‘Going over it won’t help, Brigid,’ Harry said, unwrapping a packet of paper napkins. ‘It won’t help you, it won’t help Danny. And I don’t expect it will help Toby here. Will it, Toby?’ – passing him a cup of tea with a piece of sugared shortbread on the saucer, and a paper napkin.
‘I come out the fucking constabulary for Jeb, once we knew Danny was on his way. Lost my seniority pay and the promotion that was round the corner. We were both off the slag heap, what with Jeb’s dad a useless layabout and no mother, and me never knowing who my dad was, and my mother not bloody knowing neither. But we was going to be straight, decent people if it killed us. Got myself a course in Physical Education, all so’s we could make a home for Danny.’
‘And she’s the best PE teacher the school’s ever had, or likely to, aren’t you, Brigid?’ Harry said. ‘All our children love her, and Danny’s proud of her you wouldn’t believe. We all are.’
‘What do you teach?’ Toby asked Harry.
‘Arithmetic, all the way up to A level, when I’ve got the pupils, don’t I, Brigid?’ – handing her a cup of tea as well.
‘So is your friend Mr Paul down in Cornwall some kind of fucking psychiatrist Jeb was hooked on, or what?’ Brigid demanded.
‘No. Not a psychiatrist, I’m afraid.’
‘And you’re not a gentleman of the press? You’re quite sure of that?’
‘I’m sure I’m not press.’
‘So if you don’t mind me being inquisitive, Mr Bell: if you’re not press and your pal Paul’s not a shrink, what the fuck are you?’
‘Now Brigid,’ said Harry.
‘I’m here purely privately,’ said Toby.
‘Then what the hell are you purely publicly, may I ask?’
‘Publicly, I’m a member of the Foreign Office.’
But instead of the explosion he was expecting, all he got was a sustained critical examination.
‘And your friend Paul? Would he be from the Foreign Office too at all?’ – not releasing him from her gaze, which was wide and green-eyed.
‘Paul’s retired.’
‘And would Paul be somebody Jeb knew, like, three years back?’
‘Yes. He would.’
‘Professionally then?’
‘Yes.’
‘And would that have been what their summit conference was going to be about, Jeb and Paul’s, if Jeb hadn’t blown his head off the day before? Something in the professional line, for example, from three years back?’
‘Yes. It would,’ Toby replied steadily. ‘That was the connection between them. They didn’t know each other well, but they were on the way to becoming friends.’
Her eyes had still not left his face, and they didn’t now:
‘Harry. I’m worried about Danny. Would you kindly go over to Jenny’s a minute and make sure he hasn’t fallen off his fucking bike. He’s only had it a day.’
*
Toby and Brigid were alone, and some kind of guarded understanding was forming between them as each waited for the other to speak.
‘So should I be calling up the Foreign Office in London to check you out, then?’ Brigid asked in a noticeably less strident voice. ‘Confirming that Mr Bell is who he says he is?’
‘I don’t think Jeb would have liked you to do that.’
‘And your friend Paul? What about him? Would he like it?’
‘No.’
‘And you wouldn’t either?’
‘I’d lose my job.’
‘This conversation they were proposing to have. Would it have been about a certain Operation Wildlife at all?’
‘Why? Did Jeb tell you about it?’
‘About the operation? You’re joking. White-hot tongs wouldn’t have dragged it out of him. It stank, but it was duty.’
‘Stank how?’
‘Jeb didn’t like mercs, never did. In it for the ride and the money, they are. Think they’re heroes when they’re fucking psychos. “I fight for my country, Brigid. Not for the fucking multinationals with their offshore bank accounts.” Except he didn’t say fucking, if I’m honest. Jeb was Chapel. Didn’t swear and couldn’t drink above a couple of sips. God knows what I am. Fucking Prot, I’m told. I’d have to be, wouldn’t I, for the fucking Royal Ulster Constabulary?’
‘And it was the presence of mercenaries that he didn’t like about Wildlife? He said that of this particular operation?’
‘Just generally. Just mercs. Get them off his back, he hated the buggers. “It’s another merc job, Brigid. Makes you wonder sometimes who starts the wars these days.”’
