Playing for the Ashes (36 page)

The cushion was so old and so thin that it felt as if it were filled with bird shot. “Did you speak to your husband any time on Wednesday?”

“Why would I?”

“He was supposed to take your son boating. They were supposed to leave Wednesday evening. The plans got changed. Did he phone to tell you?”

“It was for Jimmy’s birthday. That was the promise, leastways. Who knows if he meant it?”

“He meant it,” Barbara said. Jean looked up sharply. “We found the plane tickets in one of his jackets in Kensington. And Mrs. Whitelaw told us that she helped him pack and watched him put his gear in the car. But somewhere along the line, his plans got changed. Did he tell you why?”

She shook her head and drank from the mug of tea. Barbara noticed that it was one of those trick mugs on which the picture changed when the liquid heated it. Young Elvis sneersmiling had altered to the bloated Elvis of his later years, satin-garbed and warbling into a microphone.

“Did he tell Jimmy?”

Jean’s hands closed round the mug. Elvis disappeared beneath her
fin
gers. She watched the level of the tea rise from right to left as she tilted the mug back and forth. She
fin
ally said, “Yeah. He talked to Jimmy.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know what time.”

“You don’t need to be exact. Was it morning? Afternoon? Just before they were supposed to be leaving? He was going to drive here and fetch the boy, wasn’t he? Did he phone shortly before he was to arrive?”

She lowered her head farther, giving closer scrutiny to her tea.

Barbara said, “Go back through the day mentally. You got up, got dressed, perhaps got the children ready for school. What else? You went to work. You came home. Jimmy was packed for the trip. He was unpacked. He was ready. He was excited. He was disappointed. What?”

The tea continued to hold her attention. Although her head was still lowered, Barbara could see from the movement of her chin that she was chewing on the inside of her lower lip. Jimmy Cooper, she thought with a stirring of interest. What might the rozzers at the local substation have to say when they heard the name?

“Where
is
Jimmy?” she asked. “If you can’t tell me anything about this Greece trip and his father—”

Jean said, “Wednesday afternoon.” She raised her head as Barbara tapped cigarette ash into the tin shell. “Wednesday afternoon.”

“That’s when he phoned?”

“I took Stan and Shar to the video shop so they could each have a film for when Jimmy left with their dad. So they wouldn’t feel bad they weren’t going as well.”

“This was after school, then.”

“When we got home, the trip was off. Round half four.”

“Jimmy told you?”

“He didn’t need to tell me. He’d unpacked. All his gear was slung about his room.”

“What did he say?”

“That he wasn’t going to Greece.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he knew. Jimmy knew.”

She lifted the tea and drank. She said, “I expect some cricket business came up and Kenny had to see to it. He was hoping to be

chosen for England again.”

“But Jimmy didn’t say?”

“He was cut up. He didn’t want to talk.”

“Still, he felt let down by his dad?”

“He’d been dead keen on going and then it was off. Yeah. He was let down.”

“Angry?” When Jean glanced her way sharply, Barbara said in easy explanation, “You mentioned that he hadn’t unpacked so much as thrown his clothes about the room. That sounds like temper to me. Was he angry?”

“Like any kid would be. No different from that.”

Barbara stubbed out her cigarette and took her time about considering whether to light another. She rejected the idea. “Does Jimmy have a means of transportation?”

“Why’d you need to know that?”

“Did he stay home Wednesday night? Stan and Shar had their videos. He had his disappointment. Did he stay home with you or go out and do something to cheer himself up? He was cut up, you said. He’d have probably wanted something to lift his spirits.”

“He was in and out. He’s always in and out. He likes to mess about with his mates.”

“And Wednesday night? He was with his mates then? What time did he come home?”

Jean placed her mug of tea on the coffee table. She pushed her left hand into the pocket of her housedress and seemed to
fin
d something to grasp inside. Out on the street, a woman’s voice shrilled, “Sandy, Paulie, teatime! Come inside before it gets cold.”

“Did he come home at all, Ms. Cooper?” Barbara asked.

“Course he did,” she said. “I just don’t know the time, do I? I was asleep. The boy has his own key. He comes and he goes.”

“And he was here in the morning when you got up?”

“Where else would he be? In the dust bin?”

“And today? Where is he? With his mates again? Who are they, by the way? I’ll need their names. Especially the ones he was with on Wednesday.”

“He’s taken Stan and Shar off somewhere.” She indicated the rubbish bags with a dip of her head. “So they wouldn’t have to see their dad’s things packed.”

“I’m going to need to talk to him eventually,” Barbara said. “It would be easier if I could see him now. Can you tell me where he’s gone?”

She shook her head.

“Or when he’ll return?”

“What could he say that I can’t?”

“He could tell me where he was Wednesday night, and what time he got home.”

“I don’t see what help that would be to you.”

“He could tell me what his conversation with his father was all about.”

“I’ve said already. The trip was off.”

“But you haven’t said why.”

“What does
why
matter?”

“
Why
tells us who might have known Kenneth Fleming was going to Kent.” Barbara watched for Jean Cooper’s reaction to the statement. It was subtle enough, a mottling of skin where her floral housedress exposed a pale triangle of chest. The colour climbed no higher. Barbara said, “I understand you spent weekends out there when your husband
fir
st played on the county side. You and the children.”

“What if we did?”

“Would you drive out yourself to the cottage? Or would your husband come to fetch you?”

“We’d drive out.”

“And if he wasn’t there when you arrived? Had you your own set of keys to let yourself in?”

