“I don’t need to twist it. I can see it straight on.”
“Can you?” he asked. “Then see the rest. Had you put me in the picture, she might be alive. She might be at home. She might have walked away from her abduction and not ended up floating dead in a canal.”
“Simply because I told you the truth?”
“That would have been a fairly good start.”
“It wasn’t an option.”
“It was the single option that might have saved her life.”
“Was it?” She backed away, regarding him with a look that he could only interpret as pitying. She said, “This is going to come as a surprise to you, Tommy, and I almost hate to be the one to inform you, considering what a blow it’s going to be: You are not omnipotent and despite your tendency towards acting the part, you are also not God. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to see if Deborah’s all right.” Her hand reached for the knob of the study door.
“We’re not finished,” he said.
“Perhaps you aren’t,” she pointed out. “But I am. Entirely.”
She left him facing the door’s dark panels. He stared at them. He worked to control the overpowering urge to kick in the wood. He found that at some point during their conversation his hands had clenched with the need to strike. And he felt that need now, a longing to drive his fist through the wall or a window, to feel pain as much as to cause it.
He forced himself to move away from the study. He forced himself to make his way to the front door. Outside, he forced himself to breathe.
He could almost hear Sergeant Havers’ assessment of his interview with his friends: Nice job, Inspector. I even took notes. Accusing, insulting, and alienating everyone. A brilliant way to ensure their cooperation.
But what else had he been supposed to do? Should he have congratulated them for their inept meddling? Should he have politely informed them of the child’s demise? Should he have even used that fatuous, innocuous word—demise—to spare them lest they feel what they bloody damn well ought to feel at the moment: responsible?
They did the best they knew, Havers would have said. You heard Simon’s report. They followed every lead. They tracked her movements on Wednesday. They showed her picture round Marylebone. They talked to the people who saw her last. What more would you have done, Inspector?
Done background checks. Tapped telephone lines. Put a dozen detective constables into Marylebone. Given the girl’s photograph to the television news and asked for the public to report sightings of her. Entered her name and her description into the PNC. All that just for a start.
And if the parents didn’t want you to make that start? Havers would have demanded. What then, Inspector? What would you have done had they tied your hands as they tied Simon’s?
But they wouldn’t have been able to tie Lynley’s hands. One didn’t phone the police, report a crime, and then determine the manner in which the police would investigate it. Surely St. James—if not Helen and Deborah—knew that much. It had been within their power from the very first to effect a completely different sort of investigation to the one they had engaged in. And all of them knew it.
But they’d given their word…
Lynley could hear Havers’ argument, but it was growing faint. And her last point was the easiest to dismiss. Their word counted for nothing when it was weighed against the life of a child.
Lynley descended the steps to the pavement. He felt the release that came from knowing he was in the right. He walked back to the Bentley and was in the process of unlocking it when he heard his name called.
St. James was approaching him. His expression, Lynley saw, was unreadable and when he reached the car, he merely extended a manila envelope, saying, “You’ll want these, I think.”
“What is it?”
“A school photograph of Charlotte. The kidnapping notes. The fingerprints from the tape recorder. The prints I took from Luxford and Stone.”
Lynley nodded. He accepted the material. In doing so, he found that, despite his belief in the inherent justice of his censure of his friends and of the woman he loved, he felt a discomfort when faced with St. James’s deliberate courtesy and all which that courtesy implied. This discomfort was an irritant to him, reminding him as it did that there were obligations in his life that were often messy, ones that went beyond the mere confines of his job.
He looked away, towards the top of the street where Cheyne Row made a jog at whose elbow sat an ancient brick house in sad need of renovation. It could have been worth a fortune had someone cared enough to see to its repair. As it was, it was nearly uninhabitable.
He said with a sigh, “Damn it, Simon. What would you have had me do?”
“Have some faith, I suppose.”
