The Gardens of the Dead (17 page)

‘I am
looking for a man in his sixties,’ said Anselm. ‘His name is David George
Bradshaw I understand he is known as Blind George.’

‘By
whom, if I might respectfully ask?’ His accent was soft, a cultured voice from
the West Country. ‘I hope my interjection does not trouble you?’

‘Not at
all,’ replied Anselm. A sense of déjà vu flashed like a weak light. ‘That’s his
name among other homeless people.’

Mr Hillsden
gave a brief nod as if he’d made a note of the reply ‘Mr Bradshaw has
restricted vision?’

‘No.
But he wears welding goggles. I don’t know why’

‘To
hide his face?’ The suggestion was directed towards one of the posters on the
facing wall.

‘Maybe…
I’m told he keeps his own company’ Anselm felt uneasy as if he were hiding the
part he’d played in the downfall of a man. ‘Until recently Mr Bradshaw stayed
beneath a fire escape at Trespass Place. He was waiting there for a colleague
of mine who unfortunately died. When I went to meet him on her behalf he had
gone. I have an important message for him — in effect, that I will continue
what they were doing in her stead.’

‘In the
first place, I offer my condolences.’ Mr Hillsden’s eyelids twitched as if
troubled by a particle of grit. ‘But secondly with respect, if this gentleman
has withdrawn from the company of men, how might one ask questions as to his
whereabouts?’

‘I don’t
know’

A fair
answer, if I may say so. Where is Trespass Place?’

Anselm
explained, adding that while Mr Bradshaw might not be blind, his memory had
been shattered; that he held time together with a series of notebooks — a
detail that somehow seemed to define the man he was looking for.

‘A wise
practice,’ observed Mr Hillsden. He became abruptly stern, glancing round as if
he’d heard a voice of contradiction. He banged his staff twice and the severity
dissolved. Twitching again, he said, ‘I don’t wish to intrude, but have you met
Mr Bradshaw before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Frequently?’

‘Once.’

‘Would
he remember you?’

Anselm
was stung more by the innocence of the question than its pertinence. His face
grew hot: Mr Hillsden was proceeding with him as he had once proceeded with Mr
Bradshaw Neither of them had known what they were doing. ‘I hope not,’ said
Anselm gravely not daring to look up. He let his eyes rest upon the shining
brogues and the socks outside the trousers.

No one
spoke after that. Mr Hillsden seemed to be deliberating. Presently he said, ‘My
colleagues on the street tend to have what might be called a patch. Most of us
do not stray from it. When we do, I’m afraid, it is usually for a serious
reason. And when we move, it is not to another part of London, but a different
corner of England. That, at least, has been my experience. He stood up,
bringing Anselm and Debbie to their feet. ‘I’ll go over to the South Bank,
though I fear the venture will be futile. But should I find him, the most I can
do is invite him here. Without his express permission, I would not reveal his
location.’

‘Of
course,’ said Anselm. He had the peculiar sensation of standing before a High
Court Master in an application for Wasted Costs. He reached into his habit
pocket, aware that his coming gesture was ridiculous but necessary: ‘Please,
may I cover your expenses?’

‘Thank
you, but no,’ said Mr Hillsden graciously ‘I have adequate means which I am
happy to place at your disposal.’ He looked down at his feet. Briskly he raised
his head and for a split second his blue, watery eyes latched on to Anselm. ‘I
understand you were once at the Bar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which
Inn?’

‘Gray’s.’

Mr Hillsden
seemed to breathe in the sound. A ghostly calm changed his face. ‘Fantastic
forms, whither are ye fled?’

He
frowned as if trying to remember what came next. Anselm knew these words of
Lamb, but he too was stuck. Suddenly Mr Hillsden swung to the door with the
round window. Without hesitating, he strode into the heavy murmuring and the
blue smoke, his stick tapping on the floor.

3

Riley stood at the foot of
the stairs in an empty house in Tottenham. It was cold and damp and his heart
was beating fast. He stared at the bottom step.

