The Light of Day

  But I can’t say it for him. I can only say, and I have, that I forgive her. Thousands wouldn’t, but I have. A thousand times.

  And, God knows, it was always my feeling about murder victims (I’ve seen a few): why, if they could come back, should they ever forgive? I’ve seen the victims of lesser crimes, still able to speak. Why should they ever forgive?

  Why should Patel have forgiven—Dyson or me?

  “It’s just a grave, sweetheart. I stood there.”

  The twist at the corner of her mouth tightens. What did she expect?

  There’s no grille or barrier. A plain table, chairs fixed to the floor. They let you touch, they let you hug. Once a fortnight: a hug. Of course it’s not private, there are all the others, and you’re being watched. The screws can see your every move—hear, if they want, your every word. You’re on CCTV. But, after a while, you don’t let it bother you. It’s not so different, really, from visiting in hospital. You can get a cup of tea. At some beds there are intense conversations, at others no one knows what to say.

  A play area for the kids. The squeal of babies. Some of them live here. Hospital, nursery … You might be fooled.

  She doesn’t give up. She says, “But what did you think?”

  As if I should say I thought the gravestone was looking less hard, less stony, less unforgiving.

  Or as if I should say, “I hated him. Just a bit. More than a bit. I had this—foul taste in my mouth.” But she knows that. I know. She knows that’s how I think. And how can she blame me—when she killed him—for just hating him in my head?

  “I thought: I wish you’d been there. With me, at my side.”

  The twist leaves the corner of her mouth. She smiles thinly. The ghost of a smile.

  “I was. You know that.”

  It’s how we speak of things now. The arrangement we have.

  “It was all—so clear and still. The trees, the leaves …”

  Absurd, to believe in ghosts, on such a bright clear day. But I could wish they did exist, so he could come back and say, like any self-respecting dead husband who’s been let out of his grave, “It’s okay, you two, you go ahead. Don’t mind me.”

  She can smile, even today. I must have my dad’s old knack after all.

  She didn’t always smile, of course. No place for smiles here. Wipe that smile off your face. It had to come back, like a pulse. One day, one amazing day, it was there.

  She says, “Did you say anything, George? To him?”

  “I said, ‘These flowers are from Sarah. With love.’ ”

  It’s true, I said it. (Along with all the other things I said in my head.)

  Her eyes look through me again.

  But then—if he could come back he’d have the last laugh. Go ahead! She’s yours, feel free! He’d laugh his head off.

  Or he’d just shut up and know his place. A ghost, a shadow, the perfect detective, watching. He wouldn’t let us know he was here.

  The screws stand around as if they’re on playground duty, ready with their whistles. But it’s not a game. These visits—these smiles—like cracks of light in a wall. A whole world behind. Prison takes away aura too. My gulps of air, the smell on my clothes, in my hair, of a cold dazzling November day. A little for a lot.

  “I didn’t go straight away. I had plenty of time. I went and sat on this bench, in the sun. I sat and I thought …”

  I’ve never told Sarah about my mum and dad, about Dad and Mrs. Freeman. It never ended, after all, with anyone being stabbed—except my mum, by a name.

  I don’t tell her I thought about couples. How when one goes first and gets a resting place, it begs the question …

  “I sat there, and—I did what you’ve been doing, sweetheart. I’ve been doing what you’ve been doing all day.”

  She doesn’t have to ask, she knows. I’ve been going through it bit by bit, that day, two years ago. Going over it again, like evidence. Every step, every move. Replaying it like a film.

  Half past three. The sun will be dipping outside—the band of glowing brickwork getting narrower. On this day, two years ago, I hadn’t even arrived yet outside the Fulham flat.

  On my birthday Mum used to say, to tease me: “It’s not your birthday yet”—since I was born at eleven p.m. As if I might not get a birthday before I had to go to bed, I might not get a birthday at all. Then she’d relent and smile.

  But Sarah will take it literally, precisely, I know. Every hour, every minute, every detail.

