The Lying Tongue (30 page)

All that rot about her not wanting to put me under any pressure—I wonder what she would have said if I’d completely freaked out and had refused to go back to Venice. It almost made me wish that I could play the scene again just so I could see her reaction.

The truth of the matter was that I had her exactly where I wanted her. She had given me everything I needed—dates, places, context, genealogical documents, all the basic research on Crace’s early life that I could ever possibly want. Combined with my first-hand research, my day-to-day experience of living with Crace and Levenson’s evidence, the book was beginning to take shape.

Back at the pub, I cradled the clutch of pound coins in my sweaty palm, took a deep breath and dialed my old mobile number, making sure to prefix the call with 141 so he wouldn’t know where I was calling from. I knew it might take a while for Crace to ease himself out of his chair, place his book or glass of wine down, find the mobile, pick it up and work out which button he had to press, so I let it ring. Finally there was click on the line, and I started to feed the phone with money.

“Buon giorno?”

“Hello, Gordon. It’s me, Adam.”

“Adam? My dear, dear boy, I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up.”

“How are you?” I shouted.

“Much better now that I’ve heard from you. I thought you had run off and deserted me.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, just with everything to do with the funeral, you know. And my mother has been in a real state—tears, constantly questioning why, reliving memories from her childhood.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But yes, the death of a parent is an intimation of mortality.”

I told him the details I had prepared earlier so as to give the invented experience a gloss of authenticity.

“Anyway, it’s all over now,” I added. “And I should be able to get the return flight I booked.”

“Oh, thank God. It’s been a nightmare without you.”

“But you are all right, aren’t you?”

“I have been feeling a little weak. Nothing major, so don’t worry. Just off-color, that’s all.”

“But has the girl from the shop—what was her name…Lucia—has she been coming in to check on you like I’d arranged?”

“Oh yes, she’s all right, nothing more than a little slip of a thing. Drops off the food and then goes. Actually, I’m pleased she doesn’t want to hang around.”

I was down to my last pound coin.

“Listen, Gordon, I’m going to have to go now, my money is running out.”

“Oh, really?”

“I’m afraid so. But listen, I’ll be back soon and we can catch up then.”

“Well, I’m pleased everything has gone to order over there.”

“Thank you.”

“I know death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits.”

“What was that?”

The phone started to pip.

“Death—”

And we were cut off. I looked in my wallet for more change but had none. I could have gone to the bar to get some from the landlady, but I decided against it. As I went upstairs to my room and looked out of the window over the dark, brooding landscape, I thought of what Crace had just said to me. Death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits. I wrote the sentence in my notebook, wondering where it was from. And then just the one word—death—over and over again.

The next day was glorious, crisp and bright, and I spent the afternoon walking, turning the various options over and over in my head. On my return, as I made my way back to the village in the fading light, I passed a pretty, dark-haired girl walking a border collie. There was something about her that reminded me of Eliza. I smiled as she walked by, but she seemed nervous and on edge. The collie caught a whiff of something, the trace of a rabbit or the scent of another dog, and bounded over to a nearby tree. The girl called for the dog, but it ignored her. She tried shouting its name, Robbie, once more, but her voice cracked, betraying an undertone of fear. I looked around us; we were alone. Our eyes met and I knew, in that instant, that she was afraid of me. She turned her head and started to walk away. I felt like running up to her, putting my hands on her dark red velvet jacket, telling her that she had completely the wrong idea about me. I could almost feel her soft skin on the tips of my fingers, almost smell her sweet aroma.

“Sorry, I—” I said to myself as she walked away, her dog now running after her.

I watched as she moved into the distance, disappearing through the trees and into the forest beyond. If only I’d had a chance to stop and talk to her, who knows what might have happened?

I continued to walk into the village, thinking about Eliza. As I approached a couple of farm outbuildings, I saw a figure walking in the woods ahead of me. I spotted a flash of red among the glow of the autumnal russets. Was it the girl I had just seen? I caught another glimpse of the color and then it disappeared. I carried on through the trees, following the sound of someone ahead, and watched until the figure came into view. It was a man wearing a maroon V-neck sweater, holding the branch of a tree with his right hand as he tried to catch his breath. His face was obscured as he bent forward, his left hand resting on his knee, and he was wheezing. It was Shaw.

I was about to call out to him when he eased himself upward, took out his asthma spray, inhaled quickly, coughed a little and then started to move forward. He was walking in the wrong direction for his cottage. What was he up to? I kept well back, making sure I was hidden by the trees, and started to follow him.