‘Did he have other reservations about the operation?’
‘It sucked but what the hell?’
‘And afterwards? When he came back from the operation?’
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she seemed to become a different woman – inward, and appalled:
‘He was a ghost. Washed out. Couldn’t hold a knife and fork. Kept showing me the letter from his beloved regiment: thank you and goodnight and remember you’re bound for life by the Official Secrets Act. I thought he’d seen it all. I thought we both had. Northern Ireland. Blood and bone all over the street, the kneecappings, bombings, necklace killings. Holy God.’
She took a couple of deep breaths, collected herself and went on:
‘Till he gets the one-too-many. The one they all talk about. The one that’s got his name on and won’t let him go. The one-too-many bomb in the marketplace. The lorryload of kids on their way to school that gets blown to kingdom come. Or maybe it’s only a dead dog in a ditch, or he’s cut his little finger and it’s bleeding. Whatever it was, it was the straw that broke his back for him. He’d no defences. Couldn’t look at what he loved best in the world without hating us for not being covered in blood.’
Again she stopped, her eyes this time opening wide in outrage at whatever she was seeing, and Toby wasn’t:
‘He fucking haunted us!’ she blurted, then clapped her hand to her lips in reproach. ‘Christmas, we’d set the bloody table for him. Danny, me, Harry. We’d sit there gawping at his empty place. Danny’s birthday, the same. Presents on the doorstep in the middle of the fucking night. What the hell have we got that he’s going to catch if he comes in? Fucking leprosy? It’s his own house, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t we love him enough?’
‘I’m sure you did,’ Toby said.
‘How the fuck would you know?’ she demanded, and sat dead still with her fingers jammed between her teeth while she stared at something in her memory.
‘And the leathercraft?’ Toby asked. ‘Where did Jeb get his leathercraft skills from?’
‘His fucking father, who d’you think? A bespoke shoemaker, he was, when he wasn’t drinking himself into oblivion. But that didn’t stop Jeb loving him rotten, and laying out his fucking tools in the shed there like the Holy Grail when the bugger died. Then one night the shed’s empty and the tools is all gone and Jeb with them. Same as now.’
She turned and stared at him, waiting for him to speak. Cautiously, he did:
‘Jeb told Paul he had a piece of evidence. About Wildlife. He was going to bring it to their meeting in Cornwall. Paul didn’t know what it was. I wondered if you did.’
She spread her palms and peered into them as if reading her own fortune, then sprang up, marched to the front door and pulled it open:
‘Harry! Mr Bell wishes to pay his respects so’s he can tell his friend Paul. And Danny, you stay over with Jenny till I call you, hear me?’ And to Toby: ‘Come back after without Harry.’
*
The rain had returned. On Harry’s insistence Toby borrowed a raincoat and noticed that it was too small for him. The garden behind the house was narrow but long. Wet washing hung from a line. A man-gate led to a patch of wasteland. They passed a couple of wartime pillboxes covered in graffiti.
‘I tell my pupils they’re reminders of what their grandparents fought for,’ Harry called over his shoulder.
They had reached a dilapidat
ed barn. The doors were padlocked. Harry had the key.
‘We don’t let Danny know it’s here, not at the moment,’ said Harry earnestly. ‘So I’ll trouble you to bear that in mind on your return to the house. We plan to offer it on eBay once the hue and cry’s died down. You don’t want people put off by the association, do you?’ – giving the doors a shove and releasing a squadron of jubilant small birds. ‘Mind you, he did a good conversion, did Jeb, I’ll give him that. Slightly obsessive, in my private opinion. Not for Brigid’s ear, naturally.’
The tarpaulin was fastened to the ground with tent pegs. Toby looked on while Harry went from peg to peg, easing the cleat, then lifting the loop off the peg till one side of the tarpaulin hung loose; then sweeping the whole tarpaulin clear to reveal a green van, and the scrawled inscription, gold on green, JEB’S LEATHERCRAFT in capitals, and beneath it in smaller letters Buy From Van.