  And I’ll be doing it with her, though I wasn’t with her then, not till it was over. And I can’t be with her tonight—at eight-forty. Holding her hand.

  Still all to come, all to happen. Though I don’t tell her how I drove up, this morning, in the sunshine, to Beecham Close—with still hours to go. But couldn’t do it.

  As if I were Bob, in the clear light of day, coming back.

  Every moment, every clue. Reliving it. She was in her kitchen. I was in Departures. His hand on her neck. Every twist. Trying to find the point where the sequence might have been different, where it might have turned another way. So that this time around, at last, the third time of trying, she won’t do it.

  But I can’t be with her when it happens. Holding her hand.

  43

  Only one ticket, only one boarding card.

  So, it was settled. She was leaving.

  Only one passport too—her unfamiliar passport along with a wad of supporting documents. A small age while they were looked at. What was he hoping: they wouldn’t let her on the plane?

  I should have crumbled, maybe, crumpled like him: a pair of us now. But what I felt, in spite of myself, was the glow, the whoosh of success. As if I’d brought about this outcome, this incredible trick, all by myself. So: it was over.

  And had I really thought I’d be making that other call? They’ve flown off, the two of them. It’s just you and me now.

  Mission accomplished. Be content with being the hero of the hour, with being bathed in thanks. To love is to serve, what else is it for?

  The glow of virtue. Saint George.

  In a little while I’d speak into my phone. She’s leaving, it’s all over. Then melt into the night. Another job tomorrow.

  But for now, this rush of elation—as if, for this moment at least, I was feeling only what Sarah would feel.

  She turned from the check-in counter, holding her boarding card, as if she’d received a prize. And now you saw it: the glow in her, that she’d never expected to feel, maybe, quite so strongly or quite just then. And the cruelty of it for him: she’d never looked so beautiful.

  A concession, Sarah had said. But this was misery for him, torture. Worse than anything he’d imagined. It was obvious, it shone: she was going off to find herself. Of course. And he was losing himself. He was already like one of those lost souls, people in transit you see in airports. No place of their own.

  Already I was thinking: in a moment I’d make the call, and I’d have to lie.

  As they walked from the check-in counter they passed as close to me (a pretend-passenger, travelling light) as they’d ever pass. Close enough for me to have reached out and touched her shoulder, her hair.

  The shimmer of people.

  It was twenty to seven. Fifty minutes before the flight. Maybe thirty minutes before she’d have to board. What do you do with thirty minutes to go? What difference can thirty minutes make? They went to a coffee place—the usual clattery messy coffee place with empty cups and wrappers littering the tables, luggage parked on the floor.

  They didn’t have coffee. Neither of them turned to go to the counter. There was a moment that was almost like the beginning of a row. He gripped her arm and pulled her towards him, even as she was about to sit. They hugged clumsily, but she pulled away, as if they’d agreed not to do this, a pact—not until the very end. They sat. They looked at each other. More like pausing opponents, you might have thought, than lovers.

  I sat at a table ten yards away, twiddling someone
else’s plastic coffee spoon. He might have given, at that moment, all he had, for just one sign from her that her pain was as much as his, that she was having to tear herself from him. That at least, that—gift—at least.

  And who knows what she felt? She was the one, you saw it, who had to be tough, to hold her nerve, to get herself on a plane.

  Perhaps that clutching of his made up her mind. To shorten the agony, or hasten it—whatever. She could collapse later. To be cruel, to be merciful, or just to get it done. She would go through now. It had to be. She picked up her carry-on bag. Got up from her seat. He seemed to have lost all power.

  They walked, a little like dazed people stepping through wreckage. The battle-zone of airports. But she knew the way. She’d been here, somehow, before. He followed as if to the place where he’d be shot.

  They stopped where they could go no further without being drawn into the drift of passengers passing through into Departures. Now they were here, there was a sort of deliberateness, a ceremony to their actions. He clasped her and she clasped him, as if each wanted to fix the other to the spot for ever. It was equal, ferocious, fair.

