Ashes by Now

by Mark Timlin

  I checked on Harvey’s other daughter too: Jacqueline. She was the only one that I could talk to without landing myself in trouble. And I wasn’t ready for any more trouble yet. Maybe never. But maybe I wouldn’t have any choice in the matter.

  I found that she’d left home when she was eighteen, and moved to London, where she was working as a copy typist and telephonist for a firm of commercial building surveyors in Gray’s Inn, and lived alone in a tiny flat in Vauxhall.

  I couldn’t think of anything worse.

  23

  That is until I saw the office she worked in. It was in a faceless terrace off the Gray’s Inn Road. I phoned the office in the afternoon and a bloke answered. Obviously Jacqueline Harvey was temporarily off the switchboard. Maybe she was doing a bit of copy typing. I asked what time the office closed, and he told me five-thirty. I put the phone down when he started asking me why I wanted to know.

  I drove up in the Jag, and arrived at five-fifteen. At five-thirty on the dot, people started coming out of the front door. Five minutes later Jacqueline Harvey left. Even though I hadn’t seen her for over twelve years, and she’d only been a child then, I recognised her straight away.

  Her red hair was darker now, and the glass in her spectacles was thicker, but I knew it was her. She was tall, but the loose raincoat she wore gave no indication what her figure was like underneath it.

  As she passed the car in the direction of the main road, I got out and followed her.

  ‘Miss Harvey,’ I said to her retreating back.

  She almost jumped out of her coat as I spoke. She spun round, clutching her handbag tightly to her front. Her wrists were very thin and very white, with blue veins clearly visible beneath the skin.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want?’

  Close up, her face was plain, devoid of any trace of make-up. But perhaps she wanted to be plain. There were too many frown marks on her forehead. And the grooves running down from the side of her nose to the corners of her mouth were too deep for someone so young. Almost as if she’d cultivated them in a warm, dark room.

  ‘My name’s Sharman,’ I said. ‘Nick Sharman. I knew your father.’

  ‘How fortunate for you. Now what do you want?’

  ‘It’s about your sister.’

  Her pale face became paler still.

  ‘What about my sister?’

  ‘About what happened to her twelve years ago.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I worked on the case.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was one of the investigating officers at Brixton police station at the time.’

  I thought she was going to hit me when I said that. Punch me in the face with all the strength in one of her skinny arms. I even went as far as to step back out of range, I was so convinced she was going to give me a right-hander.

  ‘Then you know what happened, don’t you?’

  Our meeting was not going well. ‘I’m a private detective now,’ I said, and fumbled one of my cards out of my pocket and gave it to her. She glanced at it without looking.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about it,’ I said.

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘I think it’s important.’

  She looked round, almost in panic. ‘I should be getting home,’ she said.

  ‘It won’t take long, I promise. Let me take you for a drink. I’ll give you a lift home.’

  She looked terrified at the thought of being alone in a car with me.

  ‘Or get you a cab,’ I added.

  ‘I don’t drink,’ she said.

  ‘A coffee?’

  ‘Caffeine is a poison. I never touch it.’

  ‘A soft drink. Perrier.’

  She hesitated. ‘Why do you want to talk to me about what happened?’

  ‘The man who was convicted was released from prison recently.’

  ‘I know that.’ If I expected her to say that he should never have been set free, I was disappointed.

  ‘He killed himself a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Good riddance.’

  ‘But I don’t think he did what he went to prison for.’

  Her face went even paler. So pale that I thought she was going to faint, and I put one hand out to steady her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’ And I didn’t know if she meant that I shouldn’t touch her, or if she was denying what I was saying. Then with one more frightened look, she ran off towards the nearest bus stop where a Routemaster had just pulled up. She stood at the back of the crowd waiting to climb aboard, looking nervously at me in case I joined her.

  I stood on the corner and watched as she boarded it and went inside the lower deck, and the bus pulled slowly away to join the stream of traffic heading towards Holborn.

  24

  She called me the next morning. ‘Mr Sharman?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. I didn’t recognise her voice.

  ‘It’s Jacqueline Harvey here.’

  I was surprised. ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘I kept the card you gave me. I was thinking about what you said last night. I hardly slept.’ She paused.

  ‘Yes,’ I said again.

  ‘I’ve decided I will talk to you.’

  ‘Good. When?’

  ‘The sooner the better. Tonight?’

  ‘I’m not doing anything.’ The girls were working. An all-nighter, with everything that entailed.

  ‘But it has to be somewhere private. Somewhere that we won’t be disturbed,’ she said.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ I said. ‘You choose. A restaurant. A bar. Whatever you want.’ I didn’t suggest her place. I didn’t want her to have an inkling that I knew where she lived, or under what circumstances.

