A Delicate Truth (30 page)

If
he did that? Was the
if
delivered with greater force than she intended? Or was this merely Toby’s
imagination?

‘And come to think of it, I
don’t know what it was drove him round the fucking bend in the first place. I
never did. He’d had a
bad mission. There’d been some wrong
killing. That was my full ration. After that, I could sing for it. Maybe you and your
friend Paul know. Maybe Jeb trusted your friend Paul the way he wouldn’t trust me,
his fucking wife. Maybe the police know too. Maybe the whole fucking street knows, and
me and Danny and Harry here are the only odd ones out.’

‘Going over it won’t help,
Brigid,’ Harry said, unwrapping a packet of paper napkins. ‘It won’t
help
you
, it won’t help Danny. And I don’t expect it will help Toby
here. Will it, Toby?’ – passing him a cup of tea with a piece of sugared
shortbread on the saucer, and a paper napkin.

‘I come out the fucking constabulary
for Jeb, once we knew Danny was on his way. Lost my seniority pay and the promotion that
was round the corner. We were both off the slag heap, what with Jeb’s dad a
useless layabout and no mother, and me never knowing who my dad was, and my mother not
bloody knowing neither. But we was going to be straight, decent people if it killed us.
Got myself a course in Physical Education, all so’s we could make a home for
Danny.’

‘And she’s the best PE teacher
the school’s ever had, or likely to, aren’t you, Brigid?’ Harry said.
‘All our children love her, and Danny’s proud of her you wouldn’t
believe. We all are.’

‘What do
you
teach?’
Toby asked Harry.

‘Arithmetic, all the way up to A
level, when I’ve got the pupils, don’t I, Brigid?’ – handing her a cup
of tea as well.

‘So is your friend Mr Paul down in
Cornwall some kind of fucking psychiatrist Jeb was hooked on, or what?’ Brigid
demanded.

‘No. Not a psychiatrist, I’m
afraid.’

‘And you’re not a gentleman of
the press? You’re quite sure of that?’

‘I’m sure I’m not
press.’

‘So if you don’t mind me being
inquisitive, Mr Bell: if you’re
not press and your pal
Paul’s not a shrink, what the fuck are you?’

‘Now Brigid,’ said Harry.

‘I’m here purely
privately,’ said Toby.

‘Then what the hell are you purely
publicly
, may I ask?’

‘Publicly, I’m a member of the
Foreign Office.’

But instead of the explosion he was
expecting, all he got was a sustained critical examination.

‘And your friend
Paul
? Would
he be from the Foreign Office too at all?’ – not releasing him from her gaze,
which was wide and green-eyed.

‘Paul’s retired.’

‘And would Paul be somebody Jeb knew,
like, three years back?’

‘Yes. He would.’

‘Professionally then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And would that have been what their
summit conference was going to be about, Jeb and Paul’s, if Jeb hadn’t blown
his head off the day before? Something in the professional line, for example, from three
years back?’

‘Yes. It would,’ Toby replied
steadily. ‘That was the connection between them. They didn’t know each other
well, but they were on the way to becoming friends.’

Her eyes had still not left his face, and
they didn’t now:

‘Harry. I’m worried about Danny.
Would you kindly go over to Jenny’s a minute and make sure he hasn’t fallen
off his fucking bike. He’s only had it a day.’

Toby and Brigid were alone, and some kind of
guarded understanding was forming between them as each waited for the other to
speak.

‘So should I be calling up the Foreign
Office in London to check you out, then?’ Brigid asked in a noticeably less
strident voice. ‘Confirming that Mr Bell is who he says he is?’

‘I don’t think Jeb would have
liked you to do that.’

‘And your friend Paul? What about him?
Would
he
like it?’

‘No.’

‘And
you
wouldn’t
either?’

‘I’d lose my job.’

‘This conversation they were proposing
to have. Would it have been about a certain
Operation Wildlife
at
all?’

‘Why? Did Jeb tell you about
it?’

‘About the operation? You’re
joking. White-hot tongs wouldn’t have dragged it out of him. It stank, but it was
duty.’

‘Stank how?’

‘Jeb didn’t like mercs, never
did. In it for the ride and the money, they are. Think they’re heroes when
they’re fucking psychos. “I fight for my country, Brigid. Not for the
fucking multinationals with their offshore bank accounts.” Except he didn’t
say
fucking
, if I’m honest. Jeb was Chapel. Didn’t swear and
couldn’t drink above a couple of sips. God knows what I am. Fucking Prot,
I’m told. I’d have to be, wouldn’t I, for the fucking Royal Ulster
Constabulary?’

