The Light of Day: A Novel (14 page)

37

Marsh looked at me for a long time. His face was tight and hard as if he had me at his mercy.

Even tired teachers can make you squirm. Even kind-looking cops can give you a rough time. The power policemen have (why some of them join). The power that leaves them when they leave the Force.

Your last case. You can run with it any way. You’ll be out in the clear soon.

Then his face went soft. It had that look of someone who needs to make a leap.

It must have been about one in the morning. My statement was still resting on the table, under his hands. He pushed it towards me.

“Okay,” he said, “I think that’ll do. Sign.”

38

I park the car in the usual spot. Not quite one-fifteen. Over two hours to spare. But it’s a lengthy process, they don’t make it easy for you. You learn to build in time. The Parcels Office first, always a performance, then the visit itself. Report to the Gate and wait. Allow a good hour. And if you want to eat . . .

You learn to make a day of it. It only comes once a fortnight. Plenty of times when (without a grave to visit first) I’ve been earlier still, and gladly. Just to be near.

And never a time when I don’t think, locking the car: one day I’ll do this for the last time. One day I’ll walk away from the car and when I walk back I won’t be alone.

These routines that become part of us, like a sleeve, a skin. Climbing the stairs at the office. Rita with the kettle already boiled.

When you have a subject for surveillance, you have to learn their habits, their regular routes, so as to know when they step out of line.

Though this hasn’t always been my route. For nine months it was Essex—day trips to Southend. Then, by a fluke, back here. And she could be shipped out again, we know, at any moment. No rhyme or reason.

But if it happens, I’m ready. I’ll go. I’ve learnt where they all are, the ones that take female lifers, second stage, third stage. The points on your map.

I slip off my seat-belt and reach under the dash. A large brown envelope, unsealed. It’s been there all day. My latest offering, my fortnight’s work—to be opened and examined, of course, before it’s passed on. I don’t mind. I’m used to it. They can read every page, every word if they want. They’re not love letters, not exactly. Twice-monthly reports from the world.

They can chuckle and think what they like. The female screws—screwesses, screwardesses.

Georgie-Porgie, coming back for more.

And an envelope, usually, to pick up. Drop and collect. My previous delivery, with my teacher’s response. But Sarah doesn’t have so much to report. The routines of prison— they go without saying.

Besides, she’s writing something else: the Empress Eugénie.

(Was there a problem? Apart from the unfortunate— delay. She had a contract with a publisher, she’d already begun—and she waived any further payment. Not gainful employment. And did anyone need to know? The person who translated this book was a murderer. Murderess.)

Translators, they’re shadow-people, halfway people anyway.

And anyway it’s kept her afloat. A raft: the three of us. Her, me, and the Empress Eugénie. Not forgetting Eugénie’s old Emperor husband. The four of us. We talk about them like people we know.

“How’s the Empress today?”

I put on my coat. Inside the envelope, as well as my pages, there’s a fresh pad of blank A4 paper. She needs as much as she can get.

I slip the envelope under my arm, lock the car. I walk in the wrong direction—away from the prison. Time to spare, time to eat. The main road is five minutes away. If not a sandwich on a bench, leaving crumbs for the dead—then Snacketeria let it be.

A street of houses, houses with a prison handy. Left at the end, then right. Then I emerge into shops and traffic and crowds. Safeway, Argos, Marks and Spencer. The sun flashes off cars. There’s a tinge, a touch of coppery fire to its light. People’s faces pass like flares.

Snacketeria is packed. It’s like entering an engine room. The hiss and snort of the coffee machine, a gabble of orders being repeated. Lunches to go. A queue shuffling forward—six or seven in front of me—but I don’t mind.

Something I see in myself these days: I don’t mind waiting. I can wait. I’ve lost the knack of impatience, I don’t mind queues, procedures, jams, delays. To leave a graveyard, to buy a sandwich . . .

When you stand in line you can watch, you can notice things. When you stand in line you can think of all the other lines you could be in, all the terrible shuffling lines.

Is there a life anyway which isn’t half made of waiting? Studded with detentions? “Worth the wait.” “Give it time.” Nothing good can be hurried—like cooking. Though they’re working flat-out behind the counter in this place.

Besides: a detective’s virtue. If you don’t know how to wait, to lie in wait . . .

They know me here, by now. A regular. Every other week. And sometimes I make separate trips, just to the Parcels Office. Clothes, bits and bobs, things they’re allowed. Door-to-door service.

I reach the counter. I get a nod, a word of recognition. Whether they could guess my story is another matter.

That one? Him—with that packet under his arm? He’s just been to stand by a murdered man’s grave. Now he’s going to see the woman who killed him. In between he buys a sandwich and a cappuccino.

Chicken, rocket and roasted red pepper. They’re Spaniards here, the management. Sarah could speak their language. “Snacketeria,” a good old Spanish word.

There’s a seat free—a stool by the window. The Café Rio. This international world.

