Playing for the Ashes

  Aside from his clothing and the fact that he was as filthy as a beggar, he looked so much like his father at sixteen years old that a fog seemed to come between Jeannie and him. She felt like a spear was pressing just beneath her left breast, and she held her breath to make the pain dissolve.

  “Where you been, Jim?”

  “Out.” He held his head like he always did, cocked to one side as if he wanted to disguise his height.

  “You take your specs with you?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like you driving that bike without your specs. It’s dangerous.”

  He used the heel of his hand to shove his hair off his forehead. His shoulders moved in an indifferent shrug.

  “Go to school today?”

  He flicked his glance to the stairway. He fingered the belt loop of his jeans.

  “You know about Dad?”

  His adolescent Adam’s apple bobbled in his neck. His eyes skittered to her and then back to the stairs. “He got the chop.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  He shifted his weight. The other hip jutted. He was so thin that it made Jeannie’s palms ache whenever she looked at him.

  He shoved his fist into one of his pockets and brought out a crumpled packet of JPS. He dug a grimy index finger inside and crooked it round a cigarette. He put it in his mouth. He looked to the coffee table, from there to the top of the television set.

  Jeannie’s fingers closed round the box of matches in her pocket. She felt the corner of it dig into her thumb.

  “How’d you find out, Jim?” she asked again.

  “Heard it on the telly.”

  “Where?”

  “BBC.”

  “Where? Whose telly?”

  “Some bloke’s in Deptford.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Jimmy twisted the cigarette in his lips, like he was tightening a screw. “You don’t know him. I never brought him round.”

  “What’s he called?”

  “Brian.” He looked steadily at her, always a certain sign that he was fibbing. “Brian. Jones.”

  “That where you were today? With this Brian Jones in Deptford?”

  His hands returned to his pockets, front then back. He patted himself down. He frowned.

  Jeannie put the box of matches on the coffee table and nodded at them. Jimmy hesitated as if expecting a trick. Then he shambled forward. He snatched the matches quickly and lit one on the edge of his thumbnail. When he held it to the cigarette, he watched his mother.

  “Dad died in a fire,” Jeannie said. “At the cottage.”

  Jimmy took a long drag and raised his head to the ceiling as if that would help get the smoke into his lungs and keep it there longer. His hair hung stiffly back from his skull in greasy segments that looked like rats’ tails. It was strawberry blond like his dad’s, but so long unwashed that its colour resembled straw sodden with piss in a horse’s stall.

  “You hear me, Jim?” Jeannie tried to keep her voice steady, like the reader on the news. “Dad died in a fire. At the cottage. Wednesday night.”

  He took another drag. He wouldn’t look at her. But his Adam’s apple kept bobbing like a spool on a string.

  “Jim.”

  “What?”

  “It was a cigarette caused the fire. A cigarette in a chair. Dad was upstairs. He was asleep. He breathed in the smoke. Carbon monox—”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “You, I expect. Stan, Sharon, me.”

  “Oh, too right. Like he would of cared if one of us died? What a fucking joke. He wouldn’t of come to the funeral.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know. Don’t play that you don’t.”

  “Like fuck and shit? Or like telling the truth?”

  She didn’t reply. He shoved his fingers through his hair, paced to the window and back, and stopped himself from pacing. She tried to read him and wondered exactly when she had lost the knack of knowing in an instant what was going on in his head.

  “Don’t talk nasty in this house,” she said quietly. “You’re to set the example. You’ve a brother and sister who look to you as a guide.”

  “And aren’t they a proper mess?” He snorted. “Stan’s a baby needs a dummy to suck. And Shar’s—”

  “Don’t you dirty-talk them.”

  “Shar’s thick as a brick with mash for brains. You sure we’re all related to each other? You sure someone ’sides Dad didn’t put you in the club?”

  Jeannie got to her feet. She began to take a step towards her son but his words held her back.

