felt for the machine. Bile rose like mercury in a thermometer. He pressed PLAY …
Michael had been back in Belfast a week when the phone rang to say there was a priest at the front gate. He’d got a message for Michael. After the operation in Donegal, Michael didn’t fly back to Edinburgh. Abandoning the palaver of shifting identities, he’d driven straight back to Belfast, torched the jalopy a mile from his barracks, and walked back to base with the Billingham bag slung over his shoulder. Looking pale and ill, he’d told his colonel that it served him right for trying to have a quiet drink in Scotland. Liam had not turned up for the meeting on Saturday as planned. And now, the following Wednesday, Father Doyle was at the gate.
Michael brought the priest to an interview room. It was bare save for a table and two chairs. The walls were green. The windows glazed and covered with heavy wire netting.
‘What did you do after I left you?’ commanded the priest, sitting down. He placed a tape recorder in the middle of the table. ‘What did you do about Ó Mórdha? I’ve heard nothing on the news.’
‘And you won’t.’
The haggard priest was large and imposing, a black brooding presence, with arms folded. He wasn’t like Nigel, cultivated, articulate and ready to spar with words. He was a bruiser who delivered bread for the journey.
‘What have you done?’
Michael resented the direct question. But there was something remorseless about those dark eyes. He seemed to be staring through a grille as if they were both in the dark.
‘Nothing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
The priest’s hand strayed to the tape recorder.
‘You didn’t arrest him?’
Michael folded his arms, feeling cramped. It was as though the walls had moved in to squeeze his shoulders. The central light was glaring but Michael narrowed his eyes as if to penetrate the gloom.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Michael wiped his mouth. His understanding of things was realigning. He’d thought the priest had expected an … executive action. The removal of Ó Mórdha. He’d thought Father Doyle had gone down Eugene’s road, for the sake of long-term peace, and brought a message to Michael. And Michael had taken the same route to Donegal, thinking this priest was just another pilgrim on the road, resigned to a difficult journey. But he wasn’t. Michael had misunderstood him; thought he’d seen into the priest’s tortured mind. But he hadn’t. Father Doyle’s thick finger had come to rest on PLAY.
‘Did you know that Liam was holding guns?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did you do?’
Michael didn’t answer so the priest took it for another ‘Nothing’.
‘Well, they came back while you were on holiday.’
‘Who?’
‘The IRA. They came for their guns sooner than expected.’ The priest’s eyes were burning with a strange white heat. ‘One of them was missing. A Browning automatic. Fourteen rounds. And a silencer. Do you know where they are?’
Michael seemed to feel the heavy wire netting against his skin, pressing hard as the walls continued to advance inwards, bringing more darkness. The burly, ragged priest read the silence as a ‘No’.
‘Well, that’s fine, so,’ soothed Father Doyle. ‘Because, thankfully, Liam did. And he told ’em what they wanted to know.’
The unkempt priest, still in his hat, coat and scarf – all a shabby black, save for the snip of white plastic at the neck – leaned forward, pressing his finger heavily on the PLAY button.
‘Listen for yourself.’
The tape whirred for a few seconds. Someone walked away from the microphone. Seconds later there was a ‘ding’ … the strike of a spoon on the base of a pan … the signal for Liam to start talking; to repeat what he’d told them since he’d come to Armagh.
‘I’m … err … Liam Finnerty and I make this confession freely.’ He gave his address as if he were watching a clerk fill in a form. ‘I’ve been workin’ for British Intelligence since last November, eight months. They approached me, like, after I’d been nicked for shoplifting. I told ’em to run ’n’ jump but they follerred me around for weeks. Kept pullin’ me in. Said they could make the theft charge go away and help me ma. Offered me a few quid for the meter. That was that, like.’
Michael listened, head down, feeling the immense presence of Father Doyle. He was staring at him from an inner conflagration of rage and distress.
Liam had an extraordinary memory. He told them everything. He handed back every scrap of information he’d stolen for the Brits. It was all humdrum. Names and car registration numbers. Who knew whom. The building blocks of sound intelligence. Then, after two months (confessed Liam), he’d got a new handler. A man called ‘Frank’. A jock from Dundee. Michael shuddered, listening to the flow of invention. The physical description, the strong accent, the mannerisms. The invented conversations, the apparent slip-ups by the handler that revealed telling personal details. But Liam made no reference to Michael. Michael was safe. The IRA’s intelligence units would never track him down. They could just look for Frank, who only existed in Liam’s terrified mind. Shortly he came to the guns. The heart of the matter.
