3
It was seven fifty-five and Detective Inspector Kate Miskin and Detective Inspector Piers Tarrant were drinking together in a riverside pub between Southwark Bridge and London Bridge. This part of the riverside close to Southwark Cathedral was, as always, busy at the end of a working day. The full-size model of Drake’s Golden Hinde moored between the cathedral and the public house had long closed to visitors for the night but there was still a small group slowly circling its black oak sides and gazing up at the fo’c’sle as if wondering, as Kate herself often did, how so small a craft could have weathered that sixteenth-century journey round the world across tumultuous seas.
Both Kate and Piers had had a hectic and frustrating day. When the Special Investigation Squad was temporarily not in operation they were assigned to other divisions. There neither felt at home and both were aware of the unspoken resentment of colleagues who saw Commander Dalgliesh’s special murder squad as uniquely privileged and who found subtle and occasionally more aggressive ways of making them feel excluded. By seven-thirty the noise of the pub had become raucous; they had quickly finished their fish and chips and, with no more than a nod at each other, had moved with their glasses out on to the almost deserted decking. They had stood here together often before but tonight Kate felt that there was something valedictory about this evening’s silent moving out of the frenetic bar into the quiet autumn night. The jangle of voices behind them was muted. The strong river smell drove out the fumes of the beer and they stood together gazing out over the Thames, its dark pulsating skin slashed and shivered with myriad lights. It was low water and a turgid and muddy tide spent itself in a thin edging of dirty foam over the gritty shingle. To the north-west and over the towers of Cannon Street railway bridge the dome of St. Paul’s hung above the city like a mirage. Gulls were strutting about the shingle and suddenly three of them rose in a tumult of wings and swooped shrieking over Kate’s head before settling on the wooden rail of the decking, white-chested against the darkness of the river.
Would this be the last time they drank together? Kate wondered. Piers had only three more weeks to serve before knowing whether his transfer to Special Branch had been approved. It was what he wanted and had schemed for, but she knew that she would miss him. When he had first arrived five years earlier to join the squad she had thought him one of the most sexually attractive officers with whom she had served. The realization was surprising and unwelcome. It certainly wasn’t that she thought him handsome; he was half an inch shorter than she with simian-like arms and a streetwise toughness about the broad shoulders and strong face. His well-shaped mouth was sensitive and seemed always about to curl into a private joke, and there was, too, a faint suggestion of the comedian in the slightly podgy face with its slanting eyebrows. But she had come to respect him as a colleague and a man and the prospect of adjusting to someone else wasn’t welcome. His sexuality no longer disturbed her. She valued her job and her place in the squad too highly to jeopardize it for the temporary satisfaction of a covert affair. Nothing remained secret in the Met for long, and she had seen too many careers and lives messed up to be tempted down that seductively easy path. No affairs were more foredoomed than those founded on lust, boredom or a craving for excitement. It hadn’t been difficult to keep her distance in all but professional matters.
Piers guarded his emotions and his privacy as rigorously as she did hers. After working with him for five years she knew little more about his life outside the Met than she had when he arrived. She knew that he had a flat above a shop in one of the narrow streets in the City and that exploring the Square Mile’s secret alleyways, its clustered churches and mysterious history-laden river was a passion. But she had never been invited to his flat, nor had she invited him to hers, north of the river within half a mile of where they stood. If you were forced to face the worst that men and women can do to each other, if the smell of death seemed sometimes to permeate your clothes, there had to be a place where you could physically as well as psychologically shut the door on everything but yourself. She suspected that AD in his high flat on the river at Queenhithe felt the same. She didn’t know whether to envy or pity the woman who thought she had the power to invade that privacy.
Three more weeks and Piers would probably be gone. Sergeant Robbins had already left, his overdue promotion to Inspector having at last come through. It seemed to Kate that their companionable group, held together by such a delicate balance of personalities and shared loyalties, was falling apart.
She said, “I’ll miss Robbins.”
“I won’t. That oppressive rectitude had me worried. I could never forget that he’s a lay preacher. I felt under judgement. Robbins is too good to be true.”
