Tree of Hands (23 page)

She ran down the last half dozen stairs, her heart pounding with anger. Jason, who had abandoned the xylophone for the time being and was filling James's wheelbarrow with James's bricks, looked up and smiled when he saw her. His pleasure at her return lit up his whole face. He had waited, he hadn't cried, but he was relieved to the point of delight that she had come back. He came to her and put up his arms. She picked him up, calmed by him, her anger cooling.

Edward was looking at them both. A flush had come up into his face. He said in his sullen way, ‘So that's my son?'

She hadn't expected that. Bringing Edward down here she hadn't foreseen it, though obviously she should have. It would be easy to say yes, the easiest way out. After all she would seldom see Edward again, she was going to make sure of that. In no possible way were they going to become ‘friends'. If James had lived, if this were James he was looking at in Benet's arms, that would still be true. There was nothing to make a link between them now that James was dead.

She had only to nod. A shrug, simple silence, would do it. To put an end to questions, inquiries, suspicions, she had only to nod her head, take a step forward and present this handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed child to this handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed man. She couldn't. It seemed
an outrage. So Edward did mean something to her still? Or what there had been between herself and Edward meant something? Enough anyway to make it impossible for her to look him in the face and tell him this was his child.

‘No. He's a friend's child I'm looking after.'

He didn't believe her. ‘Don't give me that, Benet. You've kept yourself from me and your book and your success, you must be the meanest-spirited woman living. And now you'd even deny me the identity of my son.'

‘I'm not denying anything, Edward. This isn't James.'

She set Jason on the rocking horse and set it swinging. But Jason had had enough of rocking horses and xylophones and wheelbarrows. He rubbed his fists into his eyes.

‘Jay wants juice.'

It was what he always said when he was tired. She carried him with her to the fridge, took out the feeding bottle of apple juice, held it under the hot tap to take the chill off, Jason seated on her hip. Edward followed her. He was standing very close to them.

‘If it's not James, where
is
James?'

To gain courage, to have the strength to say the words, she found herself doing a curious thing. She tightened her grasp on Jason and held him close to her, feeling his warmth.

‘James is dead, Edward.'

‘What?'

‘I did say that. You did hear me. James is dead. He died in hospital about six weeks ago.'

‘Children don't die these days,' he said. ‘Children don't die.'

‘That's what I thought. I was wrong. They do.'

Jason liked best to feed himself with the juice. She sat him in the big Windsor chair, propped with cushions. Edward was staring at him.

‘I don't believe you, Benet. It would be typical of you to invent some stratagem to keep me totally from my son. I've no legal claim anyway but the fact that he's my son
and you know it and I know it would be enough to bother you. You'd even cut that.'

She lifted her shoulders. She said stonily, ‘I'll show you the death certificate.'

When Mopsa had come home in the late afternoon of that first day Benet left the hospital, she had seen her tuck a long buff-coloured envelope into one of the pigeonholes of the desk. They had not talked about it but she knew what was inside. She took out the certificate, and, without looking at it, handed it to Edward. He read it and looked up at her with haggard eyes.

‘How did you let that happen to him? How could you allow him to – to asphyxiate?'

So that was what it said. She didn't want to see. She felt a cold, contemptuous anger against Edward. What did he know? What did he
care
? He put his head into his hands and covered his face. Jason leaned against her, then climbed into her lap. She hoped and prayed Edward would go now, that he would have his little show of a grief he couldn't possibly feel for a child he had never known and then – doubtless uttering threats, abusing and accusing her – he would go. He took away his hands and looked at her, red-eyed.

‘You offered me a drink about half an hour ago. I should have thought the least you could have done was fetch it when you went upstairs just now. After what you've told me, I rather
need
a drink.'

She knew who he reminded her of. Of Mopsa. Had it always been so? Was there something in her own personality that needed a Mopsa, a parasite creature to batten on her and insult her and amaze her with its own gross selfishness? It made her laugh, hot ironically but with pure amusement.