‘And it was the presence of
mercenaries that he didn’t like about
Wildlife
? He said that of this
particular operation?’

‘Just generally. Just mercs. Get them
off his back, he hated the buggers. “It’s another merc job, Brigid. Makes
you wonder sometimes who starts the wars these days.”’

‘Did he have other reservations about
the operation?’

‘It sucked but what the
hell?’

‘And afterwards? When he came back
from the operation?’

She closed her eyes, and when she opened
them she seemed to become a different woman – inward, and appalled:

‘He was a ghost. Washed out.
Couldn’t hold a knife and fork.
Kept showing me the letter from
his beloved regiment:
thank you and goodnight and remember you’re bound for
life by the Official Secrets Act
. I thought he’d seen it all. I thought
we both had. Northern Ireland. Blood and bone all over the street, the kneecappings,
bombings, necklace killings. Holy God.’

She took a couple of deep breaths, collected
herself and went on:

‘Till he gets the one-too-many. The
one they all talk about. The one that’s got his name on and won’t let him
go. The one-too-many bomb in the marketplace. The lorryload of kids on their way to
school that gets blown to kingdom come. Or maybe it’s only a dead dog in a ditch,
or he’s cut his little finger and it’s bleeding. Whatever it was, it was the
straw that broke his back for him. He’d no defences. Couldn’t look at what
he loved best in the world without hating us for not being covered in blood.’

Again she stopped, her eyes this time
opening wide in outrage at whatever she was seeing, and Toby wasn’t:

‘He fucking
haunted
us!’ she blurted, then clapped her hand to her lips in reproach. ‘Christmas,
we’d set the bloody table for him. Danny, me, Harry. We’d sit there gawping
at his empty place. Danny’s birthday, the same. Presents on the doorstep in the
middle of the fucking night. What the hell have we got that he’s going to catch if
he comes in? Fucking leprosy? It’s his own house, for Christ’s sake.
Didn’t we love him enough?’

‘I’m sure you did,’ Toby
said.

‘How the fuck would
you
know?’ she demanded, and sat dead still with her fingers jammed between her teeth
while she stared at something in her memory.

‘And the leathercraft?’ Toby
asked. ‘Where did Jeb get his leathercraft skills from?’

‘His fucking father, who d’you
think? A bespoke shoemaker, he was, when he wasn’t drinking himself into oblivion.
But that didn’t stop Jeb loving him rotten, and laying out his fucking
tools in the shed there like the Holy Grail when the bugger died.
Then one night the shed’s empty and the tools is all gone and Jeb with them. Same
as now.’

She turned and stared at him, waiting for
him to speak. Cautiously, he did:

‘Jeb told Paul he had a piece of
evidence. About
Wildlife
. He was going to bring it to their meeting in
Cornwall. Paul didn’t know what it was. I wondered if you did.’

She spread her palms and peered into them as
if reading her own fortune, then sprang up, marched to the front door and pulled it
open:

‘Harry! Mr Bell wishes to pay his
respects so’s he can tell his friend Paul. And Danny, you stay over with Jenny
till I call you, hear me?’ And to Toby: ‘Come back after without
Harry.’

The rain had returned. On Harry’s
insistence Toby borrowed a raincoat and noticed that it was too small for him. The
garden behind the house was narrow but long. Wet washing hung from a line. A man-gate
led to a patch of wasteland. They passed a couple of wartime pillboxes covered in
graffiti.

‘I tell my pupils they’re
reminders of what their grandparents fought for,’ Harry called over his
shoulder.

They had reached a dilapidated barn. The
doors were padlocked. Harry had the key.

‘We don’t let Danny know
it’s here, not at the moment,’ said Harry earnestly. ‘So I’ll
trouble you to bear that in mind on your return to the house. We plan to offer it on
eBay once the hue and cry’s died down. You don’t want people put off by the
association, do you?’ – giving the doors a shove and releasing a squadron of
jubilant small birds. ‘Mind you, he did a good conversion, did Jeb, I’ll
give him that. Slightly obsessive, in my private opinion. Not for Brigid’s ear,
naturally.’