A few minutes farther down the track that skirted along the edge of the wood and from where you could see the village, Shaw emerged at the corner of a recently ploughed field. I watched as he walked down the dirt path, near the fence, and over the stile at the end. Waiting until he had gone out of view, I ran across the field, making sure to hide myself as I approached its bottom. I crouched down by a hedgerow but peeked over it and saw him disappearing into what looked like the shell of a derelict house. I checked to see if anyone was looking and then walked down a track toward him. On one side was an old wooden gate with traces of blue paint visible underneath a mass of ivy that led down an overgrown garden; on the other, a small, two-story house that looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years. There was no front door to speak of, merely a dirty wooden panel covered in traces of graffiti. Shaw disappeared inside. I waited, listening for Shaw’s wheezing, but heard nothing, so after a couple of minutes, I put my head through the opening. There was nothing but darkness.

After a while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. I thought I could make out the outlines of a table and some chairs; the floor was covered in newspaper and old beer cans, and the walls were marked with rings of damp and yet more graffiti.

I edged my way in, careful not to upset anything on the cluttered, rubbish-strewn floor. I heard something creak upstairs and then the sound of footsteps. I moved over to the far corner of the dark room, using my fingers to feel the way, until I came to the bottom of the stairs. I pressed my foot down lightly and slowly crept up, but as I stood on the second from the last step, the old wood emitted a painful groan, as deep and haunting as the last breaths of a dying man. My body froze, my breathing stopped. It was only a matter of seconds before Shaw came out from one of the rooms and found me on the stairs. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. I looked behind me and thought about how I should leave before he discovered me, but then, at more or less the same moment, it came to me: I realized exactly where I was. I was standing at the top of the stairs in Chris’s old house, outside one of the rooms where he most probably wrote his diary. There was no way I was going to turn back now.

I moved slowly onto the top step and felt my way around the landing, guiding myself forward by the groove of an old picture rail. I felt the rail join the frame of a door and listened. Nothing. I moved on down the small corridor, around the corner, and stopped outside another door. In the space between the bottom of the door and the floorboards, I saw a dim glow, a light that seemed to be moving around the room. Shaw had a torch.

I heard the sound of something being moved, a piece of furniture perhaps, and then the creaking of some wood. Then nothing but Shaw’s interminable wheezing, followed by a few snorts and coughs and footsteps. The light from his torch was getting brighter. He was walking toward me.

I stepped back into the darkness. As he opened the door, I knocked the torch from his hand. It fell onto the floorboards, casting shards of light up and around the dusty space and onto Shaw’s frightened face before I grabbed it and shone it right into his eyes. The light bleached out any remaining life from his already ghastly face.

“What—” he said, gasping for breath.

“Do you want to tell me what you’ve been looking at in there? Or do you want me to beat it out of you?”

Shaw was so scared he couldn’t say anything.

“Let’s go and have a look, shall we?” I said, grabbing his puny hand and pulling him back into the room.

“There’s n-nothing here,” he said finally.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite believe you,” I said, shining the torch over the room.

An old dressing table, complete with a cracked, dirty mirror, was swathed in cobwebs; a small frame hung on the wall, its canvas so blackened it was impossible to make out the details of the image; and the walls, once covered in rose-print wallpaper, were streaked with what looked like burn marks.

“It’s just my little retreat, somewhere where I like to get away from it all,” said Shaw.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll end up here on a permanent vacation—under the fucking floorboards.”

His eyes twitched. I looked over toward the dressing table, shining the torch in that direction.

“There’s nothing under the floorboards. Nothing, I tell you.”

“Well, Mr. Shaw, why don’t you show me?”

I pushed him toward the other side of the room.

“This isn’t the place you were telling me about, by any chance?” I said. “Or should I say, the one you didn’t want to tell me about—where you kept Chris’s diary.”

“No, no,” he shook his head. “I don’t know you what you mean.”

“Don’t you think one thousand pounds is an awful lot of money, Mr. Shaw?”

“Pardon?”

“I said, don’t you think one thousand pounds is an awful lot of money?”

“I suppose so.”

“That’s something we agree on.”

“It’s not that I’m not grateful, Mr. Woods, for the money. I am, I really am.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But for one thousand pounds, I expect the truth. You wouldn’t want to keep anything back from me, would you?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“Good. So now show me.”

The sound of his wheezing seemed to fill the dusty room.

“It’s not good for me health.”

“No, it’s probably not. So the sooner you show me, the sooner both of us can get out of here.”

“I was going to show you, honest I was.”

“So you are telling me there’s something else. Something you neglected to show me.”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. Let’s see it then.”

“I was going to contact you tonight.”

“Oh, really?”

“Only that as it is something very special I thought Mr…. Mr. Crace might want to place a…a separate price on it.”