“Oh well, the Met isn’t exactly hampered by an excess of rectitude.”
“Come off it, Kate! How many rogue officers do you know? We deal with them. Odd how the public always expect the police to be notably more virtuous than the society from which they’re recruited.”
Kate was silent for a moment, then said, “Why Special Branch? It’s not going to be easy for them to assimilate you at your grade. I’d have thought you’d have tried for MI5. Isn’t this your chance to join the public-school toffs, not the plodding plebs?”
“I’m a police officer. If I ever chuck it, it won’t be for MI5. I could be tempted by MI6.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “Actually I tried for the Secret Service after I left Oxford. My tutor thought it might suit and he set up the usual discreet interviews. The assessment board thought otherwise.”
Coming from Piers it was an extraordinary admission and Kate knew from his overcasual voice what it had cost him to make it. Without looking at him, she said, “Their loss, the Met’s gain. And now we get Francis Benton-Smith. D’you know him?”
Piers said, “Vaguely. You’re welcome to him. Too good-looking—Dad’s English, Mum’s Indian, hence the glamour. Mum’s a paediatrician, Dad teaches at a comprehensive. He’s ambitious. Clever, but a bit too obviously on the make. He’ll call you Ma’am at every opportunity. I know the type. They come into the service because they think they’re educationally over-qualified and will shine among the plodders. You know the theory: take a job where you’ll be cleverer than the others from the start and with luck you’ll climb up on their necks.”
Kate said, “That’s unfair. You can’t possibly know. Anyway, you’re describing yourself. Isn’t that why you joined? You were educationally over-qualified. What about that Oxford degree in theology?”
“I’ve explained that. It was the easiest way to get into Oxbridge. Now, of course, I would just transfer to a deprived inner-city state school and with luck the government would make Oxbridge take me. Anyway, you’re not likely to suffer Benton for long. Robbins’s promotion wasn’t the only one overdue. Rumour has it you’ll make Chief Inspector within months.”
She had heard the rumour herself, and wasn’t this what she too had wanted and worked for? Wasn’t it ambition that had lifted her from that barricaded seventh-floor flat in an inner-city block to a flat which had once seemed the height of achievement? The Met she served in today wasn’t the Force that she had joined. It had changed, but so had England, so had the world. And she too had changed. After the Macpherson Report she had become less idealistic, more cynical about the machinations of the political world, more guarded in what she said. The young Detective Constable Miskin had been naÏvely innocent, but something more valuable than innocence had been lost. But the Met still held her allegiance and Adam Dalgliesh her passionate loyalty. She told herself that nothing could stay the same. The two of them would probably soon be the only original members of the Special Investigation Squad, and how long might he stay?
She said, “Is anything wrong with AD?”
“How do you mean, wrong?”
“It’s just that in the last months I’ve thought he was under more stress than usual.”
“Do you wonder? He’s a kind of ADC to the Commissioner. His finger’s in e
very pie. What with anti-terrorism, the committee on detective training, constant criticism of the Met’s inadequacies, the Burrell case, the relationship with MI5 and everlasting meetings with the great and the good—you name it, he’s under strain. We all are. He’s used to it. He probably needs it.”
“I wondered whether that woman was playing him up, the one from Cambridge. The girl we met on the St. Anselm’s case.”
She had kept her voice casual, her eyes on the river, but she could imagine Piers’s long amused glance. He would know that she might be reluctant to speak the name—and, for God’s sake, why?—but that she hadn’t forgotten it.
“Our beautiful Emma? What do you mean by ‘playing him up’?”
“Oh don’t try to be clever, Piers! You know damn well what I mean.”
“No I don’t, you could mean anything from criticizing his poetry to refusing to go to bed with him.”
“Do you think they are—going to bed?”
“For God’s sake, Kate! How do I know? And have you thought that you might have got it the wrong way round? AD might be playing her up. I don’t know about bed, but she doesn’t refuse to dine with him, if that’s of any interest to you. I saw them a couple of weeks ago at the Ivy.”
“How on earth did you get a table at the Ivy?”
“It wasn’t so much me as the girl I was with. I was sinning above my station—and, regrettably, above my income. Anyway, there they were at a corner table.”
