Well-Schooled in Murder (8 page)

In the incidents room at St. Giles’ Church, Inspector Canerone checked the time. It was more than three hours since the body had been found. He tried not to think of it.

He believed that, after eighteen years on the force, he ought to have become more immune to death. He ought to be able to look upon a corpse with some degree of impassivity, taking it not as a human being who had met a violent end but merely as a job to be done.

After his last case, he thought that he had managed to find the balance he was seeking between professional detachment and human outrage. It had been simple enough to convince himself of that at the time. The body of a notorious pimp sprawled at the foot of a filthy staircase in a half-burnt tenement was hardly likely to inspire him to dwell very long on man’s inhumanity to man. Especially when part of him—the sententious Puritan within—believed that the pimp had got what he’d long deserved. When he first squatted by the body, saw the garrote round the neck, and felt unmoved by the sight, he even managed to convince himself that he’d arrived at that fine objectivity he had sought so long.

Objectivity had disintegrated fast enough tonight, however. Canerone knew why. The child looked remarkably like his own son. There had even been a ghastly moment when he thought it
was
Gerald, when his mind swept through a swift series of impossible events beginning with Gerald’s decision that he could no longer live with his mother and her new husband in Bristol and ending with his death. The pieces fit together so neatly in Canerone’s imagination. His son would telephone the flat and, getting no answer, would run off to seek his father in Slough. He would be picked up on the roadside, held prisoner somewhere, and tortured to give someone a few minutes’ sadistic pleasure. When the torture was over—or perhaps before—he would die alone, afraid, abandoned. Naturally, once Canerone had got a good, clear look at the corpse, he could see that it wasn’t Gerald at all. But for a moment the terrifying possibility that it could be his son vanquished the indifference with which he believed he had to do his job. Now he was faced with the aftermath of that moment in which he had left himself unguarded.

He saw his son rarely, telling himself that an occasional weekend was all that he could reasonably manage away from work. But that was a lie and he faced it now, with the scenes-of-crime men gone and the police surgeon escorting the corpse to the hospital and a solitary female probationary constable at a nearby desk, waiting for the word from him that she could pack up and go for the night. The truth was that he saw his son rarely because he could no longer endure seeing him at all. Seeing him even in the most nonthreatening environment, he had to admit what he had lost, and admitting this, he came face to face with the emptiness that dominated his life now that his family had left him.

He’d seen many police marriages dissolve through the years, but he had never once thought that his own might fall victim to the irregular hours, the load of work, and the sleepless nights intrinsic to a detective’s life. When he first noticed his wife’s unhappiness, he chose not to confront it, telling himself that she was a difficult woman, that if he was patient, it would all blow over, that she had it damned good being married to him at all, and with a temper like hers, who else would ever put up with her? Several men, it turned out, and one who married her, taking her to Bristol, taking Gerald as well.

Canerone poured himself a cup of coffee. It looked too strong. He knew he would be up half the night if he drank it. He took a swift gulp, grimacing at the bitter flavour. His mind and his heart were filled to capacity with this little boy in the graveyard. The child’s wrists and ankles had been tightly bound; his body had been burned; he had been discarded like rubbish. He was so like Gerald.

Canerone felt shaken. He couldn’t even have said what ought to be done first to bring about justice in the death of this boy. Such professional torpidity told him that he ought to give the case over to another DI. But he didn’t see how he could. He didn’t have the manpower.

The telephone rang. From his position near the doorway, he listened to his police constable’s side of the conversation.

“Yes, a little boy…. No, there’s no indication where he’s come from. It looks like a body dump at the moment…. It doesn’t appear to be exposure, sir. He’d been tied up, you see…. No, we’ve absolutely no idea at the moment who—” She hesitated, listening, her shapely eyebrows drawn together. Then she said only, “Let me put you through to the Inspector. He’s here.”

Canerone turned. The constable extended the phone to him. Salvation came with it.

