Gillespie hesitated, then produced the post-mortem report. He slid it across the desk towards Jenner. Jenner picked it up. He read it.
‘So?’ he said.
Gillespie sipped the coffee.
‘I need some affidavits,’ he said, ‘starting with the lady that drew up this report.’
Jenner nodded, glancing again at the last page. Then he looked up, knowing Gillespie too well to bother with any of the obvious questions.
‘Fine,’ he said, tapping the dictaphone, ‘my pleasure.’
Joanna Goodman met her husband for lunch at a new Thai restaurant which had recently opened near the pier. He’d asked her to turn up at half-past twelve, a little earlier than usual, because he had important meetings all afternoon, but she was there ten minutes early. She sat by herself at a table near the back. It was a quiet, discreet little place, fresh flowers on the table, and a waiter so tactfully unobtrusive that he was barely there at all.
She sipped at her drink, gazing down the room, out onto the street. She’d phoned Charles Jenner fifteen minutes earlier. She’d explained a little about the situation. She’d mentioned the man Gillespie. There’d been a pause. Then Jenner had asked her for the girl’s name. She’d told him, Suzanne Wallace, and there’d been another pause, and a rustle or two of paper, before he was back again to tell her that, yes, Miss Wallace was indeed dead, and that, yes, there was some question of foul play. Joanna had thanked him and hung up, feeling a chill steal over her, the ambiguities evaporating, the situation slipping remorselessly into focus. On both counts, Gillespie had been right. Where did that leave her?
A shadow fell over the door, and her husband pushed into the restaurant. He spotted her at once and smiled. She got up, kissed him. He sat down. He looked pleased with himself.
‘Eric sends his best,’ he said, ‘he’s just been in.’
‘Oh?’
‘Looked marvellous. Amazing really.’
‘Is he coming back?’
‘No,’ he smiled again, ‘that was the whole point. That’s why he came in. He’s throwing in the towel. Officially.’
She lifted her glass. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘Your dream come true.’
Goodman shrugged, signalling the waiter.
‘Early days,’ he said. ‘The job could go to anybody.’
Joanna looked at him, quizzical.
‘I’m confused,’ she said. ‘Yesterday you’d had enough of it all. You told me so. At the football. You said it wasn’t worth a candle.’
‘Ah …’ Goodman nodded darkly, ‘yesterday.’
‘Was I wrong to believe you?’
‘No.’
‘Was it true?’
He looked up at her, catching the inflection in her voice, the slightly tempered edge that cut through all the banter.
‘Well …’ he shrugged again, ‘we all have a living to make.’
‘That wasn’t my question. I asked you whether you meant it or not.’
Goodman looked up.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I did. At the time.’
‘But not any more?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He fingered the menu. ‘It’d be a fascinating challenge.’
‘That’s not what you said yesterday.’
‘No, I know.’ He opened the menu, not looking at her. ‘Confusing, isn’t it?’
Joanna watched him, the head bent over the menu, the finger running down the list of entrées. She remembered the night he’d come back, out of the dark, blood all over his face, nearly incoherent. She remembered Evans at the door beside him, the embarrassed half-smile, the coldness in his eyes. And she knew, in that moment, exactly what had happened. She realized how empty the last four weeks had been, and the years before that. She realized how easily, how wilfully, she’d confused what she wanted, with what she’d got. And she realized with extraordinary clarity, exactly what she must do about it. For now, she’d play along. But very soon, it would be all over.
Her husband looked up.
‘Number seventeen,’ he said, ‘Heavenly Chicken.’
She glanced at him over her menu, suddenly free of it all, suddenly wise.
‘Fine,’ she said, ‘whatever you say.’
It was early afternoon before Gillespie got the call. He was in the kitchen, sawing the end off a fresh loaf. He walked through to the living room, and picked up the phone.
‘Gillespie,’ he said briefly.
There was a woman’s voice at the other end. He recognized it at once. She’d taken longer than he’d expected to call back.
‘It’s Mrs Goodman,’ the voice said.
‘I know.’
