Playing for the Ashes

  Webberly came to his side. With him, the smell. It permeated his suit jacket and wafted off him in waves. Lynley had no doubt that the superintendent still reeked of it after he’d bathed, brushed his teeth, gargled with mouth wash, and scrubbed his hair.

  “Who’s controlling the information flow?” Webberly asked.

  “I am,” was Lynley’s reply.

  “Don’t cock things up.” Webberly picked up the Daily Mirror, gave it a look, muttered, “Carrion eaters,” and dropped it back onto Lynley’s desk. He struck a match. Lynley raised his head as Webberly applied it to a half-burnt cigar he had removed from his jacket pocket. Lynley looked pained and went back to his papers.

  Webberly moved restlessly round the office. He fingered a stack of folders. He took a copy of a PSI report from the filing cabinet. He replaced it. He sighed. He finally said, “See here, lad. I’m bothered.” Lynley raised his head again. Webberly went on. “You’ve got a pack of newshounds barking at the press office and a second pack prowling round outside. That seems intentional, if you ask me. So where’s it all heading? I ask, mind you, because Hillier’s going to want to know if he and his latest Henry Poole happen to arrive while the pack’s still baying for a fox. They may go after him as well, lad, which as I don’t need to remind you, is a situation we’d do well to head off before it happens.”

  There was truth in that. Sir David Hillier was Chief Superintendent and he liked his CID to work like a well-oiled machine: efficiently, cost effectively, and as silently as possible. The presence of the press would suggest to Hillier a cog in the works or at least in the making. He wouldn’t be pleased.

  “It’s to be expected,” Lynley said, folding The Times and replacing it with the Independent. “Fleming was a sportsman, a national figure. One can’t expect an investigation into his murder to go unaccompanied by numerous queries from the press.”

  A noxious cloud of smoke ballooned between him and his newspapers. Lynley coughed discreetly. Webberly ignored him.

  “You mean that’s what I’m to tell Hillier,” the superintendent said.

  “If he asks.” Lynley leafed open the Independent and said, “Ah,” at the sight of the photograph on page three. The shape of Jimmy Cooper’s head was framed in the window of the Bentley. And in the reflection on the glass winked the discernible and unmistakable silver letters on the revolving sign in front of the Yard.

  Looking over his shoulder, Webberly sighed. “I don’t like this, lad. If you aren’t careful, you’ll sink your own case before it gets to court.”

  “I’m taking care,” Lynley replied. “But it’s a matter of basic chemistry, whether we like it or not.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If you increase the pressure, you alter the temperature,” Lynley said.

  “That’s liquids, Tommy. These are people. They don’t boil.”

  “You’re right. They break.”

  With a breathless “I’ve managed to get the lot, Detective Inspector Lynley,” Dorothea Harriman whipped into the office, a final stack of newspapers over her arm. She said, “Sun, Express, yesterday’s Telegraph, yesterday’s Mail,” and with a pointed look at Webberly, “Sigmund Freud smoked twelve cigars a day. Did you know that, Superintendent Webberly? He ended up with cancer in the roof of his mouth.”

  “But I’ll wager he died with a smile on his face,” Webberly retorted.

  Harriman rolled her eyes expressively. “Anything else, Detective Inspector Lynley?”

  Lynley considered telling her to stop using his full title, but he knew that the directive would be useless. “That’s it, Dee.”

  “Press office wants to know if you plan to speak to the reporters this morning. What shall I tell them?”

  “That I’ll leave the pleasure to my higher-ups today.”

  “Sir?” Sergeant Havers appeared in the doorway, in a crumpled brown suit that looked as if it had also once served hard time as a dish cloth. The contrast between her and Webberly’s secretary—neatly turned out in cream crepe with black piping unmarred by newsprint despite her recent expeditions for Lynley—was wince-producing. “We’ve got the boy.”