Ignoring Harry’s extended arm, Toby mounted the tailgate. Wood panelling, some panels removed, others dangling open. A flap table, raised and scrubbed, one wooden chair, no cushion. A rope hammock taken down and neatly rolled. Bare, scrubbed shelves, craftsman-fitted. A smell of stale blood not quite overcome by the stink of Dettol.
‘What happened to his reindeer hides?’ Toby asked.
‘Well now, they were best burned, weren’t they?’ Harry explained brightly. ‘There wasn’t that much could be saved, frankly, Toby, given the extent of the mess the poor man made of himself. No alcohol involved to help him on his way, which they say is unusual. But that’s Jeb for you. Not a man to let his hair down. Never was.’
‘And no farewell note?’ Toby asked.
‘Just the gun in his hand and eight bullets left in the magazine, which makes you wonder what he thought he would do with the others after he’d shot himself, I suppose,’ Harry replied in the same informative tone. ‘Same as him using his wrong hand. Why? you ask yourself. Well, of course there’s no answer to that. There never will be. He was left-handed was Jeb. But he shot himself with his right, which could be described as an aberration. But Jeb was a shooter by trade, they tell me. Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? If Jeb had put his mind to it, he could have shot himself with his own foot, could Jeb, according to what I’m told by Brigid. Plus the fact that when you reach that point you’re not accessible to rational argument, as we all know. Which is what the police said, very rightly, in my opinion, me not being an expert by a long chalk.’
Toby had found a pockmark as wide as a tennis ball but not so deep halfway up the wood cladding and midway down one side, and was tracing its outline with his finger.
‘Yes, well now,’ Harry explained, ‘a bullet like that has to go somewhere, which is common sense, though you wouldn’t believe it watching some of the films they make these days. It can’t just vanish into thin air, can it, not a bullet? So, what I say is, fill the hole with your Polyfilla, rub it down, paint it over, and with any luck it won’t notice.’
‘And his tools? For his leathercraft?’
‘Yes, well that’s an embarrassment to all concerned, his father’s tools are, Toby, same as his ship’s stove, which was worth a bob or two of anybody’s money. First on the spot was the fire brigade, I’m not sure why, but clearly somebody summoned them. Then along come the police, then the ambulance. So you don’t know whose light fingers were to blame, do you? Not the police, I’m sure. I’ve great respect for our guardians of the law, more than what Brigid’s got, to be frank, her having been one. Still, that’s Ireland for you, I suppose.’
Toby supposed it was.
‘He never grudged me, mind. Not that he had the right. You can’t expect a woman like Brigid to do without, can you? I’m good to her, which couldn’t always be said for Jeb, not if we’re honest.’
Together they closed the tailgate, then together hauled the tarpaulin back over the van and together tightened the guy ropes.
‘I think Brigid wanted another quick word with me,’ Toby said. And for a lame explanation: ‘Something to do with Paul that she felt was private.’
‘Well, she’s a free soul, is Brigid, same as all of us,’ Harry said heartily, patting Toby’s arm in comradeship. ‘Just don’t listen too hard to her views on the police is my advice. There’s always got to be somebody to blame in a case like this, it’s human nature. Good to see you, Toby, and very thoughtful of you to come. And you don’t mind my saying this, do you? I know it’s cheeky. Only, should you happen, just by chance, but you never know, to bump into somebody who’s looking for a well-maintained utility vehicle converted to a high standard – well, they know where to come, don’t they?’
*
Brigid was curled into a corner of the sofa, clutching her knees.
‘See anything?’ she asked.
‘Was I meant to?’
‘The blood was never logical. There was splashes all over the rear bumper. They said it was travelled blood. “How the hell did it travel?” I asked them. “Through the fucking window and round the bloody back?” “You’re overwrought, Mrs Owens. Leave the investigating to us and have a nice cup of tea.” Then another fellow comes over to me, plain clothes from the Met, posh-spoken. “Just to put your mind at ease, Mrs Owens, that was never your husband’s blood on the bumper. It’s red lead. He must have been doing a repair job.” They did the house over too, didn’t they?’
‘I’m sorry? Which house?’