‘I thought I ought to give you a ring. About this morning.’
‘Yeah?’
‘There’s someone you ought to talk to.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘A man called Evans. He used to drive my husband around. During the troubles.’ She paused. ‘I think you’ll find he knows a great deal about … ah … what happened …’
Gillespie hesitated a moment, frowning. He’d braced himself for a long conversation, awkward, difficult, the woman’s loyalty to her husband in conflict with her need to cover her own back. But here she was, as clipped and decisive as ever, giving him chapter and verse. He wrote down the name and looked at it.
‘Evans …’ He paused. ‘You wouldn’t have a Christian name, would you? Or a phone number?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ She hesitated ‘I think he was a Marine of some sort. A corporal. Would that make any sense to you?’
‘A Marine?’
Gillespie started to laugh, gazing out of the window, his head tilted back. It was raining now, big splodges trickling down the dusty glass.
‘I’m sorry?’ he could hear her saying. ‘I’m sorry?’
He put the phone down, very slowly, the laughter louder, deeper, full-bodied. After all this, he thought. The boat, the girl, the man in the suit in the small bare room. After all the heartache, all the nausea. After everything he’d tried to do, all the mistakes he’d made. After all this, it simply boiled down to a Marine. Not him. Not Gillespie. Someone else. Someone current. He fingered the pad. Evans.
Gillespie met Dawkins at the barracks gate. He’d phoned the RSM an hour before. The two men had served in the Falklands together, same Commando, both corporals. They’d shared the Arctic Warfare course, drunk themselves insensible in Tromso bars, shivered together in iceholes up near the Finnish border. He knew the man like a brother, and Dawkins’s had been the last hand he’d shaken the day he left the Corps. On the phone, he’d kept it simple.
‘Bloke called Evans,’ he’d said. ‘One of yours?’
‘Clive Evans? Tall bugger? Local boy?’
‘Could be.’ Gillespie had paused. ‘Attached to the civvy set-up during the recent troubles.’
‘That’s him.’
Gillespie had rung off a minute or two later, an arrangement made. Dawkins would meet him at the gate. Evans was on base. Piece of cake.
Now, the rain still falling, Gillespie shook Dawkins’s hand, and walked with him back into the Barracks. Dawkins was in his last year. Soon he’d be retiring, taking his chances in Civvy Street. They joked about it, bodies running to fat, marriages collapsing under the weight of unaccustomed daily contact, and Gillespie got the strongest possible whiff of the world he’d left behind, its camaraderie, its order, its sense of cheerful self-discipline. He still missed it. Even now.
They paused by a big red brick building. Inside, through the open windows, Gillespie could hear the thunder of heavy men doing something brutal. Feet on a wooden floor. The slap of flesh on flesh. Gasps, and curses, and an occasional yelp of laughter.
They walked in, out of the rain. A dozen or so men in singlets and shorts were wrestling a big medicine ball across a gymnasium. There were low goals at each end. The object was to put the ball between the posts. There were no rules. Anything went. Dawkins and Gillespie had watched for a minute or so. Every time the ball sto
pped, it disappeared beneath a ruck of bodies. Fists. Feet. An arm locked around a neck. Someone driving a knee deep into the nearest face. Dawkins smiled.
‘Doesn’t change much, does it?’
‘No,’ Gillespie grinned, ‘which one’s Evans?’ Dawkins peered into the mountains of bodies. Finally he found the face he wanted. He pointed Evans out. Tall. Wiry. Someone else’s blood smeared across the front of his singlet. He spotted the ball in a gap. He dived in, head first, regardless.
‘Game, isn’t he?’ Gillespie said. ‘Your corporal?’
Dawkins shook his head.
‘Sergeant Evans,’ he said. ‘Get it right.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Since Monday.’
Ten minutes later, Gillespie was standing in the changing rooms, waiting for Evans to emerge from the shower. The room was thick with steam, the white tiles gleaming in the light from the overhead neons. Evans appeared, towelling himself dry. He saw Gillespie, and paused.
