The Revelations (27 page)

‘Hello, sport.’

‘Hello.’ Marcus heard his voice come out low and cold. He tapped the box in his pocket again. ‘I lost my keys last night. I thought you might have left Abby’s lying around.’

A flicker of worry crossed Mouse’s face.

‘I had it with me. Here you go.’ He reached into his pocket and threw Marcus the key. He set down a copy of the tabloid newspaper that had published an article about Lee’s disappearance.

‘I read it on the Tube. It’s rubbish, total nonsense.’ He paused. ‘Where did you get to last night? I was looking for you everywhere. You were out by the fire with the Lee-girl and then you were gone. I ended up going to sleep down the back of a sofa while Hugo Carrington had sex on top of it. Not my idea of fun.’

There was a silence. Mouse pulled another key out of his pocket, inserted it in the control panel by the steps leading up to the deck, and flicked a switch. The lights came on. Marcus drew out the box.

‘What’s this, Mouse? Where did you get these earrings?’

Mouse stared at him, his eyes wide with panic. Marcus tipped the earrings out onto the table where they rolled for a while and then stopped. Mouse and Marcus looked at each other for a moment longer, and then Mouse turned and ran up the steps to the deck. The boat rocked as he jumped to the shore. Marcus unwrapped the blanket from around his feet and stood up. He pulled on his jacket, slipping the earrings into his pocket. He couldn’t find his shoes. He charged into the study at the stern of the boat. His shoes were hanging on the back of a chair. He slipped them on and ran out into the rain.

Mouse was already out of sight. Marcus sprinted in the direction of Ladbroke Grove, slipping every so often on the muddy path. The rain tore at him as he ran, pricking pins and needles on his scalp. A bicyclist coming in the other direction swerved to avoid him. He lengthened his stride, knowing that he would catch Mouse eventually. Mouse was no athlete. As he rounded the bend by the gasworks, he saw Mouse far ahead. He was moving quickly, in spite of his awkward, waddling gait. His head was down and he pumped his arms out to the sides. A flock of pigeons that had been sheltering in the overhang outside Sainsbury’s rose into the air as Mouse ran past. Mouse turned to look back and Marcus could tell that he had seen him. Marcus watched as Mouse’s pudgy form made its way up the slope towards the road, then over the bridge and north towards Kensal Green.

Marcus reached the bridge just in time to see Mouse turn left onto the Harrow Road. Marcus’s loafers were not made for running and he thought about discarding them, then plunged forward, over the bridge and down the hill towards the traffic lights. A bus roared past him and he saw the face of a child at the window, a young girl of seven or eight who beamed at the sight of the gangly man barrelling down the road in the pouring rain, his bobbing head pointing upwards, his jaw clenched with the strain. When Marcus rounded the corner onto the Harrow Road, Mouse was gone.

Marcus sprinted up the road, thinking that Mouse might have disappeared down one of the side streets leading northwards. But they were empty, and there was nowhere obvious to hide. Marcus turned wildly around, looking for a flash of motion. He heard the sound of falling rubble. He looked up. Mouse was climbing over the crumbling wall of the cemetery. He had shinned up as soon as he turned the corner, and was there, ten feet above Marcus, looking down on him. Marcus stared into his friend’s wild, bulging eyes.

‘Why are you running? Did you kill her?’

‘Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t kill her.’

Marcus could see that Mouse was crying. His lip trembled as he looked down at Marcus, then he let himself drop down onto the grass the other side and ran off into the grey maze of tombstones.

Marcus began to climb the wall. He tried to keep his eyes on Mouse as he clambered up the brickwork, using the scaffolding that held the tumbledown wall together for handholds, but he lost the small figure as it moved into the shadow of a line of cypress trees. Marcus reached the top of the wall, swung his legs over, and let himself drop onto the soft earth the other side. He ran in the direction of the trees.

The noise from the roads around disappeared very quickly as Marcus made his way down a gentle slope into the heart of the cemetery. An avenue ran between high family mausoleums, obelisks and statues. At the end of the road a chapel stood on a grassy hill, stone steps leading up to a dramatic columned portico. It looked more like a stock exchange than a church. Marcus walked along the path, kicking at piles of damp leaves, scanning the ground that fell away to his left for any sign of Mouse. When he came to the chapel, he climbed the steps and looked down over the graves. Nothing moved. A blackbird, startled by his approach, made a break for cover, spiralling across the lawn in front of the chapel and into a patch of brambles. Below the chapel, the graves clustered thickly together. Some were very old, and the shifting of the ground over time had broken the ancient stones, so that they slumped forward or leaned perilously against each other. Marcus walked through the chapel’s empty courtyard, where his footsteps echoed in the silence, and down the steps the other side.

