Ash & Bone

by John Harvey

  The lower deck was crowded and she went up on top, a spare seat beside the window near the back, and as she sat down a man sat next to her, leaning for a moment quite heavily against her as the bus lurched away.

  'Sorry,' he said, and then, 'Vanessa? It is Vanessa, isn't it? Almost didn't recognise you.' A quick, apologetic smile. 'Miles away.'

  He was holding out his hand.

  'Steve. Steve Kennet. I used to —'

  'I know, I know.'

  'Haven't seen you since… must be ages. Couple of years, at least.'

  Vanessa nodded and said nothing. One of the last times she'd seen Steve Kennet, one evening in the pub, when Maddy had gone to the loo he'd leaned across and said, 'How about meeting up one night, just the two of us? What d'you think?' Afterwards he'd tried to pass it off as a joke, but she'd never been sure.

  'Terrible, wasn't it?' he said now. 'What happened to Maddy. Couldn't believe it when I first heard. You don't think, do you? Someone you know.'

  Vanessa shook her head.

  'So, anyway, where've you been?' Perkier now. 'Tonight, I mean. Not working, I hope?'

  'Cinema.'

  'Anything good?'

  'Not really.'

  'Pirates of the Caribbean,' Kennet said. 'You seen that?'

  'No.'

  'It's good. A laugh, you know?'

  'That what you saw tonight?'

  'Me? No. Just out for a drink, few beers.'

  Vanessa looked out of the window. They were moving slowly along Kentish Town Road, passing close to where she worked. Superimposed on the upper storeys of buildings she could see Kennet's reflection, the thickness of his hair, the collar of his leather jacket turned up against his neck, his eyes watching her. At Tufnell Park she made as if to get up.

  'This isn't your stop,' Kennet said.

  'Isn't it?'

  'Not unless you've moved.'

  'How do you know where I live, anyway?'

  'We walked past there one night, remember? You and Maddy and me. Going back to her place. That's my street, you said.'

  'Well,' Vanessa said, standing. 'Not any more.'

  He swung his legs out into the aisle, leaving just enough room to let her pass.

  'I'll get off if you like. Walk you home.'

  'Don't bother.'

  She just made it down the stairs before the doors closed. She stopped herself from looking back up at the bus as it drew away, knowing she would see his face at the window, looking down. She had bought herself a good twenty-minute walk and why? Because she'd been uncomfortable sitting pressed up next to him, certain that any moment he would say something she didn't want to hear, a proposition of some kind?

  Two-thirds of the way along Junction Road, she turned right down St John's Grove, cutting through. At the end of her own street, she hesitated, then quickened her pace; it was only as she neared the short path leading to her front door that it occurred to her Kennet might have been the man standing in shadow outside her house a few nights before.

  The keys slipped from her hand.

  Her skin froze.

  Only with the door finally open, did she turn.

  Nothing, nobody there.

  Vanessa, she said to herself, for God's sake get a grip.

  In bed less than fifteen minutes later, she lay listening to each sound; another hour almost before she finally drifted off to sleep.

  33

  The early rain clouds had disappeared, leaving the sky above Primrose Hill a clear, crystal winter blue, the light glinting off the roof of the mosque at the edge of Regent's Park below. From his vantage point near the top, Elder watched Robert Framlingham striding up from Prince Albeit Road like a landowner out to survey the vastness of his acreage and his EC subsidy. Framlingham wearing his Barbour jacket and a pair of softly polished, hand-stitched brogues.

  'Frank, good to see you.' His grip was firm and warm. 'Sorry if I'm a couple of minutes late.'

  'Sit or stroll?' Elder said.

  'Oh, stroll I think, don't you? You can fill me in as we go.'

  For the best part of a circuit Elder talked and Framlingham was mostly content to listen, the Hill busy with dog walkers, young mums and the ubiquitous au pairs, students and skivers and OAPs, all making the most of the morning sun.

  When Elder had finished, they continued to walk for a while in silence, Framlingham running it all over in his mind.

  'Kennet, your mind's pretty made up then?'

  'Not necessarily.'

  'And Shields? What about her?'