‘You Dawkins’s mate?’ he said. Gillespie nodded. Evans stared at him, unimpressed.
‘What’s the name again?’
‘Gillespie.’
‘Dave Gillespie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s this then, Dave? Some kind of investigation, is it?’
‘Yeah,’ Gillespie said again.
He gave Evans the bare facts. A girl had died. A friend of a Mr Goodman’s. There was some doubt about the circumstances. He needed a little help. He understood Evans had been with Goodman most of the time. Perhaps there were things they could discuss. Evans listened without comment. When other men drifted in from the shower, they walked next door, to the urinal. Evans leaned back against the row of hand basins, rubbing his hair dry, not taking his eyes off Gillespie’s face. Finally he shook his head.
‘I don’t know a thing,’ he said, ‘I can’t help you.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Saw nothing?’
‘No.’ Evans sounded irritated. ‘Nothing.’
Gillespie frowned, remembering Goodman’s wife on the phone, the certainty in her voice.
‘But you must have known about the girlfriend,’ he said, ‘must have done.’
Evans began to towel his shoulders, both hands, sawing back and forth.
‘Look …’ he said at last, ‘I’m a soldier. I did a job. Drove the bloke around. Kept an eye on him. And that’s about it. I’ve got a life to lead, mate. Wife, kids …’ He paused. ‘Know what I mean?’
Gillespie nodded, ignoring the overt message behind the terse phrases. Leave me alone. Sod off out of it.
‘So you’re not telling?’ he said. ‘Even though you obviously know?’
Evans looked him in the eye.
‘Know what?’ he said.
Gillespie nodded, a slow sardonic curl of the lips. There was a long silence. Next door, someone was telling a joke about a priest with bad habits. Gillespie stepped a little closer, a message of his own to deliver.
‘Listen, son,’ he said softly, ‘don’t think I’m giving up, will you. Don’t kid yourself I won’t come looking.’ He paused. ‘As long as it takes. You hear me?’
Evans shrugged.
‘Suit yourself, mate,’ he said. ‘But you haven’t got much time.’
‘Oh?’
‘No,’ he smiled. ‘I’m off to Belize next week. For a whole fucking year.’
Bullock sat in the tiny editing suite, watching the final scene of the film. Annie had phoned him an hour or so earlier, telling him she’d finished the first rough cut, a crude assembly of shots, overlength, no music, no finesse, no polish, and he was welcome to take a look. She normally tried to avoid these rituals, preferring to keep everyone away until she could run something she was proud of, but on this occasion she decided it was the only practical solution. Bullock, at the very least, should share some of the blame. The film was truly awful.
Bullock let the final image fade, sunset over the harbour, city voices in the background, ordinary men and women saying their separate thank-yous that the whole thing was over, that everyone had survived. Annie had focused in the end on two families – an unemployed couple from a big housing estate, and a young computer programmer with a pretty wife and a three-month-old baby. The social contrasts were stark, but the concerns they voiced were almost identical. The world, they both said, was crazy. Only now, perhaps, would the politicians realize what they were really putting at risk. The message, if obvious, was nicely phrased, and intercut with footage from the Bunker – hands on phones, chinagraphs advancing across huge maps of the city, the two-tone buzz of the Attack Alarm – it made compulsive viewing. Of Goodman, the putative subject of the film, there was surprisingly little, and when he appeared at all it was simply to help the story along. A detail here. A time reference there. An admission, late in the film, that yes, tension had at times been unbearable.
The screen went to black and Bullock leaned back in his chair.
‘Bloody good,’ he said. ‘Bloody excellent.’
Annie gazed at him in the half-darkness.
‘Wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s terrible.’
He looked across at her.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s bland. It’s obvious. And it says absolutely zilch.’
‘About what?’
‘About the issue that matters. What they did. What they got away with.’
Bullock shook his head.
‘That’s not what we’re about,’ he said.
‘No?’ Annie got up and switched on the light. ‘It used to be.’
Bullock ignored the comment, running a finger down a pad on his lap. He’d made a couple of notes during the viewing. He frowned, trying to decipher his own shorthand.
