The Old Wine Shades (12 page)

‘No, she wanted you to come to her.’

Talk about Divine Intervention.

Wiggins added, ‘It’s that shooting in front of Ruiyi? Danny Wu’s place? In Soho?’

Jury shrugged into his jacket, wondering how many more questions Wiggins would ask to establish the geography. ‘In London?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. See you.’

Dr. Phyllis Nancy, in her green lab coat apron and pale-green plastic cap (looking as if she’d emerged from a beautifying sauna), looked up from the cadaver on the stainless-steel table and smiled.

‘Phyllis.’ Jury smiled back.

‘This was blunt trauma.’ She was speaking of the man who’d been downed by a gun outside of Danny Wu’s restaurant. The one Racer claimed had been murdered by Danny. ‘I mean the blow that killed him, not the bullet, oddly enough. There’s a heart bruise, which is like a heart attack. The bullet went straight through, nicked a few organs–trachea, esophagus–came right out the back. Do you think’–she pulled her apron over her head and the cap off it–’I could have another look at the crime scene?’

‘Oh, indeed you can. The restaurant is just opening around now for lunch. Or did you bring your Betty Boop lunch box?’

‘It’s not Betty Boop. It’s dinosaurs. Just hold on and I’ll be back in two minutes.’

She was, too. Phyllis was spot on time for an autopsy or for lunch. She was famous for her promptness.

Soho was as usual crowded enough to stop the Chunnel train.

Phyllis, with her ginger hair, her brilliant smile and her ID, had the customers in line for Ruiyi parting like the Red Sea. Having cleared this pathway of air, she brought out a heavy-duty tape and measured that path from curb to inside the door, where the line of customers started. She wrote down the measurement, put pen, notebook and tape in her bag, smiled at them all and said, ‘Thanks.’

Jury said, ‘Phyllis, what were you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ she murmured, ‘but now we’re at the head of the line-’

Seated in a room filling up fast, their table was immediately visited by Danny Wu, the owner. ‘I don’t know why people think a shooting’s bad for business. The lines have been even longer than usual, and the MPD eating here also, well, that’s almost as good as Bruce Springsteen. Almost.’

‘Thanks.’

Danny Wu was, as always, impeccably dressed by either Hugo Boss or Armani. The restaurant hummed both upstairs and down.

Little bowls of food appeared out of nowhere. From behind Danny’s back–at least that’s what it looked like–a clay teapot was plopped down, and, when Danny moved, little teacups were placed beside them by the hands that belonged to one of the owner’s many cousins. They ordered sweet-and-sour shrimp and fish and several side dishes, including rice.

‘And is Sergeant Wiggins keeping all right?’ Danny asked.

‘Brilliantly. Don’t tell him we were here without him.’ Wiggins adored this place. He was introduced to any number of health-promoting roots and shoots.

‘How dapper,’ said Phyllis as Danny moved on. ‘He’s very attractive, isn’t he?’

‘He is. He’s also very suspect.’

Phyllis poured the tea. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Danny has his fingers in a lot of pies.’

‘You don’t think he was the shooter, do you?’

‘No, of course not. Had he been, the shot would not have been lying on his doorstep. Danny is not messy. No, the victim is probably some member of one of the God knows how many Asian gangs that operate here.’

Phyllis sighed. ‘There you go, talking shop again.’ The little black-haired waitress set down their various dishes, shrimp and fragrant rice.

‘It’s actually not my shop at the moment.’

‘Oh, lord. Are they still messing about with that? Maybe the next time a five-year-old child is shot in the back, we should drag the commissioner along. Give him a bloody taste of it.’ She speared a piece of sweet-and-sour shrimp as if she meant it. ‘Your victim here, though, he wasn’t shot outside. My guess is he was in this room here and staggered back and fell onto the pavement.’ Jury looked a question.

‘Well, that measuring bit did tell me something.’ He feigned sadness, his tone desolate. ‘So it’s not me, after all. You weren’t just making up a reason to come to lunch with me.’

