The Talisman (43 page)

Edward went to the old man and held him tight. ‘I’ve got two tickets, one for you as well. You packed? We’ll move out this afternoon. The vultures won’t take long, BB.’

BB’s eyes went moist, and his voice was gruff with the effort of trying not to show how deeply touched he was. ‘No, lad, you go and make more, much more. Put all you have to good use, make yourself powerful and untouchable. I did it once and, by Christ, with your help I almost did it again. But Edward, son, I’ve no more mountains to climb, I’m satisfied now and I’m in debt to you.’ He stuck his will in Edward’s top pocket, and Edward opened it. He gripped the old man’s knees. ‘You can’t do this, BB, what about Richard?’

‘He’ll hate me, but that won’t be anything new. He deserves no more than he gets. Now, lad, bugger off. Any day the news’ll break what you got yourself up to. You’ll not only have them after you, but the police as well. Go on, go on, and don’t look back. Just walk out, and remember, Eddie, think big and all your dreams will grow, think small and you will fall behind. Think that you will . . .’

Edward walked out and didn’t look back, he couldn’t. Skye was waiting for him outside the room. He was staggering drunk and flung his arm around Edward’s shoulder. ‘Let’s you an’ me go on a long jaunt together, eh? Take the place apart, just you an’ me, brother.’

Edward scared Skye as he shook his arm away violently and picked up his suitcase. ‘You’re not my brother, and you’re drunk out of your skull. You go your way, Skye – I’m going back to London.’

Skye couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He trailed after Edward as he rang for a taxi. ‘Eddie, what’s the matter? Has something gone on between you and the ol’ boy?’

Edward turned to Skye, his face like a mask. ‘There’s some land we should think about buying. I made a few discoveries when I was doing the collections – perlite’s there, make a bundle with it in the building trade. I think you should stay around here. No one can touch you about the press releases – you were just doing your job. Blame the whole scam on me. I think you should stay.’

Speechless, Skye backed away from Edward.

‘I’m going alone, Skye. Here’s the details of the land and some things for you to look into. I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m settled in London.’

Skye felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. He shook his head. ‘Oh, man, I don’t believe this. You’re just walking out on me, leaving me here? Well, fuck you, buddy boy – I’ll be on that plane with you . . .’

Edward sighed. He could see the taxi drawing up outside the gates. He signalled to it and the cab turned into the drive. ‘I don’t think you quite understand. You’re staying put, I might need you here. You’ve got nothing to leave for, and you’ve got enough cash to buy as many black boys and as much booze as you want.’

Skye gripped Edward’s arm. ‘You know I did all this for you, for us both . . . for you an’ me, buddy, an’ if you’re getting out of this fucking country, so am I.’

Edward stared at him, then reached through the open taxi window and touched Skye’s face. ‘You stay here, I need you here. We’re not through with this place, buddy boy. Now you’ve got the smell of money, think about doubling all those dollars . . . I’ll call you . . .’

Skye watched the yellow taxi drive away. He leaned against the villa walls, crying . . . then suddenly he was running to his car. He drove like a crazy man back to his bungalow, ransacked the drawers, knowing all the time it wouldn’t be there. He tipped out the last drawer and, sure enough, his passport and birth certificate were gone. He was so stunned at the implications, at how Edward had used him, that he collapsed on the bed. He had walked straight into Edward’s carefully prepared trap.

‘You bastard . . . Oh, you bastard . . .’

With a wondrous gleam in his eyes, BB surveyed the havoc he and Edward had wrought, revelling in it. Greed had made men he had thought were his friends grab at dried, dusty, empty earth – men who were too greedy to wait for the scientists to approve Edward’s theory.

He drove to the black area of town and pulled up outside a small shanty. Children gathered around the old black Bentley in the dusty road. BB banged on the broken-down door and called for Thin Willy.

A gnarled, thick-set man with muscles as strong as iron standing out on his arms, greeted BB warmly. They had a genuine affection for each other.

‘Time, Willy, it’s time.’

Willy nodded his thickly curled greying head and walked back into the house. He came out carrying two sticks of dynamite. BB put the keys to the Bentley into the black man’s hands, and they both climbed in. ‘Yours now, so you drive.’