  “You could of done it with other blokes, right? How ’bout at the market? Sliding round in the fish guts on the floor after hours?” He flicked ash from his cigarette onto the leg of his jeans. He rubbed his finger through it. He snickered, then grinned, then slapped himself on the forehead, hard. “Oy, that’s it! Why di’n’t I get it before?”

  “Get it? What?”

  “How we got different dads. Mine’s the famous batsman, which gives me the advantage in looks and brains—”

  “You hold your tongue, Jimmy.”

  “Shar’s’s the postman, which is why she looks like her face’s been cancelled.”

  “I said that’s enough.”

  “And Stan’s’s one of the blokes’t bring eels from the fens. How’d you ever do it with an eelman, Mum? Course I s’pose one poke’s good as another if you keep your eyes closed and don’t mind the smell.”

  Jeannie came round the coffee table. “Where’d you get this crap, Jim?”

  “I c’n see what it’s like. All those blokes. All that fish. The smell must remind them of what they’re missing.” His face brightened and his voice began to rise. “So if they find a tart who’s not too fussy about who she lets poke her and where and when—”

  “I’ll wash your mouth, boy.”

  “—then they just go ahead and take it out of their trousers.”

  “You stop this. Now!”

  “She sees it’s hard and she says with a giggle Cor what a pretty sight I see and she lowers her knickers and he backs her into one of those fridges where she don’t mind the cold because he’s panting over her like some gorilla and—”

  “Jimmy!”

  “—he fucks her till she’s dizzy and what d’you know then she’s banged up good and it don’t matter at all who she fucks after that until the kid pops out ugly as a potato with legs.” He sucked in heavily on his cigarette. His hands were shaking.

  Jeannie felt a burning behind her eyes. She blinked it away. She understood. “Oh Jimmy,” she murmured. “Daddy never meant you to hurt. You got to know that.”

  Rigidly, he put his hands over his ears. His voice grew louder. “So, the next day she takes on another bloke, see. Everyone watches and she likes it that way. There’s a circle round them, cheering them on.”

  “Dad’s dead, Jim. He’s gone.”

  His face pinched closed. “First one finishes her. Then another takes her on. She snorts. She squeals. She says Come on and get me the lot of you I can cope I can I like it this way.”

  Jeannie went to him, put her hands on his. She tried to bring them down from his ears, but all she managed to do was knock the cigarette away. It fell to the carpet. She picked it up, stubbed it out in an ashtray.

  “So they climb on her, see, the whole flaming lot. They hump her to bits and she never gets enough.” His voice wavered. His hands moved from his ears to his eyes. His fingers scrabbled at his flesh.

  Jeannie touched his arm. He gave a cry, pulled away.

  She said, “Your dad loved you. He loved you. Always.”

  He countered behind his hands with, “So they do that to her. They do it. They do. And when they’re through with her and she’s lying in the fish guts with a smarmy smile plastered on her stupid face she thinks she’s got what she wanted what she…what she wanted because she’s got all these blokes, see, even if she couldn’t keep
him and she thinks she thinks she can’t even think that this is what it’s s’posed to be like.” He began to weep.

  Jeannie put her arm round his shoulders. He tore himself away from her and ran for the stairs.

  “Why di’n’t you divorce him?” he sobbed. “Why di’n’t you? Why di’n’t you? Jesus, Mum. You could of divorced him.”

  Jeannie watched him climb. She wanted to follow. She lacked the strength.

  She went into the kitchen where the pots and dishes from an uneaten dinner of chops, chips, and sprouts were scattered on the table and the work top. She gathered and scraped them. She stacked them in the sink. She squeezed Fairy Liquid over them, turned on the hot water, and watched the bubbles begin to froth, just like lace on a bridal gown.

  It was nearly eleven when Lynley telephoned the husband of Gabriella Patten from the Bentley, as he and Havers headed up Campden Hill in the direction of Hampstead. Hugh Patten didn’t seem surprised to be receiving a telephone call from the police. He didn’t question why an interview was necessary nor did he try to put Lynley off with a request that their meeting be postponed until the morning. He merely gave the necessary directions and told them to ring the bell three times when they got there.

