Trish stood with her back to the great red oval of the Albert Hall, which she’d always rather liked, and looked straight at Queen Victoria’s chief monument to her dead husband, which she’d always loathed. Ugly, with its wildly over-ornamented pinnacles and gaudy mosaics, and completely out of place in its garden setting, the memorial was surrounded by massive stone statues representing four continents.
Crossing the road at the traffic lights, Trish saw the group she wanted almost at once. Maryan Fleming, also known as Sally Bowles, was standing in the shadow cast by the figures of Asia and looking tiny in comparison. One step below her, their upturned faces gazing more admiringly at her than at any of the statues, were her customers.
Trish waited until the lecture was over and the last of the tourists had torn himself away. By then Maryan was sorting the tips she’d been given, pouring the change into a purse, which looked surprisingly like the betraying chalk bag in Peterthewalk’s photograph, and straightening the ten and twenty pound notes. It seemed like a good haul.
‘Hi,’ Trish said.
Maryan glanced up, then felt in the pocket of her jacket.
She pulled out a slim packet of leaflets and handed one to Trish.
‘There won’t be another walk here till next week,’ she said, with an apologetic smile. Her voice was very sweet, and quite unthreatening. ‘But there are lots of others; one every day somewhere in London.’
‘Thank you. But that’s not what I wanted. I wondered if you had a moment to talk about a different kind of walk.’
The gentle face, fringed with shaggy blonde hair, looked surprised, but not at all worried.
‘In Northumberland?’ Trish said. ‘When you were with Barry Stuart on the edge of the national park there in April last year. Do you remember?’
Maryan stuffed the leaflets back into her pocket. ‘Why would I? We did lots of walking in those days.’
Trish smiled widely to make herself look reassuring and said casually:
‘It was the time you and Barry were paid to block the vents of the chemical-waste tanks. I should’ve thought that would be pretty memorable. Unless you did that kind of thing often.’
‘Of course not.’
‘But you did do it that once, didn’t you?’
Maryan looked as though she might cry.
‘I’ve got timed and dated photographs that put the two of you in the right place on the day the tanks were blocked,’ Trish went on as though there was no doubt about anything she said. ‘So there’s not much point pretending. And I’m not after you in any case. All I want to know is who paid you to do it.’
‘But I don’t
know
who they were.’ Maryan looked and sounded convincingly helpless. ‘Barry never told me.’
Trish wanted to swear. Having tracked down one of the saboteurs it would be excruciating to find that she knew nothing useful. Had Barry taken her along as cover? Or as someone to blame if they were spotted hanging around the tanks? Unless she’d changed since then it seemed unlikely he’d have wanted her for anything more active.
‘I didn’t know anything about it. Honestly,’ Maryan said, blinking the tears away. ‘He said he was going up north on his own, that he needed space to think things through. But I didn’t believe him. I thought he was seeing someone. So I said I was going too, whatever he said. In the end he said I could if I wanted, but if I couldn’t keep up he wasn’t going to wait for me.’
‘When did he tell you why he was really there?’
‘Only at the last minute, when he saw I wouldn’t let him leave me behind in the b&b like he wanted that day.’
‘Did he say why he was doing it?’
‘Only that there were people who didn’t think it right that dangerous waste was being stored up there so near the national park.’ Now Maryan was staring at the tops of the trees and letting her eyes move only in the direction of the clouds of birds that wheeled around the bare branches.
‘Did you agree?’
‘Of course not,’ Maryan said in a little-girl voice. ‘I said we couldn’t. It’d be wrong. Then he told me how much they were paying him and how bad things really were with the bank, and how we’d lose the climbing school if we didn’t get more money from somewhere. And so … And so—’
‘And so you agreed.’
‘I had to. But I wish I hadn’t.’
‘I’m sure,’ Trish said, thinking of the appalling consequences and wondering why Maryan hadn’t denied all knowledge of the plan. ‘But why, in particular?’
