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  Margaret screamed. ‘What did you do with her, Logo? What did you do with her mother?’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘Only this. No blood at all. Only this.’

  A great roar of victory from the football ground reverberated down the street. He could hear and feel the stamping of feet, the beginning of that swaying singing. It drowned the beginnings of her scream. His hands were round her throat, the thumbs gouging under her chin. Margaret was already weak and panting. She struggled again, vainly, one hand holding a knitting needle jabbing at him, catching him in the stomach, so that he yelped, but held. Her skin was purple, there were strange animal noises emerging from her throat as she went on and on struggling. It seemed endless, ebbing and diminishing. She acquired more vigour to resist after each successive wave of weakness. Then she slumped. He loosened his hands slowly, sensing a trick. Then dived quickly into her knitting bag, pulled out another hank of wool, put it round her neck almost reverently, twisted it in his fist behind and turned it. His hands slipped on the wool, felt hot and greasy: he realised he was trembling violently. Logo reached for the poker in the fireplace, inserted it into the wool and continued to turn it like a tourniquet. To stop the flow of blood, he thought irrelevantly. Finally there was no sound from her at all.

  Logo stood up and drank some more of the whisky. Gradually the trembling ceased. He picked up the letters from the floor, read them again and threw them on the fire. He sized up the body of Margaret in his mind’s eye, chuckled briefly and tapped his nose. When you were weak and ill with stitches in your stomach, it was so much harder, but he wouldn’t make the same mistakes as last time, waiting until the limbs were stiff. He might have to wait to travel, surely the match was almost ended, half an hour to clear the ground, they were so good at it these days, then he could travel with his burden.

  He pulled her from the chair by the ankles, then dragged her by the armpits to the kitchen door. She was the size of a bird, her blouse riding up to show smooth, white skin grazing on the floor. Outside was her chariot, lying on one side. First he took the blunt end of his axe and hit her elbows and knees scientifically: he had thought long and hard about this. Then he pushed her into the trolley, still warm, still malleable, but it was difficult. Finally, with a great heave, he managed to turn the trolley upright on the third attempt. All this took a while. In the meantime, crowds passed the bottom of the alleyway, whooping and yelling. He regarded that as encouragement.

  Logo covered her head with a piece of black polythene, stuck a shovel down among her ribs. He trundled the trolley down into the street and out, past the little shops on the corner, on to the main road. It was not the route he normally took to work, but he had always found before that the more obvious he was, the less he was noticed. One whole hundred yards of the main road, before he detoured, left then right, into the graveyard, whistling. The ability to whistle always came back after a trauma long before the ability to sing.

  Logo found the grave they were digging for the woman in Legard Street this morning. He took the shovel from the trolley, leaving Margaret as dead as she was, and leapt down into the trench. The gravediggers’ footsteps were all over. He had brought a torch but did not need it: they were so close to the edge, the street lights would do, and anyway, he did not need to be particular. He had watched enough funerals to know the carelessness of city incarcerations on grey days like tomorrow; no-one would notice the faintest signs of his presence tonight. They were buried here without a sense of place: Margaret would like it here. Inside the trench he dug like a demon. Soft, north-London clay, cold but free of frost, turning easily. No-one looked at the sight or the sound in a graveyard late at night. Even the vagrants and the human residue from pubs, the teenage lovers went home at the merest signal of other life in here, drunk or drugged, they were easily spooked. Digging in a cemetery was only a sign of death, consistently ignored. I do not want to die, Logo thought, but the thought was not unappealing after he had dug down a foot, neat but frantic, sweating in his black clothes. He smelt of powder, not earth, a sickly scent of talc clung to him like a mist; his lapels were white with the sheer moving of her. More powder billowed out of her in a thin mist to complement the fog as he hauled her, all lumpy and bumpy and huge, out of the trolley and into the hole, where she landed with a sound like thunder.