‘Don’t be such a baby.’ She studied the intricate bone structure of her unfileted fish. ‘How do I do this?’

‘My God! You’re our chief pathologist and autopsyest! And–’

‘Autopsyest?

‘–you can’t sort that fish’s spinal column?’

She removed the bones as cleanly as if she were unzipping a zipper.

Danny Wu was slipping about the room like a well-tailored wraith. He had that ability to turn up at your elbow and you not aware of him.

Jury told Phyllis that Danny’s mother must have been a truly courageous woman; she had risked her life on many occasions to get him out of Beijing. Then Danny had risked his own to get out of Shenzhen. Maybe in the course of having to use your wits–or your power of persuasion–to break free of a place, a person picks up some bad habits. Like killing people.

‘Or bad company.’

Jury nodded.

‘Has he ever been indicted?’

‘No. He hasn’t got form; he’s much to adroit and clever for the likes of me.’

‘I seriously doubt that.’

This had brought Harry Johnson to mind. ‘Let me tell you a story.’

It lasted through the crispy fish, their glazed banana dessert, which Phyllis claimed was a miracle of tastes and textures, and was now working on her second order of it, and through the third pot of tea and a long line of Ruiyi fans who were coveting their table, willing Jury and Phyllis to leave. Jury couldn’t have cared less.

Phyllis didn’t take her eyes off him in all the time it took to tell the story of the Gauhs. She had shaken her head a few times, obviously in near disbelief.

‘So there will be another, if not the final, installment tomorrow night. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Phyllis. ‘Is this Harry Johnson reliable?’

‘Seems to be. Of course I thought at first it was just a huge put on, one of those man-walks-into-a-pub stories. I mean, really, ‘The dog came back.’’

She smiled. ‘He’s pretty good.’

‘Harry? Or Mungo?’

‘Harry. You haven’t heard yet from Mungo. It sounds as if he’s just observing.’

Jury laughed. ‘I must say after getting through three of those Old Wine Shades and dinner evenings, I think he’s telling the truth, the truth as he knows it, of course.’

‘What about the husband, Hugh? Couldn’t you speak to him?’

‘He’s in a place called the Stoddard Clinic.’

‘I know that facility. It’s got an excellent reputation. The staff there is very good. Is this Hugh Gault psychotic? Or is he there more for mental exhaustion?’

‘The latter, I think; I think Harry said he’d gone there of his own free will.’

‘So you could at least see him. I mean, just to see–’

‘If he exists?’

She nodded.

Jury looked at his empty teacup. ‘I expect I could. Somehow, though–’

‘You’d rather take the tale on its own merits. Or perhaps you’d rather not know.’ She smiled. ‘Well, it’s a rather good story, certainly.’

‘You mean, I’d rather not spoil it?’

She nodded. ‘Maybe.’

Jury was reminded of the boy on the train from Newcastle. ‘I had a bet with him that this was the train going to Swansea. He claimed London. Of course it was the London train. And the odd thing was, there were people he could have asked who would have proven him right. He avoided all of them: the porter with the tea trolly, the boy’s own mother, the conductor who came through announcing the stops. He deliberately turned away from them.’

‘Did you ever read that Hawthorne story called ‘My Kinsman, Major Molinenx’? The boy comes to town looking for Major Molineux. It’s never made clear why he’s looking for him. He avoids asking the obvious people, such as the police. Instead he asks a prostitute, a drunk, a beggar. He wants to find Major Molineux disgraced, and when he does come upon a man tarred and feathered and being run out of town, he knows it’s Molineux. The story’s brilliant. Any psychiatrist would drool over it.’

Jury propped his head on his fist and regarded her. ‘You’re thinking I’m that boy?’

She bit into the hard coating of the candied banana. It sounded like thin ice cracking. She said, ‘If you’re lucky.’

That threw him and he laughed. ‘Lucky? Wait a minute: you think it’s good fortune to be deceived by a stranger’s story?’

