Skylark (19 page)

"Yes, around ten. Harry Belknap will meet me at the York railroad station and drive me
to Thirsk."

"I want to come, too," I blurted.

He frowned. "There are no facilities for families where we're staying, and the sessions
will run late."

"I could hire a car and stay at a B & B near Thirsk. It's supposed to be pretty
country."

"Hmm. That's a thought." He took the light bulb out into the foyer, leaving the door ajar,
and returned almost at once.

"No sign of neighbors." He was covered with dust. He headed into the bathroom.

Ann was rattling teacups. She fixed Jay's herbal stuff in one of them and carried the
laden tray into the living room. "Maybe you and I should hire a car in London and drive north to
Thirsk, Lark. That is, if you don't mind company."

"Good idea."

Ann poured two cups of real tea, and removed the bag of wet herbs from Jay's cup.
"Inspector Thorne just wants us to let him know when we leave and where we're going. He didn't
say we couldn't leave."

Jay reentered and sat in one of the armchairs. Ann handed him his cup and tried the idea
out on him.

He smoothed his mustache. "If Thorne makes an arrest, he'll want you to identify his
suspect."

I said, "We can't sit around waiting for that forever. If we had a car, Ann and I could
drive back when he needs us."

"Let's see what happens in the next couple of days."

Ann gave me my cup of properly creamed and sugared tea. "I have to stay in London
until the Henning people contact me."

"Surely they'll act soon." I sipped, burnt my tongue, and set the cup on the end table.
"Won't they?"

Ann sighed. "Let's hope so, honey. Hanging around London indefinitely could get
expensive."

We batted the idea of going to Yorkshire around for a while then Ann went off to bed
with her newspaper under one arm.

Jay came over and sat on the couch beside me. "Do you want to come north?"

"I want out of London." I wriggled against him. "And I want to be with you. Why don't
you stay overnight with me at the B & B? Ann can rent a separate room, and I can drive you
to the conference and pick you up in the evening."

"And you and Ann can spend Saturday and Sunday exploring. Sounds good to me." He
gave me a hug. "Time for bed, woman."

"All you do is sleep."

He gave me an exaggerated leer. "Not all."

I think he had another nightmare that night. At least I dimly remember him getting up
around two and coming back several hours later. I tried not to wake him when I got up at seven.
He came out at eight-thirty, yawning and looking reasonably rested. Since Ann was up and in the
kitchen, too, drinking coffee and reading the paper, I didn't question him.

Ann was going to the public library, she said, and then meant to ramble around the Earl's
Court area. I volunteered to call Thorne to see what he thought of our leaving for York.

I reached him around ten. He didn't want us to leave London altogether but said he
thought a weekend in Yorkshire would do us good. He could contact us via Jay's police
conference. He even suggested that Ann and I travel up with Jay by train because of the horrors
of driving through London. We could rent a car in York. I thanked him for the idea and hung
up.

Jay and I stared at each other.

"Well, here we are," I muttered.

"Undeniably. Are you going to show me Scotland Yard and the Old Bailey?"

The thought didn't fill me with enthusiasm, but it was something to do.

Jay found the area around Scotland Yard disappointing. I think he wanted something
hung with gargoyles and flying buttresses, but the Metropolitan Police have existed less than two
hundred years, and that part of the city was heavily bombed during the Second World War
anyway. Except for St. Paul's, the architecture is nineteenth and twentieth century.

Since we were so close to the Barbican Centre, I took Jay to see the fateful cafeteria. He
thought the complex looked like a second-rate suburban mall. I thought it looked like a first-rate
suburban mall. We settled our difference of opinion amicably by visiting the Museum of the City
of London, which is unlike anything in any suburban mall, being one of the most human
museums anywhere. Jay fell in love with the fire engines. We looked but did not eat at the
cafeteria.

In fact, we hopped on the Tube during the rush hour--at roughly the same time Ann and
Milos and I had boarded the carriage the week before. I was feeling phobic by the time we
reached Charing Cross, but I gritted my teeth and didn't say anything because I owed Jay a panic
attack. At least the train didn't halt in the tunnel.