It grew wilder as he descended further into the cemetery. He could see the line of poplars that grew along the canal in the distance, and knew that this was the boundary of the graveyard, but there was no other indication that he was anywhere but deep in the country, in an endless labyrinth of tombs. The sky grew darker still. Marcus found himself at a dead end as the path he was following became overgrown with brambles. He tried to force his way through, scratching his fingers, leaving red lines on the back of his hands that swelled white around the edges. He turned around and headed back up the hill. Mouse couldn’t hide forever. Marcus wondered if he should go to the police. He felt for the earrings in his pocket and rolled them between finger and thumb.

He was walking between rows of highly ornate vaults when he heard a noise. The tomb next to him had huge carved sphinxes at each corner. Marcus stepped up onto the head of one of the sphinxes to get a better view. The only movement was the swirling of the rain and the leaves which continued their endless fall. Marcus climbed down and continued along the dark avenue. He heard the sound of a twig breaking.

‘Mouse,’ Marcus called out. ‘Is that you? Come and talk to me. I’ll help you.’

There was no response. Marcus thought he saw something move between two gravestones ahead of him, a flash of dark material and skin. He ran. His tired mind began to panic; the presence of so much death brought images of his father to his mind. The coffins seemed to rear up above him, closing in under the night-black sky. He slipped and landed heavily on a pile of dead leaves, which were slimy to the touch. He lay for a moment, his chest pounding, his breaths coming fast and jagged like the firing and reloading of a gun. He struggled to get to his feet, reached out and pulled himself up on a gravestone, felt the cold dead certainty of the marble beneath his fingers. He began to run again.

The rain started to fall more heavily. The drops felt like hailstones against Marcus’s skin. He ran between lines of ancient graves until he came to a fork in the path. He took the right-hand branch. The pounding rain reduced his visibility to a few yards, but still he turned to look over his shoulder, searching for a dark shape against the misty grey air. He ploughed onwards. Finally, indistinctly, he thought he saw the block of the youth hostel rising above the wall. He increased his speed, tripped over a gravestone and sprawled once again on the damp ground. His clothes were soaked through, his knees and elbows muddy and torn. Picking himself up, he jogged the
final
few steps into the shadow of the hostel. He stood, resting against the cold stone of the cemetery wall.

Marcus followed the wall along until he came to the main gates. He was breathing heavily, his heart thumping horribly loudly in his chest. He crossed the road and sat steaming in a cafe, drinking scalding coffee until he felt warm enough to face the prospect of the bus home.

Marcus could hear Darwin as he stood in the lift. The plangent yelping grew louder as he opened the front door. He stepped into the flat and the dog launched himself at him, licking his hands and turning delighted circles around his feet. Marcus leaned down to pat him, then went through to the kitchen to refill the water bowl. He poured out some bone-shaped biscuits, which the dog devoured, snuffling and whimpering as he ate. Marcus saw that there was a stringy turd in the middle of the drawing-room carpet, and dark patches of piss dotted around the rest of the flat. He put on rubber gloves, reached under the sink for a sponge and bucket, and set to work cleaning up after the dog.

It felt strange to be doing something so mundane as housework after the morning’s events, but Marcus wanted to put off the decisions that he knew he would have to make, needed to fend off the thought that Mouse might be responsible for Lee’s disappearance. When he had finished scrubbing, Marcus took Darwin downstairs and let him run around the small patch of grass at the back of the block of flats. He threw a stick for the dog, which he pounced upon and then tried to bury, unsure of what was expected of him. He stared up resentfully at Marcus when he picked up the stick, until he threw it again and the sequence was repeated. Marcus found himself smiling at the dog’s mindless enthusiasm. It was still drizzling, but the ferocious wind had passed, and a number of times the sun broke through the low clouds, sparkling on the wet grass.

Back in the flat, Marcus ran himself a bath and stripped off his damp, dirty clothes. It would be the first time he had missed a Sunday morning service in several months. A dull ache nagged at the back of his throat. When he had soaked some warmth into his chilled body, Marcus hunted in the medicine cabinet until he found a packet of Abby’s sleeping tablets and some painkillers. He gulped down a handful of pills, closed his bedroom curtains, and passed out on the bed. He woke a couple of times during the day, and managed to stagger to the kitchen and feed Darwin on one occasion, but didn’t rise properly until it was dark outside.

