The Sixth Lamentation (43 page)

‘It’s a
touch more involved, so, but you can’t make a home for those little divils
without upsetting people.’

The
arresting officer summoned Lucy with a flick of his finger. Her pockets were
emptied and she signed forms that she didn’t read.

‘Now,
get your dainty skates on,’ said the Custody Sergeant. A waiting WPC took Lucy
firmly by the elbow and escorted her down a colourless corridor to a cell. The
heavy blue door slammed into position. Keys turned and jangled. The square
peephole opened and banged shut. And, to the echo of withdrawing footsteps,
Lucy started to cry.

The lock rattled as iron
turned on iron. The door opened and DI Armstrong entered the cell. She sat on a
chair fixed to the wall and said: ‘You have been extraordinarily stupid.’

Lucy
lifted her hands helplessly as if she didn’t understand what she had done. She
continued to cry, increasingly terrified by the working out of the legal
process upon her.

DI
Armstrong said, ‘I’ll do what I can to smooth things for you but my hands are
tied. You are in serious trouble.’

Lucy
nodded, grateful for the promise of a friend, however useless, within the
system that would judge her.

‘There’s
been a development in the Schwermann trial,’ DI Armstrong said, letting
compassion slip out — evidently divining Lucy’s undisclosed interest in the
verdict. ‘I don’t know what has happened but I expect it will be on the news.
You can watch it with me. That
is
something I can do for you.’

3

After the fanfare of
headlines and solemn bells, the picture shifted to live coverage of the lead
story at the Old Bailey

Lighting
stands and trails of wiring flanked the court entrance. Banks of cameras and
boom microphones like slender cranes arched over metal railings on either side.
Police officers in fluorescent yellow safety jackets stood at prescribed
intervals around a pool of harsh, consuming light. High above the doors was the
inscription read by Anselm at the outset of the trial: ‘Defend the children of
the poor and punish the wrongdoer.’

A home
affairs correspondent explained that after his sensational acquittal
Schwermann had been escorted back to the cells, where a discreet exit had been
planned. However, as he was about to depart an unidentified male had presented
himself to court staff, seeking an urgent interview on what was understood to
be a private matter. Upon hearing the name of the man concerned, Schwermann had
consented to a meeting.

‘One
thing we do know is that the consultation is over,’ said the reporter. ‘We’re
expecting them to emerge through these doors behind me at any moment. We
understand this individual may well be a survivor who … in fact, there’s
some movement …’

The reporter shifted to
one side as the court entrance jolted and opened, casting black, cutting
shadows across the walls. A small man stepped out, shielding his eyes.

Lucy
recognised the gentleman who’d sat beside her in the public gallery day after
day giving her encouragement when it had no rational foundation; the man who
had become a friend, Mr Salomon Lachaise. He moved to one side as Schwermann
made his way forward. Microphones on angled poles followed him, clawing through
the air at his neck and back.

Schwermann
stood on the pavement, transfixed by the light, one hand nervously feeling the
lower hem of his jacket. The camera position shifted closer, revealing Max
Nightingale behind a policeman, his fists pushed deep into the pockets of his
jacket.

Questions
shot out from all sides, making it impossible to hear what was being said
except for the constant repetition of Schwermann’s name. Salomon Lachaise
looked on from a step — to Anselm’s eyes as if from a judgment seat; to Lucy
all of a sudden a man in mourning. When Schwermann looked up from the floor to
the cameras the questions abruptly ended.

Salomon
Lachaise stepped back into shadow as Schwermann spoke:

‘This
court has released me and declared me innocent. Before the eyes of the whole
world I committed no crime.’ He started to laugh, his face contracted with pain
as if gripped by a spreading cramp. ‘I started the war as one person, came to
Paris … and overnight I became someone else … but I carried on doing what
I’d done before.’ Small explosions of flashlight struck his face as though he
were standing by a crackling, angry fire. ‘I admit I didn’t cry “stop”… but
I did do something worthwhile … and it gave me a reason to live … a
reason to escape … a reason to fight this trial. All I want to say is this
…’

Max
Nightingale shifted his stance from behind the policeman to get a clearer view
of his grandfather.

‘Victor
Brionne told the truth … but even he didn’t know what he was saying …’
Schwermann fell into a menacing, private fascination. The fine, smooth
clattering of the cameras grew faster and louder; sheets of instantaneous flame
danced and died, one after the other. Quietly, remonstrating with the light, he
said, ‘A boy was saved.’

His
right hand shakily fingered his jacket hem. Eyes wide, like a painted toy he
said, ‘Hasn’t that made a difference?’

Eduard
Walter Schwermann suddenly fell to his knees. The face of Salomon Lachaise
moved into the light. A policeman lunged a step and halted, confused, as
Schwermann, lifting the lower flap of his jacket, pulled at the inside lining.
He fished something out and put it in his mouth, closed his eyes, bit and
dropped like a marionette whose strings had been severed with a single cut.

As the
commotion unfurled, the discerning viewer could easily see the diminutive
figure of Salomon Lachaise in the background, walking heavily away from the
pandemonium, into the shadows and out of sight.

4

Wilma unplugged the
television and left the bedroom. The door clipped shut. For a long while Anselm
tried to read the motionless face of the woman waiting to die. Nothing moved.
There was just a slow blinking and then a welling-up of tears that ran into the
soft creases of her skin.

Now was
as good a time as any, thought Anselm. On this day of death there should be
powerful words about life. He cleared his throat. ‘Agnes, I have something to
tell you.’

