The Light of Day: A Novel (11 page)

26

And Kristina? What did she want? Did she really love him— that man over there under the slab, with the roses? And so was it really her “sacrifice”? To go back. Not to destroy him—him and Sarah. To get out of their lives.

Destroyed anyway.

So much of it I’ve had to piece together gradually, on my visits. As much as she’s wanted to tell, as much as she’s wanted to talk. A special room for talking, like an interview room, like several interview rooms together. It’s not ideal, it’s not private, but it’s all we have. You haven’t got her yet.

And we write. I write: my “English lessons.” That’s where Kristina came in. If she’d never walked into Sarah’s English class . . .

In the beginning, when she didn’t want to see me, speak to me (no Visiting Order, no visit), it was all there was, suddenly: writing. I’d never done it before, put down things like that on paper.

Please call me . . . Please see me . . . Please answer this letter . . .

As if I was the one on remand.

How much could I ever have learnt then—in Café Rio, in Gladstone’s? Our few moments, our time together, in the free world. You haven’t got her yet. But a little for a lot in this world—the only rule.

It might have been Bob’s rule too. It’s all on remand. This can’t last, this will end in disaster—but I’ll always have known this madness.

And even then, in Gladstone’s, trying to make a glass of beer last for ever, I wasn’t thinking so much of what she was telling me. A lapse of professional concentration. I was thinking: I may not see her again, not like this. This job— this simple job—and then?

And I wanted it to be a success—I mean, I wanted it to turn out as she wanted. I wanted to see her get her husband back, to be a witness to that. So that then, at least, I’d see her happy.

She’d have settled the bill, thanked me. Thanked me like some good uncle.

And then? I might never have seen her again. Unless I loitered continually by the Fine Foods section. Unless— crazy ridiculous thoughts—she asked me to dinner, to sample her cooking, to meet her husband. To say, “Bob, this is George, the one I paid to watch you, to spy on you. You and Kristina—just in case. George, this is Bob. Bob’s been dying to meet you . . .”

Crazy thoughts.

But I was a detective, wasn’t I? I could always see people, be with them, follow them. I could follow her, just as I’d followed Bob and Kristina. Just as I’d thought, years before, when the divorce was on its way, of following Rachel, of viewing this impossible thing: Rachel in another life, her own life, without me. Rachel as she once must have been, before I’d ever met her. Rachel with somebody else.

How do we choose?

She must have someone else—she must have
had
someone else. So all that getting on her high horse, all that being the judge of me . . .

I might even have stopped following and watching and butted in.

A detective, wasn’t I? A detective still.

“It’s my choice, Helen, it’s up to me . . .”

Choice? It’s in the blood. It’s what I do, I
am.

It’s what we all do, I think, in our different ways. Something in the blood, in the nose. Under the chestnut tree, the sticky breath of summer rain. We’re hunters, that’s what we are, always stalking, tracking the missing thing, the missing part of our lives.

I might never have seen Sarah again, not properly. Just followed her, dogged her, snooped, spied. But that wouldn’t have made me a detective, would it? It would have made me something else.

27

And Kristina? She disappeared of course. Became a missing person, an absent witness. Marsh wasn’t going to have her traced. The trouble, the expense. Not worth it for such a sewn-up case. (Just a few loose threads.) Not worth his remaining time, ticking away till they let him out. And, anyway, for all immediate purposes she was out of the picture, uninvolved. She was up in the sky when the crime was committed—or coming down to land, in Switzerland. Neutral territory.

I think of her on that night, in that plane. Tears all the way? (Did someone sitting next to her have to take pity?) Or dry-eyed, hard-eyed, sipping her free drink?

Thinking of what was behind her, or what was ahead?

I see her arriving in Geneva, producing her wad of papers and credentials, the proof of who she was. The passport from a country that no longer existed.

And she didn’t know—how could she?—that Bob didn’t exist any more either, whether for her or not. The lights and announcements of an airport, the flow of people. Didn’t know (it was meant to stop things being destroyed) the destruction she’d left behind.