Jean’s back straightened. She crushed her cigarette out. “I see,” she said. “I know what you’re saying. Where was Jimmy on Wednesday night? Did he ever come home? Was he in a temper over his holiday being spoiled? And if you don’t mind my asking, could he have pinched a set of keys to the cottage, popped out to Kent, and killed his own dad?”

“It’s an interesting question,” Barbara noted. “I wouldn’t mind in the least if you commented on it.”

“He was home,
home
.”

“But you can’t say what time.”

“And there isn’t any bloody keys for anyone to pinch. There never was.”

“So how did you get into the cottage when your husband wasn’t there?”

Jean was caught up short. She said, “What? When?”

“When you used to go to Kent at the weekends. How did you get in if your husband wasn’t there?”

Jean gave an agitated pull at the collar of her dress. The action seemed to calm her because she raised her head and said, “There was a key always kept in a shed, back of the garage. We used that to get in.”

“Who knew about that key?”

“Who knew? What difference does it make? We all bloody knew. All right?”

“Not quite. The key’s gone missing.”

“And you think Jimmy took it.”

“Not necessarily.” Barbara lifted her bag from the floor and slung it to her shoulder. “Tell me, Ms. Cooper,” she said in conclusion, knowing the answer without having to hear it, “is there anyone who can verify where you were on Wednesday night?”

Jimmy paid for the crisps, the Cadbury bars, the Hob Nobs, and the Custard Cremes. Earlier, at the bottom of the stairs where the fruit vendor had his stall at Island Gardens Station, he’d pinched two bananas, a peach, and a nectarine while some old cow with too much pink scalp and too little blue hair kept whining about the price of sprouts. As if anyone with sense would eat those
fil
thy green gobs in the
fir
st place.

He had plenty of money to pay for the fruit. Mum had passed him ten quid that morning and said to give Stan and Shar a treat somewhere nice. But bananas, peaches, and nectarines didn’t qualify as treats and even if that hadn’t been the case, his act of petty theft had been a matter of principle. The fruit vendor was a first-class toe-rag, always had been, always would be. “Flipping yobs,” he’d mutter whenever some of the blokes from school would pass too close to his naf
fin
g tomatoes. “Stop poncing round here. Get some decent employment, you miserable louts.” So it was a matter of honour among the blokes from George Green Comprehensive to nick as much fruit and veg as possible from the freaking jack.

But Jimmy had no grudge against the old bugger who ran the Island Gardens refreshment caff. So when they trotted over to the squat building at the edge of the green, when Shar asked for crisps and a chocolate bar, and when Stan pointed silently to the Hob Nobs and the Custard Cremes, Jimmy shoved a five-quid note across the counter willingly, not knowing at first how to respond when the old boy said, “Nicest sort of a day for an outing, dearie, isn’t it?” and patted his hand. At
fir
st Jimmy thought the old bloke was a fairy trying to pull him with the hope of doing a brown behind the counter when no one was looking. But then he looked at him closer when the old man handed him the change from his purchases and he realised from the goopy screen of white across his eyes that the poor sod was nearly blind. He’d seen Jimmy’s hair, but he’d heard Sharon’s voice. He thought he was
fli
rting with a local bird.

They’d already had two egg sandwiches and a sausage roll riding on the docklands train from Crossharbour down to the river. It wasn’t a long trip—two stations was all—but they’d had enough time to wolf down their food and wash it back with two Cokes and a Fanta orange. Shar had said, “I don’t think we’re s’pose to eat on the train, Jimmy.” Jimmy said, “So don’t if you’re scared,” and bit off a hunk of sandwich that he chewed with an open mouth right next to her ear. “Munch, munch, munch,” he’d said with his mouth full of bread and his teeth coated yellow with egg.

“Eat too slow and end up in Borstal. Here they come to get us. Shar, here they come!” She’d giggled and unwrapped her sandwich. She’d eaten half and saved the rest.

He squinted at her now from one of the tables at the Island Gardens caff. Dimly he could see that she’d taken the two slices of bread apart, carefully wiped the egg off with a paper napkin, and at the moment she appeared to be making a line of crumbles along the embankment wall some thirty yards from where he sat. When the bread was in place, she scurried back across the lawn and took her binoculars from their leather case.

“Too many people,” Jimmy said. “You won’t see nothing but pigeons, Shar.”

“There’s gulls on the river. Plenty of gulls.”

“So what? Gull’s a gull.”

“No. There’s gulls, and then there’s gulls,” she said obscurely. “You got to be patient.”

She took a small, prettily bound notebook from her knapsack. She opened it and neatly printed the date on the top of a new page. Jimmy looked away. Dad had given the notebook to her at Christmas, with three more bird books and a smaller but more powerful pair of binoculars. “These are for some
serious
watching,” he’d said. “Shall we try them out, Shar? We can take them to Hampstead and see what’s flying round the heath one day. Want to do that?”

She’d said, “Oh yes, Dad,” with a shining face and she’d waited serenely as first the days then the weeks went by, always confident that Dad would do what he said.

But something last October had changed him, making his word worth nothing, turning him edgy whenever they saw him,
fil
ling him with the need to pop his knuckles, to walk to windows, and to jump for the telephone whenever it rang. One day he acted like a single wrong word was enough to put him into a lather. The next he was completely buzzed up, like he’d scored a century without even trying. It had taken Jimmy a few weeks and some detective work to sort out what had happened to change his father so much. But once he knew what that “what happened” was, he also knew that nothing in their unconventional family life was ever going to be the same.

He shut his eyes for a moment. He concentrated on the sounds. The gulls screaming, the tapping of footsteps on the path behind the caff, the chatter of trippers come to ride the lift down to the Greenwich foot tunnel, the scrape of metal as someone tried to crank open one of the grimy umbrellas that stood among the outdoor tables.