Rainbow's End (18 page)

“This woman loved flowers, but she was nearly blind. Not totally, but forms, she told me, swam together when she looked at
them. She couldn't distinguish between the little benches in the park and the trees that overhung them, much less between the various kinds of flowers in the beds there. And she had been a painter, a watercolorist, and a very good one. Her name was Amy and she was known for her courage. No one ever heard her complain, or get angry. No one ever saw her cry. I couldn't believe Fate could play such a horrible trick on someone. It was like a pianist having his fingers paralyzed; or a runner having his legs cut off; or a singer losing her voice.” Jury nodded toward the jukebox. Jimmy looked too, both of them hypnotized by its swimming colors—oil mixing in water—and the throbbing voice, still, of Patsy Cline. Someone in here really liked Patsy. “Like Patsy Cline being struck dumb. Well, what Amy liked was for me to describe the flowers, that is, tell her what kinds were planted in different seasons, and then she'd paint them. They were remarkable; they were so true. ‘The hand remembers,' she used to say. And then after she'd done that, she'd paint what she could actually see. This turned out to be blobs of colors. Colors all running together. And once, only once, did she get so frustrated she threw her paints and her brushes down and chucked her book of watercolors straight across the grass. ‘Oh, God! That's all I see! Just a lot of melting colors!' She was crying, she was nearly
wailing.
‘I want to see edges, I want to see outlines, but all I see is melting colors.'

“And something inside of me just—exploded.
I
started crying, but not out of sympathy or empathy. I was furious, more and more furious, not at her but at life in general. ‘I wish
I
could see that!' That stopped her, stopped her cold.

“She looked at me, that is, as well as she could do, you know—a little out of kilter, a little squint-eyed. ‘See what?'

“ ‘A lot of melting colors. But no! I have to see
everything
!' And this seemed to me to be the most unjust and outrageous thing—that I had to see
everything.
Hard edges, outlines. We were both crying then, and then we were laughing. I asked her not to tell my mother, I don't know why. I told myself it was because I didn't want Mum to think I'd been callous, yelling at blind Amy, making her life harder . . . but that wasn't the reason. I still don't know the reason.”

Jimmy's eyes were still on him, childlike in their intensity. Jury recalled the little park, the dark green of the September trees, the cool ferns and damp mosses. His eyes were that shade of green, exactly. He started to say something, but stopped.

They listened to a few bars of “Crazy” and Jury said, “Nell Hawes. Anything you can remember, tell me.”

“You mean that trip she took?”

“That. Anything.”

“It's been a few months.”

“Things come back,” said Jury, wryly.

“She really liked it, the West. Or the Southwest, I expect it was. Colorado, New Mexico . . . Santa Fe, and—what was the name of the other place . . . ?”

“What about Santa Fe?” asked Macalvie, back with two pints and a bottle of ale. He sat down, still with his coat on, drank off nearly half his pint.

“I think she liked it because it's mystical. She was telling me about ‘channels' and ‘auras,' stuff like that.” He raised his bottle. “Cheers. Oh, Taos. That was the other place she liked. It means ‘the way,' she told me. Chinese, or something. Very mystical she thought the Southwest was.” Jimmy drank and thought. “Nell was religious. Or spiritual, I expect you'd say. ‘Everything runs together,' she'd say. She said the American Indians had a lot to teach people. She talked about a ‘rainbow path'—something one of the tribes believed. I think she said it was like a path between the earth and the sky.”

Macalvie grunted. He slipped twenty pence from the little hill of change he'd dumped on the table. He got up and hung over the jukebox for a moment, running his thumb across his forehead, apparently deep in thought as to what record to play, then slid the coin in. When nothing happened immediately, he kicked the jukebox. Then he sat down. As the voice of Patsy Cline filled the room with another helping of “Walkin' After Midnight,” Macalvie asked, “What about other tourists? Did she mention anyone she met over there?”

“No one in particular, no.”

“How about unparticular. Anyone at all? Any of her own countrymen, for example?”

