In The Presence Of The Enemy (33 page)

Luxford said with some stiffness, “I want the best for Leo. He needs guidance. He’ll get it at Baverstock. I’m sorry you fail to see it that way.”

She looked up from her coffee. She looked directly at him. “What you want for Leo is change. You’re worried about him because he seems…I suppose you’d choose the word
eccentric
, wouldn’t you, Dennis? Rather than the word you really mean.”

“I want him to have a sense of direction.

He’s not getting that here.”

“He has plenty of direction. You merely don’t approve of it. I wonder why.” She sipped her coffee.

He felt the fingers of warning tapping against his spine. To acknowledge them, however, was to hand power to the coward. He said, “Don’t play amateur psychologist with me. Read that rubbish if you must. I don’t object and you seem to enjoy it. But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t infl ict your diagnoses upon our relationship.”

“You’re terrified, aren’t you?” she said despite his words. “He likes dancing, he likes birds, he likes little animals, he likes singing in the school choir, he likes medieval art. How can you possibly interpret such horrors in your son? Is the fruit of your loins going to turn out a poof? And if that’s the case, isn’t sending him to a boys’ school just about the worst environment you can put him in? Or is it just the opposite because the first time an older boy shows Leo what’s what when men get naked together, he’s going to recoil and miraculously have any aberrant tendencies driven right from his head by fear?”

He watched her. She watched him. He wondered what she could read from his face and whether she could tell how his body had tightened and that he could feel his blood racing to his extremities. From her face, he could see only the process she was going through to evaluate him.

He said, “I’d assume you’d know from your reading that some things can’t be quashed.”

“Sexual preference? Of course not. Or if it’s quashed, it’s quashed only indefi nitely. But the other? It can be quashed forever.”

“What other?”

“The artist. The soul of the artist. You’re doing your best to destroy it in Leo. I’m beginning to wonder when it was you lost yours.”

She left the kitchen. He heard the sound of her leather sandals slapping quietly against the wooden floor. She went in the direction of her sitting room. From the kitchen window he could see the light snap on in that wing of the house. As he watched, Fiona came to the window and closed the curtains.

He turned away. But in turning away, he came face-to-face with his disregarded dreams.

A life in literature was what he’d intended, making his mark in the world of letters. He would become a twentieth-century Pepys.

He’d had the words. The ideas had been second nature. He’d fallen asleep to their marriage nightly. Finest writer I’ve ever known, David St. James had introduced him last week.

And what had it come to?

It had come to being realistic. It had come to putting food on the table. It had come to building a roof over his head.

It had also come to the exquisite pleasure of wielding power, but that was secondary. Primary was that it had come to growing up. As everyone did, as everyone must do, Leo included.

Luxford decided that they weren’t through with their conversation, he and Fiona. If she was insistent upon playing the game of psychological analysis, surely she wouldn’t be averse to an examination of her own motives with regard to their son. Her behaviour towards Leo could do with a decent scrutiny.

Her placement of herself between the wishes of Leo and the wisdom of his father could also do with a period of study.

He went to find her, readying himself for another round of verbal fi sticuffs. He could hear the sound of the television. He could see the shifting dark and light images blinking against the wall. His footsteps slowed. His determination to have it out with his wife less-ened. She must be more upset than he had originally thought, he realised. Fiona never turned on the television unless she wanted her agitated brain to be lulled.

He went to the doorway. He saw that she was curled into a corner of the sofa, a pillow at her stomach, holding it for comfort. The desire for combat faded more completely at the sight of her. It dissolved altogether when she spoke, saying without turning her head to him, “I don’t want him to go. Don’t do this to him, darling. It isn’t right.”

Beyond her on the screen, Luxford saw that the nightly news was playing. The newsread-er’s face faded to an aerial view of the countryside somewhere. The screen showed the snaking of a river bisected by bridges, a patch-work of fields, cars bumping along a narrow lane.

Luxford said to his wife, “Boys are resilient.” He went to the sofa and stood behind it.

