The Blue Last (2 page)

Jury left Tower Hill underground station and stood looking across Lower Thames Street. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this close to the Tower of London. The tourists were snapping pictures, a few with disposable cameras, others with more sophisticated ones. Christmas was in two weeks, a popular time for tourists. He passed an Indian restaurant on Fenchurch Street, and if that was closed he could pretty well bet that everything was.

But not the Snow Hill station, of course. An unhappy-looking constable was on duty behind the information desk and looked almost grateful that Jury wanted nothing more than a direction to Haggerty's office. Detective Chief Inspector Haggerty? Through there, down there, his door there. Jury thanked him.

Haggerty was sitting at his desk, looking at police photographs when Jury walked in. Mickey Haggerty got up and walked around the desk to take Jury's hand and punch him on the shoulder a couple of times, making it more than a handshake, less than an embrace. Jury hadn't seen Mickey Haggerty, or his wife Liza, in several years and felt guilty for allowing the friendship to languish. But that wasn't entirely down to him, was it? Mickey must bear some of the brunt.

No cop (thought Jury) was more “in place” than Mickey Haggerty. He fit the Job as snugly as a paving stone in a new-laid path. “Hello, Mickey. It's been a long time.”

“Too damned long,” said Mickey, who indicated a chair for Jury before reseating himself. “How're you keeping, Rich?”

“Fine.” This sort of exchange would have been banal between most people, but not with Mickey on the other end of it. He genuinely wanted to know. They talked for a minute about Liza and the kids, and then Jury slid the file he'd brought across the desk to Mickey. “Looks like a dig. This is a case you're working on? Was I supposed to come up with some helpful response? I don't know much about forensic anthropology—”

Mickey was shaking his head. “I only wanted you to see the file so you'd have a better idea of what I'm talking about. Yes, it's a case I'm working on. Me, personally. Say it's unofficial business. Or say I don't really want anyone to know about it. It's personal.” He turned one photograph around. In the center of the rubble were two skeletons.

At least, Jury made out what he thought were two. “What is this, then, Mickey?”

“Skeletons recovered from a bomb site.”

“Bomb site? Where?”

“Here. In the City. Near Ludgate Circus. If you want to see it, it's not far from St. Paul's, on a street called Blackfriars Lane.” Mickey drew a little map and passed it over. “The last bomb site in London.”

Jury's eyebrows went up a notch higher, in question.

“The war. You know. The Second World War?”

Jury's smile did not reach his eyes. “I've heard of it, yes.”

Mickey picked up a cigar that had been smoldering in a large blue ashtray to his right. When Mickey exhaled, Jury tracked the smoke. He hadn't had a cigarette in nearly two years, but his need for one hadn't abated. It infuriated him. He smiled. “So go on.”

From another folder, Mickey took another report. “Two skeletons recovered at the site.”

“What are you reading?”

“From the anthropology people at the University of London. They took the skeletons to do a study. They were, naturally, interested. For all they knew, these remains could have been ancient remains.”

“But they weren't?”

Mickey shook his head. “Skeletons of a female, early twenties, a baby not more than a few months, probably two or three.”

“They can fix it that closely? In a baby? But the bones are still forming.”

“Teeth. They can even fix the development of a fetus by teeth. The teeth form underneath the gums. These were the only skeletons recovered. The bomb site was where a pub once stood; it was demolished in the blitz. That was back in 1940. Specifically, December 29, 1940. The site's been bought up by a developer. There's construction going on now.”

Jury sat back and said nothing. He had never been able to reflect upon the war without considerable pain. But his intense feelings about that time made it, ironically and uncomfortably enough, magnetic.

Mickey picked up the cigar from the ashtray and smoked. And thought.

It was one of the things Jury liked about him: he was a meditative man. Like Jury himself, he did not jump to conclusions; yet at the same time, he acted on instinct. Jury knew it was difficult to do both. He recalled sitting in a pub with Mickey when they were working a case nine or ten years ago and not a word passed between them for ten minutes. Mickey reminded Jury of Brian Macalvie; they both drove their crime scene people mad with their extended silences.

