The Accomplice

  Lai, with nothing to do but listen to the wireless, kept day by day a chart of the Russian advance, comparing Radio Moscow with the German news bulletins, contrasting the boasts and the claims with the silences and evasions, to plot what was happening. He had already said that we would have to move on again in the autumn, that the Russians were not going to stop until they reached Berlin or beyond and there was no hope that the western allies were going to get to the capital, let alone to Pomerania, before them. We were safe during the rains, he said, up until Christmas. No one could move during that period, but once the ground froze hard in December, for the next three months, the Russians would be unstoppable until it started to thaw in March. The problem was where to go next. My impetus was exhausted by this first stage; I was reluctant to move on, while Lai fretted at our indecision. My only concern was where I could take Alek for safety. Lai thought that somewhere west of Berlin we would meet the Americans and British who would save us from the Russians. By January we saw the first of the columns in flight from the East and heard the first stories about the Red Army. Forgetting the Russians of 1940 and moved by some atavistic loyalty to my mother’s people, I refused to believe what I heard. The soldiers pillaged wherever they went, it was said. Not just the towns or the great houses, even the peasants’ houses in the villages were tom apart; their tiny hoards of honey or lard, saved against the worst that could happen, were seized and destroyed, wantonly tipped into the muck. Women were raped, men killed, shot, bayoneted, hanged, according to the level of drunkenness and fury of the Russian soldiers. Lai for a while allowed me my protests, until one day he said, “It’s true. It’s not just stories made up by people running from an unknown terror. It’ll be deliberate. The officers will have given permission, or at least will be turning a blind eye. It’s revenge for all they’ve suffered.”

  And still we did not join the westward stream. Alek had fallen ill just before Christmas and I would not move until he was better. There was no chance of moving by train this time. When we set out we would have to go on foot and I could not risk carrying a delirious child in temperatures well below zero with no certainty each day of where we would sleep the night. We would take our chance, and I begged Lai to leave ahead of me. He would not go and so he stayed and worried, his attention divided between the advancing Russian front and Alek’s slow recovery, without medication. Eventually the day came at the end of January 1945 when I agreed that Alek was well enough and that we could leave.

  Part Thirteen

  ZITA

  24

  Zita had put Tom to bed and was making herself a dish of pasta. The phone kept ringing and interrupting the grating of the parmesan, the peeling of the tomatoes, the tearing of the basil, all of which should have been simple and rapid tasks. The third call began with a crackling silence, giving her time to prepare herself for her mother’s voice. Valentina was in St Petersburg and just ringing, she said, to find out how her daughter was.

  “I’m fine, we’re fine, all of us, Mama. What about you?”

  “I’m very well. I’ve been amazed at everything I’ve seen here. Really, it’s astonishing we ever thought they were a great power. They can’t manage to make anything, even kitchen knives, that are fit for their purpose.”

  “They had nuclear weapons, Mama, that’s why we were afraid of them.”

  “Their theoretical science is excellent. But they have nothing, nothing; they need so much. Anyway, I am now going on holiday. We’re going to a dacha near Lake Ladoga for a few days before I come home.”

  “We?”

  “Didn’t I tell you that I met one of my old classmates from university at the Milan conference? It was he who persuaded me to come back here.”

  Zita absorbed this information. How strange her mother was, she thought; a man took her away from Russia all those years ago and another one takes her back now. It was as if her mother’s attitude to her country was on a circuit that had no reference to her work, or reason, an emotional loop that was somehow self-contained. She was not sure what she was supposed to say, whether Valentina required some kind of emotional reaction. If she did, she was not going to get it.

  “No, you didn’t say. Well, send a postcard. The one you sent of the Winter Palace has just arrived. Tom loved it.”

  “I shall. Though I shall probably be back before he gets it. I’m booked on a flight next week sometime.”

  Zita replaced the receiver, marvelling at the rewinding of her mother’s past. She poured the sauce she had just made over the pasta and sat down at the kitchen table. She cut herself a piece of bread and was about to lift the first forkful to her mouth when the phone rang again.

  It was Stevens. He did not identify himself, beginning abruptly, “I’m sorry, you’re eating.”

  “No, no. Well, yes, actually, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “I won’t keep you. Can you meet me tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes, I should think so.”

  “What about 11.15 at that coffee bar on the other side of the square.” He only waited for her to agree before ringing off. Zita wondered briefly what he had to tell her that could not be stated over the phone; then put him out of her mind for the evening. As she ate she found herself recalling old Mrs Hovell, and the flickering replays of the past that ran in her mind. She had known Asshe House in the 1940s and ’50s when she would have been in her forties herself. Her son, the midwife’s husband would have been in his teens, so although he was not a direct witness, he had presumably been around when his mother was working for the Dryburns and Yevgenia.

  On an impulse, before she had even cleared away her plates, she took the phone and, leafing through her notebook to find the number, she dialled the Hovells. Please don’t let it be Mrs Hovell, she thought. It was embarrassing being so persistent, going back over the ground again and again. Mrs Hovell had enjoyed the attention at first; by now she might become irritated by it. Zita was in luck; the voice that answered was an elderly, masculine one. She introduced herself, mentioning her visit to his mother. Then she said, “I hope this isn’t going to be painful for you. It’s a very long shot as far as I am concerned. Your mother was a bit confused when I saw her, as you can imagine, and she kept saying, ‘I lived and the child died,’ and I wondered whether you knew what she was referring to?”

