The Light of Day: A Novel (16 page)

43

Only one ticket, only one boarding card.

So, it was settled. She was leaving.

Only one passport too—her unfamiliar passport along with a wad of supporting documents. A small age while they were looked at. What was he hoping: they wouldn’t let her on the plane?

I should have crumbled, maybe, crumpled like him: a pair of us now. But what I felt, in spite of myself, was the glow, the whoosh of success. As if I’d brought about this outcome, this incredible trick, all by myself. So: it was over.

And had I really thought I’d be making that other call? They’ve flown off, the two of them. It’s just you and me now.

Mission accomplished. Be content with being the hero of the hour, with being bathed in thanks. To love is to serve, what else is it for?

The glow of virtue. Saint George.

In a little while I’d speak into my phone. She’s leaving, it’s all over. Then melt into the night. Another job tomorrow.

But for now, this rush of elation—as if, for this moment at least, I was feeling only what Sarah would feel.

She turned from the check-in counter, holding her boarding card, as if she’d received a prize. And now you saw it: the glow in her, that she’d never expected to feel, maybe, quite so strongly or quite just then. And the cruelty of it for him: she’d never looked so beautiful.

A concession, Sarah had said. But this was misery for him, torture. Worse than anything he’d imagined. It was obvious, it shone: she was going off to find herself. Of course. And he was losing himself. He was already like one of those lost souls, people in transit you see in airports. No place of their own.

Already I was thinking: in a moment I’d make the call, and I’d have to lie.

As they walked from the check-in counter they passed as close to me (a pretend-passenger, travelling light) as they’d ever pass. Close enough for me to have reached out and touched her shoulder, her hair.

The shimmer of people.

It was twenty to seven. Fifty minutes before the flight. Maybe thirty minutes before she’d have to board. What do you do with thirty minutes to go? What difference can thirty minutes make? They went to a coffee place—the usual clattery messy coffee place with empty cups and wrappers littering the tables, luggage parked on the floor.

They didn’t have coffee. Neither of them turned to go to the counter. There was a moment that was almost like the beginning of a row. He gripped her arm and pulled her towards him, even as she was about to sit. They hugged clumsily, but she pulled away, as if they’d agreed not to do this, a pact—not until the very end. They sat. They looked at each other. More like pausing opponents, you might have thought, than lovers.

I sat at a table ten yards away, twiddling someone else’s plastic coffee spoon. He might have given, at that moment, all he had, for just one sign from her that her pain was as much as his, that she was having to tear herself from him. That at least, that—gift—at least.

And who knows what she felt? She was the one, you saw it, who had to be tough, to hold her nerve, to get herself on a plane.

Perhaps that clutching of his made up her mind. To shorten the agony, or hasten it—whatever. She could collapse later. To be cruel, to be merciful, or just to get it done. She would go through
now.
It had to be. She picked up her carry-on bag. Got up from her seat. He seemed to have lost all power.

They walked, a little like dazed people stepping through wreckage. The battle-zone of airports. But she knew the way. She’d been here, somehow, before. He followed as if to the place where he’d be shot.

They stopped where they could go no further without being drawn into the drift of passengers passing through into Departures. Now they were here, there was a sort of deliberateness, a ceremony to their actions. He clasped her and she clasped him, as if each wanted to fix the other to the spot for ever. It was equal, ferocious, fair.

Somehow it ended, somehow she turned and walked. For a moment you even thought, this is something splendid, magnificent, after all. She walked as if her name had been personally called. Showed her boarding card to the man by the barrier, who smiled, waved her through (what did he know?), eyed her casually—a mockery of Bob’s stare.

Then she passed through the gap between the partitions beyond as if onto some hidden stage. She didn’t look back. Perhaps that was agreed: no looking back. She was gone.

And my job was truly done. Even the second unofficial part of it. To be her eyes.
How
would they say goodbye?

Six forty-eight.

But he just stood there, his back turned to me. Just stood looking at the space where she’d been. Yes, fixed to the spot. So that even when I stepped to one side and got out my phone, even as I thumbed in the number, he was still there. Even as I heard Sarah’s answering voice.

“It’s okay, it’s all right,” I said, my voice sounding oddly like someone at the scene of an accident. It should have sounded like some magician’s.