Willy beamed his cracked-tooth smile and shook his head, laughing. Then he drove carefully, hunched over the wheel, to the Fordesburg mine, the only one BB had retained as it was in his wife’s name.

Willy parked the Bentley and took a torch to help the old man across the fields and the overgrown, unused tracks. With an iron rod he heaved away the massive stone that had been placed in front of the old shaft. At last it rolled back far enough for them both to squeeze through. Thin Willy guided BB, holding on to his arm, until they reached the first shaft, the gates rusted, the ropes rotting. Pulling hard, Willy looked with some trepidation at BB. ‘May not take your weight – twenty-five years a long time, boss.’

BB waved him aside and climbed into the old-fashioned cradle. Willy handed him the explosives, they shook hands, and then Willy began to turn the cradle’s wheel.

Far below Willy heard the clank of the bucket as it halted, and the echo of BB’s voice, then he felt his way out of the mine. He rolled the rock back into place. Two names were carved into the rock; John Van der Burge and Michael Van der Burge. Willy patted the rock and sighed. There was no record of the names of the other boys who had died with the two white boys, but then they had only been kaffirs.

Willy walked back to the Bentley. The promise he had made to BB more than twenty-five years ago was now fulfilled. He waited, the keys in the ignition, until he heard the low rumble and boom from deep below the ground. BB was laid to rest with the ghosts of his sons. He had gone the way he had chosen, with pride. Willy knew BB would make headlines one last time, as by morning the papers would have received his letter.

The letter did make headlines, and the photo of BB was centre page. He had taken total credit for the outrageous con trick, and by doing so also took all the blame. Edward Stubbs was cleared as being nothing but an innocent young student with a hopeful but foolish idea that he could find out with chemicals what the mighty bowels of the earth contained.

The rocks that fell around the old man, burying him, had the last laugh. They shed over the dead man a mound of small, pebble-like objects. Diamonds.

Edward was excited as the pilot requested the passengers to fasten their seat belts, they would be landing at Heathrow in ten minutes.

Eight long years had passed since Edward’s arrival in South Africa. He had always known it would take a considerable time, but had not anticipated just how long he would be away from England. It was 1954, and he stared down through the clouds at the City of London far below. The Thames was like a snake curving through the city. He leaned back against the headrest as the plane dipped and took up its position in the stack. He was moving into a new phase of his life; he was a multimillionaire and still not thirty years old. He felt as if he had the world in his hands, and laughed aloud. Edward Stubbs had done it, he had made it, and now he was back and determined to climb even higher. Money he had, now he wanted power.

E
dward settled back into living in England. He had made a couple of half-hearted attempts to trace his brother, but there had always been some urgent matter that took precedence. A year after his return he drove in his new Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce back to the East End, back to his roots.

The Roller cruised along, past his old home, or rather the debris of where a prefab had once stood. He got out and walked along the entire road; he owned plot twelve, Evelyne’s house, he owned the corner site, the Meadows’ old house, plus the plot at the far end, Freda and Ed’s.

The council developers could not move with the land at each end and dead centre being privately owned, and they sold the whole stretch of land to Edward at a ridiculously low sum. The next time Edward drove along the old street he owned it, every brick and every piece of debris, the whole street, with the canal running along the back and direct views over the Thames.

Edward had formed a building company, bought it off the peg. It was already called the Barkley Company, and he liked it, liked the sound of it, repeated it in his mind a few times. Offices with a yard were purchased for the building company, and Edward stood up to watch the sign, ‘Barkley Company Ltd’, being painted. Four men were employed to erect corrugated iron fencing the whole way around the street site.

‘What you going to build, Mr Barkley, sir? Offices? Warehouses?’

He smiled and said nothing, just instructed the men to complete the fences, he hadn’t decided yet.

Edward noticed a property for sale in Greenwich and studied the brochure. The place was ridiculously cheap, described as ‘a small, stately manor house, giving direct access to the river’. He took a boat trip along the Thames, standing breathing in the cold river air and the sights. He had missed England and was glad to be back. The river, the barges and the bridges gave him a sense of freedom.