  Then she moved: she moaned and moved and lay still. Logo had carried the whisky, took a swig, looked again. Margaret was so obliging. Freed from her polythene, she lay spread-eagled. He jumped on to her spine and with his hands, filled in the shallow covering of earth over her. She was still warm: not even the soil was cold; her presence rendered it tepid. So it was not without regret he covered her and tidied up. There was a certain economy in burying two at a time; they should try it more often. For himself there would be no family vault. They would all lie outside the city walls.

  He packed up the trolley with his shovel and wheeled it towards the far gate. On his way, he saluted the same grave he had acknowledged earlier that day. After all, it was not the first time he had made this journey with a similar burden. First his wife, then Margaret, both treacherous. The wife had been heavier, he seemed to remember. Or maybe she was just stiffer and clumsier and he weaker with his stitches and fury. Logo touched his nose. He stank of talcum powder; he would never get it off; it was not fitting for a grave.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There was something about a hospital ward. Perhaps it was the casualness, as if those who lay in bed had nothing to worry about at all. It reminded Rose of the foyer of the magistrates’ court where people sat around as though nothing was going to happen and nothing ever would again. Hospital was all pervading: on Wednesday night Rose suddenly wished she belonged to this small community of souls who knew the manners of the place and revelled in its comparative security. Patients had to work for their visitors, please them in a way which would not have been mandatory at home, but Michael was delighted to see Rose. She looked at him anew, feeling a little jealous. He was like a man holding court in the kingdom of his safety, surrounded by gifts. These tributes to a man much loved by friends and family made her feel small and inconspicuous, a person who did not count.

  ‘Mum and Dad,’ he explained sheepishly. ‘They keep sending things. I wish they wouldn’t. I’m out of here tomorrow and I couldn’t have eaten this lot in a month.’

  ‘You’ll have to leave them here, then. For the others.’ Rose could hear her granny saying that.

  She was holding his hand, loosely. With the other arm immobilised in a sling, she merely touched his fingers in a way which would leave him free should he want to scratch, gesture or simply abandon contact. They were both a little awkward; she was tense, full of her own anxiety, but determined not to undermine his optimistic mood. There was so much she wanted to tell him, but none of it was for the ears of a hospital case, the most handsome man in the ward, who looked so solidly secure that she wanted to crawl into his lap and stay with him there for ever, even though no-one would believe that he was hers.

  ‘How’s the office, then? Still standing?’ He was determined not to talk entirely about himself.

  ‘Well, I’ve scarcely been in there. I expect so. You know what it’s like. Another bit falls off every day. They’ve got notices up about IRA bombs.’

  ‘Not again? I don’t know why they bother with the notices. Any old tramp could get into your building.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Rose said, shocked. She was defensive about the mausoleum she had always considered as solid as a rock. It was one of many reasons that she liked it, regarding it as the only impenetrable place she knew, because no-one would ever try to get inside. Besides, Michael did not really want to talk about her work, let alone the place where she did it.

  ‘Sergeant Jones came in today. And Smithy and that bastard Williams, getting in from the cold. I told him to fuck off.’

  She didn’t want to pursue this line either.

  ‘They only come for the chocolates,’ she said.
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br />   ‘Do you know, that’s what I thought.’ He shrugged it off, but she could tell he was flattered by the number of his visitors, slightly regretful that this period of being spoiled was coming to an end. Rose could see his point. His position in this bed made him quite invulnerable.

  ‘What time tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, the morning, I think.’ Now he was less comfortable, conscious of deserting her. ‘Mum and Dad want me back for a day or two. It’s probably as well. I won’t be much use with the scrambled eggs just now. Gives Mum a chance to fuss.’

  He was very proud of having loving parents, but also vaguely ashamed of them, with their chorus of soup-making and well-wishing relatives singing love from the sidelines. But Rose would have none of his guilt.

  ‘Just what you need. Save me coming round to you with dishes of cold spaghetti bolognese so I can cut it into pieces for you.’ They both giggled.

  ‘Only for a day or so, and only in Catford. You could come and see me, meet them all. Saturday? I’ve written the address and phone number for you. Come on, Rose, say you will.’ She shook her head, secretly delighted but terrified by the prospect.