“She’s gone by herself. The flight to Geneva. Everything’s all right.”

He just stood there, even as I heard Sarah’s voice—the relief, the joy, yes, the gratitude in her voice.

“Thank you, George—oh—thank you—”

The unmistakable sound of someone speaking through tears.

All this I told Marsh.

He just stood there. This is the man—I had to say it to myself—she loves.

He stood there and stared, as if by staring he could make her walk back. Not Departures but Arrivals. All a big mistake. And he was waiting for her. The world turned inside-out.

“And Bob?” Sarah was saying in my ear. “And Bob . . . ?”

At last he turned, looking like a man who’d forgotten who he was.

“He’s on his way home to you,” I lied.

44

The “Nash Case.” It became a story as well as a case, it made the papers. Nothing major, soon gone and forgotten, but a small splash. If splash isn’t an unfortunate word.

Most murders aren’t news. They happen all the time and mostly (ask an old cop) they’re bleak, grim, depressing affairs (wasn’t this?) that happen in some place where murders happen, where we don’t have to go. A war somewhere far away. A body, weeks old, dumped in a patch of waste ground. And pity the poor cop who has to deal with such stuff, then go back to a nice clean home. A wife, a kid.

But when it happens, in the first place, in a nice clean home—not just a nice clean home but a pricey pad in the leafiest, choicest part of Wimbledon . . .

There’s something just a bit pleasing about the disasters of the well-off. Look, even they go and screw it up, even they don’t lead charmed lives. So we needn’t feel so jealous, after all—let alone feel sorry for them. So—he was knocking off this foreign girl (where was she from again?) and she, the wife, didn’t like it. Well, poor her. Poor her with her luxury kitchen. We should be so lucky—being miserable in comfort.

And she didn’t have to do it, did she, in the first place? Take that girl in, give her shelter? The stupid bitch.

And him a gynaecologist. Raking it in. You can’t help having the thought: wasn’t he the one who had women under
his
knife?

A story. A stabbing. A stabbing is always good—a nice juicy stabbing. A kitchen knife. A college lecturer and translator: words were her thing. She went and picked up a knife.

On top of all that, the extraordinary fact, the mystery (was there any mystery otherwise?), that she did it on the very night that he’d said goodbye to the girl (where was she from?). He’d seen her onto a plane. He was coming back to her, his wife. Everything was going to be as it was. And, for God’s sake, she’d got all dressed up to welcome him. She was dressed—don’t say it—to kill.

At that very point.

Mystery? It was all set up. A plan. The heat of the moment? Pull the other one. And he’d had it coming, you might say—but not
that.
She waits till he thinks he’s safe, till he thinks he’s made his peace. Then bam! The murdering bitch.

The Nash Case. It had all the ingredients: “Top Gynaecologist Slain By Wife.” If “ingredients” isn’t an unfortunate word.

Since she was cooking a meal at the time—it’s how the kitchen knife came in. And wasn’t that the weirdest thing? It was his favourite meal, she said so, swore it. A meal that never got eaten, never got served. All the time she was waiting for him, all the time his last minutes (though he didn’t know it) were ticking away, she was cooking him his favourite meal.
Coq au vin.

(So how did that fit in with the plan?)

The heat of the moment, the heat of the kitchen. A good cook. She loved to cook. And with a kitchen like that. You might see her sometimes lingering by the Fine Foods section in the supermarket.

And that last meal, there’s no doubt about it, was lovingly, meticulously prepared.

Coq au vin.
It needs time, plenty of time. Strictly speaking, for best results, more time than even Sarah gave it (but then there was the element of surprise). A day in advance is best, so the whole thing can cook, then steep, then cook again.

(I know a little about these things now.)

But she began her task—did Marsh ever ask her?—early that afternoon, around the time that Robert Nash made his way to the flat in Fulham where Kristina Lazic was waiting for him.

While the two of them were in bed together (let’s assume) for the last time—either that or preparing to flee— Sarah Nash would have jointed a good quality small chicken (forget a real cock, in Wimbledon). She would have set aside shallots, garlic, dark-gilled mushrooms, streaky bacon. Diced the bacon into little chunks.