  Somehow it ended, somehow she turned and walked. For a moment you even thought, this is something splendid, magnificent, after all. She walked as if her name had been personally called. Showed her boarding card to the man by the barrier, who smiled, waved her through (what did he know?), eyed her casually—a mockery of Bob’s stare.

  Then she passed through the gap between the partitions beyond as if onto some hidden stage. She didn’t look back. Perhaps that was agreed: no looking back. She was gone.

  And my job was truly done. Even the second unofficial part of it. To be her eyes. How would they say goodbye?

  Six forty-eight.

  But he just stood there, his back turned to me. Just stood looking at the space where she’d been. Yes, fixed to the spot. So that even when I stepped to one side and got out my phone, even as I thumbed in the number, he was still there. Even as I heard Sarah’s answering voice.

  “It’s okay, it’s all right,” I said, my voice sounding oddly like someone at the scene of an accident. It should have sounded like some magician’s.

  “She’s gone by herself. The flight to Geneva. Everything’s all right.”

  He just stood there, even as I heard Sarah’s voice—the relief, the joy, yes, the gratitude in her voice.

  “Thank you, George—oh—thank you—”

  The unmistakable sound of someone speaking through tears.

  All this I told Marsh.

  He just stood there. This is the man—I had to say it to myself—she loves.

  He stood there and stared, as if by staring he could make her walk back. Not Departures but Arrivals. All a big mistake. And he was waiting for her. The world turned inside-out.

  “And Bob?” Sarah was saying in my ear. “And Bob …?”

  At last he turned, looking like a man who’d forgotten who he was.

  “He’s on his way home to you,” I lied.

  44

  The “Nash Case.” It became a story as well as a case, it made the papers. Nothing major, soon gone and forgotten, but a small splash. If splash isn’t an unfortunate word.

  Most murders aren’t news. They happen all the time and mostly (ask an old cop) they’re bleak, grim, depressing affairs (wasn’t this?) that happen in some place where murders happen, where we don’t have to go. A war somewhere far away. A body, weeks old, dumped in a patch of waste ground. And pity the poor cop who has to deal with such stuff, then go back to a nice clean home. A wife, a kid.

  But when it happens, in the first place, in a nice clean home—not just a nice clean home but a pricey pad in the leafiest, choicest part of Wimbledon …

  There’s something just a bit pleasing about the disasters of the well-off. Look, even they go and screw it up, even they don’t lead charmed lives. So we needn’t feel so jealous, after all—let alone feel sorry for them. So—he was knocking off this foreign girl (where was she from again?) and she, the wife, didn’t like it. Well, poor her. Poor her with her luxury kitchen. We should be so lucky—being miserable in comfort.

  And she didn’t have to do it, did she, in the first place? Take that girl in, give her shelter? The stupid bitch.

  And him a gynaecologist. Raking it in. You can’t help having the thought: wasn’t he the one who had women under his knife?

  A story. A stabbing. A stabbing is always good—a nice juicy stabbing. A kitchen knife. A college lecturer and translator: words were her thing. She went and picked up a knife.

  On top of all that, the extraordinary fact, the mystery (was there any mystery otherwise?), that she did it on the very night that he’d said goodbye to the girl (where was she from?). He’d seen her onto a plane. He was coming back to her, his wife. Everything was going to be as it was. And, for God’s sake, she’d got all dressed up to welcome him. She was dressed—don’t say it—to kill.

  At that very point.

  Mystery? It was all set up. A plan. The heat of the moment? Pull the other one. And he’d had it coming, you might say—but not that. She waits till he thinks he’s safe, till he thinks he’s made his peace. Then bam! The murdering bitch.

  The Nash Case. It had all the ingredients: “Top Gynaecologist Slain By Wife.” If “ingredients” isn’t an unfortunate word.

  Since she was cooking a meal at the time—it’s how the kitchen knife came in. And wasn’t that the weirdest thing? It was his favourite meal, she said so, swore it. A meal that never got eaten, never got served. All the time she was waiting for him, all the time his last minutes (though he didn’t know it) were ticking away, she was cooking him his favourite meal. Coq au vin.