“An odd coincidence.”
“Not really. That’s London. Sooner or later you meet everyone you know. That’s what makes one’s sex life so complicated.”
“Did they see you?”
“AD did, but I was too tactful and too well brought-up to intrude without an invitation—which I didn’t get. She had her eyes on AD. I’d say that at least one of them was in love, if that gives you any comfort.”
It didn’t, but before Kate could reply, her mobile phone rang. She listened carefully and in silence for half a minute, said, “Yes sir. Piers is with me. I understand. We’re on our way,” and slipped the phone back in her pocket.
“I take it that was the boss.”
“Suspected murder. A man burned to death in his car at the Dupayne Museum off Spaniards Road. We’re to take the case. AD is at the Yard and he’ll meet us at the museum. He’ll bring our murder bags.”
“Thank God we’ve eaten. And why us? What’s special about this death?”
“AD didn’t say. Your car or mine?”
“Mine is faster but yours is here. Anyway, with London traffic practically grid-locked and the mayor mucking about with the traffic lights, we’d be quicker on bicycles.”
She waited while he took their empty glasses back into the pub. How odd it was, she thought. A single man had died and the squad would spend days, weeks, maybe longer deciding the how and why and who. This was murder, the unique crime. The cost of the investigation wouldn’t be counted. Even if they made no arrest, the file wouldn’t be closed. And yet at any minute terrorists might rain death on thousands. She didn’t say this to Piers when he returned. She knew what his reply would be. Coping with terrorists isn’t our job. This is. She gave a last glance across the river and followed him to the car.
4
It was a very different arrival from his first visit. As Dalgliesh turned the Jaguar into the drive even the approach seemed disconcertingly unfamiliar. The smudgy illumination from the row of lampposts intensified the surrounding darkness and the curdle of bushes seemed denser and taller, closing in on a drive narrower than he remembered. Behind their impenetrable darkness frail tree trunks thrust their half-denuded branches into the blue-black night sky. As he made the final turn the house came into sight, mysterious as a mirage. The front door was closed and the windows were black rectangles except for a single light in the left ground-floor room. Further progress was barred by tape and there was a uniformed police officer on duty. Dalgliesh was obviously expected: the officer needed only to glance briefly at the warrant card proffered through the window before saluting and moving the posts aside.
He needed no directions to the site of the fire. Although no flare lit up the darkness, small clouds of acrid smoke still wafted to the left of the house and there was an unmistakable fumy stench of burnt metal, stronger even than the autumnal bonfire smell of the scorched wood. But first he turned right and drove to the car-park behind its concealing hedge of laurels. The drive to Hampstead had been slow and tedious and he wasn’t surprised to see that Kate, Piers and Benton-Smith had arrived before him. He saw too that other cars were parked, a BMW saloon, a Mercedes 190, a Rover and a Ford Fiesta. It looked as if the Dupaynes and at least one member of the staff had arrived.
Kate reported as Dalgliesh took the murder bags and the four sets of protective clothing from the car. She said, “We got here about five minutes ago, sir. The lab’s Fire Investigation Officer is at the scene. The photographers were leaving as we arrived.”
“And the family?”
“Mr. Marcus Dupayne and his sister, Miss Caroline Dupayne, are in the museum. The fire was discovered by the housekeeper, Mrs. Tallulah Clutton. She’s in her cottage at the rear of the house with Miss Muriel Godby, the secretary–receptionist. We haven’t spoken to them yet, except to say that you’re on your way.”
Dalgliesh turned to Piers. “Tell them, will you, that I’ll be with them as soon as possible. Mrs. Clutton first, then the Dupaynes. In the meantime you and Benton-Smith had better make a quick search of the grounds. It’s probably a fruitless exercise and we can’t search properly until morning, but it had better be done. Then join me at the scene.”
He and Kate walked together to the site of the fire. Twin arc-lights blazed on what was left of the garage and, moving closer, he saw the scene as garishly lit and staged as if it were being filmed. But this was how a murder scene, once lit, always looked to him; essentially artificial as if the murderer, in destroying his victim, had robbed even the surrounding commonplace objects of any semblance of reality. The fire service with their vehicles had gone, the engines leaving deep ruts in a grass verge flattened by the heavy coils of the hoses.
