Playing for the Ashes

  Since Saturday morning, she’d had him gather every newspaper for her. She read through each one, but she hadn’t allowed him to throw any of them away. Instead, after Saturday’s visit from the police, she’d had him carry the papers to her room and stack them next to her narrow bed. During the past few nights while he restlessly waited for sleep to come, he watched the striation that her reading light made against the open door of his room and he listened to her quietly turning the newspaper pages as she perused them a second and third time. He knew what she was reading. But he hadn’t known why.

  She’d held her tongue longer than he would have thought possible. She’d always been the sort of person to shoot from the hip and regret it later when it came to speaking her mind, so at first he’d thought her withdrawal merely indicated an uncharacteristic contemplation of the events that had overtaken them all with Kenneth Fleming’s death. She’d finally told him everything because she’d had no choice. He’d been in Kensington on Sunday afternoon. He’d seen and he’d heard. All that was left was his quiet insistence that she share with him the burden of the truth. When she did so, he saw how his plans for his life would be altered. Which, he assumed, was why she hadn’t wanted to tell him in the first place. Because she knew, if she told him, that he would exhort her to come forward and speak. And if he did that, both of them knew that they would then be tied to each other until she died. Neither of them spoke of this consequence of her act of confession. They didn’t need to discuss the obvious.

  Beans and Toast finished their meal and went to Livie’s canvas chair. Beans lay at her side, his head within petting distance should the whimsy take her. Toast lowered himself gingerly in front of her and rested his chin on her heavy-soled shoe. Livie bent over the newspaper. Chris had already read the front page story, so he knew she was noting the relevant words chief suspect in the crime, charges due to be brought, troubled youth with a history of delinquency. She lifted her hand to the pictures, dropped it to the largest one that was centred among the others. In it, the boy lay like a sodden scarecrow in his mother’s arms, with the river lapping round their waists and the soaked DI from Scotland Yard bending over them. As Chris watched, Livie’s hand began to crumple the picture. Whether the action was deliberate or the result of a fibrillation of her muscles, he couldn’t tell.

  He went to her side. He cupped his hand round her cheek and pressed her head to his thigh.

  “It doesn’t mean they’ll actually bring charges,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that, Chris. Does it?”

  “Livie.” His tone was gently admonishing. It said, Lie if you must, but not to yourself.

  “They won’t bring charges.” She drew the photograph into a wrinkled mass beneath the palm of her hand. “And even if they do, what can happen to him? He’s just turned sixteen. What do they do with kids who break the law when they’re only sixteen?”

  “That’s not actually the point, is it?”

  “They send them to Borstal or a place like that. They make them go to school. At school they get trained. They take the GCSE. Or they learn a trade. The paper says he hasn’t been in school, so if someone made him go, if he had no choice because there was nothing else for him to do once he got there…”

  Chris didn’t bother to argue the point. Livie wasn’t a fool. In a moment she would see the sand upon which she was constructing her suppositions, even if she didn’t want to admit to the fact.

  She let the newspaper go. She brought her right arm to her stomach and hugged herself as if she ached inside. Slowly, she lifted her left arm from where it dangled and curved it round Chris’s leg, leaning into him. He stroked her cheek with his thumb.

  “He confessed,” she said, although her words lacked the conviction that had underscored her comments about Borstal. “Chris, he confessed. He was there. The newspapers said he was there. They said the police have evidence to prove it. If he was there and if he confessed, then he must have done it. Don’t you see? Maybe I’m the one who’s misunderstanding what happened.”

  “I don’t think so,” Chris said.

  “Then why?” She grasped his leg harder as she said the second word. “Why have the police kept after him like they have? Why’s he confessed? Why’s he telling the police he killed his dad? It doesn’t make sense. He must know he’s guilty of something. That’s it. It has to be. He’s guilty of something. He just isn’t saying what. Don’t you think that’s what’s happening?”

  “I think what’s happening is he’s lost his dad, Livie. He’s lost him all at once when he wasn’t expecting to lose him at all. Don’t you think he might be reacting to that? Because how does it feel to have your dad alive one day and then have him dead the next without even having a chance to say good-bye?”