  Mr Hovell was a ponderous man, Zita could tell. She interrupted his inconsequential half sentences to give him some ideas. “You didn’t have a brother or sister who died, for example?”

  “No, nothing like that, not that I know of, that is. There was just me and my sister. She’s in Australia, now. She married in, when would it have been? Well, say around 1950, and went to Adelaide with her husband. No, I don’t think it’s that. I mean, even if you didn’t talk about that kind of thing, there would have been a grave to visit, you know. No, it’s not that.”

  Zita left a pause to allow him to suggest his own theory, but nothing came. Then he said, “I’ll think about it. I do think about the things that Mother says. It’s not madness. It’s all sense as she sees it. It’s just she’s living in another time, different to ours.”

  Zita thanked him and began to clear up. She was making no progress. Perhaps Stevens, with all the high technology of the Met’s lab at his disposal, had greater success to report. Tomorrow he would be crowing over her.

  Stevens was, in fact, not in a mood for crowing when Zita found him already waiting for her in the churchyard as she made her way to the cafe. She had dressed with care, unexceptionable black court shoes that could have no bad repercussions, she thought, even though they were suede and very high in the heel. His face was set in an expression of even heavier gloom than usual, but the shoes had their subliminal effect. He smiled as she arrived.

  He said, “I should have suggested lunch, but I’ve got an appointment at two. You probably wouldn’t have been free either.”

  “Ah, well.” In her book lunching was a business activity rather than a social or nutritional one and she as the one wit
h more to gain from pumping Stevens than he had from anything she could tell him, should have been offering lunch. Perhaps it was a hint that she owed him something for being permitted to meet the Cresacres with him.

  The coffee room was only half full, mainly with middle-aged women with shopping bags propped around their legs. Right at the back was a small alcove with a semi-circular bench. Stevens led the way there directly, ignoring other free tables, suggesting that he had often used this position, with its view over the cafe and out into the square. She wondered if he interviewed police narks here, incongruously surrounded by lumpy women eating slices of cheesecake with forks and exchanging scandalized comments about the latest doings of their daughters-in-law. He ordered an espresso, Zita a cappuccino. She looked at him expectantly; he was in no hurry to impart any information, pouring sugar into his coffee, stirring it vigorously, then swallowing most of it at once. She sipped her froth slowly, waiting for him to begin.

  “Is she worried?” he asked at last, as though he had come because he needed her knowledge.

  “Who?” Zita asked. Her mind was on old Mrs Hovell, who was worried by nothing now.

  “The Russian woman, your client, Mrs Loftus.”

  “Worried? No, not especially. What about?”

  He sighed exasperatedly at her deliberate obtuseness. He assumed that they were carrying on a conversation that they had begun some time ago and which she ought to remember. “Did you tell her, then, that we were testing the bones to find out whether they were Eddie Cresacre’s?”

  She tried to remember whether she had or not. “Of course,” she said confidently to cover the gap in her memory.

  “Did she react at all? Show any signs of nervousness?”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “It must be Peter Gilling then. She knows it. That’s why she wasn’t nervous about the tests on the Cresacres.”

  Zita had now understood. “The bones are not Eddie Cresacre’s?”

  “No. I got the report yesterday. They definitely can’t belong to a child of Mrs Cresacre. Now I’ll have to tell them. Oh God.” He groaned softly.

  Zita said nothing. The Cresacres’ newly stirred emotions had now to be put to rest again; she did not particularly wish to be involved in that interview. She was thinking, too, what the news meant for her and Yevgenia. If the skeleton had been the Cresacre child, Stevens would have been able to attack Yevgenia much more directly, something that, for a reason she still had not understood, he was determined to do. Eddie’s disappearance was still not accounted for and the discovery of his body in the garden would be a good enough reason for arresting and charging the occupier of the time. Yevgenia had escaped that fate for the moment. Zita’s sense of frustration at the lack of progress in her own searches increased. What she needed was a complete and self-contained explanation which would entirely exclude the possibility of Yevgenia’s involvement. Such certainty was unlikely ever to be forthcoming.

  “We’re still looking for the Gillings. That is, I shan’t make the same mistake again, we’re looking for Peter Gilling’s mother. But we’ve got nowhere. She’s probably remarried and moved to Australia, knowing my luck.”

  There was a terrible personal animus there, Zita thought. Every set-back was directed at him by malign Fate, or Furies working for the other side. Could he really react to every case like this? Why did this one inspire such violent and personalized emotion?

  He put down his cup and said, “I need to start at the other end. I’ll have to talk to her. I must see if I can get something out of her.”

  “Go ahead,” she said calmly. “Your people saw her right at the beginning of all this, to ask about the garden and when the roses were planted and that sort of thing. But you can ask to interview her again any time you like. It won’t do you any good. She doesn’t know anything about the body. She’s always at home, she can’t escape you. You’ve only got to ask for an appointment.”