How does she get through this day? Half-past one. In my mind’s eye I see a gravestone—coppery light, the flecks in the granite like sparks—where no one will go for another year.

In twenty minutes or so I’ll head back the way I came, take a slightly different route and join another queue.

39

The Saab pulled out. I followed. Maybe a thirty-yard gap. When it turned into the busy Fulham Road I was almost nudging its bumper, anxious not to lose contact at the very start.

At night it’s not so easy to follow a car. If you slip back, all you have are the tail lights—looking like anyone else’s tail lights.

By the same token, of course, it’s harder to tell if you’re being followed. If that ever entered their minds . . .

Lillie Road . . . Fulham Palace Road to Hammersmith. Then the A4 for the M4: the route to Heathrow. Five-thirty: heavy and slow traffic to Hammersmith, which meant I could be close enough, often, to see the crowns of their heads.

And read their thoughts? If they were heading off into the night together—if they were about to make their escape— there would surely be a tingle, a pulse between them detectable even in the attitude of their heads. Whereas if they were about to say goodbye . . .

Fulham Palace Road. Past Charing Cross Hospital, where he worked—where he saw his women.

And would still work? Did his head turn, just for a moment, in spite of himself, or did he make himself look rigidly ahead?

When you follow two people—when you follow anyone—and they don’t know you’re there, it’s hard not to feel a flutter of power. As if you can decide their fate. Your foot over the scurrying beetle.

The mysterious urge to protect.

The roundabout at Hammersmith. They swung left onto the A4. Now the traffic quickened: harder to stay close. But he didn’t drive fast, he kept to the slow lane—two steady red lights. He didn’t drive like someone eager to be far away.

I think I knew it even then. She was going. She was going to leave. Some things you piece together, some things you know in your bones. He hadn’t told Sarah any lies. He was eking out the moments.

The A4, then the M4.

Even so, even so. The thing was still in
his
power, there behind the wheel. He might do something mad, as the exit for Heathrow approached. He might step on it suddenly. He might put his foot down, exceed all limits, for the sake of not letting her go.

A last wild hope. His hope? Mine? He was brooding on it, I was brooding on it—an ex-cop who’d done six months, once, on cars. Okay, sonny, if you want a race . . . Not a surveillance, a chase (wasn’t
that
why you really joined?). In the end it’s just hunting, it’s the lawlessness of the hunt.

Dyson’s face when I had to tell him: I’d exceeded limits.

And Kristina was going back—if she was going back— to where they’d ditched all the rules.

Three exits, on the motorway, before Heathrow—not counting the one for Terminal 4. The options close off rapidly, the moments whittle down. Then you get sucked into the mesh of a huge airport.

He kept to the slow lane. Indicated for the exit to “Terminals 1, 2 and 3.”

Even so, even so. Things can still happen, they can turn right round at the last minute. And there was always Plan B: that they’d pass through the departure gates together—as always intended. They’d flash their boarding cards and be gone. Why should he have driven anything but steadily and calmly if that was the plan?

The link-road from the motorway to the airport entrance. The roar of a low jet.

In my bones I knew it, they were going to part. The way the black Saab seemed to drive as gravely as a hearse, down into the tunnel under the runways, as if there was no way out.

Part of me—my bones only?—must have rejoiced. The rest of me begging to be wrong.

40

When you go to visit someone in prison it’s like a small rehearsal of the real thing, a small taste of punishment. Doors close behind you. A system—a smell—swallows you, you’re searched and counted and marked. You wonder vaguely if they’ll let you out. Then, when your time’s up, a small miracle occurs. You go back—it’s okay—the way you came. You take that simple step which for those who stay inside isn’t simple or even thinkable at all.

Everyone ought to be made to do it perhaps. A kind of education, a privilege. To know what it’s like to leave the world then be put back in it again.

I join the line at the Gate. There’s a brand-new Visitors’ Centre, just across the way, but it’s not yet up and running so we huddle like people without a home.

Familiar faces. Always the sprinkling of kids, kids without their mums, minded by someone else. Some nods, quick smiles. By and large, we’re a silent bunch—except for the kids. We haven’t come to meet each other, and it’s only by accident that we look like some special, picked group, a chosen few.

The high brick wall rears above us. There’s a hunching of shoulders, a shifting of feet—an impatience, to be let into a prison. But while we shiver in the shadows, the brickwork up above glows like the crust of a just-baked loaf. For the sun it’s no problem either—that simple step that isn’t so simple—it can just float over a prison wall.

A privilege, a chosen few. All the shuffling queues.

Except for me the privilege is in the wrong direction. The most precious moments of my life. As if I might say, when they send us out: Can’t I stay? Do I have to go? I’d gladly stay if you could find a reason, an excuse. Isn’t there something you can pin on me?

Except, small snag, this is a women’s prison. No matter what you did to get a permanent pass, you couldn’t find a way round that.

Five past three. It’s time. They open up. We edge forward, and though it’s the new, the unfamiliar faces they’re watching out for, my stomach goes, as always, into a knot. As if they might stop me, as if there’d be the stern look, the finger pointing, then flicking away. No, not you. Not you today.

