The Forgotten Dead Read online

  The water surged over her ankles. The wind from the sea picked up force. She’d thought the jetty would be hard and sharp, but when she set her foot on the first rock to clamber up, it felt soft and slippery and slid away.

  She shrieked and fell forwards onto the rocks, striking her shoulder. She hauled herself up onto the jetty, quickly drawing her feet out of the water. Then she leaned forward and peered down. She had to find out what sort of revolting fish she’d stepped on.

  The waves receded and the sea prepared to send in the next onslaught. Terese stared, the roaring sound growing inside her head.

  It wasn’t a fish. A hand was sticking up out of the water, attached to an arm below the surface. For a long moment she stared at the place where the arm transitioned into a shoulder and then became an entire body. A person was lying there, wedged between the rocks. A black person.

  She whimpered when she realized that was where she’d placed her foot. She’d stepped on a corpse. On the chest or stomach. She didn’t want to know where. She sobbed and stammered and slid backwards up onto the ridge, scraping her soles hard against the rough surface, trying to get rid of that soft and slippery feeling on the bottom of her foot.

  But she couldn’t resist taking another look. It was a man lying down there. That much she could clearly see. His skin was black and shiny with water. Like a fish, an eel, something slimy that lived in the sea. He was naked. She thought she could make out an animal creeping along his shoulder, and against her better judgement, she leaned forward. The next wave struck the rocks and the shore, spraying up into her face and then receded, the water foaming and roiling around the body. It looked as if it were moving. For an instant she thought the black man would rise up, grab hold of her ankle, and pull her down into the water. What if he was alive?

  At that moment the first traces of morning light appeared beyond the mountains, and the colour of the sea changed to green. She was looking directly into the face of the dead man. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was wide open, as if uttering an inaudible drowned scream, his teeth gleaming white and swaying under the water.

  Dear God in heaven, thought Terese. Papa, please help me. I’m all alone here.

  Then her stomach heaved, and she pressed her hand to her mouth as she made her way across the rocks and tumbled down the other side. She was still throwing up as she ran, staggering, away from the scene.

  Chapter 2

  New York

  Monday, 22 September

  According to the charts, I was probably in my seventh week. I’d put off taking a pregnancy test for as long as possible, hoping in my heart that Patrick would come home. Then we could have done it together. Not the actual peeing on the test stick, of course. There had to be a limit. But the waiting for the stripe to appear.

  My pulse quickened as I took my cell phone out of my jacket pocket. I might have missed a call because of all the traffic noise.

  I hadn’t. The display was blank.

  There had to be some perfectly natural explanation, I told myself. For Patrick, his work was everything, and it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d become so immersed in some ugly and complicated story that he forgot about everything else. He wouldn’t give up until he’d turned over every last stone. Once, three years ago, before we were married, I didn’t hear from him for a whole week, and I was sure that he’d got cold feet and left me. It turned out that he’d latched onto some small-time gangsters in DC and had ended up sitting in jail down there, wanting to do in-depth research from the inside. He’d come home with a broken rib and a report that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

  I tapped in his speed-dial number for the eleventh time this morning.

  If you answer, I promise we’ll do whatever you want, I thought as the call went through. We’ll leave Manhattan and buy that house in Norwood, New Jersey. If it has already been sold, we’ll find one just like it. And then we’ll have babies and invite the neighbours over for barbecues, and I’ll quit the theatre and start sewing appliquéd baby hats. Whatever. If only you pick up.

  I heard a click on the line signalling his voicemail. Hi, you’ve reached Patrick Cornwall …

  The same message I’d heard when I woke up in the morning, all last week. It sounded emptier with each day that passed.

  If I’m not answering my phone, I’m probably out on a job, so please leave a message after the beep.

  It had been ten days since he’d called.

  That was on a Friday.

  I was in Boston with Benji, my assistant, to pick up a chair dating from the Czarist period in Russia. That piece of furniture was the last puzzle piece needed for the staging of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. It had belonged to an ageing hairdresser’s paternal grandmother, who had fled St Petersburg in 1917.