‘Who
sent the photograph of Walter?’

His
eyes moved to the chipped baluster, following the spindles up to the gloom of
an unlit landing. The silence opened a door on those shouting voices, the
scuffling of feet and whatever it was that ended up smashed on the floor. As a
boy in the boxroom, he used to beg God to make it stop. And funnily enough, He
did. Shortly afterwards things would go quiet and he’d say ‘Thank you, thank
you,’ his head still under his pillow.

Riley
set to work, lifting and dragging. He loaded up the tables and chairs, the
mirrors and cupboards, a lamp stand and four candlesticks. His feet stamped out
the memory of his childhood, but others from last week licked him. It was
always like this. His head was full of noise. He played arguments like they
were favourite records, changing the words for a bit of variety. It was
exhausting, but anger made him feel alive. In a full-blooded row, he’d pass
through a kind of barrier and float, hardly breathing; he’d think up things to
say and pass them on, as if to someone else. It was a long way from the
gratitude of a boy in the boxroom.

He
worked feverishly Puffs of dust made him cough and spit. By the late afternoon
he’d finished. The building had been stripped. Panting, he stood in the living
room. Sweat touched the nape of his neck like a hand: who had posted the photograph
of Walter?

He hadn’t
looked at the picture since the day it had fallen from the envelope. But he
could still see the man he wouldn’t call Dad, the man no one pushed around, the
biggest man in the street. Walter had kept dumb-bells under the bed. He’d done
press-ups. He’d boxed the air, snorting and whistling —he’d been a southpaw He’d
smelled of liniment. Riley saw him only in the evenings because he got up at
four o’clock to work at the warehouse. After he was made redundant he had to
sell pies from a barrow He was known as the Pieman. And there wasn’t a picture
of him left on the planet, except the one that had fallen onto the kitchen
table. Riley couldn’t understand it. He’d burnt them all over forty years ago. Sweat
crawled down his back. Who could have posted the photograph? There was no one
he could think of. They were all dead.

Riley
sat against the wall, hands resting on his knees. Rat droppings were scattered
like tiny black seeds along the skirting board. The damp and the quiet closed
in upon him.

Major Reynolds at the
Salvation Army hostel had always worn a neatly pressed uniform. He had a pencil
moustache like that of a Battle of Britain pilot and years of cornet playing
had left a small indentation on his upper lip. A shiny square face and
prominent black eyebrows completed the impression of military distinction.
Riley never learned his first name. He was just ‘the Major.

When
this quiet soldier saw the blade in Riley’s sock, he should have thrown him back
onto the street. But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled the runaway into his office,
threw the knife in the bin and said, ‘You’re a grown-up now.’

Riley
smiled, like kids do when they’re nervous.

‘You’re
a man.’

Riley’s
eyes glazed, but he kept the smile.

‘And a
man should think deeply’ said the Major, unperturbed. He folded his arms, and
his dark eyebrows made a frown. He measured Riley up and down with a long,
calculating gaze, as if to guess the size of his clothes.

The
next day the Major called Riley back into his office. He stood with legs
crossed, leaning back on his desk. He’d put in a good word to another trooper
in the Army a manager at McDougall’s on the Isle of Dogs.

‘There’s
a job if you want it,’ he said.

‘Doing
what?’ He stared at the Major’s gleaming shoes. Even the soles were clean.

‘Stacking
crates of self-raising flour.’

Riley
had seen the ads everywhere. They made it out to be some kind of miracle when
it was just a mix of chemicals. He said, ‘Nothing rises on its own.’

The
Major narrowed his eyes, like a gambling man, wondering if there was another
level to the remark. Uncertainly he said, ‘No, it doesn’t.’