‘This fucking house. Where you’re sitting now, looking at me, where d’you think? Every bloody drawer and cubbyhole. Even Danny’s toy cupboard. Searched from top to fucking bottom by people who knew their business. Jeb’s papers from the drawer there. Whatever he’d left behind. Took out and put back, in the right order except not quite. Our clothes the same. Harry thinks I’m paranoid. Seeing conspiracies under the bed, I am. Fuck that, Mr Bell. I’ve turned over more houses than Harry’s had bloody breakfasts. It takes one to know one.’
‘When did they do this?’
‘Fucking yesterday. When d’you think? While we was out cremating Jeb, when else? We’re not talking fucking amateurs. Don’t you want to know what they were looking for?’
Reaching under the sofa, she drew out a flat brown envelope, unsealed, and pushed it at him.
Two A4 photographs, matt finish. No borders. Black and white. Poor resolution. Night shots, much enhanced.
A format to remind Toby of all the fuzzy images he’d ever seen of suspects covertly photographed from across the street: except that these two suspects were dead and lying on a rock, and one of them was a woman in a shredded Arab dress and the other a much-shot child with one leg half off, and the men standing around them were bulked out in combat gear and holding semi-automatics.
In the first photograph, an unidentifiable standing man, also in combat gear, points his gun at the woman as if about to finish her off.
In the second, a different man, again in combat gear, kneels on one knee, his weapon beside him, and holds his hands to his face.
‘From under where the ship’s stove was, before the buggers stole it,’ Brigid was explaining contemptuously, in answer to a question Toby hadn’t asked. ‘Jeb had fixed a slab of asbestos there. The stove was gone. But the asbestos was still there. The police thought they’d searched the van before they gave it me to clean. But I knew Jeb. They didn’t. And Jeb knew concealment. Those photos had to be in there somewhere, not that he ever showed them to me. He wouldn’t. “I’ve got the proof,” he’d say. “It’s there in black and white except that nobody wants to believe it.” “Proof of what, for fuck’s sake?” I’d say. “Photographs taken at the scene of the crime.” But ask him what the crime was and all you’d get was a dead man’s face.’
‘Who was the photographer?’ Toby asked.
‘Shorty. His mate. The only one he had left after his mission. The only one as stuck by him after the others had the fear of God put into them. Don, Andy, Shorty – they was all good buddies until Wildlife. Never after. Only Shorty, till him and Jeb had their fight and broke it o
ff.’
‘What was the fight about?’
‘The same bloody pictures you’re holding in your hand. Jeb was still home then. Sick but managing, like. Then Shorty came to have a word with him, and they had this God-awful fight. Six foot four Shorty is. But Jeb come in from under him, buckled his knees for him, then broke his nose for him on the way down. Textbook it was, and Jeb half his size. You had to admire it.’
‘What did he want to talk to Jeb about?’
‘Give him back those pictures, that was first. Shorty had been all for showing them around the ministries till then. Even giving them to the press. Then changed his mind.’
‘Why?’
‘They’d bought him. The defence contractors had. Given him a job for life, provided he keeps his stupid mouth shut.’
‘Do the defence contractors have a name?’
‘There’s a fellow Crispin. Started up this great new company with American money. Red-hot professionals. The shape of tomorrow, according to Shorty. The army could go fuck itself.’
‘And according to Jeb?’
‘Not professional at all. Carpetbaggers, he called them, and told Shorty he was another. Shorty wanted him to join up with them, if you can believe it. They’d tried to sign Jeb as soon as the mission was over. To shut him up. Now they’d sent Shorty to try again. Brought Jeb a fucking letter of agreement all typed up for him. All he had to do was sign it, give back the photos and join the company and the sky was the limit. I could have told Shorty to spare himself the journey and a broken nose, but he wouldn’t have fucking listened. Actually, I hate the bloody man. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women. Had his hands all over me whenever Jeb wasn’t looking. Plus he wrote me a smarmy letter of condolence, enough to vomit.’
From the drawer that had held the press cuttings she produced a handwritten letter and shoved it at him.
A Delicate Truth Page 22