Lynley released a slow breath, realising that he'd been holding it the entire time that Frances had been speaking. He felt so far out of his depth that drowning looked like the only option. He glanced at his wife for some sort of guidance and saw that she'd raised her fingers to her lips. And he knew it was sorrow that Helen felt, sorrow for the words that had gone too long unspoken between the Webberlys. He found himself wondering what was actually worse: years of enduring the iron maiden of imagining or seconds of experiencing the quick death of knowing.
Helen said, “Frances, if Malcolm hadn't loved you—”
“Duty.” Frances began to refold the handkerchief carefully. She said nothing more.
Lynley said, “I think that's part of love, Frances. It's not the easy part. It's not that first rush of excitement: wanting and believing something's been written in the stars and aren't we the lucky ones because we've just looked heavenwards and got the message. It's the part that's the choice to stay the course.”
“I gave him no choice,” Frances said.
“Frances,” Helen murmured, and Lynley could tell from her voice just exactly how much her next words cost her, “believe me when I say that you don't have that power.”
Frances looked at Helen then, but of course could not see beyond the structure that Helen had built to live in the world she'd long ago created for herself: the fashionable haircut, the carefully tended and unblemished skin, the manicured hands, the perfect slim body weekly massaged, in the clothes designed for women who knew what elegance meant and how to use it. But as to seeing Helen herself, as to knowing her as the woman who'd once taken the quickest route out of the life of a man she'd dearly loved because she could not cope with staying a course that had altered too radically for her resources and her liking … Frances Webberly did not know that Helen and thus could not know that no one understood better than Helen that one person's condition—mental, spiritual, psychological, social, emotional, physical, or any combination thereof—could never really control the choices another person made.
Lynley said, “You need to know this, Frances. Malcolm didn't throw himself into traffic. Eric Leach phoned him to tell him about Eugenie Davies, yes, and I expect you read about her death in the paper.”
“He was distraught. I thought he'd forgotten about her and then I knew he hadn't. All these years.”
“Not forgotten her, true,” Lynley said, “but not for the reasons you think. Frances, we don't forget. We can't forget. We don't walk away untouched when we hand our documents to the CPS. It doesn't work that way. But the fact of our remembering is just that: because that's what the mind does. It just remembers. And if we're lucky, the remembering doesn't turn into nightmares. But that's the best we can hope for. That's part of the job.”
Lynley knew he was walking a fine line between truth and falsehood. He knew that whatever Webberly had experienced in his affair with Eugenie Davies and in the years that had followed that affair probably went far beyond mere memory. But that couldn't be allowed to matter at the moment. All that mattered was that the man's wife understand one part of the last forty-eight hours. So he repeated that part for her. “Frances, he didn't throw himself into the traffic. He was hit by a car. He was hit deliberately. Someone tried to kill him. And within the next few hours or days, we're going to know if that someone succeeded, because he may well die. He's had a serious heart attack as well. You've been told that, haven't you?”
A sound escaped her. It was something between the excruciating groan of a woman giving birth and the fearful moan of an abandoned child. “I don't want Malcolm to die,” she said. “I'm so afraid.”
“You're not alone in that,” Lynley replied.
The fact that she had an appointment at a women's shelter was what kept Yasmin Edwards steady between the time she phoned the pager number on Constable Nkata's card and the time she was able to meet him at the shop. He'd said he'd have to drive down from Hampstead to see her, so he couldn't swear what time he'd get there but he would come as soon as possible, madam, and in the meantime if she began to worry that he wasn't coming at all or he'd forgotten or had got waylaid in some way, she could ring his pager again and he'd let her know where he was on the route, if that would suit her. She'd said she could come to him or meet him somewhere. She said, in fact, she'd prefer it that way. He'd said no, it was best that he come to her.
She'd nearly changed her mind then. But she thought about Number Fifty-five, about Katja's mouth closing over hers, about what it meant that Katja could still slide down and down and down to love her. And she said, “Right. I'll be at the shop, then.”
In the meantime, she kept her appointment at the shelter in Camberwell. Three sisters in their thirties, an Asian lady, and an old bag married for forty-six years were the residents. Among them were shared countless bruises along with two black eyes, four split lips, a stitched-up cheek, a broken wrist, one dislocated shoulder, and a pierced eardrum. They were like beaten dogs recently let off the chain: cowering and undecided between flight and attack.
Do not let anyone do this to you, Yasmin wanted to shout at the women. The only thing that kept her from shouting was the scar on her own face and her badly set nose, both of which told the tale of what she herself had once allowed to be done to her.
So she flashed them a smile, said, “C'mon over here, you gorgeous tomatoes.” She spent two hours at the women's shelter, with her make-up and her colour swatches, with her scarves, her scents, and her wigs. And when she finally left them, three of the residents had got used to smiling again, the fourth had actually managed a laugh, and the fifth had begun to raise her eyes from the floor. Yasmin considered it a good day's work.
She returned to the shop. When she arrived, the cop was striding up and down in front of it. She saw him check his watch and try to peer round the metal security door that she lowered over the shop front whenever she wasn't there. Then he looked at his watch again and took his beeper from his belt and tapped it.
