Playing for the Ashes (66 page)

“Now that’s an interesting turn of events,” Havers said to Lynley. “A confession on one hand. A set of lies where no lies are necessary on the other. What d’you suppose we’ve got here, sir?”

Lynley reached for his jacket. “Let’s ask them,” he said.

Nkata and a second DC stayed to man the telephones, with directions to hand Jimmy Cooper over to his solicitor once he arrived. The boy had surrendered his Doc Martens at Nkata’s request, had suffered through having his fingerprints and his photograph taken. To the casual solicitation of a few strands of hair, he’d lifted one shoulder wordlessly. He either didn’t fully understand the implication of what was happening to him, or he didn’t care. So the hairs were harvested, placed in a collection bag, and labelled.

It was well after seven when Lynley and Havers cruised over the Warwick Avenue bridge and turned into Blomfield Road. They found a space to park at the base of one of the elegant Victorian villas overlooking the canal, and they walked quickly along the pavement, descending the steps to the path that led to Browning’s Pool.

No one was on the deck of Faraday’s barge although the cabin door stood open and the sound of either a television or a radio combined with cooking noises came from below. Lynley rapped against the wooden gazebo and called out Faraday’s name. The radio or television was hastily muted on the words “…to Greece with his son, who celebrated his sixteenth birthday on Friday…”

A moment later, Chris Faraday’s face appeared below them in the cabin. His body blocked the stairway. His eyes narrowed when he saw it was Lynley. “What is it?” he said. “I’m cooking dinner.”

“We need to clarify a few points,” Lynley said, stepping down unbidden from the deck onto the stairs.

Faraday held up a hand as Lynley began to descend. “Hey, can’t this wait?”

“It won’t take long.”

He blew out his breath, then stepped to one side.

Lynley said, “I see you’ve been decorating,” in reference to a collection of posters that hung haphazardly on the pine walls of the cabin. “These weren’t here yesterday, were they? This is my sergeant, Barbara Havers, by the way.” He examined the posters, dwelling particularly on a curious map of Great Britain and the unusual manner in which it had been divided into sectors.

“What is this?” Faraday said. “I’ve dinner on. It’s going to burn.”

“Then you might want to turn the fire down a bit. Is Miss Whitelaw here? We’ll want to speak with her as well.”

Faraday looked as if he wanted to argue, but he turned on his heel and disappeared into the galley. From beyond it, they could hear a door opening and the murmur of his voice. Hers rose in answer, saying, “Chris! What? Chris!” He said something more. Her answer was lost when the dogs began barking. More noise followed: the rattling of metal, the shuf
fli
ng of a body, the clicking of canine nails on a linoleum
flo
or.

Within two minutes, Olivia Whitelaw had joined them, half-dragging, half-walking, her weight on the walker and her face haggard. Behind her, Faraday moved round the kitchen, banging pot lids and pots, slamming cupboards, ordering the dogs out of the way with an accompanying and angry, “Ouch!” and “God
damn
it!” to which Olivia said, “Have a care, Chris,” without removing her attention from Havers, who was wandering along the wall and reading the posters.

“I was having a lie down,” Olivia told Lynley. “What do you want that can’t wait till later?”

“Your story’s not clear on last Wednesday night,” Lynley said. “Apparently, there are some details you’ve forgotten.”

“What the hell?” Faraday came out of the galley, the dogs at his heels and a dish-cloth in his hands, which he was drying. He lobbed it onto the dining table where it landed onto one of the plates laid for dinner. He went to Olivia’s side and when he would have helped her into one of the chairs, she said brusquely, “I can cope,” and lowered herself. She
flu
ng the walker to one side. The beagle dodged it with a yelp. He joined the mongrel in an investigation of Sergeant Havers’ brogues.

“Wednesday night?” Faraday said.

“Yes. Wednesday night.”

Faraday and Olivia exchanged a look. He said, “I’ve already told you. I went to a party in Clapham.”

