Tideline (26 page)

I cover him again. Panicking is the worst thing you can do. I must remain calm, sensible. Think it through one step at a time. I try to remember the early days of my medical training, the
first-aid courses I did when Kit was a toddler. I must refill his hot-water bottle, bring more water for him to drink and to bathe his face in.

The reek is unbearable. It makes me retch. It’s mixed with something down there in the river, a foul stench, not the washed-clean feel of the tidal water. Something must have died down
there, and begun to putrify. We do occasionally get corpses washed up on the tide. Seabirds of course. Sacks of kittens. Once I found a donkey, half eaten up by chemicals or some preying fish, its
side open, all its bloodied ribs on view. Only when the flesh has completely decayed does the smell disappear, when the bones are washed clean, as if in death there is finally a return after all to
purity. Like the shoe soles you find lying around on the beach. It’s funny how rarely one comes across whole shoes. The river devours the soft tissue of the uppers but it rejects the soles.
They wash up on the tide, hundreds of them, strewn along the shore when the tide’s out. Detached footprints of the lost and the drowned.

My plan was to take Jez back to the music room but now he’s ill it isn’t that simple. Preventing him from making a run for it is not an issue while he remains as weak as he is. But
now, even were I to support him, I’m not sure he’s capable of walking the short distance along the alley back to the house. He’s become an invalid.

The word invalid supplies me with one of my rare but brilliant brainwaves. My mother’s wheelchair! I’m supposed to visit her today. I could go right now and kill two birds with one
stone. Then I’ll push Jez along the alley as if I were simply taking my mother for one of the pleasant evening walks I did regularly when I first moved back here. I’ll wrap Jez the way
I’d have wrapped her, blankets over the knees, a shawl about the shoulders, a scarf wrapped about the head and tied under the chin.

I tell Jez I won’t be gone long. He’s barely conscious as I tuck him in, but I check the tape is tight and go back outside.

I have to act swiftly. If this illness is serious, then I cannot afford to hesitate. I grab the car keys from the River House, and hurry back along the alley.

I navigate the narrow car-lined roads that wiggle up from the river to the high street, swearing under my breath at the traffic that seems deliberately to dawdle in front of me. Every time I
come to a set of lights, they’re on red.

At last I cross the high street and take Maze Hill past Helen’s house up to Blackheath Standard.

I find a visitors’ parking space in the retirement home car park and let myself in with the key my mother’s given me.

‘You missed your Saturday visit,’ she starts up before I’ve stepped through the door. I hand over the bottle of gin I grabbed for her from the River House, as a sweetener.

‘I’m sorry, Mother. It was busy. Kit was home and Greg—’

‘Well you could have phoned at least. You’ve no idea what it is to wait all day, seeing no one. I expect you’ll have coffee.’

‘Please.’

After half an hour sitting and making amends, nodding and agreeing about how tiresome the other residents must be, I tell my mother I’m sorting out the garage, that it’d be a help to
use the wheelchair to shift stuff along the alley.

‘Can’t you use a wheelbarrow?’

‘Mother, we don’t own one. You must remember. There’s no calling for a wheelbarrow in a house with no garden.’

‘Hmmm. I used to nurture those plants at the River House. I made things grow in that courtyard that defied nature’s own laws. Everyone told me that wisteria would never flourish on
the shady side of the house but I made it flower like there was no tomorrow. And the clematis!
Purple stars, held in the green night of its leaves
.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘It’s Oscar Wilde. Though I wouldn’t expect you to know. And the peonies. I even grew sunflowers one year against the wall in the shadiest patch of the courtyard and they grew
tall for me, all they asked for was a little love and attention.’

I wonder how my mother was able to give her plants so much love and attention when she spared so little for me.

‘Still, Mother, there was never a wheelbarrow at the River House.’

‘So, what do you want my wheelchair for?’

‘I just said! I’m clearing out the garage. I need it so I can shift some of the heavier stuff back to the house.’

‘You should do as Greg wants and sell that house. Its hour has gone!’

She waves a hand, holding a glass that’s three-quarters drained. It’s a little early for gin, but the light’s fading outside and she’s already put her lamp on, which
means it’s as good as cocktail hour for my mother. I refill her glass and hand it back to her, dropping the lemon quarter in as she takes it. It fizzes and spits up at her.

