“After that it was easy,” Payne went on. He leaned across the table in his mother’s direction. Corrine backed fractionally into her chair. “I went to St. Catherine’s. I saw there was no name for the dad on her birth certificate, just like on mine. That’s how I knew that Luxford had done to someone else what he’d done to you. When I saw that, I didn’t want his money. I only wanted him to tell the truth. So I tracked the little bird down through her mum. Then I trailed her. And when the time was right, I snatched her. She wasn’t meant to die, but when Luxford wouldn’t come clean, there was no other way. You see that, don’t you? You understand? You look dead pale, but you’re not to worry. Once the story comes out in the papers—”
Corrine waved her fingers in some agitation to stop his words. She opened her handbag and dug out her inhaler. She pumped it into her mouth.
“Mum, you’re not to make yourself ill,” Payne said.
Corrine breathed, eyes closed, hand on chest. “Robbie, dearest,” she murmured. Then she opened her eyes and offered him an affectionate smile. “My dearest dearest lovely boy. I don’t know how we’ve come to have this terrible misunderstanding.”
Payne watched her blankly. He swallowed and said, “What?”
“Where on earth, my dearest, did you get the idea that this man is your father? Certainly, Robbie, you couldn’t have got it from me.”
Payne stared at her without comprehension. “You said…” His tongue slipped out and wetted his lips. “When you saw the Sunday Times, the story about him…You said…”
“I said nothing at all.” Corrine replaced her inhaler in her handbag. She shut the bag with a snap. “Oh, I may have said this man looks familiar, but you’re terribly mistaken if you think that I identified him in any way. I might even have said that he looks vaguely like the boy who used me so ill all those years ago. But I wouldn’t have said more because it was all those years ago, Robbie my dear. And it was only one night. One dreadful horrible heartbreaking night that I’d like more than anything to simply forget. Only how can I ever forget it now that you’ve done this to me? Now there’ll be newspapers and magazines and the telly, all of them bombarding me with terrible questions that’ll dredge everything up, that’ll make me remember, that’ll cause Sam to think…perhaps even to leave…Is that what you wanted? Did you want Sam to leave me, Robbie? Is that why you’ve done this terrible thing? Because you’re about to lose me to another man and you wanted to ruin it? Is that it, Robbie? Did you want to destroy Sam’s love for me?”
“No! I did it because he made you suffer. And when a man makes a woman suffer, he’s got to pay.”
“But he didn’t,” she said. “It wasn’t…Robbie, you misunderstood. It wasn’t this man.”
“It was. You said. I remember how you passed me the magazine article, how you pointed at Baverstock, how you said, ‘This is the man, my Robbie. He took me to the ice house one night in May. He had a bottle of sherry with him. He made me drink some and he had some and then he pushed me onto the ground. He tried to choke me, so I submitted. And that’s what happened. This is the man.’”
“No,” she protested. “I never said that. I may have said he reminds me—”
Payne slapped his hand on the table. “You said ‘This is the man’!” he shouted. “So I went to London. So I followed him. So I trailed him to Barclay’s and then I came home and I went to Celia and I nuzzled her proper and I said, ‘Show me how this computer-thing works. Can we look up accounts? Anyone’s accounts? How about this bloke’s? Cor, how amazing.’ And there was her name. So I tracked her down. I saw he’d done to her mum what he’d done to you. And he had to pay. He…had…to…pay.” Payne slumped in his chair. For the first time, he sounded defeated.
Lynley realised that the circle of information was finally complete. He recalled Corrine Payne’s words: He means to marry Celia Matheson. He put them together with what the constable had just said. There was only one possible conclusion to be reached. Lynley said to Nkata, “Celia Matheson. Bring her in.”
Nkata moved towards the door. Payne stopped him, saying wearily, “She doesn’t know. She isn’t involved. She won’t be able to tell you anything.”
“Then you tell me,” Lynley said.
