The Memory of Trees

by F. G. Cottam

  He shook his head and smiled a pained smile to himself. It was a mystery. He had seen no sign and yet he made a living from being intuitive. Should he see her again, he would try to have the presence of mind to ask her about why she had done it. He thought that he might see her again. He couldn’t rule it out. He was pretty certain now that it had been the dead Isobel he had seen staring at him in Richmond Park that morning.

  FIVE

  Andrew Carrington learned about the girl’s death because he was copied into the group email warning faculty staff members not to talk to the press about her character or speculate on the reason for her suicide. There was to be a meeting concerning this unfortunate event at eleven thirty that morning. Since he hadn’t taught her, his attendance wasn’t mandatory. But the email implied that everyone who’d had contact with her should try to be there. He had given a second opinion on an essay she had written about woodland clearance in Scotland; about the economic consequences and the ecological damage inflicted.

  He’d thought the essay rather good. She’d had a clear gift for analysis and a forthright prose style. She had also shown a bias for unspoiled country that was more ideological than the soupy romanticism that compelled students to decorate their walls with Arthur Rackham posters depicting elves and faeries cavorting under ferns and toadstools.

  Woodland clearance wasn’t strictly his field. But over the past term he’d marked a number of history essays and appraised an English Literature student’s thesis on the fiction of Tolkien. Budget shortfalls meant that academics these days were in the business of multi-tasking just like people in the wider world.

  Practically, the fact that he was copied into the message meant that they weren’t thinking of dispensing with him any time soon. The girl’s death was obviously sad but this was reassuring. The work the university put his way was part-time but essential to his lifestyle. He could not manage on his Oxford College pension and the trickle of royalties from his books without imposing strict economies on himself. So at the appointed time he walked into the seminar room in which the meeting was to be held with a jaunty step and an uncharacteristically generous smile.

  Her course had been land economy. Her course tutor had been Simone Butler. And though the vice-chancellor was one of the seven faculty members Carrington joined in the room, it was Professor Butler who chaired the meeting.

  To Carrington, she was Simone: a severely handsome woman in her early forties he rather admired because she had a first-rate intellect and didn’t make a song and dance about her lesbianism. As always, she was impeccably dressed in a black designer suit. She leant against a desk with her arms folded across her chest and they sat in a semi-circle before her.

  She first explained that the meeting was both informal and confidential and because it was off the record no minutes would be taken. Having established its parameters, she began the discussion.

  Isobel Jenks had apparently hanged herself the previous night. A cleaner had discovered the body early that morning. She had knocked on the door and then used a master key to enter the room when she got no response because she had smelled cigarette smoke and suspected the source of the smoke to be inside Isobel’s room. In the event the smoke was stale and its occupant already stiff with rigor mortis, suspended by a bootlace from a hook screwed into her wall.

  The note she’d left was vague and cryptic rather than clear on why she’d taken her own life in such a bleak and lonely manner. But the police and their forensic team had concluded straight away that the death was not suspicious. No one but its victim had been involved in it.

  She’d taken a call from the journalist Will Davies earlier that morning. He’d asked questions about an affair Isobel had apparently been involved in late the previous summer with an arboreal expert called Tom Curtis.

  Simone had rightly said that Curtis was not a member of the university’s academic staff and further stressed that he never had been. But she had been obliged to admit that he had run a forestry summer school organized by her faculty and that Isobel had been one of the students who travelled to Scotland to take part in it.

  Carrington had never heard of Curtis, but he could see where this was going. The university had a duty of care to its students. Isobel had been much more young woman than little girl. But this Curtis chap might turn out to be one of those serial womanizers and if that were the case, hiring him and paying him out of college funds could look bad, irresponsible and possibly even negligent.

  The vice-chancellor, grey-headed, distinguished-looking, the safe pair of hands for which he was handsomely paid linked in his lap, spoke up. He said, ‘What were your reasons, Simone, for choosing this chap Curtis?’

  ‘He’s the best,’ she said. ‘He came highly recommended by Dora Straub at Hamburg. She’s worked with him on a number of projects. She described him as highly qualified and completely reliable.’

  ‘How did he strike you?’

  After a pause, Simone said, ‘Picturesque. Physically he looks like something out of a Burne-Jones painting.’

  ‘Did you tell the journalist that?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. But to some extent it goes with the territory. In the same way that rock stars look like rock stars and eco-warriors have piercings and dreadlocks, tree people tend to look like Tom Curtis does.’

  The vice-chancellor said, ‘It’s extremely unfortunate.’

  ‘He lived locally, about two miles from here. That was convenient when it came to the meetings held for setting up last summer’s event. Also, bluntly, he didn’t strike me as the sort of philandering idiot who would shit on his own doorstep.’

  ‘But he did,’ the vice-chancellor said, ‘heftily.’

  Simone looked at him neutrally and then looked around the room. For a moment, she caught Carrington’s eye. She said, ‘I called this meeting to warn everyone present to be on their guard against indiscretion. Personally, I think this unlikely to be followed up. The death of Isobel Jenks is of course extremely unfortunate, tragic for the girl and for her family, the waste of a young life with great potential. But I got the feeling Will Davies won’t take it further.’

