by Alex Marwood
The man has one of his little twin daughters with him. They stand beside the tracks of the digger and watch the pool liner swing in the air above the hole, an army of labourers easing it carefully into position. Janusz signals to Gabriel, behind the controls of the crane, and hears the brake go on and the engine stop. A moan of disappointment goes up from the team. He walks over to the slope to greet them; switches to his English-speaking brain as he goes. He’s close to bilingual now, even after just nine months, but he still has to concentrate when he switches from one to the other.
‘It’s afternoon,’ he says, by way of greeting. He wants to make it clear from the off that he’s not tolerating any more complaints. They’ve kept to their side of the bargain, but they can’t give him any more.
‘No, no,’ says the man, and gives him a smile that makes him think fleetingly of vampires. For someone who’s on holiday he looks exhausted, his rich-man’s tan washed out in the bright sunlight. ‘Not come to make a nuisance of myself, I promise.’
‘Okay,’ says Janusz suspiciously, and comes down the slope. Takes his hat off and gives the little girl a tentative smile. She stares for a moment then smiles back. Tiny white teeth and dimples, and the sort of baby-blonde hair that will be mousey by the time she’s eight. ‘Good afternoon,’ he says to her, solemnly. She gives him the big eyes, and sidesteps in behind her father’s legs. Suddenly he’s missing his own four-year-old, Danuta, so badly it feels as though his heart is strained. She does the same thing when faced with strange adults. Only twenty-four more hours and I’ll be with them, he thinks, and then we have a whole month of beautiful autumn days on the banks of the Vistula.
‘We just came to say thank you,’ says the man. ‘We had such a lovely day yesterday, and a marvellous lie-in this morning, and we really appreciate it.’
‘Okay,’ says Janusz again. There has been no noise from his employers, as the men predicted, and it’s looking as though he, Karol, Tomasz and Gabriel will be going home with a nice little tax-free bonus. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘Coco has a present for you,’ says the man. ‘Come on, darling. Come out from there!’
The little girl steps unwillingly out from behind. Her father bends down and places a cardboard box into her hands. ‘Go on, darling,’ he says, ‘give it to him.’
It’s so large and so heavy that she has to hold it in both hands and clutch on tightly, for the fingers can’t get a purchase on the corners. She walks forward. She’s wearing a pretty little pink dress and jelly sandals with white socks. He smiles at the sight of them. Only a man, he thinks, would take a kid on to a building site in white socks. There are already a couple of brown stains where she has splashed into a passing puddle. ‘Thank you,’ she says, shyly, clearly reciting a pre-prepared speech, ‘for letting Daddy have a happy birthday.’
He bends down and takes it from her before she drops it. It’s whisky, in a presentation box.
‘Knockando,’ says Sean, ‘1973. A single malt from a good year. Thought you might enjoy something to remind you of England.’
‘Thank you,’ says Janusz, though he’s pretty sure that the whisky comes from Scotland. He nods solemnly at the little girl. ‘Thank you, Coco,’ he says, ‘that’s very kind. Where’s your sister?’
‘They went to the beach without me,’ she says mournfully. But then she brightens up. ‘But I had chips.’
‘That’s good,’ says Janusz. ‘My little girl likes chips too. With mayonnaise. How do you like yours?’
‘With ice cream,’ she says, confidently. Janusz laughs and the father makes a sort of rumbling noise that he assumes is a sound of humour. ‘Together?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she replies, firmly. ‘Strawberry is best,’ and he laughs again.
‘So how’s it all going?’ the man asks. He’s much friendlier today, the air of arrogance he carried when surrounded by his well-fed friends stripped away in the presence of the child. ‘Think you’ll make your deadline?’
Janusz nods. ‘I think so. Pool’s almost in now and the sealant’s all mixed, so we should make it.’
‘Well, thank you for delaying,’ he says. ‘It’s greatly appreciated. When’s your ferry again?’
‘Last sailing. Eleven-thirty from Portsmouth.’
‘And you’re all packed up?’
‘Yes. Everything’s in the van and ready to go.’
‘Terrific,’ he says, then repeats the word. ‘Long drive? Where are you going to?’
‘Krakow. We all come from Krakow.’
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Nice.’
‘You have been?’
