The Gardens of the Dead (25 page)

‘I’m
the son of George Bradshaw’

Riley
watched the bird pecking seeds, its green-and-yellow head jerking like it was
being shocked at intervals from the mains. Riley said, ‘Who else knows that you’ve
called me?’

‘No
one.

‘Will
they find out?’

‘No. I
promise.’

Much
later Riley concluded that some big decisions aren’t as simple as they might
appear. Like a wall, they’re built from the bottom up. You stand on the top
course, laying bricks, not daring to look at where you’ll end up if you carry
on. Finally you’re too high and you can’t get down. And yet, from the outset,
there was always a kind of knowing; and recklessly it was broken down into
manageable bits, and put together.

It was
therefore without having reached a decision as such, but irresponsibly that he
said, ‘I need to think. Call me back in six months.’

The
next day on impulse, Riley went to Lawton’s Wharf. Everything had been sold off
or flattened. The whole place was falling into the dark-blue river. Suddenly
moved, he stood on the cracked plinth that had held his crane and he searched
the pale evening sky for Nancy’s window.

What
was he going to do about Bradshaw’s son? He gazed at the wharf, sentimental for
the days he’d never really enjoyed. His eyes settled on the DANGER sign
attached to a barbed-wire fence that blocked access to the main quay Farther on
he noted a line of plastic bollards. The timbers on the other side were black
and green.

Four
times over the next six months Riley came home late and told Nancy that his van
had broken down. He complained about it to Prosser and the rest. He bought
spare parts, kept the receipts and went through the motions of an unnecessary
repair. He was getting higher and higher, never taking his eyes off what his
hands and feet were doing.

Arnold’s wheel rattled and
raced.

Riley
had hoped that George’s boy would drop the matter but he rang back, as
arranged. Wobbling, but keeping his nerve, Riley said, ‘Meet me on Lawton’s
Wharf on Saturday night.’

Why
there of all places? It wasn’t just because it was secluded and dangerous.
Riley hadn’t thought it out, but his instinct wanted to stamp upon the world of
fluffed chances, to wreck it good and proper. Accordingly broken down into
bits: Riley left a fair in Barking at six, cursing the rain. Half an hour later
he rang Nancy and told her that the van had stalled. At seven he cut down the
barbed wire. At ten past, he set about the bollards. (They’d been filled with
concrete, so one by one, he dragged them to the edge of the wharf and tipped
them into the river.) Since the planking was rotten, Riley crept along a
supporting beam, and was at the end of the platform by seven-thirty. At eight a
figure appeared.

Riley
never once looked directly at the boy He kept his eyes down and began a conversation
that had no purpose because he was too high up to listen properly.

‘I only
want to vindicate my father,’ said John Bradshaw The drizzle pattered on their
shoulders.

‘Vindicate’.
What a hauntingly strong word. This boy would never give up.

Fear
played its part, for sure — not the kind that gripped Riley in his childhood,
but something organic, a condition that he could feel all the time if he’d
checked for it (like an irregular heartbeat). It pumped ink into his intentions
— and he shoved with all his might … hoping and not hoping that it would
happen; that he could console himself afterwards by saying he didn’t really
mean it.

The
boards cracked. A whole section of planking gave way and Riley was abruptly
alone. There was a cry, but after the splash, there was no noise … none at
all … just the slapping of the river and the patter of the rain.

Riley
waited for half an hour, checking the side of the quay. Then he went home and
thrashed Nancy at dominoes.

The
following morning, as usual, he went to work. The weeks passed and he did the
things that he always did. But just as Arnold’s whiskers got wet every time he
licked the milk, so a kind of suicide happens with a murder. Sitting opposite
the Major, Riley had been bitterly proud of his home-made identity. He’d
sought no mitigation. He’d scorned salvation now, never mind the hereafter. But
with the death of John Bradshaw all that posturing fell slack. He felt
strangely sick of himself, in a new way and of the world. He tried to doubt
that he’d shoved him. Some big decisions might be made up of small choices, but
what Riley couldn’t work out was why in another world, he wouldn’t have chosen
the end result in the first place. Why he recoiled from it in this one? And
with that insight, Riley teetered towards an abyss of self-pity, for he
wondered if he’d been acting freely if he’d
ever
been free; if he ever
would be. Within a couple of months, after years of clean living, Riley began
his new scheme.