The Fire Investigation Officer had heard their approach. He was over six feet tall, with a pale, craggy face and a thick bush of red hair. He was wearing a blue overall and Wellington boots and had a face mask slung round his neck. With his blaze of hair which even the arc-lights couldn’t eclipse, and the strong bony face, he stood for a moment as rigidly hieratical as some mythical guardian of the gateway to Hell, needing only a gleaming sword to complete the illusion. Then it faded as he came forward with vigorous strides and wrenched Dalgliesh’s hand.
“Commander Dalgliesh? Douglas Anderson, Fire Investigation Officer. This is Sam Roberts, my assistant.” Sam proved to be a girl, slight and with a look of almost childish intentness under a cap of dark hair.
Three figures, booted, white-overalled but with the hoods flung back, were standing a little apart. Anderson said, “I think you know Brian Clark and the other SOCOs.”
Clark raised an arm in acknowledgement but didn’t move. Dalgliesh had never known him to shake hands even when the gesture would have been appropriate. It was as if he feared that any human contact would transfer trace elements. Dalgliesh wondered whether guests to dinner with Clark were at risk of having their coffee cups labelled as exhibits or dusted for prints. Clark knew that a murder scene should be left undisturbed until the investigating officer had seen it and the photographers had recorded it, but he was making no attempt to conceal his impatience to get on with his job. His two colleagues, more relaxed, stood a little behind him like garbed attendants waiting to play their part in some esoteric rite.
Dalgliesh and Kate, white-coated and gloved, moved towards the garage. What remained of it stood some twenty yards from the wall of the museum. The roof had almost completely gone but the three walls were still standing and the open doors bore no marks of fire. It had once been backed by a belt of saplings and slim
trees, but now nothing remained of them but jagged spurs of blackened wood. Within eight yards of the garage was a smaller shed with a water tap to the right of the door. Surprisingly the shed was only singed by the fire.
With Kate standing silently at his side, Dalgliesh stood for a moment at the garage entrance and let his eyes move slowly over the carnage. The scene was shadowless, objects hard-edged, the colours drained in the power of the arc-lights, except for the front of the car’s long bonnet which, untouched by the flames, shone as richly red as if newly painted. The flames had flared upwards to catch the corrugated plastic roof and he could see through the smoke-blackened edges the night sky and a sprinkling of stars. To his left and some four feet from the driver’s seat of the Jaguar was a square window, the glass blackened and cracked. The garage was small, obviously a converted wooden shed, and low-roofed with only about four feet of space each side of the car and no more than a foot between the front of the bonnet and the double doors. The door to Dalgliesh’s right had been pulled wide open; the left, on the driver’s side of the car, looked as though someone had started to close it. There were bolts to the top and bottom of the left-hand door and the right door was fitted with a Yale lock. Dalgliesh saw that the key was in place. To his left was a light switch and he saw that the bulb had been taken out of its socket. In the angle of the half-closed door and the wall was a five-litre petrol can lying on its side and untouched by the fire. The screw-top was missing.
Douglas Anderson was standing a little behind the half-opened door of the car, watchful and silent as a chauffeur inviting them to take their seats. With Kate, Dalgliesh moved over to the body. It was slumped back in the driver’s seat and turned slightly to the right, the remains of the left arm close to the side but the right flung out and fixed in a parody of protest. Through the half-closed door he could see the ulna, and a few burnt fragments of cloth adhered to a thread of muscle. All that could burn on the head had been destroyed and the fire had extended to just above the knees. The charred face, the features obliterated, was turned towards him and the whole head, black as a spent match, looked unnaturally small. The mouth gaped in a grimace, seeming to mock the head’s grotesquerie. Only the teeth, gleaming white against the charred flesh, and a small patch of cracked skull proclaimed the corpse’s humanity. From the car came the smell of burnt flesh and charred cloth and, less persuasive but unmistakable, the smell of petrol.