Amounts for two. She would have known there was a chance, a real chance—it’s how it turned out, but in a different way—that this meal would never be eaten, would go to waste. But it was as though (I can understand this) its very preparation and intention would bring about the outcome she wished. In the careful and loving cooking of a meal there is (I believe this too) a sort of healing power.

His favourite meal. And by association hers. They’d first eaten
coq au vin
together, I know this now, in France on that first long car journey together—the purple Mini-Cooper— that might, who knows, have turned out differently, have all gone wrong (do I wish it had? All gone wrong—then?). Especially when on the very first day and in the middle of a summer downpour their windscreen had shattered on the outskirts of some unknown small town. So there they were, suddenly wet through and shivering, driving at a snail’s pace through a storm. And it was Sunday too—no chance of a quick repair.

A blessing in disguise. The way things happen, get sealed. The owner of the ramshackle garage they finally found turned out to be a saint. As though here were his lost children. No, he couldn’t get a replacement till Monday afternoon. And no, he didn’t speak English (but Sarah spoke good French). But he took them to his sister-in-law (her name was Anne-Marie), who ran a little inn-and-restaurant where she herself did the cooking, and there she served them
coq au vin.
It might be best on a cold winter’s night but it goes down well enough on a stormy summer’s evening when you’ve been soaked to the skin. A miraculous
coq au vin.

They fell in love, really in love (it’s what she’s told me), over
coq au vin.
And the next morning the sun shone—and live cocks crowed—over a green, lush, hidden part of France they might never have discovered. So they stayed for nearly a week, even when the windscreen was ready. Forget St. Tropez. And that’s where Sarah first thought of learning to cook.

She’s dreamt about that green corner of France, the restaurant, the inn—as if it only exists in a dream.

And she would have thought about it then, on that November afternoon—already growing dark—as she set aside, of course, that other principal ingredient, the wine. A bottle of Beaune. Since although the wine is for cooking, not any old plonk will do. A mistake to skimp on the wine. The better the wine, in fact, the better the
coq au vin.
It’s half the secret.

And later on she would have placed a bottle of the same wine—only fitting—on the table in the corner of the kitchen where a half-partition with a counter-top (cupboards and a shelf or two of books underneath) formed a separate cosy alcove. Along with the glasses, the napkins, the vase of flowers (freesias), the candle.

She would have opened the bottle for breathing—it’s my guess—a little after my call. Waited still longer to light the candle.

But earlier that afternoon she was only beginning the ritual process of cooking a classic time-honoured meal. Browning the chicken joints. Trying at that early stage not even to think, to hope, to guess. Another thing that cooking undoubtedly does—if you don’t rush it. It soothes the nerves. It occupies the mind and stops it pointlessly roaming.

And it would have served that calming function as best it could until, come the evening, when everything would soon be made clear (when I’d already followed that black Saab into the entrance tunnel at Heathrow), she couldn’t have prevented herself looking at the clock, at the telephone, or prevented her stomach from tying itself in knots. You cook and you’re not hungry yourself. It’s sometimes how it is.

But then the call had come—at ten to seven by my watch and the clocks in Terminal 2—and it must have seemed, after all, that all that preparation had worked. At that point—after wiping away tears—after opening the bottle, and breathing deeply herself, she would have returned to the simple civilized task of cooking as if it were a splendour, an act of celebration.

Not that there would have been so much to do. Time and slow heat. She might already have removed the chicken pieces, to reduce and thicken the liquid (a little flour-and-butter whisked in), then returned them to the pot and to the barest simmer.

She’d set aside vegetables. With
coq au vin
you want nothing much. A few small potatoes, a dish of French beans. Some crusty bread. She’d made a pudding—poached pears. They’d been left to cool. A wedge of Roquefort, some red grapes. All never to be touched. She would have laid the table—now it was safe—the same table where once she’d hugged a sobbing Kristina and thought: now it will be all right.

Kristina by then, perhaps, would have been boarding her plane.

At some point, after a tidy-up and a quick glance round, she would have gone upstairs to change. The sudden coolness of even a well-heated house when you leave the warmth of the kitchen. November dark outside. She put on, so the police would observe, a simple but stunning scoop-necked dress of black velvet—a dress for an evening out though it was an evening in—and chose from the box on the dressing-table a pearl necklace (no doubt, but I know it now, a present from him).

