The Light of Day Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  The Light of Day

  “The Light of Day offers a master class in narrative.”

  — The Observer (UK)

  “Swift is a virtuoso of narrative ventriloquism; he inhabits his characters through their voices.… Ideas create little rhymes with each other.… Swift manages this patterning of motifs with exquisite economy.”

  — The New York Times Book Review

  “The Light of Day has a brilliantly slow, precise, careful structure, covering ‘every hour, every minute, every detail’ of its case with as much control as it lays out its geography and deals with its parts of speech. Within this tight little map, the story it has to tell is wildly extreme, sensational and romantic.”

  — The Guardian (UK)

  “Graham Swift is a writer’s writer. His books are exhilarating and daring, but not daredevil.… Swift excels at suspense, and The Light of Day, fated and claustrophobic, reads as if it were written by a British Ross MacDonald.… This effect is brilliantly drawn.”

  — Citizen’s Weekly (Ottawa)

  “A brilliantly constructed novel: rarely has suspense been better sustained.”

  — Independent (UK)

  “Indisputably one of our finest novelists. This is a book so shot through with pent-up emotion that it practically trembles in your hands.”

  — Arena (UK)

  “A classic noir plot.… Calls to mind all sorts of correspondingly gritty love stories, from Hammett and Chandler to Double Indemnity, but Swift is more concerned with plumbing the conventions of the form to explore the murky territories of a moral life: the choices and chances one has, the deals we make and the paybacks we take, the responsibility we have to care for one another.… There are moments of understated metaphorical brilliance.… A tough-guy novel with its heart buried in the twilight.”

  — The Hamilton Spectator

  “In The Light of Day, Booker Prize–winner Graham Swift writes in a style so deceptively simple that its emotional punch takes your breath away.”

  — In Style

  “Swift has the ability to cast a spell over a story, magically illuminating the small details of human interaction and the outside world.”

  — Sunday Express (UK)

  “The novel feels both fastidiously and feverishly shaped.… Though written in short, declarative sentences, there’s a musicality to Swift’s language.”

  — The Globe and Mail

  “Leave it to one of the great modern story-tellers to pen a mystery where the crime is the least important element.… Swift fashions the detective archetype into a workshop for a discussion of human identity.”

  — Winnipeg Free Press

  “Not only the work of a novelist at the peak of his powers, but also his most engaging work to date.”

  — HQ (Australia)

  “[Swift] is a wonderfully original writer and his new work lives up to his reputation as one of England’s finest living novelists.… An intriguing, even mystifying story of the power of passion, murder and redemption.”

  — The Toronto Sun

  ALSO BY GRAHAM SWIFT

  The Sweet-Shop Owner

  Shuttlecock

  Waterland

  Out of This World

  Ever After

  Learning to Swim

  Last Orders

  VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2004

  Copyright © 2003 by Graham Swift

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Canada in 2003 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom by Hamish Hamilton, London. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

  Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Swift, Graham, 1949–

  The light of day / Graham Swift.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36599-6

  I. Title.

  PR6069.W47L53 2004 823′.914 C2003-905682-1

  v3.1

  For Candice

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1997

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  About the Author

  All’s fair in love and war

  1997

  1

  “Something’s come over you.” That’s what Rita said, over two years ago now, and now she knows it wasn’t just a thing of the moment.

  Something happens. We cross a line, we open a door we never knew was there. It might never have happened, we might never have known. Most of life, maybe, is only time served.

  Morning traffic in Wimbledon Broadway. Exhausts steaming. I turn the key in the street door, my own breath coming in clouds.

  “Something’s come over you, George.”

  But she knew even before I did. She’s not in this job for nothing, she can pick up a scent. And soon she’s going to leave me, any day now, I can tell. I can pick up a scent as well.

  She’s here before me of course. When isn’t she? She doesn’t sleep these days, she says. “These days” have lasted years. Always awake with the dawn, so why not? Always something to be done. And I pitch up after her. Boss’s privilege. Though it’s not yet half-past eight, and last night I was out on a job till gone two. And today’s a special day.