Riley
never went back to the Sally Ann. He worked hard. He learned how to operate a
crane. He saved up. He bought a bungalow. And he bought Quilling Road. The
idea was to rent it out and build up an investment, but it turned into
something else. No, that wasn’t true. It was a choice; a rambling, complicated,
murky series of impulses and actions, but, in the end, a very deep kind of choice;
something cold and murderous. It was similar to being in one of his rages. It
was as if he were watching himself, and he felt nothing at what he saw.

The
docks were dying, but Riley survived. After he was made redundant, he found a
job the same week at Lawton’s, where he met Nancy Dumpy Nancy with her hungry
eyes. He first saw her from on high, looking down from his crane. He seemed to
see her close-up for who she was. She walked timidly as if she’d been hurt.
That’s when he first thought of selling Quilling Road. He seriously thought of
packing up. But he didn’t. One lunchtime he went into the manager’s office
intending to ask her out… because there was something about her that had
stirred him, that had lit a small flame in his guts… But on the day when he
opened his mouth, he’d asked her to stamp his card while he went AWOL to catch
his rent. That sudden shift of intention, the deception of Nancy had thrilled
him, as if it were a kind of arson. (Riley understood the excitement of a
building on fire.) So that was another choice —an even deeper one, from a
frozen place inside himself. Unlike getting married to Nancy. That happened as
if it were inevitable. The courting went like a dream. He did everything that
he’d seen in the films: aftershave, greased hair, a natty suit — the lot. He
took Nancy to a big hotel, ordered high tea and paid with crisp bills fresh
from the bank. He left a fat tip. He held out his arm for Nancy. On Brighton
beach, he tossed his trilby into the wind. But when they got married, and they
went home, and she was there first thing in the morning and last thing at
night.., he felt sick. He didn’t know what to do in the day to day He scoured
his past, lifting its slabs, jerking open its drawers, trying desperately to
find something that would teach him
what to do.
But there was nothing
there, except loathing and disgust, like a warm mist. And there before him, day
and night, was Nancy Dumpy Nancy with her hungry eyes. She was a breathing
accusation.

And
then help came from a very strange quarter, although he didn’t see it that way
at the time: a woman in black arrived on the wharf with a few heavies in
uniform. Twenty minutes later he was arrested. From that moment, the focus of
Nancy’s anguish shifted from who he was to what someone had said he’d done. And
that gave him space. Not much, but space nonetheless.

Riley swept up the rat
droppings and put the pan and brush back in a hallway cupboard. As he closed
the door he heard that polished voice as if it were on the other side. He saw
the scrubbed nails, the white cuffs, the starched trousers.

A man
should think deeply; he should know himself.’

Riley
had studied the Major’s cap-badge motto, ‘Blood and Fire’, in a panic, unable
to comprehend why this man should care at all.

‘I know
myself better than you ever will, Major. I’ve been places.., in here’ — he’d
pointed savagely at his head, as if it were a distant continent — ‘that you’ve
only heard about.’

‘I don’t
mean what you’ve done. I mean who you are. The man behind the mistakes and the
wrong turns.’ The Major leaned forwards, placing a hand on each knee, like the
medic on a football pitch. He stared at Riley his eyes clean and unbearably
merciful. ‘They’re not the same, you know’

They’re
not the same. The strange words spiralled down forty years into an empty house
in Tottenham. Riley’s mind grew dark — even his eyes seemed to drain of light.
How could you separate a man from what he’d done? Like a flicker of flame in
the grate, Riley remembered himself standing at the bedroom door, a boy in
pyjamas, watching Walter punch and stab the air.

4

Anselm was drinking tea in
a café ten minutes early for his meeting with Inspector Cartwright. Roughly
ten minutes after the agreed time he saw a figure dodging between the cars on
Coptic Street. A magenta scarf fluttered against a long black overcoat.

Anselm
had first met Inspector Cartwright during the Riley trial. Afterwards he’d seen
her once or twice smoking in the corridors of the Bailey. Their eyes had met;
and Anselm, being the sensitive sort, had detected a measure of hostility. That
expression, it seemed, had not left her face.