But then—she’d always been leaving destruction behind. The story of her life. Five years in England while everything she’d known was torn apart. Going back now to see what was left.

Hard-eyed and hardened? But blossomed and softened and beautiful, with the embrace of another woman’s husband still with her like the clasp of a ghost.

Switzerland. Airport shops full of watches and chocolates.

Over and over I’ve thought it: she might
never
have known, she still might not
know.
Would she have looked at the English papers? Or even noticed, if she had, the not so big story (only a murder, only a simple murder) on the inside pages? Would that have been her first concern? Out of their lives—that was the deal? So, no follow-ups or backward looks, no further communication. Dead to each other.

In Switzerland, or in Croatia, you don’t think of a street, a house in Wimbledon. Any more than people in Wimbledon think of a street, a house (a ruined street, a burnt-out house) in the former Yugoslavia.

Some things it’s best not to know. And if she
does
know, if she did find out, she’s never come forward, never declared herself. Lived—wherever she is—like an exile with the knowledge.

And she’s never appeared here, in this cemetery, considering it worth the journey, the expense, considering it necessary to come all the way back, to stand—shed tears perhaps—lay flowers.

Though how would I know? Who keeps a constant watch on a grave?

The sun here, by this wall, has a papery warmth. The sky is as blue as a summer sea. Holiday brochures. Dubrovnik . . .

I see her sitting too, at some pavement café. Geneva? Zagreb? Dubrovnik? Winter sunshine. Steaming coffee cups, glinting table tops. Her eyes are hidden by sunglasses. You can’t follow her gaze. You’d look and think: no child. A woman of the world.

What did she want? It’s easy to say she got what she wanted—as if it was all done by calculation: loss and gain. The bright-eyed girl who’d come to London to study, to get a life. Well, she’d got her compensation. A refugee? A flat of her own, for God’s sake. Seeing how they lived in comfortable Wimbledon, in comfortable Fulham. Oh she knew how to turn everything to havoc. Compensation? More. All the time, after all, she might have been living through a war. Atrocities on both sides. Fair’s fair.

And then when it seemed at last she had a country of her own to go to, she went back with her loot, her credentials, a veteran of the English suburbs.

How could it have been like that? His last hug still warm on her.

She’d become a hunter too, in Wimbledon. The missing part of our lives. She’d watched him, he’d watched her. Which way round did it work? Some moment must have come. And she, at least, must have known, when it came, that there weren’t any rules. Life happens outside the law.

Did she love him—however it began? Did he love her? There’s no recipe, it’s not like cooking. It can last for life, it can burn out in months. He hadn’t wanted to be burnt.

They walk in the woods. On Wimbledon Common. They fuck against a tree. But she’s still the student of English words.

They were the best times, Sarah said, when they’d begun to teach each other: English for Serbo-Croat. The teacher being the student, starting from scratch. In the kitchen, the different words for food—“nutmeg,” “pumpkin”—or in Sarah’s study, overlooking the garden. The best times: learning each other’s language. Even the feeling that Kristina envied her. Was that so surprising? This study, this safe calm place. Translation work. The garden outside, wintry, littered with dead leaves. As if Sarah was what Kristina wanted to be.

Well: that had come true. As near as could be. Her English was perfect. She had her degree. A qualified interpreter too. That passport of a skill.

She’d even shared Sarah’s husband.

“Toadstool,” he says. A mad word.

She stoops (so I picture it: I’m watching, a detective, hidden by trees), pretends to eat, pretends to throw up. How will it end? Suppose she got pregnant—they both have the thought. But they both have the other thought too. How will it end? This is how it could end anyway—something like this. With poison, with death.

They look at each other as if they’ve both eaten for real.

To love is to be ready to lose, it’s not to have, to keep.

So: she made her sacrifice? She was the one who always had to lose everything? Arriving—dispossessed again—in neutral Switzerland.

What became of her? Where did she go? I could follow her too, track her down. An international assignment. Find out the truth: did she ever know?

But that’s not my job, that’s not my case. That’s for that man over there, it’s his case. That’s for Bob to do.