Payne observed his mother. Corrine opened her handbag. She drew out a handkerchief that she used to press against her nose and beneath her eyes. She said in a faint voice, “Do you need me for anything further, Inspector? I’m feeling rather unwell, I’m afraid. Perhaps if you’ll be so good as to call Sam to fetch me…?”
Lynley gave a nod to Nkata, who slid out of the room. As they waited for him to return with Sam, Corrine spoke one more time to her son. “Such a terrible misunderstanding, dear. I can’t think how it came to happen. I simply can’t think…”
Payne dropped his head. “Get her out of here,” he said to Lynley.
“But Robbie—”
“Please.”
Lynley ushered Corrine Payne from the room. They met Nkata with Sam in the corridor. She fell into the man’s plump arms. She said, “Sammy, something dreadful has happened. Robbie’s not himself. I tried to talk to him, but he won’t be made to see reason any longer and I’m so afraid—”
“Hush,” Sam said and patted her back. “Hush now, sweet pear. Let me take you home.”
He headed back towards reception with her. Her voice floated back to them, saying, “You won’t leave me, will you? Say you won’t leave?”
Lynley went back into the interview room. Payne said to him, “Can I get a fag, please?”
Nkata said, “I’ll see to it,” and went for the cigarettes. When he’d returned with a packet of Dunhills and a book of matches, the other DC lit up and smoked for a moment in silence. He looked shell-shocked. Lynley wondered how he would take it when—and if—his mother ever resorted to speaking the truth about his birth. It was one thing to believe oneself the product of an act of violence. It was another to know oneself to be the product of anonymous and mindless sex, initiated by an exchange of cash, hurriedly and wordlessly completed with nothing more in one mind but a rush to orgasm and nothing more in the other mind but what the collected pounds and pence would be spent on when the act was done.
“Tell me about Celia,” Lynley said.
He’d used her, Payne told him, because she worked at Barclay’s in Wootton Cross. Oh, he’d known her before—he’d known her for ages, in fact—but he’d never really thought much about her till he saw how she could help him with Luxford.
“One evening when she was late at work, I got her to let me into the bank,” he said. “She has a cubicle that she works in and she showed it to me. She showed me her computer as well and I got her to access Luxford’s accounts because I wanted to see how much I could take him for. I got her to do other accounts as well. I made it a game and buried Luxford in the middle. And while she did it—while she accessed the accounts—I did her.”
“You had sex with her,” Lynley clarified.
“So she’d think I was hot for her,” Payne finished, “and not just hot for her computer.”
He flicked ash from his cigarette onto the tabletop. He tapped an index finger against it and watched the wedge of ash disintegrate.
“If you believed Charlotte Bowen was your half-sister,” Lynley said, “and a victim just like you, why did you kill her? That’s the only thing I don’t understand.”
“I never thought of her like that,” Payne replied. “I only thought of Mum.”
They tore westward on the motorway, hazard lights blinking to clear out the right lane. Luxford drove. Fiona sat next to him in a position she hadn’t altered from the moment they’d got into the Mercedes in Highgate. She had her seat belt on, but she leaned forward against it as if her posture could make the car go faster. She did not speak.
They’d been in bed when the call had come through. They’d been lying in the darkness holding each other, neither of them speaking because it seemed there was nothing left to say. Dwelling on memories of their so
n subjected his disappearance to a permanence they couldn’t bear to speak of. Talking of Leo’s future ran the risk of an assumption that a vengeful god might seek to thwart. So they talked of nothing, lying beneath the covers and holding each other with no expectation of sleep or peace of mind.
The phone had rung before they’d gone to bed. Luxford had let it ring three times as he’d been instructed by the police detective who was still below in the kitchen, hoping for the call that would break the case. But when Luxford had picked up the receiver, Peter Ogilvie had been on the other end.