‘When did you decide this Harry Johnson was deceiving you? I’m not so sure, from what you’ve said. You met him what, four or five nights ago? Had dinner with him three times, but you’ve never checked up.’

Jury felt defensive, as if he’d come under some revealing light.

‘Well, if you believe that–’

‘I didn’t say I believed it. But Harry, who’s to say what he believes? He’s the one telling the story.’

‘It’s true I haven’t checked up on the facts, but then it’s really none of my business, is it?’

She held her teacup in both hands. ‘Is that the reason?’

‘I just meant–’ Jury didn’t know what he meant. He shrugged. ‘Sergeant Wiggins thinks Johnson knew who I was that first night. Wiggins thinks he could have followed me to the pub and is pulling me in for some purpose I don’t have a clue about.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t agree with Wiggins, though. Sounds too outlandish.’ Then Jury remembered Harry had asked him–if not asked, suggested–he visit Winterhaus. He told Phyllis this.

‘Really? And are you going to?’

Jury thought about this. ‘I think perhaps I will. Tomorrow.’ She looked at him for a long moment. She had the greenest eyes he’d ever seen, except for Melrose Plant’s. ‘Take someone with you.’

She bit into the glazed banana. Thin ice cracking.

16

Melrose Plant sat in his favorite club chair in the Members’ Room with coffee, the
Times
and a book. As he waited for Richard Jury he drank his coffee and read his book, looking up now and again to see yet another chin drop on another chest while another snore rippled the edge of another newspaper. It was eleven A.M. but it might as well have been the Dawn of the Dead.

He frankly thought this little outing into Surrey was a wild goose chase, but he didn’t mind at all going along with Jury. Soon, somnolence would overtake the whole of Roring’s, not just the members, who were always dozing off, but also the porters, and even the occasional winged thing, fly or moth, suspend itself in a honeycomb of sunlight coming through one of the high windows. The very air was like a sleeping draught but Melrose resisted the temptation to take a nap—surely he had not reached that stage in life where napping was a commonplace.

It didn’t help that he was reading
The Gourmandise Way,
in the hope of regaining Polly Praed’s trust, although he wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted it. After the eighth victim had been dispatched by poison in the foie gras, Melrose shoved the book between cushion and chair arm. He worked it out that the next murder would have something to do with mushrooms; mushrooms were always popular in crime fiction as a method of poisoning. Death’s head mushroom or something like that. On the other hand, anyone in this book who had been around for eight murders and was stupid enough to eat his mushrooms on toast deserved what he got.

Melrose yawned. Well, he would just close his eyes for a moment . . .

 
‘Taking a nap?’

Melrose jerked awake, his wild eyes scanning the room for the source of this question, even though the source stood directly in his line of vision. ‘What? What?’ he bleated.

‘You suit the place to a
T’
said Jury, looking pointedly at the gentlemen sitting around in pleasant states of doze, slipped down in their chairs, heads on shoulders.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I just had a very bad night. Couldn’t sleep a wink.’ Except for the seven or eight hours of winks.

‘I’ll bet. The coffee, the
Times,
the fire, the chair . . .’

‘You sound like Polly’s Detective Plod. He lists things endlessly.’

‘Hell, at your age. I’d be napping every chance I got. May I have some coffee, too?’

Melrose held up his cup as a signal to the young porter walking through.

Jury sat down in the wing chair usually occupied by Colonel Neame. ‘It’s rather nice, the freedom.’ He stretched out his long legs. The porter turned up not only with a cup but also with fresh coffee. Jury thanked him.

‘You wouldn’t last a week if you were free of that job.’

‘Ah, but I
have
lasted a week. Yes, that’s just about right.’ Jury ticked off the days on his fingers.

‘Look what you do with your so-called freedom. Report to your office and go out and find something to solve.’

‘It found me. So, are you ready? Or do you want to go up and lie down and get your strength back?’

‘Oh, ha ha. Let’s go.’