He looks a little flustered. Janusz has noticed this about English people: that they can never simply admit to not knowing about something. ‘No,’ he says, ‘but I hope to go, some day.’
Sure you do, thinks Janusz, and tosses his box in his hand. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘thank you for this. But if we’re going to get finished before dark we need to get on now.’
‘Sure,’ says the man. ‘Sure. Listen: you guys seem to have done a good job here. And you’re clearly adaptable. You don’t have a card, do you? Only, I employ construction people a lot, and frankly I’m not crazy about the ones I’m using at the moment.’
‘A card? No, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But I have a mobile phone.’
‘Great!’ He gets out his own, a BlackBerry, the sort of phone owned by people who do a lot of business. ‘Let’s swap numbers. When are you coming back?’
Janusz reels his number off and Sean types it in. ‘In a month, I hope.’
‘Great. Let’s speak then. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Janusz Bieda.’
He sticks a hand out to shake. Better late than never. ‘Sean Jackson,’ he says. ‘And this is Coco.’
He shakes Coco’s hand too. His big hand goes halfway up to her elbow. ‘Have a lovely day, Coco,’ he says.
‘I’m going to Neptune’s Kingdom,’ she confides. ‘They have slides.’
‘Oh, good,’ he says, and makes a mental note to take Danuta to Park Wodny when he’s at home. If this little one’s old enough for water slides, then she must be too.
He carries his ill-gotten gains back up the slope and signals to Gabriel to carry on. Stashes the bottle in his work bag. He can break it out once they’re on the ferry; it’ll pass the time and save them money on the four-hour crossing to Le Havre. Funny, he thinks. You can never go by first impressions. If you’d asked me yesterday what Sean Jackson was like I would have said he was an arrogant wanker. I guess he was stressed. Everyone seems to be stressed these days. Especially in this country. You’d have thought that all that money would make them less stressed, but it doesn’t seem that way.
The men get into position and the pool liner is gently guided into its final resting place.
Chapter Forty-One
Two solemn policemen. Sturdy country policemen with their hats under their arms, standing on the elegant doorstep as I open up, with that I’m-not-impressed look on their faces.
‘Mrs Jackson?’
‘I’m her stepdaughter.’
‘Oh.’ He looks at Ruby, who’s lolloped along the corridor behind me, works out that if I’m a stepdaughter then she’s certainly not a wife. ‘Is Mr Jackson available?’
How funny. You think somehow that everybody knows this sort of thing. ‘He’s dead,’ I say. ‘He died three weeks ago.’
A visible ripple of discombobulation. However unimpressed by their surroundings, the police still don’t expect people in houses like this to live with disaster. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘My condolences.’
‘Thank you. Can I help you?’ I ask. I don’t know where anybody else is. I’ve been hiding in my room all morning, avoiding Simone. If I could I would have left. It’s not as though she’s not made it clear that it’s what she’d like. But you don’t. I’ve been a leaver all my life, a runner-away just like my father, and I have to see this out. At twenty-seven, I fear that I am finally becoming an adult.
‘I
s Mrs Jackson available?’
‘We’re getting ready for the funeral. I’m not sure where she is.’
‘Oh,’ he says again. ‘Do you have any idea when she’ll be home? We have a couple of questions we need to ask her.’
‘If I had any idea where she was, I’d probably have a better idea of when she’ll be home. Is there anything I can help you with?’
Simone’s voice rings out from the hall behind me. ‘It’s okay, Milly. Thank you.’
I look round and see that Social Simone has returned with the daylight. When I left her in the dark last night, she looked like a ghost in a Japanese horror movie. Now she’s made up and coiffed and dressed in one of those vaguely Moroccan draped-layer outfits that cost hundreds of pounds per piece on Sloane Street despite being made of viscose. Her hair is glossy and held up with a pair of chopsticks and her thin lips stand out against her pale skin in sophisticated scarlet.
She clicks along the corridor in sharp stiletto court shoes. She may be the same age as me, but she looks every inch the stepmother. ‘Come in, gentlemen,’ she says, with an efficient smile. Not a trace of the despair that filled her face last night, or the desperation that characterised her public dealings at that horrible first-night dinner. My God, I think. She’s an accomplished little actress, isn’t she? I wonder which one of those faces is real? ‘How can I help you?’