‘Our friend Goodman,’ he said, ‘he’s practically invisible.’
‘I know.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He didn’t say anything worth using.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’ She paused. ‘I was there. Remember?’
Bullock nodded and thought about it a moment. Then he got up.
‘You’re still going to the Rotary thing,’ he said, ‘that’ll fit nicely. Have another go at him afterwards. Find somewhere quiet. I’ll give him a ring. Tell him there’s nothing to worry about.’ He smiled. ‘You probably frightened the life out of him. Be gentle. He’s easily flattered.’
He reached for the door handle and opened the door. Before Annie could begin to protest, he was gone.
It was dark before Evans realized that it was Gillespie in the car outside his house. His wife had twice mentioned the old Marina, peering out between the bedroom curtains, but Evans had dismissed her worries with a grunt. Now, though, looking out for the first time himself, he recognized the face behind the steering wheel, a perfect view of the house, the man making good his promise, not giving up.
At first, he’d done nothing about it, going back to the endless lists of kit he was trying to draw up for his move to Belize. The posting had come as a total surprise, a brief ten-minute interview with his colonel, all plans cancelled for the coming year, the move explained as an urgent response to something the colonel termed ‘a personnel glitch’. The pill had been sugared by his promotion to sergeant, another surprise, but even so he was less than pleased to be going. He’d already done two stints in the place, routine training assignments, and he hated it. The flies, the heat, and the sheer boredom acquired an almost physical dimension. The posting had put him in a bad mood for nearly a week, and now – quite suddenly – he began to boil over. The bloke across the road evidently didn’t understand plain English. Time to try the shorter words.
He put the list to one side and left the bedroom. He clattered downstairs and tore open the front door. He walked across the road and stood by the car, hands on hips, waiting. Gillespie glanced up at him, and wound the window down. Evans bent towards him.
‘Listen, mate,’ he said slow
ly, ‘I’m serious. I don’t know what your game is, but you’re wasting your time.’
Gillespie gazed up at him, recognizing the tone of voice, the explicit threat. Fuck off or face the consequences.
‘I’m serious too,’ he said mildly, ‘believe it or not.’
The two men looked at each other. Then Evans stepped a little closer.
‘Are you going?’ he said. ‘Or not?’
Gillespie smiled.
‘Little woman been on at you?’ he said. ‘Worried about the neighbours?’
He reached inside his jacket. Evans watched him carefully. Gillespie produced a card. He offered it to Evans. Evans took it.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘My address and phone number. Think about it.’ Gillespie started the engine. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’
Martin Goodman and his wife went to bed early. Goodman had watched the mid-evening news, made a phone call or two, poured himself a drink before supper, and had been more than complimentary about Joanna’s Spanish omelettes. When he started yawning at ten o’clock, and suggested bed, she’d nodded and agreed it was a good idea.
Now, past midnight, they lay quite still in the darkness. Beside her, she could hear the regular sigh of Martin’s breathing, and she knew he must be asleep. The day had seemed the longest in her entire life, longer even than the day she’d found the postcard. The two events were linked, of course, inextricably, but what she’d done today carried with it a finality that she found truly awesome. She was still quite sure of herself, quite certain that she was making the right decision, but she felt somehow cheap, and a little cowardly. She ought to tell him what she thought. She ought to come clean.
She inched her body towards the edge of the bed, and slipped noiselessly onto the carpet. She moved slowly across the bedroom and stood by the window. She parted the curtains. The last of the rain had gone now, and the night was very clear. The glow of the city was bright, and she could see the frieze of ornamental coloured lights along the promenade, and the inky blackness of the sea beyond. She heard Martin stirring behind her, and she wondered briefly what would happen to him. Would they lock him up? Would they put him on trial? Would it go badly for him? She thought about it for a moment or two, then put it out of her head, happy that she knew so little, and surprised that she cared even less. Martin Goodman had ceased to be her husband. He’d become, instead, a total stranger.
Rules of Engagement Page 48