The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  When she phoned the hospital, the nurse she spoke to told her that Grandpapa was improving. ‘He’s a tough old bird,’ she told Faith cheerfully.

  Faith asked the nurse to tell him that she would visit later and she hung up feeling more hopeful. Maybe he would be able to communicate with her when she saw him. She told herself not to be too optimistic–whatever happened, his health would be poor for what time he had left.

  The sun was shining, and she wanted some fresh air, so she walked down the road to the village where shops clustered round a small green, and picked up a paper and some croissants for breakfast. The woman behind the counter smiled at her as she put the pastries into a bag. ‘How’s your grandfather? We were so sorry to hear he’d been taken ill. He often used to come in here of a morning.’

  ‘He’s a bit better, thanks.’ Faith was touched by this evidence of concern.

  When she got back, she heated up a croissant and made some coffee. She started flicking through the paper, and then stopped as her attention was caught by a headline: MANCHESTER CLUB KING ACCUSED. There was a photograph of a prosperous-looking man leaving a building–a police station? But it was the man’s name that had caught her eye: Terence Lomas. This must be the man that Daniel worked for, the man Helen had, accurately, it seemed, described as a crook. Lomas had been arrested for his involvement in a gang shooting just over a week before.

  She rubbed her forehead, trying to remember. Lomas had phoned Daniel the day she’d gone to Longsight. She could remember Finn picking up the phone and calling through to his father, It’s Uncle Terry. Then Daniel had rushed her out of the house. And now Lomas was involved in some kind of gang war…She thought about Finn and Hannah, close to this man, and close to a father who…Daniel’s face, cold and threatening, was suddenly in her mind.

  There was nothing she could do, not now, not straight away. She told herself that Daniel loved the children–Helen had never complained about him as a father. Whatever Daniel was, whatever he had done, Finn and Hannah were safe for the time being. The police knew about his alibi. She had to be patient. She had to wait.

  Her coffee tasted suddenly bitter. She left it and went across to the table where she had set out all of Grandpapa’s papers. Work would distract her. And as she began to go through the boxes, gradually her anxiety retreated.

  She was interrupted by the doorbell. She felt a moment of déjà vu, then shook it off as she went to answer it. There was a policewoman on the step. She showed Faith her ID and asked if she could come in. Faith took the woman through to the front room, apologizing for the cold. She’d given up on the old boiler and had put on a couple of extra jerseys.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ the woman said, refusing Faith’s offer of coffee. She waited until Faith was sitting down, then took the chair opposite her. ‘I’ve come about the incident last night,’ she said. ‘We spoke to Mr Kovacs. He’s sorry he alarmed you. He was upset, and he says it won’t happen again.’

  Faith shook her head. The response seemed ludicrously inadequate. And now there was this Lomas thing. ‘I don’t think he’s enough in control to make those promises. That wasn’t the first time he’s threatened me. I’m worried about the children.’

  ‘Miss Lange,’ the woman said, her face serious, ‘are you aware that Mr Kovacs has already made a complaint against you, before last night’s incident?’

  Shock silenced Faith. It was a moment before she could speak. ‘Against me?’

  ‘Yes. He said that you have been harassing him and his children since his wife’s death.’ She paused to make sure Faith had taken this in, then went on, ‘He says that you came to his house twice–he had to ask you to leave, the second time. He says that you waited for his son outside school, and he believes you might have been to his daughter’s school as well. He says that you encouraged his son to contact you against his clear and express wishes. It was that last incident that made him come round here last night. He says that he didn’t break in, you admitted him, and that you only made the emergency call when he wouldn’t do as you asked. He agrees that he shouldn’t have come here, and says he won’t do it again.’

  ‘That’s…’ She felt as if the breath had been punched out of her body.

  ‘The officers who called last night said that you made claims against him relating to the death of his wife. I don’t know what the problem is between you and Mr Kovacs, but I think it’s important that you realize he has been thoroughly investigated, and he is not under suspicion. If you’ll take a friendly warning, Miss Lange, you won’t repeat those accusations.’