  Lynley glanced at his watch. Four minutes after ten. “Fine,” he said, removing his glasses. “I’ll be along directly. Is his solicitor with him?”

  “A bloke called Friskin. He’s saying our Jimmy has nothing more to offer the police at this time.”

  “Is he?” Lynley took his jacket from the back of his chair and the Fleming files from beneath the newspapers. “We’ll see about that.”

  They set off to the interview room, dodging DIs, clerks, secretaries, and messengers along the corridors, Havers bobbing along quickly at Lynley’s side. She was referring to her notebook and ticking off items as she related them to him. Nkata was checking the video shop in Berwick Street, and another DC was snooping round Clapham where the Wednesday-night stag party was allegedly held. There was still no word from Inspector Ardery about her forensic team’s evaluation of the evidence. Should Havers phone Maidstone and rattle the cage?

  “If we don’t hear something by noon,” Lynley said.

  “Right,” Havers said and hurried on her way to the incidents room.

  At the interview room, Friskin was on his feet the moment Lynley opened the door. He strode to meet him, saying, “I’d like a word, Inspector,” and stepped into the corridor where a file clerk nearly ran into him. “I’ve serious reservations about your interview with my client yesterday. Judges Rules require a civilian adult be present. Why weren’t those rules adhered to?”

  “You’ve heard the tape, Mr. Friskin. The boy was offered a solicitor.”

  Friskin’s grey eyes narrowed. “How far do you honestly expect to take that ridiculous confession in a court of law?”

  “At the moment, I’m not concerned with a court of law. I’m concerned with getting to the bottom of Kenneth Fleming’s death. His son is connected to that death—”

  “Circumstantially. Circumstantially only. You haven’t one piece of hard evidence to place my client inside that cottage on Wednesday night and you bloody well know it.”

  “I’d like to hear what he has to say about his movements and his whereabouts on Wednesday night. So far we’ve got an incomplete story. As soon as he completes it, we’ll know where to go. Now may we proceed or would you like to discuss it further?”

  Friskin blocked the door by putting his hand on the knob. “Tell me, Inspector. Are you responsible for this morning’s gauntlet as well? Don’t look at me as if you don’t understand. The press went after my car like feeding sharks. They’d been told we were coming. Who’s throwing out the chum?”

  Lynley unhooked his pocket watch and flipped it open. “They won’t print anything that could cause themselves trouble.”

  Friskin stabbed a finger into his face. “Don’t think I’m a fool, Inspector Lynley. You play it that way and I’ll see to it you don’t get another word from the boy. You can attempt to intimidate a teenager, if you wish, but hear me well. You won’t intimidate me. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, Mr. Friskin. Now may we begin?”

  “As you bloody wish.” Friskin shoved the door open and stalked back to his client.

  Jimmy was slouched where he had been slouched yesterday, picking at the unravelling hem of the same T-shirt he’d been wearing then. Everything about him was the same as it had been before, with the exception of his shoes. He now wore a pair of unlaced trainers in place of the Doc Martens, which had been taken for evidence.

  Lynley offered him a drink. Coffee, tea, milk, juice. Jimmy flipped his head to the left as refusal. Lynley switched on the tape recorder, gave the time, the date, and the people present as he took his own chair.

  “Let me be clear,” Mr. Friskin said, seizing the advantage adroitly. “Jim, you needn’t say anything more. The police are giving you the impression that they’re in charge because they’ve brought you here. That’s to frighten you. That’s to make you believe they’ve got t
he upper hand. The truth is that you haven’t been arrested, charges haven’t been brought, you’ve only been cautioned. And there is a distinct legal difference between each one of those conditions. We’re here to assist the police and to cooperate to the extent that we deem appropriate, but we’re not here at their behest. Do you understand? If you don’t want to talk, you don’t need to talk. You don’t need to tell them anything.”

