This Body of Death (54 page)

She was careful with what she revealed about herself, like most people, and what she
did
reveal was painted in positives: an older brother sheep farming in New Zealand, two parents alive and well near Dover where Dad was a ticket agent for a ferry line and Mum was a housewife who sang in the church choir; education in RC schools although she was not now a member of any religion; former husband a childhood sweetheart whom she married too young, unfortunately, before either of them was really prepared for what it takes to make a marriage work.

“I hate to compromise,” she admitted. “I want what I want and there you have it.”

He said, “And what do you want, Isabelle?”

She looked at him frankly before she answered. It was a long look that could have communicated any one of a number of things, he supposed. She said at last with a shrug, “I expect I want what most women want.”

He waited for more. Nothing more was offered. Round them in the pub the noise of the nighttime drinkers seemed suddenly muted, until he realised what muted them was his heartbeat, which was unaccountably loud in his ears. “What’s that?” he asked her.

She fingered the stem of her glass. They’d had wine, two bottles of it, and he’d pay the price the following morning. But they’d stretched the drinking over the hours, and he didn’t
feel
in the least drunk, he told himself.

He said her name to prompt her to reply, and he repeated his question. She said, “You’re an experienced man, so I think you know very well.”

His heartbeat again, and this time it occluded his throat, which didn’t make sense. But it did prevent him from giving a reply.

She said, “Thank you for dinner. For the St. Jameses as well.”

“There’s no need—”

She rose from the table then, adjusted her bag over her shoulder, and laid her hand on his as she made ready to depart. She said, “Oh, but there is. You could have presented what you’d already concluded about that shirt during our meeting. I’m not blind to that, Thomas. You could have made a perfect fool of me and forced my hand with regard to Matsumoto, but you chose not to. You’re a very kind and decent man.”

A
N ESTABLISHMENT CALLED
S
HELDON
P
OCKWORTH
N
UMISMATICS
had sounded to Lynley like a place tucked away in an alley in Whitechapel, a shop whose proprietor was a Mr. Venus type, articulating bones instead of dealing in medals and coins. The reality he found was far different. The shop itself was clean, sleek, and brightly lit. Its location was not far from Chelsea’s Old Town Hall, in a spotless brick building on the corner of the King’s Road and Sydney Street where it shared what was doubtless expensive space with a number of dealers in antique porcelain, silver, jewellery, paintings, and fine china.

There was no Sheldon Pockworth, nor had there ever been. There was instead one James Dugué, who looked more like a technocrat than a purveyor of coins and military medals from the Napoleonic Wars. When Lynley entered that morning, he found Dugué leafing through a heavy volume set upon a spotless glass counter. Beneath this gleamed gold and silver coins on a rotating rack. When Dugué looked up, his chic steel-rimmed spectacles caught the light. He wore a crisp pink shirt and a navy tie striped diagonally in green. His trousers were navy as well and, when he moved from beyond the counter to a second display case, Lynley saw that he had on blindingly white trainers and no socks.
Brisk
was a very good word to describe him. So, as things turned out, was
certain.

Lynley had come to the shop directly from his home rather than going into the Yard. He lived so close that it made more sense, and he’d phoned Isabelle on her mobile to tell her this as a courtesy. They’d spoken briefly, haltingly, and politely. The ground had slightly shifted beneath them.

At the end of their dinner on the previous night, he’d walked with her to her car although she’d told him such a show of good breeding was hardly necessary as she was perfectly adept at defending herself in the unlikely event that she should be accosted in the fashionble Chelsea neighbourhood. Then she seemed to realise exactly what she’d said because she’d stopped completely on the pavement, turned to him, impulsively put her hand on his arm, and murmured, “Oh my God. I am so sorry, Thomas,” which told him she’d connected her remarks to what had happened to Helen, murdered in a neighbourhood not so different from this one and less than a mile away.

He’d said, “Thank you. But you’ve no need, really …,” and he hesitated about saying more, stumbling rather with, “It’s only that …,” before he stopped again, in a search for words.

They stood in the deep shadows of a leafy beech, the pavement beneath it already beginning to collect its leaves, fallen in the hot, dry summer. Once again he was aware of being nearly eye to eye with Isabelle Ardery: a tall woman, slender without being thin, cheekbones prominent—a fact he hadn’t noticed before—and eyes large, which he also hadn’t noticed. Her lips parted as if to say something.

He held her gaze. A moment passed. A car door slammed nearby. He looked away. He said, “I do want people to have less care with me.”

She made no reply.

He said, “They’re afraid they’ll say something and I’ll be reminded. I understand that. I’d probably feel the same. But what I don’t understand is how anyone might think I actually
need
reminding or am afraid of being reminded.”