28

Dyson did it. And if there were any justice . . .

And I’m still shocked—the reverse of other people’s shock, the reverse of Rachel’s shock—at how the story, the crime almost, became how I’d shown myself to be a crooked cop and had to be made an example of, and not the story of how Lee Dyson had stabbed Ranjit Patel in his Handi-Store on Davis Road. Stabbed him three times, almost committed murder in fact (and not for the first time), but was going to walk free.

But I’m still shocked at myself, it’s true.

A Sunday evening. They called me out. September ’89. Helen had left home—so I couldn’t blame her. Needling me, pushing me near the edge. Remarks that stung. “You don’t
see
things.”

So what am I saying? It would have been all Helen’s fault?

Three witnesses—or none, depending on how a court would see it, and if it reached a court in the first place. But Dyson did it—his handiwork, as the saying goes—and now I had him. It ought to have been a sewn-up case.

Ranjit Patel. But he’d passed out in seconds, and hadn’t been in a state to talk (it was touch and go) for two days. By which time . . . And any defence lawyer would have torn holes in the reliability of his memory. Even if he hadn’t said anyway (since it was Dyson): I don’t remember a thing.

Mrs. Patel—Meera Patel. But she’d come on the scene, from behind the shop, just too late to see Dyson (if it was him). What she saw was her husband lying in a terrifying pool of blood (and Dyson, maybe—a blur that was hardly in her vision—disappearing through the door). Her first thought hadn’t been to look out onto the street—which seemed to have been surprisingly empty of passers-by—or to look down the passage leading to the Callaghan Estate. But she was ready enough, now, to testify that Dyson— she even knew his name—had abused and threatened both her and her husband several times before, had even once, though she wasn’t present, waved a knife at her husband. She was as ready to say it was Dyson as I was—and she was relying on me.

Which, given the minimal forensic, left Kenny Mills. Given that the weapon was as yet unlocated, though it was reckoned to be a knife with at least a four-inch blade, given that Dyson (if it was him) had managed to lose it very efficiently, and, in the time it took for police and ambulance to get to the scene, had (to reconstruct) gone back to the Dyson place on the estate, put all his clothes in the washer (“So? It was wash-day”), disposed somehow of a pair of probably blood-stained trainers, put on fresh clothes, then set off for Mick Warren’s flat, across the estate, where, according to Warren, the two of them had been since seven, watching a match on TV.

All this, a defence lawyer would say—all
this
in the time it took for police and ambulance to be on the scene . . . ?

Yes, if it was Dyson, yes.

It left Kenny Mills, in Room Number One. Who wasn’t having a happy time. Who said he’d only gone up to the Patel shop for some cans and fags. Yes, up the passage from the estate, and he hadn’t seen a soul, and then he’d come upon Mrs. Patel with Mr. Patel bleeding and unconscious.

I said he was lying and he said he wasn’t. Either way, he looked scared.

Not one of the true hard-nuts. Not one of Dyson’s little core. On the edge—wanting to be let in, perhaps. Though not any more.

Some cans and some fags, which he never got to buy. And for this innocent little errand, and though Meera Patel swore he’d walked in
after
she’d called 999—maybe a minute after she herself had come in from the back of the shop—he was hauled in by Uniformed and strip-searched, as if a four-inch knife might be hidden up his arse. Then grilled long into the night, including by DI Webb who arrived—from the Patel shop—at nine-fifteen.

And took one look at Mills and had them haul in Dyson as well.

It’s a well-known game. You have the two of them in and you play the one against the other, hoping for a quick result. Especially in those precious moments before either of them has a lawyer beside them, telling them when to shut up.

Not so much detection as spinning plates. Till one breaks. But sometimes you just get impatient, you get excited—you get near the edge. The scent of a quick kill under your nose.

Dyson did it, Mills didn’t—I knew that. But I didn’t have to tell him. I even believed the beer and fags. The only bit I didn’t believe was that he’d come up the passage from the estate—at just that time—without seeing Dyson coming the other way.