Marcus made himself bacon and eggs and sat down at the dining table with his computer in front of him. He hadn’t checked his emails since Friday, and it was another thing to occupy his time before he had to think about Mouse. He turned on the machine and ate while it warmed up. When he logged into his account, he saw with a mixture of pleasure and trepidation that there was an email from Abby titled ‘NYC’. He opened it and began to read.

Marcus read the email again and felt a hard knot of shame build in his stomach. He pictured Rebecca lying back naked on the beanbag, saw the childish amusement in her eyes as he licked his way up her leg. It seemed so long ago, though. So much had changed since then, Rebecca seemed like a character from a bizarre dream. He shut his computer and stared out of the window.

He would have to speak to Mouse. He owed it to his friend to give him a chance to explain. Perhaps Lee had given him the earrings before she disappeared, perhaps he had found them going through her possessions and was ashamed to have taken them. Marcus dialled Mouse’s mobile. There was no response. He left a message.

‘Mouse. It’s me. Listen, we need to talk. I want to hear your side of the story. Just tell me where you got the earrings and it can stay between us. No one else needs to know. Give me a call, Mouse. Please.’

Marcus hung up the phone and stretched out on the sofa. He opened up his computer again and found the article about Lee in the newspaper’s online edition. The piece contained very few facts, and hinted with many
allegedly
s and
supposedly
s and carefully hedged words that Lee killed herself because the Course was a cult that sought to control the lives of its followers. The newspaper would get a call from the Course’s lawyers, despite the careful manner in which it presented the story. Marcus read it once more and then drifted off to sleep. He woke after a couple of hours and stumbled to bed. Darwin, yawning, came too and curled up at his feet as he slept.

On Monday, Marcus kept his mobile in constant view. He found his work particularly dull that day as he trawled through further documents relating to the legal wrangle between Plantagenet Partners and the Chinese bank. The case was growing increasingly murky. It seemed to him that the hedge fund had acted recklessly and criminally, and now he was being asked to help them cover their tracks. He was surprised, when reading through one of the documents, to see the Earl’s name. He searched through the files on his computer and realised that the Earl was one of the initial backers of the shady hedge fund, and was now a non-executive director of the business. He wondered if the Earl knew the details of the case.

He could hardly muster the energy to care, though. Partly his boredom was driven by the anticipation of speaking to Abby, partly by the recollection of Rebecca’s response to his description of his life. Marcus knew that he was wasting his talents at the law firm, but the money was so good. He walked out for lunch feeling dejected, sniffing as he attempted to fight off the cold that sat threateningly behind his eyes.

Mouse hadn’t called by the time Marcus left the office at seven. Marcus went for a beer with some of his colleagues after work, then walked towards Moorgate. He made his way down into the Tube, determined to call Mouse when he came out at Notting Hill Gate. He sat on the swaying train half-reading a novel and wondering what he’d do if Mouse didn’t telephone. When he came out into the damp West London night, his answerphone alert was flashing. He dialled it as he walked towards his flat.

‘Marcus, it’s Mouse. I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier. I’m sorry about yesterday in the cemetery. I’m sorry about everything. But I can’t tell you how I got the earrings. Please just believe me, sport, I didn’t kill Lee. I’m going to go away for a while. Don’t turn your back on me now, Marcus. Please.’

Marcus listened to the message again and then saved it. He opened the door to his flat, fed Darwin, and sat down to call Abby. She answered almost immediately, her voice full of childish pleasure.

‘Oh, darling, it’s you. Your number doesn’t come up. How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

‘No you’re not. What’s wrong?’

He took a deep breath. ‘A lot of things have been happening, Abby. To do with Lee. I don’t really know what I should . . . I found her earrings, Abby. I found them on Mouse’s boat.’

‘Tell me all about it. Start at the beginning and take me through what happened.’

Marcus told her about meeting Daffy in east London and then going on to the artist’s party. He skipped over the episode with Rebecca, but then described finding the earrings in the tortoiseshell box and his pursuit of Mouse across the graveyard. Finally, he related Mouse’s answerphone message. Abby was silent for a while.

‘I believe him, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know. I stayed the night on the boat on Thursday and I just got the feeling that he was hiding something, that there was something awful that he needed to tell me but couldn’t.’

He heard the sound of traffic in the background, a police siren wailed.

‘You should talk to David. He’ll know what to do. If Mouse is going away then he won’t be at the Course on Tuesday night. Go and speak to David afterwards. I’m sorry I’m not there, darling. But I know you’ll do the right thing. I still think Lee probably killed herself. And maybe you’re looking for things to demonstrate otherwise, to take away some guilt. Get lots of sleep, my love. You sound like you’re coming down with something. And call me whenever you want.’