“Americans, she said. Not surprising,” he said dryly, shooting Macalvie a slightly insolent look. “But no one I remember—oh, except she said she had dinner with a family from New York, and, yes, there was a woman ‘teamed up' with her for a few days. Saw the sights.”

Macalvie had taken out his tiny spiral notebook, uncapped his pen. “What about this woman?”

Jimmy frowned, trying to remember, then shook his head.

“Did she mention places she stayed? People who come back from trips are always raving on about the high price of food and hotels.”

Jimmy thought for a moment, took a pull on his bottle of ale. “She didn't, though, I mean she didn't name any particular place. Did talk about how pricey everything was, especially in Santa Fe. ‘Even that little B and B,' she said. Because it was so near the center of town. But that's all.”

“Easy enough to check.” Macalvie made a note, then asked, “Did she mention a place called Coyote Village or the Silver Heron?”

“No . . . Canyon Road,” said Jimmy, suddenly. “I remember that because I liked the name. That's where she ran into her, this woman.” He shook his head again. “Maybe I'll remember more.”

Patsy Cline walked her heart out as the three of them sat in silence for a few moments.

“Was it you?” asked Jury of Macalvie. “Playing Patsy Cline?”

“She helps me think. Okay, Jimmy. We have your mother's address but not yours. I understand you don't live with her?” Macalvie managed to invest this comment with as much reproach as he could.

Almost absently, Jimmy gave him the address; he was frowning at the pen poised over the notebook. “That was it; I remember, now.”

“That was what?”

“The notebook. Or address book, rather. It was when we were driving to Sainsbury's on the Monday, and Nell was looking for something in her purse, tossing stuff out, you know, the way women will do. And she came across this little address book. She said, ‘Drat, I forgot to send this off to her.' I asked, Who? It was the woman she'd got on so well with on the trip. It seems this woman—what did she call her?” Jimmy rubbed at his temple as if to dislodge this bit of information. “Frances, that was it. It seems she'd handed Nell her address book to write down her address and number and something had happened right then so that Nell forgot to give it back. She meant to post it, she said.”

Macalvie had pulled out the address book in its sleeve of polythene and put it on the table. “That it?”

“Why, yes. Where'd you get it?”

“Amongst her things.”

Jury asked: “That's what she called her? Frances?” When Jimmy nodded, Jury said, “They were all Americans that she met, you said.”
Jimmy nodded again. “Could one of them, this Frances, have been living in London?”

Jimmy frowned. “Well, she could have done, of course. But Nell didn't say that.”

“Okay. Time to go home, Jimmy. But make yourself available, will you?”

Jimmy brought the bottle down on the table, totally perplexed. “Home?”

“Yeah, it's the place halfway up the steps with the door and the windows. You'll be wanting to say goodnight to your mother, I imagine.”

Jimmy laughed uncertainly. “I still got some drinking to do. Hardly had a chance to talk to my mates, me sitting here cracking with you two.” He was sounding tough again, but not too.

“Oh. Too bad, because this place is closing.” Macalvie drank off his pint of bitter.

Jimmy was totally surprised. “It's not even half-nine yet. What're you talking about?” He looked around as if to assure himself people weren't bolting.

“Call it early closing.” Macalvie was up and pocketing his cigarettes, his change. “Time to go home. Unless you'd like to come along to the station with us?”

“What in hell is this?” Jimmy was back to his former line of questioning. But he had finished his ale and was standing up.

“It's a choice. A nice cup of tea with your mum or along to headquarters.” Macalvie shrugged as if to say, No problem.

Patsy's voice walked them out the door into the cold night air.

 • • • 

“
I DON'T THINK
I can handle it.” Jimmy's words were all but inaudible.

There was a silence during which Macalvie made a movement toward the boy and Jury thought he was going to relent and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. The hand went to the shoulder all right, but it didn't look comforting—more like the grip of a bird of prey. “Poor. Fucking. You,” Macalvie said.

Suddenly, Jimmy exploded. “Where the hell do you get off, telling people how to live their lives? You come in here like Judgment Day when you don't know anything about it; you don't know me, you know nothing about me; you don't know me and my mum!”

