This Body of Death (34 page)

“Paolo,” Lynley noted, “isn’t going to be popular with his mates.”

“Not to mention what this will do to his ‘engagement’ to Dominique. Did she alibi him, by the way?”

“She didn’t. Except to say she reckoned he was at Covent Garden. If it’s afternoon you’re talking about, that’s where he usually is, she said, and someone there will have seen him. She also knew why I was asking. And contrary to what di Fazio said, she did know Jemima, at least by sight. She called her ‘Paolo’s ex.’”

“No jealousy? No concern?”

“Not that I could see. She seemed to know—or at least to believe—that it was finished between them. Between Jemima and Paolo, I mean.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence, and they were in the underground car park at New Scotland Yard when Isabelle Ardery spoke again, gathering up her purchases from the railway arches. She said, “What d’you make of Paolo’s declaration that Frazer Chaplin was involved with Jemima?”

“Anything’s possible at this point.”

“Yes. But it also supports what Sergeant Havers said about the bloke.” She slammed the door and locked it, adding, “And that, frankly, comes as something of a relief. I have my concerns about Barbara Havers and her reaction to men.”

“Do you?” Lynley walked at her side. He was unused to a woman so tall. Barbara Havers didn’t reach to his collarbone and while Helen had been of above-average height, she had not been nearly as tall as Isabelle Ardery. He and the acting superintendent were shoulder to shoulder. He said, “Barbara has very good instincts about people. You can generally rely on her input.”

“Ah. What about you, then?”

“My input is, I hope—”

“I meant your instincts, Thomas. How are they?” She looked at him. It was an even gaze.

He wasn’t sure what to make of her question. Nor was he sure how he felt about it. “When the wind is southerly, I generally know my hawks and handsaws,” he settled on saying.

Back in the incident room, bits of information were filtering in: Jayson Druther had indeed been present in the cigar shop when Jemima Hastings was killed in Stoke Newington, and he’d provided the names of three customers to confirm this. He’d gone on to alibi his father, if there was interest in that. “Betting lounge,” John Stewart reported, “in the Edgware Road.” Abbott Langer had finished up his afternoon lessons at the ice rink, walked dogs in Hyde Park, and then returned to the ice rink for his evening clients.
But
the dog-walking bit gave him a good-size window to get up to Stoke Newington because there was no dog owner to swear the family canine had been walked. Obviously, a dog walker was employed when no one was at home.

As to background information, progess had been made there as well. Although Yolanda the Psychic had been warned off stalking Jemima Hastings, Jemima Hastings hadn’t been the one to report her. That reporting had been done by Bella McHaggis

“McHaggis’s husband died at home, but there’s nothing suspicious associated with it,” Philip Hale reported. “His heart gave out while he was on the toilet. Yolanda’s daughter is dead. Starved herself slimming. Same age as Jemima.”

“Interesting,” Ardery said. “Anything else?”

Frazer Chaplin, born in Dublin, one of seven children, no record and no complaints. Shows up on time to the job, he reported.

“He has two jobs,” Isabelle told him.

Shows up on time to both of his jobs. He seems a bit too interested in money, but then, who isn’t? There’s something of a joke at Duke’s Hotel: him looking for a rich American-Brazilian-Canadian-Russian-Japanese-Chinese-
anything
to support him. Male or female. He doesn’t care. He’s a bloke with plans, according to the hotel manager, but no one faults him and he’s well liked. “One of those ‘That’s our lad Frazer’ types,” Hale said.

“Anything on Paolo di Fazio?” Isabelle asked.

It turned out that Paolo had an interesting background: born in Palermo, from which his family fled the Mafia. His sister had been married to a minor Mafioso there only to be beaten to death by him. The husband himself had been found hanged in his cell while awaiting trial, and no one thought it was a suicide.

As to the rest? Isabelle Ardery asked.

There was very little. Jayson Druther had an ASBO, apparently having to do with a relationship that went sour. But this was with a man, not a woman, for whatever good that piece of news could do them. Abbott Langer, on the other hand, was something of a puzzle. It was true that he was an Olympic ice skater turned coach and dog walker. It was completely bogus that he had ever been married, with children. He was fairly close to Yolanda the Psychic, apparently, but this didn’t seem to be a sinister connection, as it was looking more and more as if Yolanda the Psychic did as much trolling for surrogate children—adult or otherwise—as she did reading palms or getting in touch with the spirit world.