Yasmin pulled up in the old Fiesta. When she opened her door, the detective was there before she put a foot on the pavement.
“This some kind of joke?” he demanded. “You think messing in a murder 'vestigation's something you can have fun with, Missus Edwards?”
“You said you didn't know how long—” Yasmin stopped herself. What was she making excuses for? She said, “I had a 'pointment. You want to help me unload the car or you want to chew my bum?” She thrust out her chin as she spoke, hearing her final words for their double meaning only after she'd said them. Then she wouldn't give him the pleasure of her embarrassment. She faced him squarely—tall woman, tall man—and waited for him to go for the crude. Hey, baby, I'll chew on more'n your bum, you give me the chance.
But he didn't do that. Wordlessly, he went to the Fiesta's hatchback and waited for her to come round and unlock it.
She did so. She shoved her cardboard box of supplies into his arms and topped it with the case of lotions, make-up, and brushes. Then she smacked the hatch of the Fiesta closed and strode to the shop, where she unlocked the metal door and yanked it upwards, using her shoulder against it, as she usually did when it stuck midway.
He said, “Hang on,” and put his burdens on the ground. Before she could stop it from happening, his hands—broad and flat and black with pale oval nails neatly trimmed to the tips of his fingers—planted themselves on either side of her. He heaved upwards as she pushed, and with a sound like eeeerrreeek of metal on metal, the door gave way. He stayed where he was, right behind her, too close by half, and said, “That needs seeing to. 'Fore much longer, you won't be able to slide it at all.”
She said, “I c'n cope,” and she grabbed up the metal box of her make-up because she wanted to be doing something and because she wanted him to know she could manage the supplies, the door, and the shop itself just fine on her own.
But once inside, it was like before. He seemed to fill the place. He seemed to make it his. And that irritated her, especially since he did n
othing at all to give the impression that he meant to intimidate or at least to dominate. He merely set the cardboard box onto the counter, saying gravely, “I wasted nearly an hour waiting for you, Missus Edwards. I hope you 'ntend to make it worth my while now you're finally here.”
“You getting nothing—” She swung round. She'd been stowing her make-up case as he spoke, and her reaction was reflex, pure as the bell and those Russian dogs.
Now don't go playing Miss Ice Cubes, Ya s. Girl got blessed with a body like yours, she need to use it to her bes' a'vantage.
So You getting nothing off me was what she'd intended to hurl at the cop. No kiss-and-don't-tell by the airing cupboard, no grope in the lap at the dinner table, no peeling back blouses and easing down trousers and no no no hands separating rigid legs. Come on, Yas. Don't fight me on this.
She felt her face freeze. He was watching her. She saw his gaze on her mouth, and she watched it travel to her nose. She was marked by what went for love from a man, and he read those marks and she would never be able to forget it.
He said, “Missus Edwards,” and she hated the sound and she wondered why she'd kept Roger's name. She'd told herself she'd done it for Daniel, mother and son tied together by a name when they couldn't be tied by anything else. But now she wondered if she'd really done it to flay herself, not as a constant reminder of the fact that she'd killed her husband but as a way of doing penance for having hooked up with him in the first place.
She'd loved him, yes. But she'd soon learned that there was nothing whatsoever to be gained from loving. Still, the lesson hadn't stuck, had it? For she'd loved again and look where she was now: facing down a cop who would see this time the very same killer but an entirely different sort of corpse.
“You had something to tell me.” DC Winston Nkata reached into the pocket of the jacket that fit him hand-to-a-leather-glove, and he brought out a notebook, the same one he'd been writing in before, with the same propelling pencil clipped to it.
Seeing this, Yasmin thought of the lies he'd already recorded and how bad it was going to go for her if she decided to clean house now. And the image of cleaning house opened her mind to the rest of it: how people could look on a person and because of her face, her speech, and the way she decided to carry herself, how people could reach a conclusion about her and cling to it in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and why? Because people were just so desperate to believe.
Yasmin said, “She wasn't at home. We weren't watching the telly. She wasn't there.”
She saw the detective's chest slowly deflate, as if he'd been holding his breath since the moment he'd arrived, betting against his own respiration that Yasmin Edwards had paged him that morning with the express intention of betraying her lover.
“Where was she?” he asked. “She tell you, Missus Edwards? What time d'she get home?”
“Twelve forty-one.”
He nodded. He wrote steadily and tried to look cool, but Yasmin could see it all happening in his head. He was doing the maths. He was matching the maths to Katja's lies. And underneath that, he was celebrating the fact that his gamble had won him the jackpot he'd bet for.
21
HER FINAL WORDS to him were, “And let's not forget, Eric. You wanted the divorce. So if you can't cope with the fact that I've got Jerry now, don't let's pretend it's Esmé’s problem.” And she'd looked so flaming triumphant about it all, so filled with look-at-me-I've-found-someone-who-actually-wants-me-boyo that Leach actually found himself cursing his twelve-year-old daughter—God forgive him—for being capable of manipulating him into talking to her mother in the first place. “I've got a right to see other people,” Bridget had asserted. “You were the one who gave it to me.”