  'There's not a lot else for her to latch on to.'

  'So far, Frank. So far.' Framlingham paused to ease something off the sole of his shoe. 'That business with Mallory and Repton, that young PC in the car. I wonder if I'd let that go for nothing, after all.'

  Elder fixed him with a look. 'You know something that I don't.'

  Framlingham allowed a smile to spread slowly across his face. 'A good deal, Frank, a good deal. And much of no conceivable use to man or beast.' He rested his hand for a moment on Elder's arm. 'All I'm saying, don't lose sight of the bigger picture.'

  They shook hands.

  'Your daughter, Frank. I heard just a little. I'm sorry. If ever there's anything I can do.'

  A wave of the hand and he was on his way.

  * * *

  The Brent Cross shopping centre was just off the North Circular Road, no more than ten minutes in the car from where Elder was staying. By mid-morning, the car parks were close to full.

  Vicki Wilson was standing in the centre aisle, between Next and Hennes, in front of a brightly coloured demonstration stand promising tomorrow's mobile phone today. Make-up picture-book perfect, Vicki was smiling her best professional smile and glad-handing leaflets extolling the virtues of a technological marvel which allowed you to text, take and transmit photographs, download video clips from current movie releases and the top ten singles, watch the latest Premiership goals, surf the Internet and, if time allowed, make the occasional phone call. She was wearing a short pencil skirt and a T-shirt with the manufacturer's logo snug across her breasts.

  She'd been there since ten, the best part of an hour, five more to go, and her feet in those stupid shoes were aching already.

  Oh, Christ, she thought, when Elder approached. Another sad bastard, can't take his eyes off my tits. Elder had walked past her once slowly, turned and come back around. When he got closer, she revised her opinion. Shit. It's only the fucking law.

  'Vicki Wilson?'

  'If you're asking that you already know the answer.' Her voice was sharp, east London-edged, Goodmayes or Dagenham.

  'Frank Elder.'

  'Here.' She pushed a leaflet into his hand.

  'What time d'you get a break?' Elder asked.

  'Not soon enough.'

  'How about a cup of coffee?'

  'Now?'

  Elder tried a tentative smile. 'Why not?'

  'Just hang on a minute.'

  She fanned the leaflets out across the table behind her, lifted a shiny green jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it across her shoulders, picked up her bag and walked with Elder towards the lift by the corner of Marks & Spencer.

  They sat at the end of a row of small tables overlooking one of the aisles; below, shoppers wandered past oases of green-leaved plants, plastic and real, prospering equally beneath a glass roof.

  With a small sigh, Vicki eased off her high-heeled shoes. Touch a fingernail to her face, Elder thought, and it would glide like a skater on fresh ice.

  'How d'you know where I was?' she asked.

  'Your agency.'

  'Wonder they didn't give you my address and chest measurements while they were about it.'

  'They did.'

  'You're fuckin' kidding.'

  'Maybe not the chest measurement.'

  Vicki tossed her head. 'Coppers, you're all the bloody same.'

  Elder held his tongue.

  'Jimmy, innit? That's what you want to talk about.'

&n
bsp; 'Jimmy?'

  'James William Grant. Jimmy. It was what he liked to be called. By his friends.' Vicki stirred some of the chocolate from the top of her cappuccino into the froth and brought the spoon to her mouth. 'Come to make sure I've done what I was told, I suppose.'

  'What you were told?'

  'Keep my mouth shut, of course.'

  'What about?'

  'I don't know, do I? Fuckin' everything.'

  'Who told you this?'

  'I don't know, do I? Some copper, plain clothes.'

  'Describe him.'

  Vicki leaned back in her chair. 'Forties, maybe. Smart. Bit old-fashioned, but smart. Joking with it. Not heavy. But all with that look in his eye. Like it wouldn't pay to cross him, you know?'

  'He have a name?'

  'Not for me. I'd seen him, though. Seen him before. After what… after they killed Jimmy. Talking to the one who shot him. That bastard.'

  'How do you know he was the one?'