Still, she said nothing.

“What I mean is that she’s always there anyway. She’s a constant presence. How could she not be? She was doing such a simple thing, bringing in her shopping, and there they were. Two of them. He was twelve years old, the one who shot her. He did it for no reason really. Just because she was there. They’ve caught him but not the other and he—the boy—won’t name him. He won’t say a word about what happened. He hasn’t done since they found him. But the truth is, all I want to know was what she might have
said
to them before they …Because somehow I think I might feel …If I knew …” He suddenly found his throat was so tight that he knew he would, to his horror, weep if he did not stop speaking. He shook his head and cleared his throat. He kept his gaze on the street.

Her hand was extraordinarily soft when she touched his. She said, “Thomas. You’ve no need. Really. Walk along with me.”

As if she thought he might not do so, she put her hand at his elbow and with her other hand she held on to his arm. She brought him close to her side and it was oddly comforting. He realised that other than his immediate family and Deborah St. James, no one had touched him for months, aside from shaking his hand. It was as if people had become frightened of him, as if by touching him they believed the tragedy that had visited his life would somehow visit theirs. He found he felt such
relief
at her touch that he walked with her, and their steps fell into a natural rhythm.

“There,” she said when they reached her car. She faced him. “I’ve had a pleasant evening. You’re very good company, Thomas.”

“I’ve my doubts about that,” he said quietly.

“Do you?”

“Yes. And it’s Tommy, actually. That’s what most people call me.”

“Tommy. Yes. I’ve noticed.” She smiled and said, “I’m going to hug you now and you’re meant to know that this is in friendship.” She did so. She held him close to her—but only for a moment—and she also brushed her lips against his cheek. “I think I shall call you Thomas for now, if that’s all right,” she said before she left him.

Now in the coin shop Lynley waited while the proprietor put his heavy volume away. Lynley handed him the card they’d found in Jemima Hastings’ bag, and he showed Dugué the Portrait Gallery photo of Jemima. He also showed his police identification.

Surprisingly, after Dugué examined the warrant card, he said to Lynley, “You’re the policeman who lost his wife last February, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“I remember these things,” Dugué told him. “Terrible business, that. How can I help you?” And when Lynley nodded at the Portrait Gallery picture of Jemima, he said, “Yes. I remember her. She’s been into the shop.”

“When?”

Dugué considered the question. He looked out of the shop, which was mostly windows, and studied the corridor beyond it. He said, “Round Christmas. I can’t be more exact than that, but I do remember the decorations. Seeing her backlit by the fairy lights we put up in the corridor. So it would have been round Christmas, give or take two weeks in either direction. Unlike some establishments, we don’t keep our decorations up all that long. We all of us loathe them, to be honest. Along with the carols. Bing Crosby may dream of snow. I, for one, dream of strangling Bing Crosby at the end of one week having to listen to him.”

“Did she make a purchase?”

“As I recall, she wanted me to look at a coin. It was an aureus, and she thought it might be worth something.”

“‘Aureus.’” Lynley considered his schoolboy Latin. “Gold, then. Was it worth a great deal?”

“Not as much as one would think.”

“Despite its being gold?” It seemed to Lynley that the price of gold alone would make it valuable. “Did she want to sell it?”

“She just wanted to know what it was worth. And what it
was
, actually, because she’d no idea. She reckoned it was old and she was right about that. It was old. Round one-fifty
AD
.”

“Roman, then. Did she say how she came to have it?”

Dugué asked to look at the picture of Jemima again, as if this would stimulate his memory. After studying it for a moment he said slowly, “I believe she said it was among her father’s things. She didn’t tell me exactly, but I reckoned he’d died recently and she’d been going through his belongings the way one does, trying to sort out what to do with this and that.”

“Did you offer to buy it?”

“As I said, aside from the gold itself, it wasn’t worth enough. On the open market, I wouldn’t have been able to get a lot for it. You see …Here, let me show you.”

He went to a desk behind the counter where he opened a drawer that had been fashioned to hold books. He ran his fingers along them and brought out one, saying, “What she had was an aureus minted during the reign of Antoninus Pius, the bloke who came to be emperor directly after Hadrian. Know about him?”

“One of the Five Good Emperors,” Lynley said.

Dugué looked impressed. “Not the sort of knowledge I’d think a copper would have.”

“I read history,” Lynley admitted. “In another life.”

“Then you know his was an unusual reign.”

“Only that it was peaceful.”

