Hugh was on the edge of his vision, just out of sight, but Magnus knew that no matter how quickly he turned his head, his cousin would be gone. He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, defeated.
‘I’ll help you harvest three fields. That will be more than enough for your needs. Then I have to go.’
Jacob gave him a grim smile. ‘It’s a deal.’
‘God requires a harvest.’ Father Wingate smiled beatifically. ‘And we are all His children.’
The three of them shook hands. Magnus remembered his slashed tyre again and wondered if it mattered that the soldier had not repeated the old priest’s assurance that he was not a prisoner.
Raisha was standing in the hallway. There were fields waiting to be surveyed, equipment to find, jobs to be assigned, a harvest to plan. Raisha held out her hand, Magnus took it in his and she led him upstairs to his bedroom.
Twenty-Six
It was late by the time Magnus visited Jeb. He was surprised to find him propped up at a small table in his sickroom, a few pages of paper splayed in front of him, his injured leg set stiffly on a low chair. A single candle glimmered waxily from a saucer. Jeb looked up. His face seemed old and hollow by its dim light. He turned the pages face down.
‘Want to sign my cast?’
Jeb tapped his leg lightly with a pen and Magnus saw that it had been plastered.
‘I guess it’s important to keep the old traditions alive.’ Magnus took the pen from him and tried to scrawl his name on the plaster cast, but it was not quite set and the nib sank into it, leaving a shallow dent. He perched on the end of the bed. ‘Maybe later, when it’s dried.’
Jeb rested a hand on top of his papers. ‘You going to be around that long?’
The candle wavered in response to a faint breeze reaching in through the open window. Magnus stared into the blackness beyond. He could see nothing, except the reflection of the candlelight in the glass pane.
‘It seems so, since you told them I might be useful.’
‘What did I say you’d be useful at? Fucking their women?’
Magnus felt his face flush. ‘Helping them get the harvest in.’
‘Shit, I let slip about your croft, didn’t I?’ Magnus nodded and Jeb said, ‘Sorry.’ He grinned. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the religious. Not even a day off for the end of the world.’
‘I guess that’s the point. They don’t want it to be the end.’
‘Strange, when they believe they’re in for pie in the sky.’ Jeb scored a finger across his plastered leg and looked at the white powder caught beneath his nail. ‘Do you ever think what a stroke of luck it was for you and me? A shame millions died, but the sweats did us a good turn.’
‘I had a warm-up gig at O2 lined up.’ Magnus wished he had not been reminded of his big break. It belonged to another life.
Jeb glanced at the door and then said in a low voice, ‘You had a smashed-up face and an imminent rape trial. Entertainers have a bad rep. You could have been looking at a long sentence.’
This must be how long-married couples felt, Magnus thought. They had been over it before and there was no point in discussing it further. He said, ‘If you were a policeman, how come you ended up in prison?’
‘It’s old news.’
‘All the same…’ Magnus let the threat hang in the air.
Jeb stared at him. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
‘They have a right to know.’
Jeb sighed. He lifted the pages from the table and turned them over so Magnus could see the scrawled handwriting, the crossed-out lines and scribbled deletions. ‘I was trying to write it all down. I don’t know why. Scared I’ll forget who I am, or maybe just too much time on my hands. I wasn’t doing very well.’
‘Perhaps you need to say it out loud.’
‘To someone with a sympathetic ear?’ Some of the fight had left Jeb, but his voice still held a challenge. ‘Aren’t there enough priests in this house?’
Magnus grinned. ‘Too many.’
‘That’s the truth.’ Jeb reached beneath the table and brought out a bottle of whisky. He nodded to a shelf above the bed. ‘There’s another glass over there.’
Magnus got up from his seat. Things were easier between them now. Perhaps it was their shared experience and imminent parting, or maybe being newcomers to Tanqueray House had united them in a way that saving each other’s lives had not. A small stack of paperback novels sat beside the glass. He said, ‘Has Belle been looking after you?’
‘You’d make a good detective.’ Jeb poured himself a tot and passed the bottle to Magnus who did the same. ‘Belle’s a nice girl. She isn’t used to being on her own and she’s trying to be brave about it. Helping me helps her.’
There was truth in what Jeb was saying, but the convenience of it made Magnus uneasy. He picked up one of the paperbacks to look at its title and saw a revolver secreted behind the pile. He lifted it by the barrel.
‘Did Belle bring you this too?’
Jeb took another sip of his drink, hiding his expression behind the glass. ‘Like I said, she’s a nice girl. I told her I needed something to protect myself with and she gave me that. It’s okay for you, you’re heading into the blue yonder. I’ve no chance of running away if anything kicks off.’
There was truth in what he said. Magnus slid the gun back into its hiding place and replaced the book on top of the pile.
‘You still haven’t told me what you were in for.’
Jeb took a sip of his drink. Magnus thought he was going to refuse again, but he met his eyes and asked, ‘What if I say I’m in for murdering the woman I loved?’
‘It depends on circumstances, I suppose.’
‘And what if I tell you a bundle of lies?’
‘I’ll have to trust my own judgement on that.’
Jeb’s stare was level. ‘I thought I could leave all this in Pentonville, but it’s on me like skin. If it’s going to come out, maybe it’s better I tell you than someone else.’
‘I’ll be gone soon. I’ll keep it to myself.’
‘If you don’t, you know I’ll find you.’ Jeb looked up towards the far corner of the room. His hair had grown out of the suede head he had worn in prison and was twisting into loose curls that gave his face a softer appearance. ‘I said that I was innocent. That’s not strictly true. I’m not a sex offender and I didn’t do what they put me away for, but I deserved to go down.’ Jeb’s defensiveness was still there, but it had flipped to an insistence on his guilt. ‘My trial was all over the papers, it was three years ago, but a lot of people still remember’ — he paused and corrected himself — ‘remembered, my face. There were two photographs that they used, one of me in uniform, smiling like every mother’s dream. It was taken by a photographer for a local paper on a school outreach visit, not long after I completed training. My hair’s long in the other one.’ He touched his curls. ‘And I’ve got a scruffy beard, like a tramp that’s not had any attention from the Salvation Army in quite a while. There’s a stupid expression on my face, as if I’d just sucked up an exceptionally long joint, which is exactly what I’d done.’ Jeb came to a stop, as if he could see the photographs in front of him.
Magnus said, ‘You don’t sound like ideal police material.’
‘I was superb police material. Perfect for what they wanted at any rate.’
‘Which was?’
‘Being a lying bastard.’ Jeb knocked back the last of the whisky in his glass and freshened it with more from the bottle. ‘I was an undercover police officer. Serpico, that was me, all cock and beard.’
Magnus took the bottle and poured himself another measure. A memory stirred. A documentary about police officers who had formed relationships with some of the women they were meant to be keeping under surveillance. One of them had had a wife elsewhere, a legitimate family.