The Gardens of the Dead Read online

  Charles searched the table, as if for crumbs. ‘She asked whether Elizabeth had been troubled by anything.’ He was ruffled and red. ‘Just kindness, you know Surprised that she’s gone the distance too soon.

  Roddy banged the skillet on the cooker, as if it were a gong.

  ‘Plates, glasses and the amenities of joy if you please,’ he said solemnly ‘Even now, at this painful time, we cannot waver.

  Nick woke in the middle of the night. He went to the bathroom for a glass of water. The mirror was too low because he was too big … that’s what his mother had said … so he stooped to look. Despite the sun, he hadn’t gone especially brown. But his skin was speckled and his eyebrows had turned to straw As if that bewildered face ought to know, he asked himself why a solicitor had quizzed him about the East End, rather than dingos; why an inspector had gone after a widower; and why a key his mother’s secret, had been kept not only from her husband, but also from him.

  5

  Father Andrew was fond of a saying from a Desert Father:

  ‘Don’t use wise words falsely’ Perhaps that explained why he was always cautious when he spoke. And why it was disconcerting when you sensed he was preparing to speak.

  The day after the funeral, Anselm bumped into Father Andrew crossing the cloister. The Prior paused, eyeing Anselm with an expression somewhere between expectancy and deliberation.

  ‘Nice day for picking the apples,’ volunteered Anselm.

  ‘What?’

  Anselm repeated what he’d thought was an amiable observation.

  ‘Eh?’ The Glasgow intonation suggested a coming scuffle.

  Oh no, thought Anselm. He’s changing the community work rota. The Prior always lost a screw when he was planning to shift people from one job to another, because everyone complained. Father Andrew waited a moment and then strode off. In a flush of horror, Anselm thought of the new dispensation: he might face exile to the kitchen — a sort of limbo where no one approves of you, except on feast days. But then he settled upon the obvious: that the Prior’s ill temper was related to Elizabeth’s death, the coming of Cartwheel and … an unused key. They were of a piece. And the Prior was waiting for Anselm. He had something to say. But why not call him in? Why the glowering?

  Anselm decided that he’d better go to BJM Securities sooner rather than later. First, though, he had to sift through some nagging memories that had gathered around the key Uneasily, Anselm made his way to Saint Leonard’s Field and the sweet ambience of manual labour.

  The trees were already peppered with monks. Crates were stacked against a trolley Ladders and forked poles reached into the branches. There was a hum of contentment. Apple picking always did that, even when community nerves were frayed —which they had been since Cyril had started banging on about missing receipts. And Christmas was coming. That always wound the brothers up.

  Anselm chose an unattended tree that was heavy with foliage. He found a wide limb, leaned back and rolled himself a cigarette. And he returned to Elizabeth’s remark about ‘not knowing and not being able to care’. It didn’t sit easily with the vociferous defender of the adversarial system whom he’d known at the Bar.

  ‘Look,’ she had said during one of their little chats, ‘it’s a court of evidence, not truth. We have to forget about the truth, for truth’s sake. The truth is out of reach. And we shouldn’t pretend when we stand up in court that the truth is what we care about. We don’t. We care about what our client says is the truth. I can live with that. It’s the only way to take innocence seriously when all the evidence points the other way. The truth? What’s that? It’s something the jury decided after I sat down.’

  No discomfort there, thought Anselm, blowing a perfect ring. At the time, ruminating over a Jaffa cake, Anselm had baited her confidence. ‘But what if someone got off because the trial took a wrong turn and no one noticed?’

  ‘It can’t happen,’ she said, glancing at her watch. She was due back in court. ‘All the jury hears are competing versions of the relevant facts. Have you eaten the last one?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  What quiet voice had seized her conscience? thought Anselm, picking an apple. And what could it seize upon? Every barrister accepted that justice was determined by winning and losing. If you lost, you swallowed disappointment; if you won, you got a pat on the back. As Elizabeth had said, ‘what really happened’ was whatever the jury decided. And if they convicted an innocent man? Unless you could fault the process or find new evidence, he’d languish in jail. And if a guilty man was freed? No one could bring him back to court. He could chant ‘Nemo debet bis vexari’ (or, to be patristic, ‘God doesn’t judge the same offence twice’). Either way the truth had gone like the dove off the ark.

