by Adam Creed
‘What?’ says Rosa.
Staffe turns the hand-painted postcard over. All it says is: ‘My darling R. Be safe. Be extraordinary’. The unceasing tide of a mother’s love.
‘This is Imogen, too,’ says Rosa, approaching Staffe. She hands him an invoice from the Warblingsea Chandlery. It is a bill for £9,700 – a second reminder for unpaid repairs to the mast and bilge for a vessel named Imogen II.
On top of the pile of papers Rosa has made is a small ream of travel documents from the last ten years or so. He can see why Leonard keeps them. It is quite a log and relates the travels of a man for whom the world is not large enough: Nairobi, Auckland, Lima, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, Rangoon, Phnom Penh, Lima again – the last time – and Istanbul. Istanbul once, twice, thrice, all within a year. The year before Imogen died. The year before Taki Markary moved to England.
‘Stay here, I’m going to look around,’ says Staffe. He makes his way from room to room, the boards creaking, the doors squeaking. It is a house only used for weeks in the summer, he suspects. As he rises from landing to landing, up into the heights of the house, a sliver of moon is seen, here and there. On the second floor, he looks towards Aldesworth, can see the outline of a crane, which makes him sad.
The house is as old as the Howerds, older than the town house in Mayfair, and Laing’s, and the Colonial Bankers’ Club. Yet you can see the new money from here. He can’t imagine Leonard not being ashamed and can’t comprehend what you might do to preserve this, against a tide that comes and comes and comes.
He hears a creak on the stairs, turns off his torch and leans flat to the wall. The moon catches a photograph. Ampleforth Leavers, 1974. Somewhere, there will be Leonard – in this same life, unrecognisable.
Another creak, closer this time. He wants to call out for Rosa but knows he can’t give himself away. He holds his breath, hears another stealthy tread, another board betraying its age. He clenches his fist, looking at all those boys, in subfusc, so long before their time.
Staffe breathes out, slow, feels his pulse release as he steps out, raising his hands above his head, smelling – in the musty curtain and rug and dusty wood – the scent of Rosa. Her eyes are wide and he looks beyond her. Sees only dark.
‘Are you alone?’ he says, afraid.
‘There’s no one here, is there?’ she says. ‘I was frightened. And I found this. It doesn’t seem to fit.’
She hands Staffe a photograph of an infant boy with a straight nose and dark skin. He is naked and has a serious look on his face, holding a bucket and spade up to whomever is holding the camera. Staffe takes it from Rosa, puts it in his pocket and holds Rosa’s hand, leads her down through the house.
Outside, her eyes are large, watery in the bold, silvery light from the moon. ‘Do you think they killed Arabella?’ she says.
Staffe shakes his head. ‘Quite the opposite.’
Twenty-six
Leonard Howerd puts down his mobile telephone. He doesn’t say ‘thank you’ to Gerald Holt, nor even goodbye. He blows out his cheeks and sighs.
‘Is he at the house, Father?’ says Roddy, carrying charts from the aft berth, nimble and alert at the prospect of setting sail, instinctively stooping so as not to bang his head on the ceiling of the boat’s galley. He appears to be completely at home.
‘Holt dropped him off half an hour ago.’
‘Do you think he’ll come?’
Leonard ignores his son’s question and sits opposite a third man. Younger, lean and dressed head to toe in black, he has a ruddy face with a stitched cut across his head. ‘I want to see her,’ says Leonard.
‘You agreed not to,’ says the Younger. ‘We’re not fucking about here.’
‘Do you have children?’
‘That’s no business of yours. You don’t need to know anything about me – except I’m on your side.’
Leonard says, ‘I don’t suppose you can stop me, if I insist on seeing her.’
The Younger shakes his head. ‘I know my place.’ His face assumes an extra furrow of sadness.
‘She is blindfolded.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘You should wait, Father,’ says Roddy.
Howerd gives him a scolding look, as if he has talked out of turn, in company. He says, to the Younger, ‘Give me your aftershave, whatever you wear.’
