“You have to let it go,” she said. “Move on.”
“I can’t let it go,” I said. “I can’t let them go. Can you?”
“You have to,” she said. “You have to.” And she started to sob, and then apologised, and we said we’d speak again soon, and we did, but something had changed between us. And my father, quiet and stoical and sad, was there in the background. I felt I had never really known them.
Not long after that came the prison visit to Khazar, and the attendant publicity, and the gulf widened. My sister, Karen, called and said she was coming to see me. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years. She was forty-seven then, had been married for twenty-five years to her childhood sweetheart, Geoff, and had two grown-up sons, Ben and Daniel. She still worked for the same supermarket chain but as a customer services manager. In most respects she didn’t appear to me to have changed much over the decades.
I met her off the train a week later, and we went back to the house in a taxi. She’d brought a bottle of gin, her favourite tipple, and we opened it and talked.
“I take it you’ve been sent as an envoy,” I said.
“A what?”
“Mum and Dad asked you to come and talk some sanity into me. Am I right?”
“Actually, no. It was my own idea. They agree with me, though.”
“About what? That I’m insane?”
“Don’t be silly. We love you, Alan.” As if love and madness couldn’t go together.
“I know you do.”
“You can’t spend the rest of your life like this. That’s what we agree about. Or one day you’re going to wake up and it’ll be over.”
“Karen, this is the rest of my life. I didn’t will it to be like this, but it is. And you’re right, one day it will be over.”
“I don’t just mean over, I mean used up, finished, gone, but you’ll still be breathing. You’ll be a crumbling old man and you still won’t have Emily and Alice. You won’t have had them all those years and years and some day soon you’ll be dead. What good will that be? What good will it have done you? Or them?”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘that’? What good will I have done staying alive? Trying to find out who killed them? I don’t know, Karen. Are you offering me something better?”
“You owe it to them to live differently.”
“You have no idea what I owe them. I am tired of having these conversations with everyone. You, Mum and Dad, Emily’s family. Why do I have to justify myself to you all?”
“Alan, you know your trouble? You think too much. You always have. If you stopped thinking you had to justify yourself and just were yourself, you’d be a lot happier.”
“Like you, you mean.”
“Yes, like me. I know I don’t have your brains and nothing that’s ever happened to me is remotely as terrible as what happened to you and I’ve got Geoff and Ben and Daniel and so I’m lucky, but if I woke up one morning and my luck had changed, I know I’d get up and get on with it. I’d have to. And I’m not saying you should ever forget Emily and Alice and I’m not saying I’ve forgotten them or that I don’t think about losing Geoff or the boys and how awful that would be. I’m not saying that.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying it was eighteen years ago.”
I was silent.
“Hasn’t there been anybody else, not even a possibility, in eighteen years?”
“No.”
I had not, would not, mention Carol to Karen or my parents. I still never have. She is none of their business. They would load such expectations on the relationship it would destroy it. It may be as much as I can manage, but it certainly would not be enough for them.
Karen was with me for only a weekend, and we survived it. She gave up her probing and lecturing after the third gin and we talked of other, safer things, mostly Ben, Daniel and Geoff. On the Saturday we went to Edinburgh and were tourists for a day. On the Sunday we took a long walk in the country. On the Monday she went home, back to her family four hundred miles away. Not only did I not mention Carol, I kept to a minimum any possibility of Karen meeting her.
Different things woke me in the middle of the night, or would not let me go to sleep in the first place. Dreams of Alice; sudden memories jabbing like knives; complex puzzles from different filing cabinets of the Case, endlessly rearranging themselves. But worst of all was the gripping, sweat-inducing fear which hissed that I had made a terrible mistake, that for all the years in which I had argued and campaigned against the verdict of the court I had been in error. This insidious whisper said that Khalil Khazar was indeed guilty of the crime. He it was who had placed the bomb in the suitcase, who had gone in Parroulet’s taxi to the airport, who had somehow managed to get the suitcase through security, on to the connecting flight to Germany and on to London. Then he had flown out on another flight, back to his own country, with a smile under his blank face, knowing he had done his job in the service of whatever his cause was. And I had refused to accept his guilt. I had looked into his eyes and he had coolly and earnestly looked back into mine and taken me for a fool. I had lost my wife and daughter to this man and then I had lost years of my life convincing myself that he was as innocent as they. I had argued with the families of other victims about it, I had clawed at the wounds of Emily’s family till I had lost them as well, and I had all but lost my own relatives. This fear was with me always, and when it loomed large in the hours of darkness it tortured me, left me broken by the awfulness of what I might have done. It was as if, had I been a driver, I had run over a child not because of a momentary lapse of concentration or because the child had suddenly stepped out in front of me but through some arrogant, wilful conviction that I was in control and incapable of making a mistake. No matter how rationally I argued against the fear, reminding myself of all the piles of evidence in the Case that spoke against it, still it persisted. It condemned me again to my ancient prison, to scraping at the mouldy walls, but this time there was no hope of release and it was my own fault that I was incarcerated. What had I done wrong? I had created my own false religion, without which I could not function, could not wake and work every day, could not be. I had locked myself in a cell of delusion, of total, blinkered faith in Khalil Khazar’s innocence.
