Elizabeth had found George before he got his head kicked in. He still didn’t know how she’d traced him, though he had his suspicions. The only person who knew about Trespass Place was Nino. And everyone near the Embankment knew Nino. So George had pictured Elizabeth beneath the bridges, tapping arms, lifting blankets, seeking the whereabouts of a man named Bradshaw She must have been sent Nino’s way; and she must have told him a great deal to make him reveal where George had gone to ground.
A pinprick of light had jigged in the distance, exposing the cobbles like scabs in the asphalt. It grew larger, making her outline darker than the darkness. She lowered the torch and he saw gold buckles on expensive shoes. The beam was cut and she said, ‘You walked out of court, George.’
He replied to the shadow ‘Yes, and I let Riley go.
‘We both did.’
Elizabeth sat down on the cardboard beside him. They looked out on the courtyard, the drainpipes and the bins. She produced a flask of whisky and two silver beakers. It started to rain. The drops pattered on the fire escape landing. They didn’t speak; they just sipped the warming malt.
She came frequently after that, always in the evening. They fell to talking of old times. George told her what he’d done before the trial: baggage boy at the Bonnington, then one of a team in a night shelter for the homeless, and finally becoming its manager. He’d lost that job for gross misconduct after Riley was acquitted. Elizabeth’s story couldn’t have been more different: boarding school, Durham University and Gray’s Inn. After the trial she was made a deputy High Court judge. Her life had gone up, his had gone down. She too had married; they’d both had a son. Hers was called Nicholas; he was planning a trip to Australia.
‘What for?’
‘To get away from me.’ She laughed. ‘He’s grown too quickly’ Distantly she added, ‘He’s the very image of my father.’
Elizabeth never urged George to find a hostel; she never asked about the home he’d left behind, and the wife who couldn’t face him any more. She seemed to understand that sometimes there was no going back; or at least, not until one’s connections with the past had been changed. They just sat side by side beneath the fire escape sometimes chatting, sometimes silent. Then she’d go home.
One night she turned up with her work. It brought the ambience of the Old Bailey into this, his hideaway While she read, marking the page and swearing, he was sure she was ahead of him, waiting. Tension made him fidget. She asked him to keep still. Suddenly he blurted out, ‘It couldn’t have been any different.’
‘I know.’ She carried on reading.
‘Not after I was asked about my grandfather… the dropping of my first name.
‘I know’
‘I never saw that coming.’
‘No one did.’ She put her files and coloured pens in a bag and pulled out the whisky and the beakers. After they’d drunk several shots, she spoke of John’s fall on Lawton’s Wharf. The subject had hung in the air while she’d spoken of her own son. George opened out a newspaper cutting of the inquest and gave it to Elizabeth.
‘How did Riley do it?’
George couldn’t answer because – in truth – it was his fault. He’d sent his son to his death with an aside uttered during Countdown. He saw the smiling presenters; and he saw his boy fearful, stooping through a hole in the wire. He was only seventeen.
‘I suppose there’s no evidence.’
‘None.’
She turned, drawing the fall of hair behind an ear. A diamond sparkled on the lobe. ‘I’m implicated in what happened, George.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I let Riley escape far more than you did.’ It didn’t sound condescending, just private and adamant.
‘You can keep the cutting.’ It was all he could do to reach her. She had almost left the planet.
When Elizabeth next came to Trespass Place she said her back couldn’t take it any more. She was very specific. The problem was degenerative changes at L5 and L6. ‘There’s a cafe round the corner.
They found a table in Marco’s by the window Then Elizabeth went to the counter without having asked him what he wanted. When she came back, he paled. She’d bought hot chocolate and toast. She’d done it on purpose. She’d remembered.
Three girls had given evidence against Riley It had taken guts, because they’d been terrified of the Pieman. But George had persuaded them to come forward. It had taken three attempts. And he’d done it over toast and cocoa. They’d said so in their witness statements.
‘Eat up,’ she said gravely.
George looked at the plate and mug in horror.
‘Go on,’ she repeated. ‘Take a sip.’
When he started eating, she said, ‘Have you ever wondered how evil can be undone?’
He nodded.
‘Me too.’
And that was it. George waited for the follow-up, but they just sat and ate toast and drank hot chocolate.
Elizabeth came back about two weeks later. She stood beneath the arch into Trespass Place and waved. George got up and followed her to Marco’s. By the same window they ate more toast and drank more hot chocolate.
Elizabeth said, ‘Do you remember Mrs Riley?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nancy is her name. She listened to the prosecution opening and then left the court, rather like you.’
