Ice Blue (18 page)

“Of course.” Thawing visibly, Ginny shot
another strange, triumphant glance at Burt. She seemed to enjoy
receiving male attention in front of her husband, and determined to
ensure he didn’t miss a single nuance.

“Make yourselves comfortable.” Ginny
indicated the sofa. “No! Down! Down, Gerard! You, too, Lexie! Dirty
paws! No dirty paws on my sofa! Burt, for God’s sake,” she barked
again, switching back to that harsh, demanding tone, “help me with
these dogs!”

With a sigh, Burt unfolded himself from his
position against the fireplace. He plucked the dogs off the sofa
amid a torrent of yapping protests. Then, with a fluffy white dog
tucked beneath each arm, he exited the room.

“We’ll need your husband back, I’m afraid,”
Hetheridge said, locking eyes with Ginny. Despite the
police-procedural simplicity of his words, he allowed his tone and
expression to send a different message: Not that I wouldn’t rather
concentrate every ounce of my attention on you.

“Let me help him crate the dogs,” Ginny
whispered, “and we’ll be right back.” With a conspiratorial wink,
she click-clacked away after her husband.

“Brilliant,” Bhar said, cuffing Hetheridge on
the shoulder. “And she was doing her best to insult you. Wish I had
that much self-control.”

“I’ll keep bringing you to visit Lady
Margaret until you do,” Hetheridge said. “When they return, you’ll
conduct the interview. I’ll break in when the moment is right.”

* * *

Ginny and Burt Rowland sailed through the
initial phase of the questioning. Ginny soon loosened up, even
toward Bhar. She enjoyed the experience of answering one man’s
questions while another – Hetheridge – maintained meaningful eye
contact, and a third, Burt, absorbed it all. Midway through her
discussion of the abortive engagement party – which matched the
accounts given by Madge, Jules, Kevin Whitley, and Charlie Fringate
– the Rowlands’ maid arrived to serve tall, mint-garnished glasses
of lemonade. Observing the maid, whose nondescript face and dumpy
figure said much about Ginny’s tolerance for rivals, Hetheridge
accepted the lemonade and took a sip. It was laced with vodka.
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have swallowed one mouthful,
then put the glass aside. Today, grateful for hair of the dog, he
had every intention of drinking it down.

“We’ve heard a lot about how Malcolm Comfrey
treated Kevin Whitley,” Bhar was saying. “What did you make of the
exchange?”

Ginny shrugged. “Malcolm hated weakness.
Kevin is weak. He’s an ideal target for a heat-seeking missile like
Mal. Mal despised Jules, too, but not as much. Weakness in women he
could tolerate, I suppose. Maybe he just considered it part of the
natural order.” Her eyes narrowed, but more with cold amusement
than feminist outrage. “Of course, Mal fancied himself the
strongest, most ruthless alpha male on the planet, and we poor
little femmes were nothing next to him. Wonder if he still felt so
big and bad when someone was beating his brains out?”

“What do you make of the way Comfrey was
murdered?” Hetheridge interjected. Bhar, alert for the moment when
Hetheridge would break in, swallowed his own query so well, the
switch in interrogators seemed choreographed.

Ginny rewarded Hetheridge with a dazzling
smile. “You want to trip me up!” she teased, shaking a finger at
him. Her legs shifted, upper thigh rubbing against upper thigh
beneath her short black skirt. It was a move too provocative for
Hetheridge – or Bhar, or Burt Rowland – to miss, although none of
the men overtly acknowledged it.

“But surely, Anthony,” Ginny continued, “you
realize Madge and Jules have told me everything. I heard all about
poor Madge finding Mal in the study with a poker through his eye
socket. At first I was shocked. Then I had to press my fists in my
mouth to keep from laughing. Mal was a right bastard. If anyone
deserved a fatal beating, it was him.”

“That seems to be the consensus,” Hetheridge
said. “What stopped you from giving it to him?”

Ginny took a sip of her lemonade before
answering. Then she set down the glass and stretched, pushing those
long, perfect legs out in front of her.

“I’m not really a hands-on sort of girl these
days,” she said at last. “Mal was a pill. An arse. A bloody bore
whose only virtue was a genius for making money. That’s why Burt
and I tolerated him. The same way you tolerate an ATM that’s a
bloody bother to withdraw from. As long as the money keeps coming
out, you keep playing along. But if some punter gets angry and
smashes the bollocky thing with a hammer, you don’t mourn the loss.
You just go looking for a brighter, shinier ATM around the
corner.”

