Fruitful Bodies (14 page)

‘It’s police business. Confidential. I’m not meant to discuss it,’ Andrew said rather officiously, wondering if perhaps they could, perhaps if they didn’t take quite all their clothes off? Not ideal of course, but in the circumstances
better than nothing. He shifted again and looked at his watch. They had only been up here ten minutes, after all.

‘I know that. So?’ So she wasn’t even pretending to believe that that was his reason for not wanting to embark on conversation. She was waiting for his answer.

‘We’ve had Mrs Takahashi’s PM results,’ he said in a tired voice, ‘and it’s exactly what I expected. Cause of death is asphyxiation. There’s bruising to the upper arms and the skull injury that she sustained when he knocked her out cold against the wall or got her so punch-drunk she couldn’t put up any real resistance when he strangled her. No fingernail evidence. We found a dent and a couple of her hairs stuck on the wall of the pub corridor, at just the right height. Oh, and she was pregnant. Just a few weeks. Sorry—you can’t want to hear this.’

Sara had shuddered in his arms. For a reason she could not fathom, the fact of the poor woman’s pregnancy suddenly brought her to life, so that the brutality of her killing felt like a new blow, becoming now also a new death. Not even the sight of the contorted blue face in the dim and grubby pub corridor had made her feel this. But now, the thought of a baby conceived never to be born, conceived to wither in its mother’s belly, not knowing that it had existed but never quite lived, was unbearable. She was struck by the thought that Andrew had to face such appalling truths if not quite every day, then too often. As she watched the trails of rainwater sliding haphazardly down the window glass she wondered shamefully how she could have been so self-obsessed that she had refused even to try to understand this.

‘What’s next, then?’

Andrew considered in silence. Then he said, ‘She was
killed no later than about ten o’clock that morning, according to the PM, probably earlier. Rigor was well established, and the stomach contents were hardly digested. Her last meal was fried egg and toast. Hilary Golightly confirmed the time she had breakfast, anyway.’ Sara squirmed in his arms. ‘Her husband claims he was meeting her at 12.30 at the RPS and got there slightly late, at 12.38. If we can find the evidence that he was in Bath earlier then that would be significant. Not conclusive, but significant, in the absence of anything better.’

‘How are you going to get evidence like that, though? Bath’s seething with people on Saturdays in the summer. Unless he spoke to somebody who remembers him? And wouldn’t he take care not to do that, if he’d come to murder his wife?’

‘Well, in the first place it’s unlikely he intended to kill her. You wouldn’t choose a passageway in a pub as the ideal murder location, would you? He probably lost his temper, though that said, it’s an oddity that he went as far as he did with the strangulation. She’d have been unconscious long before she was dead and that’s usually when an abusive husband stops. So he probably wouldn’t have been trying to stay inconspicuous before he met her. There’s security video footage from the town and the railway station to go through, and we’re putting out appeals for information. People who were in the area from eight or nine o’clock onwards and may have seen him.’

‘So—a swarthy photograph in the paper, then?’

‘Oh no,’ Andrew said, sounding almost shocked. ‘That’d screw us up completely. We might want to do an ID parade, and that’d be out of the question if a photograph had been published earlier. You can see why.’

‘I thought you told me identity parades were a nightmare?’

‘They are, they are. And this one will be worse than most.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I’m bored stiff talking about it,’ Andrew announced, rousing himself. ‘And because it’s a nightmare getting enough volunteers together, and then your suspect doesn’t show up, any number of things go wrong, whatever. Anyway, it may not even happen. We need witnesses first, people who think they saw someone answering Takahashi’s description at or near Green Street before ten o’clock that day. A long shot. Oh God, look,’ he groaned, pointing outside.

An eager, wet face was peering in at them, bouncing up and down, its indecently pink tongue lolling. ‘Just as well we kept our clothes on, then,’ Sara said dolefully. ‘We wouldn’t want to embarrass Pretzel, would we?’

‘I hate you,’ Andrew said conversationally to the dog as he opened the door to let him in. ‘I hate you because wherever you are, Joyce is never far behind. Ah, Joyce! There you are!’ he called. ‘Up here! We were just wondering where you were, weren’t we, Sara?’