14
LED NILSEN INTO THE HALLWAY AND POINTED TO THE downstairs toilet. He moved slowly across the space, as if still treading through snow, and closed the door firmly behind him. It was the first time that he’d been out of my sight since his arrival.
I didn’t want to stand sentry until he reappeared but on the other hand I didn’t want him roaming the house unattended. Next to the toilet was the dining room, its door ajar. Least of all did I want him in there. I went in myself and waited, surrounded by the Case. I could hear nothing through the wall. What was he doing? Getting rid of the coffee, I assumed, but everything was quiet. Was he staring in the mirror and if so what did he see? A weakened, dying man? Or a man still in control, ticking off items on his to-do list? Maybe both. Then the toilet flushed, and I heard a tap running.
I was about to step back into the hallway but changed my mind. If Nilsen came into the dining room what might he see that I didn’t want him to? It was inconceivable that he would not have worked out that my house must contain the Case, or something approaching it in scale. He would already have a feel for the weight of its paper, the way it made the very walls of the room bulge. The Case—his version of it, my version—was, after all, why he had come. “Nilsen,” I called out. “In here.” And I pulled the door wide.
He seemed to have aged by some years. He came in and there it was for him. He looked at the shelves, the table, the chairs, the floor, all covered with the live workings and the exhausted seams of my research. His gaze lingered on the filing cabinets, then came back to me.
“What?” he said.
“There’s nothing you can give me that I don’t already have, somewhere,” I said.
“You think so?”
>
“Yes.”
“But I can,” he said.
He had something, I realised, clutched in his left hand, and now he stretched out his arm and opened his fingers. A tightly folded square of paper fell on the table among the other papers. He continued to look at me, as if he were a conjurer expecting me to gasp or cheer. I reached for the paper, unfolded it. An address was printed on it in typed block capitals: a house number, a road, a town, a country. The town was called Sheildston. The country was Australia.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s where he is.”
“Who?”
“Parroulet.”
I looked again at the paper. Who had typed the address? Nilsen? He appeared not to want to leave a trace of himself, not so much as a specimen of handwriting.
“This is what you came here for?”
“I came to talk to you. Yes, and to give you that.”
“This scrap of paper?”
“It’s all I have. What do you want, a phone number?” He spoke as if I’d asked him a favour. “He isn’t going to talk to you across twelve thousand miles. You have to go visit him.”
“I don’t want to visit Parroulet. I want to know who killed my wife and daughter. He doesn’t know.”
“That’s not why you’d go.”
“Why don’t you give me the address of the bomber? The real bomber. That would be a visit worth making.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t know where that is. Or who that is.”
“If you did, would you tell me?”
“If I did, we’d have paid a visit ourselves.”
“Maybe you already have. Maybe you’ve erased them, but you still can’t afford to admit it wasn’t Khalil Khazar. The perpetrator is dead, and so is Khazar, but only Khazar stays guilty.”
“Not if you get Parroulet to talk.”
“If he’s not going to talk to me on the phone, why would he talk to me face-to-face? There’s nothing in it for him. Unless he’s dying with a guilty conscience too.”
“You won’t know till you get there.”
I dropped the paper back on the table. “All I want is the truth and you offer me this? The address of a bought witness? Am I supposed to feel grateful?”
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to feel. I have nothing else to offer. But if you can get Parroulet to talk, you could force them to reopen the whole case.”
I felt faint at the thought of starting again, had a brief vision of one hole in one wall leading to another, and another, a new succession of holes in walls.
I said, “Why not you? You’re on a mission. You go to him.”
“I don’t have time. Anyway, we talked to him already. That conversation is over. This is between him and you.”
I picked up the paper again, turned it over. The reverse was blank. I hadn’t really expected anything else.
“I wish I’d never let you in the door,” I said.
“No you don’t.”
I tried again. “How do you know this is where he is? If you’ve been retired as long as you say you have.”
“You never retire. They don’t let you. Or you don’t let yourself. I still have contacts.”
“And they would give you this information for what reason?”
“Officially, no reason,” Nilsen said. “Unofficially, let’s say a favour, from one man to another. A guy who knows what’s happening to me. Who understands the time imperative.”
Again I felt a surge of anger, at the implication that time had only started ticking when he learned he was dying.
“And you told him what? ‘God says I have to tell Tealing where Parroulet is so he can go and have a chat with him, and then all our consciences will be clear and I can die happy.’ Is that what you said?”
“No, but if that’s what does it for you, so be it. What you think of me or my faith is of no consequence. You can mock all you like. I’m just giving you an option. But it isn’t really an option, is it? You won’t be able to not go. You’re still in the game.”
“This place might not even exist,” I said. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“The first thing you’ll do after I leave,” Nilsen replied, “is look it up.”
“I want you to leave now,” I told him.
“I’m on my way.”
I ushered him from the room. Deliberately, I left the piece of paper on the table, as if I didn’t care about it, but he was right, of course, about what I would do when he was gone.