“Inspector Lynley,” she said. “New Scotland Yard.”

Queen Caroline Street was as close as Lynley could get to the Whateleys’ cottage on the river. He parked his car illegally in the only space available, blocking off half the driveway of an apartment building, and propped his police identification against the steering wheel. On either side of the street stood a grim collection of postwar housing where institutional buildings of mushroom-coloured concrete squared off against other buildings of dirty brown brick. Both were devoid of architectural decoration, bleak and overcrowded and inhospitable.

Even at ten o’clock on a Sunday night, the neighbourhood was alive with noise that rocketed through the street and reverberated against the buildings. Cars and lorries roared along the flyover. Additional traffic fired across Hammersmith Bridge. Shouts echoed in apartment courtyards, followed by the antiphonal barking of dogs.

Lynley walked to the end of the street and descended to the embankment. The tide was up, the water shimmered in the darkness like cool black satin, but what vague, life-giving smell rose from the river was overpowered by the exhaust fumes that drifted down from the bridge above him.

Lynley found the Whateleys’ cottage a few hundred yards along the Lower Mall, an obdurate reminder of Hammersmith’s past. It was an old unrestored fishing cottage, with whitewashed walls, thin strips of black woodwork, and dormer windows rising from its roof.

Access to the cottage interior was gained by means of a tunnel that served as boundary between the Whateleys’ home and a pub next door. The passage was narrow, unevenly paved, and redolent of the yeasty smell of lager and ale. As he made his way to the door the top of Lynley’s head grazed the rough timbers that crisscrossed the tunnel’s low ceiling.

So far, everything had followed the usual roll of policework. Lynley’s phone call to the incidents room in Stoke Poges had resulted in Kevin Whateley’s identification of his son’s body less than an hour later. This led to Lynley’s suggestion that Scotland Yard coordinate the investigation into the death of the boy, since more than one police organisation was involved: the constabulary of West Sussex where Matthew Whateley was last seen alive at Bredgar Chambers and that of Buckinghamshire where his body had been found near St. Giles’ Church. Once Inspector Canerone had given his approval to this plan of action—with rather more relief than was usual when someone from the Met proposed an invasion into another police force’s territory—all that had been left to ensure another case keeping Lynley occupied for the days or weeks it would take to see it to its completion was to secure approval from his own superior, Superintendent Webberly. Summoned away from his favourite Sunday night television show, Webberly had listened to Lynley’s quick recitation of the facts, agreed to his proposed involvement, and returned happily to BBC-1.

Sergeant Havers was the only person who promised not to be relieved by their involvement in yet another new case. But her displeasure could not be helped at the moment.

Lynley knocked on the discoloured door. It was recessed into the wall, and its lintel sagged as if it carried the weight of the entire building. When no one opened it, he looked for a bell, failed to find one, and rapped against the wood again, more forcefully. He heard a key being turned and bolts being drawn. Then he found himself face to face with the father of the boy.

Until that moment, the death of Matthew Whateley had represented to Lynley a means by which he might escape his own troubles and stave off the void. Confronted now with the kind of suffering incised onto Kevin Whateley’s face, Lynley felt only shame at the base selfishness of his own motivation. Here was the real void. Whatever loneliness or loss he felt was risible by comparison.

“Mr. Whateley?” He offered his police identification. “Thomas Lynley. Scotland Yard CID.”

Whateley’s eyes made no move to study the warrant card. He gave no immediate indication that he had heard Lynley. Looking at him, Lynley saw that he’d probably only just returned from identifying his son’s body, for he was wearing a threadbare peaked wool cap, and under his thinning tweed overcoat a brown suit gaped round his neck and sagged at his knees.

His face told Lynley that he would deal with loss through the means of denial. Every muscle was held in rigid control. His grey eyes looked dull, like unpolished stones.

