by Clare Carson
‘What did you overhear?’
‘You mentioned...’ She wasn’t sure she could say it now. Perhaps she’d got it all wrong, her youthful imagination overdramatizing. ‘I heard you mention torture.’
He winced.
She flustered. ‘I didn’t know whether you were referring to real...’
He looked pained. She shouldn’t have mentioned it. She was so stupid. Clumsy. ‘I mean...’
He ran his tongue around the corner of his mouth, closed his eyes. She didn’t know what to say. The silence ran on. Eventually he opened his eyes, stared straight at her. ‘You did hear me talking about torture.’ His voice was quiet. ‘Did you hear Jim say anything?’
I wouldn’t betray. She couldn’t repeat his words.
‘No. I only heard you. I was upset, worried that Jim had done something wrong. You know what it’s like when you’re a child and you hear adults talking and you pick up the vibe even if you don’t understand what they are saying. I remember being scared and I ran away along the cliff path. To the rock that’s shaped like a whale.’
‘Ah. I know the spot. The Raven’s Nest, that’s what I call it. Apparently there used to be a pair of young ravens that nested there for a couple of years, but then one died and its partner kept hanging around. Grieving, so the locals said.’
‘Oh, I saw a raven there that day.’
Pierce leaned to one side, rubbed his lame leg, as if even the mention of that difficult summer was stirring old wounds.
‘I’m sorry if it’s painful for you to... I just wanted to know whether Jim...’
‘No. Don’t apologize. It’s not...’ He glanced away and back. ‘Look, it wasn’t all Jim’s fault. I don’t want to go into it now. Let sleeping dogs lie.’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and half smiled at her in a way which was obviously supposed to be reassuring, but it made her stomach sink. It wasn’t all Jim’s fault. There was no escaping the implication – Jim fucked up. Big time. Dumped him in it. She wanted to run. Disappear. A creeping sense of shame, inadequacy, coming over her in his presence. She was conscious of Pierce scrutinizing her reactions. He leaned forward.
‘The conversation you overheard...’
She nodded.
‘I don’t suppose... Jim didn’t say anything afterwards to you about an envelope, did he?’
He was surveying her with an intensity which made her feel uncomfortable.
‘An envelope?’ She tried not to redden. Her mind raced to her hollowed-out book The Secret Island. The envelope she had hidden there. Why was he asking her about the envelope now? It seemed odd, a minor detail, given the seriousness of the conversation. Fucking tortured. Maybe he was searching for a diversion. Fair enough, but she didn’t want to tell him about the envelope. Instinct; keep something back for another time. Or maybe it was just the possessiveness she felt for the photo of Anna.
‘No, Jim didn’t mention an envelope.’ It was true – he hadn’t mentioned it. She’d learned that trick from Jim. Don’t lie; craft your answer to avoid telling the whole truth. Did she look guilty?
‘Well, not to worry. It doesn’t matter.’ He grimaced, as if it did matter. ‘I suppose what does really matter,’ he raised one eyebrow, ‘is letting Anna know that she can contact me via the PO Box number I gave you.’
She was relieved that he was steering the conversation away from tricky subjects now – Jim’s actions, the envelope she had treasured all these years.
‘I’ll pass the message on to Miranda,’ she said. ‘I mean Anna.’
‘Great. That would be fantastic. Could you bear to drop me another note when you’ve done it?’
‘No problem.’
He patted her on the shoulder. ‘You’ll go far. You’re smart. You’ve got a huge amount of integrity.’
His words of praise made her feel peculiarly happy; he had the kind of charisma that made you want to please him, earn his praise. Avoid the sharpness of his disapproval.
‘Just don’t,’ he added, ‘ever think of taking up spying as a profession.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’
‘Although, I have to say, I think you would be pretty good at it. I think you could make the grade. A proper spy. Which reminds me.’ He tapped the side of his head with his finger. ‘Have you read Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana?’
She nodded.
‘You remember Lamb’s code?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘We agree on a book to use and send each other page and line numbers as a starting point for encoding and decoding the alphabet.’ He laughed. ‘It can be quite useful sometimes. I was just thinking, why don’t you use Lamb’s code when you drop me that note? Make an onerous task more exciting.’