He reels slightly, looks from stepmother to stepdaughter and back again, takes control of his manners. ‘Mrs Jackson?’
‘Yes.’ She smiles again.
‘Detective Constable Rice. This is Constable Summers. Can we go somewhere a little more comfortable, Mrs Jackson? We could do with a word.’
‘But of course! Come through to the kitchen! I’m sorry. I should have offered you a cup of tea!’
‘No need. Thank you,’ says the older of the two policemen, and we all trail her up the corridor.
Maria is at the kitchen table, buttering bread, Robert slicing tomatoes very very thinly with a giant chef’s knife and scraping them into a pottery salad bowl. They see our visitors and jump to their feet. ‘Oh!’ says Maria. ‘Sorry. I was making some sandwiches for lunch. Shall I get out of your way?’
‘Of course not, Maria,’ says Simone, gaily. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing you can’t say in front of my stepmother, is there?’
‘I’m Mrs Jackson’s father,’ says Robert.
A little flicking of eyes. These wealthy types, it says. They must get so confused with all these stepmothers drifting about the place.
They lay their hats down on the table, neatly, side by side. ‘I’m afraid we need to ask you a few questions, Mrs Jackson,’ says Older Cop. Constable Summers is gazing around him at the stainless steel appliances, the stacks of bone china. I wonder if he’s going to ask to use the loo, the way they do on cop shows. He looks about nineteen, and has sticky-out ears, but they don’t age so quickly outside London.
‘Fire ahead,’ says Simone. ‘Tea.’
‘No, thank you. Just had one. Mrs Jackson, I’m sorry to say that there’s been an incident down at Appledore. There’s been a body found, caught in the mud in the estuary.’
‘Oh, God,’ says Maria, and looks concerned. ‘How awful.’
‘It looks as though the tide caught him. We don’t know what he was doing on the sands, but there are patches of quicksand out there and you need to know what you’re doing, especially in the dark. Tide was full around midnight last night. So I suppose he must have gone down there a few hours before then.’
‘Oh, God,’ says Maria, and sits back down. ‘Poor man. What an awful way to go.’
Robert doesn’t speak, but he lays his huge knife down in the sink. Runs his hands under the tap and dries them carefully on a tea-towel. I know where they’re going with this. It’s Jimmy who’s been making crab food, it has to be.
He continues. ‘We found some identification on him, and it identified him as a Dr James Orizio?’
‘Oh, God,’ says Maria again, and instantly starts to cry.
‘I take it you knew him, then?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘He’s been staying with us. Until yesterday. But I think you probably know that, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?’
‘And you didn’t miss him last night?’
‘No. He left yesterday morning. We didn’t know where he’d gone. Oh, God. Oh, poor Jimmy. Oh, poor man.’ She pushes her chair back, goes and grabs a piece of kitchen towel and blows her nose. Dabs carefully under her eyes and throws it in the bin. So that’s the mourning Jimmy Orizio gets at the end of his life. Thirty seconds of tears from the kindest-hearted person he knew.
Simone shows no emotion at all. ‘We saw him in the afternoon,’ offers Ruby. ‘My sister and I. Down in Appledore. We went into the Smuggler’s Arms after our walk and he was in there. Drinking.’
‘Yes,’ says DC Rice. ‘We’d gathered that already.’
‘My husband went to look for him in the evening,’ says Maria.
The police turn to Robert. He clears his throat and speaks. ‘I couldn’t find him,’ he says. ‘We were worried when Milly and Ruby came back and said they’d seen him, so I went down and looked, but he was nowhere about. I thought I should try, you know?’
‘And what sort of time was this?’
‘Sevenish, eightish? I wasn’t really paying attention. It was before supper, though.’
I try to remember when he came back. I can’t. But of course I was up in my room for most of the evening, then out in the garden with the Medusa.
‘I looked for a while,’ says Robert. ‘I checked all the pubs in Appledore, as far as I know. I thought perhaps he’d gone on to Bideford, but that’s far too large to even start, really. I didn’t see his car.’
‘He had a car?’ DC Rice gets his notepad out and jots it down. ‘I don’t suppose you know the numberplate, do you?’
We all shake our heads. ‘It’s a Fiesta,’ I say. ‘Old, sort of greeny-blue, bashed-in front wheel well.’
