The Language of the Dead (21 page)

“I'm sure of it.”

“Is he our killer, then?”

Lamb looked more closely at the drawing. “I don't know. I think he might be trying to communicate something with these drawings.”

“To who?”

“At first guess, I'd say he was trying to communicate something to the girl and maybe to Blackwell.”

“Why doesn't he just bloody say it, then? Why the bloody spiders and the rest of it?”

“I don't know that he
can
say it, at least not in the way you and I would expect.” He nodded at the drawing. “The drawing's obviously his, so she must have known him.”

“But why hide the drawing—and the photos?”

“Why hide anything?” Lamb asked. “To keep someone else from finding it.”

As Lamb and Wallace examined the purse, Winston-Sheed had gone to his car. Now Lamb caught a glimpse of the doctor walking back toward Emily Fordham's body carrying a heavy Great War–era pistol, a .45-caliber Webley Mark VI. Lamb had worn a similar pistol on his belt at the Somme.

The sight so surprised Lamb that he said nothing at first. He watched the doctor move silently toward the body, then stop when he reached it. Winston-Sheed raised the pistol and, gripping it with both hands, aimed it at the seagulls wheeling in the sky. Lamb looked at the birds and in that instant heard the pistol fire and saw one of the gulls explode in the air. Its body plummeted to the ground at Emily Fordham's feet. The other birds seem to rise as one, higher into the sky.

“Brilliant shot!” Larkin said.

Lamb ran to Winston-Sheed, who stood still, staring at the sky, the pistol at his side. “What in bloody hell are you doing?” Lamb yelled.

Winston-Sheed raised the pistol and squeezed off another shot that missed the flock.

“Stop it, damn you!” Lamb yelled. “You're fouling the scene!”

The doctor ignored Lamb and fired a third shot; a second bird exploded and fell to the ground about three feet from them.

Winston-Sheed's gaze remained fixed on the birds. “I think we've endured enough trouble from the air these last few days, don't you?” he said without looking at Lamb.

Lamb yelled at Larkin. “Get those bloody damned birds out of my crime scene immediately!”

He turned to Winston-Sheed. “What in hell is wrong with you? This is a murder scene, not a damned shooting party.”

Winston-Sheed turned to Lamb and shrugged. His casualness infuriated Lamb.

Lamb spoke sharply to Larkin. “Get in there and mark the places where the birds fell and clean up the mess. I don't want to find out that my evidence comes from a bloody goddamned bird!”

“Yes, sir,” Larkin said. He seemed shaken, as if only then realizing what had happened.

“Well, I think we're finished here, then,” Harding said. He stood rigid, his hands behind his back. He seemed unperturbed by what Winston-Sheen had just done. Harding's lack of emotion struck Lamb as unusual, given the way in which he'd only just reproved Wallace.

“You've got a hell of a bloody mess here, Tom, no doubt about it,” Harding said. “But I'm counting on you to get results quickly. Otherwise we could end up with a kind of general panic. It's bad enough that the damned Germans are due any day now and our men are being shot out of the sky and slaughtered before they can even get airborne. It's too much strain on the average person. The sooner we wrap this up, the better. I understand your frustration and your desire for protocol, but I frankly don't see how a couple of bloody seagulls matter in the larger picture. We'll get this cleaned up and move on.”

Harding addressed the other men present.

“I don't need to tell you, of course, that we simply can't speak of this. I'll have the arse of any man I discover has wagged his tongue. Let's do our duties and solve this case before the whole bloody mess ends up becoming another casualty of the war.”

Harding turned and walked to his car. As Lamb watched him leave, he wondered if they'd all gone mad.

LAMB STRODE TO HIS WOLSELEY, GATHERED UP EMILY FORDHAM'S
purse and its contents from the bonnet, got into the passenger seat, and slammed the door. He was too angry to drive. Wallace, understanding, eased in behind the wheel.

Lamb fumbled in the pocket of his coat for his fags and lit one. “Bloody goddamned fools,” he muttered.

Wallace said nothing. He approved of Winston-Sheed having shot the birds. It was past time that someone had acted. They all had spent far too much time merely
waiting
. He started the car. “What's next?” he asked.

“We'll talk to the girl's mother,” Lamb said. His task would be to break the news to the woman of her daughter's death, and then endeavor to calm her enough to extract some usable information from her. He hated such interviews because he knew them to be, in their
way, cruel. But there was no avoiding them. He had to speak to the mother as soon as possible in the likely case she possessed some crucial evidence or clue. For that reason, the mother's moment of private grieving would have to wait and he would have to maneuver around that grief, keep it at bay long enough to get what he sought.

Wallace pushed the starter button. Lamb's Wolseley sputtered but refused to start.

Lamb turned to Wallace. “I'm going to ask this bluntly, because I haven't got the time to muck about: Have you been drinking?”

The question stunned Wallace; he'd thought he'd managed to hide his drinking from Lamb. That morning had been particularly good in that he'd even managed to arrive to work early, despite the mess with Delilah. He recovered quickly enough to say, “What do you mean, sir?”

“Damn you, David.” Lamb's eyes were fierce. “I'm in no bloody mood for your games. I intend to pull your arse out of this latest mess you've made, but I won't lift a bloody goddamned finger on your behalf if you lie to me. Is that clear?”