  Her arm dropped from his leg. “That’s not fair,” she whispered.

  He persisted. “What did you do, Livie? Shag some bloke you picked up in a pub, didn’t you? He offered you a fiver if you’d let him give you a length and you were drunk that night, weren’t you, and you were feeling so low that you didn’t give a shit what happened to you next. Because your dad was dead and you hadn’t even been allowed to go to his funeral. Isn’t that what happened? Isn’t that how you got started at the game? Weren’t you acting crazy? Because of your dad? Even though you didn’t want to admit it?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “The hurt’s the same. How you deal with the hurt is what’s different.”

  “He’s not saying what he’s saying to deal with hurt.”

  “You don’t know that. And even if you did, what he’s doing and why he’s doing it isn’t the point in the first place.”

  She moved to dislodge his hand from her head. She smoothed out the newspaper and began to refold it. She placed it on the others he’d brought her that morning, but she didn’t make any effort to turn her attention to them. Instead, she raised her head to Browning’s Island. She resumed the position she’d been in when he’d returned from his run with the dogs.

  He said, “Livie, you’ve got to tell them.”

  “I don’t owe them anything. I don’t owe anyone anything.”

  Her face was settled into the stony look she adopted whenever she wanted to dismiss a subject. To argue further was useless at this juncture. He sighed. He touched his fingers to the top of her head, where her chopped-up hair grew wild, like weeds.

  He said, “But it is about owing, whether you like it or not.”

  “I don’t bloody owe them—”

  “Not them. Yourself.”

  Lynley went home first. Denton was in the midst of his afternoon tea, cup in hand, feet up on the drawing room coffee table, head back against the sofa, eyes closed. Andrew Lloyd Webber was blasting from the stereo as Denton bellowed along with Michael Crawford. Lynley wondered idly when Phantom of the Opera would go out of style. Soon wouldn’t be soon enough, he thought.

  He crossed to the stereo and lowered the volume, which left Denton howling, “…the music of the niiiiiiiiiight,” into a moderately silent room.

  “You’re flat,” Lynley said drily.

  Denton jumped to his feet. He said, “Sorry. I was just—”

  “Believe me, I have the general idea,” Lynley interrupted.

  Denton hastily put his teacup on the table. He brushed imaginary crumbs from its surface onto the palm of his hand. He deposited the same onto the tray on which he’d thoughtfully arranged sandwiches, biscuits, and grapes for himself. He said sheepishly, “Tea, m’lord?”

  “I’m on my way out.”

  Denton looked from Lynley to the door. “Haven’t you just come in?”

  “Yes. I’m glad to say I was regaled by only the last twenty seconds of your warbling.” He headed out of the room, saying, “Carry on without me. But, if you will, at a lower volume. Dinner at half past eight. For two.”

  “Two?”

  “Lady Helen’s joining me.”

  Denton brightened visibly. “Is it good news, then? Rather, have you and she…Wh
at I mean to ask is—”

  “Half past eight,” Lynley said.

  “Yes. Right.” Denton made much of gathering up teapot, plates, and cup.

  As he climbed the stairs, Lynley reflected upon the fact that there was no real news to impart about Helen, to Denton or to anyone for that matter. Just a late-night phone call on Wednesday after she’d seen the newspaper stories covering his Tuesday evening run through the Isle of Dogs. She’d said, “My God, Tommy. Are you quite all right?” He’d said, “Yes. Fine. I’ve missed you, darling.” But when she’d begun to go on with a careful, “Tommy. I’ve been thinking since Sunday morning. As you asked me to do,” he discovered that he couldn’t cope with holding a conversation that might touch upon their lives. So he said, “Let’s talk at the weekend, Helen.” And they’d agreed on dinner.