  A mulish, angry expression lay on Stevens’ face, as if Zita were taunting him and he was determined to bear it.

  “She still remembers your original meeting in 1960. It was obviously a powerfully hostile encounter that you both recall it so clearly more than thirty years later.”

  “It was.”

  Zita looked at the smudge of coffee at the bottom of her cup and gestured to the girl who served them. She picked up the chit of paper and handed it back with a note. Stevens’ need to see her was at the moment greater than hers to see him. Nevertheless, it was worth keeping the upper hand by being faster than he was with her wallet, even for a cup of coffee. He paid no attention to what was going on, appearing immersed in his thoughts, only realizing what was happening when Zita pushed the table aside to get out.

  “Don’t go yet.”

  “I must. But,” she added, “I should like to know what develops about the skeleton. So I’ll keep in touch.”

  “It’s not finished yet.”

  She left him still sitting in his place, feeling his eyes on her back until the door closed behind her. She wondered whether his remark was intended as a reinforcement of his own purpose or a threat to her.

  She felt more cheerful as she made her way back to her office. This might be the point at which the skeleton could be forgotten. Other more important and more urgent matters would arise to take up police time and with no evidence as to whose the body might have been, the case would become a statistic on the list of unsolved crimes. Or perhaps, with a little cunning with definitions, it would not count at all, for it was not certain a crime had been committed. Stevens’ demeanour had affected her mood more than his words. He had spoken of his determination to go on; his expression had shown that he did not know which direction to take. The building work at Asshe House was continuing and had now reached such a point that order was beginning to be glimpsed through the chaos created by the workmen. The little pool had been lined; flagstones were being laid around it. Soon all reminders of the grisly find under the roses would be erased in the new vision of the house. She would allow the skeleton to slip from her mind.

  A day or so later, she was entering her office on her way back from the County Court when she found an elderly man pulling at the door that had to be pushed. He turned out to be Mr Hovell, reluctantly sent in by his wife to find her. He was sheepish and obviously uncomfortable, regarding what he had to say of such minimal importance that it was not worth doing.

  “She said you might like to know. Well, you might, but I don’t know if it’s worth anything.”

  Zita took him up to her office and sat him down, offering coffee or tea. She looked at him encouragingly. “What was it that your wife thought you ought to tell me?” she asked.

  “It’s about what Mother was saying. I didn’t make the connexion at first. It was only when Mrs Hovell mentioned the medallion I knew who she might be meaning. She always believed the medallion was lucky; she said it saved her life. It was during the war. Those bombs right at the end. Not the Blitz but the flying bombs, V2s they were called. One of those fell on Woodham. It hit the corner of the square here, over where the post office is now. Well, Mother was out with the child of the people she worked for at Asshe House…”

  “The Dryburns?”

  ‘Was that their name? They were funny people. It must have been at the beginning of 1945, Mother and the child were caught in it, knocked down by falling debris. They weren’t trapped for long but Mother used to say that you don’t need long to be killed. She was very upset about it at the time. She must have been very fond of the kid. I don’t think I ever knew him, but I remember how shocked she was when he died. I remember that at the time she kept saying, ‘It’s the wrong way round when the young are taken and the old are left.’”

  Zita was rolling a pen beneath her fingers as if she were rolling out pastry with a rolling pin, smoothing, stretching. She was recalling the picture under her fingers as she smoothed open the page for Tom in the library, of St Michael’s Square in a state of ruin. “I’m very glad you di
d decide it was worth dropping in to tell me. You don’t recall the child’s age, whether it was a boy or a girl, its name?”

  He was looking more relaxed now, relieved at the reception his trivial memory had received. “Oh, it was a boy. It’s a bit hard if you’re only going on what she said and you never saw him. She used to talk about him the way you talk about… a boy, if you know what I mean. Not a baby, not a teenager, a little boy. Say between five and eight.” He fumbled in his breast pocket and pulled out a photograph. “I found this photo and I think, though I can’t be sure, that’s him.” He held out a black and white snapshot, not much bigger than a credit card, its edges nicked and creased. It showed three characters, layered one on top of the other. A crouching woman was holding a child, a small boy with a fringe, standing within her arms, against her right shoulder. He in turn held a teddy bear under his left arm. The eyes of all three, the woman’s blurred, the child’s wide, the toy’s sharp, button-like, stared at Zita from 1944.

  “I remember his first name. Ezra, funny name. But they were a funny family, very strange.”

  “In what way strange?”

  “Religious. One of those funny religions. Christian, but not regular church goers, if you follow me.”

  “Ah.” She waited. If she was patient with him, something more might emerge from his memory. But now he had reached the end of what he could recall. There was nothing more to come. She thanked him, encouraging him to contact her again if anything more came back to him. When he had gone she sat at her desk looking at her oblique view of Asshe House, thinking about the strange family who lived there during the war. She could see who he was now quite clearly. She was as sure of her answer as Stevens was of his, and now the proof was starting to come in. She would set about the acts of confirmation at once, although they would be done not for herself: she was sure she was right. She would do it for Stevens, to show him he was wrong.