  Anselm was certain that Elizabeth’s crisis had lain in this system, devised over a thousand years to deal with the corollaries of frailty and wickedness. How that was connected with tidying up her life, he hadn’t the faintest idea. Having finished his cigarette, he turned his attention to the apple. Organic principles, incompetently followed, meant that most of Larkwood’s fruit was technically blemished. He examined a wormhole, feeling a small hankering for the old struggle in the corridors of the Bailey.

  In one of those glancing thoughts, seemingly irrelevant, Anselm recalled that he’d only ever done one case with Elizabeth. In many respects it had been an allegory for the law’s uneasy accord with the truth. Forensically, it hadn’t been anything special. But the client had been awful … Riley. That was the name. She’d called him ‘a ruined instrument’. Gradually a presence materialised in Anselm’s memory: a shaved head, small ears and sunken wounded eyes.

  6

  Nick went to the Green Room and rang BJM Securities. While waiting, he studied an open trial brief on the desk. A big man had been murdered in Bristol. ‘The cranial vault comprises eight bones that surround and protect the brain.’ Autopsy photographs reduced him to a one-inch bundle of close-ups.

  A Mrs Tippins answered the phone. Nick explained that his mother had passed away and that he wished to collect what had been stored at the premises. She, in turn, described which documents would be required for access to the deposit box.

  ‘Without the probate certificate,’ she said, ‘you can only look.’

  ‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Sudbury.’ She gave the Suffolk address. After a pause, she said, ‘At first I thought you were the monk.’

  ‘A monk?’

  ‘Yes. He’s the other keyholder.’

  Nick made another call to check train times and then he wrote a note for his father, saying he’d be back late. On rising he looked at the red and blue photographs. His mother had often quizzed him on the building regulations of the body — how it was put together, what would happen if you did this or that to an organ, a tissue. It was an incredibly fragile structure, despite the bones; a staggering, miraculous unity.

  ‘The design is perfect,’ he’d once said.

  ‘Not quite.’ She’d sounded disappointed.

  To Elizabeth, in this chair, the body had been an exhibit, something numbered and sewn up with stitches. Her wonder had been reserved for worms that glowed.

  Nick waited in a small room without windows. The only furnishings were a table and one chair. The door opened, and Mrs Tippins entered, pushing a large aluminium box on wheels. She said, ‘People bring things here when their houses are full up.

  Her skirt seemed to have been made from abandoned hotel tablecloths and the blouse from net curtains. ‘It’s hard to get rid of things, isn’t it? Stay as long as you like. Here’s a list of attendances.’ He glanced at the single entry, made about three weeks earlier.

  Left alone, Nick opened the box. Inside was a single item: a battered red case — a dainty valise for a weekend trip. A seam was split and the gold had flaked from the clasp. He put the case on the table and lifted the lid. Inside it was a ring binder, an envelope and a newspaper cutting.

  Nick began with the first
. It was wrapped in the characteristic red tape that he’d seen for years on his mother’s desk. Typed in the centre was the case name: Regina v Riley The left-hand corner bore an endorsement:

  Coram: HHJ Venning

  Prosecution: Pagett

  Defence: Glendinning QC

  Junior: Duffy

  Not Guilty on all counts.

  ‘Duffy’ had come to his attention a few moments ago from Mrs Tippins. It was the surname of the monk who’d been entrusted with the second key Nick had met him, long ago. ‘Larkwood Priory isn’t that far off, but he’s never been here. I’ve heard that once you’re in, you can’t get out.’ She’d grimaced like a seasoned potholer. Nick considered the name of the instructing solicitor at the bottom of the page. He’d met him at St John’s Wood, chomping nuts and thinking twice: Frank Wyecliffe Esq.

