In The Presence Of The Enemy (71 page)

SO4 on Jack Beard’s fi ngerprints. Wigmore Street on the Special Constables. Two reporters—one from
The Source
and the other from the
Mirror—
”

“How did they get my name?”

“Someone’s always willing to blab, Detective Inspector Lynley. Just look at the royals.”

“They blab on themselves,” Lynley pointed out.

“How times have changed.” She referred back to the messages. “Sir David twice. Your brother once—he says not to phone back. It was just about having solved the problem at the Trefalwyn’s dairy. Does that make sense?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “Your tailor once. Mr. St. James three times. He says you’re to phone him as soon as you can, by the way. And Sir David says he wants his report pronto.”

“Sir David always wants his report pronto.” Lynley took the messages and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. He said to Luxford, “This way,” and sat the newsman in his office. He phoned SO4 and SO7 to hear what they had to say about Jack Beard and about the squat. The information was complete but not altogether useful. Jack Beard’s criminal record was confirmed by the Fingerprint Office, but his prints were no match for any that they’d found. The carpet from the squat had been examined, and it was going to take at least another week to sort through everything they’d found in it and on it: hairs, semen, blood, urine, and enough food droppings to keep a flock of pigeons happy for hours.

When Nkata arrived with Eve Bowen, Lynley handed the rest of the messages to the DC, along with the photograph of Dennis Luxford that
The Source
editor had provided him. As Nkata hurried off to send the picture to Havers in Wiltshire, to deal with the messages, and to compile a report that would keep the Assistant Commissioner content for another day, Lynley shut the door behind him and turned to Eve Bowen and the man who had fathered her child.

The MP said, “Was this entirely necessary, Inspector Lynley? Do you have any idea how many photographers were waiting to capture the timeless moment when your constable came for me?”

“We could have come to your offi ce,” Lynley replied. “But I doubt you would have appreciated that. The same photographers who caught you leaving with DC Nkata would have had a field day recording Mr. Luxford’s appearance at your door.”

She hadn’t acknowledged Dennis Luxford’s presence. She didn’t do so now. She merely crossed to one of the two chairs in front of Lynley’s desk and sat on the edge of it, her back like a shaft. She was wearing a black coatlike dress, double-breasted with six gold buttons. It was politician’s clothing without a doubt, but it looked uncharacteristically rumpled, and a ladder in her black stockings, down by the ankle, threatened to snake whitely up the rest of her leg.

She said in a composed voice but without looking in his direction, “I’ve stepped down at the Home Office, Dennis. And I’m fi nished in Marylebone. Are you happy now? Fulfi lled?

Complete?”

“Evelyn, this was
never—
”

“I’ve lost just about everything,” she interrupted. “But there’s still hope, according to the Home Secretary. In twenty years, if I keep my nose clean, I could turn myself into John Profumo. Admired, if neither respected nor feared. Isn’t that something worth looking forward to?” She gave a false little laugh.

“I wasn’t involved,” Luxford said. “After everything that’s happened, how can you even think I was behind this horror?”

“Because the pieces fit into place so nicely: one, two, three, four. Charlotte was taken, the threat was made, I failed to capitulate, Charlotte died. That focused attention on me where you wanted it and prepared the way for piece number fi ve.”

“Which is what?” Luxford asked.

“Your son’s disappearance and the subsequent necessity to ruin me.” She fi nally looked at him. “Tell me, Dennis. How are the newspaper’s circulation numbers? Did you fi nally manage to outdistance the
Sun?
”

Luxford turned away from her, saying,

“Good God.”

Lynley went to his desk. He sat behind it and faced the two of them. Luxford slumped in his chair, unshaven, his hair unwashed and largely uncombed, his skin the colour of putty.

Bowen maintained her unyielding posture, her face like a mask that was painted on her flesh. Lynley wondered what it would take to gain her assistance.

He said, “Ms. Bowen, one child is already dead. Another may die if we don’t move quickly.” He took the copy of
The Source
that had been at Luxford’s house and laid it upside down on his desk so that its lead story was facing the other two people. Eve Bowen glanced at it distastefully, then averted her eyes. “This is what we need to talk about,” Lynley said to her. “There’s something in here that’s incorrect or something that’s missing. We need to know what it is. And we need your help to know it.”