He sounded in his near-to-weeping rage as Jury remembered himself sounding that day long ago in the park with Amy. And he knew why he'd told Jimmy about her.

Macalvie was taking all of Jimmy's verbal abuse in much the same way he did when he waited for one of his own men—or women, like Gilly Thwaite—to come back down the ladder of near-hysteria, Macalvie having frustrated them to within an inch of their lives. When Jimmy finally came down a few rungs to nothing more than a sputter, Macalvie said, “Goodnight, then. We'll just watch you up the stairs to see you don't get mugged.”

Jimmy stomped furiously upwards, turning once in the middle to hurl one remaining insult at Macalvie: “
Fuck YOU, Commander
!” Then he continued up the stair.

Jury loved that “Commander,” as if this particular “fuck you” weighed in with a lot of rank.

“He has a point, Macalvie.” Jury had his hand on the other's arm and was trying to turn him toward the quay.

Macalvie was looking upward. “Is he inside the house yet or just skulking around in the dark waiting to make a run for it?”

“Will you come
on
? You're not his bloody minder!” Jury pulled him toward the quay and the river.

“We find out the dates when your lady—Fanny Hamilton—was in the Southwest, where she stayed. Easy enough.”

Jury sighed. “This is an extremely tenuous connection you're making.”

His face still turned upward, Macalvie said, “Nell Hawes and Angela Hope both in Santa Fe. Fanny—or Frances—Hamilton, ditto.” His sigh was awfully theatrical. “If I could take a holiday, I'd go. Too much on my platter at the moment.”

“There's
always
too much on your platter. Me, hell, I have nothing better to do than take off for the American Southwest.”

“Looks like it.” Macalvie craned his neck upward, squinted.

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Angela Hope was found in
Wiltshire.
Nell Hawes died here in
Devon.
Fanny Hamilton,
London.
The American embassy and the American cops will not be interested in the last two. Ditto, Wiltshire Constabulary.”

Calmly, Macalvie answered, “Obviously. That's why we ought to go there.”

“ ‘We' seems to have a trickle effect. Down to
me
. I do have a life over here, you seem to forget.” Jury was thinking of Jenny and not being able to contact her. It was frustrating.

“Not much of a one.”

Jury turned his face upward, too. It's true, he thought sadly. The black matte of the sky was crowded, more than usual, with stars, as if a star gun had sprayed it with star bullets. Then, unaccountably, he smiled, for the image made him think of Covent Garden and the Starrdust. A few moments passed in total silence and he found himself irritated by Macalvie's upward staring. “What the hell are you looking at?”

“Dark matter.”

Jury winced. He was sorry he'd asked.

“You've read about dark matter, haven't you?”

“No, that's just one of the many things I haven't read about. Come on, I'm tired.” Jury yanked Macalvie's sleeve.

Macalvie, however, wasn't going anywhere. “It's got something to do with gravitational pull. The first mass they found they calculated to be trillions of miles long. That's
trillions
, Jury. This is matter so huge it's
unimaginable.
That's what gets me. It's unimaginable, but it's calculable.”

“Is this going to be another ‘deep time' lecture?”

Macalvie turned his squint on Jury. “I'm not talking about deep time; I'm talking about dark matter. Can't a person even look at the universe without being persecuted by you?”

“A person, yes. You're not a person. Come on. I don't feel like standing here in the middle of the night talking about the universe.”

Macalvie now squinted at his watch. “It's only ten bloody o'clock. That's the middle of the night to you?”

“How can anyone who's so damned literal stand around talking about deep time and dark matter? What's wrong with you? Usually you can only see what's at the end of a gun or a torch or a microscope. What's all this philosophizing about?”

As if the question weren't clearly rhetorical, Macalvie answered, face turned skyward once again, “Dark matter. I told you.”

“What? Am I hearing correctly? Are you saying you think there's such a thing as an unsolvable crime?”

“That's right. Stop to think about it: They have enough facts, the scientists. The physicists, the chemists, the astronomers. They have enough facts with which to calculate. With which, I expect, to actually prove it. But that ‘prove' is in quotes. Because how can you prove something you can't imagine?”