‘Because we lost the school anyway, and everything else went wrong as well. And it wasn’t even necessary. There’d been something wrong with the tanks all along.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Didn’t you read about it in the papers? They were really dangerous. Quite soon after we were there, they blew up. We needn’t have ever gone anywhere near them. I wish we hadn’t.’
Could she really not have made the connection between the blocking of the vents and the explosion? Looking at her charming face, Trish didn’t see a lot of intelligence, but even so she was doubtful. And the little-girl voice was definitely assumed. She’d sounded perfectly normal when they’d started to talk.
‘Where’s Barry now?’ Trish asked.
‘We split up. The money he got from the tanks wasn’t enough to save the school.’ Maryan wiped away the tears with both hands, but they went on oozing out of her eyes. ‘So we shut it down. We tried to go on together for a bit after, but he got so restless. And the people he’d been to for loans and stuff were harassing him, threatening him that if he didn’t pay up they’d … they’d … you know.’
‘Break his legs?’
Maryan shuddered. ‘Something like that. So he said we had to get away.’
She’d found a handkerchief at last and mopped her face more effectively, and blew her nose.
‘Why New Zealand?’
‘I don’t know.’ Maryan sniffed. ‘He hadn’t told me he was keen to go there or ever bothered to ask if
I
wanted to, so I said I wouldn’t. And he said, OK, was he bothered? I was just a millstone round his neck. And if I wanted to stay and take my chance with Ken Shankley that was OK by him. Which was stupid because I never fancied Ken at all. I mean, I always liked him. But I never fancied him.’
Trish heard a whirring sound and someone shouted ‘Look out’ just as a heavy weight hit her in the small of the back. Shock stopped her breathing. Then came sharp pain.
A sensation of small warm hands clinging to her legs banished most of the shock. She twisted round to see a child of about nine, wearing enormous roller blades, jeans and a crash helmet, howling at her feet. She couldn’t tell from above whether it was a boy or girl. An adult woman came running up, panting.
‘Sorry,’ she said casually in the kind of voice Robert used when he wanted to be annoying, then bent down to the child. ‘Barbie, I told you to be careful. You’re lucky you didn’t fall right down the steps and break something.’
Trish waited for a more fervent apology, a question about whether she was hurt, or a suggestion from the woman that her child might say something to excuse what had happened. Nothing came. The pair of them moved away.
‘Well, I think that’s outrageous,’ Maryan said, sounding less sorry for herself and considerably older. ‘Her kid really hurt you. I could see. People are so irresponsible! You need to sit down. There’s a bench there. Can you manage? Take my arm.’
Trish, whose back was genuinely aching, accepted her help.
‘Who’s Ken Shankley?’ she said as they settled on the bench.
‘A climber. One of our best customers at the school. First he used to come on his own, then he started bringing colleagues from GlobWasMan for what he called corporate-bonding weekends.’
‘GlobWasMan?’
‘Yes. They came three or four times.’
‘Did they ever bring a lawyer with them? A man called Ben Givens?’
Maryan sat, stroking her cheek with her right hand, round and round. Then she took it away and nodded decisively.
‘A tall man with greying hair, a bit curly? Rather arrogant?’
‘That’s right, and old acne scars.’
‘Yeah, it was him. He came once and he couldn’t climb for toffee.’ She laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘He hated Ken for being so much better at it than him, and Ken teased him. Barry joined in, which is why I thought Barry liked Ken. That’s why I was nice to him. But it was never any more than that.’
‘So why did Barry think you wanted to stay in England for him?’
‘I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter now. I’ve drawn a line. Forgotten it all.’ Maryan looked uncomfortably at her watch. ‘Are you OK now?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Great. Because I’ve got another party of tourists arriving in Chelsea and twenty minutes to get there. They’ll get lost if I’m not there.’
‘You carry on. I’ll rest a little longer,’ Trish said, still not sure whether Maryan was a brainless innocent or a highly efficient actor with a scapegoat conveniently out of reach.