The house was so run down that the roof had sunk in, the gardens were overgrown and the access to the river was blocked by driftwood and leftover debris of bombed-out wharves. The estate agent bowed and scraped to Mr Barkley as he opened the front door, and their voices echoed through the dark marble hall. The dusty cobwebs hung in swathes, and everywhere was filled with rubble. One room had been used by tramps – they had left their empty wine and meths bottles, and the stench of their urine pervaded the air.

The master suite overlooked the river, directly across from his old home. He could stand at the window and see where he had been raised. ‘Tell your company, I will give them ten thousand below the asking price, in cash. Contact me at my office tomorrow morning.’

The agent almost fainted as he calculated his commission, and his luck in being the one to be given the keys to show Mr Edward Barkley of the Barkley Company around the old manor. As he locked and bolted the thick oak front door, he noticed, for the first time, the strange carved gargoyles looming from the eaves of the dilapidated roof. He made a mental note to contact his ‘knocker boy’ friends. The old place would be demolished, and there could be a bit of cash made from ‘devils’ heads’ up the King’s Road.

Within one week the deeds belonged to Edward, and within a month of the completion twenty-four builders started work. They were not going to demolish the manor as everyone thought, far from it. Mr Barkley was going to be in residence, and he wanted the best, nothing but the best.

Driving away from the manor house Edward was very happy. The work was going along fine. He turned on the car radio and suddenly decided he would visit his mother’s grave. He veered off the bridge and headed for the East End cemetery.

He stared down at the neatly cut grass, the marble urn filled with fresh flowers. The caretaker told him someone came most Sunday afternoons to tend the grave. Edward tipped him well, very well, and the old man took off his cloth cap. ‘You want me to look out for him, sir? Tell ’im you was askin’ after ’im?’

Edward hesitated. It would look strange if he didn’t say something. ‘No, no need, thank you all the same.’

‘It’d be no trouble, guv, you jest gimme yer name an’ I’ll pass it on . . .’ the caretaker trailed after Edward and looked at the Rolls parked along by the railings. ‘Didn’t catch the name, sir?’

Edward stopped and turned, irritated by the man’s persistence. ‘Barkley, the name’s Barkley.’

The old man pushed his cap back, scratched his head. ‘Barkley . . . you any connection to the Barkleys, that big tombstone up by the grass verge? Only the geezer don’t do dat one, he does the small one up by the taps.’

Edward shrugged the man off and opened the car door, then as the old boy shambled back into the gatehouse he walked across to the Barkley tomb. It was massive, and an archangel stood on top as if on guard. The Barkley family were titled until 1864, then the title dropped, and the last names added made Edward bend down to brush off the creeping moss.

‘Edgar, Andrew, the dearly beloved sons of Edith and John Barkley . . . Rest Forever In Peace.’ The whole family had been wiped out in the Blitz, not that Edward felt any pity, it was the dates that interested him. Edgar and Andrew had been born in the same years as Edward and Alex Stubbs.

Edward spent a long time at Somerset House trying to check on the Stubbs family; Freedom and Evelyne had never married – both he and Alex were illegitimate. Freedom’s name was on both birth certificates as the father, but there was no marriage certificate.

Turning to the Barkley family, he made copious notes and detailed the family history. He was informed by the clerk that many records had been destroyed in the fires of the Blitz . . . There was no record of the deaths of the two boys, Edgar and Andrew, at Somerset House. Armed with a copy of the birth certificate of the dead Edgar, Edward applied for a new passport . . .

Shortly before two o’clock two Sundays later, Edward arrived at the cemetery. By four o’clock he was ready to give up when he saw the silver Jaguar draw up. He didn’t know for sure, but he had a gut feeling it would be his brother.

Almost able to touch him, Edward stood right behind Alex. ‘Hello, Alex.’

Alex straightened, clenched his fists, and froze.

‘Been waiting for you, came last Sunday too.’

Alex’s stomach turned over. He couldn’t move, and his mouth went dry. He felt the hand on his shoulder like a massive weight, and still he couldn’t turn. The hand rubbed his shoulder, then moved to his neck, skin contact. Slowly, Alex turned to look into his brother’s face. He had to lift his eyes just a fraction, but then Eddie had always been slightly taller. The brothers remained silent as they looked at one another – into each other’s souls. Edward’s hand dropped, but their eyes were locked, each trying to see into the other’s mind.