She grinned, joining in with his obvious delight at playing spy games. ‘OK.’
He waved his hand at the bookshelf. ‘Do we have any books in common?’
She could see the backs of several le Carrés – but it was a white spine that caught her eye.
‘The Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot.’ Another of her English A-level texts.
He eased the book from the shelf, handed it to her. ‘Do you have the same edition?’
She flipped through the familiar pages and confirmed their copies were identical.
‘Good. T. S. Eliot it is. Very appropriate given his references to the Fisher King and The Tempest in The Waste Land. “The Fire Sermon”, if I remember correctly.’
‘Right.’
The confidence of his detailed literary references made her feel slightly inadequate; she couldn’t quite keep up. A reminder – as if she needed one – that she was an amateur at this game. That was the difference between proper spies and police spies, she decided as she stood to leave. Proper spies could reference T. S. Eliot. Although, how could she forget, Jim’s favourite book was Ulysses, which was hardly less demanding than T. S. Eliot; he kept it by his bed for solace during sleepless nights – though not, as far as she knew, for decoding secret messages. Pierce held the door open for her, the wind rushing in, and she was reminded again of Prospero, the ageing magus.
*
THROUGH THE ROCKY valley, right along the coast road. The bike battled with the gradient. She reached a bend, spotted the solitary marker of Betty Corrigall’s grave among the browning heather and remembered driving back from Rackwick Bay with Jim, that August day in ’76; they had reached this same bend and Sam had glimpsed the white headstone. She wanted to find out who was buried on such a lonely spot, although she wasn’t sure why she had suggested it because Jim was in a grim mood and examining a tombstone was hardly going to cheer him; it would have been better to head straight to Pegal Bay. Jim parked on the verge anyway, and they had trudged across the moorland. Even in the sunshine, it was bleak. No human settlement in view, endless heather in front, black lochan water behind, chilling gusts blowing in from the sea and making her shiver.
She read the words on the tomb. ‘Here lies Betty Corrigall.’
‘It’s made of fibreglass,’ Jim said. ‘I suppose that’s to stop it from sinking in the bog. It must be quite recent – look, the ground around its base is still disturbed.’
The fibreglass tombstone might have been new, but the body it marked was not. A small plaque explained that Betty Corrigall was a young woman of twenty-seven who had lived in Hoy in the eighteenth century. She had become pregnant and then tried to drown herself when the father ran away to sea. She had been rescued, but the shame was too much for her and she had hanged herself. None of Hoy’s churchyards was prepared to take her body and so she had been buried in unconsecrated ground on the boundary between two parishes. Her bog-preserved body had been found by two peat cutters in 1933. The noose with which she had hanged herself lay by her side, but disintegrated as soon as it was exposed to the air.
She said to Jim that it was unfair; the girl had done nothing wrong. It was the father of the child who was at fault. Jim didn’t reply, his eyes on the far horizon, his face tense and grey. She had felt
an urge to break his trance. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be so unhappy you would want to end your life, she said. Eventually he replied, ‘Sometimes when you’re really unhappy, or scared, it helps to go somewhere else in your mind for a while.’
She asked him what he meant, although, at some level, she understood exactly what he was saying.
‘Think of a safe place, a calm place, and imagine you are there. That’s what I do. Retreat.’
She had conjured up the places she considered safe – her bedroom, the school, the library. None of them seemed quite right, and then a thought had struck her.
‘Oh. I found a cave at Rackwick and when I walked to the back of it, there was a patch of dry sand that wasn’t touched by the sea. That felt like a safe place to me.’
Jim had locked his hands behind his head, grimaced as if he was in agony. She had panicked, scared he was having a heart attack.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. I was thinking, that was all. If you felt the cave was safe, then it’s a good place to go in your mind.’ His mouth twisted. ‘But you shouldn’t have been playing in a cave.’
‘The tide didn’t reach the back, that was the...’
He raised his fist, held it above her in the air and she ducked. ‘You have to be careful around water. Don’t take the sea for granted.’