  ‘Yeah you will. And after that,’ he was holding her hand very firmly with no sign of wanting to escape, gazing at her with eyes which felt capable of melting her bones, ‘after that, you are coming round to my place. With your suitcase if you want. I love you, Rose. I want to bloody shout it.’

  ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Shush, someone will hear you.’

  ‘I bloody won’t shush,’ he said. ‘I won’t.’

  On her way out via three sets of antiseptic, polythene doors, she was weak with a transient happiness, before the dark world beyond flapping exits intervened. Inside the ward next to him, she could see a future twinkling away, somewhere beyond the ever-persistent fog, but the trouble was how to survive the time before the future could begin. Somehow, inside that greenhouse warmth, Rose had managed to suppress the cough which now returned for revenge. With the sound of her hacking went the pleasure of illusion. Michael could not help. She would have to find a safe place all on her own. Logo was everywhere: no-one could lock him up. Rose looked left and right before crossing the road. There was a taxi rank on the other side. Taxis were a luxury she could not afford, but there was no question of going home alone. Both girls would be in, Wednesday night was for complaining and hair washing. She would be fine until the morning, unless the doorbell rang.

  Daddy looked round every corner. He had seen her.

  Thursday dawned with a milky sweetness. The fog sank against Helen’s basement windows as daylight pushed itself into her dreams. Nothing but the fog peered through the bars which covered the panes, and although she loathed the necessity for this iron security, she could not have slept alone without it. It was a slow January light, with fog making her think of the sea and of being far away.

  Thursday. For the untroubled it was a day of promise when the back of the week was broken, but Helen rarely came into that category. The morning’s work would be easy enough, but all played to the tune of Wednesday’s emotional hangover. Helen did not think of Logo as she dressed. Pondering cases in lieu of counting sheep was proving a distraction which no longer worked. An obscure guilt was nibbling at her bones; guilt for things done badly or not at all; guilt for somehow missing the point and for not making sufficient progress with that girl, Rose, and for discussing her with Dinsdale the night before. Guilt for drinking white wine with Mr Handsome, as much as anything else, while knowing there was something wrong in this intimacy, however much she defended it by saying it was Wednesday and no phone call from Bailey this week, he deserved whatever he got.

  Come now, there are no real, concrete commitments between Bailey and me. Oh yes there are, for all there is nothing on paper: the unspoken promises are the most important you have ever made.

  ‘I don’t know what ails that child,’ Helen had been saying to Dinsdale about Rose, while they sat in a wine bar which was, by mutual consent, a long way from the office and prying eyes. Perhaps it was that which made her less comfortable, this definite movement towards the clandestine. ‘One minute she’s open, next, closed for the day. One minute an ordinary giggly girl, next sulky and unpredictable.’

  ‘Cherchez l’homme,’ said Dinsdale. ‘Moaning hormones. How’s the new man?’

  ‘In hospital.’

  ‘Not the best place for love to bloom, might have something to do with her moods.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Monday and Tuesday, she’s brilliant, then this morning she didn’t want to come to court at all, I practically had to force her. Then she kept her head down in her hands, did everything grudgingly, as if she was hiding … Don’t know why.’

  ‘Do you suppose,’ Dinsdale ventured, ‘there could be any truth in the Redwood theory? That Rose could be the one who’s been sandbagging the system?’

  ‘No. I’d literally stake my life on it. What a silly, dramatic thing to say.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Anyway, you should know better than that.’

  Helen watched his fingers round the stem of the goblet, holding it with the casual delicacy of a discriminating drinker. The bowl of his glass never became dirty, greasy or marked as hers did with fingerprints and lipstick long before the bottle was empty. She wondered how it was he managed to keep himself so clean, and also why it was she was struggling to keep the conversation on neutral, fixed to the main highways of law and objective gossip, away from anything to do with themselves. They had been playing with each other for several weeks, an element of teasing in all this chat. It amounted to nothing less than a prolonged flirtation, admittedly of an obscure kind, consisting as it did of two people listening to one another with the intentness only given to a potential lover. Now as the tenuous nature of the relationship began to slip, as it began to slide in the direction of an affair, and she knew he was teetering on the brink of either proposition or declaration, Helen, who had been as enthusiastic as Dinsdale for the flattery each gave and received, was thinking twice.