Wallace blinked. “Yes.”

“So answer my bloody goddamned question.”

“No, sir,” Wallace said without looking at Lamb. “Only the occasional pint in the pub. Same as anyone else.”

“Nothing at all, then?” Lamb said, the sarcasm evident in his voice. “Don't think I haven't noticed—the lateness and the occasional foul-ups and now
this
.”

“It's a woman,” Wallace said. He thought it a good excuse. It explained everything and was partly true.

“Well, you better bloody well get John Thomas under control, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't you see what you're doing? If you lose your warrant card, you're going straight into the thick of it. And don't think you'll get by on your bloody charm. I spent a bit of time in the Army in the last war. They'll chew you up and spit you out. No one there gives
a damn about your well-cut suits and your dazzling smile. Being at the front is like swallowing a bucket of shit every day, over and over again. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Lamb wondered if he did.

“Then pull yourself together and stop being a bloody damned fool. I can't help you otherwise. And if I find out you've lied to me, I'll have your arse.”

Wallace looked straight ahead. “Yes, sir,” he said.

He pushed the button again and, to his relief, the car started.

The road narrowed as they entered Lipscombe.

A moment later, they were through the square and on the eastern side of the village, where they came to a row of small stone houses with tiny front lawns and gardens. The third of these was the one in which Emily Fordham had lived with her mother. Wallace stopped the car.

“Be prepared if she collapses,” Lamb told Wallace as they exited the car. “Get her off her feet and into a chair as quickly as possible.”

They walked along a flagstone path flanked by pink roses to a green door with a small brass knocker. The morning sun shone on them. Wallace lifted the knocker and rapped on the door. Lamb removed his hat.

A few seconds later, a small woman, her shoulders wrapped in a red cotton shawl, opened the door. Lamb recognized the woman from the photo he'd found in Emily's wallet. He guessed that she could not be more than forty-five, though the shawl and the way her shoulders slumped beneath it made her seem older. She appeared ready to speak; her mouth began to form a question. But she stopped and blinked, as if trying to bring the two strangers standing at her door into better focus.

“Good morning, Mrs. Fordham,” Lamb said. “I am Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb of the Hampshire Constabulary, and this is Detective Sergeant David Wallace. May we come in?”

Elizabeth Fordham blinked again but did not answer. She did not seem to understand.

Lamb moved slightly closer to the door. There was nothing for it but to plunge ahead. “It's about your daughter, Emily,” he said.

Mrs. Fordham did not move. “Emily?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lamb said. “I'm afraid we've some bad news.” He put his hand gently on her right elbow and began guiding her into the house.

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked. “What has happened to Emily?”

“Why don't we sit down,” Lamb said and led her toward the sitting room.

“Why is the news bad?” she asked. Lamb could feel her body beginning to stir, almost as if she had been asleep and only now was waking. “What do you mean?”

Lamb maneuvered her onto a yellow sofa that backed against a window that faced the street. Once Elizabeth was seated, her countenance rapidly changed. She glared at Lamb and said “I demand to know what happened to my daughter.” Lamb understood this sudden metamorphosis as the initial stirrings of grief. His and Wallace's sudden arrival at her door, her daughter's name on their lips, their solicitousness, had communicated to Elizabeth's deepest instincts all she needed to know. She now must struggle with the nearly impossible job of accepting a hideous, unalterable truth.

“I'm sorry to tell you that your daughter is dead,” Lamb said. “She was found murdered this morning about two miles from the village. I'm very sorry. Very, very sorry.”

“Murdered?” Elizabeth asked. Her eyes widened, as if she were on the verge of panic. She seemed to be coming to consciousness in stages, Lamb thought. “That can't be!”

“I'm afraid it is,” Lamb said gently. He girded for an eruption.

Elizabeth began to move in the chair as if she'd suddenly grown very uncomfortable. Lamb thought she was going to stand. He prepared himself to grab and restrain her. But she looked at the floor. The fierceness she had shown only seconds earlier suddenly seemed to drain from her. “How?” she asked quietly.

“We believe that she was assaulted as she was riding home last night on her bicycle. She was struck on the head. Her body was found near the road, about three quarters of a mile from the village.”

Elizabeth wrapped her arms and the shawl about herself tightly. Her behavior surprised Lamb. She seemed to have moved from defiance to despair in the blink of an eye. Although he had seen the transition occur in the opposite manner—first the slumping, then the rage—he had never seen it occur so quickly. He sat next to her.

“Perhaps Sergeant Wallace can make us some tea,” he said.

She looked at Lamb. “Tea?”

“Yes. Perhaps some tea would help.”

He felt ridiculous. Nothing would help. The life of the woman sitting before him suddenly and irrevocably had entered a kind of final phase and he could do nothing to stop this. Death had joined them in the little sitting room. For the moment, he could only sit next to her on her yellow couch and suggest she take some tea. She had not collapsed, as he had suspected she might, but retreated into a stupor. His job now was to entice her from that refuge long enough to extract some information from her that he might use to track down her daughter's killer. Wallace went into the kitchen to brew a pot of tea. Lamb moved in, hoping to catch Elizabeth before she locked herself away completely.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your daughter?” he asked.