Episode 22 · What Remains Unfinished

The man at the pavilion door greeted Krista by name. Serren was expecting them upstairs. A young man in a vest led them up a wooden staircase, past old photographs of the garden, and opened a door at the top.

The room was small and bright, with a window onto the canal and three armchairs arranged around a low table. On the wall, under glass, hung a mask: overlapping dark leaves, with a few golden ones slipped in near the temples.

Soles stopped in front of it.

There was no label beneath it. From any of the chairs, Soles would have been able to see it.

— It’s his, Krista said quietly.

— I know.

Krista asked for water; Soles declined. When the young man left, Soles sat near the wall, his bandaged hand on his knee. From here he could see both door and window. He had chosen the seat without thinking.

He took the sheet from his pocket, unfolded it, then folded it again.

Krista sat beside him.

— I start, she reminded him.

— You start.

A lean, straight-backed man in a gray suit opened the door, with short white hair, a long face and a thin folder under one arm. He greeted Krista, then studied Soles’s face and bandaged hand.

— Take a seat, Serren said, though both of them were already sitting. Let’s see what remains unfinished.

Serren sat with his back to the window, the folder closed on his knees. The light left his face in shadow.

— Miss Krista writes that you want to speak about Kerr, he said. I would prefer to know from the beginning on whose behalf you have come.

— No one’s, Krista said.

— Then why are there two of you?

Krista laid the copy of the ledger reference on the table and answered calmly.

— Because I know you, and he knows Kerr.

Serren turned his gaze to Soles.

— You know him.

— I’ve seen him twice, Soles said.

— And why does he interest you?

Soles felt his bandaged palm pressing into his knee. He wanted to answer quickly, with everything he had, and watch what happened to the man’s face. He looked at Krista. They had agreed she would begin. They had not agreed who would say this part.

— Kerr killed my parents, he said.

Serren held still. Soles watched for a reaction, but even the hands on the folder stayed loose.

— When?

— A few weeks ago. In our yard. Friday evening.

— And you reported this…

— To the investigator. Yes.

Serren placed the folder on the table, its edge aligned with the tabletop.

— Then I misunderstood your message, he said. I thought you had come about the money.

Krista looked up from the ledger reference.

— What money?

The young man returned with water and Serren’s coffee. Serren waited until he left before picking up the cup.

— The club does not admit just anyone, he said. You have seen that. A member who recommends someone places his name beside theirs. If the person admitted owes debts to the club, the member who recommended him is responsible for them until they are settled.

— Kerr had debts? Krista asked.

— Kerr was admitted with a debt. That is what the appendix you looked for in the archive says.

Beside Soles, Krista went still.

— The archivist told me you had asked for it, Serren continued. I don’t hold it against you. You would have learned it from the committee office anyway, a week later and with more forms.

— What kind of debt? Soles asked.

— One you would not understand without knowing how the garden works.

— Explain it to me!

The demand came out louder than he had meant. Serren’s eyebrows rose very slightly, and beneath Soles’s palm, for a fraction of a second, he felt the curved edge of wood that was not there. He withdrew his hand from the arm of the chair and put it in his lap.

Not like that.

— Please, he added.

Serren set down the cup.

— After the flood, the garden needed people to rebuild the banks, the paths, and the greenhouses. Contracts were awarded in haste. Some companies worked well. Others worked quickly. Kerr worked for one of the latter. Not as a laborer. He handled what didn’t fit into the contracts.

— Meaning?

— Meaning the things people here prefer not to know about. A supplier who wouldn’t deliver. A guard who saw too much. A machine that disappeared from one worksite and reappeared at another.

Krista put a finger beside the copied entry.

— And the club admitted him for that?

— The club admitted him because it owed him something. Kerr once solved a problem for some members of the committee. I won’t tell you which ones. I don’t know every detail, and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. Admission to the club was the payment he asked for. In return, the committee required him to compensate the garden for part of the damage done by his company. That is the debt.

— And you vouched for him, Soles said.

— I vouched for him.

— Why?

Serren did not answer immediately. He looked toward the window, toward the canal moving slowly beneath the pavilion, and the light touched his face for the first time. He was older than he had seemed in the doorway. The skin beneath his eyes was thin, almost translucent.

Soles kept his eyes on him. Serren was precise about what he would not tell them. It was hard to believe he had nothing left to defend.

— Because someone asked me to.

— Who?

— A man I owed a favor.

— His name.

Krista touched Soles’s arm lightly. Soles understood the gesture and fell silent.

— I won’t give it to you, Serren said. Not because I want to protect Kerr. I have no reason to protect him anymore. But because that man has nothing to do with what you told me. He asked me to recommend someone who had once helped him too, and I did. If I give you his name, you’ll go to him with the same question you brought to me, and you’ll learn just as little.

— That’s for us to decide, Soles said.

— No. That is for me to decide. You decide what you do with my refusal.