Searching for Celia (21 page)

Highgate Cemetery is a strange and mysterious place. Built in the 1830s, it covers thirty-seven acres and has more than 53,000 graves holding the remains of more than 170,000 people. The atmosphere is certifiably spooky Victorian Gothic, thanks to the cemetery’s official policy of managed neglect, allowing the grounds to remain wildly unmanicured, overrun with trees, vines, shrubs, and wildflowers that threaten to suffocate the countless tumbledown, crumbling, ramshackle graves.

I appear to be the cemetery’s only visitor as I take one in the maze of many narrow, winding, muddy paths that cut through the dense vegetation toward the center of the cemetery. The fog, which had thinned to the lightness of a human breath back in Bayswater, still lingers here, farther north and at a higher altitude. This fog is in no hurry to lift as it kisses cold marble statues and embraces lonely gravestones, some untouched for decades by human hands.

Callaway could be on the way, I think, as a gust of damp wind whistles around my ears. Or she might be waiting, even now. I’ve got to get to Celia before she does. I quicken my pace as I move down the hillside and deeper into the cemetery, where the light barely pierces the tangled masses of brambles, holly, and thick wiry shrubs.

I approach the Egyptian Avenue, one of the cemetery’s best-known landmarks, and enter a dark descending passageway beneath a great stone arch carved into the hillside, overgrown with ropy vines and cascades of ivy and marked on either side with obelisks. A chill darts up my spine as I hurry through the damp, shadowy tunnel lined with vaults, each holding a dozen ancient coffins. The vaults are separated by stone columns capped with carvings of lotus buds, extending the eerie theme.

The tunnel opens into the Circle of Lebanon, a sunken ring of elaborate Greco-Egyptian-style vaults and catacombs, twenty feet below ground level and fully exposed to the sky. In the middle of the circle stands the majestic Cedar of Lebanon tree around whose roots the circle was carved and which predates the cemetery by hundreds of years.

I can’t remember exactly where Radclyffe Hall’s tomb is located, so I work my way counterclockwise around the circle’s damp dirt path, moving between the massive stone vaults lining the ring’s outer edge, each sized, shaped, and designed like a small Gothic chapel, and the inner rim’s catacombs, with their dark recessed iron doors set deep into the earth.

Roughly halfway around the circle, I turn the corner and there is Cecelia Frost waiting for me, standing in the shallow entrance to a vault with the name
Mabel Veronica Batten
chiseled overhead. Mabel Batten was Radclyffe Hall’s first lover and it is within her tomb that Radclyffe Hall is buried. At Celia’s feet is a small white marble planter, engraved with
Radclyffe Hall
and holding a delicate bouquet of pink flowers.

Seeing me, Celia drops her cigarette and crushes it with her boot heel, then raises her arm in a silent salute. It is still a shock to see the bobbed black hair framing her pale skin and even features. Beneath her denim jacket she wears my Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, borrowed from my suitcase.

My heart pounds as I rush toward her, my feet turning up clumps of damp dark soil. “Celia,” I pant when I reach her. “What did you mean when you said you were guilty of enough other things?”

She ducks back into the doorway, eyes narrowing. “What?”

“Last night.” I gulp for air, bending at the waist. “When I told you about Callaway and the photos. You said you never took payoffs from Gregorovich, but you were guilty of enough other things. What other things?”

She stiffens, jutting out her chin. “Dayle, what the hell is going on?”

Catching my breath, I speak more slowly. “Celia—I need to know. What else have you done?”

She folds her arms. “Nothing audacious. Just bent a few rules.”

I turn, glance over my shoulder, then look past Celia, past the dark doorways that stare out like hollow eyes from the curved circle of tombs. “I need specifics,” I insist.

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Let’s see—crossed into Ukraine on forged papers when I couldn’t get a transit visa. Sold a blood diamond and gave the proceeds to a clinic in Sierra Leone. Slashed the tires on a van meant to traffic underage girls from Marseille to Rotterdam. Shook hands with evil people and told myself it was for a greater good.” Her face softens. “But I’m done with all that, Dayle. I want a fresh start. I want to feel clean again. There are other ways to be of use in this world.” She pauses. “Now tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I believe Callaway is working with Gregorovich and they want you out of the way.”

She inhales sharply. “What?”

“There’s no time to explain. We’ve got to get you out of England.”