And
then, out of nowhere, came an envelope containing a photograph. The image sent
Riley flying back to the times he’d done his best to forget. He was overwhelmed
by his powerlessness — either to annihilate that face or to hinder whoever it
was that had sent it. Stranded, he felt a need for Nancy far stronger than
anything he’d known since the trial. It seemed incredible, but it was true:
standing in his way was a
hamster.
It was humiliating.

The spool fell silent.
Arnold had been running for ages. If he’d been a man on the road he’d have
reached Penzance.

Riley
went to the kitchen, bit an apple and threw it in a plastic bag. Still chewing,
he opened the cage and dropped Arnold onto the fruit. Then he followed the lane
that led to Limehouse Cut. The bins were out. A crowd of polystyrene pellets
skittered along the pavement, white and vibrant in the darkness. He swished the
bag across his trouser leg, like a boy with sweets from the corner shop —
sticky things out of tall jars held out by Mrs O’Neill. She’d only ever been
kind to him —but with a pity that had guessed everything, that had stripped him
down to the contusions. ‘He has tempers.’ That’s what his mother had said of
Walter. Tempers. It sounded like something Babycham would have ordered with
lemonade and a cherry. ‘Not to worry, son,’ his mother once said. She wiped her
own split lip as if she’d just finished her fish and chips. ‘You fell off your
bike, all right?’ Her eyes had dried like a desert, centuries before.

When he
reached the canal, Riley halted. The bag swung by his leg. Hesitating, he began
to think. In a way Walter, John Bradshaw and Arnold belonged together. Each of
them, in very different ways, had been so much stronger than Riley And with
that terrible thought, he let go.

18

Despite expectations that
he would sink quickly under the weight of wet clothing, George had remained
afloat. An action somewhere between swimming and treading water led him away
from his point of entry He felt a colder current around his feet; the smack of
small waves made him spit. He was being pulled now, towards the full flow of
the river. The final supporting pillars rose out of the shadows to meet the
abrupt ending of the wharf’s run. George turned into the water.

In so
far as this moment had received any planning, George had intended to give his
final thoughts to John. To his surprise he found himself upon the tracks of his
own childhood, running down a winding path, at the back of a string of council
houses in Harrogate. It was a sunny day; the ground was ribbed and dry
underfoot. To his right were fences and small gardens with sheds … windows
framed white in walls of red brick … A shining cat lay sprawled upon warm
slate; to his left there were trunks and branches, screening a tennis court of
orange grit … and then a bowling green … a velvet stage for men in white
coats with bald heads or big caps … He was skipping and hopping, for the
sheer joy of being alive, feeling his heart ache with the strain. He was ten.
And he wanted to stay that age for ever. At the end of the path was a thick
patch of dock leaves at the base of a tree by his home. George began to sink,
just as he remembered kneeling down, panting and curious, to taste a bright,
crisp leaf as though he were a rabbit.

Something
made of metal hit George on the head. Instinctively his arms flailed and he
surfaced with a gasp. Bobbing in the water was a tin can. Looking up, he saw a
boy sitting at the end of the wharf, his legs idly dangling. A small shaved
head cut a fine serrated hole into the sky Suddenly he vanished. Rage ran hot
through tired old veins. ‘The little brat …’ George was panting now Cold had
seized him as though it were a weight. Panic gripped him. The boy appeared
again at the edge of the wharf. George shouted for help. A thin arm swung out,
and something angular swiftly cut a fine arc against the sky like a shooting
star without light. It struck the water with a deep thud. The arm flashed
again.

‘What
the
hell
do you think you’re doing?’ yelled George. In a frenzy he shook
off his coat. Enraged, he began moving towards the side. The boy relaxed,
followed the swimmer’s progress, walking along the rim of the wharf, tossing
chunks of broken masonry. They landed around him casually George hauled himself
up the rusted ladder and collapsed, spewing water, onto the quay His teeth worked
in unison with a vivid memory, and he began to weep. The sun was warm upon his
neck, and he was a lad again, on his knees at the foot of a tree, tasting a
leaf. It had been surprisingly bitter, when he had wanted it to be sweet. He
arched his head, opening his streaming eyes: the boy was sauntering towards
the perimeter fence, hands in his pockets.