  As I reach the top of the stairs I hear the click and hiss of an already warm
kettle being switched on. The computer in her little compartment (we call it the “reception area” but area’s a generous word) is already up and running. It feels like she might have been here all night.

  “Cold,” she says, with a shiver at the air I’ve brought in and a little nod to the outside world.

  “But beautiful,” I say.

  She’ll have been here before the sun hit the streets.

  “Coffee or tea?” she says, ignoring my smile—and that word—as if insisting I’ll have had a rough start.

  But I don’t have a sleep problem, not now. Though maybe I should. I can grab it when I can, cat-nap, get by on little. An old trick of the trade. And Rita’s sleep problem, if she’s honest about it (and sometimes she is) isn’t really a sleep problem either.

  “An empty bed, George, that’s all it is. If there was someone there …”

  “Tea, I think, Reet. Nice and strong.”

  She’s wearing the pale pink top, soft wool, above a charcoal skirt. Round her neck a simple silver chain. The small twinkly stud earrings, a waft of scent. She always gets herself up well, Rita. We have to meet the public, after all.

  But the pale pink is like a flag, her favourite colour. A very pale pink—more like white with a blush. I’ve seen her wearing it many times. I’ve seen her wearing a fluffy bathrobe of the same soft pink colour, loosely tied, tits nuzzling inside. Bringing in morning tea.

  I go into my office, leaving the door open. The sun is streaming through my first-floor window, the low, blinding sun of a cold November morning, the sun Rita never gets in her compartment, except through the frosted glass of my door.

  She follows me in with the tea, and a mug for herself, a bundle under her arm. There’s always this morning conference—my office door open—even as I settle myself in, take off my coat, switch on my own computer, sit down. The sun’s warm through the glass, even if outside the air’s icy.

  She puts down my tea, already sipping her own, eyeing me over the rim. She slips the bundle onto my desk, pulls round the other chair—the “client’s chair.” She steps through bars of bright light.

  It’s like a marriage really. We’ve both thought it. It’s better than a lot of marriages (we know this). Rita—my assistant, my associate, my partner, or not-quite partner. Her job description has never exactly been set in stone. But I wouldn’t dream of calling her my receptionist (though she is that too) or even my secretary.

  “Be an angel, Reet.”

  “I am an angel, George.”

  Where would I be without her?

  But she’s going to leave me, I can tell. One morning like this one: she won’t bring in a mug of her own and she won’t put down the bundle of files, she’ll keep it hugged tight to her, a shield, and she won’t sit down. She’ll say “George” in a way that will make me have to look up, and after a bit I’ll have to say, “Sit down, Rita, for God’s sake,” and she’ll sit facing me like a client.

  “It’s been good knowing you, George. It’s been good working with you, but …”

  She knows what day it is. A Thursday, and Thursdays are special, but she knows the date, the day of the year. November 20th. Two years—if you count it from that day. Two years and it hasn’t stopped. And if it hasn’t stopped, it will go on for the years to come, however many they’ll be. The time’s gone when she could say (as she did once), “How can you, George—with her?” Or when she could say, to herself: He must be mad, he must be off his head, but he’ll come round, it’ll stop, give it time. He’ll come slinking back. And meanwhile what better guarantee, what better safeguard, really—that woman being where she is?

  I think she’s come to accept it—even to respect it. A fact, a feature. Mr. Webb is always “on an assignment” every alternate Thursday afternoon. I’ve even seen this look of sweet sad understanding in her eyes. That’s why I think she’s going to quit.

  “Those are for Mrs. Lucas—this afternoon. Five forty-five. Earliest she can do.” A quick glance. “You’ll be back?”

  We both know what’s in the envelope. Photographs. Photographs of a man and a woman in a hotel room. A little blurred but clear enough for recognition, at six-by-nine enlargement. “Surveillance equipment” is reliable these days. We have to get the film processed specially—a private contract—and Rita collects. A man and a woman doing things with each other. But this sort of stuff hardly raises an eyebrow or even gets that much of a look from Rita and me. It sits there, like the morning mail, between us.

  Our stock-in-trade. Can you see who’s who? That’s the vital thing.