Beside me, Jay was doing a very unEnglish survey of our fellow passengers. I almost
asked him not to stare. The train lurched and swayed, passengers swarmed on and off the car,
and I recited my mantra under my breath. When we decanted onto the South Kensington
platform, I pulled Jay over to the bench Ann and I had sat on.

"Hey, you showed me this last night."

I said through clenched teeth, "Let me breathe for a minute."

He sat beside me. "What is it...oh. I'm sorry, Lark."

"It's the rush hour crowd. It was like this when Milos was stabbed." I closed my eyes,
wondering if I'd have to put my head between my knees.

Jay took my hand and sat with me as the commuter tide ebbed and flowed. He didn't say
anything. The P.A. system crackled out its garble. A train pulled in on a gust of stale air.

I opened my eyes. "Okay. Let's go."

There was no point in sprinting with three or four train-loads of commuters surging like
spawning salmon up the grimy staircase and through the toll gates. We flowed upstream at their
speed, but I was half-running by the time we reached street level and the open air. We dashed
across the traffic island to the far side of the Old Brompton Road.

Jay touched my arm. "Slow down, ace."

I was gulping air. "Okay."

"Show me the famous car dealership."

I reversed course in front of the Post Office, and we inspected shop windows. My
stationer-copyist, the pharmacy, a travel agent, a tiny
bureau de change
. The car
broker's window displayed a glowing BMW in metallic blue-grey and a carmine Porsche. A
salesman was showing the Porsche to an upscale couple in matching tan burberries. There was
no sign of Trevor--unsurprising, given the late hour. The dealership would close at six.

We strolled on. I rarely approached the flat from that side. Jay found the gardens
interesting--the burglar's egress. The wrought-iron fencing and elaborate gate looked
impenetrable to me, but he suggested half a dozen ways to get in. Getting out was easy. We
walked all the way around the cul-de-sac on which the terrace of houses lay and came in from
the opposite direction.

Ann was cooking southern. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cole slaw. The only things
missing were okra and peach pie. We contented ourselves with a peach sorbet she had found in
one of the shops and didn't miss the okra. Ann and Jay settled down for a look at the news, and I
took the telephone into our bedroom to call my father. No dice, no package.

Thursday the weather finally broke. The day dawned clear and almost balmy. A few fat
puffy clouds sailed across the sky, and the wind was light. It was ideal touristing weather.
Unfortunately we had to do laundry and pack. A tiny Laundromat, which I had learned to call a
launderette, lay only four blocks away near the Lycée Charles de Gaulle. It opened at
half-past eight, so Jay and I headed for it while Ann held down the fort. She was still waiting for the
telephone call from the Henning people, and she had also volunteered to make train and B &
B reservations for the northern jaunt. In return I would wash her clothes, and we could all
sightsee in the afternoon. That was the deal.

I let Jay haul the duffel bag full of dirty laundry the four blocks while I toted the change.
English coins are heavy and English Laundromats expensive, so the burden was not as unequal
as it sounds. I did carry the detergent.

Jay and I sat on the stiff wooden benches and read our morning papers--for some reason
he had decided to patronize the
Telegraph
--while the four loads, two white and two
colored, whirled and sloshed. He had made it through the night without bad dreams and was full
of energy. He wanted to see the British Museum in the afternoon. That seemed reasonable. I
intended to poke through the Bloomsbury bookshops.

Five other people, one the attendant, filled the tiny establishment to capacity. None of
the four customers spoke English. That gave Jay and me status with the attendant, and she
actually changed a pound coin for us. The others pantomimed their desire to change assorted
bills, but the woman just compressed her lips and shook her head. Another bewildering example
of London retailing.

In all likelihood three-fourths of the launderette's customers would lack the right change,
yet there was neither a coin machine nor a till. I knew from sad experience that none of the
surrounding shops would make change either. A greengrocer had ticked me off so rudely when I
asked to change a pound coin that I had since boycotted him, though his produce looked
luscious. He probably lost a lot of customers that way. So did the launderette. By nine all but one
of the other patrons had wandered disconsolately off, dirty clothes bags trailing, in search of the
right change.