“We’ll want more on this marriage business,” Ardery noted. “He’s a real person of interest, then.”

Lynley slipped out of the meeting as the superintendent was giving further instructions having to do with confirming alibis and with the time of death, which was set between two o’clock and five o’clock. This should make it easy, she was saying. Most of these people have jobs. Someone saw something not quite right somewhere. Let’s find out who and what it is.

Lynley crossed over to Tower Block, and he made his way to the assistant commissioner’s office. Hillier’s secretary—in an uncharacteristic move—rose from her chair and came to greet him, her hand extended. Usually the soul of discretion when it came to things Hillier, Judi MacIntosh murmured, “Brilliant to see you, Inspector,” and added, “Don’t be fooled. He’s quite pleased about this.”

This
was apparently Lynley’s return and
he
, naturally, was Sir David Hillier. The assistant commissioner, however, did not want to talk about Lynley’s return other than to say, “You’re looking fit. Good,” when Lynley entered his office. Then he got down to business. The business was, as Lynley suspected it might be, the permanent assignment of someone to the detective superintendent’s position, which was nearly nine months vacant.

Hillier broached the topic in his usual fashion, at an oblique angle. He said, “How’re you finding the job?” which, of course, Lynley might have taken any way he wished and which, of course, Hillier would use to steer the conversation any way he desired.

“Different and the same at once,” Lynley replied. “Everything’s a bit shaded with odd colours, sir.”

“She’s got a good mind, I daresay. She wouldn’t have climbed as fast as she’s climbed without that, would she.”

“Actually…” Lynley had been talking about returning to work with the world as he’d known it utterly transformed in an instant, on the street, at the hands of a child with a gun. He thought about making this point, but instead he said, “She’s clever and quick,” which seemed to him a good response, making a reply but saying little enough.

“How are the team responding to her?”

“They’re professionals.”

“John Stewart?”

“No matter who takes the job, there’ll be a period of adjustment, won’t there? John has his quirks, but he’s a good man.”

“I’m being pressed to name a permanent replacement for Malcolm Webberly,” Hillier said. “I tend to think Ardery’s a very good choice.”

Lynley nodded, but that was the extent of his response. He had an uneasy feeling where this was heading.

“Naming her will bring a lot of press.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Lynley said. “I’d say the opposite, in fact. Promoting a female officer, indeed an officer from outside the Met …I can’t see how that could be interpreted as anything other than a positive move, fairly guaranteed to give the Met good press.” Which, he didn’t add, they rather badly needed. In recent years they’d faced charges of everything from institution-alised racism to gross incompetence and all points in between. A story in which there were no skeletons lurking in anyone’s closet would be a welcome one, no doubt about it.

“If it
is
a positive move,” Hillier noted. “Which brings me to the point.”

“Ah.”

Hillier shot him a look at that
ah
. He apparently decided to let it go. He said, “She’s good on paper, and she’s good from every verbal report about her. But you and I know there’s more than verbiage involved in being able to do this job well.”

“Yes. But weaknesses always come out eventually,” Lynley said. “Sooner or later.”

“They do. But the point is, I’m being asked to make this sooner, if you understand what I mean. And if I’m going to make it sooner, then I’m also going to make it right.”

“Understandable,” Lynley acknowledged.

“It seems she’s asked you to work with her.”

Lynley didn’t inquire as to how Hillier knew this. Hillier generally knew everything that was going on. He hadn’t got to his present position without developing an impressive system of snouts. “I’m not sure I’d call it ‘working with her,’” he said carefully. “She’s asked me to come on board and show her the ropes, to allow her to move more quickly into the job. She has her work cut out: not only new to London but new to the Met and having a murder case landing in her lap. If I can help her make a quick transition, I’m happy to.”

“So you’re getting to know her. Better than the rest, I daresay. That brings me to the point. I can’t put this delicately, so I’m not going to try: If you come across anything that gives you pause about her, I want to know what it is. And I do mean anything.”

“Actually, sir, I don’t think I’m the one to—”

“You’re exactly the one. You’ve been in the job, you don’t want the job, you’re working with her, and you’ve a very good eye for people. You and I have disagreed over the years—”

Which was putting it mildly, Lynley thought.