“Right. As one of the good guys, he wasn’t …Well, let’s say he wasn’t sexy. Or, at least, he’s not sexy now, not to collectors. He was intelligent, well educated, experienced, protective of Christians, clement towards conspirators, and happy to stay in Rome and delegate responsibility to his provincial leaders. Loved his wife, loved his family, assisted the poor, practised economy.”

“In a word, boring?”

“Certainly compared to Caligula or Nero, eh?” Dugué smiled. “There’s not been a lot written about him, so I think collectors tend to dismiss him.”

“Which makes his coins of less value on the market?”

“That and the fact that there were two thousand different coins minted during his reign.” Dugué found what he was looking for in the volume, and he swung it to face Lynley.

The page, Lynley saw, displayed both the obverse and the reverse of the aureus in question. The former depicted the emperor in profile, draped in the fashion of a bust, with
CAES
and
ANTON-INVS
in relief, parenthesising the emperor’s head. The latter showed a woman enthroned. This was Concordia, Dugué explained, a patera in her right hand and cornucopiae beneath her. These images were fairly standard stuff, the coin dealer went on, which was what he’d also told Jemima. He’d explained to her that although the coin itself was rare enough—“One generally comes across coins of baser metals because they were minted more regularly than the aureus”—its true value would come from the marketplace. That was defined by the demand for the coin among collectors.

“So what are we talking about, exactly?” Lynley asked.

“The value?” Dugué considered this, tapping his fingers against the top of the display case. “I’d say between five hundred and a thousand quid.
If
someone wanted it and
if
that person were bidding against someone else who wanted it. What you must remember,” Dugué concluded, “is that a coin needs to be—”

“Sexy,” Lynley said. “I understand. The bad boys are the sexy ones, aren’t they?”

“Sad,” Dugué confimed, “but true.”

Could he then assume, Lynley asked, that Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics did not have an aureus from the period of Antoninus Pius among its stock?

He could, Dugué said. If the inspector wanted to look at an actual aureus from that time, he would likely find one in the British Museum.

B
ARBARA
H
AVERS HAD
been forced to begin her day by shaving her legs, which hadn’t done much to elevate her mood. She was fast discovering that there was a domino effect to altering her physical appearance: For example, the wearing of a skirt—A-line or otherwise—dictated either the wearing of tights or going bare legged, and either choice demanded that something be done about the condition of her legs.
This
required the application of razor to skin.
That
required shaving cream or some other kind of lather, which she did not possess, so she used a dollop of Fairy Liquid instead to develop some suds activity. But the entire operation led to the excavation of a plaster from her medicine cabinet when she sliced into her ankle and blood gushed forth. She shrieked then cursed. What the flaming hell, she wondered, did how she dressed have to do with what she was able to accomplish as a cop anyway?

There was no question, however, that she would wear the skirt. That had been dictated not only by the acting superintendent’s pointed suggestion but more by the fact that Hadiyyah had gone to such an extreme to make it ready for her. Indeed, what was also demanded of the morning was that Barbara stop at the Big House upon leaving her bungalow, her purpose to show Hadiyyah how she looked. She had on the new bracelet and the blouse as well, but she’d eschewed the scarf. Too hot, she reasoned. She’d save it for autumn.

Azhar came to the door. Hadiyyah appeared behind him at once when she heard Barbara’s voice. They both exclaimed over the dubious alteration in Barbara’s appearance. “You look lovely!” Hadiyyah cried, hands clasped beneath her chin as if to keep herself from bursting into applause. “Dad, doesn’t Barbara look
lovely
?”

Barbara said, “Not exactly the word, kiddo, but thanks all the same.”

“Hadiyyah is right,” Azhar said. “All of it suits you, Barbara.”

“And she’s got on
make
up,” Hadiyyah said. “See how she’s got on makeup, Dad? Mummy always says makeup’s just to enhance what you got, and Barbara’s used it
just
like Mummy. Don’t you think so, Dad?”

“Indeed.” Azhar put his arm round Hadiyyah’s shoulders. “You’ve both done very well,
khushi
,” he told her.

Barbara felt the pleasure of their compliments. She knew they were due to kindness and friendship and nothing more—she was not nor would she ever be a remotely attractive woman—but still, she fancied that their gazes remained fixed on her as she went to the garden gate for the walk to her car.

Once at work, she put up with the hoots and good-natured teasing of her colleagues. She suffered their remarks in silence as she looked round for Lynley and found him missing. As was the acting superintendent, she learned. First thing that had happened that day: Hillier had demanded Isabelle Ardery’s presence in his office.

Had Lynley gone with her? She asked the question of Winston Nkata. She tried to make it casual, but he wasn’t deceived.