Jay watched them go and gave me a grin that showed he was onto the situation. The
attendant poked a batch of clothes into one of the driers, humming cheerfully to herself. Maybe
she was xenophobic. The machines whirled and spun. I had finished the
Independent
,
and Jay and I were loading the communal wash into two driers when Ann entered.

"What's up?" I asked. She looked pink and rather pleased.

She glanced at the attendant who was watching us with bright-eyed curiosity. "Uh, we
had a call. Parks has been picked up. Mr. Thorne wants to see us right away."

I looked at Jay over a load of wet sweats.

"Go ahead, Lark. I'll bring the stuff home when it's dry."

"Thanks." I handed him the remaining coin hoard and gave him a hug. "See you at the
flat in an hour or so."

"No problem."

Ann and I caught a cab at the taxi rank in front of the Norfolk Hotel, and we were being
ushered into Thorne's office within ten minutes, me in jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, Ann looking
proper in her flowered dress.

Thorne entered beaming. "Well, ladies, we finally nicked Sparky. I trust you'll pick him
out of the line-up."

I had been trying to visualize the tout all the way to the station. "I hope so."

"We will," Ann said confidently. "However did you find him so fast, inspector?"

Thorne made a gesture of modest deprecation. "Routine enquiries, Mrs. Veryan. He was
bound to turn up at his local sooner or later."

It was amusing to think of plainclothes detectives hanging out at Parks's favorite pub,
blending into the paneling, for five days. That was a lot of beer and bangers.

Thorne took Ann off first, so I stood by his office window and watched the passers-by in
Lucan Place and thought about the next day. With Parks in custody I felt easier about leaving
London over the bank holiday week-end. It would be great to get out into the countryside, to see
a bit of the real England again. I remembered incredible flower gardens, neat village squares and
greens, and the way daffodils and bluebells grew wild in the meadowlands. Funny what kids
notice. On the southwest coast fuchsias grew wild, too, like weeds, but probably not in
Yorkshire.

My thoughts drifted to Milos, and I shivered. He had been removed from St. Botolph's
in a private ambulance--what exactly did that mean? The British health care system had a bad
press in the United States, but at least it was a system. My impression was that elderly people
and children in particular were well cared for, and that fewer people fell through the cracks than
at home.

Parallel private facilities existed, though they were expensive. The best scenario had
Milos in the care of a competent staff at a private nursing home with some generous-minded
plutocrat footing the bill. I hoped that was where Milos was but it seemed unlikely. And private
hospitals surely kept records. The police would have found him if he were receiving professional
care.

When Ann and the inspector returned I asked him whether there was word of Milos's
whereabouts, but he just shook his head.

Ann's smile had faded as soon as I mentioned Milos's name.

"How did the line-up go?"

She shrugged. "I'm not supposed to comment."

"Come along, Mrs. Dodge." Thorne led me out and down a long corridor to an unlabeled
door. He was explaining the line-up procedure, which sounded pretty much as it was portrayed
on thousands of television shows.

The room was dark, except for a low, brightly-lit ramp at the front that adjoined a blank
white wall. We sat on what felt like old theater seats, Thorne on the aisle at my left hand. I
spotted several other heads in the dark auditorium, but no one said anything.

Five men entered and spaced themselves along the wall at roughly arms' length from
each other. They were wearing dark clothing, and all five were short and slim. For a panicked
moment I thought they all looked alike then someone in the darkened seating area dropped
something, a book or notebook. At the sound all five started slightly. One cupped a hand above
his eyes. The others peered.

I said, "He's second from the left." My pulse thumped, and I felt a choking sensation in
my throat.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes." The tout's stare was unmistakable.

Thorne sighed. "Let's make sure." He asked the man to step forward a pace, and Parks's
shoulders slumped in the brown suit jacket. He obeyed, and I repeated my identification.

"Right," Thorne said. "That's it, then. Thank you, gentlemen." The other four men
shuffled back the way they had come, and ferret-face waited, head bent, while a uniformed guard
entered and led him out the opposite door.