Still, the leaflet she’d given Trish had two phone numbers, as well as postal and email addresses. She’d be easy to find again.
David sat in the dark cinema, next to Jay, waiting till the ads were over and the film could begin. With luck that would fill up his mind and stop him worrying about what Jay was going to do next. He’d already mucked about with the overflowing rubbish bin in the foyer and threatened to tip it up.
The ads were flashing and noisy, trying to sell them jeans and cars and drinks, and Jay was fidgeting and muttering. Some of his breathy swearing was as bad as it had been on the night of the Scrabble drama. But at least he wasn’t screaming and yelling tonight.
He was being like this because David had insisted on getting tickets for
Henry
V instead of Kathryn Bigelow’s
Near Dark
in Screen Two, which Jay wanted to see because it was full of vampires and cowboys and lots of blood. At first when David had handed over the ticket, Jay had said it didn’t matter a fuck which screen it was for because there was hardly anyone about and they could just move from One to Two once the films had started and no one would notice.
‘George gave us the money for
Henry
V
because of school,’ David had said all over again, knowing he sounded like a girl. ‘So that’s what we’ve got to see.’
‘He won’t ever know if we don’t.’
‘He would,’ David had said with conviction.
George could always tell what you’d been doing when you tried to lie. Anyway, David didn’t want to see any horror film. He wanted to see
Henry V
.
It was always easier to deal with set books if you’d got pictures in your head and seeing a film or some telly was the easiest way of getting them. And he liked the speeches, although he’d never admit it to anyone: ‘He that outlives this day, and comes safe home … will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say …’
It was partly the bit about coming safe home, David had decided as the woman with the torch showed them to their seats. And partly the thought of the yearly feast and the remembering and the courage needed for dealing with all those wounds and scars.
He liked the quiet bit before the battle, too, with the soldier Michael Williams telling the king the truth about ‘all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle’. He silently recited it in his mind again now while he waited for the ads to finish.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
The sound forced David to look at Jay again. All he saw were flashes in the dark. Then he understood: Jay had a cigarette lighter.
David sat on his hands. It would only cause trouble if he tried to grab the lighter or say anything.
Flick. Flick. Flick. In spite of the flashes no one was looking at them. Jay was right: there were hardly any people here.
David turned, twisting his neck so he could look across the empty seats towards the place where the woman with the torch had been standing when they came in. There was no sign of her or her light now.
A disgusting smell stuffed itself up his nostrils. Jay was holding the lighter to the back of the seat.
‘Fuck! It won’t light.’
‘Of course not, you fucking twat,’ David said, trying to sound like they all did at school so it wouldn’t set off one of Jay’s worst rages. ‘It’s fireproofed.’
Jay turned to him with the lighter’s flame bigger than ever flickering up over his face, making him look like a gargoyle.
David didn’t say anything else as he thought about grabbing the lighter after all. Jay let it go out and bent double to scuffle about in his schoolbag. David held his breath, wondering what was coming next.
The ads had finished and there was the old-fashioned black screen now, saying the film had been passed for exhibition to everyone. Then came the music. George had told him to listen out for the sound of a thousand arrows fizzing out of the longbows.
Jay straightened up in his seat at last and sat fiddling with something in his lap. Then he started flicking the lighter again. Concentrating on the screen, David hoped Jay would stop if he didn’t show any fear. The actors looked weird: wooden and made up like clowns. A smell of real burning caught in his throat and made him cough. In the silence afterwards, something crackled, and bigger flames lit up the space in front of Jay.
Trish went home in good time to oversee the boys’ prep and cook, only to find no sign of them in the flat. Instead, there was George sitting on one of the black sofas with Shelby Deedes, who looked very comfortable with her short legs crossed, a mug of tea in her hand and a plate of biscuits conveniently close beside her. They weren’t talking,
but both stared at Trish as she took off her coat. Their expressions were self-conscious enough to suggest they’d only just stopped discussing her.
‘Hi,’ she said, trying not to feel that something important was being negotiated behind her back. ‘No boys?’