  ‘This just isn’t true. I–’

  ‘Do you deny going to the house? Or the school?’

  ‘No, of course not. But I was invited. I didn’t just–’

  ‘To the school?’

  Faith shook her head. ‘No, not to the school.’

  The woman stood up. ‘Mr Kovacs has no intention of taking this any further at present. He understands that you are upset about his wife’s death, and your grandfather’s illness. He has given his assurance that he will stay away from you. I want your assurance that you will stay completely away from him and from his children. You’re obviously under a lot of strain. I suggest that you do as Mr Kovacs asks.’

  When the woman had gone, Faith sat at the window staring out into the garden. The stumps of the roses looked dead in the ground, and the trees were bare. Daniel had been clever. He had connections she knew nothing about. He had used his son. He had distorted the truth to make the police see her as hysterical and manipulative. All she had were beliefs and deductions. She was certain that he hadn’t been in the house the night Helen had died, but she couldn’t prove it, not unless Finn agreed to say what had really happened–and he wasn’t going to.

  She abandoned the piles of papers and packed her bag. She’d decided to go home after visiting the hospital. She no longer felt worried that Daniel might come back–he seemed to have found a more effective way than threats of silencing her. At the bottom of her bag, she found the piece of paper with her attempts to sort out the cryptic and incomplete notes that Helen had left: Ma_y _ro__ene__.

  Ma_y, Maay, Maby, Macy, Mady.

  choiceness, shortness

  browbands, croplands

  thousands

  many thousands

  She looked at it, then discarded it on the table. It meant nothing, and she had to go.

  The hospital ward smelled of urine and disinfectant. The light reflected off the floor and walls, and the beds looked disordered and cluttered. The nursing staff had reported an improvement in Grandpapa’s condition, and he seemed more alert, but he was also more restless and distressed. His eyes were open, wandering round the room as if he were looking for something. She sat beside him and took his hand, but he didn’t seem aware of her. Once or twice his eyes focused on her and she thought she saw a moment of recognition, but it faded into confusion as his search started again.

  And all the time he was muttering urgently. Sometimes his slurring words were comprehensible: light, the light…. watching…go…She recognized them from when she had found him in the dark hallway. Sometimes they seemed to be nothing more than meaningless rambling, where she thought, sometimes, she could hear words, but they made no sense: predatel…soldat…

  Faith sat beside the bed and talked to him. She told him some of what she had been doing, she told him about her visit to the art gallery, she told him that Katya had visited, and that she sent her love. Nothing seemed to break through the intensity of his need.

  ‘He has to rest,’ the nurse told her. ‘He’s wearing himself out.’

  ‘Can’t you give him something?’

  The nurse shook her head. ‘We’ve given him everything we can. Do you know what it is that’s worrying him?’

  ‘No. I’ve no idea.’ But she had. She could still hear Katya’s voice. Marek…may have had to make some hard choices.

  ‘You look exhausted,’ the nurse said. ‘Go home and get some sleep. You won’t
help him by making yourself ill as well.’

  Faith managed a smile. ‘I’ll do that, thanks. You’ll call me if…’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  The idea of sleep was compelling. Her eyes felt gritty from fatigue. But time was passing by. She could feel it slipping away faster and faster. Instead of going home, she turned the car round and headed back to Grandpapa’s. She’d had an idea. In her hunt through his papers, she’d been looking in the wrong places. He wouldn’t have kept his secrets among the papers in the cupboards where anyone–she, Katya on her rare visits, Doreen–could see them. Anything private he kept locked in his desk, or in the secret drawer for added security.

  When she got back to the house, she went straight to the study, and to his desk. But Katya had already been there. The desk looked like a picked-over corpse. The drawers hung half-open and all the pigeonholes had been cleared. She wondered if her mother had checked the secret drawer. It was easy to miss with a cursory glance. She pressed the spring to release it and slipped it out. It was empty. Katya had been thorough. Faith looked at it, remembering how it had been stuffed full to overflowing the day when she had first seen the newspaper cuttings. Something could easily have…She pulled it out completely, and slipped her hand into the space where it had been.