Lynley turned back to him. But before he could comment upon the remark, St. James went on, returning once again to a tone that conveyed nothing other than an adherence to the protocol called for by Lynley’s earlier demand for information. “I’d forgotten one thing. Webberly’s incorrect. The police in Marylebone have been involved, however tangentially. A PC ran off a vagrant from Cross Keys Close the same day that Charlotte Bowen was taken.”
“A vagrant?”
“He may have been staying in some squats on George Street. I think you’ll need to check him out.”
“I see. Is that it?”
“No. Helen and I think he may not have been a vagrant at all.”
“If not a vagrant, then what?”
“Someone who might have been recognised. Someone in disguise.”
15
RODNEY ARONSON SLIPPED the wrapper from his Kit Kat bar. He broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth. Blissfully, he guided his tongue through an exploration of the delicious little nodes and crevices created by the ingenious conjunction of cacao seeds and wafer. This afternoon’s Kit Kat, whose consumption Rodney had postponed till his body’s fiendish need for chocolate could no longer be ignored, was almost enough to make him put Dennis Luxford out of his mind. But not quite.
At the conference table in his office, Luxford was in the midst of examining two alternative dummies of tomorrow’s front page, which Rodney had just delivered to him, per Luxford’s request. As he studied them, The Source editor rubbed his right thumb along the crooked scar on his chin, while his left thumb followed the shape of his bicep beneath his white shirt. He was the perfect picture of contemplation, but the information Rodney Aronson had managed to assemble in the past few days prompted him to wonder how much of Luxford’s performance was being manufactured spontaneously for his deputy editor’s benefit.
Of course, the truth was that The Source editor didn’t know that Rodney had been playing the hound to Luxford’s fox, so his contemplation of the two dummy front pages might be genuine enough. Still, the fact of the two front pages’ very existence brought Luxford’s motivations into question. He could no longer argue that the Larnsey-rent boy story was hot enough to take up front page space. Not with the news of the Bowen child’s death reverberating through the canyons of Fleet Street ever since the official statement had been handed down from the Home Office this afternoon.
Rodney still could see the raised eyebrows and dropped jaws among his colleagues during the news meeting when Luxford had said what he wanted despite the fast-breaking news of the Bowen death: a dummy front page running a year-old picture of Daffy Dukane in tête-à-tête with MP Larnsey, which one of the photo historians had managed to unearth after a prolonged archaeological dig through the newspaper’s photo files. Perhaps in direct response to his colleagues’ roar of incredulous protest, Luxford had gone on to order another dummy front page, this one running a photograph of the Home Office Undersecretary, a photograph that was spontaneous, catching Bowen en route from one location to another. He didn’t, Luxford said, want a studio photograph or a publicity photograph, and he wasn’t about to run either one on the front page of his paper in conjunction with Charlotte Bowen’s death. He wanted a recent picture, a picture from toda
y. And if they couldn’t produce that for him by the time the newspaper went to press, they would go with Sinclair Larnsey and Daffy Dukane for tomorrow’s paper and sink the Bowen story somewhere inside.
“But this is our lead,” Sarah Happleshort had protested. “Larnsey’s dead meat. What difference does it make where the Bowen pictures come from? We’re going to have to use a school picture of the kid, and that won’t be recent. So who the hell cares if her mother’s is?”
“I care,” Luxford said. “Our readers care. The chairman cares. So if you want to run the story, get the picture to go with it.”
Luxford was attempting to stymie them, Rodney suspected. He was betting on the fact that no one would be able to come up with a current picture by deadline.
But he had bet wrong, because at precisely half past five that afternoon, Eve Bowen had ducked out a side entrance at the Home Office, and The Source, who had staff photographers as well as free-lancers at every possible location where the Junior Minister might show her face—from Downing Street to her health club—had managed to catch her with the Home Secretary’s solicitous hand on her elbow, guiding her towards a waiting car.
It was a clean, clear shot. True, she didn’t look much like the grieving mother—no lace-edged handkerchief clutched to her eyes, no dark glasses to hide the bloodshot whites—but no one could argue that it wasn’t the woman of the hour. Although from the expression on Dennis Luxford’s face, it looked as if he intended to try.