‘Now what can I do for you?’ she asks.

‘The wheelchair, Mother. May I borrow it? Just for a day?’

‘Take it!’ she says. ‘Take it away. Looking at it makes me feel old and frail. I’d rather never have to look at that horrible thing. I don’t know why you had to
make me buy it!’

‘If it wasn’t for the wheelchair you wouldn’t be able to go for your outings to the heath, or the village, or to the park, would you? I’ll bring it back as soon as
I’ve finished clearing up.’

As soon as she’s settled down in front of the TV, I say I have to leave, and I take the chair down the carpeted corridors to the main entrance.

When you’re in a hurry, it’s as if the world knows and decides to slow you up. As I reach the foyer, Max comes out of his mother’s flat.

‘Afternoon, Sonia,’ he says, grinning, dimples appearing in his rosy cheeks. Max looks like the kind of man who has been happy all his life, who was probably born smiling and has
stayed that way ever since.

‘I see Mother’s going out? What little mystery trip have you in store for her?’

I explain that I’m storing the wheelchair in my car ready for my mother’s next excursion.

‘I’ll give you a hand with that!’ he says. ‘Here, let me.’

We push our way out through the double doors. At the car I thank Max profusely. He looks at me for a few seconds longer than I feel comfortable with. Is he about to invite me for a drink?

‘It’s funny,’ he says, ‘sometimes I envy my mother her little flat in there, all her washing done, nothing to do all day but play Scrabble and gossip about the other
residents.’ He stands, hands on hips, as if he has all day.

‘I’m sorry, Max, I’m in a bit of a hurry, I’d love to stop and chat . . .’

‘Perhaps we could have a cup of tea together sometime . . . meet in the residents’ lounge?’

‘It’d be a pleasure.’

‘I was only joking of course, about the residents’ lounge. I meant, perhaps I could take you for dinner?’

I smile. ‘If I’m ever at a loose end.’

He looks at me as if trying to find a positive way of interpreting my words, then he nods and folds the wheelchair and puts it into the boot for me.

‘There she goes!’ he says, a broad grin spreading across his face again. ‘All ready for Mum’s next day out. Take care now.’

I drive as fast as I can back to the river.

Helen

Helen sat down on one of the few empty chairs in the market café with her usual large cappuccino and put her head in her hands. Sonia hadn’t wanted to help and who
could blame her?

It took sitting alone like this, without a drink, for Helen to let her thoughts and feelings take coherent shape. The Jez situation was far worse than she imagined it could have become.
Sonia’s theory that he might have a lover was unlikely given his relationship with Alicia. Alicia was convinced Jez would never have gone anywhere without his guitar, and she knew him best.
That left them with three possibilities. He had had an accident, perhaps in the river and hadn’t yet been found. He had been abducted. Or the most unthinkable possibility of all –
he’d been murdered. But there was no body. No clue. Helen banged her cup down in her saucer. She wasn’t getting anywhere like this. Any further than the police had already done. Though
they at least had a suspect.

Me, she thought.

The police interrogation yesterday had been awful. They’d asked her to confirm again where she’d been on Friday morning and she’d been forced to tell them she was at the
Turkish baths. It was obvious that they didn’t believe her. May even have checked up on her by now. But rather than pursuing this, they had asked her about the course Jez had applied to. How
badly had she wanted Barney to get a place? Did he have any other prospects? Was she angry that Jez had jeopardized her son’s chances? She had expressed a feeling of inferiority towards her
sister and her nephew – did this ever make her think of doing anything to harm him?

Helen knew they’d let her go. They had no evidence of course, never would. But it was time for her to take stock. Stop letting childish feelings of jealousy towards her sister, insecurity
towards Mick enter into her head. Feelings that were putting her in a very unpleasant, even dangerous light.

She never used to suffer from such a profound lack of self-confidence, such violent unpredictable avalanches of self-doubt. This week she’d wondered who Mick was, whether she knew him at
all. Now she wondered whether she knew herself. This whole situation was about Jez. Her nephew. She must not let her own stuff cloud the fact he might be in serious danger.