‘I never told him,’ pleaded Liam. ‘If I ’ad a done, he’d a taken the rifles, wouldn’t he? Thing is, I wanted to fire a gun for real. See what it felt like. So I just borrowed it and went out on me own to have a go. But I didn’t get the chance because I came across a patrol and I panicked and chucked the thing in a bin.’
Liam gave the exact location. And the number painted on the lid. And the time of day. He’d picked half an hour before the rubbish trucks lurched down the streets, stopping and starting. The boy was utterly convincing.
‘I’m sorry for what I’ve done,’ breathed Liam in a monotone. ‘A tout’s a tout. I know. I just want to go home. See me ma. An’ tell Frank to leave us alone.’
Father Doyle pressed STOP. Just as deliberately, he pressed REWIND as if Michael might want to listen again. The tape whirred, spinning backwards while Michael watched the spools turn, thinking of Liam’s boyish features. The eruption of adolescence hadn’t gone yet. He was still awkward. Still a dreamer. Impressionable. The Nutting Squad would have let him go.
‘He’s dead,’ said Father Doyle.
Michael looked up.
‘Didn’t you know? Hasn’t the paperwork filtered through?’
Michael shoved back his chair, stepping away from the low hum of the machine. He found himself retreating to the far wall, not daring to meet the priest’s accusing gaze.
‘I warned you,’ said the priest, banging the table with his white knuckles. ‘I told you what would happen.’
Bang.
‘I said let the boy go.’
Bang.
‘I said you’d played on his vulnerability.’
Bang.
‘And now … now there’s going to be another funeral in Belfast. There’ll be a handful at the side of the grave, no more. And if his mother, poor woman, ever comes downstairs afterwards, people will turn the other way. All that … for what? Nothing? You did nothing?’
Father Doyle tapped the table lightly a few times and then stood up as if he’d heard enough.
‘You’re no different to them,’ he said at the door. ‘The sooner you get your backside off this island the better.’
The priest had gone. The tape was whirring faster and faster, the sound rising to a crescendo until, finally, there was a soft, slow click. A report came through later that afternoon. Liam had been found naked by the side of a quiet country lane in South Armagh. His hands had been tied behind his back with brown tape and his head had been covered with a black bin liner. He’d been shot from behind with a high-velocity rifle. There’d been no signs of torture on the body. The next day, his mother told the Belfast Telegraph he’d always wanted to be a train driver.
Michael’s breakdown probably started at the moment he picked up the tape recorder. It was as heavy as a dead body. He stopped speaking, eating and caring for himself. He neglected his work. His colonel, recognising a certain fragility of character, transferred him back to Templar Barracks in Ashford, Kent. There, while sitting in the small garden of Repton Manor staring at an old oak tree, he was approached by a nice guy, a major, who introduced himself as Danny Carpenter. ‘I’m a sort of joiner,’ he joked. ‘I help put the tongue back into the groove. No nails or glue. Fancy a beer?’
Michael’s career with the Intelligence Corps had come to an end. After a mere six months. For the appraisal writers, he’d been a diligent operative better suited to desk work. Analysis, not action. Danny tried all sorts to bring the planks of Michael’s life back into line, only once asking a direct question, when all else had failed.
‘What did you do, Michael?’
And Michael had gazed at the ancient oak tree, once used to hang so-called witches while Cromwell brought the scourge to Ireland.
‘I did nothing,’ he’d murmured, enigmatically. ‘Absolutely nothing.’
Michael pressed REWIND.
The tape began its trip home, whirring softly. Michael looked at the hand that would hold the gun. There was a very faint dying tremor. Journey’s end was in sight. All he had to do was cross the border in his mind and walk to a cottage lit by a summer moon, sneaking between the mauve shadows of ling and bell heather. He’d told Danny that he’d done nothing. That wasn’t true. He’d made the biggest mistake of his life.
40
Anselm seemed to park, pull the handbrake and snatch the keys from the ignition in one fierce movement. He ran across the gravel towards Morning Light. Opening the door without so much as a knock or a call, he strode down a corridor and into the sitting room, fearing that he may be too late, spilling out a command with as much relief as panic:
‘Peter, you have to leave at once.’
Peter Henderson was standing near an armchair by a fire, half-moon glasses on the end of his nose and a book in one hand. He was about to remonstrate when Anselm spoke again.
‘Trust me, you must get away from here.’
Peter Henderson had shaved. He looked smart in loose jeans and a baggy woollen jumper. His face remained a field of devastation – deep ruts in the skin and shadows like potholes on his sunken cheeks. He stepped back, and sat down again, saying, ‘Still charging around things you don’t fully understand, I see.’
He nodded towards a facing chair as if it were time to go over that very confused essay on Charles Stevenson.
‘Peter, I know how Jenny was killed,’ said Anselm, pointing anxiously towards the door.
