Dreams of Leaving by Rupert Thomson

a matter like this.’ He paused. ‘There will be the funeral to take care of.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜If there’s anything I can do – ’
    George scanned the Chief Inspector’s face for its usual irony. Not a trace. Genuine compassion then. Peach could be almost likeable at times. That was what made him so dangerous.
    â€˜Thank you,’ George said.
    Any elation he might have felt as he walked to the door of Peach’s office had been dismantled by the preceding weeks of pressure and suspense. And, for all he knew, Moses might really have drowned in the river.
    That would have been the cruellest irony of all.
    *
    The priest sprinkled a handful of token soil on to the coffin lid. The grave gaped. A mouth in the ground not saying anything. Soon the sexton would arrive. Stop it up with spadeloads of earth. Stop it up for ever. Eternal silence.
    George wondered.
    His grandfather and his father were buried here. Now his son. In a way. He had a sudden urge to laugh, to screech with laughter, to guffaw. He coughed instead.
    He glanced round. So few mourners. A dozen, if that. And half of them policemen. Things were definitely back to normal. Even now he was being watched. Perhaps he would always be. He caught Dinwoodie’s eye and felt the tug of the man’s curiosity. He would like to have let Dinwoodie into the secret (imagine his face!) but Dinwoodie had a mouth on him, everyone knew that. If it wasn’t his escape plans, it was his revolutionary party. No, he would never be able to tell Dinwoodie. Or anyone else, for that matter. He turned back in time to see the priest close his prayer-book. The priest’s sacred words were already evaporating in the heat.
    The service over, there was a general adjusting of collars and veils, a general shuffling and clearing of throats. As George steered Alice awayfrom the grave, Peach loomed, a mass of blue curves, vacuum-packed into his dress uniform.
    â€˜Please accept my condolences,’ he said, ‘my sincere condolences,’ and rested a heavy hand on George’s shoulder.
    The resonance of this gesture was not lost on George. So devious this Peach. Even now his mind would be on the move, bristling with suspicions as an army bristles with spears.
    â€˜Thank you,’ George said. The briefness grief allows you.
    But Peach was unwilling to let go just yet. ‘We did everything we could,’ he said. ‘As I’m sure you know.’
    â€˜Oh, we know that, Chief Inspector. We know that.’ George considered the sky, its empty unblemished blue, Peach’s face a pale blur in the foreground. And he smiled. ‘If you could’ve found him, you would’ve done. I can only thank you for all you did on our behalf.’ Overdoing it a bit, perhaps, but in a kind of trance. He had climbed, it seemed, into thin exhilarating air.
    Peach shielded his eyes and fell back on convention. ‘Not at all, Mr Highness,’ he said, and pleasantly enough, ‘not at all.’ Tugging at the front of his tunic he turned away to rejoin his colleagues.
    Relief drifted upwards through George’s body, the faintest of breezes, cooling him, refreshing him, but not visibly disturbing his outer surfaces. He couldn’t allow relief to register. He would always be careful.
    He turned to Alice, took her arm.
    â€˜Let’s go,’ he said, ‘shall we?’ Secretly rejoicing that his plan, against all odds, had worked.

The Building of Many Colours
    The sun falling across the tables of the Delphi Café that afternoon was pure and white, as dazzling as a vision. The proprietor leaned against the back wall, his legs crossed at the ankles. He was leafing through a paper. A fly described an unearned halo in the air above his head. It was a Sunday.
    His only customer was an old woman dressed in a crumpled mackintosh. Her mane of grey hair, so long that it tickled the small of her back when she unpinned it,