  Patrick had phoned just after I finished the transaction. Benji and I had each taken hold of one side of the chair and were on our way down a narrow flight of stairs in a building that looked like it might collapse at any minute from sheer exhaustion.

  ‘I just wanted to say goodnight,’ said Patrick from across the Atlantic. ‘I miss you so much.’

  ‘This isn’t the best time,’ I said, propping the chair onto a step while Benji held on tightly so the precious object wouldn’t tumble down the stairs.

  The hairdresser stood in the doorway above us, watching nervously. I really wanted to get out of there before he changed his mind. He’d told us that this chair, which he’d inherited from his grandmother, was the dearest thing he owned, but he wanted to see Mother Russia before he died. Otherwise he would never have even considered selling it. If he had enough money, he wanted to buy a burial plot near the Alexander Nevsky church in St Petersburg, where the great men of his native country had been laid to rest.

  ‘You won’t believe what a story this is going to be,’ Patrick went on. ‘If it doesn’t turn out to be the investigative story of the year, I don’t know what—’

  ‘Are you in a bar or something?’ I glanced at my watch. It was 5.45 in Boston. Midnight in Paris. It warmed my heart to hear his voice.

  He was audibly slurring his words. ‘No, I’m back at the hotel,’ he said. There were sounds in the background, a car honking, voices nearby. ‘And you know what I’m looking at right now? The dome of the Panthéon, where Victor Hugo is buried. I can see straight into the garret windows of the Sorbonne too. Did you know people live up there under the eaves? But their lights are out now, and they’ve gone to bed. I wish you were here.’

  ‘Well, I’m standing in a stairwell in Boston,’ I said, as I heard the hairdresser start arguing with Benji. Apparently he was asking for more money.

  ‘I’ll be damned if human life is worth anything here,’ Patrick went on. ‘Nothing but objects that can be bought and sold.’

  ‘I really have to go, Patrick. Let’s talk tomorrow.’

  I could hear him taking a swig of something.

  ‘I can’t talk about it over the phone,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to plaster this story all over the world. I’m not going to let them think they can silence me.’

  ‘Who could possibly do that?’ I replied with a sigh, grimacing at poor Benji, whose face was starting to turn an alarming shade of red. I had no idea how much it might cost to be buried next to Dostoevsky, but it had to be more than my budget could handle.

  ‘And afterwards I went out for a while, over to Harry’s New York Bar, just to find somebody to speak English with. Did you know that Hemingway went there whenever he was in Paris?’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘I needed to clear my head and think about something other than death and destruction. You have no idea what this journey is like, I’m headed straight into the darkness.’

  ‘Sweetheart, let’s talk more in the morning. OK?’ I was having a ridiculously hard time getting off the phone. A small part of me was afraid he’d disappear if I ended the call.

  Then I heard a shrill ringtone somewhere near him.

  ‘Just a sec,’ said Pat
rick. ‘Somebody’s calling on the other phone.’

  I heard him say his name with a French accent. It sounded funny, as if he were a stranger. Who would be phoning him in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Paris? Patrick raised his voice, shouting so loud that even the Russian standing above us must have heard him. He said something about a fire, and God.

  ‘Mais qu’est-ce qui est en feu? Quoi? Maintenant? Mais dis-moi ce qui se passe, nom de Dieu!’

  Then he was back on the line.

  ‘I’ve got to run, sweetie. Shit.’ I heard a bang, as if he’d knocked something over, or maybe stumbled. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  We both clicked off, and that was the last I’d heard from him.

  I cut across 8th Avenue, heading for the Joyce Theatre. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a whirling blue light at the next block, but the sirens seemed to be coming from far away, from another universe, where none of this was happening. The silent phone in my hand. The tiny speck growing inside me. Patrick, who didn’t know he was going to be a father.

  ‘Ally!’

  That was the girl at the reception desk — Brenda something or other — calling to me as I entered the theatre. ‘Your last name is Cornwall, right? Alena Cornwall? There’s a letter for you.’ She held up a fat envelope. ‘From Paris.’