“—but I’d never deny that you’ve rarely been wrong about someone. You’ve a vested interest—we
all
have a vested interest—in this job going to someone good, to the best person out there, and you’re going to know if she’s that officer in very short order. What I’m asking you to do is to tell me. And, frankly, I’m going to need details because the last thing we need is a charge of sexism if she doesn’t get the job.”

“What is it exactly that you want me to do, sir?” If he was going to be asked to spy upon Isabelle Ardery, then the assistant commissioner, Lynley decided, was going to have to come out and say it. “Written reports? A regular briefing? Meetings like this?”

“I think you know.”

“As it happens, I—” His mobile rang. He looked at it.

“Let it go,” Hillier said.

“It’s Ardery,” Lynley replied. Still, he waited for the assistant commissioner’s sharp nod, telling him to take it.

“We’ve got an ID on the second e-fit,” Ardery told him. “He’s a violinist, Thomas. His brother identified him.”

B
ARBARA
H
AVERS DID THE TELEPHONE WORK AND
W
INSTON
Nkata did the route planning. Without much difficulty, she was able to track down Jonas Bligh and Keating Crawford, the two instructors at Winchester Technical College II—no one was shedding any light on whether there was actually a Winchester Technical College I—and both of these individuals agreed to speak to the Scotland Yard detectives. Both of them also asked what the coming visit from Scotland Yard was about. When she said it was about a bloke called Gordon Jossie for whom a letter of reference had been written, the response of “Who?” was identical.

Barbara repeated Jossie’s name. This would have been eleven years ago, she told them.

Again they were virtual echoes in reply. Eleven years? One could hardly be expected to remember a student from such a long time ago, Sergeant. But each went on to assure her he would be waiting for the detectives to show up.

Meanwhile, Nkata was studying the map to get them up to Winchester, into Winchester, and in the general environs of the college. He was growing less and less happy about being in Hampshire, and Barbara couldn’t blame him. He was the only black person she herself had seen since they’d entered the New Forest, and from the reaction of everyone they’d come into contact with at the hotel in Sway, he appeared to be the first black man they’d ever encountered other than on the telly.

She’d said to him sotto voce at dinner on the previous evening, “First, it’s that people think we’re a couple, Winnie,” to excuse the obvious curiosity of their server.

He said, “Yeah?” and she could sense him bristling. “So wha’ if we are? Something wrong with mixed couples? Something
wrong
with that?”

“’Course not,” Barbara said at once. “Bloody hell, Winnie. I should be so lucky. And
that’s
why they’re staring. Him and
her
? they’re thinking. How’d she score
that
bloke?
Def
initely not on her looks, by God. Have a look at the two of us—you and me—having dinner in a hotel. The candlelight, the flowers on the table, the music playing—”

“It’s a CD, Barb.”

“Bear with me, okay? People jump to conclusions based on what they see. You can believe me. I get it all the time when I’m with DI Lynley.”

He seemed to think about this. The hotel dining room
was
moderately special, even if the music did indeed come from a CD playing old Neil Diamond hits and the flowers on the table were plastic. It remained the only establishment in Sway where one could have anything remotely resembling a romantic evening. Still, he said, “Second?” to which she said, “Huh?”

“You said
first
. What’s second?”

She said, “Oh. Second, it’s just that you’re tall and you’ve got that scar on your face. Makes you look a type. And then there’s the way you dress contrasted with the way I dress. They also might be thinking you’re ‘someone’ and I’m your secretary or assistant or whatever. Probably a footballer. That would be you, not me. Or maybe a film star. I reckon they’re trying to decide where they saw you last:
Big Brother
, some game show, maybe on
Morse
when you were still in nappies.”

He gazed at her, looking mildly amused. He said, “You do this with Inspector Lynley, Barb?”

“Do what?”

“Worry so much. ’Bout him, I mean. Like you’re doing with me.”

She could feel herself colouring. “Was I? I mean, am I? Sorry. Just that—”

“Nice of you,” he told her. “But I been stared at worse’n here, believe me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

“
And
,” he added, “you don’t dress half bad, Barb.”