‘Three years ago,' he said, ‘I thought you couldn't be harder but I was wrong. I hoped you'd changed. Don't you want to know why I came here? I thought we might get together again. I even thought we might marry.'

‘But now you're disillusioned?' Jason had fallen asleep.
She took the bottle gently from him. ‘If you want that drink, Edward, you'll have to fetch it yourself. Room above this one, cupboard by the window. I have to put this boy to bed.'

Barry went down the hill towards Hampstead tube station. He felt shaken. There had been very little warning of what had happened. All evening the house had been in darkness and then, just as he was giving up hope of seeing Terence Wand that evening, a faint light had come on, not in one of the front rooms but a light somewhere in the back of the house seen from where he stood through an arch or an open doorway. Terence Wand had come in the back way. It hadn't occurred to Barry that there
was
a back way, but after he moved away from the arch and before he left for the station, he had investigated and found the garages, the one numbered five with the small blue Volvo tucked inside.

But after that light came on, he had for a while been given new hope of seeing and identifying Terence Wand. He counted on him showing himself at a window and this was what had eventually happened but in a shocking and almost horrible way. Barry wondered how long Terence Wand had known he was there and, come to that, known who he was and where he stood in relation to Carol. For that Terence Wand must have known this, his subsequent behaviour clearly showed.

If Barry had had any doubts about Terence Wand, they were gone now. About who Wand was to Jason and had been to Carol and would be again if he could. Wand had mocked him with it in a single moment's
macho
display. The house had been dark but for that glimmer of light in the back regions. Somehow its darkness seemed permanent, still, enduring. He had let his attention wander and watched a white cat jump one of the low walls and stroll towards the tree in the centre of the courtyard. What had made him look up again towards the blank, black, shiny windows? Certainly not any change in the unchanging aspect of the house. A sixth sense perhaps, a spark of
electricity transmitted from this man to him with whom he had something strong in common.

He lifted his head and looked up. The light came on in an explosive flood and a naked man stood there for an instant of mocking exposure. The light made a gold gleam on his hair, he looked tall as a statue. Then the blind went down in a black cascade and shut him out.

Barry came home over the Chinese bridge. He counted the houses from where the footpath met Summerskill Road but there were no lights on in Carol's. It was only just gone eleven, the winebar didn't close till eleven.

Winterside Down seemed unusually empty. Even the motorbike boys weren't about. Lila Kupar, who never drew her curtains, whose curtains were perhaps not ample enough to draw, could be seen in her scarcely furnished front room ironing a white sari. A naked light bulb, rather too powerful, hung just above her head. Barry let himself into the house. The Spicers had their television on loudly and you could hear the meaningless prompted laughter in Carol's hall. In the dark, Barry saw Terence Wand's face. In reality he had glimpsed it for no more than five seconds but he was sure it had imprinted itself on his mind. It was Jason's face thirty years on that he conjured up.

Barry didn't possess a pair of gloves. He put Carol's rubber ones on that hung over the rim of the kitchen sink. Wearing the gloves, he found himself the ballpoint pen he and Carol used for writing messages to each other and the milkman and the notebook Tanya had for school and had once left behind in the house. He would have to buy an envelope tomorrow. He began to write his letter, carefully printing the words.

THE ANONYMOUS LETTER
came into the hands of Detective Inspector Tony Leatham by way of Chief Superintendent Treddick and those forensics experts who had examined it in vain for fingerprints and other possible giveaways. By this time the lined paper, exercise book paper, was crumpled and rather limp. Leatham already knew what it said. A conference had been held solely for the purpose of discussing this letter.

 

The writer evidently wanted them to believe this Wand had snatched his son and was keeping him hidden somewhere. The aim was probably no more than the vindictive one of wanting to cause trouble for Wand. Treddick, of course, believed Jason was dead and had been dead since the day he disappeared, had almost certainly been dead even before his disappearance was reported. He had been murdered and buried somewhere like the African child in Finchley, and one day, like that child's, his body would be unearthed.