I motion her away from the tomb’s entrance but she stands her ground. “How?” she demands.

“By exchanging identities. I’ll be you and you’ll be me.”

She shakes her head so rapidly the blunt black ends of her hair strike her cheek. “You
can’t
be serious.”

“I am. With your hair cut and colored, we look enough alike, at least from a distance, to pull it off. You’ll take my flight to Chicago as Dayle Salvesen and I’ll be Cecelia Frost for as long as possible.” I slip the backpack from my shoulder and push it toward her. “Take this. Inside are my passport, driver’s license, credit cards, cash, and the details for an e-ticket to Chicago. British Airways Flight 1544 out of Heathrow, leaving at twelve fifty. Be on that flight.”

“But—”

“When you land at O’Hare, take a cab to my condo. The address is on my driver’s license. I’ll get a message to Mom, letting her know what’s happened. She’ll help you get settled until I get back.”

“But the police will realize rather quickly you’re not me,” she argues.

“I know. I just want to buy enough time for you to catch that flight. We don’t know what kind of false evidence Callaway might have. She may have convinced others that you’re working with the traffickers. If you’re here, you’re in danger.”

“But you’re in danger too.”

“Not as much as you are.” I force a wry smile. “Besides—think how cool this will sound in the next
Assignment
novel.” I fight my arms out of my jacket and motion for Celia to do the same. I struggle into her faded denim jacket while she slips on my green London Fog.

“Okay,” I say, breathless. “One last thing.”

“What?”

“This.” I hold out my plaster cast and grasp it with my other hand.

Celia gasps. “Bloody hell!” Her face pales as she steps back in horror.

“You’ve got to help me. Please, Celia. It’s the only way.”

Thursday

9:15 a.m.

I bear down and pull. The pain is so intense, I feel nauseous. “Help me, Celia,” I plead. “If my arm swells, the cast’ll never come off.”

I motion for her to grab hold above my knuckles while I push from below. “Okay,” I say when we’re both latched on tightly. “On three. Ready?”

She nods, looking queasy.

“Okay. One, two, three!” I push while she pulls. After several agonizing seconds of stubborn resistance, the cast releases and I stumble backward, blinded by pain. My broken hand feels electrified, as if I’ve plunged it into a bucket of stars.

“Are you all right?” The cast sways gently between Celia’s fingertips.

“I think so.” I rise to my knees and then sit back on my heels in the dirt, cradling my arm. The bones below my shoulder have turned to jelly; even my lips quiver. “Put it on,” I pant, looking up at her. “You’re so thin—it should slide right on.”

With a nod she pushes up her sleeve and thrusts her left arm into the cast. It fits easily, stopping just below her elbow.

I struggle to my feet and Celia hands me the red duffel bag, which I heave over my shoulder, centering the weight against my ribs.

“Okay, let’s go.” I struggle to breathe through the pain as my arm goes numb at my side.

“Wait.” Celia turns to the plaque affixed to the inner wall beside the entrance to the tomb. It reads,
Radclyffe Hall
1943
, and then beneath:
And, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. Una.

Una
was Una Troubridge, Mabel Batten’s cousin who became Radclyffe Hall’s lover after Mabel died. Una had planned to be buried in the vault alongside Mabel and Radclyffe, but she died unexpectedly in Rome and was buried in Rome’s English Cemetery, her written instructions for burial not discovered until afterward. Her coffin in Rome was inscribed simply with the words,
Una Vincenzo Troubridge, the friend of Radclyffe Hall.

“Come on, Celia,
now
,” I urge her. “Before Callaway gets here.”

“Wait. Just a moment longer.” Celia, her face suddenly soft and strangely dreamy, caresses each carved letter on the plaque with her finger as if it were a loved one’s cheek, then tenderly straightens the bouquet of pink flowers in the planter at her feet, just in front of the tomb’s dark latticed door.

“Very well.” She stands and surveys her handiwork with satisfaction, pressing the plaster cast against her lip. “
Now
we can go.”

We stride side by side along the circular dirt path, past the ring of stately vaults and corniced catacombs to a broad stone stairway, then mount the vivid green, moss-softened steps and emerge from the circle at ground level. I look around anxiously, surveying the dense, almost primordial, vegetation, rich with a lush, dark decadence, almost anti-English in its lack of order and restraint. There’s no sign of Callaway or the police anywhere. Nothing but row after row of crosses, headstones, and ancient, sunken graves tipped sullenly toward the center of the earth.