To which she guffawed. “Right. And Jesus didn’t die on the cross. But it’s no matter. Superintendent Ardery is seeing about that. Soon, believe me, I’ll be the Met’s answer to …” She pulled at her lip. “See, that’s the problem. I don’t even know the latest fashion icon. That’s how far out of the loop I am. Well, whatever. It can’t be helped. But life was easier when emulating the dress sense of the Queen was good enough, let me tell you.” Not that she herself had ever emulated the Queen’s dress sense, Barbara thought. Although she
did
wonder if sensible shoes, gloves, and a handbag looped over her arm would satisfy Superintendent Ardery.

Winchester being a city and not a village, Winston Nkata was not marked for special observation there. Nor was he much noted on the campus of Winchester Technical College II, which they found easily as a result of his advanced planning. Jonas Bligh and Keating Crawford proved to be more challenging, however. Expecting to find them in a department somehow related to thatching, Barbara had neglected to ask their whereabouts. It turned out that Bligh was involved with computers in some arcane fashion while Crawford dealt with telecommunications.

Bligh was “having his surgery hours,” they were told, and they found his office tucked beneath a stairway up and down which, during their initial conversation with him, herds of students pounded incessantly. Barbara couldn’t imagine anyone actually accomplishing anything in this environment, but when they introduced themselves to Bligh, the wax earplugs he removed from his ears explained how he managed to cope with the place. He suggested they get out of there, go for a coffee, have a walk, whatever. Barbara countersuggested that they track down Crawford, a plan that she hoped would save them some time.

That was managed by way of mobile phone, and they met the telecommunications instructor in the car park where a caravan selling ice cream and juice was attracting a crowd. Crawford was one of them.
Heavy
was a sympathetic way to describe him. He certainly didn’t need the Cornetto he was attacking. He finished it and immediately purchased another, calling over his shoulder, “You lot want one?” to the detectives and to his colleague.

Fully capable of seeing her future when her feet were held to the flames, Barbara demurred. Winston did likewise. So did Bligh, who muttered, “Dead before he’s fifty, just you wait,” although he said pleasantly, “Don’t blame you,” to Crawford in reference to the second Cornetto. “Damned hot summer, eh?”

They went through the usual prefatory conversational motions that were peculiar to the English: a brief discussion of the weather. They strolled to a patch of browning lawn that was shaded by a sturdy sycamore. There were no benches or chairs here, but it was a relief to get out of the sun.

Barbara handed each of the men the letter of reference he’d written for Gordon Jossie. Bligh put on a pair of spectacles; Crawford dropped a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the sheet. He wiped it off on his trouser leg, said, “Sorry, occupational hazard,” and began to read. In a moment, he frowned and said, “What the hell … ?” and Bligh simultaneously shook his head. They spoke nearly in unison.

“This is bogus,” Bligh said as Crawford declared, “I didn’t write this.”

Barbara and Winston exchanged a glance. “Are you sure?” she asked the instructors. “Could you have forgotten? I mean, you must be asked to write a lot of letters at the end of students’ course work, right?”

“Naturally,” Bligh agreed. His voice was dry. “But I’m generally asked to write letters in my own field, Sergeant. This is college letterhead, I’ll give you that, but the letter itself deals with Gordon Jossie’s accomplishments in Accounts and Finance, which I don’t teach. And that’s not my signature.”

“You?” Barbara said to Crawford. “I take it … ?”

He nodded. “Large appliance repair,” he said, indicating the contents of the letter by extending it to her. “Not my bailiwick. Not even close.”

“What about the signature?”

“Same thing, I’m afraid. Someone likely nicked letterhead from an office—or even designed it on their computer, I suppose, if they had an example in front of them—and then wrote their own recommendations. It happens sometimes, although you’d think this bloke would have checked first to see who taught what. Looks to me like he gave a quick glance at a list of the staff and chose our names at random.”

“Exactly,” Bligh said.

Barbara looked at Winston. “It explains how someone who can’t read or write managed to ‘complete’ course work at the college, eh?”

Winston nodded. “But not how someone who can’t read or write wrote these letters, cos he didn’t.”

“That looks like the case.”

Which meant, of course, that someone else had written them for Gordon Jossie, someone who knew him from years gone by, someone they likely hadn’t spoken to yet.

R
OBBIE
H
ASTINGS KNEW
that if he was going to get to the bottom of what had happened to his sister and why, and if he was going to be able to go on living—no matter how bleakly—he had to begin looking squarely at a few basic truths. Meredith had been attempting to tell him at least one of those truths in the church in Ringwood. He’d stopped her abruptly because he was, quite simply, a bloody coward. But he knew he couldn’t go on that way. So he finally picked up the phone.