“Yes. Tell me more about that party.” Lynley rested his weight against the arm of the chair opposite Olivia’s. Havers chose the stool next to the workbench. She crackled through her notebook to find a pristine page.

“What about it?”

“Who was the party for?”

“It wasn’t for anyone. It was just a group of blokes getting together to blow off steam.”

“Who are these blokes?”

“You want their names?” Faraday rubbed the back of his neck as if it was stiff. “Right.” He frowned and began a slow recitation of names, hesitating now and then to add something along the lines of, “Oh right. Bloke called Geoff was there as well. I’d not met him before.”

“And the address in Clapham?” Lynley asked.

It was on Orlando Road, he told them. He went to the workbench and pulled an old address book from among a collection of large battered volumes. He fingered through the pages, then read off the address, saying, “Chap called David Prior lives there. You want his number?”

“Please.”

Faraday recited it. Havers jotted it down. He shoved the address book among the other volumes and returned to Olivia, where he finally sat in the chair next to hers.

“Were there women at that party as well?” Lynley asked.

“It was stag. The women wouldn’t have fancied it much. You know. It was one of those sorts of parties.”

“Those sorts of parties?”

Faraday glanced uneasily at Olivia. “We watched some films. It was just some blokes getting together, drinking, making noise, and having a lark. It didn’t mean anything.”

“And no women were present? None at all?”

“No. They wouldn’t have wanted to watch that stuff, would they?”

“Pornography?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. It was more artistic than that, actually.” Olivia was looking at him steadily. He grinned and said, “Livie, you know it was nothing.
The Naughty Nanny. Daddy’s Little Girl. Bangkok Buddha
.”

“Those were the films?” Havers clarified, pencil poised.

Seeing she intended to write them down, Faraday willingly recited the rest although the pits on his cheeks took on a deeper hue as he did so. He said when he’d completed the list, “We got them in Soho. There’s a video rental on Berwick Street.”

“And no women were there,” Lynley said. “You’re sure of that? At no time during the evening?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why do you keep asking?”

“What time did you get home?”

“Home?” Faraday gave Olivia a querying look. “I told you before. It was late. I don’t know. Sometime after four.”

“And you were alone here?” Lynley said to Olivia. “You didn’t go out. You didn’t hear Mr. Faraday return?”

“That’s right, Inspector. So if you don’t mind, can we have our dinner now?”

Lynley left his chair and sauntered to the window where he adjusted the shutters and gave a long scrutiny to Browning’s Island a short distance across the pool. He said, looking out, “There were no women present at the party.”

Faraday said, “What is this? I’ve told you that already.”

“Miss Whitelaw didn’t go?”

“I think I still count as a woman, Inspector,” Olivia said.

“Then where were you and Mr. Faraday heading at half past ten on Wednesday night? And more importantly, where were you coming from when you returned around
fiv
e the next morning? If, of course, you weren’t at the…You did say it was a stag party?”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. One of the dogs—the three-legged mongrel— lurched to his feet and limped in Olivia’s direction. He placed his misshapen head on her knee. Her hand dropped to it but lay
fla
ccid there.

Faraday looked neither at the police nor at Olivia. Instead, he reached for the walker that Olivia had flung to one side. He righted it, ran his hand along its aluminium framework. Finally, he directed a look at Olivia. Clearly, the decision to clarify the situation or to lie further lay with her.

She said under her breath, “Bidwell. That snoop.” She swung her head to Faraday. “I’ve left my fags by the bed. Will you…?”

“Right.” He seemed happy enough to be out of the room, even for the brief time it would take him to fetch her cigarettes. He returned with Marlboros, a lighter, and a tomato tin with half its label missing. This last he placed between her knees. He shook out a cigarette and lit it for her. She spoke to them without removing it from her mouth. When it needed to have its ash dislodged, she let this heedlessly fall onto her black jersey.

“Chris took me out,” she said. “He went on to the party. He fetched me when the party was over.”

“Out,” Lynley said. “From ten at night until five the next morning?”

