In The Presence Of The Enemy (70 page)

“Getting a dose of his own though, with this lot sharking through the waters like they are.”

“It’s a nice little irony,” Lynley acknowledged, “if you like that sort of thing.”

He pulled to a stop behind the Mercedes.

At his knock, a constable opened the door.

The reporter shouted past Lynley, “Mr. Luxford! Answer a few questions from the
Sun?

What’s your wife’s reaction to this morning’s—”

Lynley grabbed the man by the back of his shirt collar. He thrust him at Nkata, who seemed only too pleased to shove the reporter back in the direction of the street. Upon cries of “Bleeding police bru
tality
,” they entered the house.

The constable said tersely, “You got our message?”

Lynley said, “What message? We were in the car. Winston was on the phone.”

The constable said in a low voice, “Things are breaking. There’s been another call.”

“From the kidnapper? When?”

“Not five minutes ago.” He led the way into the drawing room.

The curtains were closed to keep the Luxfords at peace from telephoto lenses. The windows were shut to keep them safe from prying ears. But the result was a close and tenebrous atmosphere that even broken by illuminated table lamps felt tomblike and unnaturally still.

Evidence of meals largely uneaten lay on coffee tables, ottomans, and the seats of chairs.

Cups of film-topped tea and ashtrays cough-ing up cigarette ends and burnt tobacco crowded the surface of a grand piano, where an unfolded copy of that day’s
Source
shed its pages onto the fl oor.

Dennis Luxford sat, head in his hands, in an armchair next to the telephone. As the police crossed towards him, he raised his head.

Simultaneously, DI John Stewart—one of Lynley’s divisional colleagues at the Yard and the very best man for any job requiring meticulous attention to detail—came into the drawing room from the other direction. He was wearing a set of headphones round his carrot-thin neck and speaking into a cordless phone.

He nodded at Lynley, said into the phone,

“Yes…Yes…Blast. We’ll try for more next time…Right,” and snapped the mouthpiece closed. He said to Luxford, “Nothing, Mr.

Luxford. You did your best but there wasn’t enough time,” and to Lynley, “You’ve heard?”

“Just now. What was it?”

“We’ve got it on tape.” He led Lynley to the kitchen. On a centre island that stood between a work top and a stainless steel cooker, a tap-ing system had been set up. It consisted of a recorder, a half dozen spools of tape, ear-phones, flex, and wiring that seemed to run everywhere.

DI Stewart rewound the tape and then played it back. Two voices spoke, both ostensibly male, one of them Luxford’s. The other sounded as if the caller were speaking from the throat and through completely clenched teeth. It was an effective way to distort and disguise the voice.

The message was brief, too brief to be able to trace the call itself:

“_Luxford? _”

“_Where’s my son? Where’s Leo? Let me talk to_
him
.”

“_You got it wrong, fucker_.”

“_Got what wrong? What are you talking about? _

For God’s sake—
”

“_Shut up. And hear me good. I want the truth. _

The story. The kid dies without the truth
.”

“_I wrote it! Haven’t you seen the paper? It’s on_
the front page! I did what you asked, exactly as
you asked. Now, give me my son or—
”

“_You wrote it wrong, fucker. Don’t think I don’t_
know. Do it right by tomorrow, or Leo dies. Like
Lottie. You got that? Tomorrow or he dies
.”

“_But_ what—”

The tape ended as the phone went dead.

“That’s it,” Stewart said. “Not enough time for a trace.”

“What now, Inspector?”

Lynley turned towards the voice. Luxford had come to the kitchen door. He was unshaven, he looked unwashed, and his clothes were the same that he’d worn the previous day. The cuffs and the open collar of his white shirt were grimy with his body’s perspiration.

“‘You got it wrong,’” Lynley said. “What does he mean?”

“I don’t know,” Luxford said. “As God is my witness, I do
not
know. I did what he told me to do, to the letter. I don’t know what more I could have done. Here.” He was carrying a copy of the morning’s
Source
, and he extended it to Lynley. He blinked rapidly, eyes red-lid-ded and bloodshot.

Lynley looked at the paper more closely than he had done upon seeing it earlier that day. The headline and the accompanying photograph were all the kidnapper could have hoped for.