  “I’ve been rather more bothered by journalists than I like,” was his explanation.

  “Who is this bloke when he’s somebody?” Havers asked as they made the turn onto Holland Park Avenue.

  “You know as much as I, at the moment,” Lynley said.

  “Cuckolded husband.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Potential killer.”

  “There’s that to be discovered.”

  “And the sponsor of the test match series with Australia.”

  The drive to Hampstead was lengthy. They finished it in silence. They wound up the High Street, where several coffee bars accommodated a late evening crowd, and then farther up Holly Hill to a point where houses gave way to mansions. They found Patten’s home behind a stone wall overgrown with clematis, pale pink flowers feather-striped with red.

  “Nice digs,” Havers said with a nod at the house as she hopped from the car. “He’s not too pushed for lolly, is he?”

  Two other cars stood on the drive, a late model Range Rover and a small Renault with its left rear light smashed. As Havers strolled along the edge of the semi-circular drive, Lynley walked to a second drive that veered off from this main one. Perhaps thirty yards along, a large garage stood. It was newish looking but built in the same Georgian manner as the house itself, and like the house, it was lit with ground lights that fanned illumination in intervals along its brick exterior. The garage was large enough to house three cars. He slid one of the doors open to see the gleam of a white Jaguar inside. It appeared to be freshly washed. It bore neither scratches nor dents. When Lynley squatted to scrutinise them, even the tyres looked clean to their treads.

  “Anything?” Havers asked when he returned to her.

  “Jaguar. Recently washed.”

  “There’s mud on the Rover. And the Renault’s rear light—”

  “Yes. I saw it. Make a note.”

  “Done.”

  They went to the front door, which stood between two terra-cotta urns of goldheart ivy. Lynley pushed the bell, waited, then pushed twice more.

  A man’s voice spoke quietly behind the door, not to Lynley but to someone else whose response was muted. The man spoke again and then after a short delay, the door opened.

  He looked them over. His glance took in Lynley’s dinner jacket. His eyes moved to Sergeant Havers and travelled the length of her, from her overgrown haircut to her red high-top trainers. His mouth twitched. “Police, I assume? Since it’s not Halloween.”

  “Mr. Patten?” Lynley said.

  “This way,” he replied.

  He led them across a polished parquet floor beneath a brass candelabrum burning lightbulb flames. He was a good-size man with a decent physique encased in blue jeans and a faded plaid shirt, which he’d rolled up to the elbows. A blue sweater—cashmere by the look of it—was knotted casually round his neck. He had nothing on his feet and, like the rest of him, they were just tanned enough to suggest Mediterranean holidays and not labour in the sun.

  Like most Georgian houses, Patten’s was constructed on a simple plan. The large entry gave way to a long salon, which itself gave way to several closed doors leading to the right and to the left and a bank of french doors opening onto a terrace. It was through these doors that Hugh Patten strode, leading them to a chaise longue, two chairs, and a table that formed a seating area on the flagstones, half in shadow and half in light from the house. Perhaps ten yards from this, the garden sloped down to a lily pond beyond which the lights of London spread out in a vast, glittering ocean without apparent horizon.

  On the table stood four glasses, a tray, and three bottles of The MacAllan, each one stamped with a distillery date: 1965, 1967, 1973. The ’65 was half-empty. The ’73 hadn’t yet been opened.

  Patten poured a quarter glassful of the ’67 and used the glass to gesture to the bottles. “Will you try some? Or is that not allowed? You’re on duty, I take it?”

  “A swallow won’t hurt,” Lynley said. “I’ll try the ’65.”

  Havers chose the ’67. When they had their drinks, Patten made for the chaise longue, and he sat with his right arm curled behind his head and his eyes on the view. “Hell, I love this damn place. Sit down. Take a moment to enjoy yourselves.”

  Light from the far end of the salon filtered through the french doors, lying in neat parallelograms on the flagstones. But as they took their seats, Lynley noticed that Patten had positioned the furniture so that only the top of his head was illuminated. This would allow them to gather one initial and potentially useless fact about the man from his appearance: His dark hair bore that peculiar metallic tinge that sometimes accompanies surreptitious colouring done outside of a hairdressing salon.