More than one reason he was looking scared.

“You didn’t see anyone—coming the other way, from the shop?”

“No.”

“Lee Dyson, for example.”

“No.”

“Pity.”

“Yeh?”

“Yes, because if you say you didn’t see Dyson you’re smack in the frame.”

“I never got there till after. That woman—”

“Mrs. Patel? Yes, that’s what she
said.
But maybe she was confused. She thought her husband was dying. He still might die, you know. And, maybe, she was scared of
you.
”

“Scared?”

“Yes. Wasn’t that the idea—the old idea? Scare them. See how far it could go. You, Dyson and the others. Scare them a little, scare them a lot. You look scared yourself, Kenny.”

“Fuck off.”

“You wouldn’t have stuck a knife in Ranjit Patel, would you? Not by yourself. But you were there when Dyson did. Let’s suppose. And that put you in shit. But then you came back. Smart—and not so smart. You thought you’d clear yourself, you’d make it look as though you’d just arrived—”

“That wasn’t how—”

“How? How what, Kenny? What are you saying? You really did it yourself?”

“Piss off.”

“So who did? If you didn’t, why are you looking so scared?”

“Fuck off.”

Interview rooms. Grey boxes. There’s a point where they can become like clearings in the forest. The thrashing and gnashing could start. There’s a tape running and a DC sitting in, but you can forget both are there.

“Shall I tell you something? We’ve got Dyson in here right now. Just along the way.”

You watch their eyes closely.

“But—we’ll keep you apart.”

“Fuck off.”

“You’re scared of Dyson, aren’t you? That’s okay, that’s sensible. Dyson’s scary. I’d be scared of Dyson—but I’m a cop. It’s your chance, Kenny. While the two of you are here. You nail him first. One of you walks, one of you gets to stay.”

It’s what I said. On the tape.

“He did it, didn’t he? You were there.”

“No.”

“You were with him.”

“Fuck off.”

“Okay. You weren’t there, you weren’t with him. Here’s another story—tell me if it’s any better. Yes, you went to get some beer and fags. No, you didn’t do a thing wrong. You were just going to get some beer and fags. But you saw Dyson coming the other way, down that passage. Bad timing. Or good timing—maybe. He looked pretty fired up, didn’t he, and you couldn’t step out of his way, could you? And he couldn’t step out of yours. Just the two of you. So he grabs you and he
tells
you what he’s done. He’s full of it. I’m prepared to bet he even waved the knife in your face. He’s a nutcase, isn’t he, Kenny? Off his fucking head. And he tells you that you never saw him. He tells you that you never saw him and that you should piss off out of it. And he disappears fast himself.

“Then you’ve got a choice, haven’t you? Big choice. Disappear yourself, that’s the easier option. But you reckon— smart thinking—that if you do that and it comes back round to you again, you’re an accessory. So you walked on. You walked on to clear yourself, but you walked on for another reason—let’s hope. You’ll say you never saw Dyson anyway, but you walked on for another reason. There was a man dying—maybe—just yards away. He still might die, Kenny. You did the right thing. You didn’t piss off. A different kind of bottle. You behaved like a good citizen. You get points for that. You don’t need a brief, Kenny. Sometimes briefs take ages to arrive . . .”

I watched his eyes. You can tell. Ninety-five per cent true. Sometimes it’s not detection. It’s being in the picture. As if I’d been standing there all along, watching, in that passage.

“A good story? You haven’t said anything. If you like, we could make it your statement. You could sign. And I’ll make another bet. If you don’t have a better story and Dyson gets to know you went on to that shop, he’ll stick you right in it, that’s for sure.”

Interview rooms. They can be like another world. I got up, turned my back, looked, hands in pockets, at the wall. Like the teacher when the class is doing the test. But I think my heart was thumping, measuring the silence. Those first few hours. Dyson, at last.

If you look away, it’s sometimes when they talk. But the silence dragged on, thick with Kenny’s thinking.

Finally I said, “Okay, I’m going to speak to Dyson.”

Kenny said, “Stop.”