They barely required the reader to consume the story that they illustrated. And anyone with the reading skills of a seven-year-old would have been able to comprehend the prose that Luxford had used in assembling his article, at least on the front page. Lynley skimmed it, seeing that the first paragraph alone contained the pertinent answers to who, where, when, why, and how. He did not read on when he came to the end of what the front page held.

“That’s what happened as best I remember it,” Luxford said. “I may have got some detail wrong. I may have left something out—God knows I don’t remember the room number in the hotel—but everything I
could
remember is in that story.”

“Yet you got it wrong. What could he mean?”

“I don’t know, I tell you.”

“Did you recognise the voice?”

“Who the hell could have recognised the bloody voice? It sounded like he was talking with a gag in his mouth.”

Lynley glanced beyond him, back towards the drawing room. “Where’s your wife, Mr.

Luxford?”

“Upstairs. Lying down.”

“Got agitated about an hour ago,” Stewart added. “She took a pill and had a lie-down.”

Lynley nodded at Nkata, who said, “She’s upstairs, Mr. Luxford?”

Luxford seemed to realise the intent behind the question, because he exclaimed, “Can’t you leave her alone? Does she have to know this now? If she’s fi nally sleeping—”

“She may not be sleeping,” Lynley said.

“What sort of pill has she taken?”

“Tranquilliser.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. Why? What’s this all about?

Look. Good Christ. Don’t wake her and tell her what’s happened.”

“She may already know.”

“Already? How?” Then Luxford appeared to put it all together, because he said quickly,

“You can’t still think Fiona has
anything
to do with this. You saw her yesterday. You saw her state. She isn’t an actress.”

“Check her,” Lynley said. Nkata left to do so. “I need a picture of you, Mr. Luxford. I’d like a picture of your wife as well.”

“What for?”

“My colleague in Wiltshire. You didn’t mention you’d been in Wiltshire recently.”

“When the hell was I in Wiltshire?”

“Does Baverstock jog your memory?”

“Baverstock? You mean when I went to the school? Why should I have mentioned a visit to Baverstock? It had nothing to do with anything that’s happened. It had to do with enrolling Leo.” Luxford seemed to be trying to read Lynley for his assessment of guilt or innocence. He also seemed to glean that assessment because he went on with, “Jesus.

What’s happening? How can you stand there watching me as if you expect my flesh to start bubbling? He’s going to kill my son. You heard it, didn’t you? He’s going to kill him tomorrow if I don’t do what he wants. So what the hell are you doing wasting time interviewing my wife when you could be out there doing something—
anything—
to save my son’s life? I swear to God, if something happens to Leo after this…” He appeared to notice that he was breathing roughly. He said blankly, “God. I don’t know what to do.”

DI Stewart did. He opened a cupboard, found a bottle of cooking sherry, and poured half a tumblerful. He said to Luxford, “Drink this.” As Luxford was doing so, Nkata returned with the newspaperman’s wife.

If Lynley had thought Fiona Luxford was involved in the death of Charlotte Bowen and the subsequent kidnapping of her son, if he’d thought she had made the recent phone call herself from a cellular phone somewhere within this house, those thoughts were laid to rest instantly by the woman’s appearance. Her hair was flattened, her face was swollen, her lips were chapped. She was wearing a crumpled oversized shirt and leggings, the shirt stained in the front as if she’d been sick on it. The smell of sickness was heavy on her, in fact, and she clutched a blanket round her shoulders as if for protection rather than for warmth. When she saw Lynley, her steps faltered. Then she saw her husband and seemed to read disaster on his face. Her own face crumpled.

She said, “No. He isn’t. He
isn’t
,” on an ever-rising scale of fear.

Luxford took her into his arms. Stewart poured more sherry. Lynley led them all back to the drawing room.

Luxford gently eased his wife onto the sofa.

She was trembling violently, so he adjusted the blanket round her and circled her shoulders with his arm.

He said, “Leo isn’t dead. He isn’t dead. All right?”

Weakly, she leaned into his chest. She plucked at his shirt. She said, “He’ll be so frightened. He’s only eight…” And she squeezed her eyes shut.