  Jimmy’s head was down but he gave what went for a nod. Having said his piece, Friskin yanked loose his floral tie and leaned back in his chair. “Then go ahead, Inspector Lynley,” he said, but his expression declared that the inspector would do well to keep his expectations at ground level or below.

  Lynley reviewed everything that Jimmy had told them on the previous day. The phone call from his father, the excuses Fleming had made, the motorbike ride out to Kent, the pub’s empty car park, the footpath to Celandine Cottage, the key from the potting shed. He went over the story Jimmy had told them about setting the fire itself. He concluded with, “You said the cigarette was a JPS. You said you put it in an armchair. That’s as far as we got. Do you recall that, Jim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s return to the lighting of the cigarette,” Lynley said.

  “Wha’ about it, then?”

  “You said you lit it with a match.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me about that please.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “The match. Where did it come from? Did you take matches with you? Or did you stop somewhere along the way to get matches? Or were they in the cottage?”

  Jimmy rubbed his finger beneath his nose. He said, “Wha’s it matter?”

  “I’m not sure it matters at all,” Lynley said easily. “It probably doesn’t. But I’m trying to complete a mental picture of what happened. That’s part of my job.”

  Friskin said, “Have a care, Jim.” The boy pressed his mouth closed.

  Lynley said, “Yesterday when you had a cigarette in here, you used four matches to light it. Do you remember that? I’m wondering if you had that difficulty in the cottage on Wednesday night. Did you light it with one match? Did you use more?”

  “I c’n light a fag with one match. I’m not a spas, am I?”

  “So you used one match. From a book? From a box?” The boy shifted in his chair without answer. Lynley took a different tack. “What did you do with the match when you had the JPS lit? And it was a JPS, wasn’t it?” A nod. “Good. And the match? What happened to it?”

  Jimmy’s eyes flicked from side to side. Remembering the facts, altering them, fabricating them as he went along. Lynley couldn’t yet tell. The boy finally said with a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, “Took it with me, I did. In my pocket.”

  “The match.”

  “Sure. I didn’t want to leave evidence, see?”

  “So you lit the cigarette with a single match, put the match in your pocket and did what with the cigarette?”

  “Do you want to answer that, Jim?” Mr. Friskin interjected. “It isn’t necessary. You can keep silent.”

  “Nah. I c’n tell him. He knows anyways, don’t he?”

  “He doesn’t know anything you don’t tell him.”

  Jimmy worked this one over. Friskin said, “May I have a moment with my client?” Lynley reached forward to switch the tape machine off.

  Jimmy said before Lynley’s hand hit the stop button, “Look, I lit the bloody fag and I put it in the chair. I tol’ you that yesterday.”

  “Which chair was this?”

  “Jim, go easy,” Mr. Friskin cautioned.

  “What d’you mean, which chair?”

  “I mean which chair in which room?”

  Jimmy twisted his hands into the hem of his T-shirt. He lifted the front legs of his chair an inch off the floor. He said under his breath, “Fucking cops,” and Lynley continued with, “We’ve got the kitchen, the dining room, the sitting room, the bedroom. Where exactly was the chair that you set on fire, Jim?”

  “You know which chair it was. You saw it yourself. What’re you asking me all this bloody crap for?”

  “On which side of the chair did you place the cigarette?”

  He made no reply.

  “Did you place it on the left or was it on the right? Or was it in the back? Or beneath the cushion?”

  Jimmy rocked in his chair.

  “And what happened to Mrs. Patten’s animals, by the way? Did you see them in the cottage? Did you take them with you?”

  The boy slammed his chair back to the floor. He said, “You listen. I did it. I chopped Dad good and I’ll get her next. I told you that much. I won’t say nothing more.”

  “Yes, you did say that much yesterday.” On the table, Lynley opened the file he’d carried from his office. From the photographs Inspector Ardery had supplied, he found a single enlargement of the armchair in question. It filled the frame with only the scalloped edge of a window curtain hanging above it. “Here,” Lynley said. “Does this jog your memory?”