“Do you have hard copy on the rest of this?” Luxford asked, having read the four brief paragraphs crammed into the space that remained once the headline was in place. This read High Ranking MP’s Daughter Found Dead! in a combination of colours guaranteed to move papers from vendor to customer as quickly as thirty-five pence could change hands. In comparison to the Larnsey & Daffy in Happier Times on the other dummy, there was simply no contest.
Rodney fished the rest of the story’s copy from a sheaf of papers he’d brought along. It was a draft that he’d had Happleshort print out in anticipation of just such a request from the editor. Luxford read it.
Rodney said, “It’s solid. We started with the official statement. We built from there. Confirmations on everything. More information to come.”
Luxford raised his head. “What sort of information?”
Rodney saw that Luxford’s eyes were bloodshot. The flesh beneath them was the colour of plum skin. He readied himself to read the editor for the slightest nuance and said with a careless shrug, “Whatever information the cops and Bowen are holding back.”
Luxford set the copy next to the front page dummy. Rodney tried to interpret the precision of his movements. Was he stalling for time? Devising a strategy? Reaching a decision? What? He waited for Luxford to ask the next logical question: What makes you think they’re withholding information? But the question didn’t come.
Rodney said, “Look at the facts, Den. The kid lives in London but was found dead in Wiltshire, and that’s the limit to what we were told in the official statement from the Home Office, along with ‘mysterious circumstances’ and ‘awaiting autopsy results.’ Now, I don’t know how you interpret that rubbish, but personally I think it reeks like dead cod.”
“What do you propose to do?”
“Put Corsico on it. Which,” Rodney hastened to add, “I’ve already taken the liberty of doing. He’s just outside. Arrived back in the newsroom as I was bringing in the dummies for you. Shall I…?” And Rodney used his arm to indicate his willingness to have Mitch Corsico join them. “He’s done all there can be done on Larnsey,” Rodney pointed out. “It seemed a waste not to use his talents on what’s clearly going to be a bigger story. Agree?” He made the word so affable, so filled with eagerness to pursue the news. What could Luxford do but concur?
“Bring him in,” Luxford said. He sank into his chair and rubbed thumb and forefinger into his temple.
“Right.” Rodney popped another piece of Kit Kat into his mouth. He slid it into the pouch of his cheek so the chocolate could melt there, slowly entering his system like an IV drug. He went to the office door and opened it, saying expansively, “Mitch-boy. Get in here. Tell papa the news.”
In the waiting area, Mitch Corsico hitched up his jeans, which he perennially wore beltless, and lobbed the core of an apple into the wastepaper basket near Miss Wallace’s desk. He scooped up his denim jacket, wrestled a grubby notebook from its pocket, and clomped across Miss Wallace’s cubicle in his cowboy boots, saying, “I think we’ve got something nice and dodgy for tomorrow. And I can guarantee we’re the only ones on to it so far. Can we hold up the presses?”
“For you, my son, anything,” Rodney said. “It’s on the Bowen situation?”
“None other,” Corsico said.
Rodney closed the door behind the young reporter. Corsico joined Luxford at the table. He said with a flip of his index finger towards the dummy front pages and the draft of the Bowen story, “This stinks. They gave us one effing fact—a dead body in Wiltshire—and then entertained us with the have-you-no-decency routine when we wanted more information. We had to work our arses off to get every other detail, none of which it would have slain them to share. The kid’s age, her school, the condition of the body, exactly where it was found. You name it, we had to grub for it. Did Sarah tell you that?”
“She just handed over the finished story. Which, I might add, is as lovely a piece as you’ve ever done.” Rodney went to Luxford’s desk and looped his thigh over the corner. It was odd how hidden knowledge invigorated one. He’d been working ten hours so far today, and the way he was feeling, he could work ten more. “Bring us up to date,” he said, and added to Luxford, “Mitch tells me he’s got something that we’re going to want to run tomorrow along with this.” He indicated the dummy Bowen front page, projecting a confidence in the editor’s forthcoming decision about which of the two dummies would actually be used.
