He decided he needed coffee. He went to the kitchen to make it. It was only when he heard the roar of the shower upstairs that he saw how Clover had derailed the conversation he’d intended them to have. Her bringing Finnegan into things was what had done it.
How bloody clever the woman was. He’d learned nothing at all that she hadn’t decided in advance he was meant to know.
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
Lynley had just finished his morning shower when he heard his mobile ringing. He had hopes that Daidre was phoning him, but he saw that it was Isabelle. He wasn’t quite ready for whatever the DCS had in store in the way of conversation at seven o’clock, so he let it go to message and returned to the bathroom—such as it was—to shave.
His ingrained inclination to be ever the gentleman, allowing Barbara Havers to have the room Isabelle had taken, had cost him this time. His bed was so abominable that he’d removed the mattress from its frame on the previous night, and had slept upon it on the floor. The bathroom was suitable only for a munchkin, with a shower that was actually smaller than a telephone booth. There was a single oval mirror above the basin and nothing reflective at all in the bedroom, unless one counted the antique television set, which could, he supposed, be used in a pinch if the picture was off, the curtains were closed, and the weak overhead light was on. The resulting shadowy image might then be helpful, but only as far as a silhouette could carry things.
He was wiping steam from the mirror when his mobile sounded another time. Another time he went to check it. Daidre, he saw, and he felt a rush of gratification.
When he answered, she said, “I suppose I ought to ask first if Barbara is practising her tap dancing as ordered.”
“As I’ve given her what is apparently the larger room, she ought to have space to do it. Whether she has the will remains to be seen.”
“Should I ring Dorothea and recommend a pep talk?”
“You know Barbara and pep talks. I think it’s best to let Dee be surprised when she sees Barbara in action. We can only hope her tap shoes will be flashing. If tap shoes flash, that is. I’m uncertain of that part. I will say that my anticipation is building, however, although I’m keeping mum on what actually comprises my anticipation.”
“You’re very cruel.”
“‘I must be cruel only to be kind,’ although I don’t think Ophelia much appreciated the thought. How are you, darling? Are you at the zoo or still at home?”
There was a pause. It was the darling. But he’d given her space with the follow-up question and she seized upon that. “Home, Tommy. But I think I must go to Cornwall.”
Now there was irony, Lynley thought, although he knew she certainly didn’t mean that she planned to drop by Howenstow to press palms with his family. He said, “Has something happened?”
“Well, yes.” He heard her sigh. He wondered where in her flat she was at the moment, and he decided that she was in the kitchen that she’d remodelled, standing at the French windows overlooking the weed-choked ruin of a garden. She’d have made herself a cappuccino, no sweetener added. It would be on the kitchen’s island and she’d be turning just now to drink it. She’d be dressed—not for work but for the drive to Cornwall, so what she wore would be comfortable for the journey—and her sandy hair would be drawn back from her face. The lenses of her specs would be newly cleaned, the smudges from yesterday carefully removed.
She said, “Gwynder rang last night. It’s nearly time if I want to say good-bye.”
“Do you?”
“That’s just it. I said good-bye so long ago that this part seems extraneous.”
“Yes. I can see how that might be the case.”
“The difficult bit for me is trying to work out whether my reluctance to see her one last time is due to bitterness, anger, or a complete lack of grief.”
“Perhaps it’s all of that. Or none of that. Perhaps it’s just natural reluctance. She wasn’t actually a mother to you. She gave birth to you, but largely that was where things ended. For all of you, your brother and sister as well.”
“I so want to be like Gwynder. I want to see our mother as someone who did the best she could do, but it’s only that I’ve always had the worst time believing it.”
“I doubt anyone who knows the circumstances would disagree, let alone cast stones if you decide not to go.”
“It’s my name, though. I mean my real name, Tommy. The one she gave me, as if she knew how it would all work out.”
“Edrek, yes,” he said. It meant regret. It—like her birth in a lay-by in Cornwall, like her childhood in a caravan along a stream in which her father believed he could make his livelihood finding tin—was part of the past she’d been lifted out of when she and her siblings had been taken from their parents. It had been a case of complete neglect: no schooling, no healthcare, the environment unkempt, the clothing filthy, the hair matted and infested with lice, even the teeth in their mouths loose and beginning to rot. He wanted to tell her that she owed them nothing, despite the fact that her mother was dying. But then there was her name—Edrek—and what she might feel if she did not make this final effort to release the past.
“I do wish you were here,” she said.
“Why is that? I’m not much good in the counselling department.”
“But you’re very good in the being-with-me department. I’d ask you to go with me. Just to be there.”
“Ah. Well, at this moment it can’t be helped. I’ve rather made my bed, and unless I sort out this matter, my next likely bit of employment will be walking a beat in Penzance. Or alongside Barbara in Berwick-upon-Tweed. So whatever you decide, you must go it alone. I’ll be with you in spirit, though. But let me say that these sorts of things—the things that hang over us—it does seem best to put them at rest if the opportunity comes up to do so. This may be it. I hate to say that, but there you have it. I hope you’re not sorry you rang.”
There was a pause, quite a long one. For a moment he thought they might have been cut off. He finally said her name.