On Tuesday evening, David stood in front of the Course members, his skin grey under the spotlight, large purplish bags under his bloodshot eyes.

‘You will have read the lies printed about one of our Course members in the press this weekend,’ he began. ‘I don’t want to dignify such monstrous rubbish with anything more than a cursory response. Lee Elek is a wonderful girl and a dear friend. We all miss her very much. But she has some significant personal problems, and I believe the Course is one of the very few forces for good in her life. Let us all pray now for Lee, wherever she might be.’

After the speech, which was shorter than usual, David and Marcus played an acoustic set on stage. There were candles around their feet and David sang in his high, soft voice. Some of the girls in the front row swayed along with the music. As expected, Mouse hadn’t turned up that evening. The two discussion groups were combined and Marcus would speak to them both in the low-ceilinged crypt room.

Marcus sat and stared at the new members, aware that Sally and David were behind him, watching. His head was fuzzy, his sinuses clogged and aching. While he had tried to steer the conversation around to the evening’s topic,
Being an Apostle in the Modern World
, the group had only wanted to talk about Lee. One of the quiet girls spoke first, looking down at her feet, her cheeks reddening.

‘I saw the article and, while I realise that it’s journalism, sensationalised, I can’t help but think that some of it must be true. Has David really made people leave because they were gay? It doesn’t seem like him.’

Marcus caught David’s eye and then looked back at the girl.

‘It should be obvious to you now you’ve done the Course that it’s total rubbish. I remember the boy they were talking about. He was trying to make some sort of political statement by coming here. David didn’t ask him to leave because he was gay. He told him that he was here for the wrong reasons and that he should either change those reasons or come back when he would get more from the Course.’

One of the twins raised a thin arm.

‘Alice and I were both very sad when our mummy died. I became quite horribly depressed. And I think we all knew that Lee was sad, suffered from her slumps. I suppose I’d have thought that the Course would insulate you against that kind of thing. Would give you the tools to stop you getting that bad. If Lee was a Course leader and still fell apart like this, what message does it give to us?’

David coughed and the group turned towards him. Marcus sank gratefully back on his chair. The priest stepped forward into the centre of the room, very grave, his hands pressed together.

‘We’re all human here, we all have doubts, many of us have been down – like Ele, like Lee. It’s hard not to look on the things going on in the world and get terribly downhearted. But we have to believe that what we’re doing here is right. I imagine over the next few weeks we’re going to learn a great deal more about the troubles that Lee was facing. And I think perhaps what we’ll end up realising is that it was a miracle that something like this didn’t happen sooner. That actually the Course helped sustain Lee until even her faith and our love couldn’t force away the darkness. I just wish that she had spoken to me more, that she had let me shoulder more of that terrible burden.’

Tears beaded at the corners of David’s eyes. He walked from the room. Sally hurried after him. The Course members sat in silence.

Finally, Neil, who had been leaning back watching them, spoke. A kind of holy glow radiated from his bald head.

‘When my daughter Phoebe died, I tried so hard to understand what was behind it. Unravelling the infinitely complex threads of her life became an obsession for me. It was as if I thought that if I could understand why she stopped eating, I might be able somehow to go back and make it better. Or at least that it might be proof that it wasn’t my fault, that nothing I could have done would have changed it. I spent hours staring at photographs of her when she was younger, trying to read the future in her sunny little smile. But, in the end, mental illness is unknowable to everyone except the sufferer.

‘There is something wrong with Lee, just as there was something wrong with Phoebe. We can go mad trying to find the reasons behind what happened to them, or we can move on. All we can do is love them; the rest is in God’s hands.’

He collected himself, lowered his head, and put his hands in his lap.

‘Thanks Neil,’ said Marcus. ‘I entirely agree. Now let’s get back to the Course material. It’s some of the most important stuff we’ll deal with – how to handle the conflicts that are thrown at Christians in the modern world. We need to arm ourselves against the demons that brought Lee and Phoebe down.’

When the discussion group had left, Marcus sat in the room, his head in his hands. Finally, he rose and made his way upstairs, through the darkened church and out into the night. David was waiting for him in the shadows of the porch. The priest coughed.

‘How did the rest of your discussion go?’ David asked.

‘I was on autopilot. I just couldn’t stop thinking about Lee. Did you speak to Abby? Do you know about Mouse? Have you called the police?’