For the past two months Michael and Josh had been meeting twice a week to walk and jog on the Heath. The days on which they met were dictated by the shifting pattern of Josh’s work schedule, which was, in turn, defined by the state of various foreign markets. But whatever the day, they’d always managed to keep their agreement. For Josh it was part of a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and counter the hours he spent each week under office lights and on the Tube. For Michael the exercise was to get fit for his fencing, to break the day in his flat between waking and working, but also to ease his sciatica, the consequence of a schoolboy injury that had recently returned from across the years to cramp his right leg each morning. He didn’t know what had brought it on again — whether it was the fencing or having returned in earnest to The Man Who Broke the Mirror, the long hours at his desk. Or, even, he sometimes found himself wondering, was it another process of his grieving? A slippage of whatever leaden weight had sat in his chest since Caroline’s death down his body to cannonball itself in his calf instead. Whatever the cause, its electric grip on his lower back, the muscles in his right buttock, had Michael limping from his bed to the bathroom each morning. It was only after thirty minutes of extended walking that his leg would begin to loosen and he could once more flex his right foot freely again.
As Michael, sitting on the stairs, read that fifth line, he’d felt the heat leave his body. The stairwell seemed to pulse about him, his vision to blur. He returned to the letter’s opening. Dear Mr. Turner, it read. I understand this is a letter you most probably do not want to receive, but I hope on reading it you might come to appreciate why I felt both compelled and morally bound to write to you.
Michael flipped the page over, scanning to the letter’s end. An unreadable signature, its letters printed below. Daniel McCullen. So that was his name. That was the name of the man who’d killed his wife, written in ink by the same hand that had held the controls of that Predator, that had released, via touch, fibreoptic, satellite, hydraulics and hinge, two Hellfire missiles, their thrusters burning, into the clear mountain skies above her head.
For a while Michael did no more than stare at the name. Daniel McCullen. Eventually, as his focus returned, he turned the page again and read the letter from the start once more. Dear Mr. Turner. When he reached the signature for a second time he folded the letter into its envelope, then folded the envelope into the pocket of his shorts before standing, his head light, to take himself and this new knowledge, burning at the front of his mind, out into the city’s winter morning.
All through his walk and jog with Josh that day — around the men’s pond and up the eastern side of the Heath to skirt the grounds of Kenwood House and back through the woods to Parliament Hill — Michael had felt the letter’s edges rubbing against his thigh, its words distilling, like the slow release of a drug, through his body and his mind. The day was overcast, the Heath’s sandy soil waterlogged under their feet. Lone walkers followed their dogs through the bare woods. A single woman was swimming in the mixed pond, her blue cap making slow, bright progress between a swan and a resting gull bobbing in her wake.
At first, as they’d walked, it was Josh who had talked. About Samantha wanting to go back to work, or to college. “It’s doesn’t seem to matter to her which,” he’d said, as they’d strode along the lower paths. “Which is my problem with it. I mean, I don’t mind her working, course I don’t. Sure, it’ll make things harder with the girls, and Christ knows she doesn’t need to, but well.” He’d paused, for breath, not thought. “If she’s gonna make it more difficult, she may as well have some focus about what she does. You know what I mean?”
Michael could tell they’d argued. Josh only ever talked about Samantha at this length when they had. Usually he kept his conversation to work politics, current affairs. Sometimes football, although he knew Michael didn’t support a team. But occasionally he’d use their sessions on the Heath to talk about Sam, the girls. Never anything too revealing, but still more, from what Michael could tell, than he perhaps shared with his work colleagues or other male friends.
As the cramp in Michael’s calf eased, they’d broken into a jog along the façade of Kenwood House. Almost immediately Josh’s talk gave way to his now-familiar heavy breathing, his face flushed with the effort, the boyish lick of his fringe bouncing above his brow. They ran like that, in silence other than the sound of their clouding breaths, until the end of their route. Reaching the crest of Parliament Hill, as had become their habit, the two men sat on one of the benches and looked out over London, craned and grey, spread like a sieging army before them.
Michael leant forward, his elbows on his knees. Josh rested against the bench beside him, his legs stretched and his arms spread across its back, as if to invite as much air as possible into his lungs. Their calves and shins were spattered with mud, their shoulders steaming. Michael could feel the sweat pricking at his temples. Removing his gloves, he took the letter from his pocket, unfolded it from its envelope, and handed it to Josh.
“What do you make of this?”
“What is it?” Josh said, as he took it. Michael just nodded at the letter, as if to say Read it and see for yourself.
While Josh read, Michael looked out over the city, keeping his eyes on its skyline as Josh let out a whispered “Fuck.” A plane coming in to land at Heathrow laboured across the sky, its undercarriage a dirty white against the darkening clouds. Somewhere, Michael found himself thinking as he’d watched its descent above the towers and terraces, at this same instant, Daniel McCullen was lying asleep in his bed. Perhaps beside his wife. He’d mentioned in the letter he was married. It was, it seemed, part of his reasoning. As a husband, he had written, I can only imagine I would want to know how my wife came to die. He disagreed, he also said, with the secrecy of the Pentagon’s internal inquiry. With the limitations imposed upon him. He’d apologised, too, more than once. But not, Michael felt, so much for himself as for the situation. For the movements of the world that had led them all to this. He wrote like a victim. As if Caroline’s death was something that had happened to him, rather than something he’d caused.
“Jesus, Mike,” Josh said, returning the letter. “Have you shown this to anyone else?”
“No,” Michael said, slipping it back in the envelope. “It came this morning. Just before I met you.” He looked down at the original postmark. “From San Francisco.”
Josh looked at him, as if in admiration. “That is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “Insane.” He laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I am so sorry. What a shitty letter to get. What a shit!” Taking his hand away, he turned to the view. “The fucking gall!”
“Maybe,” Michael said.
“Maybe?” Josh looked back at him, his palms up in question. “What do you mean maybe? The guy—” He broke off, unable to finish the sentence. “You should inform the inquiry,” he said, with more authority.
“Why?”
“Why? Because he can’t do this.” He seemed genuinely upset. “It’s fucking manipulative. He doesn’t have the right. Because it’ll jeopardise the process. That’s why.”
Michael nodded. “Yeah. I guess I should.”
Josh looked back out at the city, at Saint Paul’s, the London Eye, the pyramid of Canary Wharf steaming in the east. “How can he do that?” he said, sighing heavily. “It’s all so fucking ridiculous. I mean, I know what Caroline was doing was important. But the war? Afghanistan? Iraq? It’s all a fucking distraction. Meanwhile, China is rubbing its hands, loving it. Doing what they fucking want. I’m tellin’ you, China, that’s where we should be focusing. Not a bunch of countries with a GDP the size of Birmingham.”