With No One As Witness (73 page)

“Where?” Lynley’s voice was raw. “Simon, I told Deborah…I said that she was to—”

“Tommy.” St. James’s hand tightened.

“Where, then? Where?”

“In Eaton Terrace.”

“At home?”

“Helen was tired. They parked the car and unloaded their parcels at the front door. Deborah took the Bentley round to the mews. She parked it, and when she got back to the house—”

“She didn’t hear anything? See anything?”

“She was on the front step. At first, Deborah thought she’d fainted.”

Lynley raised his hand to his forehead. He pressed in on his temples as if this would allow him to understand. He said, “How could she have thought—”

“There was virtually no blood. And her coat—Helen’s coat—it was dark. Is it navy? Black?”

Both of them knew the colour was meaningless, but it was something to cling to and they had to cling to it or face the unthinkable.

“Black,” Lynley said. “It’s black.” Cashmere, hanging nearly to her ankles, and she loved to wear it with boots whose heels were so high that she laughed at herself at the end of the day when she hobbled to the sofa and fell upon it, claiming she was a mindless victim of male Italian shoe designers with fantasies of women bearing whips and chains. “Tommy, save me from myself,” she would say. “Only foot binding could be worse than this.”

Lynley looked out of the window. He saw the blur of faces and knew they’d made it as far as Westminster Bridge, where people on the pavements were caught in their own little worlds into which the sound of a siren and the sight of a panda car zooming by caused them only an instant of wondering, Who? What? And then forgetting because it didn’t affect them.

“When?” he said to St. James. “What time?”

“Half past three. They’d thought to have tea at Claridge’s, but as Helen was tired, they went home instead. They’d have it there. They bought…I don’t know…tea cakes somewhere? Pastries?”

Lynley tried to absorb this. It was four forty-five. He said, “An hour? More than an hour? How can that be?”

St. James didn’t reply at once, and Lynley turned to him and saw how drawn and gaunt he looked, far more than normal for he was a gaunt and angular man by birth. He said, “Simon, why in God’s name? More than an hour?”

“It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to get to her.”

“Christ,” Lynley whispered. “Oh God. Oh Christ.”

“And then I wouldn’t let them tell you by phone. We had to wait for a second panda car—the first officers needed to stay at the hospital…to speak to Deborah…”

“She’s there?”

“Still. Yes. Of course. So we had to wait. Tommy, I couldn’t let them phone you. I couldn’t do that to you, say that Helen…say that…”

“No. I see.” And then he said fiercely after a moment, “Tell me the rest. I want to know it all.”

“They were calling in a thoracic surgeon when I left. They haven’t said anything else.”

“Thoracic?” Lynley said. “Thoracic?”

St. James’s hand tightened on his arm once again. “It’s a chest wound,” he said.

Lynley closed his eyes, and he kept them closed for the rest of the ride, which was mercifully brief.

At the hospital, two panda cars stood at the top of the sloping entrance to Accident and Emergency, and two of the uniformed constables who belonged to them were just coming out as Lynley and St. James entered. He saw Deborah at once, seated on one of the blue steel chairs with a box of tissues on her knees and a middle-aged man in a crumpled mackintosh talking to her, notebook in hand. Belgravia CID, Lynley thought. He didn’t know the man, but he knew the routine.

Two other uniforms stood nearby, affording the detective privacy. Apparently, they knew St. James by sight—as they would, since he’d already been at the hospital earlier—so they let both of them approach the interview that was going on.

Deborah looked up. Her eyes were red. Her nose looked sore. A pile of sodden tissues lay on the floor next to her feet. She said, “Oh, Tommy…,” and he could see her try to pull herself together.

He didn’t want to think. He couldn’t think. He looked at her and felt like wood.

The Belgravia man stood. “Superintendent Lynley?”

Lynley nodded.

“She’s in the operating theatre, Tommy,” Deborah said.

Lynley nodded again. All he could do was nod. He wanted to shake her, he wanted to rattle the teeth in her head. His brain shouted that it was not her fault, how could it be this poor woman’s fault, but he needed to blame, he wanted to blame, and there was no one else, not yet, not here, not now…

He said, “Tell me.”

Her eyes filled.