She said, “How are you?” when she heard his voice. “I mean, how are you doing, Rob? How are you coping? I can’t sleep or eat. Can you? Have you? I just want to do—”

“Merry.” He cleared his throat. Part of him was shouting
better not to know, better never to know
and part of him was trying to ignore those cries. “What did …In the church when you and I were talking about her …What did you mean?”

“When?”

“You said
whenever
. That was the word you used.”

“I did? Rob, I don’t know—”

“With a bloke, you said. Whenever she was with a bloke.” God, he thought, don’t make me say more.

“Oh.” Meredith’s voice was small. “Jemima and sex, you mean.”

He whispered it. “Aye.”

“Oh, Rob. I s’pose I shouldn’t actually have said that.”

“But you did, didn’t you. So you need to tell me. If you know something that’s to do with her death …”

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “I’m sure of it. It’s not that.”

He said nothing more, reckoning that if he was silent, she would be forced to continue, which she did.

She said, “She was younger then. It was years ago anyway. And she would have changed, Rob. People do change.”

He wanted so much to believe her. Such a simple matter to say, “Oh. Right. Well, thanks,” and ring off. In the background he could hear murmurs of conversation. He’d phoned Meredith at work, and he could have used this alone as an excuse to end their conversation at that point. So could have she, for that matter. But he didn’t take that turn. He couldn’t do so now and live with the knowledge that he’d run again, just as he’d turned a blind eye to what he knew at heart she was going to tell him if he insisted upon it.

“Seems it’s time for me to know it all, Merry. It’s no betrayal on your part. Mind, there’s nothing you can say would make a difference now.”

When she spoke at last, it sounded to him as if she were talking inside a tube, as the sound was hollow, although it could well have been that his heart was hollow. She said finally, “Eleven, then, Rob.”

“Eleven what?” he asked. Lovers? he wondered. Had Jemima had so many already? And by what age? And had she actually kept count?

“Years,” Meredith said. “That’s how old.” And when he said nothing, she rushed on with, “Oh, Rob. You don’t want to know. Really. And she wasn’t
bad
. She just …See, she equated things. ’Course, I didn’t know that at the time, why she did it, I mean. I just knew she might end up pregnant but she said no because she took precautions. She even knew that word,
precautions
. I don’t know what she used or where she got it because she wouldn’t say. Just that it wasn’t up to me to tell her right from wrong, and if I was her friend, I would know that, wouldn’t I. And then it became a matter of me not having boyfriends, see. ‘You’re only jealous, Merry.’ But that wasn’t it, Rob. She was my
friend.
I only wanted to keep her safe. And people talked about her so. Specially at school.”

Robbie wasn’t sure he could speak. He was standing in the kitchen and he felt blindly behind him for a chair onto which he could lower himself with infinite slowness. “Boys at school?” he said. “Boys at school were having Jemima when she was eleven? Who? How many?” Because he would find them, he thought. He would find them and he would sort them even now, so many years after the fact.

Meredith said, “I don’t know how many. I mean, she always had boyfriends, but I don’t expect …Surely not all of them, Rob.”

But he knew she was lying to protect his feelings or perhaps because she believed she’d betrayed Jemima enough, even as he was the one who’d betrayed her by not seeing what was in front of him all along.

“Tell me the rest,” he said. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Her voice altered as she replied and he could tell she was crying. “No, no. There’s really no more.”

“God damn it, Merry—”

“Really.”

“
Tell
me.”

“Rob, please don’t ask.”

“What
else
?” And then his own voice broke when he said, “Please,” and perhaps that was what made her continue.

“If there was a boy she was doing it with and another boy wanted her …She didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to be faithful. She didn’t mean it as anything and she wasn’t a tart. She just didn’t understand how it looked to other people. I mean what they thought or might do or might ask of her. I
tried
to tell her, but there was this boy and that boy and this man and that man and she just couldn’t see that it really had nothing to do with love—what they wanted—and when I tried to tell her, she reckoned I was being—”

“Yes,” he said. “All right. Yes.”

She was quiet again although he could hear the rustle of something against the phone. Tissue likely. She’d wept the entire time she’d spoken. She said, “We used to quarrel. Remember? We used to talk for hours in her bedroom. Remember?”