He touched her shoulder. “It’s natural to want to hold on to him, Fi. What’s not natural is giving in to the impulse when it’s best to let him have a new experience.”

“He’s too young for new experiences.”

“He’ll do fi ne.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Why don’t we just take things as they come?”

“I’m afraid for him.”

“That’s why you’re his mother.” Luxford changed his position, going to sit next to her, removing the pillow, drawing her into his arms. He kissed the cinnamon taste of her mouth. “Can’t we present a united front in this? At least until we see how it works out?”

“Sometimes I think you’re intent upon destroying everything in him that’s special.”

“If it’s special and it’s real, it can’t be destroyed.”

She twisted her head to look up at him. “Do you believe that?”

“Everything I always was is alive in me,” he said, indifferent to whether he spoke the truth or a lie, merely wanting an end to their enmity. “Everything that’s special will stay alive in Leo. If it’s strong and real.”

“Eight-year-old boys shouldn’t have to endure an ordeal by fi re.”

“Their mettle can be tested. Whatever’s strong will endure.”

“And that’s why you want him to have this experience?” she asked. “To test his determination to be who he is?”

He looked her squarely in the eye and lied without a twinge of conscience. “That’s why.”

He settled her against him and gave his attention to the television screen. The picture was of a reporter this time, speaking into a microphone, a tranquil expanse of water behind her that had appeared from the air to be a river but instead was, she said, “…the Kennet and Avon Canal, where late this afternoon the body of an unidentifi ed girl—perhaps six to ten years old—was discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Esteban Marquedas, two honeymooners sailing a narrow-boat from Reading to Bath. Although the death is being investigated as a suspicious circumstance, no decision has been made yet as to whether it should be classified a murder, a suicide, or an accident. Police sources tell us that the local CID have been at the scene and at the moment the Police National Computer is being used to attempt to establish the child’s identity. Anyone with information that might assist the police is being asked to telephone the constabulary in Amesford.” She went on to give the telephone number which was printed across the bottom of the screen. She concluded by giving her name, her station’s call letters, after which she turned and gazed at the canal water with an expression of solemnity which she no doubt felt appropriate to the occasion.

Fiona was saying something to him, but Luxford didn’t register her words. Instead, he was hearing a man’s voice saying
I’ll kill her
Luxford if you don’t run that story
overlapping Eve’s voice saying
I’ll die before I cave in to you
which itself was overlapping his own interior voice repeating the facts he’d just heard on the news.

He got abruptly to his feet. Fiona said his name. He shook his head and tried to manufacture an explanation. All he could come up with was “Damn. I’ve forgotten to give Rodney the word about tomorrow’s news meeting.”

He went in search of a telephone as far from Fiona’s sitting room as possible.

IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK
on the following afternoon when Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley received word of the canal death. He had just returned to New Scotland Yard, having completed yet another interview with the Crown prosecutors. He never much cared for having to investigate high-profile murders, and the case that the prosecutors were preparing for trial—which involved the asphyxiation of a member of the England cricket team—

had placed him into the spotlight more than he liked. But the media’s interest was waning as the case began to wend its way into the judi-cial system. That interest was unlikely to be stirred up again until the trial itself. So he was feeling as if he’d shed a millstone he’d been forced to carry round for weeks.

He’d gone to his office to put it into some kind of order. During the last investigation, its chaos had assumed gargantuan proportions.

In addition to the reports, the notes, the transcripts of interviews, the crime scene documentation, and the collection of newspapers that had become part of the manner in which he’d handled the case, the incidents room had been disassembled shortly after the perpetrator’s arrest, and its collection of charts, graphs, timetables, computer printouts, telephone records, files, and other data had been delivered to him for sorting, for filing, and for sending onward. He’d been working through the material for the better part of the morning when he’d left to keep his appointment with the prosecutors. He was determined to wade through it to the end before he left for the day.