  “Yes, I’ll be back by five-thirty.”

  “And I’ll just say”—she doesn’t push the point too much—“you’ll be out of the office till then?”

  “But I won’t leave before ten. I can take calls till then.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a beautiful day out there,” I say again. “Cold, but beautiful.”

  Another sideways look, more lingering this time. She might be saying, You poor bloody idiot.

  The eyes are tired, made up immaculately, but tired. The sunlight streaming in is like a warm bath, but it isn’t kind to the lines round her eyes. It catches a wisp of steam rising from her mug and puts a sparkle in her hair. She moves a bit closer to point out something. A silver bracelet at the end of the pink sleeve.

  A long time now, since the last time. I’d asked her round to try some of my cooking (Rita may be an angel, but she’s a hopeless cook). I might even have spelt it out to her: a meal, that was all. But that’s the trouble with good cooking (if I say it myself). Not to mention red wine. It warms the heart, the cockles, as well as the stomach. Melts the resistance.

  “Things on your mind, Reet?” The considerate boss.

  “Not exactly, George. You?” She’d cupped her wineglass in both hands—her nails wine-red too. “It’s just not having anyone there. You know. Somebody by your side.”

  2

  Something happens. “Something comes over us,” we say.

  “Mrs. Nash, can I ask what your husband does?”

  “He’s a gynaecologist.”

  And I didn’t voice any of the thoughts I had, of course not. Though one of them was that this was a new one—I’d never known this before: a gynaecologist. Shouldn’t they make safe husbands? Wouldn’t it be like a guarantee? Since they’re seeing other women all the time. You’d think they see enough. But what does it feel like to be married to one? A man who sees other women every day.

  “I see,” I said.

  But I think she read my thoughts. Women (Rita, for example) read thoughts, faces, quicker than men. A working principle, a lesson of the trade. Maybe it’s also a gynaecological law.

  I looked at her face—brown eyes—looking at mine and had the exact thought: She’s reading my face like a book. But that’s just an expression. I didn’t read faces like books (I didn’t read many books), I read faces like faces.

  Brown eyes. A special brown. Clever, I thought, and none too sure of me. My dumb “I see’s.” This hideaway of mine, up narrow stairs, overlooking the Broadway. But not so clever, or so sure of herself—or why was she here?

  Later, on one of my Thursdays, she’d say, “He wasn’t a gynaecologist when I met him—fool. He was just—a not very committed medical student.”

  And she’d actually laughed, a small dry laugh. A laugh—it was possible. And I’d thought: This might be ordinary life, we might not be here.

  Later still, she’d say, “ ‘Gynaecologist,’ it comes from the Greek. It literally means ‘womanizer.’ Ha. But he wasn’t that. I mean, there was only her. I know.”

  The truth is she’s taught me to say things, to say all this, to put things down in words. It’s been an education, really.

  He was a gynaecologist and she was a lecturer in languages. English included, of course.

  “I see.”

  The sun came in at a low slant through my office window, just like it’s doing today. Cold outside, warm slabs of sun indoors
. It fell like a partition across the desk between us. It just touched her knees, making them look as if they couldn’t hide.

  She’s not sure of me, I thought, she can read my thoughts—my gynaecological thoughts.

  But if she could, if she did, she’d have read the one I felt, like a small pang, for her. That it must make it worse for her—the pain and the shame. All the tired old jokes and remarks popping up and pressing round to haunt her. Him a gynaecologist too …

  She looked at me and smiled, for some reason. A smile as defenceless as her knees.

  You cross a line.

  3

  The florist’s is only just starting its day. Trails of silvery-bright drips across the floor. Here, on the other side of the Broadway, at ground level, the sun comes in from behind, through a back window, so the girl who’s serving becomes for a moment a silhouette against a sheet of light.

  If Rita’s watching (it’s just my guess), if she’s gone to my office window to look out, she’ll have seen me cross over and confirmed it to herself: he’s getting the flowers. Though it’s Rita who’s the regular customer here, not me. I haven’t seen this girl before. The first time it was like a blatant message: the flowers, in a brand-new vase, on my desk.