  The vice-chancellor said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, partly because the affair between Curtis and Isobel Jenks fizzled out six months ago. In tabloid terms, it’s ancient history. Mostly because to splash on that would be to obscure the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is vast. Tom Curtis is working on a megalomaniac scheme dreamed up by the billionaire Saul Abercrombie. That’s the real story and Davies knows it is. Everything else, including poor Isobel, is a side-bar at best.’

  ‘Or worst,’ the vice-chancellor said. ‘What is this Abercrombie scheme?’

  ‘He’s going to restore an ancient forest reaching deep inland from a stretch of Pembrokeshire coastline. He plans it to be huge, dense and deciduous, and for this rich man’s folly he’s made Tom Curtis project manager.’

  Carrington said, ‘Restore, Simone? As in, recreate? The forest was there originally?’

  ‘Apparently, Andrew, yes, it was.’

  ‘Do you know where in Pembrokeshire?’

  ‘Davies mentioned a place called Raven Dip. Also somewhere I think he called Loxley’s Cross. It sounded like it’ll stretch over half the county.’

  Carrington was too numbed by what he’d just heard and by its appalling implications to comment further. The rest of the meeting did not really register at all with him. It might have gone on for a little longer. Eventually it ended, because it must have done for him to have left it. But the specifics of what he was doing did not really return to him until, at a quarter to two that afternoon, he found himself at a table on the promenade outside the Riverside Café, a cup of coffee in front of him, his fingers absently toying with the cellophane wrapping on the complimentary Italian biscuit accompanying his drink.

  He saw the river, which he was facing. He became aware of the brightly painted green and red tables to his right and left, vivid colours in early afternoon sunshine within t
he scope of his peripheral vision. There were a couple of other customers seated as he was, outside the café. It felt quite warm. You might even describe it as pleasantly so. To his rear he could hear John, the Riverside’s proprietor, whistling mellifluously as he performed some necessary task.

  The whistling got louder. A shadow loomed to his rear. And then there was a scrape of metal as chair legs were pulled out and John was seated across from him, backed by blue water and the orange clay path of the far bank, an expression of concern on a face that had always struck Carrington as not just friendly, but kind.

  ‘You all right, Prof?’

  ‘Of course the water isn’t blue at all, is it? That’s just the reflection of a blue sky in sunlight. It’s essentially a happy bit of visual trickery.’

  ‘Andy, it’s me, John. Are you all right?’

  ‘Very clever, putting him in the way of temptation like that. The affair with the girl sullies his virtue. It weakens him in the conflict. The old rules and customs endure. The chivalric code had yet to be written but its values were understood and the bitch knows best of anyone how to undermine an opponent.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Curtis. Who else would I be talking about?’

  ‘Tom Curtis? He’s called you?’

  ‘Of course he hasn’t. I’ve never spoken to him in my life. Until today I’d never heard of him. Why would he call me?’

  ‘I gave him your card.’

  ‘Well, Curtis hasn’t called me. But I fear I must call him.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a coincidence.’

  Carrington blinked at John. What was he talking about, coincidence? It was nothing of the sort. It was nothing as innocent or banal as simple chance. Fate was what it was. Predestination was what it was. ‘I might have to go there,’ he said. Suddenly he felt weary, every day of his age weighing on him and terror clutching coldly at his heart.

  ‘He’s in Wales,’ John said. ‘I think he’s from there originally. He’s a Welshman.’

  ‘He’s a Celt, from Cornwall,’ Carrington said.

  ‘I’m sure he said he’s Welsh.’

  ‘He might be,’ Carrington said, ‘but there’s Cornish Celt in his DNA. It was where his ancestors came from. It was where one of them came from, anyway, the important one, a thousand years ago.’

  John looked at him like he was speaking Ancient Greek. Or Demotic Greek, it was all Greek to John, who was a good and industrious man but no linguist and no student of mythology either.

  ‘I knew it,’ Carrington said, ‘when I saw that the ice field had split high on Kilimanjaro a few days ago.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That it was a portent. I knew it signified something, some shift or acceleration in matters. I knew it symbolized something serious. It was a warning to anyone alert to such things. I didn’t dream it was warning of something as calamitous as this.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles, Prof,’ John said. ‘You’ve lost me completely.’

  ‘Pray they stay riddles,’ Carrington said. ‘I’ve an awful feeling they won’t.’

  The day began badly. The press were on to what they were doing. A reporter called the head office of Abercrombie Industries at mid-morning. He wanted confirmation concerning the scale of the project they had begun. He wanted clarification concerning the state of Saul Abercrombie’s health. He had the name of the project manager and a contact number already for Tom Curtis, he explained. He had not used it only because he wanted to observe the niceties and allow Abercrombie to cooperate with the splash they planned for the paper’s next edition.

  It was the private opinion of Curtis that going public had never been their choice really to make. A battalion of ex-Royal Engineers had arrived with their fleet of cement and tarmac-laying lorries at first light that morning to construct the runway and helipad. In an hour or so, a firm that specialized in pre-fabricated building would be hammering together the accommodation block for a workforce so substantial it might constitute a private army. The excavators were expected at Fishguard harbour later in the day.