‘Watch yourself. This could still go wrong, and then we’d all be in the shit,’ says the Younger, handing him a bottle.
Howerd holds it to his nose. ‘This stinks.’
‘It’s everyman. That’s what they say.’
Howerd dabs the scent on his wrists and onto his index finger, applying it to his temples and behind his ears. Its aroma is abrasive, makes him splutter.
‘What’s to be gained?’ says the Younger.
‘I am tired of losing people.’
The Younger pulls across a curtain to reveal a sheet of plywood cut to fit the cross-section of the hull. Within the plywood, a door has been made and this is padlocked, top and bottom. Once this door is opened, another door, the original, leads to the bow berths.
Howerd takes a deep breath. The smell claws his throat. His daughter has been here just a few hours, but the ingrained stench of days weeps, thick.
He knows why it has to be this way, knows that undue tenderness will scupper the deception. But even so …
A brace of tears break and he is taken aback. For a brief snatch of time, he feels liberated; likes himself a little more. He didn’t weep when Imogen went; told Arabella not to cry when he said, ‘Your mother is dead.’
Leonard crouches down and his bones creak. He could reach out and touch her. He wants to pull away the scarf that is wrapped around her head, binding the rags that keep the sounds of this small world from her. He wants to pull away the blindfold and see what her eyes reply when he tells her that he is sorry, for everything. He wishes it had been possible simply to love his daughter at all costs and to protect her – nothing more.
‘Who’s there?’ she says, her voice muffled and hoarse and mostly lost in the gag. She sniffs like an animal and tries to reach out but her arms are bound and she falls off balance.
Instinctively, Howerd reaches for her and catches her. He holds her for the longest second and pushes her upright again.
‘Who is it?’ she says, muffled.
He sits back on his haunches, weighing up the pros and cons if he held her.
‘Daddy?’ she says.
And he knows that one lapse has been sufficient. He should have known better, after all his years of doing the right thing. Too late, now. Slowly, uncertainly, he pulls himself together, reaches out, pulls off the hood and sees, in the gloom, the unadulterated relief that flickers when she sees him. Then goes off, like a concussion.
*
Gerald Holt is back at the bottom of The Ridings’ driveway. He has drunk his flask of tea and figures the inspector will want the lift back to town on a night like this. In his position, Gerald must do what is asked of him.
The heater is on high, but icy white hexagon flowers have formed on the wing mirrors. He will be glad when his favours are all evened out but to console himself, he pulls out the brochure from the glove compartment and treats himself to a peek at the artist’s impression, the floor plans of his promised land.
A tap on the window makes his heart thud and he throws the Aldesworth Country Town brochure to the floor.
Wagstaffe’s face is at the window. Where the hell did he come from? He is smiling and Gerald feels known. He fixes a smile and flicks the door locks off. But the inspector has gone. Gerald looks around but cannot see him, nor the woman. ‘Hello!’ he calls, winding down the window. He checks in the rearview but can see nothing. The wing mirrors are useless because of the frost. He turns on his headlights, but all they reveal is two beams of falling snowflakes.
He starts the engine, thinking this will bring them running. Gerald puts his foot to the accelerator, pulsing the revs. He wants to drive away but
knows he has to honour this side of a bargain.
The passenger door opens violently. The night howls in with a black sweep. It is Wagstaffe, sitting heavily alongside; the back door opens, too. The inspector smiles at him, reaches down at his feet and picks up the brochure.
‘No,’ says Gerald. ‘That’s …’ The words trap in his throat and he feels a softness wrap itself around his neck, pulled tight from behind. He raises his hands to ease the pashmina that strangles him. He can’t breathe, but as he raises his hands, a terrible pain shoots down his legs and up into his belly. He looks down, sees the inspector has him by the balls. The inspector’s hand is large and hard. Gerald wants to weep, wants to close his eyes and this be over.