Upon reaching his office, however, he found that someone had decided to assist in his Augean endeavours. His detective sergeant, Barbara Havers, was sitting cross-legged in the midst of a stack of folders, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she squinted through the smoke at a stapled report that lay open on her lap. Without looking up, she said, “How were you going about this, sir? I’ve been working for an hour, and whatever your method is, it doesn’t make any sense to me. This is my first fag, by the way. I had to do something to settle my nerves. So clue me in. What’s your method? Are there piles to be kept and piles to be sent on and piles to be tossed out? What?”

“Just piles so far,” Lynley said. He removed his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. “I thought you were going home. Isn’t this one of your Greenford evenings?”

“Yes, but I’ll get there when I get there.

There’s not exactly a hurry. You know.”

He did. T he sergeant’s mot her was ensconced in Greenford, a paying resident in a private home whose owner cared for the aged, the infirm, and—in the case of Havers’

mother—the mentally disintegrating. Havers made the pilgrimage to see her as often as her irregular work schedule would allow, but from what Lynley had been able to gather from six months of the sergeant’s laconic remarks about her visits, it was always a toss-up as to whether her mother would recognise her.

She took a deep drag from her cigarette before, in deference to his unspoken wishes, she crushed it out against the side of the metal wastepaper basket and sent it to join the rubbish. She crawled across a scattering of folders and reached for her shapeless canvas shoulder bag. She dug round in it and brought out a wad of belongings from which she extracted a smashed packet of Juicy Fruit. She unwrapped two sticks and crammed them into her mouth.

“How’d you let it get this bad?” She made an expansive gesture to take in the offi ce and leaned against the wall. She balanced her left heel upon the toes of her right foot, admiring her shoes. She was wearing high-top red trainers. They made quite a fashion statement with her navy trousers.

“‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,’”

Lynley said in answer to her question.

“More like loosed upon this office,” she replied.

“I suppose things got out of hand,” he continued, and added with a smile, “but at least they didn’t fall apart altogether. Which means, I should guess, that the centre will hold.”

Her face drew in on itself—eyebrows meeting, mouth pursing, chin lifting towards nose—as she rooted through his words for a meaning. She said, “Who what where, sir?”

He said, “Poetry.” He went to his desk and gloomily surveyed the mound of manila folders, books, maps, and documents that heaped across it. He said, “‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ It’s part of a poem.”

“Oh. A poem. Lovely. Have I ever mentioned how much I appreciate your efforts to elevate my cultural consciousness? Shakespeare, was it?”

“Yeats.”

“Even better. I like my literary allusions obscure. Back to the subject at hand. What’re we going to do with all this?”

“Pray for a fire,” he said.

The genteel clearing of a throat drew their attention to the door of Lynley’s office. A vision of hot pink double-breasted suit stood there, with a cream silk jabot frothing copiously from her throat. At the jabot’s centre an antique cameo nested. All their superinten-dent’s secretary needed to complete the ensemble was a broad-brimmed hat, and she’d be one of the royals, decked out for Ascot.

“This is a sad state of affairs, Detective Inspector Lynley.” Dorothea Harriman gave a melancholy shake of her head at the condition of his office. “You must be angling for a promotion. Only Superintendent Webberly could make a bigger mess. Although he could manage it with far less material.”

“Care to lend a hand, Dee?” Havers said from the fl oor.

Harriman held hers up, the nails perfectly manicured. She said, “Sorry. Other duties call, Detective Sergeant. For you as well. Sir David wants to see you. Both of you, in fact.”

Havers thudded her head against the wall.

“Shoot us now,” she groaned.

“You’ve had worse ideas,” Lynley said. Sir David Hillier had just been promoted to Assistant Commissioner. Lynley’s last two run-ins with Hillier had walked a tightrope between insubordination and all-out warfare. Whatever Hillier wished to see them about now, it probably wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Superintendent Webberly’s with him,”

Harriman offered helpfully, perhaps in encouragement. “And I have it on the very best authority that they’ve spent the last hour behind closed doors with the VIP-est of VIPs: Sir Richard Hepton. He came on foot and he left on foot. What d’you think of that?”