As they stood together watching Joyce struggle up the slippery path to the hut Sara whispered, ‘Let’s go to bed really early. At least she can’t follow us
there
’

Andrew squeezed her hand. He had been saving until the last possible moment the news that he was babysitting his children that night because Valerie, once again at deliberately short notice, had decided she needed an evening out.

B
Y THREE O’CLOCK
on Thursday James, lying up at the top of the Sulis garden in the deep of the afternoon and surrounded by flowers and summer bird-song, felt he had read enough Coleridge to be able to appreciate that

but he didn’t because in his exhausted stomach there was so much skirmish and capricious passaging that it felt as though someone with a pickaxe and a grudge was down there breaking boulders. After he had left his message on Sara’s mobile he had tried to make himself relax by listening to the birdsong tinkling down from the high trees that bordered the clinic grounds, but had fallen instead into an agitated and distressing half-dream in which he was losing control of a masterclass made up of fledglings in velvet hairbands falling out of their nests. ‘No! Come on! Give
me swift jug jug jug, not
pring pring!
Get back in your nests! Sit up straight!’ Shaking himself into wakefulness he tried to remember what he had been learning in the yoga class about relaxation and a sense of harmony with oneself and with the natural world. But all he could hear in the calling of the birds was a restless lament for how things ought to be but were not. Coleridge’s
Poetical Works
lay open across his chest. The book on naturopathy lay on the ground beside him open at the page headed Health Is A Matter Of Nutrition.

It was a pity that Health seemed also to be a Matter Of Sharing A Dining Room With Intolerable People although, to be fair to them, James admitted to himself that had the food been more enjoyable and sustaining, the company of the others round the oval table at lunch would have been, too. The dining room itself was superb, another high-ceilinged room with full-length windows on two sides, carpeted in pale grey and with hand-painted murals depicting some kind of eighteenth century carnival with horse races. Parts of lunch had been good: the different kinds of lettuce, chervil, parsley and rocket had been wonderfully fresh, which was not to say they would not have been better with garlic mayonnaise. The carrot, courgette and tomato bake, with shredded raw cabbage, celery and cucumbers had also been very nice, though how much of such stuff could a person be expected to eat? The bread, a mixed grain slab with a crust like pebble dash, James had judged about as rewarding as eating eggboxes. And that, along with all the water he could drink, had been it. Where was his lump of Stilton? The smoked ham, the shavings of parmesan? The marinaded anchovies, the oil, the butter?

James had watched his four fellow patients approach their lunch with the solemnity of communicants.

‘Isn’t he a genius?’ rasped the old woman sitting opposite. When no one had replied, she had turned to the man on her left, with the cravat tucked into the neck of his towelling robe, who had been staring at his plate. ‘Warwick, don’t you agree he’s a genius? Ivan. He’s a genius. With food.’

Warwick, still chewing, considered. ‘Oh absolutely. Though truth to tell, Bunny, I don’t go such a bundle on the raw stuff,’ he said. ‘And the bread’s a bit heavy.’ Sensing the old lady’s dismay at the criticism he added, ‘Oh, it’s meant to be, one appreciates that. Full of cereals.’ He picked up the untouched chunk of bread on his plate and weighed it in the palm of his hand. ‘Rather filling, that’s all. In fact, I think I’ll keep mine for later. As is my wont.’ Smiling with faint embarrassment, he wrapped the bread in his paper napkin and pocketed it.

The old lady nodded in the general direction of Warwick’s dressing-gown pocket and said, ‘I hope you’re not skipping it. You must be sure you eat it. Everything’s worked out for nutritional balance. It’s a daily requirement.’ Turning to James she said, ‘Ivan and his father work it all out. Dr Golightly insists we eat well, whatever we’re in for. Get the fuel right and the body will rejuvenate itself, you see. Better than a whole handful of antibiotics. I see you’ve eaten yours. Have you a troublesome gut?’

James was saved from having to reply by Warwick, who seemed anxious to convince that he was a true disciple. ‘Oh, goodness me yes, Bunny’s right. Solid goodness. Goes through the colon like a bottle-brush. I’ll eat mine later, you see. I often get peckish around three o’clock.’