‘I need to know’, says the inspector, ‘where Arabella is. You have seen her.’ The scarf cuts into him, the pain in his gut gets deeper, sharper, and Gerald raises his hands to his neck, tries to ease the pressure, but he is too weak. ‘The truth cannot hurt you, Gerald. But the law can.’ A false light appears alongside, in the inspector’s lap. He has Gerald’s phone. He tries to say ‘Don’t’ but he can utter it only in his head, which is screaming. He would say anything now, but it is too late. Life is slipping away. He prays. He sees his grandson first, and then his daughter. Finally, he sees his wife and in the last morsel of his prayer he begs forgiveness.
Everything goes slack, and Gerald feels his head, too heavy to support itself, snap away from him.
‘Will you tell me everything, Gerald?’ says the inspector, releasing him from that grip.
‘Yes.’ The syllable burns in his throat, but Gerald thinks there is a God. His prayers are answered.
*
Pulford unclasps from Josie and her tears tack to his cheek and neck. She doesn’t look him in the eye as they release. He could tell her not to blame herself or feel ashamed, but such advice merely suggests the opposite.
‘Go,’ she says. ‘And thank you for coming.’
‘Where’s Rimmer?’
‘With Tara Fleet. Concocting a new theory, I suppose.’
‘You had the evidence, Josie. He confessed. Maybe it was a matter of honour for him.’
‘Honour?’
Something Staffe had said.
‘Do you need a drink?’ he asks.
Josie shakes her head. ‘I might go and see him.’
‘Blears? Don’t do that!’ Pulford has heard the gory details from Jombaugh, of how Blears had stuck himself, like a pig; had contrived to kill himself, that his meat not be poisonous for anyone wanting his body in his afterlife.
Nobody had ever heard of anything like it, according to the Governor of Inmate Activities.
*
Staffe and Rosa rise above the Alde river in Gerald Holt’s cab, then sweep down into the lowlying folds that crumple along the south side of the estuary, to Warblingsea. In the distance, the water tower signals Saltburgh. Staffe sees masts and he winds down the window, slows the car. ‘Don’t you love that sound?’
Rosa leans across, supporting herself by putting her hand on his thigh. The clinking masts are like chimes, distant, on a cusp. ‘What is it?’
Staffe is sad that, for her, it is a new sound. ‘It’s not just a sound,’ he says. ‘Just like the ozone’, he sniffs the sea air, ‘isn’t just a smell.’
‘I don’t understand you, Will.’ She looks down at her hand, takes it away. ‘Are we here?’
‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’ He raises a finger to his lips, slows further, for what he knows must come. The engine is low and, looking behind, he sees the black cab come into view then back off, keeping its distance.
Staffe waits for a blind bend and accelerates, stretching the gap to the cab behind. The road swoops down and round, seemingly below the close sea, as if reeds can hold back an ocean. Staffe drops Holt’s car from fourth to second and puts his foot to the floor. Gerald shivers in the passenger seat, quite unsure, still, what fate might befall him, and the consequences for his daughter.
The revs spool into the red. The engine screams blue murder and Staffe kills the lights, steers violently left, down a rutted track, and waits for the sound of the London taxi. It comes louder and louder, roaring past the track, its suspension squealing. Once it is gone, Staffe tells Holt to get out. ‘I’d leave town, quick if I was you, Gerald. Give it ’til the new year.’
Staffe reverses back up the track, puts the lights on, illuminating the frozen Gerald, not wanting to move, not wanting his future to come get him.
Following the red tail lights of Thomas’s cab, they catch him, quarter of a mile from the harbour. Staffe sees the chandlery up on the left and a line of shacks that sell fish, so he puts the car into neutral, kills the lights again and they glide, soundless, with nothing but dark in the rear view. He steers the minicab behind an old Nicholson on a stand, pulls Rosa’s head down, out of sight.
‘Where are we going now?’ she says.
‘I’m staying here. You drive the car back to town. Stay at the Bull, though. Don’t go near the Signet. Here,’ he hands her a wafer of twenties.
‘Are these the people who killed Elena and Rebeccah?’
‘Leave the car by the Magnet Café, on the edge of town. And use a false name.’
‘I can do that,’ she laughs, nervous.
They look at each other, locked in a distant moment.
