Every Contact Leaves A Trace (53 page)

I have no real sense of what they will discover when they come in to land and turn to their respective tasks, those detectives in their aeroplanes. I was aware even as I’d started to speak to the police yesterday that I was simply passing on a version of events, and that mine was no more authorised than Harry’s. I was able to provide only traces and imaginings, after all, having nothing better to offer. And now, as I can only stand and wait, I am becoming yet more aware, horribly so in fact, that there is a chance that what they will learn when they arrive at their destinations, if indeed they learn anything at all, may add precisely nothing of any significance to that which they know already. I cannot avoid confronting the prospect that despite my journey to visit Harry, and my note-taking, and my sorting of facts and ordering of narratives, carried out so painstakingly and so late into the night as I sat on my own at Rachel’s desk in the evenings after I returned to London, looking out at the heron
and
breaking only to walk on to the balcony and see the moon falling on the water; that despite all this, I will, on their return, be no further on than I was when the snow began to fall and I took the train to Oxford. I cannot but think of the possibility that I will, for all my learning, be found wanting; that I will have failed Rachel, and wholly so. It might well be the case that what I have provided by way of a theory, or a collection of possible theories, about her death, will prove to be nothing more than a house built of surmises and resting on a foundation made entirely of coincidence, the only concrete shred of evidence, such as it is, being the tiny spot of what might or might not be blood on the corner of a page in a book of poetry.

It was, I think, one afternoon on our honeymoon in Florence that Rachel told me, throwing down a novel in despair so that I asked her why she’d done so, that a tale whose resolution rests only on coincidence is one that is hardly worth the telling. Despite the cold, we were sitting at an outside table of a café, if I remember correctly, in the Piazza di San Lorenzo, each of us wrapped in blankets and holding our tea while we read, in the hope that our hands wouldn’t freeze. I questioned her conviction, asking her to explain exactly what she meant, and how exactly she was using the term coincidence, suggesting in return that every piece of knowledge in the whole of the history of time had been acquired by way of a coincidence, to some extent, if one went back far enough in searching for its provenance. We argued the idea back and forth for a while, in an easy kind of a way, until eventually I observed that what she was saying was absurd, and that any number of cases in any number of courtrooms across England were being won or lost on an almost daily basis by virtue of facts gleaned by coincidence of one sort or another, and that surely, that was how the most interesting denouements came about. ‘Not in fiction darling,’ she said, smiling. ‘In life, yes. It happens all the time, of course it does. I know all about that. But there are rules when it comes to literature. Hard and fast ones, to be broken at an author’s peril.’ And she laughed then, and looked in her bag for another book and said she’d run out and why didn’t we
go
across the piazza to the market stalls that were strung along the other side and see if she couldn’t find something to read next. ‘Of course,’ I said, glad to be moving, and we set off towards the piles of second-hand books we’d passed when we arrived.

‘But what else is there?’ I asked her in the middle of the night just passed, as I lay in the darkness of my room wishing she was there to help me slow my thoughts enough to fall asleep again. ‘What else do any of us have to go on, when it comes down to it, other than coincidence?’

I listened for a time to the wake of her silence, imagining what she might have answered, before I carried on.

‘Can it not be said,’ I asked, ‘that we none of us know anything by any other route, really?’

And then, for the first time in all these months, she spoke.

‘Hush now, Alex.’ She put her hand up to my face and placed a finger on my lips. ‘We’ve talked about that already, haven’t we?’

‘But I can’t—’

‘You can’t what, Alex?’

‘I don’t—’

‘You don’t what? Alex, come on. It’s OK come on, come here.’

She moved her hand up and stroked my head, and then she ran the back of her fingers down my cheek, wiping away my tears and licking them from her skin.

‘Rachel.’

‘Stop talking,’ she said. ‘Stop thinking even. You’re thinking about it all too much, Alex,’ and she came closer and stretched her body out beside me, the length of it, rubbing my toes with hers. ‘You try so hard always, to work things out. To make things right. Perhaps that’s why you’re a lawyer, not a writer of novels.’ Then she laughed a little, softly, and brought her face to mine and murmured in my ear, ‘And perhaps that’s why I love you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, hardly able to breathe for the ache in my heart. ‘I’m so sorry, Rachel.’

‘Sorry for what?’ and she reached her hand up and stroked my head again. ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s not talk any more.’

She folded herself into me.

‘Just love me, Alex. That’s all I want.’

And so I held her, reminding myself of how the clefts and hollows of our bodies fitted together so well, and as our breathing settled into one rhythm, something in me let go and I was able at last to fall asleep.

Harry said to me that I could do with his story what I would. And I am conscious that I can be no more proprietorial about the one I told the police yesterday. They will do with it whatever they see fit, and that is something over which I can have no further control. It’s not my story any more, and whilst I am not sure that it ever was, I feel better, somehow, for having given it away to someone else. And just now, as I hear my telephone ringing to tell me my car has arrived, and as I close the balcony door for the last time and go through to the hallway to pick up my suitcase and lock the front door and post the keys back through the letterbox, I am only glad that I no longer have the burden of it.

E
PILOGUE

New York, Saturday 21 June 2008
4
A.M.

A Note on Harry Gardner

As with all of the characters in this work of fiction, Harry is a fictional character.

I am glad that I was taught English A Level by Andrew Dobbin. I am glad also that I studied English Literature with, among others, Edward Wilson and Professor David Bradshaw at Worcester College, Oxford, and with Bernard O’Donoghue at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Those that know Edward, or know of him, will perhaps recognise him as a source from which I drew in creating Harry Gardner. I would like to note that, to the extent that Harry is a character drawn from life, all of the good in him comes from Edward, and from Andrew, David and Bernard. And if Harry can be said to be flawed, then all of his flaws are drawn from my imagination.

Thanks

A number of people helped me with the writing of this book, and I am grateful to all of them for the things that they did. I would especially like to thank Simon Marshall, and Darian Leader. I would also particularly like to thank Simon Trewin, Beth Coates, Andrew Dobbin, Edward Wilson, David Bradshaw, Richard Gipps, Mara Carlyle, Andrew Ruhemann, Brendan Wright, Nicholas Mercer, Sarah Addenbrooke, Matthew Brotherton, Rachael McGill, Florence Dollé and Mike Shaw.

A lot of the book was written during a snowbound stay in Worcester College, Oxford in January 2010. I am grateful to Coleen Day, Annie Belz, Vickie Porter, Emma Goodrum, Mark Norman, Peter Brooks, Lance Oliver and Michael Howe for the warmth of the welcome I received, and for the help I was given while I was there.

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