The Truth Commissioner (31 page)

It's his favourite choral track – ‘Love Bade Me Welcome' – and there is something intensely soothing in the ethereal purity of the voices and something also that stirs a pleasurable sense of sadness. Perhaps it's the music, perhaps it's the wine, perhaps even the impeachable emptiness of the apartment arcing over him again, that makes him turn to the memory of what he first felt when his daughter sat in front of him with her hair sprinkled with beads of water and a new life swelling inside her and he knows he doesn't want to let her go just yet.

In the morning he's another interview to do. The world's media have arrived and taken up temporary residence – he's told that the city's running out of hotel rooms. There seems no corner of the globe that hasn't sent a reporting team and, shortly after the first wave, a second wave of circus freaks attracted by what exactly Stanfield isn't sure has blown in. So each morning camped outside the building one might encounter a group of Navaho Indians who do some dance that claims to evoke the spirits of the dead, a Buddhist monk who attempts to give flowers to those who enter or a violin-playing survivor of Kosovo. It's only slightly reassuring to see also the homegrown stalwart Ulster evangelical jostling for his space with a text-covered sandwich board that asks where everyone will spend eternity.

He gives his well-practised little soundbite to a young Japanese reporter and her television crew. Afterwards for some bizarre reason she blurts out that she likes U2 and she wants to see the Giant's Causeway. He smiles and nods encouragingly then extracts himself as quickly as possible. In the afternoon he presides over a session that he finds stultifyingly boring and he has to force himself to concentrate to avoid slipping into a disinterested lethargy. He's moved on, left this case behind, and in his imagination he's already presiding over the case of Connor Walshe and he knows that when he looks down it will be the face of Maria Harper he will see and behind her, if not in the flesh, the face of his daughter.

These people's faces, their guttural voices, are long merged into some soapbox drama that leaves him desperate to reach the
end. He looks around the chamber counting off the resident members of the press; the regular attenders in the public seats
who in his imagination increasingly resemble caricatures and grotesques that Dickens would have been proud of and have queued
for the privilege; the officials and recorders; the medical staff, counsellors and ministers, He feels an increasing immunity
to the suffering that is served up for his inspection – by now it is a cold dish, rarely distinguished by an articulacy or
differentiation from all that has gone before. Sometimes he has to stifle a yawn and his frequently asked questions as to
whether anyone needs a brief adjournment are driven only by self-interest.

That night after everything is over he takes his short walk to the restaurant. It's no more than a couple of hundred yards
but he almost looks forward to it. The cold night serves to stir him awake after the stuffy overheated chamber where no matter
how low they try to set the heating there is always a flushed and stifling charge that sparks the air. And there is no air
– it's as if those who appear before the Commission consume it all in their broken breathing and floundering, painful need
as they drown in their own sorrow. Now it's the hour when the city changes shift and those who work in it abandon it to those
who use it for pleasure. There are too many people about to feel threatened, but there's still the slight nervousness of the
wealthy walking in a city where there are many poor, and he injects his step with a sense of self-confidence and quiet authority
to ward off any lurking danger. And there are always pretty women to catch his eye – he's been grudgingly forced to admit that
the city has its fair share. Sometimes if one meets his gaze he fantasises about stopping her and persuading her to join him
in a restaurant more expensive than she's probably used to and advising her on the menu and explaining to her about wine.
But whatever pleasure he momentarily devises for himself is soon vanquished by the imposition of reality and the vision of
a solitary meal and afterwards there's not even the prospect of Kristal's company to console him. His last two phone calls
have solicited a polite statement that she's not available and his subsequent questions received no further elaboration than
the information that she was away at present. And no he doesn't want someone else. Surely he might have expected her to say
something if she was going away, even if it was no more than a professional courtesy. He turns the possibilities over in his
mind but there's always one more unknown than he's able to assimilate. He's forced to admit, however unlikely and indeed foolishly,
that he's grown fond of her and he consoles himself that perhaps her absence will only be a short one.