For his part, Leatham wasn't so sure. He still thought it possible Jason had been abducted. Tough, hard, with little faith left in human nature, he nevertheless hoped for Jason. He was fond of children. Since Jason had gone, he sometimes found himself looking at his own sons with fiercely protective paternal feelings, something he hadn't consciously experienced before.

Treddick was gunning for Barry Mahon. He thought it
was only a matter of time before he got him. One day Barry would betray himself, probably lead them to Jason's grave, and Treddick was patient, he could wait. Tony Leatham couldn't see they had a scrap of real evidence against Barry. The only offence he had committed, Leatham thought, was to write this letter. He was nearly sure Barry had written it. Treddick was too. He said it was an attempt on Barry's part to turn the heat off himself.

Leatham didn't care much, he was losing interest in all of it. What he would have liked was to find Jason alive and in good shape – preferably for
him
to find him – and then let bygones be bygones. Another case he had been involved in back in the summer affected him more. The man in question, a bank robber, had broken prison while on remand, escaped and made his way halfway across the world. They had recaptured Monty Driscoll in Melbourne, and when the Australian government agreed to give him up, Leatham hoped to be the officer sent out to bring him back. It would be the kind of excitement that seldom came his way. He was pulling strings to get himself to Melbourne.

In the meantime this Terence Wand business had to be attended to. They couldn't just leave it.

Mrs Goldschmidt rang up early in the morning. Could she come and have another look at the house, take a few measurements? Terence didn't want her there but he didn't know how to refuse. There were all sorts of risks attached to having anyone in the house except his own personal invitees. He took two Valium.

She arrived at ten-thirty, dressed this time in a pink leather coat with a fur collar. Each time Terence had seen her, she had been wearing animal skins. Today her short blond hair was swept forward in wispy curls round her face, her make-up mauvish with damson lips. She had the manner of someone on depressant drugs, downers, and her first remark therefore sounded sarcastic.

‘I'm thrilled we're going to have your house.'

She spoke in the grey monotone of someone commenting on continual bad weather or chronic illness. Terence walked about the house with her. In the bedroom where the futon was, she took off her coat and dropped it over one of the low Japanese tables. Under it she wore a very short, pink, knitted dress with a bulky polo collar.

‘That's better.'

She stood on a stool to measure the window for curtains.

‘Blinds are so cold on their own, don't you think?'

She put out a hand for Terence to help her down, even though the stool stood no more than a foot off the floor. Now in stockinged feet, she climbed on to the ottoman which filled the window embrasure in the master bedroom. She stretched up with her tape measure, lost her balance and would have fallen had Terence not caught and steadied her. He caught her round the waist and, instead of a stiff nervous body, found himself clasping a relaxed, even yielding, one. He asked himself what was going on. Something certainly was. Terence knew he was attractive to women – it had made a living for him as having a flair for design or management might – but he didn't know why. He was a little below medium height, nothing to much to look at and with the sort of colouring that in a woman is called ‘mousy'. Carol Stratford had once asked him if he was a man or a mouse and it was true he often felt mouselike, smallish and brown and nervous. Perhaps that was what the women liked.

He took his hands away from Mrs Goldschmidt's waist, giving her a light pat on the flank. He was wondering what to do, what response to make if things hotted up – would refusal jeopardize the sale of the house or, on the other hand, would acquiescence? – when, glancing out of the window, he saw two men come into the court from under the arch and stand just this side of it, looking at the five houses.

Terence had not been able to make up his mind about the watcher of a few nights ago but he knew these two were policemen. He was one of those people who have a
nose for policemen. No one else had quite those tired bleary eyes, rubber-mask faces, clothes that looked as if their wearers had lost weight, black shoes that needed polishing. They stood there looking at the five houses. Then they began to move across the courtyard towards number one. Terence let out his held breath. Mrs Goldschmidt put out her hand to him to be helped down as if she expected him to kiss it first.