The detective—somewhere Lynley heard him say his name was Fire…Terence Fire, but that couldn’t be right because what sort of name was Fire, after all?—said that the case was well in hand, he was not to worry, all stops were being pulled out because the entire station knew not only what had happened but who she was, who the victim—

“Don’t call her that,” Lynley said.

“We’ll be in close contact,” Terence Fire said. And then, “Sir…If I may…I am so terribly—”

“Yes,” Lynley said.

The detective left them. The constables remained.

Lynley turned to Deborah as St. James sat next to her. “What happened?” he asked her.

“She asked would I park the Bentley. She’d been driving, but it was cold and she’d got tired.”

“You’d done too much. If you hadn’t done too much…those God damn bloody christening clothes…”

A snaking tear spilled over the rim of Deborah’s eye. She brushed it away. She said, “We stopped and unloaded the parcels. She asked me to take care parking the car because…You know how Tommy loves his car, she said. If we put a scratch on it, he’ll have us both for dinner. Watch the left side of the garage, she said. So I took care. I’d never driven…You see, it’s so big and it took me more than one try to get it into the garage…But not five minutes, Tommy, not that even. And I assumed she’d go straight into the house or ring the bell for Denton—”

“He’s gone to New York,” Lynley said, unnecessarily. “He isn’t there, Deborah.”

“She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know. And I didn’t think…Tommy, it’s Belgravia, it’s safe, it’s—”

“No where is God damn safe.” His voice sounded savage. He saw St. James stir. His old friend raised a hand: a warning, a request. He didn’t know nor did he care. There was only Helen. He said, “I’m in the middle of an investigation. Multiple murders. A single killer. Where in the name of heaven did you get the idea any place on earth is safe?”

Deborah took the question like a blow. St. James said his name, but she stopped him with a movement of her head. She said, “I parked the car. I walked back along the mews.”

“You didn’t hear—”

“I didn’t hear a sound. I came round the corner back into Eaton Terrace and what I saw was the shopping bags. They were spread on the ground, and then I saw her. She was crumpled…I thought she’d fainted, Tommy. There was no one there, no one nearby, not a single soul. I thought she’d fainted.”

“I told you to be sure no one—”

“I know,” she said, “I know. I know. But what was I meant to make of that? I thought of flu, someone sneezing in her face, Tommy being a fuss pot husband because I didn’t understand, don’t you see that, Tommy? How would I know because this is Helen we’re talking about and this is Belgravia where it’s supposed to be…and a gun, why would I ever think of a gun?”

She began to weep in earnest then, and St. James told her that she’d said enough. But Lynley knew she never could have said enough to explain how his wife, how the woman he loved…

He said, “What then?”

St. James said, “Tommy…”

Deborah said, “No. Simon. Please.” And then to Lynley, “She was on the top step and her door key was in her hand. I tried to rouse her. I thought she’d fainted because there was no blood, Tommy. There was no blood. Not like what you would think if someone is…I’d never seen…I didn’t know…But then she moaned and I could tell something was terribly wrong. I phoned triple nine and then I cradled her to keep her warm and that’s when…On my hand, there was blood. I thought I’d cut myself at first and I looked for where and how but I saw it wasn’t me and I thought the baby, but her legs, Helen’s legs…I mean, there was no blood where one would think…And this was a different sort of blood anyway, it looked different because I know, you see, Tommy…”

Even in his own despair, Lynley felt hers, and that was what finally got through to him. She would know what the blood of a miscarriage looked like. She’d suffered how many…? He didn’t know. He sat, not next to Deborah and her husband, but across, on the chair that Terence Fire had been using.

He said, “You thought she’d lost the baby.”

“At first. But then I finally saw the blood on her coat. High up, here.” She indicated a spot beneath her left breast. “I phoned triple nine again and I said, There’s blood, there’s blood. Hurry. But the police got there first.”

“Twenty minutes,” Lynley said. “Twenty God damn minutes.”

“I phoned three times,” Deborah told him. “Where are they, I asked. She’s bleeding. She’s bleeding. But I still didn’t know she’d been shot, you see. Tommy, if I’d known…If I’d told them that…Because I didn’t think, not in Belgravia…Tommy, who would shoot someone in Belgravia?”