Luxford had no real choice in the matter, as Rodney well knew. He may have temporised at the news meeting earlier by demanding two dummies and a current photo of Bowen that he believed unobtainable, but he was boxed in now. He was the editor of the paper, but he reported to the chairman, and the chairman would expect The Source to run the Bowen story front and centre. There would be hell to pay if Sinclair Larnsey’s mug and not Bowen’s decorated page one in the morning, and Luxford would be the one to pay it.
It was intriguing to Rodney to speculate upon why Luxford had dragged his feet on the front page decision. It was especially intriguing to engage in speculation in light of Luxford’s assignation at Harrods with one of the story’s principal players. How much of a coincidence could it possibly be that he’d met with Eve Bowen secretly just three days before her daughter was found dead? And how did that meeting fit in with everything that had followed it: Den’s holding up the presses on the flimsiest of pretexts, Den’s visit from the red-haired photographer and the stranger who’d decked her, Den’s rushing off not ten minutes after that decking had occurred, and now this death…. Rodney had spent much of the weekend mulling the question of what Luxford was up to, and when the Bowen story broke, he’d immediately assigned Corsico to it, knowing that if there was dirt involved somewhere, Mitch was just the person to roll in it.
Now he grinned at Corsico. “Shovel it out for us.”
Corsico took a moment to remove his trademark Stetson. He looked at Luxford as if awaiting a more official directive. Luxford gave a weary nod.
“Okay. First. Mum’s the word at the police press office in Wiltshire,” Corsico began. “No comment at the moment aside from the basics: who found the body, what time, where, its condition, etc. Bowen and her husband made the positive ID round midnight in Amesford. And this is where things start to get interesting.” He shifted his bum from one cheek to the other, as if settling in for a pleasant natter. Luxford glued his eyes steadily upon the reporter and didn’t move them. Corsico continued.
“I asked the press office the regular preliminaries
. The name of the investigating officer, the time of the autopsy, the identity of the pathologist, the initial decision on the time of death. No comment to all of it. They’re controlling the information flow.”
“That’s hardly news to stop the presses for,” Luxford commented.
“Right. I know. They like to play games with us. It’s the normal struggle for dominance. But I’ve a reliable snout at the police station in Whitechapel, and she—”
“What’s Whitechapel got to do with anything?” To emphasise his irritation, Luxford glanced at his watch.
“Nothing directly. But wait. I phoned her and asked her to have a look at the PNC, just to see what kind of vitals I could get on the kid herself. But—and here’s where it starts getting dodgy—there was no report on the police computer.”
“What sort of report?”
“No report of the body having been found.”
“And this is what you consider earth-shattering? This is what I’m to hold up the presses for? Perhaps the police just haven’t got caught up in their paperwork.”
“That’s a possibility. But there was also no report of the girl’s having gone missing in the first place. Despite—and Whitechapel had to call in some chits to get this for me—the body’s having been in the water up to eighteen hours.”
Rodney said, “That is a nice bit.” And with an evaluative glance at Luxford, “I wonder what it means. What d’you think, Den?”
Luxford ignored the question. He lifted his knuckles to his chin and rested it on them. Rodney tried to read him. His expression looked bored, but surely his eyes seemed wary. Rodney nodded at Corsico to continue.
Corsico warmed to his topic. “At first I thought it was no big deal that no one had reported the kid missing. After all, it was the weekend. Maybe someone had got their wires crossed. Parents thinking the kid was with the grandparents. Grandparents thinking the kid was with an aunt or uncle. The kid supposedly at a sleep-over somewhere. That kind of thing. But I thought it was worth checking on anyway. And it turned out I was right.” Corsico flipped open his notebook. Several pages fluttered out. He scooped them up from the floor and stuffed them into a pocket of his jeans. He said, “There’s an Irish-woman who works for Bowen. Fat lady in baggy leggings, name of Patty Maguire. She and I had a chat about quarter of an hour after the Home Office made the announcement about the kid.”