He lowered his arm, but his face was still red with anger, his voice sharp. She had wanted to cry; his sudden temper had scared her. It didn’t make sense. It was all so weird; Pierce hiding here, Jim and her pretending neither of them knew. The shouting. Fucking tortured. All this stuff about safe places. The trip to Hoy had been a big mistake. She really wished she hadn’t tagged along with Jim.
*
SHE BRAKED, EYES on Betty Corrigall’s burial place. Remembering that strange conversation with Jim now made her want to revisit the grave again, re-tread the old ground, see if any of it made more sense second time around. What was it with Jim? She sometimes suspected he had suffered from manic depression – all those highs and lows. She parked the Honda on the verge, followed the sodden path from the road, boots sinking in the sphagnum moss. She reached the picket fence surrounding the grave, stood silently, head bowed; poor Betty so lonely all these years out on the cold slopes of Hoy. A V of honking geese flew overhead.
She scanned the ground for something she could leave on the tomb, and decided she would have to make do with a sprig of heather. Somebody had left a jam jar at the foot of the headstone; she could use that for her offering. She leaned over the fence, lifted the jar, removed the wilting stems and spotted an object she thought she recognized. Surely she must be mistaken. She held the jar up and peered through the bottom of the glass; it was definitely there. A small white square. She tipped the jar, let the water dribble out, caught the tile in her hand. How extraordinary. Grimy, but unmistakable. One of the white Roman tiles from Blackstone. The Fisher King’s magic treasure. Pierce had deposited one of the two tiles that Anna had sent him via Jim, in this jar on the grave of Betty Corrigall. She didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps it was a casual gesture; he was passing, like her, and had been moved to leave something personal on the tomb. But spies never made casual gestures. A spy’s empty milk bottle was never simply an empty milk bottle; it was a signal. Their daughters were just as bad; Anna’s tiles were not randomly distributed, she was sure. The red, white and blue carefully assigned to their chosen recipients. Pierce had left the tile on Betty Corrigall’s grave for a reason. What was it? She brushed the tile clean; the white definitely felt colder than the blue. She dropped it in her pocket.
She squelched across the moor, reached the Honda, swung her leg over, twisted the key in the ignition and sat there for a moment with the bike still on its stand, staring across the water, comparing Pierce and Jim. There had been times when Jim’s behaviour had been turbulent, difficult. On the surface, Pierce seemed more genial and in control, and yet he had odd undercurrents. Religiously noting all the cash he handed over in his notebook. The flash of threat when he thought she had given away his address to Anna. The sudden question about the envelope. She still liked him – he was interesting and generous – but you could never take a spy at face value. She would have to take another look at the contents of that envelope when she returned to Vauxhall, she decided as she kicked the Honda’s start pedal and the bike leaped across the heather.
CHAPTER 16
London, September 1976
SHE FOUND THE envelope shortly after they returned from their summer holiday in Orkney. The heatwave had dissipated, the dusty streets of south London made strangely unfamiliar with the lick of rain. Sam was glad to have her room to herself again, but she missed Anna. Valerie had left the number of their latest residence. Sam called, but nobody picked up the phone. She tried again an hour later, still no answer. She didn’t want to waste the last weekend of the school holiday sitting at home calling somebody who wasn’t in. She decided to visit Bridget. That was the reason she gave herself for returning to the street where she and Anna had located Pierce’s safehouse. They mooched around the Riverdale Shopping Centre. Sam was bored. She missed Anna. They went back to Bridget’s house and played Mouse Trap for a while before Sam got irritated with Bridget’s hysterical laughter every time the plastic diving man landed head first in the tub. She had to leave.
She walked the wrong way down the road, not back to the bus stop, but towards Pierce’s safehouse where they had spied on the blonde woman only a few weeks previously. Just checking, that was all. She strolled past the bomb hole, spotted a fox dozing in a far corner, reached the house and looked for signs of life. The curtains were drawn. Maybe she could double-check. She glanced around. The street was empty. She couldn’t see the harm; she scraped the gate on the path, ran up the steps to the front door, rang the door bell. Distant chimes echoed. She rang again. More chimes but no footsteps. She glanced over her shoulder; the street still empty. She skipped down the steps, into the long grass of the garden, dodged the branches of an apple tree. She jumped at the hum of a wasp hovering around her ear and, in her head, Anna egged her on, teasing her for being a scaredy cat.