  She had left the wine bar in full flight with an excuse which sounded as false as it was and now she felt furious with herself. She was a grown woman, she should have talked to him, she shouldn’t have let things go so far. What she had wanted was the attention, she admitted bitterly. She had required fresh armaments in her war with Bailey, needed the uncritical, unreserved admiration which her younger colleague gave with such generosity along with Dinsdale’s support while he laughed at her pathetic jokes. She had not really wanted to give anything back. Cock tease. And what is so wrong in that? She asked the mirror. Am I not supposed to talk to men and enjoy their company? You have every right, her conscience answered back; but you knew this was different. Did she really like Dinsdale, with his patrician manners, splendid articulacy and shining cleanliness? Yes, apart from the last. Yes, yes. So that was all right then. An honest cock tease.

  The fog helped. It always helped but it would clear before noon. Helen West loved the cold anonymity of winter. It was as if the void left by the non-existent pregnancy had been filled with a strange kind of longing to be different, to acquit herself well by someone in the world, instead of failing everyone in a subtle fashion, all the time.

  Sylvie’s parents had debated long and hard the several issues raised by Granny’s funeral. The first was, should Sylvie attend? Was this part of the necessary education of a child of such tender years, and would it make things easier to explain? Opinions had been canvassed, but they had come back in contradictory forms and it was pragmatism which won. An early morning call to Margaret Mellors had elicited no response; the child could have been shuffled off elsewhere, but there had been so much upheaval lately, it did not seem entirely right and there was no time to consider the alternatives. The second subject of debate was should they wear black, but there was no black garment in the house and no time to borrow. Mr and Mrs went to church in blue and grey and Sylvie, spoiling for a fight, in red.

  It was the coffin itself which made Sylvie�
�s mother weep, such a helpless weeping it had no self-consciousness and she clutched the child for comfort. Too late she remembered why children were left behind; not to spare them the sight of the coffin but the sight of the parent out of control. Letting go of the smaller hand, the mother clutched her solid husband instead. Sylvie forgot to fight in this alienating atmosphere. She picked up the hymn book her mother had abandoned and looked at it, before beginning to gnaw the cover with silent concentration.

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die …’

  Sylvie twisted round with the book still in her mouth. She saw the last member of the congregation come in and sit at the back. Her jaw worked faster. It was the man with the fingers. Sylvie searched for her mother’s sleeve, saw her huddled away against Daddy, both of them smaller, ignoring her.

  ‘… We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.’

  It all went on too long. When the priest led his tiny flock from church to graveyard, the daylight hurt their eyes, but the movement was welcome, although as soon as the coffin shifted on the shoulders of the dull, professional pallbearers who had been outside for a cigarette during the ragged singing of a single hymn, the bereaved daughter wept afresh. The coffin was so tiny: she could not imagine it actually held the remnants of a life. She imagined her mother in there, sitting cramped like a small animal in hiding, squashed into that box the way she herself had once carried a pet mouse to school. There was a fine drizzle outside; the hair of the priest rose in a frizz, but he did not seem to mind. He enjoyed traditional funerals for the opportunity they gave him to raise his voice in prayer, the only chance in his current existence to remind the agnostics of the power of God and the futility of these little lives without Him. So he warned them in sonorous tones of our traditions of the graveside, warned them how the coffin must be lowered to the tune of his prayers and then they must each throw earth. Denied contact with her mother, Sylvie followed him closely, fascinated by the flowing surplice and the dash of colour in his sash. Boldly, she stepped up to the grave and peered down. The priest shielded her: this was no time for sharp words.