  In his bedroom he went to the wardrobe and began pulling out clothes. Blue jeans, polo shirt, a worn pair of gym shoes, a tatty pair of white socks. He changed from his suit, tossing jacket, trousers, and waistcoat onto the bed. He looked into the cheval mirror on the chest of drawers and studied his reflection. The hair was all wrong. He ran a hand through it, dishevelling as he went. He fetched his car keys from his trousers and left.

  The heavy traffic of late Friday afternoon slowed his progress from Belgravia to Little Venice. It was particularly thick in the vicinity of Hyde Park where a tourist coach had stalled on Park Lane, leaving a trail of vehicles stranded behind it.

  Past the park, conditions weren’t much better on the Edgware Road. Everyone, it seemed, was intent upon leaving the city for the weekend. He couldn’t blame them. The weather was May perfect, an invitation to either the country or the coast. He wished coast or country were his destination. He didn’t savour the thought of the hours to come, what might follow those hours, or how much depended upon them.

  He parked on the south side of Little Venice and, newspapers once again tucked under his arm, he took the long way round Warwick Crescent to the bridge that spanned Regent’s Canal. There he paused. He gazed at the murky water where five Canada geese were paddling in the direction of the pool and Browning’s Island.

  He could see Faraday’s barge quite well from here. Although it was still light out and would be for another two hours, no one was on the deck of the barge and lamps had been lit inside it. They cast bands of yellow-gold against the glass. As he watched, he saw the yellow-gold waver as someone within passed between the window and the light. Faraday, he thought. Lynley would have preferred to meet with Olivia alone, but he knew how unlikely it was that she would ever agree to a meeting without her companion present.

  Faraday met him at the door to the cabin, before Lynley had the chance to knock. He was halfway up the stairs, dressed in running gear, and the dogs were milling round his legs. One scratched at the step upon which Faraday stood. The other yelped.

  Faraday didn’t speak. He merely stepped back down into the cabin of the barge and when the dogs began to hurtle themselves up the stairway towards Lynley and the out-of-doors, he said, “Dogs, no!”

  Lynley descended. Faraday watched, his face chary. His eyes flicked to the newspapers under Lynley’s arm, then to his face.

  “She’s here?” Lynley said.

  A crashing of metal against lino in the galley answered him. Olivia’s voice said, “Damn. Chris, I dropped the rice. It’s gone everywhere. I’m sorry.”

  Faraday called over his shoulder, “Leave it.”

  “Leave it? Goddamn it, Chris, stop treating me like—”

  “The inspector’s here, Livie.”

  Abrupt silence fell. Lynley could sense that Olivia had drawn in her breath and was holding it as she tried to decide how and if she could avoid this final confrontation. After a moment in which Faraday looked towards the galley and the dogs trotted to see what was what, the sound of movement began. The aluminium walker creaked as it took her weight. Shoe soles dragged sloppily against the floor. Olivia grunted, then said, “Chris, I’m stuck. It’s the rice. I can’t get round it.”

  Faraday went to her. He said, “Beans! Toast! Go lie down!” and the sound of their nails against lino faded as they went obediently to the front of the barge.

  Lynley switched on the remaining unlit lamps in the main room. Olivia could still play with the disease if she wished to avoid him, but he wouldn’t allow her any further variations of shadows and light. He looked for a table on which he could lay out the newspapers he’d brought, but aside from Faraday’s worktable against the far wall, there was nothing he could use except one of the armchairs and they wouldn’t do. He laid the papers on the floor.

  “Well?”

  He swung about. Olivia had worked her way to the opening between the galley and the main room. She was slung between the handrails of her walker, her shoulders caving against her weight. Her face appeared at once paste-coloured and shiny, and as she inched forward, she avoided his eyes.

  Faraday trailed her, one hand held up, palm outward, a foot or so from her back. She paused when her lowered eyes caught sight of the newspapers, but she gave another grunt—sounding somewhere between derision and disgust—and struggled carefully round them to place herself in one of the corduroy armchairs. When she lowered herself into it, she kept the walker in front of her, as a line of defence. Faraday started to move it. She said, “No.” And then, “Will you fetch my fags, Chris?”