  My heart leaped as I took the envelope.

  It was addressed to Alena Cornwall, c/o The Joyce Theatre, 8th Avenue, Chelsea, New York.

  There was no doubt it was his handwriting. Neat letters evenly printed, revealing that Patrick had once been a real mama’s boy.

  The envelope felt rough to the touch and seemed to contain more than just paper. According to the postmark, it had been sent from Paris a week earlier, on 16 September. Last Tuesday. The image on the stamp showed a woman wearing a liberty cap, her hair fluttering, in a cloud of stars. The symbol for France and liberty.

  ‘When did this get here?’ I asked, looking up at Brenda. ‘How long has it been lying around?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, wiping her fingers on a paper napkin. Under the desk she always kept a stash of sticky Mars bars, which she ate in secret. ‘Maybe on Friday. I wasn’t working that day. I guess they didn’t know where to put it.’

  I went down the corridor, which led to the offices and dressing rooms. Why the hell couldn’t I even get my mail delivered on time? Certain people seemed to think I didn’t exist because I didn’t have a proper job contract or mailbox. But why on earth would Patrick send the envelope to the theatre and not to our apartment? That seemed incredibly impersonal. And he hadn’t even managed to write the whole address. No street number and no zip code. That had to be significant.

  He must have been in a hurry. Something had happened. Maybe he’d met somebody new and didn’t dare come home to tell me. Maybe he was leaving me.

  I stopped abruptly when a door crashed open, right in my face, and out rushed one of the dancers from the show.

  ‘But I nearly killed myself!’ Leia cried. ‘Don’t you get it? The wall practically reared up in front of me.’

  I groaned loudly. Leia was a 22-year-old bundle of nerves who’d been singled out as the next big star on the New York dance scene, which had made her believe that the rest of the world revolved around her. She opened her eyes wide when she caught sight of me.

  ‘You need to do something about it,’ she said. ‘Or else I’m not setting foot on that stage ever again.’

  ‘I can’t rebuild the whole place,’ I told her. ‘Everybody knows how cramped the space is off-stage. You need to ask someone to stand there and catch you. That’s what they usually do.’ I turned my back on her and kept on walking. I had no intention of grovelling before a girl who was named after the princess in Star Wars.

  ‘You shouldn’t even be doing this job,’ she yelled after me. ‘Because you don’t care about other people.’

  I turned around.

  ‘And you’re a spoiled little diva,’ I said.

  Leia ran into her dressing room, slamming the door behind her.

  The envelope I was holding was making my hand sweat.

  I went into the small, windowless cubbyhole that was the production office for visiting ensembles and shut the door, but not all the way. Then I tore open the envelope.

  A little black notebook tumbled out, along with a small memory stick and a postcard of the Eiffel Tower. I felt a burst of joy as I read the brief message.

  Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. There’s just one more thing I have to do. Love you always. P.

  P.S. Keep this at the theatre until I get back.

  I read the words over and over.

  The air was getting stuffier in the cramped office. The walls were closing in on me, and I had to kick open the door to make the space seem bigger. I reminded myself what I’d memorized: Turning left, the corridor led to the loading dock on 19th Street. Turning right, I could reach the foyer, where the art deco stairs led up to street level. There were exits. It wouldn’t take me more than thirty seconds to run outside.

  I sank back onto the desk chair and studied the famous steel structure on the front of the postcard.

  There’s just one more thing I have to do, he’d written. The envelope had been postmarked a week ago. Shouldn’t he be done with whatever it was by now?

  I leafed through the notebook. Scattered words and sentences, names and phone numbers. Why had he sent this to me? And why keep it at the theatre instead of taking it home? I saw darkness gaping beneath the illusory cheerfulness of the postcard.

  Don’t worry meant that I had every reason to be nervous. I’d worked in the theatre long enough to know that people don’t say what they mean. The true meaning is hidden behind the words. I’ll be home soon and when I get back sounded like simple, practical information, but the words could just as well mean that he was trying to fool me. Or himself.