He’d said in his crisp I’ll-brook-no-nonsense voice, “Rodney tells me a snout at the Yard places you there with Eve Bowen this afternoon. Were you planning to run that story, or just let the Globe have it? Or perhaps the Sun?”
“I’ve nothing to say.”
“Rodney claims you’re involved in this Bowen matter up to your eyeballs, although eyeballs wasn’t the part of the anatomy he used. He suggests you have been from the first. Which tells me where your priorities lie. Not with The Source.”
“My son’s been kidnapped. He may well be murdered. If you think I ought to be concentrating on the paper at a time like this—”
“Your son’s disappearance is unfortunate, Dennis. But he hadn’t disappeared when the Bowen story was breaking. You held back on us then. Don’t deny it. Rodney followed you. He saw you meet with Bowen. He’s been doing double his job since the Bowen girl’s death and before.”
“And he’s made sure you knew it,” Luxford said.
“I’m giving you the opportunity to explain yourself,” Ogilvie pointed out. “I brought you on board to do for The Source what you did for the Globe. If you can assure me that tomorrow morning’s lead story will fill in the gaps in the public’s information—and I mean all the information, Dennis—then we’ll call your job secure for at least another six months. If you can’t give me that assurance, then I shall have to say it’s time we parted company.”
“My son’s been kidnapped,” Luxford repeated. “Did you even hear that?”
“All the more power for the front page story,” Ogilvie said. “What’s your answer?”
“My answer?” Luxford had looked at his wife, who sat at the end of the chaise longue in the bay window of their bedroom. She still held Leo’s pyjama top. She was folding it carefully into a square on her lap. He wanted to go to her. He said to Ogilvie, “I’m out of it, Peter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Rodney’s been after my job since day one. Give it to him. He deserves it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I’ve never meant anything more.”
He’d replaced the phone and gone to Fiona. He’d undressed her gently and put her to bed. He got in next to her. They watched the pattern of moonlight work its slow way across the wall and onto the ceiling.
When the phone rang three hours later, Luxford’s heavy heart told him to let it keep ringing. But he went through the routine that the police had prescribed for him, and on the fourth ring he picked it up.
“Mr. Luxford?” The man’s voice was soft. His words carried the melodic accent of the West Indian grown to adulthood in South London. He identified himself as Constable Nkata and added Scotland Yard CID as if Luxford had forgotten him in the intervening hours since they had last met. “We have your son, Mr. Luxford. It’s all right. He’s fine.”
Luxford had only been able to say: “Where?”
Nkata had said Amesford police station. He’d gone on to explain how he’d been found and by whom, why he’d been taken, where he’d been held. He’d ended by giving Luxford directions to the station and the directions were the only part of the brief speech that Luxford remembered or cared to remember as he and Fiona sped onwards in the night.
They left the motorway at Swindon and tore south towards Marlborough. The thirty miles to Amesford felt like sixty—one hundred and sixty—and during them Fiona finally began to speak.
“I made a bargain with God.”
Luxford glanced at her. The headlamps from a passing lorry washed her face with light.
She said, “I told Him that if He gave Leo back to me, I would leave you, Dennis, if that’s what it took to make you see reason.”
“Reason?” he asked.
“I can’t think what it would be like to leave you.”
“Fi—”
“But I will leave you. Leo and I will go. If you don’t see reason about Baverstock.”
“I thought I’d already made it clear that Leo doesn’t have to go. I thought you’d understood from my words. I know I didn’t say it directly, but I assumed that you realised I’ve no intention of sending him away after this.”
“And once the horror of ‘this’—as you call it—wears away? Once Leo begins to irritate you again? Once he skips instead of stalks? Once he sings too beautifully? Once he asks to be taken to the ballet for his birthday instead of to a football game or a cricket match? What will you do when you again begin to think he needs some toughening up?”
“I pray I’ll hold my tongue. Is that good enough, Fiona?”
“How could it be? I’ll know what you’re thinking.”