The far side of the garden was a dump. Tangled clumps of straw and hogweed sprouting between piles of bricks, a coil of rope, discarded tyres, planks, tarpaulins. What had Pierce used this place for, she wondered. Anna had found the address on a gas bill in the name of Davenport. His safehouse, she had said, paid for by MI6; the Firm, Anna had called them. And yet, it seemed they hadn’t reclaimed the house since Pierce had done a flit to Hoy. Left it to rot. She reached the back steps to the kitchen door. Oddly, there was an empty milk bottle on the top step, which was the wrong place to leave it; the milkman wouldn’t see it there. Perhaps it was a secret message – empty milk bottle; nobody at home. She was beginning to enjoy herself, playing the detective. Shame Anna wasn’t here too. She stooped to examine the bottle. The sound of a car drawing up on the road and a door slamming made her freeze, her mind blank for a second before she jumped from the top step, darted into the long grass, headed for the densest corner of the wilderness, ignored the nettle stings. Curled up small. She listened, expecting to hear footsteps disappearing as whoever was in the car walked along the street but, to her dismay, the garden gate scraped on the path. She pushed herself further into the undergrowth. She thought for a moment that it might be Anna and Valerie, but she realized from the thud of the footsteps on the path that these were men, not a twelve-year-old girl and her titchy mum. She should have walked straight to the bus stop. God only knew who these men were and what they were after. She tried to calm herself. Getagrip, Getagrip. Even if they did find her, they wouldn’t harm her. They were probably from the Firm, coming to tidy up their property.
She could hear their voices, harsh, spitting words that weren’t English. What language was it? Russian? She didn’t think so; she’d heard Russian before when Jim had brought his KGB drinking mates from Tilbury docks around to their house for a late-night vodka, and
this didn’t sound like Russian. Similar, though. Was it Czech? She was starting to panic; anything could happen. What if she was found? Abducted. Fucking tortured. Her throat was scratchy and her eyes were full of tears. She tried not to look at the intruders but she couldn’t help peeping at the two men in leather jackets, bulky backs visible as they ascended the steps to the kitchen door. Dark-haired. Swarthy men, Bridget’s mum had said, with a tone of distrust. Taking over the street. The taller man lifted the milk bottle, examined it, then turned and chucked it up in the air, sent it twisting in a high arc. She thought it might drop on her head, but it fell short, landed on the grass with a thud.
She sensed the gaze of the men following the path of the bottle and hardly dared to breathe, hoping her brown tee shirt would camouflage her, fox-like in her den. A guttural shout made her think she had been discovered, but the men weren’t looking in her direction any more – they were banging the door, kicking it, yelling. They conferred on the top step for what seemed like hours before they descended and strode off, their thick legs barely ten feet away from her hiding place. The car engine revved and wheels squealed. Still, she didn’t dare move, worried they might return. She dug in her back pocket, removed the packet of Smarties she’d stashed there, pinged the lid off, emptied the sweets into her cupped palm, the food dye staining her clammy skin tangerine, dropped a Smartie in her mouth and chewed. If she got to the end of the packet and the men still hadn’t returned, it was safe to move.
She placed the last sweet in her mouth, crunched the hard sugar shell between her molars. Nothing. She stood, about to make her way to the front of the house when her eye was caught by a green glint; a glorious emerald, flat-nosed rose chafer, scurrying along a jagged plank lying in the grass. The chafer wiggled its antennae, searching for a route to the dank underside. She couldn’t quite let it disappear. She shifted the splintery wood; the chafer had vanished but lying on the flattened white grass underneath was a tartan tin of Crawford’s assorted shortbread. She prodded the tin; it wasn’t rusty, it didn’t look as if it had been there long. She gripped the lid and prised it open, found an envelope inside. She removed it, stuck it in her back pocket and scarpered.