  (So how did that fit in with the plan?)

  The heat of the moment, the heat of the kitchen. A good cook. She loved to cook. And with a kitchen like that. You might see her sometimes lingering by the Fine Foods section in the supermarket.

  And that last meal, there’s no doubt about it, was lovingly, meticulously prepared.

  Coq au vin. It needs time, plenty of time. Strictly speaking, for best results, more time than even Sarah gave it (but then there was the element of surprise). A day in advance is best, so the whole thing can cook, then steep, then cook again.

  (I know a little about these things now.)

  But she began her task—did Marsh ever ask her?—early that afternoon, around the time that Robert Nash made his way to the flat in Fulham where Kristina Lazic was waiting for him.

  While the two of them were in bed together (let’s assume) for the last time—either that or preparing to flee—Sarah Nash would have jointed a good quality small chicken (forget a real cock, in Wimbledon). She would have set aside shallots, garlic, dark-gilled mushrooms, streaky bacon. Diced the bacon into little chunks.

  Amounts for two. She would have known there was a chance, a real chance—it’s how it turned out, but in a different way—that this meal would never be eaten, would go to waste. But it was as though (I can understand this) its very preparation and intention would bring about the outcome she wished. In the careful and loving cooking of a meal there is (I believe this too) a sort of healing power.

  His favourite meal. And by association hers. They’d first eaten coq au vin together, I know this now, in France on that first long car journey together—the purple Mini-Cooper—that might, who knows, have turned out differently, have all gone wrong (do I wish it had? All gone wrong—then?). Especially when on the very first day and in the middle of a summer downpour their windscreen had shattered on the outskirts of some unknown small town. So there they were, suddenly wet through and shivering, driving at a snail’s pace through a storm. And it was Sunday too—no chance of a quick repair.

  A blessing in disguise. The way things happen, get sealed. The owner of the ramshackle garage they finally found turned out to be a saint. As though here were his lost children. No, he couldn’t get a replacement till Monday afternoon. And no, he didn’t speak Englis
h (but Sarah spoke good French). But he took them to his sister-in-law (her name was Anne-Marie), who ran a little inn-and-restaurant where she herself did the cooking, and there she served them coq au vin. It might be best on a cold winter’s night but it goes down well enough on a stormy summer’s evening when you’ve been soaked to the skin. A miraculous coq au vin.

  They fell in love, really in love (it’s what she’s told me), over coq au vin. And the next morning the sun shone—and live cocks crowed—over a green, lush, hidden part of France they might never have discovered. So they stayed for nearly a week, even when the windscreen was ready. Forget St. Tropez. And that’s where Sarah first thought of learning to cook.

  She’s dreamt about that green corner of France, the restaurant, the inn—as if it only exists in a dream.

  And she would have thought about it then, on that November afternoon—already growing dark—as she set aside, of course, that other principal ingredient, the wine. A bottle of Beaune. Since although the wine is for cooking, not any old plonk will do. A mistake to skimp on the wine. The better the wine, in fact, the better the coq au vin. It’s half the secret.

  And later on she would have placed a bottle of the same wine—only fitting—on the table in the corner of the kitchen where a half-partition with a counter-top (cupboards and a shelf or two of books underneath) formed a separate cosy alcove. Along with the glasses, the napkins, the vase of flowers (freesias), the candle.

  She would have opened the bottle for breathing—it’s my guess—a little after my call. Waited still longer to light the candle.

  But earlier that afternoon she was only beginning the ritual process of cooking a classic time-honoured meal. Browning the chicken joints. Trying at that early stage not even to think, to hope, to guess. Another thing that cooking undoubtedly does—if you don’t rush it. It soothes the nerves. It occupies the mind and stops it pointlessly roaming.

  And it would have served that calming function as best it could until, come the evening, when everything would soon be made clear (when I’d already followed that black Saab into the entrance tunnel at Heathrow), she couldn’t have prevented herself looking at the clock, at the telephone, or prevented her stomach from tying itself in knots. You cook and you’re not hungry yourself. It’s sometimes how it is.