“Why? Is Mr. Luxford looking for tomorrow’s lead? Can’t he develop it on his own?

He’s managed to do that so far.”

“Have you read this story?”

“I don’t wallow in muck.”

“Then I’ll ask you to read it now.”

“If I refuse?”

“I can’t think your conscience will bear the weight of an eight-year-old’s death. Not fast upon the heels of Charlotte’s murder. And not if you can do something to stop it. But that death will occur—make no mistake about it—

if we don’t act now to head it off. Please read the story.”

“Don’t play me for a fool. Mr. Luxford’s got what he wants. He’s run his little front page article. He’s destroyed me. He can carry on for days picking through my remains for additional stories, and I’ve no doubt he’ll do it. But what he won’t do at this point is murder his own son.”

Luxford lunged forward and grabbed the paper. “Read it!” he snarled. “Read the God damn story. Believe what you want, think what you will, but read this fucking story or so help me God, I’ll—”

“What?” she asked. “Move from character assassination to the real thing? Are you capable of that? Could you plunge the knife? Could you pull the trigger? Or would you just rely on one of your henchmen to do the job again?”

Luxford threw the paper into her lap. “You manufacture reality as you go along. I’m through trying to make you see the truth.

Read the story, Evelyn. You didn’t want to act to save our daughter, and I have no power to change that fact. But if—”

“How dare you refer to her as
our
daughter.

How dare you even suggest that I—”

“But
if
”—Luxford’s voice grew louder—“if you think I’m going to sit on my hands and wait for my son to be the second victim of a psychopath, you have completely misread me.

Now, read the bloody story. Read it now, read it carefully, and tell me what I’ve got wrong so I can save Leo’s life. Because if Leo dies…”

Luxford’s voice splintered. He got to his feet and went to the window. To the glass he said,

“You have reason enough to hate me. But don’t take your vengeance out on my son.”

Eve Bowen watched him the way a scientist watches a specimen from which she hopes to glean some empirical information. A career of distrusting everyone, maintaining her own counsel, and keeping an eye open for backbench backstabbers had not prepared her to accept anyone’s credibility. Inherent suspicion—the simultaneous bane and necessity of political life—had brought her to her present state, taking as its hostage not only her position but also, most horribly, the life of her child. Lynley saw clearly that that same suspicion, in conjunction with her animosity for the man who had made her pregnant, prevented her from making the leap of faith that would allow her to help them.

He couldn’t accept this. He said, “Ms.

Bowen, we’ve heard from the kidnapper today.

He’s said he’s going to kill the boy if Mr. Luxford doesn’t correct whatever facts are incorrect in this story. Now, it isn’t necessary for you to believe Mr. Luxford’s word. But I’m going to ask you to believe mine. I heard the tape of the phone call. It was made by one of my CID colleagues who was in the house when the call came through.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Eve Bowen said. But her remark was less certain than her earlier statements had been.

“Indeed. It doesn’t. There are dozens of clever ways to fake a telephone call. But assuming for the moment that the call was genuine, do you want a second death on your soul?”

“I don’t have the first one on my soul. I did what I had to do. I did what was right. I’m not responsible. He—” She lifted her hand to gesture at Luxford. For the first time, the hand was trembling slightly. She seemed to see this and dropped the hand to her lap where the tabloid lay. “He…Not I…” She swallowed, stared at nothing, and finally said again, “Not I.”

Lynley waited. Luxford turned from the window. He started to say something, but Lynley shot him a look and shook his head.

Outside Lynley’s office, telephones were ringing and he could hear Dorothea Harriman’s voice. Inside the office, he held his breath, thinking,
Come on, come on. Damn you, woman.

Come on
.

She crumpled the edges of the tabloid. She pushed her spectacles more fi rmly into place.

She began to read.

The telephone rang. Lynley snatched it up.

Sir David Hillier’s secretary was on the line.

When could the AC expect an update on the investigation from his subordinate officer?

When it’s written, Lynley told her, and dropped the phone.

Eve Bowen turned to the inside page where the story continued. Luxford remained where he was. When she had completed her reading, she sat for a moment with her hand covering the newsprint and her head raised just enough so that her gaze rested on the edge of Lynley’s desk.