The station house was oddly quiet. They might have been visiting a memorial. “Who found the remains?”

“Construction crew. They didn't disturb them.” Mickey turned the photograph of the two skeletons around so Jury could see it. “What's your off-the-wall guess?”

“It looks as if the baby's skeleton was lying close to the adult's—the mother?”

“I'll tell you a little story.” Mickey had opened his desk drawer and taken out a handful of snapshots, old ones in black and white. He took the one off the top and shoved it toward Jury. “This was taken in Dagenham. It was at the beginning of the evacuation, in 1939. Children who were taken by boat to one of the trains bound for the country.” Mickey pushed over two more snapshots. “These were taken in Stepney. Evacuation again. My dad used to talk about the unearthly quiet. All those children and hardly a peep out of them.”

Jury looked at the band of children, at the gray, unsmiling faces of the mothers.

“That was the exodus in forty, during the so-called phoney war, when London prepared for war, but nothing really happened.”

Jury hated talking about the war. And what were all of these pictures in aid of? What was the point?

Mickey was pushing yet another snapshot toward Jury. “Right here, I think, are the woman and the child who ended up in the rubble. Alexandra Tynedale, twenty-one or -two, and a baby of maybe four months. Not, however, her
own
baby. The nanny had taken Alexandra's baby out to get some air.” Mickey spun another photo to Jury's side of the desk. “This is that baby now: Maisie Tynedale.”

Jury looked at the photo. She was attractive, early fifties, he guessed, but from calculating the passing years rather than her looks. She could have been forty, judging by the picture. This was a better picture than the others, taken by a camera superior to the one that had taken the snaps. Jury set it down. He now had five pictures lined up before him. “These two of the evacuation—what about them? What's the story?”

In answer, Mickey pushed over another snapshot. It showed a young woman, back to the camera, face turned to smile down at a baby whose round little chin was propped on the woman's shoulder, arm and hand flat against the woman's back. Jury lined that up in the row, number six, and simply looked the question at Mickey.

“Kitty, the nanny. Katherine Riordin and baby Erin.”

Like a card dealer, Mickey flicked another snapshot over. A shot of demolished buildings, red brick blown to bits. A few people were making their way through the rubble. Jury said, “I expect scenes like this must have duplicated themselves thousands of times all over London. I really hate this, Mickey. Both my parents died in this war.”

“Sorry, Rich. There is something—”

Jury looked at him thoughtfully. “Something wrong, Mickey?” He thought he actually saw tears forming in the other man's eyes. Maybe not. “Listen, I'm in no hurry. But where is this?” He held up the shot of the blasted building, the all-but-leveled street.

“What I was telling you before. That's the pub—was the pub—owned by Francis Croft. Here's one taken while it was still standing. The Blue Last, it was called. Those two in front of it are Alexandra Tynedale Herrick and Francis Croft. Christmas lights around the door, so it must have been a very short time either before or after this picture was taken. Francis Croft was the business partner and best friend of a man named Oliver Tynedale, Alexandra's father. They'd been friends since childhood. Francis is dead, but Oliver is still alive. Amazing, since he must be ninety. They were like brothers, he and Croft.”

“The nanny's—Kitty Riordin's—baby was killed, too; her name was Erin. Kitty was an Irish girl, came over here, as did thousands of poor Irish girls, looking for work
and
her husband. He'd just walked out on her, apparently. Alexandra took her on as a child keeper for Maisie. Kitty's baby, Erin, was the same age as Alexandra's, a few months old.” He sighed and ran his hand across his hair, roughing it up, as if that would improve the thought process.

Jury sat back. “Tynedale. Of Tynedale Brewery? One of the biggest in the country?”

“Both of them actually owned it. Tynedale and Croft.”

“Francis Croft must have been pretty down to earth if he was part of the Tynedale empire and was still landlord of a pub.”

Smiling, Mickey leaned back in his swivel chair, hands folded on his chest. “He was. He was great, a great person. My dad was a close friend of Francis's. When I was growing up, Dad talked about him a lot.” Mickey passed over another snapshot.