“That’s right. Out. From ten at night till five in the morning. Probably more like half past five, which Bidwell would have no doubt been delighted to tell you had he been sober enough to read his watch correctly.”

“You were at a party yourself?”

A laugh gusted from her nose. “While the men were getting sweaty watching porn, the women were elsewhere, having a bake-off of their chocolate gateaux? No, I wasn’t at a party.”

“Then where were you, please?”

“I wasn’t in Kent, if we’re heading back in that direction.”

“Can someone confirm where it is that you were?”

She inhaled and peered at him through the smoke. It veiled her as effectively as it had done yesterday, perhaps more so now because she was so insistent about keeping the cigarette in her mouth.

“Miss Whitelaw,” Lynley said. He was weary. He was hungry. It was getting late. They’d bandied the truth round long enough. “Perhaps we’d all be more comfortable having this conversation elsewhere.” At the workbench Havers snapped her notebook closed.

“Livie,” Faraday said.

“All right.” She stubbed her cigarette out and fumbled with the packet. It slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. She said, “Leave it,” when Faraday would have picked it up. “I was with my mother,” she told Lynley.

Lynley wasn’t sure what he had expected to hear, but this wasn’t it. He said, “Your mother.”

“Right. You’ve met her, no doubt. Miriam Whitelaw, woman of few but eternally correct words. Number 18 Staffordshire Terrace. The mouldy, old Victorian relic. That’s the house, not my mother, by the way. Although she does come in a fine second in the mould and old department. I went to see her at half past ten on Wednesday night, when Chris set off for the party. He fetched me the next morning on his way home.”

Havers opened her notebook once again. Lynley could hear her pencil scratching furiously against the paper.

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he asked. The larger question remained unasked: Why hadn’t Miriam Whitelaw herself told him earlier?

“Because it had nothing to do with Kenneth Fleming. His life, his death, his anything. It had to do with me. It had to do with Chris.

It had to do with my mother. I didn’t tell you because it was none of your business. She didn’t tell you because she wanted to protect my privacy. What little I have left.”

“No one has privacy in a murder investigation, Miss Whitelaw.”

“Oh balls. What pompous, arrogant, narrow-minded shit. Do you trot that line out for everyone? I didn’t know Kenneth Fleming. I never even met him.”

“Then I’d assume you’d be eager to clear yourself of any suspicion. His death, after all, removes every obstruction to your inheriting your mother’s fortune.”

“Have you always been such a bleeding fool or is this an act for my bene
fit
only?” She raised her head to look at the ceiling. He could see her blink. He watched her throat work. Faraday put his hand on the arm of her chair, but he didn’t touch her. “Look at me,” she said. It sounded as if she spoke through her teeth. She lowered her head and met Lynley’s eyes. “Just bloody look at me and use your brains. I don’t give a shit about my mother’s will. I don’t care about her house, her money, her stocks, her bonds, her business, her anything. I’m dying, all right?

Can you deal with that fact, no matter how much it destroys your precious case? I’m dying.
Dying
. So if I had it in mind to knock off Kenneth Fleming and weasel back into my mother’s will, what in God’s name would be the point? I’ll be dead in eighteen months. She’ll be alive another twenty years. I’m not inheriting anything, from her or anyone. Not anything. Got it?”

She’d begun to tremble. Her legs were jitterbugging against her chair. Faraday murmured her name. She snapped, “No!” without a clear reason. She held her left arm against her body. Her face had taken on a sheen during their interview, and it seemed to glisten more brightly. “I went to see her on Wednesday night because I knew Chris had the party to go to and couldn’t come with me. Because I didn’t want Chris to come with me. Because I needed to see her alone.”

“Alone?” Lynley asked. “Weren’t you running the chance that Fleming would have been there?”

“He didn’t count as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t bear the thought of Chris seeing me grovel. But if Kenneth saw, if he was in the room even, I thought it might increase my chance for success. The way I saw it, Mother’d be only too happy to act the role of Lady Forgiveness and Mother Compassion in front of Kenneth. She wouldn’t think of chucking me into the street if he was there.”