My stomach tightens. But, as always, I don’t forget to fill my lungs. It’s become a ritual, a superstition, an essential preliminary. Like a diver. A lungful of free air.

As if I could hold it for all the time it takes to get through the doors and checks and searches and into the Visits Room, and only release it when our lips meet.

As if we’re allowed to kiss on the lips . . .

The screws say, “Hello, George.” You have to leave your stuff in the lockers. Pockets turned out. It’s like old times in the cop-shop. No wallets, keys, money in notes, cigarettes. They look in your shoes, they look in your mouth. Sometimes they bring in the dogs.

They frisk me quickly, more by habit than purpose, not touching certain parts. We’ve got past the jokes about all-over massage, but part of the smell of prison, there’s no doubt about it, is the smell of sex. Sex without sex.

Though it can’t be as strong, I suppose, as in a male prison. The reek of perfume at visiting time, the dolling up. The best that can be done.

Like my clients—some of them. Wafts of signals being given off. Rita sniffs them, eyes them, then lets them in. And there are all the questions you can’t ask, though you do (and they know it) in your head, and sometimes—sometimes surprisingly quickly—they answer them anyway.

You still sleep with your husband? When was the last time . . . ? So you still have sex with him, but you know, by the way he . . . ?

It’s the same when the screws feel you up: a little flurry of unspoken questions.

The last time? There hasn’t been a first.

They look at you. Well it takes all sorts.

And you’re still holding your breath.

My screw’s name is Bridget (I know some of the names). She’s firmly built and forty, and looks like a female judo expert. There must be men who fancy female prison officers. Like men (I knew some) who fancy policewomen. Women in uniform, screwardesses. A touch of discipline.

Me? I’m more teachers, these days.

Bridget says, “Hello, George. How are we?” as she pats me and I lift my arms. These days, it’s true, we’re past the silent-question stage. She looks at me these days with a sort of respect.

“Nice day out there,” she says.

And I wonder if she knows, if they all know, if they keep a special log. This was the day.

“But cold,” I say.

Just a step. But it’s another country, another world. And if you’ve come to live in it, you have to survive. There are all kinds of ways, but one way is to accept it, to want it utterly—is there anywhere else you should be? You’ve done wrong (the worst kind of wrong) and shouldn’t you be punished? Once upon a time—not so long ago—they wouldn’t even have let you live.

Wanting to be locked away. Wanting to forget that you ever walked about in that other world, far away, just beyond a wall. It never existed, you were never really there.

She used to hate me, at first. I could see it—it was terrible—in her eyes. She hated me: this outsider, this intruder—this reminder—this breaker into her space. For the first three months, in fact, she refused to see me, refused to call, though they can call. The prisoner decides, their one bit of power, the prisoner invites. Come to my place.

And of course, I feared. A crime like hers, they’d put you on close watch.

Feared, and doubted? My own feet turning cold? “Off her trolley,” Marsh had said. Feared, and couldn’t believe. Could she believe it? That it was happening. An old cop, and I’d thought, as if I didn’t know the law: she can’t get life, not life.

Letters only, my dumb letters. Letters only one way. Then one day a reply. I stared at it. Then one day that magic thing, that concession: a Visiting Order. But even when she did see me, let me see her: the look in her eyes! As if I was dead to her, she was dead to me.

He’ll stop, he’ll give this up, I’ll make him. Then I’ll be alone, then I can turn completely to stone.

I said to myself: Keep going, hold on. What did you expect? To be welcomed, rewarded, made to feel good?

I don’t want your pity, George, I don’t want your fucking charity.

It’s not what you’re fucking getting.

Me with my lungfuls of air, me about to burst. Me with the one bit of news she didn’t want to hear: whatever happened, whatever happens, you’re still
you.

Keep going.

And I wasn’t blind. I knew about prison, what it does to people. It turns them into people they never thought they were. On conviction, they go to the hospital wing. That numbness in her eyes: some of it sheer shock. Sweetheart. I wasn’t naive. It used to be my job once, my duty, to send people to prison. Now look at me, banging on the door myself.

I thought of how I’d gone to see Patel. Off the danger list. I’d wanted forgiveness. As if I’d stuck that knife in his chest myself.

Don’t give up. This will pass, it will pass. It’s only natural. Only natural: to kill the man you love—love? loved?—then to want to be dead yourself.

Not prison but burial. As if she were in that grave with him. I couldn’t drag her out. I couldn’t smuggle out earth, I could only carry in air. How many lungfuls, how many deliveries—a whole cellful?—before the hatred started to die? Before she came back to me. And back to herself.

Back to being
you.

There are times, there always will be, when you still wish you weren’t, you’d never been you. Or when you could almost believe it really was some other person, not you— how could it have been
you
?—who did what you’re supposed to have done.

But on this day, of all days, the anniversary of the day you did it, you know you can’t believe that.