  She hesitated. ‘I said somewhere private,’ she said. ‘Not a public place.’

  ‘That doesn’t leave a lot of options.’

  She hesitated again. ‘Do you live alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I have a flat in Tulse Hill.’

  ‘Can I trust you?’ she asked.

  A stupid question really. I was hardly going to say no. But something in her voice told me that what she’d asked was not really what she wanted to know. That me arriving like that outside her office had triggered something inside her that had been lying dormant for a long time. ‘Miss Harvey,’ I said, ‘I have no intentions of doing you any harm. I’ve got mixed up with something that started all those years ago when your sister was murdered.’ The word ‘murdered’ hung between us like a dead fish, but I carried on. ‘Believe me, if I felt I had any options I wouldn’t have come looking for you last night. I know that you don’t know me. But I promise you that all I want is the answers to a few questions. Nothing more. You can trust me. You have my word.’

  Which, as I might have remarked on before, plus a quid will buy you a cup of coffee.

  There was a pause. ‘Give me your address,’ she said. ‘I’ll come round later.’

  I did as she requested. ‘What time?’ I asked.

  ‘I finish work at five-thirty as you obviously know. I imagine I could be with you by six forty-five or so.’

  ‘I’ll make us a meal,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no need for that.’

  ‘I’d enjoy it. I don’t often get the chance. Is there anything you don’t like?’

  If she’d said ‘you’, like I half expected her to, we might have laughed and got off to a better start. But she didn’t. ‘I eat most things,’ was all she did say.

  ‘Meat?’ After the crack about caffeine, I thought there was a good chance she was vegetarian.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Steak?’

  ‘That would
be acceptable.’

  ‘OK. I’ll see you later,’ I said.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she replied, and hung up her phone in my ear.

  I took a walk down to Gateways, and picked up a pair of fillet steaks, and some lemon sorbet from the freezer. Then I went to the greengrocers next door and bought two big baking potatoes, the makings of a green salad, and the ingredients for my mother’s recipe vegetable soup.

  I returned home and started getting the meal together. I hadn’t lied. It had been a long time since I’d cooked for anyone. Even someone as hostile as Jacqueline Harvey.

  By six everything was ready. The soup was keeping warm on top of the stove. The potatoes were cooking away inside it. The steaks were peppered and buttered and sitting beneath the grill. The green salad was lying in a bowl on top of the tiny breakfast bar that I use as a dining table. The sorbet was in the freezer, and the coffee pot was full of decaffeinated. I’d bought a couple of bottles of wine on my way home. Just for me. And the spirits cupboard was stocked up full.

  Perfect.

  She rang my doorbell at six-fifty precisely. I went down and let her in. She was carrying a Thresher’s off-licence bag that clinked attractively as she went up the stairs in front of me.

  ‘I thought you didn’t drink,’ I said, as she handed it to me when we got inside my flat.

  ‘Sometimes with a meal,’ she said. ‘It’s for you mainly. As you’re being kind enough to cook for me.’

  ‘Do I look like I could drink two bottles of wine in an evening by myself?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘And you said you used to be a policeman. All policemen drink. I should know.’

  I imagined she did.

  I took her loose coat. Underneath it she was wearing a loose dress that also disguised her figure.

  ‘Do you want some wine?’ I asked.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Please sit down.’

  She chose the sofa, and I went off to get a pair of glasses and open one of the bottles of perfectly acceptable red wine that she’d brought with her.

  I poured out two glasses, gave one to her, and took mine and perched on the edge of one of the two stools you have to sit on to eat in my place.

  ‘Sorry it’s a bit crowded in here,’ I said, referring to the furniture that seemed to fill the place when there was more than one person present.

  ‘It suits me,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit like my place.’

  ‘You live alone?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘All alone,’ she added unnecessarily, and sipped at her wine.

  I thought I’d serve the first course before I got down to cases and busied myself with the soup.

  She joined me at the breakfast bar and dug in. ‘This soup is very good,’ she said after the first mouthful.

  ‘Mother’s own,’ I said. ‘I learnt to cook it at her knee.’

  ‘You don’t look the type.’

  ‘What type do I look, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Mr Macho. The type I detest.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I spluttered.

  ‘Although I might be wrong,’ she added.

  When the soup was drunk, and before I put a light to the grill, I said, ‘Why did you change your mind? About talking to me, I mean.’

  ‘It was what you said last night.’

  I gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘About the man who was convicted for the murder of my sister being innocent.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ I said. ‘But in this case I don’t think he did what they said he did. And what he went to prison for.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know really. I never ever thought that he did.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do something about it then? All those years ago.’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  So I told her. I told her about talking to Sailor the night Collier and Lenny had beaten him into giving a confession. About me being the new boy. Scared about jeopardising my job. Lacking in confidence. The whole nine yards.