His sense of irritation is exacerbated when he enters the restaurant and sees two men sitting at his table. They're wearing
dark suits and one is perusing the wine list. Stanfield looks round the restaurant and sees other empty tables that might
just as easily have accommodated two diners. His unspoken question to the maitre d' is answered with an apology and a slightly
perplexed hunch of the shoulders but when he leads him to a table it's to his normal one and the same one that now has two
other people sitting at it.

Before he can say anything the older of the two men stands up and greets him with a handshake.

‘Good evening, Henry,' he says in a voice that Stanfield immediately associates with a particular kind of breeding, its plummy
richness redolent of public schools and public service. ‘So sorry to drop in on you like this unannounced but it seemed a
good opportunity for us to meet again.'

‘We've met before?' Stanfield asks, staring at his face. Out of the corner of his eye he detects a thin sneer on the lips
of the younger man whose cropped haircut is curiously out of sync with the expensive cut of his suit.

‘I think so. Some time ago. I was working for the Foreign Office at the time of the Balkan trouble. It was only briefly – don't
expect you to remember, hardly do myself. Messy business. Please sit down – I'm told the food is rather good here.'

‘Not bad at all,' Stanfield says, suddenly conscious that something is happening to him but uncertain what it is and conscious
also that he feels a sense of volition that is not entirely under his own control. ‘And you are?'

‘Sorry: of course. I'm Michael Walters and this is William.'

For the first time he looks at the younger man who stares at him with the same smirk and rudeness of intensity that annoys
Stanfield into saying, ‘And does William have a second name?'

‘Just William I think might be best for the present,' Walters says.

As the waiter arrives and takes a drink order Stanfield thinks of Richmal Crompton books and midnight feasts in the dorm.
For a second he thinks Walters might order a ginger beer but he sees something darken in the younger man's eyes. He looks
back to Walters's hands with their long effeminate fingers, neatly manicured nails and the two rings he wears. Walters orders
a gin and tonic and a beer for his friend who has not yet spoken. Without being asked he also orders Stanfield a bottle of his normal wine.

‘So who are you?' Stanfield asks again. ‘And what do you want?' Already he has a bad feeling about this.

‘I think we've introduced ourselves,' Walters says, smiling thinly at him.'And we just want to talk some things over.'

You work for the Foreign Office?' Stanfield asks.

‘Not quite. but same firm.if you understand me.'

‘I think I'd like to see some identification, be given some explanation as to whywe're here talking to each other.'

‘Best to keep this purely social,dont't you think. No real necessity to me you can contact me on this number.' He hands Stanfield what looks like a particularly plain business card containing only his name and a phone number.

‘Look,I dont't know what this is all about but if you dont't mind I'm going to leave now and when I call him, my police driver will be here in a few minutes.'

Standfiels stands up as if to go and fumbles in his pocket for his phone but as he does so the younger man jeans across the table and says in a low voice that resonates with threat, ‘Sit down. Henry, and dont' act the prick.'

‘William,' Walters says in a tone that suggests he is gently reprimanding a naughty schoolboy, ‘no need for rudeness.' Then he stands up and gestures Stanfield to his seat. ‘Please, Henry, I don't think Beckett will mind a little more time in the car, do vou?'

Stanfield slumps back into just as the waiter arrives with the drinks. The younger man deelines a glass and puts the bottle to his mouth. Walters looks at Stanfield and rolls his eyes. But Stanfield knows already that despite the mock disdain, the older man views the younger with something that approximate affection. A waiter comes to take their order but Walters taps his companion's arm and says, ‘Why dont't you take a seat at the bar, William? We'll call you if we need you.' William's face assumes a momentary look of hurt but he glowers only at Stanfield before wearily lifting his body slowly from the chair and going to the bar where he immediately lights a cigarette. ‘No point wasting good things on William, I'm afraid he doesn't have a very cultivated sense of the finer things of life.'