“Is that how you thought of Malcolm Comfrey
during your affair with him? As an ATM providing cash?” Hetheridge
asked. He waited a beat for the words to sink in, then added in
Burt’s direction, “Your pardon, Mr. Rowland. A murder investigation
always churns up private details. And of course I refer to an
affair that occurred before you met and married your wife.”

Burt, still inscrutable, did not respond.
Ginny, for her part, went colder, from her immobile forehead right
down to her plump red lips.

“That’s precisely how I thought of Mal,” she
said. “A man with money to lavish on me while his wife reared their
daughter, and managed their home, and maintained his reputation in
the community. I didn’t know Madge then – one of life’s little
ironies that I know her now. But I imagine if she and I had met
during the affair, she would have asked me to wear out the cruel
bugger before sending him home – and to pick his pocket while I was
about it.”

“Fascinating conversation to imagine,”
Hetheridge said with a trace of genuine humor. In his opinion,
Ginny believed what she was saying. She thought Madge would have
reacted not as a woman scorned, but as a drudge grateful for a
respite. But it was hard to be sure what was true and what was
artificial when interrogating a creature as image-conscious as
Ginny Rowland.

“Would it have mattered to her, do you
think,” Hetheridge asked, “if Madge had also known you weren’t
merely the other woman, but also a prostitute from a high-end
escort service?”

Ginny shot a glance at Burt. There was a
moment when Hetheridge thought he had gambled wrong, and would
regret it. Then she gave a hard laugh.

“Well. Sherlock Holmes lives,” Ginny said.
“Congratulations for making some twit at Venture Perfect blab to
you. They were always jealous of my talent for reinvention. And no,
I don’t think Madge would have blinked an eye at my choice of
profession. At our level, all women are prostitutes. We just charge
a good deal more than the average bird on the stroll. And that
reminds me,” Ginny gave that dangerous smile again, “isn’t there a
slag assigned to this case? Madge told me about a girl detective,
all bad clothes and bad hair and just a whiff of the East End. I’ve
been dying to meet her. Wanted to see what sort of burden the Met
has taken on to satisfy the bleeding hearts. Besides you, of
course, Detective Bhar.”

Hetheridge felt a stab of true anger, like a
steel bolt punched through his skull. He controlled his expression
with effort, taking an extra second or two to be certain his
composure was solid. Bhar, to Hetheridge’s pride, maintained his
affable expression.

“I had no idea all women at your level, as
you put it, are prostitutes,” Hetheridge said in his blandest tone.
“That destroys one of our working hypotheses. That Malcolm Comfrey
was no longer content to treat you as an inferior, and make cutting
remarks in your presence. According to the hypothesis, he crossed
the line by threatening to actually expose your past. Not to your
husband, of course,” Hetheridge nodded toward Burt, “who knew of
your former career, and perhaps even met you through Venture
Perfect. But if Comfrey threatened you with exposure to all of
London society, as the hypothesis went, that would have been a
threat worth committing murder to prevent. Unless, of course, your
female friends on the committees, and in the clubs, and at the
parties, all acknowledge themselves to be prostitutes in the
broader sense. In that case, you would have no social standing to
lose, and thus no reason to silence Malcolm Comfrey.”

Ginny Rowland stared at Hetheridge. Nothing
about her face changed. But something in her eyes, some inner
darkness, seemed to lash out at him. Beside her, Burt’s expression
finally shifted from unreadable to hostile, like a stupid dog
catching wind of an unfamiliar scent.

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” Ginny
said. Her tone could have wilted roses. “So plummy and upper crust
and
male
. Like you see everything, and
understand everything, and no detail escapes your all-seeing eye.
You know nothing,” Ginny spat. “I know more than Scotland Yard ever
will about this case. I know who did it. I know why. And I see no
reason to share what I know with a pair of incompetents like
you.”

“If you have any information, Mrs. Rowland,
you’re obligated to tell us,” Bhar began, “under pain of…”

“I take it back,” Ginny cut across him in a
falsely bright voice. “Don’t know a thing. Now I’ve answered all
your questions. So unless you have a search warrant, why don’t you
get the hell out of my house, Sir Anthony?”