  Nick untied the tape and opened the binder. The front page was entitled ‘Instructions to Counsel’ and contained a single paragraph:

  Mr Riley maintains that the witnesses, his former tenants, have fabricated a case against him following their eviction for rent arrears. No doubt counsel will be able to advise the client upon the complexion of the evidence.

  Nick turned the page and skimmed the typed witness statements. Three young women had said Riley was a pimp. Scattered here and there was another name: the Pieman. The last deposition was that of David George Bradshaw, the manager of a homeless people’s night shelter to whom, it seemed, the girls had turned for help. The final page was the defendant’s police interview. There was only one reply, ‘I’m clean. ‘Something in Nick’s concentration failed and he tied up the brief. It was difficult this: doing what she had done, in the same way.

  He picked up the cutting. It was taken from a south London daily newspaper. The paper was dirty and the ink smudged. A coroner’s court had returned a verdict of accidental death regarding John Bradshaw, seventeen, whose body had been recovered from the Thames. The report quoted the anger and grief of his father, George — evidently the witness in the earlier trial, even though he went by his middle name. Nick cross-checked the date of the inquest with that of the trial: an interval of five years had elapsed.

  Nick turned to the envelope. It was addressed to both his mother and Anselm Duffy The letter inside was from Emily Bradshaw, the mother of John and the wife of George. It condemned Riley’s defenders and blamed them for the destruction of her family Again Nick checked the date, and then he quickly put everything back in the red case. After a moment’s calm he pencilled a chronology to make clear the sequence of events:

  End of trial.

  Death of J Bradshaw (as per cutting): 5 years after the trial.

  Letter from Mrs Bradshaw: 8 years after trial.

  Opening of account with BJM: 10 years after trial.

  Nick wheeled the aluminium box back to Mrs Tippins. Her look of permanent curiosity prompted him to remark, ‘Just some old papers.’

  ‘It’s funny what people hang on to, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She opened a desk register for his signature and then changed her mind. ‘Oh, probate’s on the way … go on, take them. The monk won’t be coming, will he? I mean, he’s all but locked up, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  On the train back to London Nick gazed at the evening fields, his mind focused on a small puzzle: how did Elizabeth obtain a cutting from a local newspaper far from where she lived and worked? She was a woman of meticulously clean habits, and yet the paper was dirty and ragged. The only sensible conclusion was that someone had given it to her; and the most likely candidate was either Mr or Mrs Bradshaw It was unlikely to have been the latter because the cutting didn’t fit the envelope, and in any event, the letter itself was in pristine condition, so that left David George Bradshaw But how could Elizabeth have met him? She had been defence counsel, representing Riley They’d been on opposing sides. How could they meet without one or the other, in effect, crossing over? And given that Elizabeth was the one with the suitcase, she was the likely traveller, so to speak. That being so, there was a further curiosity: why would Mr Bradshaw give such a cutting to Elizabeth? Not only did that imply a binding of his mother to the tragic event, it revealed an intimacy that could not have prevailed at the time of the trial: for if Elizabeth had already known Mr Bradshaw, she would have had to withdraw from the case. And, since she didn’t, the implication was that Elizabeth had sought him out afterwards, perhaps prompted by the letter from his wife.

  So, thought Nick, watching homely lights spread across the fields, you made a friend of your opponent, you stored what you found in secret, and you gave the key to a monk. He felt acutely awake, though tired. He forced his mind to plod on one or two steps and, like a reward, he came to the real mystery. He gazed ahead, as if he’d stumbled on the source of the Nile: Elizabeth had started this collection at the conclusion of the trial, when she could not have anticipated the death of John Bradshaw, or the letter from his mother. Why then, had she kept the trial papers in the first place?

  At Liverpool Street Nick took the Underground to St John’s Wood, musing upon a chain of intuitions: there was a link between the evolution of Elizabeth’s secret and her desire to keep Nick close to home; at the same time, Nick’s father had been urging him to visit Australia. Did he know of his wife’s subterfuge? Nick had little doubt: he did not. His father was guileless. His unthinking candour had compromised numerous commercial transactions spanning several continents — the last of which had led to his enforced retirement. He could not be relied upon — least of all with the truth. It made another question all the starker: how might anything be so important to Elizabeth that she could not share it with the man she trusted most?