George remembered the hat – yellow with black spots -pulled down as if it were a steel helmet.
Elizabeth explained that Riley’s solicitor, Mr Wyecliffe, was a highly intelligent man. She had asked him to interview Nancy with a view to obtaining a witness statement upon Riley’s good character. The difficulty was that no one knew what Nancy might say under cross-examination. Ultimately it was agreed that Nancy would not go into the witness box: she would only reveal Riley’s anger towards women.
George said, ‘She’s crackers.’
‘She trusts him, that’s all,’ said Elizabeth reprovingly ‘Maybe she sees a trace of something, a remnant of what’s been lost.’
Neither of them spoke for a while.
‘When I first saw you under that fire escape,’ mused Elizabeth innocently ‘I didn’t recognise you.
‘I’ve been sleeping rough for years. It changes you.’
‘Even in daylight you looked different,’ she continued. ‘Something’s gone, something you can’t catch and put in your notebook. Riley wouldn’t recognise you either, if you bumped into him.’
George looked up quickly.
‘He’s still a criminal, as he always was,’ she said, collecting toast crumbs with a manicured finger. ‘Nancy is the way to proving it. Maybe we can all make amends. How does that sound to you?’
When Elizabeth had gone, George went back to Trespass Place and wrote it all down in book thirty-five. There’d be one more volume before he got his head kicked in.
George sat beneath the fire escape, his goggles in his hair, reading his account of that meeting It was the beginning of a calculated scheme – although Elizabeth’s plans were already formed. They just required his cooperation. From the moment he’d written down her invitation it was as though every ill that had come to pass since the trial might all be transformed by a greater conclusion. Elizabeth had said, ‘If we get the ending right, we’ll change everything, right back to the beginning. It’s almost magic. A monk told me.’
The monk who hadn’t turned up, thought George, looking towards the arch at the end of the courtyard. He hadn’t slept for days now. Giddily he counted the scratches on the wall. Then he hauled himself upright, positioned his goggles and tramped into the sunshine. His shoes were split and the laces frayed. They fell off as he walked. On Old Paradise Street, he slumped forward onto the pavement, one leg in the gutter. He heard the tread of feet: frantic high heels, the measured clip of some army type, the squelch of trainers. Some slowed, some stopped, some spoke; but the river of feet moved on, drawn towards a sea of pressing obligations.
Among the flowing George heard the steps of someone familiar, a dawdling coming close… a pat-patting of small red sandals. He was dreaming. The ankles came into view: white skin upon fine bones; blue veins summoned by a wind that lifted off the waves. The boy’s copper hair danced. George lifted a hand off the pavement, reaching out, and said, ‘Oh, John.’
The waking dream unfolded. It was like watching a family video.
George took his son by the hand on Southport Pier. It was a blustery day with gulls thrown around as though attached to the railings by string. Occasionally they dropped like stones, but landed lightly on discarded crusts of bread. George found a bench, and John clambered beside him, banging one of his knees.
‘What’s for lunch, Dad?’
George pulled a tin from the plastic bag prepared by Emily ‘Salmon.’
‘That’s a treat, Dad.’
‘You’re right there, son.
They sat side by side, watched by the passers-by George kicked his shoes off and wiggled his toes. John pedalled the air.
The cold sun tilted towards the west. George checked his watch: it was time to get back to the hotel. Emily was waiting. ‘Come on, lad,’ he said despondently He didn’t want these moments of happiness to end.
John refused to budge.
‘We have to go.
John leaned away arms entwining round part of the bench.
George pulled him free and roughed his hair. The boy stomped ahead, along the silver timbers. His voice flew on the wind, ‘I like Southport, Dad.’
‘We’ll come again, son.
Blind George rolled over onto his back and said, ‘But we didn’t, did we?’
A passer-by knelt down and placed his hand under George’s head. It was a young man. His hair was gelled and spiked like a sea urchin. He wore a T-shirt with WINGS written on it. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘You’ve no shoes.’
‘I must have left them at Southport.’
The young man sat down and took off his trainers. ‘Put these on.
George couldn’t speak or protest. He just watched this prickly helper struggle to fit the shoes onto his feet. They were white with bright red stripes. Seconds later the figure walked briskly away as if he were embarrassed. Written across the back of his T-shirt were the words: WORLD TOUR.
I wonder where he’s off to now, thought George. He jogged back to Trespass Place – with sporty things like that on each hoof, he’d have looked stupid walking.