‘My confession wasn’t sufficiently compelling?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Peter Henderson slowly closed the book and placed it on the armrest. He seemed to have died.
‘You must leave now,’ said Anselm. ‘Instantly.’
‘Why?’ His voice was low and dark, shocked and spare.
‘Let me take control of what is happening, Peter,’ replied Anselm. ‘Let me handle this crisis. For once in your life, don’t ask so many questions. Accept that sometimes you have to wait for an answer. And that time is not now. So please, leave at once.’
Anselm wanted Peter Henderson safe out of the building because he wanted to be alone when Michael Goodwin arrived. He wanted to speak to him: this quiet man of so many secrets. But Peter Henderson wasn’t moving. He sat like a punctured life-sized doll, sagging to one side.
‘Leave now,’ ordered Anselm.
‘No,’ he said, as with a last breath. ‘I’m going nowhere until you explain yourself.’
Anselm strode forward.
‘Okay, have it your way,’ he said. ‘Michael intends to kill you tonight.’
The smile vanished.
‘That’s right, Peter. No Moral Maze. No wondering which way to turn. He’s armed. He’s resolved. He trained with the SAS. He’s on his way here. Now get out. Go to Larkwood. Ask for Wilf. Speak to no one. Wait.’
For a while Anselm paced around the room as if he might get somewhere in bringing matters to a close. It was almost dark outside and the fire’s reflection flickered on the crooked windows. As he turned to the grate, Anselm’s eye caught the title of the book Peter had been reading, an intrepid study by Geoffrey Bannon: Killing, Ethics and the Law. Sitting down in the armchair, Anselm opened the book randomly. His gaze instantly fell on a passage that made him smile. To illustrate a point, the author had imagined an atheist tormented by a stutter with his foot trapped in a hatch on the sinking Titanic.
41
Michael parked in the lane that ran to Morning Light. Very slowly, he opened the door. Minutes later, he was walking calmly towards Jennifer’s cottage as if it were that farm in the Blue Stack Mountains. He reached the gate and quietly lifted the latch. To avoid the crunch of gravel he stepped on the lawn he’d raked ten days earlier and moved swiftly around the building towards the back door. A light was on in the sitting room, shining softly through pale green curtains. The rest of the house was in darkness. Peter, hopefully, was by the fire enjoying a good book. Something to make him think.
It had been like this in Donegal. Only the light had been stronger from a bright moon. He’d crossed three gates, not one. He’d moved on tiptoe towards a silver strand of light, a rippling stream on the far side of Néall Ó Mórdha’s bolthole. He’d seen smoke like a thread from a needle, dangling from the stars into a squat chimney.
There was smoke rising now from the fire by Peter’s armchair.
Standing by the wheelbarrow near the back door, Michael placed his thumb on the latch and quietly opened the door …
In Donegal, he’d opted for a knock. It had been a last-minute decision, a strange nervousness, as if he needed Ó Mórdha’s permission to kill him. A surviving decency that had tracked him from Edinburgh where he’d left his better half.
He’d heard footsteps fall soft upon the wooden floor inside.
The door had creaked open all the way as Ó Mórdha peered into the darkness, a hand shielding his eyes from the shocking power of the moon.
Michael stepped into Morning Light. The gun, with silencer attached, was in his hand. His finger was on the trigger. The safety catch was off. He was in the kitchen. After a few seconds he walked with slow, silent steps to the fuse cupboard and tugged open the door. There was a slight thunk. Michael listened intently. A page turned.
Ó Mórdha’s eyes had got accustomed, too. Michael should have fired before then, but time had slowed as if it were concrete passing through a sieve. Michael had stood, legs apart, arms extended, the Browning absolutely still in his hands. There’d been a low light in the hall. A dog had watched from the end of a musty corridor. A grandfather clock had ticked. The kettle had rattled on a stove. Michael had noted all these details even before the expression on Ó Mórdha’s face had been able to change from curiosity to terror. Finally, the IRA commander had seen the gun.
‘Can I help you?’ he’d said, in that child-like voice.
For a brief second their eyes had met; and Michael had seen a flicker of naked supplication. He’d come to put it out.
‘You’re dead,’ he’d explained.
But just as Michael had squeezed the trigger, he’d heard a very quiet voice within himself … very quiet indeed: ‘Michael, Michael, Michael …’ and he’d fired a millisecond later, to drown out whatever might come next.
BAM-BAM, BAM-BAM.
Only Michael had closed his eyes. On opening them he’d seen Ó Mórdha standing to one side, looking down the corridor, aghast. There, by an open bedroom door, lay man’s best friend. Michael had shot the dog. It hadn’t even barked back.