  She used her lighter against a cigarette that he shook from the packet. She blew out smoke in a thin grey stream. She said to Lynley, “Are you done up for a masquerade, or something?”

  He said, “I’m off duty.”

  She inhaled and blew out another grey stream. Her lips were pursed and made her expression look angry, as perhaps she intended or perhaps she was. “Don’t give me that. Cops’re never off duty.”

  “Perhaps. But I’m not here as a cop.”

  “Then what’re you here as? A private citizen? Visiting the sick in your free time? Don’t make me laugh. A cop’s always a cop, on duty or off.” She cranked her head away from him to Faraday. The other man had gone to sit at the kitchen table, his chair turned round so it faced theirs in the sitting room. “You got the tin over there, Chris? I need the tin.”

  He brought it to her, then retreated once again. She tucked the tin between her legs and tapped a bare millimetre of ash from her cigarette. She was wearing a silver hoop through her nostril and a line of silver studs on one ear, but the rings that had decorated all of her fingers had given way to bracelets stacked along her left arm. These jangled together as she smoked.

  “So what d’you want this time?”

  “Just to talk to you, actually.”

  “Haven’t got the darbies with you? Haven’t made arrangements for my bed-sit in Holloway?”

  “That won’t be necessary, as you can see.”

  She followed his lead by clumsily using her foot to indicate the newspapers, which he’d laid on the floor. She said, “So it’s Borstal, then. Tell me, Inspector. What’s a yob like that get in our current justice system for doing the business on his own dad? A year?”

  “The length of the sentence is up to the court. And the skill of his barrister.”

  “So it’s true.”

  “What?”

  “That the kid did it.”

  “You’ve no doubt read the papers.”

  She lifted the cigarette to her mouth and inhaled, watching him over the glowing tip. “Why’re you here, then? Shouldn’t you be out celebrating?”

  “There’s not much to celebrate in a murder investigation.”

  “Not even when the bad guys are caught?”

  “Not even then. I’ve found the bad guys are rarely as bad as I would like them to be. People kill for all sorts of reasons, but the rarest is malice.”

  She inhaled another time. He could see the wariness in her eyes and her posture. Why’s he here? she was wondering, and her expression told him she was making an attempt to suss him out.

  “People kill for revenge,”
he said easily, as if he were a lecturer in a criminology classroom with nothing at stake. “They kill in a sudden fit of temper. They kill because of avarice. Or in self-defence.”

  “That’s not murder, then.”

  “Sometimes they become embroiled in territorial disputes. Or they attempt to secure justice. Or they need to cover up another crime. Other times they commit an act of desperation, in trying to secure freedom from bondage, for example.”

  She nodded. Behind her, Faraday shifted on his chair. Lynley could see that the black-and-white cat had stolen silently into the galley as he was speaking and leapt to the table where she was weaving between two empty glasses. Faraday didn’t appear to notice the animal.

  “Sometimes they kill because of jealousy,” Lynley said. “Because of thwarted passion, obsession, or love. Sometimes they even kill by mistake. They aim in one direction, but they shoot in another.”

  “Yeah. I expect that happens.” Olivia tapped her cigarette against the tin. She returned it to her mouth and used her hands to pull her legs closer to the chair.

  “That’s what happened in this case,” Lynley said.

  “What?”

  “Someone made a mistake.”

  Olivia gave her attention to the newspapers briefly, seemed to think this was avoidance, and returned her gaze to Lynley. She kept it there as he went on.

  “No one knew that Fleming was going to Kent last Wednesday night. Are you aware of that, Miss Whitelaw?”

  “As I didn’t know Fleming, I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “He told your mother he was going to Greece. He told his teammates much the same. He told his son he had cricket business to take care of. But he didn’t tell anyone he was going to Kent. Not even Gabriella Patten, who was staying at the cottage and whom he no doubt wished to surprise. Curious, isn’t it?”

  “His kid knew he was there. The papers said.”

  “No. The papers said Jimmy confessed.”

  “That’s logic chopping. If he confessed to killing him, he had to know he was there to do the job.”