The Doorkeepers (6 page)

“You're absolutely sure you don't remember her?”

“I honestly wish I did. But, no. I'm sorry. Missing, is she?”

“You could say that. She's dead.”

“Oh, I'm really sorry. She's not that girl the police were here asking about? The American one?”

“That's right, Julia Winward. She's my sister. She
was
my sister.”

“It's a bloody tragedy,” said the woman, shaking her head. “So young, too. They come and they go, you know, thousands of them, and sometimes I feel like taking hold of them and shaking them and saying, ‘Where are you going? What on earth do you think you're going to find?' But still they come, year after year. So hopeful, you know. Backpacking round God knows where, looking for God knows what.”

“We're going to have some copies of this picture printed,” said Nancy. “Is it OK if we pin one up in here?”

“Oh, of course it is. You're very welcome. But I'll tell you what you ought to do. Make a big picture like a poster and stand outside the tube station. Just stand there, all day. If she's ever been around here, sooner or later somebody will recognize her.”

“Well, thanks, you're really kind,” said Josh.

“Don't mention it. I lost somebody once. My only son Terence. He went off to India, that was back in the Beatles days. Can't think what he was looking for. We all end up with two kids and a mortgage and a clapped-out Datsun, don't we? We don't need no maharishi to tell us that.”

She found a small lacy handkerchief in her pocket and dabbed her nose. “He died, my Terence. Hepatitis. Such a waste. All those shirts I ironed for him, for school. All those packed lunches. And they cremated him, and scattered his ashes in the bloody Ganges.”

They found a hotel overlooking West Brompton Cemetery, a real Victorian cemetery with tilting headstones and weeping angels. In complete contrast, the hotel was a seven-story concrete block with air-conditioning and new blue carpets and crowds of bewildered Japanese around the reception area. It could have been any hotel anywhere at all, and that was what Josh wanted. As they went up in the elevator he saw himself
reflected in the stainless steel doors and he thought that he looked like a ghost. His hair was tousled and his eyes were reddened and his nose looked twice as big as normal. His first day in London had left him grimy and depressed and tired, and he was desperate for a cold beer and a shower and some mindless TV.

He showered until his skin was bright pink, and then he lay on the bed in his complimentary Sheridan Hotels bathrobe watching
The Simpsons
and drinking Harp lager out of the can. It was four o'clock now, and the sun was much lower. Nancy came out of the bathroom toweling her hair. “I don't know how you can come all the way to England and watch
The Simpsons.
Apart from that, you hate
The Simpsons.”

“I know I do. But at least I can understand what they're saying. Did you bring any dental floss?”

“I forgot. We'll have to buy some.”

“They've probably never heard of dental floss in England. Or they call it something totally different, like ‘trousers', and we'll never find out what it is.”

“What are you panicking about? You never used to floss at all until you met me.”

“Of course I flossed before I met you. You're trying to make me sound like some kind of animal.”

“You
are
a kind of animal. You're more like an animal than any man I ever met. Gentle, affectionate, stupid and manic-depressive.”

“I love you, too.”

Nancy went to the window and drew back the nets, and Josh climbed off the bed and joined her. Six stories below they could see rows of small backyards, some with sheds, some with pink-blossoming trees, some with rusty automobile parts, some with fish ponds. In the distance, in the late-afternoon haze, they could see thousands of chimney pots, and turrets, and spires, and more trees. Josh had never seen a city with so many trees in it.

He picked up his A-Z. “That's south-east we're looking at, toward Fulham.”

“They call it ‘Fullum'. I heard a woman in reception.”

“All right, Fullum. And beyond Fullum is Walham Green, except they probably call it ‘Wallum'. And beyond Wallum Green is … the River Thames.” He closed the book. “I don't know whether I want to see the Thames. I keep thinking about Julia floating along it. Upstream. Empty.”