“Look, Bridg,” he'd said. “It's not that I'm jealous. It's that Esmé’s in a twist because she thinks you'll remarry.”
“I intend to remarry. I want to remarry.”
“All right. Fine. But she thinks you've already chosen this bloke and—”
“What if I have? What if I've decided it feels good to be wanted? To be with a man who doesn't have a thing about breasts that droop a bit and lines of character on my face. That's what he calls them, by the way, lines of character, Eric.”
“This is on the rebound,” Leach tried to tell her.
“Do not inform me what this is. Or we'll get into what your behaviour is: midlife idiocy, extended immaturity, adolescent stupidity. Shall I go on? No? Right. I didn't think so.” And she turned on her heel and left him. She returned to her classroom in the primary school, where ten minutes before Leach had motioned to her from the doorway, having dutifully stopped to speak to the head teacher first, asking if he could have a word, please, with Mrs. Leach. The head teacher had remarked how irregular it was that a parent should come calling on one of the teachers in the midst of the school day, but when Leach had introduced himself to her, she'd become simultaneously cooperative and compassionate, which told Leach that the word was out not only about the pending divorce but also about Bridget's new love interest. He felt like saying, “Hey. I don't give a flying one that she's got a new bloke,” but he wasn't so sure that was the case. Nonetheless, the fact of the new bloke at least allowed him to feel less guilty about being the one who'd wanted to separate and, as his wife stalked off, he tried to keep his mind fixed on that.
He said, “Bridg, listen. I'm sorry,” to her retreating back, but he didn't say it very loudly, he knew she couldn't hear him, and he wasn't sure what he was apologising about anyway.
Still, as he watched her retreat, he did feel the blow to his pride. So he tried to obliterate his regrets about how they'd parted, and he told himself he'd done the right thing. Considering how quickly she'd managed to replace him, there wasn't much doubt their marriage had been dead long before he'd first mentioned the fact.
Yet he couldn't help thinking that some couples managed to stay the course no matter what happened to their feelings for each other. Indeed, some couples swore that they were “absolutely desperate to grow together,” when all the time the only real glue that kept them adhered to each other was a bank account, a piece of property, shared offspring, and an unwillingness to divide up the furniture and the Christmas decorations. Leach knew men on the force who were married to women they'd loathed forever. But the very thought of putting their children, their possessions—not to mention their pensions—at risk had kept them polishing their wedding rings for years.
Which thought led Leach ineluctably to Malcolm Webberly.
Leach had known that something was up from the phone calls, from the notes scribbled, shoved into envelopes, and posted, from the oft distracted manner in which Webberly engaged in a conversation. He'd had his suspicions. But he'd been able to discount them because he hadn't known for certain till he saw them together, seven years after the case itself, when quite by chance he and Bridget had taken the kids to the Regatta because Curtis'd had a project at school—The Culture and Traditions of Our Country … Jesus … Leach even remembered the bloody name of it!—and there they were, the two of them, standing on that bridge that crossed the Thames into Henley, his arm round her waist and the sunlight on them both. He didn't know who she was at first, didn't remember her, saw only that she was good-looking and that they comprised that unit which calls itself In Love.
How odd, Leach thought now, to recall what he'd felt at the sight of Webberly and his Lady Friend. He realised that he'd never considered his superior officer a real breathing man before that moment. He realised that he'd seen Webberly in rather the same manner as a child sees a much older adult. And the sudden knowledge that Webberly had a secret life felt like the blow an eight-year-old would take should he walk in on his dad going at it with a lady from the neighbourhood.
And she'd looked like that, the woman on the bridge, familiar like a lady from the neighbourhood. In fact, she looked so familiar to Leach that for a time he expected to see her at work—perhaps a secretary he'd not yet met?—or maybe emerging from an off
ice on the Earl's Court Road. He'd reckoned that she was just someone Webberly had happened to meet, happened to strike up a conversation with, happened to discover an attraction to, happened to say to himself “Oh, why not, Malc? No need to be such a bloody Puritan,” about.
Leach couldn't remember when or how he'd sussed out that Webberly's lover was Eugenie Davies. But when he had done, he hadn't been able to keep mum any longer. He'd used his outrage as an excuse for speaking, no little boy fearful that Dad would leave home again but a full-grown adult who knew right from wrong. My God, he'd thought, that an officer from the murder squad—that his own partner—should cross the line like that, should take the opportunity to gratify himself with someone who'd been traumatised, victimised, and brutalised both by tragic events and the aftermath of those events…. It was inconceivable.
Webberly had been, if not deaf to the subject, at least willing to hear him out. He hadn't made a comment at all till Leach had recited every stanza of the ode to Webberly's unprofessional conduct that he'd been composing. Then he'd said, “What the hell do you think of me, Eric? It wasn't like that. This didn't start during the case. I hadn't seen her for years when we began to … Not till … It was at Paddington Station. Completely by chance. We spoke there for ten minutes or less, between trains. Then later … Hell. Why am I explaining this? If you think I'm out of order, put yourself up for transfer.”