“What I think isn’t important,” Luxford said. “I’ll learn to accept him as he is.” He looked towards her again. Her expression was implacable. He could tell there was no bluff behind her words. He said, “I love him. For all my faults, I do love him.”
“As he is or as you want him to be?”
“Every father has dreams.”
“A father’s dreams shouldn’t become his son’s nightmares.”
They passed through Upavon, manoeuvred a roundabout, continued south in the darkness. To the west an occasional glitter of lights marked sleepy villages that sat on the edge of Salisbury Plain. East Chisenbury, Littlecott, Longstreet, Coombe, Fittleton. As Luxford drove past their signposts, he thought about his wife’s words and how closely one’s dreams ally to one’s fears. Dream to be strong when you’re weak. Dream to be rich when you’re poor. Dream to climb mountains when you’re caught in the masses scrabbling about on the valley floor.
His dreams for his son were merely a reflection of his fears about his son. Only when he let go of his fears would he be able to relinquish his dreams.
“I need to understand him,” Luxford said. “And I will understand him. Let me try. I will.”
He followed the route Constable Nkata had given him as they reached the outskirts of Amesford. He pulled into the car park and stopped next to a panda car.
Inside the station, the bustle of activity suggested the middle of the day and not the middle of the night. Uniformed constables passed through the corridors. A three-piece suit carrying a briefcase announced himself as Gerald Sowforth, Esq., a solicitor demanding to see his client. A white-faced woman came through reception leaning heavily on the arm of a balding man, who patted her hand and said, “Let’s just get you home, my pear.” A team of paramedics were answering questions put to them by a plainclothes police officer. A lone reporter was making angry enquiries of a sergeant behind the reception counter.
Luxford said loudly over the head of the reporter, “Dennis Luxford. I’m—”
The woman who’d come into reception began to keen, shrinking into her companion’s side. She said, “Don’t leave me, Sammy. Say you won’t leave!”
“Never,” Sammy told her fervently. “Just you wait and see.” He allowed her to hide her face against his chest as they passed Luxford and Fiona and went out into the night.
“I’m here for my son,” Luxford said to the sergeant.
The sergeant nodded and picked up a phone. He punched in three numbers. He spoke briefly. He rang off.
Within a minute the door next to the reception counter opened. Someone said Luxford’s name. Luxford took his wife’s arm and together they passed into a corridor that ran the length of the building.
“This way,” a female constable said. She led them to a door, which she op
ened.
Fiona said, “Where’s Leo?”
The constable said, “Wait here, please.” She left them alone.
Fiona paced. Luxford waited. They both listened to the sounds outside in the corridor. Three dozen footsteps passed without stopping during the next ten minutes. And then a man’s quiet voice finally said, “In here?” The door opened.
When he saw them, Inspector Lynley said immediately, “Leo’s all right. It’s taking a bit of time because we’ve had a doctor examining him.”
Fiona cried, “A doctor? Has he—”
Lynley took her arm. “It’s just a precaution. He was filthy when my sergeant brought him in, so we’re trying to clean him a bit as well. It won’t be much longer.”
“But he’s all right? He is all right?”
The inspector smiled. “He’s more than all right. He’s largely the reason my sergeant’s alive. He took on a murderer and gave him something on the skull to remember him by. If he hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be here now. Or at least if we were, we’d be having an entirely different conversation.”
“Leo?” Fiona asked. “Leo did that?”
“He jumped into a drainage trench to find the weapon first,” Lynley explained. “And then he wielded a tyre iron like a young man who was born to crack open skulls.” He smiled again. Luxford could tell he was trying to put Fiona at ease. He covered her hand and led her to a chair. “Leo’s quite the young lout,” he said. “But that’s exactly what was called for in the circumstances. Ah. Here he is.”
And there he was, carried in the arms of Constable Nkata, his fair hair damp, his clothes brushed but filthy, his head resting against the black constable’s chest. He was asleep.