“He said I’ve got it wrong,” Luxford told her quietly. “He said I have to write it correctly for tomorrow or he’ll kill Leo. But I don’t know what to change.”

“You haven’t.” Still she wouldn’t look at him and her voice was muted. “You haven’t got it wrong.”

“Has he left out something?” Lynley asked.

She smoothed the paper. “Room 710,” she said. “Yellow wallpaper. A watercolour of Mykonos on the wall above the bed. A mini-bar with very bad champagne, so we drank some of the whisky and all of the gin.” She cleared her throat. Still, she looked at the edge of the desk. “Two nights we met for a late dinner out. One night was at a place called Le Château. The other night was an Italian restaurant. San Filippo. There was a violinist who wouldn’t stop playing at our table until you gave him fi ve pounds.”

Luxford didn’t seem able to look away from her. His expression was painful to see.

She continued. “We always separated long before breakfast because that was wise. But the last morning we didn’t. It was over, but we wanted to prolong the moment before we parted. So we ordered room service. It came late.

It was cold. You took the rose from the vase and…” She took off her glasses and folded them in her hand.

“Evelyn, I’m sorry,” Luxford said.

She raised her head. “Sorry for what?”

“You said you wanted nothing from me.

You wouldn’t have me. So all I could do was put money in the bank for her—and I
did
that much, once a month, every month, in her own account—so that if I died, so that if she ever needed anything…” He seemed to realise how inconsequential and pathetic his act of taking responsibility had been, cast against the immensity and sheer enormity of what had passed within the last week. He said, “I didn’t know. I never thought that—”

“What?” she asked sharply. “You never thought what?”

“That the week might have meant more to you than I realised at the time.”

“It meant nothing to me. You meant nothing to me. You mean nothing to me.”

“Of course,” he said. “I know that. Of course.”

“Is there anything else?” Lynley asked.

She returned her glasses to her nose. “What I ate, what he ate. How many sexual positions we tried. What difference does it make?” She handed the tabloid back to Lynley. “There’s nothing more from that week in Blackpool that could be of interest to anyone, Inspector.

The interesting item has already been printed: For nearly a week, Eve Bowen fucked the left-wing editor of this scurrilous piece of fi lth.

And she spent the next eleven years pretending otherwise.”

Lynley directed his attention to Luxford.

He considered the words he’d heard on the taped conversation. There did indeed seem nothing else to print to ruin the MP any more thoroughly than she’d already been ruined.

This left only one possibility, as unlikely as that possibility seemed: The MP had never been the kidnapper’s target.

He began sifting through the files and reports on his desk. Towards the bottom of the mass of material, he found the photocop-ies of the two initial kidnapping notes. The originals were still with SO7 where the lab was running the lengthy procedure of lifting fingerprints from the paper.

He read the note that had been sent to Luxford, first to himself and then aloud. “

‘Acknowledge your firstborn child on page one, and Lottie will be freed.’ ”

“I acknowledged her,” Luxford said. “I claimed her. I admitted it. What more can I do?”

“If you did all that and you still got it wrong, there’s only one feasible explanation,” Lynley said. “Charlotte Bowen wasn’t your fi rstborn child.”

“What are you saying?” Luxford demanded.

“I think it’s fairly obvious. You have another child, Mr. Luxford. And someone out there knows who that child is.”

Barbara Havers returned to Wootton Cross near teatime with the photograph of Dennis Luxford, which Nkata had faxed to Amesford CID. It was grainy—and its graininess wasn’t exactly improved by making several photocop-ies of it—but it would have to do.

In Amesford, she’d done her best to avoid another run-in with DS Reg Stanley. The detective sergeant had been barricaded in the incidents room behind a fortress of telephone directories. And since he’d had a telephone pressed to his ear and was barking into it as he lit a cigarette with his obnoxious lady’s-arse lighter, Barbara had been able to give him a businesslike but otherwise meaningless nod after which she’d gone in search of her fax from London. Once she’d found it and made her copies, she’d hunted down Robin who’d completed his circuit of the narrow-boat hiring locations. He’d come up with three possibilities and he seemed ready to discuss them with her, but she said, “Brilliant. Well done, Robin. Now go back to the possibles and have a go at them with this.” She handed over the photocopied picture of Dennis Luxford.