  ‘Typical,’ she said.

  I pulled a face. ‘It goes with the job,’ I said. ‘You must know that. Don’t upset the apple-cart. Play the game. Maintaining a solid front with your colleagues. All that sort of stuff.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Only too well.’

  I stood up and started cooking the steaks. She poured herself another glass of wine. A large one.

  We ate mostly in silence. We finished the first bottle of wine with the main course and most of the second one. I was glad I’d got a couple of bottles of wine in too. For someone who didn’t drink, Jacqueline Harvey was making a good stab at getting pissed.

  When our plates were empty, I said, ‘Miss Harvey.’

  ‘Call me Jacqueline,’ she said. ‘No. Call me Jackie. No one’s called me that for a long time.’ And she gave me a stoned smile.

  It was around then that I realised I might have bitten off a little more than I could chew.

  And I didn’t mean in the fillet steak department.

  25

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Jackie it is.’

  ‘That’s what my dad used to call me.’

  I got up and opened another bottle of wine. ‘Want some?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  I filled her glass, took the dirty dishes over to the sink, removed the sorbet from the freezer and served it up.

  ‘You’re a very good host,’ said Jackie.

  ‘Like I told you, I don’t get the chance too often these days.’

  ‘I bet.’ I noted a hint of flirtatiousness in her tone, and smiled.

  We ate the sweet, and I leaned over and turned up the light under the coffee pot. ‘No caffeine,’ I said.

  ‘You remembered.’

  ‘The way you were so adamant about it, how could I forget?’

  ‘I’m sorry if I was rude. Your turning up was something of a surprise.’

  ‘I should have phoned first.’

  ‘Then I probably wouldn’t have seen you at all.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t.’

  I removed the pudding dishes from the table and poured the coffee. It didn’t taste bad but, knowing what it was, just a bit flat. Besides, I like caffeine.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re being very careful with me.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘I’m not made of glass you know.’

  ‘You give the impression you might be.’

  ‘I don’t mean to. Of course you can smoke. It’s your flat.’

  ‘You’re my guest.’

  ‘You’re kind.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You give the impression you might be.’ She mimicked my tone, and we both laughed.

  I got out the brandy bottle from the cupboard. ‘Do you want some of this?’ I asked. ‘Being teetotal and all.’

  ‘A little drop.’

  I poured the liquor into two brandy balloons, and went back to my seat at the table.

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked.

  I thought of Dawn and Tracey, and wondered what Jacqueline Harvey would make of them. ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’d have to define girlfriend.’

  ‘That’s a funny thing to say.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You keep saying that.’

  ‘Not really,’ we both said together, and we laughed again. Things were looking up.

  ‘Well, have you?’ she pressed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Got a girlfriend.’

  ‘No one serious. Just some friends who happen to be girls. Women. Have you got
a boyfriend?

  ‘No.’ It was definite. Emphatic.

  I nodded.

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘Nothing much surprises me these days.’

  ‘I bet I could tell you something that surprises you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve never kissed anyone.’

  I thought I’d heard her wrong.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never kissed anyone in my life,’ she said.

  What can you say to that?

  ‘That surprises you doesn’t it?’ she asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘I told you I could. I could tell you other things that would surprise you too.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I can’t tell you…’ Then she paused. She shook her head and smiled mysteriously, and somewhat tipsily. ‘I’ve been kissed a few times,’ she said. Going back to the previous subject. ‘It was horrible. All wet and slimey.’

  ‘If it’s the right person it’s OK,’ I said.

  She took off her glasses and put them on the table.

  It was no ‘Why, Miss Smith, you’re beautiful’ number, believe me. She wasn’t, and that was a fact. Her face was pinched and plain, and without her bins she screwed up her eyes to see me, and I was only a couple of feet away.

  ‘And of course I’ve never made love with anyone. Not after what happened to Carol. I just couldn’t. What a pair, eh? No grandchildren for Daddy. And no great nieces or nephews for Uncle Alan. No fear of that. A 24-year-old virgin. What a joke. And poor Carol, who never even got to live to be twenty-four.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to be.’

  ‘I still am. I feel somehow responsible. I should have done a better job.’

  ‘Caught the real murderer, you mean?’

  This was a turn-up. ‘You don’t think that the man who went to prison did it either?’ I said.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Last night, when I told you that I was on the original investigation team, I thought you were going to hit me. Is that because you thought we’d got the wrong man too?’

  She was silent.

  ‘Jackie?’ I said.

  ‘Would it make any difference now, if the wrong man had gone to prison?’