Back in the kitchen he began the laborious process of putting on his coat and fastening its buttons. Outside, the last of the light was leaking from the day. I wanted rid of him but still I found I had questions for him.
“Why should I believe you, this getting-ready-to-meet-your-maker nonsense? And even if I do believe you, why did you come to me like this, like a thief in the night? Why not just go public on everything you’ve told me?”
His fingers stopped their fumbling. “Why should you believe me?” He gave that short, croaking laugh. “Who else is going to? I go to the media with this, I’m just another conspiracy crank. I can’t prove who I am. I might get a few minutes of someone’s attention, sure, because it sounds like a story, but then they check me out at the office. ‘What about this guy?’ they ask. ‘He says he worked for you.’ And they say, ‘Well, a lot of guys say that. We never heard of him. He’s just another fantasist.’ I know how they operate. They’d deny everything. And in a few weeks or months I’ll be dead. But you won’t be.”
“And what makes you think I’ll act on this?”
“It’s like I said, I admire you.” He waved a hand in the direction of the dining room. “You’ve stuck at it so far. You’ll see this through too.”
I shook my head.
“Yes you will. We’re alike,” he said. “In other circumstances, we could have worked together.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“In another life, sure we could have. You’re the one I needed to reach. The other relatives got a version they believed because they wanted to. You wanted to believe it too, but you couldn’t. You’re the one we lied to. You’re the one that can get to Parroulet. You’re the one that can change everything. You’re a good citizen.”
“You’re full of crap,” I said.
“I don’t expect you to like me,” he said. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is there’s a bottom line, a calculation at the end of everything. Do we do good or do we do evil? All these details, these things we grapple with, they’re part of the calculation. We get some of them wrong, I’ve been trying to tell you that. But the bottom line: what is it we work towards? Good or evil?”
I had no answer. He pulled his hat slowly down over his ears. It looked as if it hurt to do so. He said, “There’s nothing more I can do here.”
“So who’s next?” I asked. “You said you had other debts to settle.”
“I guess I’m clear now,” he said.
“You’d better be sure,” I said. “If you turn up and find one thing on the sheet that hasn’t been ticked off, one detail, wouldn’t that make all this a waste of time?”
The doglike smile flickered. “Time’s up. And I’ve been pretty thorough.”
“But if you’ve made a mistake,” I insisted, “if you’ve missed something, just one thing, and your contract is null and void, what then? The angels will be thorough too. Won’t they put you on the fiery escalator down to hell?”
He did not like my flippancy.
“You don’t understand, do you? The thing I have with God. I’m not some salesman with merchandise. Do you think I could sneak in somehow if he didn’t want me?”
“Maybe there’s a back entrance with a broken padlock. Do you believe in hell, by the way?”
His look said it was a stupid question. “Yes, I do.”
“So do I,” I said, “but my hell is John Milton’s: ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’ I don’t suppose
you’ve read Milton, have you?”
“Not lately.”
His face gave nothing away, but his mouth held the vaguest hint of amusement, or tolerance. Maybe he’d never heard of Milton.
“He believed in everything you do, but with a depth and intellect you can’t even imagine. You know why?”
The faint smile was gone again. “Tell me.”
“Because he lived four hundred years ago, when that kind of belief was still possible.”
Nilsen shook his head. He started towards the back door, and I got ahead of him and opened it.
In a moment, I thought, that paper with the Australian address on it will be the only sign that he’s ever been here.
No, not quite. It was snowing again, hard. Nilsen stepped out and his boots left their marks in the snow. He’d leave a trail round the house and down the street, for a while at least. But eventually only the paper would remain.
Nilsen said, “Goodbye, Dr Tealing. Good luck.”
Already, with the flakes settling on him, he looked like a man in a film about to perform some heroic act. Did he expect me to wish him luck back? I said nothing. He turned and began his walk along the already filled-in path. He went round the corner of the house. I looked at my boots. Coatless and hatless, not knowing why I went, I hurried after him.
Nilsen had moved with more speed than I’d thought him capable of. He was clear of the house, of the driveway. The street lights had come on, so that near them the snow fell as a pale-yellow substance, stains on the general blanket of white. I stood out in the middle of the road and glimpsed the retreating figure, slumped yet marching somehow, going into the snowstorm between the two lines of sickly torches. I felt an urge to call out, but what would I say? Goodbye? Come back? There was nothing to say. I said nothing.
And then Ted Nilsen was gone, on his way to paradise.
I went back to the house. The snow was coming down in heavy clumps, a great latticework of flakes. I kicked my boots against the wall, stepped inside, removed them. I certainly wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t think Nilsen would have much luck getting out of town. I took the coffee mugs and cafetière and washed them. I thought, is there a wife? Are there children? Grandchildren? Maybe Nilsen is divorced, maybe he has a girlfriend much younger than himself, maybe he doesn’t. For some reason I couldn’t imagine him having a boyfriend. I thought, does anybody care about him? I thought, why do I even ask?
The Professor of Truth Page 14