Down Cemetery Road Part 8

'Did he say why?'

'He didn't know why. Just, there's been this information clampdown. His very words. Leaks, he said, would be plugged. He was worried for his pension.' Joe's shoulders rose and fell. 'Don't expect to read this in the papers.'

A thought struck her. 'How much do I owe you, Joe?'

'I gave you two days,' he said. 'I spread it over a week, that's all.'

'Are you sure?'

'None of it matters. I went looking for a child, I found a father. You couldn't call it a result.'

'It's odd, though.'

'Life is odd. You should know this, you don't grow old and disappointed. You owe me one hundred and fifty pounds, since you ask. I would offer a discount for failure, but union rules forbid it.'

She wrote him a cheque. 'What will you do next?'

'I thought I'd have a look at the exhibition. This French photographer, are you interested? It's free before one.'

'I meant about Dinah.'

He took the cheque, folded it, slipped it inside his wallet. 'Sarah. You don't mind? Of course not, you're calling me Joe. Sarah, like I said, these are muddy waters. A soldier comes back from the dead, even if his visit proves brief. We are not talking about police matters here. We are talking national security. Military Intelligence. Private investigators, they don't like. Sometimes they throw the book at them.'

'Joe '

'Have you seen the book, Sarah? It's very big and it's very heavy. I promise you, if I wasn't a coward, I'd help.'

'You're giving up.'

'If you want to put it that way, yes. You won't shame me into this, Sarah. You want to know what else my policeman friend told me? Ex-friend. The word is, that house did not blow up by accident.'

'The papers said '

'The papers lied.'

'You know that for a fact?'

He raised his eyes to heaven. 'Facts. A policeman wanted to give me my money back, Sarah. We are beyond facts here. We are in an age of miracles and wonders.'

'But what about the child?'

'Trust me. She'll turn up. It was a hospital she was in, they won't have sold her into slavery.'

He wasn't about to budge, Sarah could see that. Still, it wouldn't hurt to insert a wedge. 'Supposing I found out '

'How would you do that?'

'I don't know. I'm supposing. Supposing I thought I knew where she was, would you help me look? If I asked?'

He picked up his coffee spoon and held it lengthwise between index fingers. He seemed to be measuring something with it. 'You understand what I said? That explosion was no accident. In English, a bomb was involved. It's a dangerous business.'

'I don't care about that. I want to find Dinah.'

'Why?'

Why? Because the child was a survivor: now, more than ever. Before, Sarah had imagined Dinah to have come through an Act of G.o.d unscathed. Now, it seemed she had lived through an Act of Man. For that, if for no other reason, she deserved to have someone care about what happened next.

'Sarah?'

'Joe. It matters, that's all.'

He considered. 'You need help, it doesn't involve policemen or spies or soldiers, okay, I'll be there. But this is only because I like you, Sarah.'

'And because you don't think it'll happen.'

'That too.' He put the spoon down and reached into his jacket pocket. 'This doesn't interest you. But it's what he looked like, Thomas Singleton. I took it from a newspaper, an old one. The story about the helicopter crash.'

She unfolded a picture: two men, uniformed, but relaxed and smiling; both about her age, maybe a little older. The one on the left was squinting in the sun. The other, Thomas Singleton, held a cupped cigarette at chest level.

Joe said. 'His friend there was in the chopper with him.'

'What's his name?'

'Michael something. Michael Downey, I think.' He scratched his chin. 'You know, come to think of it, maybe he's still alive too.'

'Oh, I'd put money on it.'

'Why's that?'

'Because he's the man who was waiting for me in the car park,' Sarah said.

She finished stripping the ivy from the shed, and piled it in a garden refuse sack. For all her musing she was no nearer finding Dinah Singleton, apart from having established that she wasn't in the garden. Back inside, Mark was absorbed in cricket, and didn't look up as she walked past. Sundays were their one guaranteed day together. Looked like they'd blown this one.

The fight proper, though, didn't start until the evening. Usually Mark was ready for bed by ten, never failing to make some comment about having to be up early. Meaning lucky old her, who didn't. Tonight he was in no hurry, pouring another gla.s.s of wine as the clock struck. 'We've been invited away next weekend,' he said.

'Really? Who by?'

'The Inchons.'

He'd deliberately turned away before dropping this bombsh.e.l.l.

'You have to be kidding.'

'Uh-uh.'

'Well, forget it. We're not going.'

'Yes we are.'

'You might be. He's not my client.'

'But I'm your husband. Be reasonable, Sarah. It goes with the job.'

'That's my point.'

'Christ, why do you have to be so sanctimonious all the time? You never bleat about my job while you're spending money.'