  'Came over and told me, didn't he? That morning. Right after it happened. I was sitting in the back of this police car, right? Didn't really know what was going on. 'Cept I knew Jimmy was dead. I knew that. Anyway, he come over, pointed his finger, right in my face, and made this sort of popping sound. Like a little kid, you know, pretending he's got a gun. That's the finger, he said, pulled the trigger. Put him away. And then he laughed and wandered off. Mallory. I asked this copper in the car and he told me. Detective Superintendent Mallory.'

  'And this detective, the one who came to see you, him and Mallory they were together?'

  'Yeah, I said so, didn't I?'

  'Tell me again what he said to you.'

  'I already told you.'

  'Tell me again.'

  '"Anyone comes round asking questions, anyone, you don't know a thing.'" She lifted her cup from its saucer but didn't drink. 'No one has. Till now. And if they had, I don't know anything anyway. Jimmy, he never talked about… you know… what he did. Not really. Joke about it sometimes, bragging I suppose. This big score or that, but that was all. Nothing more. Just, sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn't. Besides, I hadn't known him very long. And I liked him, you know. He was fun.' She looked at Elder, moist-eyed. 'Why did they have to kill him?'

  'I don't know.'

  'He always said whatever he did, he'd be okay. Said they wouldn't touch him, you know?'

  'They?'

  'The police, I suppose.'

  'He didn't say any more? Give any names?'

  'Said he had someone looking out for him, that's all. All-round protection. Like garlic. You know, keeping away vampires.' She shook her head. 'Wasn't true, was it? Not in the end.'

  Elder drank the rest of his coffee.

  Vicki renewed her lipstick, leaving a near-perfect impression on a folded napkin. 'I'd better be getting back to this sodding job.'

  'Here. Take this.' Elder took a notebook from his pocket, wrote down his mobile number and tore out the page. 'If you do think of anything, call me.'

  Vicki hesitated, then pushed the piece of paper down into the side pocket of her bag. 'Thanks for the coffee.'

  'Any time.'

  Elder walked with her back to her stand, where a covey of small kids, having strewn half of her leaflets across the floor, was misspelling obscenities on the white spaces of the painted board.

  'Fuck off!' she shouted. 'The lot of you.'

  While they jeered and whistled and offered her the finger, Elder bent down and helped retrieve the leaflets from the ground. Then he wished her well and carried on to where he'd parked his car.

  * * *

  'I could be back over your way Sunday evening,' Framlingham said in response to Elder's call. 'Whitestone Pond. Near the old Jack Straw's Castle. I'll be parked on the north side. Seven, give or take?'

  It was dark when Elder arrived, Framlingham sitting with the car window wound part-way down, listening to a broadcast of Idomeneo from the Met.

  At the aria's end, he turned the radio down to listen, Elder sitting in the passenger seat alongside.

  'Of course,' he said, when Elder had finished, 'he could have been lying to her. Vicki, is that her name? Mouthing off.'

  'Why would he do that?'

  'Wanting to impress?'

  'I don't think so.'

  'Grant had someone in his pocket, is that what you're thinking?'

  'Either that or the other way round.'

  'He was an informer, you mean?'

  'It's possible.'

  'He'd be high-grade if he were. Top drawer. Not some snivelling menial of the toerag variety.'

  'How easy would it be to find out?'

  A smile passed across Framlingham's face. 'How difficult, you mean. That stature of informant - Covert Human Intelligence Sources, as we're supposed to call them nowadays. CHIS, can you believe that? If it hasn't got a fucking acronym, it doesn't exist. But that's by the by. All that information's kept on a closed file at the Yard. Strictly need-to-know. Senior officers only. And I mean senior.'

  'That would include you, surely?'

  'Given good reason, Frank, it might.'

  'You'll try then?'

  'It may take a day or two, but I'll try.' The moon broke through the clouds as Elder skirted the pond, heading back the way he had come.

  34

  There were times when Estelle thought it was only the garden which kept her sane. If sane was what she was. Her friends, of course, had she really had any friends, would have said, Darling, you've got the children, and while it was true that they still accounted for a large part of her life, they were no longer hers in the way they used to be. Jake acted and sounded more like his father every day, and Amber, at five and a half, was lost much of the time in a world of ballet shoes and tutus and the right shade of pink for her cardigan, the right shade of blue for the band which held back her hair.