The tarpaulin was fastened to the ground with
tent pegs. Toby looked on while Harry went from peg to peg, easing the cleat, then
lifting the loop off the peg till one side of the tarpaulin hung loose; then sweeping
the whole tarpaulin clear to reveal a green van, and the scrawled inscription, gold on
green,
JEB’S LEATHERCRAFT
in capitals, and beneath it in smaller
letters
Buy From Van
.

Ignoring Harry’s extended arm, Toby
mounted the tailgate. Wood panelling, some panels removed, others dangling open. A flap
table, raised and scrubbed, one wooden chair, no cushion. A rope hammock taken down and
neatly rolled. Bare, scrubbed shelves, craftsman-fitted. A smell of stale blood not
quite overcome by the stink of Dettol.

‘What happened to his reindeer
hides?’ Toby asked.

‘Well now, they were best burned,
weren’t they?’ Harry explained brightly. ‘There wasn’t that much
could
be saved, frankly, Toby, given the extent of the mess the poor man
made of himself. No alcohol involved to help him on his way, which they say is unusual.
But that’s Jeb for you. Not a man to let his hair down. Never was.’

‘And no farewell note?’ Toby
asked.

‘Just the gun in his hand and eight
bullets left in the magazine, which makes you wonder what he thought he would do with
the others after he’d shot himself, I suppose,’ Harry replied in the same
informative tone. ‘Same as him using his wrong hand. Why? you ask yourself. Well,
of course there’s no answer to that. There never will be. He was left-handed was
Jeb. But he shot himself with his right, which could be described as an aberration. But
Jeb was a shooter by trade, they tell me. Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t
he? If Jeb had put his mind to it, he could have shot himself with his own foot, could
Jeb, according to what I’m told by Brigid. Plus the fact that when you reach that
point you’re not accessible to rational argument, as we all know.
Which is what the police said, very rightly, in my opinion, me not being an expert by
a long chalk.’

Toby had found a pockmark as wide as a
tennis ball but not so deep halfway up the wood cladding and midway down one side, and
was tracing its outline with his finger.

‘Yes, well now,’ Harry
explained, ‘a bullet like that has to go somewhere, which is common sense, though
you wouldn’t believe it watching some of the films they make these days. It
can’t just vanish into thin air, can it, not a bullet? So, what I say is, fill the
hole with your Polyfilla, rub it down, paint it over, and with any luck it won’t
notice.’

‘And his tools? For his
leathercraft?’

‘Yes, well that’s an
embarrassment to all concerned, his father’s tools are, Toby, same as his
ship’s stove, which was worth a bob or two of anybody’s money. First on the
spot was the fire brigade, I’m not sure why, but clearly somebody summoned them.
Then along come the police, then the ambulance. So you don’t know whose light
fingers were to blame, do you? Not the police, I’m sure. I’ve great respect
for our guardians of the law, more than what Brigid’s got, to be frank, her having
been one. Still, that’s Ireland for you, I suppose.’

Toby supposed it was.

‘He never grudged me, mind. Not that
he had the right. You can’t expect a woman like Brigid to do without, can you?
I’m good to her, which couldn’t always be said for Jeb, not if we’re
honest.’

Together they closed the tailgate, then
together hauled the tarpaulin back over the van and together tightened the guy
ropes.

‘I think Brigid wanted another quick
word with me,’ Toby said. And for a lame explanation: ‘Something to do with
Paul that she felt was private.’

‘Well, she’s a free soul, is
Brigid, same as all of us,’ Harry said
heartily, patting
Toby’s arm in comradeship. ‘Just don’t listen too hard to her views on
the police is my advice. There’s always got to be somebody to blame in a case like
this, it’s human nature. Good to see you, Toby, and very thoughtful of you to
come. And you don’t mind my saying this, do you? I know it’s cheeky. Only,
should you happen, just by chance, but you never know, to bump into somebody who’s
looking for a well-maintained utility vehicle converted to a high standard – well, they
know where to come, don’t they?’

Brigid was curled into a corner of the sofa,
clutching her knees.

‘See anything?’ she asked.

‘Was I meant to?’

‘The blood was never logical. There
was splashes all over the rear bumper. They said it was
travelled
blood.
“How the hell did it travel?” I asked them. “Through the fucking
window and round the bloody back?” “You’re overwrought, Mrs Owens.
Leave the investigating to us and have a nice cup of tea.” Then another fellow
comes over to me, plain clothes from the Met, posh-spoken. “Just to put your mind
at ease, Mrs Owens, that was never your husband’s blood on the bumper. It’s
red lead. He must have been doing a repair job.” They did the house over too,
didn’t they?’