'I don't notice you being particularly supportive about my career.'

'What career?'

'Yeah, thanks a bunch. Congratulations, Mark. You really have turned into one of the s.h.i.ts we used to hate so much in college.'

'I work b.l.o.o.d.y hard '

'You spend all day a.r.s.e-licking on the phone. I tell my friends you sell crack to schoolkids. I don't want to alienate them.'

'You've been a real b.i.t.c.h these past months, did you know that?'

'And you turned into a yuppie p.r.i.c.k about three years ago.'

She couldn't believe what she was hearing herself say; it was like watching somebody have an accident there was nothing you could do to prevent. The damage they did now would be with them long after they'd both pretended to forget it. Later they'd call it clearing the air, but it had more in common with biological warfare.

'. . . Turned into a what?'

'I didn't mean that. But Christ, Mark, what am I supposed to think? This wasn't what you'd planned.'

'This is news to me?'

'All I meant was '

'You think I wanted it to be like this? You think I woke up one morning and thought, I never really wanted to fulfil my life's ambition, maybe I'll go and work for a bank instead? You think that's what happened?'

'So what did happen, Mark? You tell me, since I can't work it out for myself.'

'Things change, that's all. Is that so hard to take in? You think life's all straight lines and easy choices? How many people get to live their student daydreams? h.e.l.l, people we know'd be running the world if that happened.'

'And that's your answer, is it? Things change. Brilliant.'

'What do you want? An apology?'

'I just want to know what happened to us, Mark! One day you were full of ambition. You were going to write books, for G.o.d's sake. What turned you into a shark instead?'

'I'm not a shark!'

'Your job is making b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like Inchon richer. What would you call it, radical philanthropy?'

'My job pays for everything we have.'

'I'm not interested in what it pays for, Mark. I'm worried about what it costs.'

'Oh, pardon me while I write that down!'

'I'm being serious here.'

'So am I. You wish I'd made it in academia? Me too. But I didn't. s.h.i.t happens, Sarah. What am I supposed to do, curl up into a ball and spend the rest of my life crying about it? Would that make you happy?'

'Maybe I just didn't want you to give up.'

'Well, that's f.u.c.king easy for you to say. What did you ever work at?'

'I work at this. I work at us. But you're never here, and when you are you aren't interested!'

'Oh, grow up.'

She didn't realize until then how loud they'd been shouting. There followed one dull, excruciating moment when she knew the neighbours must have heard them, and another of pure pain as she realized they'd never fought like this, not even back in the early days when everybody fought. How did you get out of a corner you'd just painted yourself into? She fell back on the old; the tried and trusted: 'I'm sorry.'

He pretended not to hear that.

'Mark? I said I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said any of that. I didn't mean it. I love you.'

He mumbled something she wasn't meant to catch, and went and locked himself in the bathroom.

So Monday was h.e.l.l, even more than usual. She found a s.p.a.ce above the airing cupboard she'd never attacked, had always a.s.sumed was spider heaven, and spent the whole morning with it, though you'd need a ladder and torch to appreciate it afterwards. Then she cried for a while, skipped lunch, and walked into town to buy something expensive from the butcher's. This is what good little wifey is supposed to do, a voice in her head informed her, but she was too miserable to pay attention. When you were in h.e.l.l, you always did what you were supposed to do.

And in the evening Mark played the good hubby anyway, getting home early with flowers and chocolates, which made them even. They went to bed first, then ate chocolates, and had fillet steak sandwiches for a midnight snack. It was a little like life five years ago; four at a pinch.

'I'll call him,' he said, far too casually. 'Tell him we can't make it.'

'No, let's go.'

'You don't want to.'

'No, but we have to. It'll be all right.'

'Are you sure?'

'No. But let's go anyway.'

He was pleased, but tried not to show it. 'I'll make it up to you. I promise.'

'I've been meaning to mention it,' she said. 'I spent three hundred pounds last week.'

The next few days, Sarah mostly spent gearing up for what she was calling, in her mind, The Inchon Weekend: a name which made it sound like a particularly dire novel. But with a dire novel you could give up half-way, and The Inchon Weekend would have to be lived through minute by minute. It occurred to her, had occurred as soon as Mark had confessed they'd been invited, that this had been the point of having the Inchons to supper; the quid pro quo he'd been angling for from the start. Not much chance of doing business with Wigwam and Rufus about. But with a whole weekend to play with you were away, though what banking business involved, the kind you could do just talking about it, Sarah didn't know. Presumably, though, The Bank With No Name would be happy that its brightest and best was rubbing elbows with a fat potential client. At the fat potential client's country seat.

'Which is where, anyway?'

'Out in the Cotswolds.'