  Jimmy hurled a sullen glance at it, saying, “Yeah, tha’s it,” and began to move his eyes away. They stopped, however, at the corner of a photograph that triangled out from beneath the others. In it, a hand dangled limply over the side of a bed. Lynley saw Jimmy swallow as his eyes locked on to the sight of that hand.

  Lynley inched the photograph from the pile, watching the expressions flit across the boy’s face as his father’s body slowly came into view. The hand, the arm, the shoulder, then the side of the face. Kenneth Fleming might have been sleeping save for the deadly flush of his skin and the delicate roseate froth that bubbled from his mouth.

  Jimmy was held by the photograph as if it were the stare of a cobra. His hands twisted once again in his T-shirt.

  Lynley said quietly, “Which chair was it, Jim?”

  The boy said nothing, eyes imprisoned by the picture. Outside the room, work noises ricocheted round the corridor. Inside, the tape machine clicked softly as the tape kept turning in its cassette.

  “What happened on Wednesday night?” Lynley asked. “From start to finish. We need the truth.”

  “I told you. I did.”

  “But you’re not telling me everything, are you? Why is that, Jimmy? Are you afraid?”

  “Of course, he’s afraid,” Friskin said angrily. “Put that photograph away. Turn off the machine. This interview has ended. Now. I mean it.”

  “Do you want to end the interview, Jimmy?”

  The boy managed at last to force his eyes from the picture. He said, “Yeah. I said what I said.”

  Lynley pressed the stop button. He made much of gathering the photographs together, but Jimmy wouldn’t look at them again. Lynley said to Friskin, “We’ll be in touch,” and left the solicitor to usher his client through the reporters and photographers who by this time no doubt lay in wait at every entrance and exit to New Scotland Yard.

  He met Sergeant Havers—toasted crumpet in one hand, plastic cup in the other—on his way to his office. She said past a bulging cheekful of crumpet, “Billingsgate verifies. Jean Cooper was at work Thursday morning. Right on time.”

  “Which was?”

  “Four A.M.”

  “Interesting.”

  “But she’s not there today.”

  “No? Where is she?”

  “Downstairs from what reception tells me. Raising holy hell and trying to get past security. You done with the kid?”

  “For now.”

  “He’s still here?”

  “He’s just left with Friskin.”

  “Too bad,” Havers said. “Ardery phoned in.”

  She waited until they’d got to his office before she passed along Inspector Ardery’s information. The oil on the ivy leaves from Lesser Springburn’s common matched the oil on the fibres found at the cottage. And both matched the oil from Jimmy Cooper’s motorbike.

  “Fine,” Lynley said.

  Havers went on. Jimmy Cooper’s fingerprints matched
the prints on the duck from the potting shed, but—and this was interesting, sir—there appeared to be none at all inside the cottage, none on the window-sills, none on the doors. None of Jimmy’s at least. There were plenty of others.

  Lynley nodded. He tossed the Fleming files onto his desk. He opened the next set of newspapers that he’d not yet examined and reached for his glasses.

  “You’re not looking surprised,” Havers remarked.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Then I suppose you won’t be surprised by the rest.”

  “Which is?”

  “The cigarette. Their expert got in at nine this morning. He’s made the identification, done the photographs, and finished his report.”

  “And?”

  “B and H.”

  “Benson and Hedges?” Lynley swung his desk chair round towards the window. The pedestrian architecture of the Home Office confronted him, but he didn’t see that as much as he saw the application of flame to a tube of tobacco, followed by one face after another, followed by a cirrus of smoke.

  “Definitely,” Havers said. “B and H.” She set her plastic cup on his desk and took the opportunity to flop into one of the chairs in front of it. “That cocks things up for us properly, doesn’t it?”

  He didn’t respond. Instead he began yet another mental assessment of what they knew about motive and means, trying to match them with opportunity.