“May I come in, Mr. Whateley? I need to ask you some questions. I realise how late it is, but the sooner I can get information—”

“No good, is it? Information won’t bring Mattie back.”

“You’re right. It won’t. It’ll only bring justice. And I know that justice is a meagre replacement for your son. Believe me. I do know that.”

“Kev?” a woman’s voice called from the upper floor. It sounded weak, perhaps sedated. Whateley’s eyes shifted in the direction of the sound, but it was the only indication he gave that he had heard it. He did not move from the doorway.

“Have you anyone to stay the night with you?” Lynley asked.

“We don’t want no one,” Whateley replied. “Pats and me will cope. Just us.”

“Kev?” The woman’s voice was closer now, and steps sounded upon uncarpeted stairs somewhere behind the door. “Who is it?”

Whateley looked over his shoulder at the woman who was out of Lynley’s line of vision. “Police. Some bloke from Scotland Yard.”

“Let him in.” Whateley still did not move. “Kev, let him in.”

Her hand came round the side of the door, pulling it completely open and giving Lynley a chance to see Patsy Whateley for the first time. The mother of the dead boy was, he guessed, in her late forties, an ordinary woman who, even in grieving, would fade into faceless anonymity within a crowd. On the street she probably would not garner a moment’s attention from anyone at this time in her life, no matter the transitory beauties that might have graced her youth. Her womanly figure had thickened through time, making her appear more solid than she probably was. Her hair was very dark, that sort of uncompromising black which comes from a hasty application of inexpensive dye rather than from nature, and it lay unevenly against her skull. Her nylon dressing gown was wrinkled, printed with Chinese dragons that snarled across her bosom and down her hips. That the dressing gown, for all its garish design, was a possession holding meaning for Patsy Whateley was attested to by the fact that her green slippers had obviously been chosen in an unsuccessful attempt to match the dragons on the gown itself.

“Come in.” She reached for the sash of her dressing gown. “I look like…Not done much, you see…since…”

“Please. It’s fine, Mrs. Whateley.” Lynley sought to brush her words away. What did the poor woman think he expected from the mother of a child who’d just been found murdered? he asked himself. Haute couture? The idea was absurd, yet still, with one hand smoothing down a rucked seam, she seemed to be comparing her appearance with his, as if his tailored presence was somehow a derogation of her own. He felt distinctly uncomfortable and wished for the first time that he had thought far enough ahead to bring Sergeant Havers. Her working-class background and sartorial nonchalance would have eased them through the superficial difficulties created by his own blasted upper-crust accent and his Savile Row clothes.

The door admitted him directly into the cottage sitting room. It was sparsely furnished with a three-piece suite, a sideboard constructed of Formica-topped pressed wood, a single armless chair upholstered in brown and yellow plaid, and one long shelf running beneath the front windows. Two disparate collections sat upon this, one of stone sculptures and the other of teacups, both equally revealing.

Like any collection of art, the stone sculptures acted as a disclosure of someone’s taste. Nude women sprawled in unusual positions, their pointed breasts jutting into the air; couples entwined and arched in mock passion; nude men explored the bodies of nude women who received this attention with heads flung back in rapture. Rape of the Sabine women, Lynley thought, with the women apparently begging for abduction.

Sharing this shelf, the teacups bore inscriptions that identified them as souvenirs. Gathered from holiday spots across the country, each sported a scene to identify its location and gold letters lest the image not be enough stimulus to the memory. Some of them Lynley could read from where he stood by the door.
Blackpool, Weston-Super-Mare, Ilfracombe, Skegness
. Others were turned from him, but he could guess their origins from the scenes painted upon them. Tower Bridge, Edinburgh Castle, Salisbury, Stonehenge. They represented places, no doubt, that the Whateleys had taken their son, places whose association would pain them treacherously—when they least expected—for years to come. That was the nature of sudden death.

“Please sit…Inspector, is it?” Patsy nodded towards the couch.

“Yes. Thomas Lynley.”