They know who he is, they know about Beckett, but who they are or what their purpose is remains unclear to Stanfield. He has
no recollection of ever having met Walters but now he discusses the menu with the waiter and offers opinions to Stanfield
as if they are old friends about to share a meal at their club. He orders only a starter, claiming that he doesn't want to
intrude any longer on Stanfield's evening than is absolutely necessary. Stanfield orders quickly and when he's finished he
glances up to the bar where in the expanse of mirror he catches the younger man's leering stare. For a second he returns it
and then sees William's hand slowly point at him in the glass. It's meant as a gesture of menace and Stanfield feels it as
it's intended and for a second it insults him that he should suffer such a third-rate little cliche of a threat. The indignity
makes him angry.

‘In what zoo did you find him?' he asks Walters, pointing with his wine glass.

‘Please don't mind William,' Walters says, ‘his enthusiasm sometimes makes him a little bold. Not quite the right type but
in these troubled times, sometimes useful, I'm afraid. Please forgive any rudeness – I'm sure it's not intentional.'

‘I was appointed personally by the Prime Minister,' Stan­field says and then regrets that he's felt compelled to assert his
status so blatantly. He needs to match Walters's self-controlled and apparent casualness of tone, not betray his mounting
nervousness so openly.

‘Indeed you were and a well-deserved appointment. You've managed to build up quite an impressive CV in relation to some of
the world's troubled spots. So tell me, how do you feel the Commission is going?"

Stanfield feels a sense of relief. Perhaps the purpose of the meeting is simply to gain some insights into his judgement on
the process, to unofficially pick his brains about the way forward, but as he glances to the bar again where a wreath of smoke
garlands the younger man's head and he thinks of the circumstances of their meeting, this relief wavers. His suspicions are
increased by the awareness that Walters isn't really listening and is more intent on exploring the artistic creation that
is framed on his white, square-shaped plate. When Stanfield pauses for a second it is to hear Walters say, ‘Terribly good,
and yours?'

‘What is it you want?' Stanfield asks, resolutely setting his knife and fork down on the table.

‘A pity business always intrudes in the end,' Walters says, replicating Stanfield's actions. ‘It would have been quite nice to enjoy a civilised meal – I haven't had that pleasure recently. It's not quite the culinary capital of Europe, is it?'

‘It's not the capital of Europe in any regard,' Stanfield says.

‘Perhaps only in creating a sordid little mess and then expecting others to bail it out – it's very good at that. I think
we're all a little tired of it: it's time to move on. Except the one problem I find here is that they will give up anything
– their wives, their money, their self-respect – before they'll give up their past. And that makes constructing the future
a little difficult, as you can imagine. Do you understand, Henry?'

‘What is it you want from me?"

Walters pauses as if a student in his class had just asked him a difficult question and he needed time to consider. ‘Well, Henry, I suppose, in a nutshell, we need you to help build that future.'

‘The Commission is an independent body,' Stanfield asserts. ‘It stands free from political bias and pressure from any source.
That ineiependence is crucial to the process. I'm not sure we should be having this conversation or where exactly it's leading.'

Walters's smile almost evolves into a snigger but he holds up a hand in a gesture of appeasement. ‘Of course, Henry, of course.
I understand completely. But sometimes in life you have to see the bigger picture. It's not an attribute we can universally
expect but you are a cultured, intelligent man.' He pauses, ‘A man who could go on to very great things indeed.' Then he looks at Stanfield and nods slowly.

‘I can't be bought,' Stanfield says and then thinks it makes him sound like an actor in a film built on some tedious little
tale of a moral dilemma and suspects also that despite its rhetoric they both know it's patently untrue.

‘That's a pity, Henry – a real pity – because I always thought of you as a man who might be amenable to seeing the broader
picture, who might help achieve what was clearly in everyone's best interests.'