A woman walked past with a new baby in a sling and, seeing its tiny nose pressed against the woman’s coat, Helen remembered suddenly and with dreadful clarity the first time she’d
ever seen Jez. Maria was ecstatic, the dark-haired baby at her breast making tiny smacking sounds with his lips. Helen had gone to visit her sister the day Jez was born, at home in that lovely flat
they’d had at the top of Crooms Hill. The sisters had sat side by side on the bed, propped up on pillows, their knees bent up. They were close at that time, as if once Maria had become
pregnant the gulf that had existed between them had closed for a while. There was a fabulous view of the river from that room, a silver ribbon in the distance, weaving its way through the
industrial docks towards the sea.

When Maria had finished breastfeeding she’d slipped the tiny boy over to Helen. Helen had rested him on the slope of her thighs, facing her, his tiny limbs folded and pudgy, and he’d
fixed her with those mesmerizing dark eyes, and the overwhelming love she felt was matched only by what she already felt for her own sons. It had brought tears to her eyes. She had held lots of
newborn babies by then, most of her friends were parents now, but there was something different about a blood-link, you couldn’t deny it. Jez was her baby nephew, her sister’s own son,
and she loved him. She still loved him. Of course she did. It was impossible to imagine that he had come to any real harm.

She left the café, still thinking, and walked between the wrought-iron gates of the park. As she passed the sign saying, ‘No itinerant ice-cream sales’ she could hear Theo
read it aloud to Jez, as if they were right there with her now. ‘What’s “itinerant”?’ Jez had asked.

‘Exactly!’ Theo had said. ‘Why use a word like that?’

They’d run along the path beside her, passing a stone as if it were a football and cracking jokes about the long words you could use on signs directed at people who couldn’t be
expected to understand them.

‘People like me,’ said Jez, who was dyslexic.

‘Yeah,’ Barney said. ‘For you, the sign’d say, “No inebriated musicians!” and you’d just carry on being wasted and strumming your geeetar!’

There was never any animosity between her sons and Jez. They all seemed to exist in a benign world of male camaraderie that hadn’t changed much since they were little, making fun of each
other. Scrambling up things. Going to see bands.

She had just reached the foot of the hill when her mobile went. It was Alicia.

‘I need to talk to you. I’ve found a clue.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Outside the university. On the river path. Can you come here? Then I can show you where I found it.’

Helen hesitated. She wanted to go home, felt in need of a bath and a drink. But this might be an opportunity to do something constructive.

‘I’m in the park. I’ll come to you. Wait there.’

Helen found Alicia on a bench staring out over the river. The tide was up and the water lapped at the wall only a few feet below. It was beginning to get dark and lights were
coming on, yellow ones along the path and spangles of red, white and blue on the river and the opposite bank. Alicia looked up at Helen and held out a tiny, ragged piece of cardboard in the palm of
her hand.

‘What is it?’ asked Helen, sitting down on the bench beside her, noticing how cold the seat was.

‘It’s a roach,’ Alicia said. ‘Jez’s. I found it on the path along there,’ she gestured to her right. ‘Just outside the power station.’

Helen glanced in the direction Alicia pointed. The river was black towards the east, bottomless, rather threatening in the gathering dusk. The other way, towards the city, it still reflected the
remains of a silvery sunset.

‘What makes you think it might be Jez’s?’

‘It’s made of a piece of ticket from a gig we went to. I know it. I recognize it. We rolled spliffs the night before he disappeared. Never smoked them because you came in.’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah, well, we thought you wouldn’t like it.’

‘And you found it down there?’

‘Yes. He left your house on Friday to come and see me in the foot tunnel. This is the way he’d of come. Down the hill, past the Cutty Sark pub, and then along the path. The entrance
to the foot tunnel is just over there. ’ She nodded to her left. ‘I decided to do a search myself. No one else is looking properly.’

Helen doubted the roach was Jez’s. She suspected Alicia needed to believe she was on to something, that the roach gave her hope. She wished she didn’t have to play along with what
was almost certainly a red herring, but at the same time you can’t ignore anything, that’s what the police had said.