Jury found himself looking at an airfield, at what appeared to be a fighter plane, Spitfire or maybe a Hawker Hurricane. The pilot, getting into or out of the cockpit, squinted into the sun. “Ralph Herrick, Alexandra's husband. They'd only been married a little over a year when he died.”

Jury wanted to look away, but looking away would make him feel weak. He thought he expended a lot of energy in pulling back from feelings of weakness. “Active duty? His plane was shot down?”

“No, as a matter of fact, he drowned. He was out of the RAF, doing some sort of work in the Orkney Islands, when it happened. He got the V.C., incidentally. A real hero, that's what my father told me.”

His head bent over the pictures—seven of them now and showing some anomalous progression of events. Jury studied each in turn. He felt somehow his and his mother's house in Fulham should have been one of them. Mickey had asked him a question which he only half heard.

“I'm sorry, Mickey. I was—” Jury shrugged. Then he asked, “But how can you remember all this?”

“Some of it I remember because it was told me so convincingly and in such detail by my dad. Dad talked about Francis Croft a lot. I know Francis's son, Simon, a little; I haven't seen Oliver Tynedale since I was a kid, though. These snapshots I found among other things in a desk of his. I was going through some papers recently and came across the pictures.” He was back to the snapshots again, pulling out of Jury's lineup the ones of Alexandra and the baby Maisie and the one of the nursemaid, Kitty Riordin, and her baby, Erin. The poses were very similar, might have been the same adult and same child. He directed Jury to study the arm and hand of each child bending around the neck or down the back of the mothers.

“Look at the faces. They're both girls, or did I tell you that?”

Jury held the snapshots, one in each hand. He let his eyes travel back and forth. “At this age it's hard to tell the difference, isn't it? Are you going to tell me they shared the father? Something like that?”

“No, no. Look at the hands, the fingers.” Mickey handed him a magnifying glass.

Jury did so, carefully. “The Herrick baby's hand looks deformed. A couple of the fingers look disjointed or broken. The Riordin infant's hand is normal, from what I can see.”

“You see correctly. Here's another picture, taken
after
the bombing.” He shoved it across. “Kitty Riordin holding the baby Maisie.”

“The hand's bandaged. Why?”

Mickey sat back in his swivel chair, hands locked behind his head, rocking slightly.

Enjoying this,
thought Jury, with a smile.
About to administer the coup de grâce.
Mickey loved mysteries.

“According to Kitty, they'd had an accident that night. Part of a bombed wall had given way, some of the bricks hit them. Kitty wasn't hurt, but the baby Maisie's hand was. Broken in a couple of places. So now both Maisie
and
Erin had disfigured hands. That's interesting. My point being: Maisie Tynedale isn't Maisie Tynedale. She's Erin Riordin. Before you ask why the nanny would try to pass off her own daughter as the Tynedale baby, Maisie is heiress to the Tynedale millions. She goes by Tynedale, incidentally, not Herrick. Again, before you ask why, if I was heir to millions, I'd go by Mickey Mouse, if I thought it would help.”

Jury sat back, shocked that this was the end of the story, or at least Mickey's end. “But Mickey, it
could
have happened. And even if the baby's mother was killed, surely others could have identified the baby. I mean, they might look much the same to us, but to a mother—but the mother is dead; to the grandfather, then, to Oliver Tynedale?”

Mickey shook his head. “Imagine you're the granddad. Do you really
want
to dispute the identity? Or do you want to believe, yes, this is your granddaughter? To say nothing of the fact that Kitty Riordin would be denying her own baby is still alive?”

“But others—”

Mickey shrugged. “What others? No one on Kitty Riordin's side, there wasn't anyone. Francis Croft? He's dead. Brother and sisters? All little kids. There was one Croft girl who was Alexandra's age, Emily Croft. I expect she
could
have recognized that the baby wasn't Maisie, but as she didn't say anything about it, I assume she didn't know either.” He shrugged again.