  “I’ve heard about Fleming.” Patten lifted his drink, his eyes still on the view. “The word went out around three this afternoon. Guy Mollison phoned. He was letting this summer’s sponsor know. Only the sponsor, he said, so for God’s sake keep it under your hat until the announcement’s official.” Patten shook his head derisively and swirled the whisky in his glass. “Always has England’s interests in mind.”

  “Mollison?”

  “He’ll be chosen captain again, after all.”

  “Are you sure about the time?”

  “I’d just come in from lunch.”

  “Odd that he knew it was Fleming, then. He was phoning before the body was identified,” Lynley said.

  “Before the wife identified it. The police already knew who he was.” Patten turned from the view. “Or didn’t they tell you that much?”

  “You appear to have a great deal of information.”

  “My money’s involved.”

  “More than money, as I understand it.”

  Patten swung himself off the chaise longue. He walked to the edge of the terrace where the flagstones gave way to the gentle slope of lawn. He stood, ostensibly admiring the view.

  “Millions of them.” He gestured with his glass. “Dragging through their lives every day without the slightest thought as to what it’s all about. And by the time they conclude that life might actually be about something besides grubbing for money, eating, eliminating, and coupling in the dark, it’s too late for most of them to do anything about it.”

  “That’s certainly the case for Fleming.”

  Patten kept his eyes on the shimmering lights of London. “He was a rare one, our Ken. He knew there was more than what he had in hand. He meant to have it.”

  “Your wife, for example.”

  Patten made no reply. He tossed back the rest of his whisky and returned to the table. He reached for the unopened 1973 bottle. He broke the seal and removed the cap.

  “How much did you know about your wife and Kenneth Fleming?” Lynley asked.

  Patten returned to
the chaise longue and sat on its edge. He looked amused when Sergeant Havers crinkled through her notebook’s pages to find a clean sheet. “Am I being given the caution for some reason?”

  “That’s rather premature,” Lynley said. “Although if you’d like your solicitor present—”

  Patten laughed. “Francis has heard enough from me this past month to keep him in his favourite port wine for a year. I think I can soldier on without him.”

  “You’ve legal problems, then?”

  “I’ve divorce problems, then.”

  “You knew about your wife’s affair?”

  “I hadn’t a clue until she said she was leaving me. And even then, I didn’t know an affair was at the bottom of things at first. I just thought I hadn’t been giving her enough attention. Ego, if you will.” His mouth curved with a wry smile. “We had one hell of a row when she said she was leaving. I bullied her a bit. ‘Who d’you suppose is going to want to pick up a thick-headed piece of fluff like you, Gabriella? Where in Christ’s name do you think you’ll find another bloke willing to take on a tart without a brain in her head? Do you actually think you can walk out on me and not become what you were when I found you in the first place? A six-quid-an-hour office temp with nothing to recommend her but a somewhat erratic ability to alphabetise?’ It was one of those nasty marital scenes, over dinner at the Capital Hotel. In Knightsbridge.”

  “Odd that she chose a public place for the conversation.”

  “Not odd when you consider Gabriella. It would have appealed to her sense of drama, although I dare say she imagined me sobbing into my consommé rather than losing my temper.”

  “When was this?”

  “The conversation? I don’t know. Sometime early last month.”

  “And she told you she was leaving you for Fleming?”

  “Not on your life. She had a good-size divorce settlement on her mind, and she was clever enough to realise she’d have a bloody rough time getting what she wanted from me financially if I knew she had someone she’d been screwing on the side. She merely defended herself at first. You can imagine how it ran: ‘Fat lot you know, Hugh, I can find another bloke, I can walk out of here as easy as pie, I’m not a piece of mindless fluff to everyone, son.’” Patten set his glass on the flagstones and swung his legs onto the chaise longue. He resumed his earlier position, right arm cushioning his head.