“It’s Lord Hetheridge, actually,” he said,
rising and giving her a small smile. “Ninth Baron of Wellegrave.
But I wouldn’t expect you to understand which title goes with a
barony. Chief Superintendent Hetheridge is a perfectly adequate
manner of address. Hopefully it will be easy for you to remember,
when DS Bhar and I return.”

Kate had no intention of taking more than one
day of the bereavement leave owed her. But that day got off to a
bad start when she stayed in bed till noon, awakening to a phone
call from Henry’s school, informing her he’d been skeeving off his
classes again. That news started Kate on the tangent of trying to
find Henry a local fencing instructor. After studying websites
dedicated to the art of swordplay, then re-watching the Star Wars
movies at deafening volume, Henry had decided fencing was the only
sport for him. And having promised it, Kate had learned that
karate, basketball, and chess were the only options in their
neighborhood.

I could ask Tony … she thought, and
stopped.

She still couldn’t believe he’d proposed
marriage to her. Of course, when he said the words, she’d assumed
he was operating from outrageous gallantry. After their
is-that-a-sword-in-your-pocket encounter on the fencing mat, Kate
knew he was physically attracted to her. So she’d concluded
generosity of spirit, poured into lust, had boiled over into a
marriage proposal he’d immediately regretted. And he
had
looked discomfited just before she chose to take it
as a joke. Then he should have looked relieved, and he had –
almost. His shoulders had dropped. His smile had been one-sided. It
was several moments before he spoke again, on a subject bland
enough for tea and cakes. The detective in Kate, accustomed to
assessing suspects’ mood and affect, would upon second review call
it disappointment, not relief.

How bizarre that after her torrent of emotion
for Dylan, Kate had spent the entire morning staring at the cracked
ceiling above her bed, reviewing every word from Hetheridge, every
look. During her relationship with Dylan, she’d frequently caught
herself lecturing him in her mind. Did other people rehearse and
re-hash arguments while pushing a trolley round Tesco, or filling
up on petrol, or tossing out junk mail? She’d won a thousand
battles with Dylan that way.

Now, as she went about making his final
arrangements, she found herself cataloguing her entire brief
history with Hetheridge. Talking to herself in her own head about
the “plonker affair,” as Bhar called it; the night Hetheridge,
handsome in evening dress, pulled up to her curb; the time he’d
contradicted Lady Margaret’s advice to cut her hair. As a child
Kate had learned not to confide in her mother or sister, speaking
the secrets of young womanhood only to herself. So she didn’t find
it strange when she admitted to herself, as she folded Henry’s heap
of white t-shirts and briefs, Hetheridge was quite attractive
enough to take to bed. Various scenarios on that topic intruded on
her thoughts with surprising frequency.

Girlishly agonizing over whether or not a man
harbored singular feelings for her was unfamiliar to Kate. Her type
– the Dylans of the world – were far too engaged in witticisms and
world-weariness and cultivating their own image to cherish tender
emotions for others. Yet while loading Tesco bags into her car’s
boot, she dissected even her most commonplace encounters with
Hetheridge with surgical precision. If he cared for her, it
mattered. It made his proposal all the more awkward, made their
next meeting all the more charged.

And how do I feel about him? Kate asked
herself, turning the key in the ignition. He’s my boss, we hail
from alternate realities, in seven months I’ll give birth to a dead
man’s baby. All the reasons she and Hetheridge weren’t together,
and could never be together, stacked up in Kate’s head like a brick
wall. From behind its comforting mass, the answer came easily. I
fancy him like mad.

* * *

Kate called Mrs. Snell the next morning to
say she would be taking another bereavement day. Dylan’s
arrangements, though simple, took a surprising amount of time and
legwork – transferring his remains to a mortuary, arranging for a
cremation, and choosing an urn. By the time she arrived home, it
was past six, and she’d received no messages from work. When her
mobile finally rang, it was ten o’clock. Cassie and Henry were
already in bed, and Kate and Ritchie were watching a pirate movie
on DVD. Ritchie, his lips moving soundlessly in sync with the
dialogue, ignored the ringing, but Kate hurried to answer her
mobile, taking it into the kitchen where she had a modicum of
privacy.