She said, “Oh. Yes, yes. I’m still here. I was just considering.”
“Whether to go?”
“Not at all. I’m going to Cornwall.”
“Then . . . ?”
“I was considering whether I’d ever be sorry that I rang you, Tommy.”
“Dare I ask?”
“I wouldn’t be. Sorry, that is. No matter how this present thing works out.”
They rang off then, and Lynley remained where he was for a moment, sitting on the room’s only chair at the narrow table that served as a desk. He examined his heart and its steady beating and he wondered what it meant in one’s life: making a decision to love again after terrible loss.
He was still holding his mobile, so when it rang another time he answered without looking to see that it was Isabelle phoning this time.
She said with no preamble, “Is there more?”
He didn’t ask what she meant, and he didn’t sugarcoat the matter, which he might have done had he not just spoken to Daidre and heard her wish that he be with her on her journey to Cornwall, which, of course, he could not be. So he said bluntly, “Ian Druitt had a mobile. He had a car as well. We’ve come up with both. We’ve also come up with the fact that West Mercia’s deputy chief constable is mother of the boy you interviewed. She and the forensic pathologist who examined Druitt’s body belong to the same gliding group, by the way. Apparently, they own a glider together. The deputy chief constable—she’s called Clover Freeman—rang the PCSO’s sergeant and gave the order to fetch Ian Druitt for questioning. All of this leads to a single point: Barbara was on the right track when she wrote the report that you ordered her to change.”
Isabelle was silent, perhaps evaluating what this meant. The fact that she might be doing so made Lynley’s hackles rise. He said, “What the hell were you thinking telling B
arbara to alter that report? You were sent up here to—”
“Don’t you dare tell me my job,” she snapped.
“—look into what the IPCC made of their investigation into a custody death, and that’s exactly what Barbara was trying to do. We have nineteen days between an anonymous call that led to an arrest and the arrest itself, and during those nineteen days, Isabelle, there was, we have learned, no investigation done into Druitt, which means there was no apparent reason for his arrest. That’s where Barbara was trying to head, so why the hell did you stop her?”
“We weren’t in Ludlow to do anything more than look at what the IPCC did in their investigation after Druitt died—not before he died—and that’s exactly what we did. The rest is irrelevant.”
“Are you goddamn mad?”
“How dare you speak to me like that? Who the hell do you think—”
“That horse isn’t nearly high enough, Isabelle. I suggest you dismount. And while you’re doing that, consider this. Clive Druitt came to the hotel to meet with us. He knew you’d been drinking when he spoke to you. He could smell it on you. Since he mentioned it to me, you can’t possibly think he didn’t also mention it to his MP. And what his MP did with the information . . .” He let her consider that as well.
She finally said, “Now this,” in a near whisper, to which she added in an altered tone, “‘What’s it going take,’ eh? You’re thinking that, aren’t you, Tommy?”
He didn’t bother to deny anything because indeed he’d been thinking along those exact lines. At the same time, though, he felt the compassion of someone who has watched this sort of thing play out before. “Isabelle, listen to me. You’re not the first person and you won’t be the last,” he said. “If it were easy, people placed into your position—having lost nearly everything—would just stop. You’d just stop because you love your sons and because you’ve lost both them and your marriage at your own doing. It’s very possible that now you stand to lose your job as well. At some level, you see this. But the monster still has you and unless you shake it off your back—no matter how the hell you do it—you’re going to die. Do you understand that? Even remotely?”
“Don’t be dramatic with me, Tommy. I’m not that far gone. You see me as standing on the brink, but that’s not what this is. It’s not where I am.”
He raised his gaze to the ceiling, to the heavens, to whatever being existed who could possibly get through to her. From his experience within his own family, though, he understood that the only person who would be able to reach Isabelle Ardery was going to be Isabelle Ardery. And then it would happen only when she’d had enough of the cock-up she’d made of her life.
He said, “We’re speaking with the PCSO this morning, I hope. We tried to arrange it yesterday, but we weren’t able to make contact. Barbara left him a voice mail, but other than a note he left for her at reception, that was it. We’re taking a stab with Finnegan Freeman as well. What did you make of him?”
“He plays at working-class-boy-making-good—he’s quite adept with the accent—and he has the gruesome habit of talking with his mouth full. Of burrito, when I saw him. He’s a strong advocate for Ian Druitt’s innocence in all things.”
“It’s interesting, then, isn’t it: that he knew Druitt and that Druitt’s arrest was called for by his own mother.”
The DCS was quiet for a moment. Lynley knew that she fully understood how much she had missed because of her haste to be finished with Ludlow. There was no point in underscoring that another time. She finally said, “Good hunting then, Tommy. You might be able to get more from the PCSO. Barbara was right. I do see that.”
That, he decided, was the first hopeful thing he’d heard from her. They rang off then. It was time to get down to the business of the day.
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
Rabiah Lomax had long ago learned that a morning run cleared her head for whatever she had to face that day. She’d developed the habit during the trying adolescent years of her two sons. Up before dawn, out in the early morning streets, she was able to dismiss her concerns about David’s drinking—always claimed on his part to be “experimental” only—and Tim’s dabbling with marijuana. She could tell herself that this was her time, that she would get back to her sons and their difficulties later.