A little silence had then settled over the table, during which the old lady’s jowls had fallen, rather miraculously, even further. As James looked at the other two patients who had so far said nothing, one of them, a big-boned, gentle-faced woman with hair the colour of parsnips, raised her eyes and met his look. She was chewing bravely, while tears gathered in her large green eyes.

‘Oh Jane,’ the old woman said. ‘What’s set you off this time? Not talking about food, surely?’

Jane shook her head and tears splashed on to her plate. ‘Nothing. It’s just—’ The word ‘just’ had proved difficult to say with a mouthful of the challenging bread. She swallowed inelegantly and gave a little nod of apology to everyone. ‘I was just thinking about my wedding. Today’s our anniversary. I can’t help it, it’s my first as a … as a divorcée. It just reminded me. You see, it was three o’clock when we got married.’ Confident of her charm, she trailed off into a pretty little sniff. Even her voice had been blonde, James thought as he remembered it, this seeming to him a charitable way to describe her tone of soft-brained inconsequentiality.

Nobody had known what to reply, perhaps because if something as innocuous as three o’bloody clock in the afternoon was too charged with painful meaning to be mentioned then it was surely dangerous to say anything else.

Warwick had resumed the earlier, less hazardous topic. ‘Well, well. Nutrition’s vital, of course. But you know me, Bunny. The creative therapy’s the thing. Therapeutic self-expression—that’s more me. That’s my saviour, not the rabbit food.’

This remark stirred the other man, who had hairless pink hands and the face of a middle-aged cod, into speech.
‘Oh yes. Therapeutic’s right. You’re all right, you lot are, with Hilary,’ he said, in a reverential Welsh accent. He turned to James. ‘They’re all right. Doing art. They get Hilary, the art therapist. Attractive woman. Only I can’t really get on with the clay, not like these two. Dries my hands out, you see.’

James murmured with what he considered the minimum acceptable level of feigned interest, but the Welshman wet his lips and continued. ‘Now the music therapy, I could have got on with that. Bit of a singer at one time, actually. I auditioned for the Swingle Singers once. I could have done with the music therapy, only there’s none. She’s left, the music therapist. Didn’t tell me that when I booked, though.’ He sat back and pursed his lips. ‘I’m negotiating a refund,’ he said importantly.

‘There are plenty of other things you could do instead,’ Bunny said, peering frostily along the table, ‘only you don’t. You could paint but you don’t. You don’t even swim. You just fall asleep by the pool in between massages. I think you’re very unfair.’ She glared at James as if to warn him that it would be intolerably bad form to side with the Welshman, who had now grown pink in the face.

‘Rest is a fundamental need for my condition,’ he pouted, and fell silent.

Warwick patted his sides. ‘Results speak for themselves, don’t they?’ There was a murmur from the others. ‘Anyway, it’s the whole shebang, isn’t it?’ he went on, trying to draw them together. ‘Diet, rest, self-expression. Physical and mental. The whole thing.’

The blonde woman, Jane, added, ‘Yoga, hydrotherapy, massage, posture, breathing,’ counting them off on lilac-painted talons. Her contribution over and clearly not expecting
a reply, she had risen with a cool smile and swayed from the room as slinkily as her lumpy robe allowed. The Welshman’s hungry eyes tracked her working buttocks until they disappeared behind the door and then he, presumably in obedience to some doomed libidinal impulse, had got up and followed.

‘Ivan is a genius, anyway,’ asserted the old woman, back on the subject with which she seemed to be successfully emptying the room. She pulled a reptilian hand from somewhere inside her towelling folds and held it out to James, displaying several rings as gnarled as her fingers.

‘Mrs Bunny Fernandez,’ she said. She leaned across the table and offered with the hand a close-up of her heavily made-up cheeks and a smiling top row of tea-coloured teeth. The black eyelashes flailing in the chalky face made James think of two spiders trapped in setting cement.

‘James Ballantyne,’ he said.

‘Detoxification,’ she replied.

Warwick leaned towards James. ‘Bunny’s a big fan,’ he said. ‘Comes every year. Three weeks of organic food, rest, art therapy, swears by it, don’t you, Bunny?’

‘Detoxification. Every August,’ she assented graciously. James murmured with the impressed tone that was clearly expected. ‘Essential,’ she went on, ‘for rejuvenation. I’m seventy-nine, you know.’

She certainly did not look that. James had put her closer to ninety.