George
tried to shout, but nothing came from his throat. He clambered to his feet and
stumbled after his persecutor. Several times he fell, cutting his hands and
knees. The pain quickened him. Frantically George continued his ridiculous
pursuit, driven by a senseless desire to express an elemental, livid gratitude.
Beneath the radiance of a street lamp, the boy stooped, working his way through
a hole in the netting. By the time George stood dripping in the road that ran
adjacent to Mr Lawton’s fallen kingdom, the assassin had gone.

A couple of hours later
George swayed beneath the fire escape and was stunned to find his bed made. As
consciousness became pain and a deep, immense shivering, delusion eased away
his last waking moment: he could have sworn he saw a figure coming down from
the steps above.

19

When Nancy had gone to
bed, leaving Riley in his rocker, she’d tossed and turned, annoyed by questions
as if they were lumps in the mattress. Where was Mr Johnson? What should she do
with his notebooks? Who was the man in the photograph? With this last, Nancy
had, in fact, made some headway: it might be Riley’s father, she thought,
because he never spoke of him. Or maybe his mother had sent it: he didn’t speak
of her either. That was Riley He was so different, you wouldn’t be surprised to
hear that he’d never had parents. She laughed at her own joke, changed sides
and plumped her pillow. Listening to Arnold, she finally became drowsy.

Nancy woke up. Something
in the house was slightly different, but she didn’t know what. Riley wasn’t
beside her … but she could hear him in the kitchen. The back door opened and
closed. A tug of sympathy took Nancy out of bed and to the window: her man
couldn’t come to bed; he had to walk himself like a dog, until he was so tired
that his mind couldn’t worry him. This is what British justice had done to her
man — to a man who’d done nothing wrong.

She
moved the curtain an inch or two. At first she couldn’t see anything. Some of
the windows on the other side were lit round the edges … and the bins were
out. Her breath steamed the glass. She gave it a rub with the sleeve of her
nightie, and then she saw him. Riley was at the top of the street. She knew his
walk, by the way his arms swung like loose ropes.

Nancy
climbed back into bed and twenty minutes later, Riley slipped between the
sheets. She didn’t stir and he didn’t move. Almost at once, he began snoring
with his hands behind his head. Nancy couldn’t get back to sleep because she
was distracted: something had been altered in the house, and she couldn’t put
her finger on what it was.

20

In his sleep Riley was
running down a dark corridor towards a window, its frame blurred by light. His
footfalls were silent. All he could hear was the breathing of the Thing behind
him. Blinded, he broke though the glass as though it were tracing paper. His
stomach spilled out and he began to fall.

Even as
he fell, he knew this was the old dream — the dream that had begun the day of
his acquittal. And even as the stairs appeared, he recognised that this was the
development — like a turning of the pages in his mind — that had started after
he’d received the photograph. He was observing himself, and yet experiencing
the rise of terror.

All at
once the nightmare cut location. Riley was no longer falling. His stomach was
in his belly He was walking along a small corridor in a silent terraced house.
Upstairs there were three bedrooms. Outside, at the back, there was a small
garden with a gate that led to three trees. He didn’t know why he knew all
this, or why he was aware that the front door was green, or that the kitchen
floor had been laid with fake marble. It was simply part of the sensation of
being in this empty house. He moved slowly like an underwater diver. Sunshine
lit the floating dust. To his right, through a doorway he saw an iron
fireplace. The grate was clean. By the hearth were a pan and brush on a stand;
the poker was missing. A kind of barking started in Riley’s guts — a juddering
sensation brought on by the recognition of his surroundings: this was home. He
noticed that he was not a man, and not a boy; that he was in between the two.
Ahead and to the left he saw a hand on the carpet. It hung off the bottom step
of the staircase. The bystander in Riley vanished. Riley became Riley in his
entirety. Slowly bravely his eyes moved along the arm, up the shoulder and onto
the matted hair.