When she left the house on the morning following the second call upon her by the Metropolitan Police, she altered her normal route. Generally she included the Breadwalk in her run, an earthen slice through the forest that carved beneath the ancient limes and alders, marking a route high above the River Teme. This path stretched from Lower Dinham Street all the way to the Ludford Bridge and on many mornings it afforded one a pleasing view of the dawn breaking over the town’s ancient rooftops. But this day she needed Temeside to be part of her route, so she headed in that direction from St. Julian’s Well.
She wanted to look at the house where Dena Donaldson lived. She’d had a phone conversation with her granddaughter on the previous evening, and as things turned out, Ding had unexpectedly become a part of it.
Rabiah didn’t like lying. She had always adhered to the philosophy: tell the truth because there’s less one must remember that way. Out of necessity, however, she’d lied to the Metropolitan Police upon their first visit because it was the simpler thing to do given the circumstances. But to have now lied to the Metropolitan Police a second time was something that she could see as having the potential to fill her life and the lives of her family with unexpected sinkholes.
So after looking at the possible alternatives she could choose from once the police had left her, she knew that she had to ring Missa. She hadn’t done the first time round because it hadn’t seemed necessary. Besides, there had existed in her family an atmosphere of letting sleeping dogs lie for quite some time, and Rabiah had gone along with it, hoping for the best and telling herself that it was not her place to intervene in the lives of her adult children, their spouses, and their offspring.
But upon reviewing the two visits she’d had from the Met—what they said, what she said, what they asked, and how she answered—she altered the hands-off approach she’d long taken with her boys and their families. When it was late enough for Missa to be in her bedroom and out of earshot of her parents, Rabiah punched in the number of the girl’s mobile.
She went directly at it with her granddaughter: “Tell me about the appointments you had with Ian Druitt, Missa.”
There was a considerable pause. During it, Rabiah heard a wannabe 1940s crooner singing in the background. She wondered if a talent programme was playing on telly. Evidently, Missa was watching it on her own, because the sound went off and then she said, “What are you talking about, Gran?”
“I’ve had two encounters with detectives from the Metropolitan Police on the subject of Ian Druitt. I’d like to avoid having any additional conversations with them, although I know that might not be possible.”
“Do you mean the London police?”
“That’s exactly who I mean. The first time they were here, I had Aeschylus hold my hand and do the talking. This time, I went it alone. They’re hunting down a Lomax who met with the deacon of St. Laurence Church—this is Ian Druitt, as I expect you know—and while I declared that Lomax to be myself—”
“Why did you do that? Did you know him, Gran?”
“—I’m uneasy having done so. Not so much because I don’t wish to lie to the police—although I don’t wish to lie to the police—but because I dislike lying blindfolded. Now. What did you and Mr. Druitt meet about? If I’m to keep lying, I’d like to know what I’m dealing with.”
There was another pause. Its length did not suggest that Missa’s next words were entirely reliable. “Gran, I never met with Mr. Druitt at all.”
“Then why would our surname be in his diary seven times?”
“Seven times? I don’t have any reason to meet any deacon of any chur
ch one time, let alone seven. Someone must have done it using our name.”
“Would there be any reason in the world for that?” Even as she asked the question, however, Rabiah could herself come up with a list of answers. It began ominously with lest someone find out.
“Probably,” was Missa’s answer. It hung there for a bit before she added, “Gran, it has to be Ding.”
“Why on earth . . . ?”
“She must’ve been talking to him about how to cope with Brutus. Bruce Castle? He’s her . . . well, sort of her boyfriend? They seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. At least that’s how it was when I was in Ludlow. Or could be she was talking to Mr. Druitt about wanting to make some changes in her life and not knowing how to do it. I don’t expect she meant anything by it, though. I mean: to cause any trouble by using our name.”
“I don’t like anyone using our name, no matter how or why,” Rabiah told her. “I intend to speak to Ding about this.”
Missa said quickly, “Gran, please don’t do that.”
“Whyever not?”
“It’s just that she’s had such a rotten time of it because of Brutus. He cheats on her and he expects her to be fine with that and she’s not at all but she’s been pretending and now if she’s finally got up her courage to end things with him . . . I wouldn’t want the fact that she used our name to be the thing that makes her back off from tossing Brutus from her life. You see?”
The fact was, Rabiah didn’t see. It was one thing staying out of the lives of her sons and their families. It was quite another if someone not of the family was asking her to do the same while putting her family in a bad position.
Now, she crossed the river where dawn cast a glow upon the water. On its placid surface a lone swan floated. It preened its feathers before rising up to unsettle its wings. Incredible, the size and aspect of the bird, Rabiah thought. Swans looked so gentle, so placid, so accepting. And then in an instant, they altered.
Lights were beginning to come on in the houses along Temeside. But at the house where Dena Donaldson lived, all was still, and what Rabiah could see of the interior through the front bay window looked full of shadows. She paused there and considered Ding: what she knew about her already and what she’d learned from Missa on the previous night.