A cloud drifts across the moon and Thomas’s lights smudge the night with red, then die. It is silent, save the coming and going of the sea, the masts chiming.
He runs across the boatyard, slowing so he can hear beyond his steps and the rush of his own blood. The driver of the taxi, clearly Thomas, makes his way past the jetty which serves the ferry to Saltburgh. Staffe curses Thomas’s betrayal, but in the same breath gives thanks that his plan has worked. Staffe knew that if they believed or even feared his lie to Roddy, about knowing where Arabella was, they would have to follow his every move. All he had to do then was turn the tables on the lie that revealed the truth.
Thomas hooks a leg over the chains that bar access to the boats. He steps straight on deck, the second boat from the harbour wall, looking back before he disappears below.
The livery of the boat, and the lettering, Imogen II, is just as Gerald Holt had described. Now he is here, Staffe’s choices go to vapour in the sea fret, as rock and the hard sea come together.
*
Pulford gets a daggers look from the curator of the IT suite who then looks contemptuously at his watch. The sergeant goes back to his screen, scrolling through the Companies House database, cross-checking the Aldesworth development companies: Bluecoat, Oakvale and Pinfold. Vassily Tchancov isn’t listed as director or shareholder. He does the same for Laissez SA and the story is the same. He leans back, rubs his eyes, thinks he should have taken Josie home, stayed with her until she found some kind of peace.
‘Bloody documents,’ he says, chucking his pen across the room.
The curator scuttles across and tells him to ‘shushh’, even though Pulford is the only reader in the room.
He stretches, fetches the pen, wishes he was with Staffe, at the sharp end, rather than tracing the Howerds’ title – all wrapped up in land for centuries and them more bankers than farmers. Which makes him think – maybe it could be about the land and not the companies.
Pulford asks the curator to get him into the Land Charges Registry for Saltburgh and Aldesworth; receives a snarl for an answer. ‘Otherwise, we could be here all night,’ he says, getting the desired response.
He soon sees that the consideration for the sale transfer from Leonard Howerd to Aldesworth Developments was relatively modest: a mere £750,000. In the Companies Register, he sees that Landesbank of Hanover have registered a debenture against the assets, including the land, but an interest is also registered in the name of Magellan Holdings, relating to a profit share agreement. The interest was registered only six weeks ago.
‘Magellan,’ says Pulford. He checks the com pany’s details, flicks back through his notebook. Ma
gellan Holdings’ registered address is Cobalt Street, St Helier; its company secretary, a Henry Desai. Unremarkable, save that they are exactly the same address and secretary as he had noted for Vodblu.
At last, Vassily Tchancov puts his head above the parapet.
Twenty-seven
Staffe steps gingerly onto the Imogen II, peers through the narrow windows that look down below decks. He can hear raised whispers but is unable to discern what is being said. He continues along the rails to the bow. Here, he can see the combed and oiled hair of a suited man who seems to be on his knees. His head is bowed, but Staffe knows him. ‘Howerd,’ he whispers to himself.
Unable to see the object of Howerd’s attentions, he crawls around to starboard, peers down. From this angle, he sees that the gentleman banker’s face is pinched with suffering. His hands are turned down, as if in prayer.
When he presses his face to the glass, Staffe sees the object of Howerd’s penitence. Wrapped in blankets and bound at the feet, the body is dead still.
‘Come on,’ says a voice within and Staffe recognises the kindly tones of Thomas. ‘Don’t ruin all we have done.’ From above, Thomas looks as if he would be unable to bring himself to harm a fly: a big man with round shoulders and bald pate, a pencil moustache and twinkling eyes.
‘This is my time, with her,’ says Howerd.
Thomas retires as Howerd says, over and again, ‘I’m sorry, Bella, I’m sorry, Bella. We’ll be fine, now. We’ll be fine, now,’ as if he is trying to convince himself, or some higher order, that this ordinary and beautiful act – of a father loving a daughter – could be true.
Staffe, distracted by the scene below, hears too late that somebody has come above decks. The engine expectorates and he turns round. In the fullness of the moon, he and Roddy, stooping by the fenders, scrutinise each other.