“Back to the front gate.” I touch Celia’s sleeve and whisper in her ear, “Not too fast, not too slow. Steady steps.”

She nods grimly as we trek down yet another winding, muddy pathway, overrun with knotted grasses and muscular, sinuous weeds. The graves and mausoleums seem older and more elaborate in this part of the cemetery; we weave between towering Celtic crosses with encircled arms and chiseled statues of angels, saints, and garland-draped urns. Death is everywhere here—memorialized and normalized by Victorian Londoners for whom death was never distant, and no one was ever safe from that grim shadow passing always overhead.

“When we get through the front gate, we separate,” I tell Celia. “Go to Archway station. Get on the Tube, but get off after the first stop or two—somewhere unexpected, somewhere neither of us would be likely to go. Grab a cab to Heathrow, but don’t check in until the gate’s about to close. Lie low, be careful, you’ll be fine.”

Scattered thoughts careen through my head, bouncing and ricocheting like carnival bumper cars. “When you land at O’Hare, take a cab to my condo. Call my mom and explain what’s going on, in case I can’t reach her before you arrive. Tell her I love her and I’ll be home soon.”

Celia tucks her chin to her chest as her scuffed leather boots squish through the mud. The path here is so narrow that drooping vines tickle our faces as we push forward. “You don’t have to do this,” she offers softly. “I’m willing to go to the police, Callaway notwithstanding.”

“I know. But I want to do this. I
need
to do this. If I’d believed you all along, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” My mind races and my arm aches; the very air seems to burnish my bruised and tender skin. “Hug my cats when you get to my condo. Hamlet and Yorick. They have similar black-and-white markings, but Hamlet is fatter. They like to be picked up, turned over, and have their tummies rubbed.”

Celia swivels to face me, her hazel eyes wide and surprised. “Are you serious?”

“Yep.”

“Dayle, you really
must
get out more often.”

I allow myself a brief, tight smile, then motion to continue.

*

We’re halfway back to the front gate when I sense that something isn’t right. It’s not that we’re being watched or followed. It feels more like something is encroaching, closing in. A circle narrowing, constricting—a breath held too long and anxious for release. I feel movement all around us in the whispering oak and chestnut trees and in the shadows cast by massive granite vaults and bashful stone-faced angels gazing down from giant crosses. I think I see something—a glint of metal, a brief flash of silvery light. I’m sure it’s nothing.

My steps quicken and Celia struggles to keep pace. “My condo has two bedrooms,” I continue. “Feel free to sleep in the master bedroom. The other room…belongs to Rory.”

The heavy vegetation thins, the sky lightens, and in the mist up ahead, a man—average height, Caucasian, late twenties—advances toward us on the path. Highgate normally receives a steady stream of visitors, but this man doesn’t look like a sightseer, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a hooded gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled forward, obscuring his face. As he glances up, his hands slip quickly into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. Please just let him be a Candee Cronin fan, I think absurdly.

Celia too seems to sense that something is wrong. The man draws steadily closer. His eyes, two beads shining blackly beneath the peak of his hood, emerge from the shadow to focus on us briefly before glancing down.

Keep moving; keep walking. Don’t do anything suspicious. Each minute off the clock brings Celia closer to freedom. It’s not much longer now.

The man is almost upon us. We could break away and make a run for it. But there’s no way out of the cemetery other than through the front gate, and we don’t want our exit to cause a commotion. If we can just get past this guy, we’ll be fine.

“Be careful,” I whisper to Celia. “I’m not sure about this one.”

Celia nods gravely, drawing her arms to her sides.

In a matter of moments the man is upon us. As I make eye contact, his eyelids flicker and he looks away. His sweatshirt brushes my shoulder, jostling the duffel bag as he barrels past me with long, forceful strides. I am just about to breathe a sigh of relief when he turns suddenly, grabs my shoulder, and spins me around. I stumble out of his grasp, dropping the duffel bag to the ground.

Celia screams. I turn in time to see the knife, withdrawn with a glimmer from the pouch of his sweatshirt. The man swings at my arm, slashing the denim sleeve. “Run!” I yell at Celia. “Go! Get out of here, now!”