  Once home he walked straight to the Butterfly Room determined to confirm his father’s exclusion from the meaning of the key Charles looked up from an armchair as if he’d seen a well-loved moth. He had an empty glass in his hand.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ His face was flushed and he was tipsy.

  ‘I just went walkabout.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’ Nick noticed the bow tie, a remnant from his father’s banking days. He’d worn a bowler hat to work. His suits had been cut from heavy cloth that made him perspire. But he’d looked the real shilling — as if he were hot with responsibility.

  ‘Regent’s Park. And you?’

  ‘Sudbury.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Suffolk.’

  ‘Good God.’

  Nick studied his father’s wounded face. The dear man knew nothing. What had he thought about in Regent’s Park? It was easy to surmise: his wife’s evasiveness and stealth, which, of late, he had noticed; the manner of her going; and consolation from a police officer whom he did not know He was bewildered and Nick could not help him — because he held the key It gave him knowledge, but of a kind he couldn’t share.

  Nick woke and listened to the rubbish truck and the antics of the binmen. He swung his legs out of bed and reached for his mobile. After considerable hesitation, he rang a monastery.

  7

  Blind George, as he was known, woke up on a traffic island. He was lying on a bench. Marble Arch towered huge and white behind a litter bin. A flag fluttered, its line slapping against the pole. Above, the sky was misty blue. An aeroplane crossed in silence, like an ant on lino. George sat up, with a groan, and opened his notebook. A thumb with a cracked black nail smoothed back the pages. He read out loud:

  I am going to Mile End Park to confront Riley.

  Wait beneath the fire escape in Trespass Place.

  The explanation for Inspector Cartwright is in your left inside jacket pocket.

  There’s fifty pounds in your right trouser pocket.

  Elizabeth.

  For years George had kept a record of days gone. Nino, a former traffic warden, had insisted upon the practice. It had been part of his instruction when teaching George about life on the street. Since leaving the world of parking tickets, Nino had moved around t
he libraries of London, still clutching a floppy pad. He had his own chair in most of the reading rooms. One of them had his name on it — stuck on with tape by the management. He had a habit that drove them to distraction, and kept him on the move: in one place he’d put in a request for a book that was held in another. So all these books were flying about London after Nino, when all he had to do was keep still.

  ‘Don’t think,’ he’d said. ‘Just write, starting at the beginning, and keep going. You’ll only understand the story looking backwards. If you start thinking, you’ll write the story you want, not the story you’ve got.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘The street is the place of stories,’ he’d concluded gravely Black, tangled hair covered his face and his skin was grey ‘Stories of harm and stories that heal.’

  George had obeyed, because traffic wardens have a peculiar authority. When one notebook was full he’d start another. They were numbered on the cover. He had thirty-eight of them. George’s whole life was laid out in order, all sixty-four years, as best as he could remember them. Almost every day he’d sat on a park bench or in a café, and he’d scribbled with haste, not pausing to choose his words. Once he’d got something down, he was like an archaeologist with a toothbrush: he gently brushed away the dirt; he’d change a word or phrase, cleaning up what had been saved. It could take months to get it right.

  George’s earliest memory was of an outing in a pushchair. He was sitting behind an improvised cover to keep out the rain. His mother had made it. There was a polythene window sewn into a sort of waxed cotton tent that covered his upper body His protruding legs were warm, covered by a blanket; but he couldn’t see anything because of the condensation. He could hear only the rain and his mother’s feet on the path. They were on their way to see Granddad, whose first name he bore. David. He’d stopped using it a long time ago, out of shame. He’d become George. That burst of anguish took up the first pages of book one, which now lay with all the others in a plastic bag. All them had been filled with a similar, honest desperation: to preserve both the good and the bad. That was something else Nino had said: