Orkney Twilight Page 5

  ‘I won’t do it again,’ she said. ‘Get caught, that is.’

  A flash of concern crossed his face. ‘You’ve got to be more careful, you know.’

  What did he mean? Was that a general warning or was he talking about something specific? She half considered mentioning the Rover with the south London registration, but when she thought about it, tried to grasp the concern, there was nothing to say: shadows in the night, paranoid delusions, too much Red Leb.

  ‘You don’t tell any of your mates about my work, do you?’ It wasn’t the first time he had asked that question.

  ‘Of course not. Well, I mean obviously I have to tell them something, so I tell them you are a plainclothes cop. A detective.’ One of Jim’s tricks: don’t lie; just don’t reveal the whole truth. Omission rather than commission.

  She waited, expecting more; a dig, extraction of penalties at the very least, but there was no further comment. He re-erected his newspaper barrier and flicked it into an impenetrable double-page spread.

  She poked at her bowl of muesli. Ate in silence.

  Jim folded the paper, placed it on the table, pushed his chair back, stood up to leave. He hesitated. ‘So I hear you’re coming with me to Orkney,’ he said.

  ‘You heard wrong. I’m not.’

  ‘Are you bringing a friend?’

  ‘Definitely not. None of my friends want to spend a week with you.’

  He laughed to himself as he left. The dog emerged from under the table, snarled and sauntered off into the kitchen. She picked up the newspaper, had a quick flick through the pages to find the cryptic crossword. Araucaria. Her favourite. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and stared at the space where Jim had been standing. It wasn’t like Jim to pass up an opportunity to be by himself, escape. The childhood holidays in Orkney had been rare times when she and Jim had hung around together, trekking off to visit the Neolithic ruins that littered the islands while her sisters went elsewhere with Liz. They had pretended they were archaeologists, trying to reconstruct the life of Skara Brae’s inhabitants from the debris that the villagers had left behind; a dish of ochre-red pigment, the skull of a bull, fish bones, shells. At Maeshowe she had squirmed with embarrassment when the guide had told them about the Viking’s rude runes carved on the stone walls of the burial chamber. ‘Thorni fucked. Helgi carved.’ Jim had been amused. Funny, he had said, that a bit of mindless graffiti ended up being an important historical record, somebody’s off-guard thoughts bringing the past to life. Being an archaeologist, Jim reckoned, was like being a detective, digging down through the layers, sifting through the soil, the rubble, the middens. Searching for clues about long-vanished people. Those trips with Jim had always been interesting. He had, she suspected, found it easier to spend time with her when she was younger, less likely to challenge his commands. She wasn’t quite sure now whether she should be flattered or alarmed by his willingness to let her tag along on his trek north.

  4

  They were stopping at Ruth’s house in a shabby corner of south London on the way to the station. Ruth had phoned that morning; a back-garden fence had collapsed in the night under the weight of an overgrown jasmine. The neighbours had unleashed a torrent of foul-mouthed bilge when she had said the repair might have to wait. Ruth had retreated, locked the doors and phoned Jim. He promised they would drop by that afternoon – the train didn’t leave until the evening. He would fix the fence and the neighbours.

  Ruth was a Parsi, born in Bombay, exact date unknown, although she was undoubtedly ancient with a face that had been as wrinkled as a walnut for as long as Sam could remember and wispy grey hair that barely covered her scalp. Ruth was Sam’s unofficial godmother; she had slipped into the unfilled vacancy through mutual agreement. When Sam had told Liz about the arrangement, she said she wasn’t sure it was possible to have a Zoroastrian godmother, but Jim had decreed that religious affiliation was a piffling irrelevance and had waved all objections aside with a flick of his hand. Ruth was a rare window on Jim’s past. Ruth had arrived in Stepney decades earlier with a suitcase full of the family silver and an encyclopaedia in her head. She had befriended Jim when he was a rookie cop on the beat in the East End and she was in charge of the local library. Later, when she had saved enough, Ruth had moved south of the river.

  The sun was blasting Ruth’s treeless street as they pulled up outside her home and had triggered the annual swarm of flying ants. Newly hatched insects were spewing from the cracks in the baking pavement, unfurling translucent wings before launching themselves into the air in a kaleidoscope of dancing dots. Jim swaggered round to sort out the neighbours, unbothered by the insect plague. She made a dash for Ruth’s back door, swatting at the irritating critters as she went.

  ‘They are God’s creatures too. I suppose,’ Ruth said, assessing the black swarm as she motioned Sam inside.

  They sat in silence, wilting in the kitchen’s heat, rice bubbling on the stovetop, listening for signs of trouble. Sam cringed as she imagined Jim jabbing his finger provocatively. Ten minutes passed, maybe more, before he returned looking pleased with himself. The neighbours had backed off, apologized even. Jim said he would have a word with the governor at the local cop shop and make sure the bobbies on the beat kept an eye out for her. Ruth told him not to bother. She seemed content with the immediate victory, unconcerned about the long-term peace. Perhaps she didn’t foresee a long term, Sam speculated as she crunched on grains of pilaf and Ruth talked about her funeral arrangements.

  ‘I want a Zoroastrian funeral.’

  The last time Ruth had visited their house she had talked endlessly about the details of her will. The solicitor. The executor. The solicitor again. And now it was her funeral. At least it was more interesting than the paperwork. Jim suggested gleefully that they could build a tower in the back garden and put her body in it so the crows could come and clean the bones. The customary Zoroastrian way.

  ‘That would really please the neighbours,’ Jim said.

  Ruth laughed. Jim seemed to be the only person who could say anything to Ruth these days without aggravating her.

  ‘A tower won’t be necessary,’ Ruth said. ‘Lewisham crematorium will be fine.’

  The cemetery was visible from the mainline to Charing Cross: row upon row of neat white tombs jammed between Grove Park and Hither Green, a daily reminder of the last stop for all commuters. The idea of a Zoroastrian funeral there seemed incongruous to Sam, although it clearly didn’t bother Ruth.

  ‘All the elements have to be present. Fire. Air. Water,’ she said. ‘Will you sort it out?’ She looked at Jim.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘If I’m still around.’

  God, they were trying to out-compete each other now on the morbidity stakes.

  ‘Sam will see to it,’ he said. ‘She’ll make sure you have a good funeral.’

  Sam folded her sweaty arms. ‘What if I go before either of you?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, child,’ Ruth said. Irritable again. Sam wanted to argue, but she couldn’t quite be bothered in the soporific heat of the afternoon.

  Jim announced he was going to fix the fence, departed to the back garden. Sam grabbed her opportunity in his absence.

  ‘Do you have a book of Norse myths I could borrow?’ she asked.

  Ruth glared. ‘Didn’t I give you a book of Norse myths once for a birthday present?’

  Ruth was right, she had. Norse myths: typical Ruth present. The volume of Norse myths was the first book that Ruth had ever given Sam and almost the last, because she had mislaid the slim paperback shortly after receiving it and Ruth had judged her carelessness with reading matter to be bordering on sacrilegious. She had been forgiven, eventually. And every June since then some esoteric volume that Ruth considered to be essential reading had materialized: Legends of Eastern Lands, Greek Gods, Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight, Beowulf. That year’s present hadn’t yet arrived. She reminded Ruth that she had mislaid the book of Norse myths a long time ago. Ruth sc
owled and Sam thought she was about to be re-reprimanded for her carelessness when she was six, but Ruth had something else on her mind.

  ‘The Golden Bough. Have you read it?’

  Sam shook her head; she had seen the title before in a footnote to one of her A-level English Literature texts. She could name the author, but had only a vague idea what the book was about.

  ‘If you are interested in mythology you should read The Golden Bough. James Frazer. He looks at the origins of Western myths. Explains how they have evolved.’

  Sam nodded and smiled in what she thought was a congenial manner.

  Ruth glared at her through opalescent eyes. ‘What’s wrong with you anyway?’ she demanded.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You seem anxious. Are you in some kind of trouble?’

  Sam hesitated. She could tell Ruth about trespassing at Greenham, her fears that she had been identified, Jim’s strange declaration at her birthday dinner that had knocked her off-kilter, made her feel slightly out of control. A moth to the flame. Unable to pull away even though she feared the heat. It would be a relief to tell somebody. Instead she shrugged. ‘No. I’m not in any trouble. Not as far as I know.’

  Ruth raised an eyebrow, levered herself unsteadily up from the chair, ordered Sam to follow her to the front room.

  A shaft of dust-speckled light sliced through the gap in the half-drawn curtains and fell on a forlorn landscape of unwanted household objects: pairs of knotted-together shoes of the black and flat variety that Ruth always wore; battered books; assorted, barely used kitchen appliances. Everything was to be organized and stacked, ready for a local charity collection. Sam sighed. Ruth folded her arms. Sam squatted on the floor, rummaged around among the jumble, poked at the books, picked up a box of paste jewellery, pulled out a ring topped with a gaudy red plastic ruby, rubbed it, put it down again when she realized Ruth was eyeing her with patent irritation.

  ‘You’ll miss your train at this rate.’

  She left Sam alone to get on with it.

  It took Sam half an hour to bring order to Ruth’s discarded chattels. She called to her godmother when she had finished the task. Ruth returned, clutching a tatty paperback. She surveyed Sam’s work critically. Nodded grudging approval.

  ‘Here, I suppose you can have this,’ she said. She held out the volume she had been carrying. ‘It bills itself as a history of the Vikings. I’m not entirely convinced. The author doesn’t seem to see the need for references. I suspect it might be more fiction than fact.’ She sniffed. ‘But you can have it if you want.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Sam took the book. ‘I’ll just go and put it in my backpack.’ She buried it in among her other belongings quickly before Jim had a chance to spot it. She didn’t want to give him any reason to suspect that she was digging around, looking for connections between his outburst about Operation Asgard and their trip to Orkney.

  They drove northwest in the glare of the late afternoon sun. The combination of heat and Jim’s driving making her feel slightly sick. Jim insisted on throwing the Cortina around the seedy, litter-strewn backstreets of south London, swerving around corners, speeding up, suddenly braking, diving down side turnings at the last minute. Why did Jim always have to drive as if he were in a car-chase? Christ, maybe they were being shadowed. She glanced into the wing mirror, trying to see if there was a suspicious car tailing them. An innocuous dirty green Volvo estate hugged their bumper, four heads of varying heights just visible: a family. Stupid; of course they weren’t being trailed.

  Around the common, past Mrs Dee’s Chinese restaurant where the best spare ribs in south London were to be found, according to Jim, heading for the river. She peered through the iron girders of Battersea Bridge as they crossed the grey smear of the Thames at low tide. The bullhorn handles of a BMX bike poked upwards from the kippled beach of broken glass and plastic pebbles. A solitary figure patrolled the shoreline, waving his metal detector optimistically. The black arrow of a cormorant shot out from under an arch, flying downstream towards St Paul’s and the ominous cumulonimbus tower building in the east.

  ‘Which is your favourite bridge?’ she asked.

  Jim paused to consider. ‘Vauxhall. I like Vauxhall best.’

  Jim often backed the underdog. Unless there was any danger it might bite his ankle, and then he kicked it.

  ‘What’s so great about Vauxhall?’

  ‘It has a particular atmosphere, Vauxhall.’

  He jerked his head over his shoulder. ‘I reckon Vauxhall has always been a bit of a hot spot, a crossing point. It’s where the Effra and the Tyburn dump out into the Thames. Places where rivers meet are always… sacred. Gateways to the other side.’ He glanced wistfully over his shoulder at the south bank.

  On the north side, the Cortina edged along the polluted streets of Chelsea. She checked the car behind: still the Volvo. The road bent slightly to the left and now the cars behind the Volvo came into view: a navy Renault, a red Peugeot and behind the Peugeot, a black Rover. She peered into the wing mirror but the car was at the wrong angle to make out the numberplate. She glanced at Jim. He was staring straight ahead, keeping his eye on the road now, muttering about the smear of squashed insects on the windscreen. They swung right at a set of traffic lights. The Volvo peeled off to the left. The Peugeot turned right behind them. So did the Rover.

  ‘Is that car following us?’ she asked,

  ‘Which car?’

  ‘The one behind the Peugeot. The black Rover.’

  He didn’t check the mirror. ‘Nope,’ he said.

  Had he clocked it already? Dismissed it? Anyway. Black Rover. There had to be more than one of those in the world.

  She faced forwards again, beginning to feel relieved that they had almost made it to the station without engaging in a slanging match.

  ‘So what about this friend of yours, then?’ Jim demanded. ‘The one that’s tagging along.’

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Yes. Him. What does he do?’

  ‘He’s just finished his A-levels; like me.’

  ‘Then he’s going to university in September.’

  ‘No. He’s taking a year out.’

  ‘A year out? So he’s taking it easy in between farting around at school and doing bugger all at college.’

  Jim slowed down for an amber light.

  ‘No, he’s looking for work experience that might help him with his career.’

  ‘What career is that then?’

  ‘He wants to be a journalist.’

  Jim slammed his foot on the accelerator, sped across the junction as the light turned red.

  ‘What did you do that for? You could have killed us.’

  Jim ignored her. ‘So he’s a journalist,’ he said. ‘A bloody gongfermor. A night-time trawler of cesspits.’

  ‘I said he wants to be a journalist,’ she replied, backtracking from what, she surmised from his reaction, was not the best career choice for someone he was about to share a holiday cottage with.

  ‘Wants to be – is. Same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. It’s like me saying I want to be a barrister.’

  ‘You don’t want to be a bloody barrister, do you?’

  ‘I was just trying to illustrate the difference between having an aspiration to be a journalist and actually being a journalist,’ she said, with exaggerated patience. ‘Anyway, what’s wrong with being a barrister?’

  ‘Barristers. Bunch of crooks. Masters of pettifoggery.’

  ‘I thought they were on the same side as you.’

  Jim puffed out his cheeks and shook his head at the naïveté of his daughter.

  ‘Are there any careers you do approve of?’

  He sucked his teeth. ‘I’ll think about that one.’

  ‘Thanks. Might be useful to know.’

  She stared out of the window. Why on earth was she asking a secret policeman for careers advice?

  They crawled past the Kensington Olympia exhibition centre. The Mind, Body
and Soul experience.

  ‘You won’t say anything to your mate about…’ Jim said.

  ‘No, I won’t say anything.’ How the bloody hell did he think they were going to manage a week crammed into a holiday cottage together without anyone talking about what Jim did for a living? She took a deep breath. There was a whiff of hot-weather bad drains in the air.

  ‘Journalist on the make. Now that is bad news,’ Jim said. ‘You’d better check what he’s got in his pockets when we leave.’

  She muttered ‘piss off’ under her breath.

  Stuttering down the slip road to the station, she peered in the rear-view mirror and spotted the Rover gliding smoothly past like a shark. Maybe she was just being paranoid after all. They parked.

  ‘Get your bag out the boot,’ said Jim. He handed her the car keys, started fiddling with something under the driver’s seat.

  She hauled herself out of the Cortina, walked around to the back, opened the boot. He had dumped his haversack on top of her bag. She leaned over, reached in, knocked her knuckle against a hard object in the front of his haversack, retracted her hand. Froze. Eyes locked. Half an inch of rag-wrapped dull black metal sticking out from the loosely buckled pocket. Not much. But enough. Pistol. She didn’t have to look twice; she’d seen it before. Once. Years ago. She had wandered into her parents’ bedroom for no real reason, drawn towards Jim’s unlocked cabinet – curious – she’d never seen it unlocked before, and opened a drawer. It had been lying among the rubber bands and envelopes. She had peered over and read the word ‘WALTHER’ engraved on its side. It looked like a toy, so small and neat with its funny name. Walther. She reached out to touch. And just then Jim had shouted up from the bottom of the stairs. What the fuck was she doing? She knew she wasn’t allowed in their room. She had better move her arse out of there pretty bloody quickly. She had legged it, more scared by the threat of a bollocking from Jim than by the danger of a gun. The very next day she had been watching the six o’clock news with her sisters and there was a story about the lead singer of this American pop group. Chicago. Accidentally killed himself with his own shotgun. Don’t worry. It’s not loaded. So he had said just before he pulled the trigger, according to the newsreader. She had burst into tears and Helen had whacked the back of her head, told her not to be such a big cry-baby, blubbing about nothing. She felt like crying now, although she knew she wouldn’t, knew that she could fight down the prickling tears of anger. What was he doing taking a pistol with him? In his haversack. On a journey with her. And one of her mates. Christ, what kind of a trip were they on?