They were still staring out of the window when the news came on the television:
“In the Middle East
…
six Israelis were killed and two seriously injured
…
Police today released a new picture of the murdered woman found floating in the Thames two days ago
…
Miss Julia Winward, twenty-three, from San Francisco, California, could have been the seventh victim of a serial killer who mutilates his victims and drops them in the river at or near Southwark Bridge
…
If you knew Julia Winward or if you saw her at any time in the past twelve months, please contact New Scotland Yard on this special number
…”

“You see,” said Nancy, curling a finger around Josh's hair. “They're doing everything they can.”

“Sure,” he said. He couldn't take his eyes away from the picture of Julia on the television screen, smiling at him. He could remember the morning that he had taken that picture. He could remember it as clearly as if it had been today.

That afternoon, shortly before five o'clock, a police car came to collect them and take them to the mortuary at St Thomas's Hospital. The car was so tiny that Josh had to try three different ways of folding himself up before he managed to climb into the front passenger seat. They drove along the Embankment, and for the first time Josh saw the River Thames, shining brilliant gold in the afternoon sun.

Josh peered at it over his knees. “It's a whole lot wider than I imagined it,” he told the young constable who was driving them. “I thought it was going to be real narrow. You know, and
dirty.”

“Oh, no, sir, it's much cleaner than it used to be. They've caught salmon, right up as far as Chelsea Harbour. Mind you, I wouldn't swim in it. Too many dodgy currents.”

Josh thought of the “dodgy currents” that must have swirled Julia's body upstream, like Ophelia.

Then they were driving around Parliament Square, and he saw Westminster Abbey for the first time, and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. He always felt a sense of history in San Francisco, with the wooden houses and the cable cars, but London's history was different: older, darker, much more complicated, much more multi-layered. In a way that he had never expected, he found it threatening – as if the British knew something that he didn't know, and would never tell him what it was.

They drove over Westminster Bridge. “Earth has not anything to show more fair,” quoted the young constable.

“I'm sorry?”

“William Wordsworth, that's what he wrote about standing on Westminster Bridge.”

“William Wordsworth actually wrote that here?”

“Well, no, sir. I expect he went home and did it.”

Josh turned and looked at the constable and said, “Do you mind if I ask your name?”

“Not at all, sir. Police Constable Smart.”

“Yes,” said Josh. “I might have guessed.”

The morgue attendant switched on the closed-circuit TV camera and there she suddenly was. Her face was fluorescent gray, like all drowned people. Her eyes were open and staring straight at him, out of the screen.

“Yes,” he said. “That's her.”

DS Paul said, “Thank you, Mr Winward,” and led him out of the room.

“Is that it?” he asked her.

“Just for the moment, yes. But depending on what response we get from the public in the next thirty-six hours, we may ask you to go on television and make an appeal for witnesses. You wouldn't mind doing that, would you?”

He shook his head. He was beginning to feel badly jet-lagged and the floor kept rising and falling. Nancy said, “Let's go back to the hotel, OK? I think you've had enough for one day.”

They walked along a long, antiseptic-smelling corridor. An elderly woman approached them, pushed in a wheelchair by a hospital porter in a turban. She was so old that she was almost transparent: white hair, white skin, even her eyes were colorless. As she was wheeled past them, she whispered,
“Jack.”

Josh froze, and then turned slowly around to stare at the old woman as she was pushed away.

“Josh?” said Nancy. “What's the matter?”

“That old woman … she just said my name. Well, she said ‘Jack', anyhow.”

“Oh, come on, you're imagining it. How could she know your name?”

“I swear it, Nance. She said, ‘Jack'.”

DS Paul impatiently looked at her watch. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but I'm late for a meeting. Perhaps I can call you tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, sure, yes,” said Josh, still staring after the old woman. She was pushed through a pair of double swing doors, and then she was gone. Josh hesitated for a moment and then began to hurry after her.

“Josh!”
Nancy protested, jogging after him with her Indian bead bag slap-slap-slapping on her thigh.