Luxford pressed her head against him. He said, “We’ll find him. We’ll get him back.”

The look he directed towards Lynley asked the unspoken question: How can you believe that this is a woman who engineered the kidnapping of her own son?

Lynley had to admit that her culpability was unlikely. From what he’d seen of Fiona Luxford since her arrival home yesterday afternoon with her son’s school cap clutched in her hand, she had not struck a single false note. It would take more than a fine actress to carry off the performance of overwrought anxiety that he’d seen from this woman. It would take a sociopath. And his intuition told him that Leo Luxford’s mother was not a sociopath.

She was simply Leo’s mother.

This conclusion, however, did not yet exon-erate Dennis Luxford. There was still the fact that a search of his Porsche had produced Charlotte’s spectacles and hairs from her head.

And while these might have been plants, Lynley could not dismiss the newspaperman as a suspect. He watched him closely as he said,

“We need to examine the newspaper story, Mr. Luxford. If you’ve got it wrong, then we need to know why.” Luxford looked as if he was about to protest, about to argue that their time and their energy could be better spent combing the streets for his son than combing his printed words for an error that could be corrected and thus somehow placate a homicide. Lynley said in answer to that unspoken protest, “The investigation is gaining ground in Wiltshire. We’ve made progress here in London as well.”

“What sort of progress?”

“Among other things, a positive ID on those glasses we found. Hairs from the girl as well.

In the same location.” He didn’t add the rest: Mr. Luxford was standing on shaky ground, so he might want to cooperate as fully as possible.

Luxford got the message. He wasn’t a fool.

But he said, “I don’t know what else I could have written. And I don’t see where this direction will take us.”

His doubt wasn’t unreasonable. Lynley said,

“Something may have happened during that week you and Eve Bowen spent together in Blackpool, something that you’ve forgotten.

That incident—a chance remark, a botched encounter of some sort, an appointment or assignation that you cancelled or failed to keep—could be the key to our rooting out whoever is behind what happened to Charlotte and to your son. If we uncover what it is that you left out of the story, we may see a connection to someone, a connection that at the moment is beyond our reach.”

“We need Eve for this,” Luxford said. When his wife raised her head, he went on with,

“There’s no other way, Fi. I’ve written all that I can remember at this point. If there’s something left out, she’s the only one who can tell me. I have to see her.”

Fiona turned her head. Her gaze was dull.

“Yes,” she said. But the word was dead.

Luxford said to Lynley, “Not here though.

With the vultures outside. Not here. Please.”

Lynley handed his keys to Nkata, saying,

“Fetch Ms. Bowen. Take her to the Yard.

We’ll meet you there.”

Nkata left. Lynley studied Fiona Luxford.

He said, “You must be strong for the next several hours, Mrs. Luxford. DI Stewart will be here. The constables will be here as well. If the kidnapper phones, you must try to prolong the conversation to give us a chance at a trace.

He may be a killer, but if your son’s the last card he’s holding, he’s not going to harm him while there’s still a possibility that he can get what he wants. Do you understand?”

She nodded but didn’t move. Luxford touched her hair and said her name. She drew herself up, blanket clutched to her chest. She nodded again. Her eyes became filmed by a transparency of tears, but she didn’t shed them.

Lynley said to the other DI, “I’ll need your car, John.”

Stewart tossed him the keys, saying, “Run over a few of those swine at the end of the drive while you’re at it.”

Luxford said to his wife, “Will you be all right? Shall I phone someone to stay with you before I go?”

“Go,” she said, and it was clear her mind was completely in order on at least one subject. “Leo’s the only thing that matters.”

LYNLEY HAD DECIDED
in advance that there was little profit in having his meeting with Dennis Luxford and Eve Bowen in an interview room. They might have been disconcerted by the presence of a tape recorder, the absence of windows, and a system of lighting engineered to sallow the complexion and rattle the nerves. But effecting a loss in their self-possession wasn’t as important at this point as was garnering their cooperation. So he took Luxford directly to his office, and there they waited for Nkata’s return with the Marylebone MP.

Dorothea Harriman thrust a stack of messages in Lynley’s direction as they passed her desk. She said in apparent reference to these,

“SO7 reporting in on the George Street squat.