  There was something caught at the back. Carefully, she freed it and pulled it out. It was an envelope, tattered and old. She stood there with it in her hand, a feeling of reluctance making her hesitate. Once she opened it, she would know what was in it.

  It was probably nothing–more cuttings, something to do with the business–but if it was something else…And then she knew that she wasn’t as convinced as she had claimed that Katya’s beliefs were groundless. People had committed extraordinary acts of heroism and of barbarism in those times. Her grandfather’s humanity, the thing that made her deny the possibility of his involvement, would have left exactly the gnawing, destructive guilt she was seeing.

  She opened it and slipped out a sheet of paper with writing on one side–a letter–and a small wallet. Tucked into one pocket of the wallet, she found a photograph, a black-and-white one, like the two Jake had returned to her. It looked like a pair to the one of Grandpapa in uniform. It was the same size and had the same deckle edge. It showed a girl, fine-boned and slender, gazing unsmiling at the camera. Faith looked at the pale face, the dark hair and wide, dark eyes, and felt a nagging sense of familiarity. She knew who it was, or thought she did, but that didn’t account for her feeling that she had seen this girl before.

  She turned the picture over. There was something written on the back in a faded scrawl of ink: 3ea, 1941. She stared at it without comprehension, then she realized what it said: Eva, 1941. It was a photograph of her great-aunt taken on the eve of Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Eva. She had found Eva. She felt as though she had one part of the puzzle in her hand.

  She looked at the letter and the wallet, suddenly reluctant to go any further. He had hidden this in the secret drawer. He had burned a whole box of photographs in an attempt to get rid of the ones that Jake Denbigh had taken away with him. Maybe this picture of Eva was one that he thought might be there. She didn’t know if she had the right to look. She didn’t even know if she wanted to.

  She was still hesitating when the phone rang. It was the landline. The hospital would call her on her mobile. She went through to the hall and picked it up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Faith? It’s Jake Denbigh.’

  She’d forgotten about Jake Denbigh. It seemed no time since she’d last seen him, a glimpse in her rear-view mirror, standing in the car park watching her as she drove away. ‘Jake,’ she said. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I got back yesterday. I saw something in the paper about your grandfather. How is he?’

  ‘He’s holding on, but there’s a long way to go.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ There was a moment of silence, then he said. ‘You don’t sound too great yourself.’

  ‘I’m okay. I’m just tired.’ The emptiness lay like a pool of silence around her.

  ‘I know what it’s like. When my father was ill–it’s a few years ago now–I gave up trying to sleep. I used sit up until three in the morning smoking too much and wondering if there was any news.’

  She thought about the night before when she’d lain awake listening out for the phone as the house creaked and whispered around her. ‘What happened? To your father?’

  ‘Oh, he pulled through. Look, is there anything I can do?’

  ‘No. Thanks. I’ve got everything I need. You could count sheep for me if you want,’ she said.

  ‘Sheep? I can do that. Anything else?’ There was a brief pause. ‘Would you like some company?’

  His offer took her unawares. It was too late to go home–she was too tired to drive safely–and the thought of another solitary evening in the empty house lay in front of her like a steep hill she wasn’t sure she could climb. So what if he had an agenda–at the moment, she didn’t care. ‘Company would be good.’

  ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour. Shall I bring some wine?’

  Wine would be the best insomnia cure, or the best one she was prepared to try tonight. After he’d rung off, she felt better. She went to check herself in the old mirror that hung over the fire. Her reflection, in its brown depths, looked pale and far away. She could see the shadows under her eyes from lack of sleep. Her clothes were dusty from the hours she’d spent looking through the piles of old papers. She twisted her hair up on top of her head, then let it fall down on to her shoulders again.