  I stuck the memory stick in my laptop. While I waited for the pictures to upload, I slipped into an emotional limbo, a neutral position between plus and minus. It was something I did on opening nights or in disastrous situations. When Mama had suffered an embolism and I’d found her dead in her apartment, I’d wandered about in that state for several weeks afterwards. I’d finished up the set design for a music video at the same time as making arrangements for the cremation and funeral. My friends began telling me to see a psychologist. Instead, when it was all over, I slept for two weeks, and then I was ready to go back to work.

  A picture appeared on the screen. It was blurry, showing a man partially turned away from the camera. In the next photo I saw two men standing outside a door. It seemed to be night time, and this picture was also blurry. I scrolled through more images, but couldn’t make any sense of them. Patrick was definitely not a great photographer. Words and language were his forte, but he was usually able to take decent pictures. These were awful. Nothing but hazy-looking men with disagreeable expressions. One of them appeared in several photos. A typical bureaucrat or banker, or maybe an advertising executive, with thin, rectangular glasses and light eyes, wearing an overcoat or suit. The pictures seemed to have been taken from some distance, in secret. The men could have been any anonymous strangers, in any city on earth. And they told me absolutely nothing about what sort of story Patrick was so immersed in over there.

  I closed my eyes to think for a few minutes.

  Then I opened the browser on my laptop and found the home page for The Reporter. I looked for the phone number of the editorial office.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Richard Evans,’ I said on the phone. He was the editor of the magazine that bought Patrick’s freelance stories, and a legend in the publishing world.

  ‘One moment, please.’

  I was put on hold. An extended silence, while I waited to be put through. Then I heard that Richard Evans was not available. After half an hour of being rerouted to one person after another, I reached an editorial assistant, and I was able to trick her into telling me where he was. When I said that I had a
story to deliver from Patrick, she told me that the editor would probably be back from the Press Café in an hour because he was due at a meeting. The assistant advised me to make an appointment. Instead, I slipped out of the theatre and took a cab to the corner of 8th Avenue and 57th Street. That was the location of the Universal Press Café, just across from the magazine offices.

  Richard Evans was sitting next to the window, leaning over a table that was too low for his tall body. He was deeply immersed in a newspaper and gave me only a brief glance as I approached.

  ‘There are more tables over there,’ he said, motioning towards the other side of the café. Even though he was over sixty, his blond hair was thick and wavy.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said. ‘My name is Ally Cornwall, and I’m married to Patrick Cornwall.’

  Evans put down his paper. Though his gaze was piercing, his eyes were the faded blue of washed-out jeans.

  ‘Oh, right. Aren’t you from somewhere in Hungary? It seems to me Patrick mentioned that.’

  ‘I’m from the Lower East Side,’ I said and boldly sat down on the chair across from him. That was my standard reply whenever anyone wondered where I was really from. ‘We met once, at the celebration for the magazine’s fifteenth anniversary.’

  ‘Sure, of course.’ He managed a half-smile. ‘That’s also when Cornwall was nominated for the Pulitzer.’

  ‘But he didn’t get it,’ I said, waving to the waiter, who came rushing over to wipe off the table. I ordered a glass of orange juice.

  I had stood beside Patrick on that evening, squeezed into a beautiful emerald-green sheath dress that I’d borrowed from a costume supplier. I had clutched his hand as the mingling stopped and everyone turned to look at the TV screens. In Patrick’s line of work there was no higher honour than the Pulitzer Prize. His series of articles about the Prince George police district in Maryland had aroused tremendous attention, and being nominated for the prize was the biggest thing that had ever happened to him. But in the end, his name was not the one announced. Instead, the prize for the best investigative reporting went to a couple of journalists from The New York Times, for uncovering insider trading on Wall Street. Patrick got good and drunk. The following year he’d spent four months, two of them without pay, reporting on who the losers were in the new economy. It was a blistering account that was given extensive coverage in The Reporter and had stirred vigorous debate. It was also cited by numerous politicians. But Patrick was not nominated again, and his self-esteem had suffered ever since.