A simple question: do you get dressed like that if you mean to—?

Now I run it all back through my head, as if I was there (there in their bedroom), it seems almost the most unbearable moment. The last time, though she didn’t know it, she would do this. Make herself ready. Those practised, almost unthinking and, recently, just token actions, now once more performed with meaning, even a touch of triumph. All that Kristina might have had to offer. Not any more.

She touched up her hair, her face. Lipstick. Scent. The last time she would do these things, this way. The last time she would know even the commonplace pleasure of a bedroom, a dressing-table, laying out a special dress.

And Mrs. Nash, the papers would note (Marsh would note it), was a striking woman. If that’s not an unfortunate word.

I should have been in that bedroom, fastening that necklace, fastening that dress.

It was nearly eight perhaps by then. She came back downstairs. Now all her agony had condensed into a single minor uncertainty: when would she hear the car, his step? The key in the door. She knew it might be a while. Traffic. A weekday night. Heathrow to Wimbledon, it can take longer than you think. She knew she might need this last scrap of patience.

In the hallway, by the window, she’d have checked that the porch light, the light over the garage and the little low lights at the entrance to the drive were all on. Of course they were. She would have eyed herself in the mirror. The way we can look at ourselves as if we haven’t met for a while.

And Bob—did she wonder? Would it be like meeting him all over again?

She would have gone back to the kitchen. She would have been doubly careful to put on the apron—the proper, wrap-around cook’s apron, navy-blue with a white stripe— that was found, when the police arrived, bundled loosely on the work-surface where she must have flung it quickly when she heard him arrive.

One of the cops (a tasteless joke): she should have kept it on.

But there had still been things to do. Final touches. A last taste, a last stir, a last adjustment of the heat. And there was the parsley to chop, for the garnish. And perhaps it was at this point—not waiting, after all, till she heard the car— that she lit the candle.

So that when the police arrived they walked into a scene that was not at first—till you saw the obvious—like a murder scene at all. The opposite. A scene of perfect welcome. A warm, inviting house on a cold November night. And a house that smelt, that breathed—this was the really striking thing—of something wonderful cooking. You couldn’t help smelling it as soon as you entered (whatever your reason for being there). The smell of good cooking that goes straight from nose to stomach, from stomach to heart.

Look, it was still there, still on the gentlest simmer, it hadn’t been touched.

Someone took it upon themselves to turn off the heat. And someone (Marsh himself?)—after Mrs. Nash had been taken away but the body, her husband, was still there— might have raised the lid, looked, sniffed.

A wooden spoon was close by. Did they dare?

And over there, in the corner, the candle, the flowers, the napkins, the unpoured wine.

Even the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, a good one and recently sharpened, still had on it, along with Bob Nash’s blood, some green smears and flecks of parsley.

A private detective, who blundered madly in, noted all this too.

The Nash Case. How could it have been cold-blooded revenge? But if not revenge, then what? On that very night, at that very point?

She hadn’t planned an escape, a get-away. The opposite. She herself made the call, said the words. And there she was, still there, saying it over and over again, I did it, I did it, I did it, as if she was learning a new language, as if someone should have been there to translate.

She’d put down the knife. She’d put it back on the chopping board.

Revenge? He had it coming? But who was the real monster now? The real monster of the two? He was just a gynaecologist who’d crossed a line—and taken advantage (if it was that way round) of a poor helpless refugee girl. No, he didn’t look so pretty. But who was the real monster now?

But go back, go back to that kitchen before it was the scene of a crime. Before it was a case, a story in the press. Rewind the clock. Relive it (how do the dead relive?). It might be different this time.

It’s eight o’clock. It’s eight-fifteen. She begins to worry— ordinary clock-watching worry. Traffic. But of course—she’s not naive—he might be having to do some thinking, he might be having to pull himself together. Taking his time.

All the more reason for this meal, for all this elaborate preparation. So that when he arrives he’ll be instantly reassured. Instantly greeted by a smell, a smell speaking louder than words.

And it can stand waiting, one of its virtues, the longer it simmers, the better.

And, anyway, a little after eight-thirty she hears the sound that for her is like a confirmation, an embrace. A familiar and not often thought-about sound, which recently has meant little to her ears. But now it comes like music. The sizzly civilized sound of tyres on gravel.