‘What the—’
Michael had turned and run. Under the light of the moon he’d scaled three gates, tripped and fallen twice and had finally stumbled into the driver’s seat of his car. He’d never forgotten Ó Mórdha’s look of astonishment, any more than he’d forgotten the sound of Liam’s confession. Eugene and Liam had both taken a bullet so that Michael could remove Néall Ó Mórdha from the Army Council and tilt the balance in favour of peace. And he’d shot a pedigree dog. A man and a boy had died so that he could put down an Irish water spaniel.
Throughout the years that followed his return to civilian life, Michael had watched the unfolding of history with horror. One atrocity followed the other: the Brighton bomb that nearly wiped out the British Cabinet, the mortar attack on Newry police station, the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen … the ‘spectaculars’ didn’t end. And behind them all, Michael saw the dumbfounded face of Néall Ó Mórdha looking at his dog. Michael had missed his chance – his obligation – to act decisively. Of course, he wasn’t so simple-minded to think that killing Ó Mórdha would have prevented the Brighton attack, all the way to Canary Wharf and beyond. But he couldn’t escape the nagging doubt that it might have brought forward the peace process, if only by a year, six months even, and that would have been lives saved. Innocent lives. People who’d done nothing wrong except get out of bed and go to the wrong shopping centre. It would have given some purpose to Eugene’s secret confession and Liam’s later silence. Those two meaningless deaths and the vague, long list of casualties that might have been prevented lay on Michael’s conscience … something Nigel would never understand. They accused him now, every time he saw Ó Mórdha on the television. He’d come round to the idea of peace eventually: once it was clear that the long war would never be won.
Michael reached out and put a finger on the trip switch below the fuse box.
Another page turned. Peter cleared his throat.
But there’d been another presence throughout the years. The echo of that voice. The echo of his own name. Beyond all thought and feeling, choice or argument, this sound had remained strangely insistent, uncomfortably present … only Michael had refused to acknowledge it was there; refused to open the ear of his heart. And when he’d tried, tentatively, on his long journey here, to Polstead, he’d heard absolutely nothing. So this was where his past and future came together: the failure in Northern Ireland would be redeemed now. He was going to kill Peter, not because he’d done a great wrong – this was not about vengeance – but to make a difference for everyone else’s tomorrow.
Michael breathed in slowly. There was no panic. No shake to the hand. There were four rounds in the Browning: one up the spout and three ready to go.
Michael flicked up the switch. Then he was off. Counting the cost: one, two, three, four …
42
The problem was this: the atheist with his foot caught in the hatch – Albert – was shot by Ernest because he, Ernest, couldn’t imagine a worse way to go than drowning. And Albert was in one hell of a flap. What Ernest didn’t know was that Albert (terrified by the gun) would have preferred to drown, but he couldn’t get the words out. What neither of them could have known was that, first, Albert’s foot would have come free an instant later. But, second, irony of ironies, when they’d finally got near a lifeboat, Albert would have met his end anyway, injured horribly by the whip of a snapped cable, dying in agony before the ship could sink and let him drown. Now, if Albert and Ernest could have shared a cocktail afterwards and talked things through amicably, Albert would have said he’d have preferred the bullet after all. And thank God he had a stutter. So, in the end, everyone was happy.
Except the author.
According to Professor Bannon, Albert’s preferences were—
Suddenly, the lights went out.
There’d been a click from down the corridor but that sound was overtaken by the stamp of feet sweeping forward. Anselm rose in a panic, dropping the book to the floor. Soft light from the fire picked out some objects in the room. A clock ticked against the wall – he hadn’t noticed the mark of time until now, when it was about to be halted, once and for all – and he could hear the thumping dread of his heart.
Oh God, I’m finished, he thought, numbed.
Each second slowed, opening up space for one last-ditch reflection, something charged with high meaning and importance. In the popular imagination, Anselm was meant to see his life pass before his eyes – his infancy, parents, loved ones, a kite in the wind – but something else came to the fore … a man with a flushed, perspiring face. He appeared like an overweight angel to insulate Anselm from the banality of what was about to happen.
It was Bede. He’d come to say, ‘I told you so.’
It was that kind of case after all.
A dark shape appeared at the mouth of the corridor. Anselm tried to call out but his voice jammed. His final deliberation came like a weak sigh:
‘God … I’m not ready.’
Anselm had always imagined that death might be like falling under a general anaesthetic: giving in to the sudden, overwhelming pull of darkness … followed by a burst of light and the great answer to the great question: had the fifties jazz revival reached heaven?
There was no such tug from below. No trumpet blast. Just an enormous crash and then it was all over.