She
raised a finger off the bedspread.

‘I know
you had a son, Robert, and that he was taken away from you.

She
reached for his hand.

‘You
have lived as though he were dead.’

She
turned her head, applying the lightest of pressure to Anselm’s fingers.

‘Victor
did not betray you. He took your boy and protected him. I have met Robert. He
is very much alive.’

Agnes
suddenly raised herself from the bed, startling Anselm, and rasped out a thick
sound of pain or wonder. She fell back, gripping Anselm’s hand. Her mouth moved
round the shape of words but nothing broke into sound.

Anselm
said, ‘He’s tall.’ A squeeze.

‘In
comparison to me, moderately handsome.’ A squeeze.

‘I
understand he’s a prodigy on the piano.’

A
frail, lingering squeeze.

‘He’s
married to a charming woman. She’s called Maggie.’

Her
strength had gone; her fingers lay warm and still within Anselm’s hands.

‘They
have five children. Some of them are married and they, too, have children.
Agnes, you are not only a mother … you are a grandmother and a
great-grandmother.’

Her
lips pursed into a loop, her eyes wide and swimming. Somehow the years were
stripped back and Anselm sensed the ambiance of youth, captured by Victor
Brionne in the photograph seen earlier that afternoon. He immediately
recognised her for who she was, and who she had become; they were one and the
same.

Wilma
bustled in, carrying a teaspoon, a saucer and a bowl of ice cubes.

5

Lucy was taken back to her
cell. Half an hour later the heavy door swung open with a bang. Lucy was waved
out by an impatient hand and taken to the Custody Sergeant’s desk. Father
Conroy was still there, beside DI Armstrong, who said: ‘The Detective
Superintendent says you can go home. You’re bailed for a week. When you come
back there’ll be an interview After that you may be charged.’

Lucy
collected her personal belongings, signed more forms and Father Conroy led her
outside. On the street he said, ‘Come on, I’ll drive you home.’

As he
pulled away into a stream of traffic, Lucy said evenly:

‘They
both deserved to die.’

‘Say
that to Father Anselm.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s
always full of surprises.’

‘About
what?’

‘Convincing
appearances.

They
did not speak for the rest of the journey Father Conroy dropped her in Acre
Lane.’ near her flat. As Lucy stepped on to the pavement he said, ‘Nothing’s
what it seems, you know Don’t worry.

Out in
the cold she walked hurriedly to her door, fighting a growing sense of having
stained herself by wanting to savour revenge, because she hoped Agnes had seen
the news and felt the same: that she too had sought pleasure in watching the
keeper of the flame extinguish himself.

Part Four

‘They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise

From
squalor of rottenness into the old splendour …’

(Laurence Binyon, ‘The Burning of the Leaves’, 1942)

Fourth Prologue

Agnes could no longer lift
her arms or head, but her fingers moved and she could still use the alphabet
card if everything was held in place. There were still some things that had to
be said.

She was
fed by drip now, procured by Freddie when he insisted that his mother would not
die in a hospital bed but in her own home. Everyone diligently fussed over her
needs, not realising that Agnes didn’t care, knowing nothing of the carnival
that raged out of sight.

For
within her the heavens were lit by repeated explosions of fireworks, with every
shade of blue and green and yellow and red, splintering into trillions of
gleaming particles against a vast stream of silver, dancing stars. They fell as
a shower upon her raised head, on to her lashes, balancing precariously on each
curved, counted hair before tumbling joyously over into the abyss beneath,
where she would soon follow after the reunion with Robert that would surely
come. She had entered upon a timeless, enduring, secret benediction.

Chapter Forty-Five

1

The reliability of a
wartime revolver after decades in a cupboard was literally a hit and miss
affair. Unlike capsules of potassium cyanide. Which struck Anselm as a happy
imbalance in the scheme of things, given Lucy’s misguided attempt to provoke
Victor’s suicide.

It
transpired that Victor had had no intention of killing himself at all. Like all
men who have known grave dependence on alcohol, he had a certain clarity of
mind that was sharpened when drunk. And so, confronted with a young woman
whose level of foolishness reflected the degree of her distress, he’d thought
it prudent to accept the offered gun. After Lucy had gone he’d pointed the
barrel at his face, looking into the dark, narrow hole. It had been, he said, a
sort of playing, an acting out of the preliminary steps to an oblivion that had
its attractions but which he would not choose. How could he? No matter what
personal suffering he had endured, no matter the scale of moral compromise,
there was Robert, the children and the grandchildren. They rose like flowers
from the catastrophe of his life, and their splendour, however circumscribed,
had a fragile, redemptive quality. He lived for them. And now, Victor had
learned that they lived for Agnes.

And
yet, but for the protecting hand of luck, Victor would have shot himself. Upon
lowering the barrel, the hammer suddenly discharged, held back (it turned out)
by a hairline trigger. The round went off, destroying a rare copy of Doctor Johnson’s
dictionary that had cost Victor most of his retirement lump sum.

Victor
was kept in hospital overnight, on account of his bitten lip and presumed
shock, and released the next morning, whereupon Anselm paid him a welcome visit
at home.

‘As I
told you before,’ said Victor, ‘I had always seen the irony of my predicament —
on paper, I was the one who had betrayed The Round Table. So when I came to
England I decided to set the record straight, if you will forgive the
expression. The idea came to me when I was wondering how I might conceal my
identity still further. I decided to change my name a second time. What name? I
thought.’