  As for Gerald, he was, of course, the perfect gentleman, so polite at times it was as if he'd forgotten who she was and imagined her some distant cousin come to stay. He left early each weekday for the City and often returned late, occasionally phoning to say he was sorry but he'd have to miss dinner, and if that happened sometimes he'd bring her flowers and a little note. Once she found in one of his pockets a card advertising a members-only gentlemen's club in Soho and she'd been careful to put it back, pleased that he'd found somewhere to relax and unwind. If he asked her for sex now it was once a month at most, the light always out beforehand; when his leg slid over hers in the way she recognised, she would put her bookmark carefully in place and excuse herself to the bathroom; quite often, by the time she returned, he would be asleep and snoring.

  Estelle stood now by one of the rose beds, late morning, wearing an old green woollen coat, slacks tucked down inside calf-length Wellington boots, a pair of scuffed brown gardening gloves on her hands. The trouble with January, it was too late to plant more bulbs, too early for much else; all she could usefully do was tidy up the beds, cover the mess left by one or other of next door's cats, nip off the odd brown leaf with her secateurs.

  She thought how ugly the rose bushes were, pruned back, their hard green stems poking up blind into the air.

  Somewhere in her mind she heard the car approaching, then a silence, then, faint, the front doorbell. If the door to the conservatory had not been open, it was unlikely she would have heard it at all. Not that it mattered: whoever it was, another of those smartly dressed Mormons or someone collecting for the church bring-and-buy, they would soon lose patience and go away.

  Nearer the bottom of the garden a sparrow was giving itself a bath in the dirt, its wings spraying up a film of loose soil. Helped by the cold air overnight, the ground had dried out quite well; the sky today a washed-out blue-grey smeared with cloud and the temperature in single figures, eight or nine at most.

  The side gate clicked open and when Estelle turned she saw the black detective who had, for a moment, held her hand. Tall, she hadn't remembered her as quite so tall; as tall as Gerald she could swear, the h
eels of her boots making sharp indentations in the lawn.

  'Mrs Cooper. Estelle. How are you this morning?' Smiling, smiling, smiling. 'I rang the bell, but I suppose being in the garden, you didn't hear. I hope you didn't mind me finding my own way round?'

  'No, of course not. Not at all.' What else was she supposed to say?

  'You do all this yourself?' Karen Shields said, looking round. Though in all probability meant as praise, to Estelle's ears it came out more as accusation. Is this all you do with your life?

  'Gerald helps with the heavy work sometimes, that is, he used to. And Jake, now he's older, he —' Abruptly she stopped: why was she saying this?

  'Estelle?' Karen asked gently. 'Are you okay?'

  She looked up at her, that large commanding face with those red, red lips. Beautiful, was that the word?

  'Estelle?'

  'Mm? Yes, of course.' Of course what? She didn't know.

  'Why don't we go inside?' Karen said. 'That cup of tea you offered last time. Something to keep out the cold.' Walking back towards the house, she took Estelle's arm.

  * * *

  They sat in the conservatory, the door now closed, the corners of glass beginning to mist over. Here and there a flower, brick red or butterfly white, still clung to one or other of the geraniums, their upper leaves healthy and green, those gathered round the base shrivelled brown and paper thin.

  Tea was in broad-brimmed white cups with a gold line faded around the rim; the china teapot in its cosy sat on a tray with a matching milk jug and sugar bowl, though the sugar remained untouched. Rich tea biscuits fanned out on a plate. Paper serviettes.

  Karen took her time, listening while Estelle pecked at conversation like a bird, waiting for what might be an opportune moment.

  In the end she dropped her question into the silence, like a pebble falling slowly into the well.

  'Estelle, I know this will be difficult, and if there was any way I could avoid asking you I would, but when you said there were things Steven Kennet wanted you to do, things you felt uncomfortable with, I need you to tell me what they were.'

  Estelle's hand shook and tea spilled from her cup into her saucer and from there into her lap. 'How silly of me,' she said, dabbing at it with her serviette. 'I'm sorry, what was it you said?'