Lovely wife, Superintendent. The sodding profile in The Source. Complete with photographs of the smiling superintendent of police and his charming wife. Titled bloke, he was, not your garden variety sort of cop at all.

Lynley rose blindly. He would find him. He would find him.

St. James said, “Tommy, no. Let the Belgravia police…” And only then did Lynley realise he’d said it aloud.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You must. You’re needed here. She’ll come out of theatre. They’ll want to speak to you. She’s going to need you.”

Lynley headed in the direction of the door but this, apparently, was why the uniformed constables had been hanging about. They stopped him, saying, “It’s in hand, sir. It’s top priority. It’s well in hand,” and by that time St. James had reached his side as well.

He said, “Come with me, Tommy. We won’t leave you,” and the kindness in his voice felt like a crushing weight on Lynley’s chest.

He gasped for breath, for something to cling to. He said, “My God. I’ve got to phone her parents, Simon. How am I going to tell them what’s happened?”

BARBARA FOUND that she couldn’t bring herself to leave even as she told herself she wasn’t needed and probably wasn’t wanted either. People milled about everywhere, each one of them in a personal hell of waiting.

Helen Lynley’s parents, the earl and countess of whatever because Barbara couldn’t remember if she’d ever heard the title so many generations in their family, were huddled in misery and they looked frail, more than seventy years old and unprepared to face what they were facing now.

Helen’s sister Penelope rushing in from Cambridge with her husband at her side, tried to comfort them after herself crying out, “How is she? Mum, my God, how is she? Where’s Cybil? Is Daphne on her way?”

They all were, all four of Helen’s sisters, including Iris on her way from America.

And Lynley’s mother was tearing up from Cornwall with her younger son, while his sister hurried down from Yorkshire.

Family, Barbara thought. She was neither needed nor wanted here. But she could not bring herself to leave.

Others had come and gone: Winston Nkata, John Stewart, other members of the team, uniformed constables and plainclothes officers whom Lynley had worked with through the years. Cops were checking in from stations in every borough in town. Everyone save Hillier had seemed to put in an appearance during the course of the night.

Barbara herself had arrived after the worst sort of journey from North London. Her car had refused to start at first up on Wood Lane, and she’d flooded its engine in a panic trying to get the bloody thing running. She’d sworn at the car. She’d vowed to reduce the Mini to rubble. She’d strangled the steering wheel. She’d phoned for help. She’d finally got the engine to sputter into life, and she’d sat on the horn trying to clear traffic out of the way.

She’d got to the hospital just after word had been given to Lynley about Helen’s condition. She’d seen the surgeon come to fetch him and she’d watched as he’d received the news. It’s killing him, she’d thought.

She wanted to go to him, to say she’d bear the weight of it with him, as his friend, but she knew she didn’t have that right. Instead, she watched as Simon St. James went to him, and she waited until Simon had returned to his wife to share with her what he had learned. Lynley and Helen’s parents disappeared with the surgeon, God only knew where, and Barbara understood that she could not follow. So she crossed the room to speak to St. James. He nodded at her and she was furiously grateful that he did not exclude her or ask why she was there.

She said, “How bad is it?”

He took a moment. From his expression, she prepared herself to hear the worst.

“She was shot beneath the left breast,” he said. His wife leaned into him, her face against his shoulder as she listened along with Barbara. “The bullet evidently went through the left ventricle, the right atrium, and the right artery.”

“But there was no blood, there was almost no blood.” Deborah spoke into the jacket he was wearing, into his shoulder, shaking her head.

“How can that happen?” Barbara asked St. James.

“Her lung collapsed at once,” St. James told her, “so the blood began filling the cavity that was left in her chest.”

Deborah began to cry. Not a wail. Not an ululation of grief. Just a shaking of her body that even Barbara could see she was doing her best to control.

“They would have put a tube in her chest when they first saw the wound,” St. James told Barbara. “They would have got blood from it. A litre. Perhaps two. They would have known then that they had to go in at once.”

“That’s what the surgery was.”

“They sutured the left ventricle, did the same for the artery and the exit wound in the right ventricle.”

“The bullet? Have we got the bullet? What happened to the bullet?”

“It was under the right scapula, between the third and fourth rib. We have the bullet.”