He jots again. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘And were you alone when you conducted this search?’
Robert shakes his head. ‘No. I had another family friend with me. Charles Clutterbuck. The former member of parliament. He’s staying at the Grand in Ilfracombe, if you want to verify.’
‘He was a drunk, you know,’ says Simone. ‘Everyone was doing what they could, but in the end…’
‘Yes.’ He looks at us all speculatively. Another one who knows, I think. They’ve looked him up on their computers and worked out the connection. ‘I’ll make a note of that.’
‘He was an old friend of my son-in-law’s,’ says Maria. ‘He would be so upset.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says DC Rice. ‘You could do without this, with all you’re dealing with.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s such a tragedy. Oh, poor Jimmy. I’m afraid we’ve all been half expecting to hear he was dead one day, but not like this. Oh, lord.’
‘So,’ he says, ‘what time did he leave here?’
We all look at each other. ‘Mid-morning, I think it was?’ I say. ‘Before lunch, anyway.’
‘Any particular reason?’
The question sounds innocuous, but I know it isn’t, really. Maria blinks a couple of times, then speaks. ‘My fault, I’m afraid. I locked the wine cellar and he didn’t like it.’
‘Terry at the Smuggler’s says that he was saying some pretty nasty things about you all,’ he says. ‘Sorry. I have to mention it.’
Maria looks at him. ‘DC Rice, have you had much experience with people with substance abuse issues? I would imagine you have. Presumably you come across them quite a lot in the course of your work?’
He gives her a wry little smile. ‘Once or twice.’
‘Well, then,’ she says.
‘Sure,’ he says.
‘My son-in-law spent a dizzying number of thousands of pounds putting Jimmy through rehab,’ she says. ‘Several times. He was a good man. Loyal to his friends. But you know… sometimes… and
alcoholics can be fantastically vicious when they’re protecting their habits. I’m sure you know that, as well.’
‘I do,’ says DC Rice.
A pause.
‘So…’ says Maria, all businesslike. ‘Thank you for letting us know.’
‘The other thing,’ he says. ‘Does he have a next of kin that you know of?’
And so it goes on. Tiggy and Inigo and Fred. More teenagers out in the hands of the world. ‘He has three children,’ I say. ‘They live with their grandparents. Their mother died a few years ago, and, well… I don’t think a custody hearing would have gone his way, you know?’ I shrug. What can you say? The Jackson Associates are down to five. A pretty high attrition rate, even in people who lived as hard as they did.
The five of us walk them back to the front door, the Gavila charm switched on full-beam as they talk about the plans for the funeral, promise to contact them if we think of anything, discuss how they will be in touch with the Orizio children once their own travails are over. So sad, they all agree. Such a waste. I follow in their wake, admiring their grace, their composure, their wonderful teamwork. If only, I think as we stand in a row on the steps, Simone and Maria arm in arm as we wave the squad car off, if only my own family had had even a fifth of the unity the Gavilas have. Think how much easier life would have been: just simply, sweetly loving each other, the way they do.
Then the car disappears around the corner of the drive and Simone turns and slaps Maria full in the face.
Chapter Forty-Two
2004 | Sunday | Maria
Maria has something of an eidetic memory when it comes to lists. Once they’re written, she can tick them off in her head as she goes along. She’s left the original copy with the men, who lack this particular talent, but still, as she watches the suburbs of Bournemouth crawl past, she is ticking things off; seeing her handwriting in her mind’s eye crossed through with black ballpoint pen. Bottles (oh, God, so many bottles) to the recycling, tick. Jimmy’s medication bag on to the Gin O’Clock as he refuses to part with it, tick. Annexe cleaned, scrubbed, bleached, dried, polished, scattered with Simone and Joaquin’s belongings as though they have been there all weekend, tick. The men are in charge of breaking the lock on the sliding doors into the kitchen, of ensuring that the hole in the fence is large enough to fit a man and not just a teenage girl, of scrubbing every surface, every piece of grouting, every corner, to make sure they’re clear of residues; I’ll tick them off when I see it’s done. Clear internet history, tick. Oh, God, I must check what they’ve all been doing online and get them to clear theirs as well. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and there are so many links to worry about.