George chose a jigsaw — a medieval map of the known world. Anselm left George and took a bus to Camberwell. Once more he was directed to the garden and the corridor of chestnut trees. Sister Dorothy was in the same place, at the far end. Tartan blankets kept her warm; the brown pakol had been pulled down to protect her ears. She glanced at Anselm as he sat down beside her on a stone bench, and said, ‘She was a very clever girl, but naughty. Didn’t take to the rules at first. She spent her first months in detention every Sunday afternoon. I used to visit her with parcels from the tuck shop.’
‘I take it you mean Elizabeth Steadman, and not Elizabeth Glendinning,’ said Anselm.
‘What a very silly mistake,’ she replied, closing her eyes. The fracture in her nose caught the low, slanting light, and it appeared dark and grotesque.
‘I was completely fooled,’ said Anselm.
Sister Dorothy might have admitted defeat, but she was shrewd enough to wait and see just how much territory had been lost. Anselm smuggled an arm into each wide sleeve, taking hold of his elbows. It was cold. Three ravens watched him from the branches of an oak beyond the convent wall.
‘I imagine that it was in the evening,’ said Anselm, ‘and that it had grown dark outside. Elizabeth was alone in the Green Room at St John’s Wood. She opened The Following of Christ — a book that went back, perhaps, to her last meeting with you —and she cut a hole in the pages deep enough to hold a key Much later she came to Larkwood with a duplicate and asked me to use it if, by chance, she were to die. Her last words to me were, “You can’t always explain things to your children. If need be, will you help Nicholas understand?” At first, I thought she meant help him come to terms with grief. Then I thought she wanted me to explain that you couldn’t be a lawyer without a sort of innocent compromise. But now I fear she meant something very different –’
Sister Dorothy made a low groan of surrender. ‘Mr Kemble said you might come.’
The ravens hopped onto higher branches, and then flew off in different directions.
‘You know Roddy?’ Anselm had the sort of sensation that might occur if you turned a corner in a familiar street, only to find you were in a different country.
‘Oh yes, we’re old friends,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘I met him during a prison visit. My veil charmed him. In those days it was like a marquee. He wanted to know how it was fixed, whether it was comfortable. I rather thought he was jealous.’
‘He’s never mentioned you.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that is what we agreed.’
Anselm tried to stop his intuition racing ahead of his questions. ‘Sister, did you introduce Elizabeth to Mr Kemble?’
‘Not quite.’ Sister Dorothy seemed proud of her own machinations. ‘I told Roddy all about Elizabeth when she began her studies for the Bar. He wangled several accidental meetings and eventually urged her to apply to his chambers. Elizabeth never found out.’
Anselm’s inkling was like a rush of blood. He said, ‘You didn’t meet Elizabeth in Carlisle, did you? You met here in Camberwell … This is the hostel where you were based … before the architects put in those corridors …’
Sister Dorothy gazed high above the convent wall, as if she could see ridges, peaks and snow ‘Wheel me inside, please, and tell me about the key’ she said.
As happens in November, darkness had come like a thief, and quickly.
15
When Riley got to Hornchurch Marshes the light was dwindling. Gingerly he trotted down a sloping path that led to the Four Lodges. Years back, a cooling tower had been demolished and all that remained were these rectangular pools. The Council had put some fish in and left them to it.
On the site of the old tower, Riley scoured the grass. Whimpering and swearing, he kicked free some rocks and a blackened two-by-four with rusted nails protruding like a row of buttons. Then he sat on the remnants of a wall, hugging himself, his eyes fixed on the path. He was up a height, feeling nauseous, watching his actions run ahead of him, like they’d done with John Bradshaw At his feet were the weapons, and a torch.
This was only the third time Riley had been here. The last was after the trial, and before that he’d been a boy.
Very early one morning the man Riley wouldn’t call Dad had put the remaining kitten in a sack. The other eight had found good homes. ‘Put your coat on, Graham,’ he said. There was a smell of aftershave — something brash and fiery.
Without speaking, they walked through Dagenham’s empty streets towards the pale light over Hornchurch Marshes. Presently the flats of the Thames opened out like a damp blanket and there, in the middle, were four panes of water, framed and criss-crossed by slippery bricks.
They walked to the edge and Walter’s arm began to swing. His chest blew up and his mouth went firm. Sick at the idea of unwanted life, Riley grabbed the big man’s sleeve, but a backhand sent him flying He was on his hands and knees for the splash, with blood on his lip. The bag turned in the water and sank. Riley watched, transfixed. He’d expected a scream — not from the bag, but from above and all around. But there was no sound … none at all. After the ripples had run off, the surface carried nothing but colour snatched from the brightening sky.
That evening, they came back to the Four Lodges. Midges clung like hats around the fishermen. They sat on boxes and stools, maggots on their bottom lip. That’s how it was done: you warmed it in the mouth. When it hit the cold water the thing wriggled on its hook, attracting the perch and the carp. Walter kept his supply in a Tom Long tobacco tin.
‘Go on, Graham,’ he said distantly.
Riley wanted to please Walter, so he did as he was asked, and Walter looked on, midges circling his head. Riley gazed into his high, tormented eyes: the big man didn’t really want to be like this, but he couldn’t stop himself. However, there and then, Riley’s understanding shrivelled up. Somehow, this couldn’t be right … feeling this thing writhe between his lips. It was the taste of decay.
Riley didn’t trouble himself with questions like why the man he wouldn’t call Dad did what he did — he already knew the answer: Walter had a child of his own; Riley was in the way The big man had lost his job and his self-respect. He wanted a life different from the one he’d got. Those huge lungs were bursting with complaint. The braces weren’t strong enough to hold it in. When Riley lay awake that night, after two visits to the Four Lodges, such thoughts didn’t even ruffle the surface of his mind; no, Riley was more confused by the senseless parade of death: in one day he’d seen a fish taken out of water, and a cat thrown in.
When Riley next came, after the trial, he thought of the Major, who’d never lost faith in the boy who’d turned up at the hostel, who’d seen someone else behind the flesh and blood in front of him — someone lost to Riley’s eyes. Leaving the conference room, Riley had glimpsed something like agony on the old soldier’s face. The Major was asking himself how this beast had turned out the way he had. It was a good question, but who’d have thought that the die was cast when Riley still a boy couldn’t make sense of a brightening sky?
On that glorious day of acquittal, midges gathered around Riley’s head; and he wept as a man on the grass where he’d wept as a boy.
The temperature was dropping fast with the light and Riley shivered. Before him lay the Four Lodges and, on their far side, coming down a sloping path, was a big lad … a lad who was on to Walter.
16
Nancy stood in the yard by the pile of bricks that she’d been collecting for the herb garden.
‘You could have gone places.’