  She went up to her room and had a quick wash. She didn’t have much with her, but she changed into a clean pair of trousers, and pulled on the soft white sweater that Katya had given her last Christmas. She brushed her hair back from her face, then let it fall forward again. Her reflection gazed back at her, giving her a tantalizing moment of déjà vu.

  She was straightening up the front room when the doorbell rang.

  The Lange house looked dark and forbidding as Jake walked up the drive. There was a glimmer of light behind the curtains of one window, but otherwise the place looked deserted, a gothic pile against the evening sky. He pressed the doorbell and waited, remembering his fantasies about fairytale princesses and wicked witches the first time he had waited here.

  This time, the princess was in. It was Faith who opened the door. She was wearing jeans and a heavy white sweater against the cold. Her hair was loose and her face was devoid of make-up. She looked younger and more vulnerable than he remembered. ‘Come in,’ she said.

  It was almost as cold inside the house as it was out. ‘It’s a bit better through here,’ she said, taking him into the room where he and Lange had sat the week before. The curtains were pulled across the window, and the room was lit by a dim overhead bulb. Shadows lurked in the corners. A gas fire was burning, leaking some warmth into the room, and a one-bar electric fire was plugged in by the table where she had obviously been working.

  ‘The boiler’s broken down,’ she explained. ‘I’ve been dragging this thing round the house with me.’ She gestured towards the electric fire. It was an antiquated heater with an element that glowed red-hot in places and was dull in others. The cord was frayed. She saw him looking and made a shrugging face. ‘I’m going shopping tomorrow. It was the best I could do for now.’

  He dreaded to think what the wiring might be like. ‘Let me have a look at that boiler.’ She gave him a look of such surprise, it made him laugh. ‘What?’

  She shook her head. ‘You don’t seem like the kind of person who fixes central heating, that’s all. Okay, it’s through here.’

  She led him through to the back of the house, to a cold, bare kitchen. The boiler was ancient, backed into a corner. He took off the front.

  ‘Here.’ She crouched beside him and held a torch while he peered into the innards. He checked the burners and the pilot light. The whole system was clogged up with dirt. It looked as if it hadn’t had any serious
maintenance done for years. He cleaned the pilot light and, on his second attempt, managed to get it working. He sent up a silent prayer to any deity that might be listening and pressed the ‘on’ switch. The burners ignited with a roar.

  He stood up, brushing the dust off his trousers. ‘Done.’

  ‘Okay, now I’m impressed,’ she said, giving him a towel so he could wash his hands. ‘You’re a man of many talents. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ve lived in some dodgy flats in my time–boiler maintenance is a survival skill. But if you’re staying here, you need to get it fixed. Your grandfather’s lucky it didn’t poison him.’

  ‘I know. It isn’t just the heating–it’s the whole house. He’s been letting it fall apart and I just didn’t see it.’ She bit her lip, then changed the subject quickly. ‘You’ve got some oil or something on your shirt. Here, let me.’ She dabbed at it carefully with a piece of kitchen paper, her face intent on what she was doing. Her hair brushed against his face. It smelled faintly of lavender. ‘There. That’s better. It should be okay when you’ve washed it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. They looked at each other, and the silence lengthened. Finally he said, ‘I brought some wine. Let’s celebrate fixing the boiler with a drink.’

  Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘That’s the best thing anyone’s said to me today.’

  She took some long-stemmed glasses out of a cupboard and they went back to the other room. There was a low table in front of the settee which had been pulled closer to the gas fire. He poured some wine and touched his glass to hers. He could feel the heat of the fire on his face, and the chill of the house behind him. ‘Here’s to…keeping warm in winter.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can drink to that.’

  He took the opportunity to study her. He was reminded again of Sophia Yevanova as he noted the delicate line of her jaw, the high cheekbones, the fair skin. She looked pale and heavy-eyed. She must have had a rough few days ‘What’s happening with your grandfather?’

  ‘He’s improving.’ She didn’t look at him, and seemed to be hunting round for a subject. He waited. ‘You said your father had been ill. What happened?’