Vigil (40 page)

2.

Two fat policemen sucked their lips and looked down at the grave.

             
Dirt was thrown up on one side, grassy clods still wet with spring dew.

             
That alone and it would have been down to the gravekeeper, or maybe the council, at best.

             
But whoever desecrated the child’s grave had also sprayed a swastika on the headstone and kicked it over.

             
That was why two fat policemen stood beside the grave.

             
‘Was he a Jewish kid?’

             
‘Don’t know for sure. Not, like, a hundred percent,’ said his partner.

Local policemen didn’t really have partners. Mostly it was just plodding, keeping the old ladies happy. PC James didn’t like the cemetery, though, so he’d persuaded his mate to come with him. ‘Don’t think so, though.’

              ‘Samuel. That’s Jewish, right?’

             
‘Biblical, maybe. Jewish? Don’t know,’ said PC James, biting his tongue.

             
‘What about Smith?’

             
‘Samuel Smith.’

             
‘Yeah. Samuel Smith,’ said PC Davis.

             
‘Sam Smith,’ said PC James.

             
‘Could be.’

             
‘Sam Smith, Ewan? Sam fucking Smith?’

             
‘What?’

             
‘No, Ewan. I’m not a hundred percent, but no,’ said PC James. ‘I don’t think he was Jewish.’

             
What PC James thought was that someone with roughly the same IQ as Davis had thought Sam Smith was Jewish. Some kind of neo-nazi idiot, listened to death metal in his mum’s basement kind of idiot. But he didn’t say that, because he didn’t want to make work for himself if he didn’t have to.

             
‘Well, I don’t fucking know, do I? It’s fucking Norfolk, alright? What do I know about Jewish people, or anyone else? Apart from the eastern European immigrants in the carrot packers, maybe. Or that fella runs the Portuguese shop with all them weird sausages...’

             
PC James sighed.

             
‘Bump it up?’

             
PC Davis kicked at a clump of grass and dirt. Made out like he was seriously considering it.

             
‘OK?’

             
‘Pub?’

             
‘OK?’

             
PC James liked PC Davis. You knew where you were with PC Davis. Generally in the pub.

             
He clicked his radio and called it in.

3.

Henry Harrison watched the two policemen at the grave. He didn’t want anything to do with it, and they didn’t want anything to do with him. They didn’t stop to ask him any questions, and that suited him fine. He’d been walking round the cemetery for two hours, trying to keep Emily asleep. The last thing he needed was someone waking her up.

             
Emily was his beautiful daughter, tucked up tight in an all-in-one suit against the chill, bundled into an old Silver Cross buggy. It had a small place to store baby stuff underneath. The space was filled with nappies, wipes, bottles – already sterilised – and a change of clothes, because baby’s doings had a way of getting out.

             
Henry Harrison liked things orderly. Baby stuff in the buggy, none in his pockets.

His pockets were full of pipe and pipe tobacco, a penknife for clearing the bowl, and a box of matches. He always used a match to tamp down his tobacco and a match to light his pipe. It tasted better that way.

              He pushed Emily away a little way, now she was sound asleep.

People thought maybe the most beautiful sound in the world was the deep roar of an expensive sports car, or a woman’s orgasm, or a symphony. It wasn’t. It was a baby snoring.

              He filled his pipe, already clean, and pushed the tobacco down into the bowl. He flicked the match alight on the rough old arm of the bench, puffed a while to get it going, and sighed in satisfaction as he sat on the same bench.

             
Now he was down he didn’t plan on getting up for a good while, either.

It was his favourite bench. It was dedicated to the memory of Lily Anne and Frank Holt, whom he’d known, way back when. That wasn’t why it was his favourite bench. It was because it was smack in the middle of the cemetery, out of the way of the roads that ran parallel either side, at the east and west entrances. It was the quietest. You could barely hear the traffic, and the birdsong was clear.

It had the best view, too. The cherry blossom was out, spring in bloom. The trees were green again. Seemed like the older you got, the more you appreciated making another spring.

He would have been what, now? He would have been...?

Christ, he thought. Time flies. How many years had he been coming to this cemetery? Since he’d known the Holts, for sure. Since his wife had passed? Maybe that was when he’d started using the cemetery like his own personal park. Maybe that was when.

There was something comforting, being surrounded by the quiet dead, because at home his wife was with him all the time, no matter that she’d been gone for so many years.

Henry puffed his pipe for a while. Quiet, peaceful. Baby sleeping, birds singing in the spring.

Baby snoring softly, with a slight snuffle from a little spring cold, but nothing drastic, and a pipe on the go.

For an old man with a young baby in tow, life didn’t get much sweeter.