  There wouldn’t just be wide loads to consider when they were hauled on to the giant flatbeds hired to transport them. They would close roads. They required police escorts and that meant lights and sirens and for ordinary motorists, delays the RAC and AA had already needed to be briefed about. Jesus, the diggers were more gigantic machines than anything Curtis had seen outside of an episode of Thunderbirds or a Star Wars movie. You didn’t hide plant like that. You couldn’t, and it aroused curiosity in people. They wanted to know what it was for.

  You couldn’t keep industry on this scale a secret. Curtis thought it pretty miraculous that they had kept it quiet for as long as they had and paradoxical that so flamboyant a man as Abercrombie normally was should have wanted it kept quiet at all. It was ambitious. It was actually quite breathtaking in the epic extent of its ambition. And its ecological credentials were unimpeachable. What was wrong with going public on the project?

  It was his illness, of course. Close scrutiny of Saul Abercrombie threatened to reveal his cancer and the fact that the end of his life was approaching quite rapidly. What would that do to the Abercrombie Industries share price? The myth of his invincibility would take not just a dent but a mortal blow. Literally a mortal blow, Curtis thought.

  They were on the quad bikes. He’d been in his room, working on his phone and laptop, looking forward to the scheduled arrival later in the day of Pete and Dora, though not necessarily in that order. He’d already greeted the ex-military guys laying the airstrip, having had to because there was still no sign of Freemantle on the estate and Francesca had knocked on his door and asked him to do it. He’d obliged happily enough.

  Saul had also knocked on his door, half an hour ago, his helmet strapped to his head but no sign of his steampunk goggles today. Curtis took this as an indication of his less than playful mood, a judgement proven when his employer said, ‘Have you been gossiping to the press?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I banked twenty grand of your money yesterday.’

  ‘Your money, Tree Man, I gave it to you.’

  ‘My point being that I wouldn’t have done that and disobeyed your instructions concerning my job conditions. I’d consider it theft.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it would be theft. And you wouldn’t be the first person to regret ripping me off.’

  ‘Except that I’ve not spoken to any reporter. You’ve got the wrong culprit, if there even is a culprit.’

  ‘Someone tipped this guy off. He knows about the cancer.’

  The cancer, not my cancer, Curtis observed. He said, ‘Is there any sign of Freemantle?’

  ‘That’s another thing. Where’s my to-do guy on the day when I need him like I’ve never fucking needed him before? Talk about lousy timing.’

  ‘Could he have gone to the press?’

  That question made Saul Abercrombie laugh. It seemed to lighten his mood slightly. ‘If he did that, he’d be going public on his own past. And believe me, brother, Sam has enough of a past to have a very good reason to keep quiet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean he didn’t acquire his skills-set in quite the manner you seem to have assumed.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘It’s where we’re going. We’re going to look for any sign of Sam.’

  ‘The construction guys are due and they’ll need to be told where to build the compound.’

  ‘There are security people at the gates to greet them. Fran can show them where to build. It’s not like they’re restricted choice-wise.’

  ‘I’ve earmarked a spot along the eastern perimeter. It’s good for road access, drains well, doesn’t impede the digging and puts five miles of privacy between you and the workers and their galley, canteen and bunk houses.’

  ‘And latrines,’ Abercrombie said.

  Curtis shrugged. What could he say? It was a labour-intensive business. It needed muscle as well as machiner
y. He’d liaised with the recruitment company he always used. The people would start to arrive as soon as their accommodation was completed.

  ‘Show Fran the spot on the map and then grab a quad, brother,’ Abercrombie said to him. ‘We’ve got some searching to do.’

  They found Freemantle’s Land Rover after two hours of looking. They had known it was not going to be near the landward boundary of the estate because the security guards now manning the perimeter would have spotted the vehicle and called the sighting in.

  They first went to Raven Dip and then to Loxley’s Cross. There was no real logic to this except that the Dip was just that, a depression that could hide the presence of someone there. And the Cross was somewhere that led to places and so seemed marginally less barren than the wastes of grassland around them distinguished by no name at all.

  The Land Rover was the same green as the ground and so naturally camouflaged. Against the background of the thorn bush it couldn’t be seen at all until you were almost upon it, Curtis realized, wondering why Freemantle had parked it quite so close to the great thorn tangle dominating the ground.

  He thought he had his answer when they looked in the back of the vehicle and saw the red jerry can strapped upright in a bracket there. When he freed and hefted it, he discovered it was full. Freemantle had come here to do some damage to the bush, maybe to scorch it out of existence. So where was he and why hadn’t he accomplished this relatively straightforward task?

  ‘Over here,’ Abercrombie said, still astride his quad bike, gesturing at the ground. Curtis walked across. He saw a shotgun lying in a tangle of grass. It was a pump-action, heavy calibre, probably a sixteen-bore and had been beautifully maintained up to the moment of its abandonment. There was a polished lustre to the walnut stock and the metal glimmered without tarnish in the spring light.