Josh shoved his way through the double doors and there was the woman and her Sikh attendant, silhouetted against the window at the end of the corridor. He called out, “Pardon me!” and hurried after them. He reached the old woman just as the Sikh was about to open a door marked
X-ray Department: Authorized Personnel Only.

“I'm sorry,” said Josh, “but I believe this lady called out my name.”

The Sikh porter stared at him impassively. “She is having to go for an X-ray, sir. Excuse me.”

Josh hunkered down beside the wheelchair and took hold of the old lady's hand. The skin was thin and crinkly, like tissue
paper. She looked down at him and gave him something that could have passed for a smile. She was so old that it was impossible to tell if she had ever been really beautiful, but Josh could see that she had never been ugly.

“You said my name. Back there, in the corridor, you said ‘Jack'.”

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,” she whispered. She spoke so softly that he could barely hear her.

“How did you know what my name was? That's what my mother calls me, Jack.”

“I know what you're looking for, Jack. But you won't find it, you know. Not unless you look
here.”
She tapped her forehead with her long chalky fingernail.

“I don't understand what you mean.”

“You won't understand, either. Not unless you're nimble. Not unless you're quick.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” the porter interrupted. “This lady has to get to X-ray.”

Josh slowly stood up. Maybe the old woman hadn't really whispered his name at all. Maybe she was senile, and had simply been babbling a nursery rhyme from the days that she could still remember clearly.

“Take care,” he told her, and turned to go. But suddenly she reached out and snatched at his sleeve.

“Come on, Polly, leave the gentleman alone,” the porter smiled. “Our Polly, she's one for the men, aren't you, Polly?”

But the old woman continued to clutch at Josh's sleeve and she wouldn't let go. She fixed him with her boiled-cod eyes and hissed at him as loudly as she could manage.
“Six doors they stand in London Town. Six doors they stand in London, too. Yet who's to know which way they face? And who's to know which face is true?”

“That's enough, Polly,” said the porter, and before Josh had a chance to ask her what she was talking about, she was pushed into the X-ray department and out of sight.

“What the hell was all that about?” asked Nancy.

Josh shook his head. “I don't have any idea. It sounded like a Mother Goose rhyme.”

The Sikh porter came out again, pushing an empty wheelchair. “I'm sorry if Polly was any trouble to you. She is a very determined lady, even for one hundred and one.”

“One hundred and one? That's how old she is?”

“She celebrated her birthday last week. She is very wonderful for her age, you know. But she does like to be grabbing people.”

“Do you have any idea what she was talking about? The six doors standing in London Town?”

The porter gave Josh a dazzling smile, full of gold teeth. “I'm sorry. I never listen to anything they say. I nod my head and I say ‘yes' and ‘no' and ‘really' and ‘how terrible'. But you can't listen to them all day. You would be going doolally in your head, too.”

“It could be a Mother Goose rhyme, couldn't it …
Six doors they stand in London Town?”

The porter didn't stop smiling. “I was brought up in Punjab. I didn't speak English until I was seventeen.”

“OK, thanks,” said Josh, and together he and Nancy walked back to the front of the hospital, where PC Smart was waiting for them.

“All right, then?” he asked. “Back to Earl's Court, is it?”

“Yes, please.” It was nearly eleven o'clock already and Josh wanted to collect the photographs of Julia from the Kall-Kwik print shop.

They struggled their way through the mid-morning traffic. “Is it always as busy as this?” asked Nancy.

“It's not too bad today. At least they're not having a demonstration or a state opening of Parliament. Then it's murder.” He sat for a while, drumming his fingers on his steering wheel. Then he said, “It's not getting any worse, though. They just brought out a report that London's traffic moves at exactly the same average speed today that it did in 1899.”

“You know a whole lot about London.”

“I know a lot about a lot of things. It's my hobby, general knowledge. Here's one for you – do more people die every year from air crashes, or accidents with donkeys?”