A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “Her diet was rather wretched,” Rory said, with a fond smile. “I doubt she’d eaten a balanced meal in a year. And she did like her wine. But that was it. She wasn’t even a smoker. So for this to happen to her . . . I still don’t understand.”

  The doctor said, “As I said, it does happen. Even to people as fit as long-distance runners.” He went on to say that when it came to the human body, really, anything could occur with or without an explanation. That was one of life’s mysteries, he told her.

  He ended with, “I’m terribly sorry. I can see how much Clare meant to you. To other people as well, as I’ve been reading about her latest controversy.” He smiled in a fond and sad way. “That book of hers. She was quite a lively thinker, wasn’t she? It’s a great loss for you and for everyone who knew her.”

  5 OCTOBER

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  Barbara Havers decided that her best course was to buttonhole DI Lynley in the underground car park, so she arrived at New Scotland Yard forty minutes earlier than usual, and she was standing in his regular parking bay when he finally pulled in. She moved to one side. She’d smoked six cigarettes down to the nub during her wait for him, and their dog ends were lying crushed round her feet. He sighed when she hopped inside his pristine vehicle, undoubtedly in reaction to how redolent she was with smoke at 7:52 in the morning.

  She didn’t give him a chance to pull out the air freshener. She said at once, “You’re doing your best. I see that, sir. Mind you, I didn’t at first. I was that cheesed off. But I’ve had a think, and now I see what you’re about and I more or less appreciate the thought. But you’ve got to chuck it as it’s just no good.”

  He considered all this before saying, “What are you talking about, Havers?”

  “She’s not going to rip up those transfer documents. Not in my lifetime and not in yours. Who can blame her? In her position, I wouldn’t rip them up either. I’ve made my bed and all the rest, and I get that. I also don’t regret it, so let it be.”

  He looked away from her, but the only thing to see was what was directly in front of them: the stunning concrete wall of the underground car park, which in this particular location bore a disturbing wet patch resembling the silhouette of Queen Victoria in her declining years. On so many levels it was not a pretty sight. Barbara was about to remark on this when Lynley said, “Frankly? You’re not doing your best work. You haven’t been for months. You and I and Isabelle all know that. So how is not doing your best work going to serve anyone in the long run?”

  “I’m trying to find my way,” she told him. “Or better said, I’m trying to find a way.”

  “A way for what?”

  “To navigate all this.”

  “And might I ask what constitutes ‘all this’?”

  Her chest developed a hard sore spot. She knew what that meant and what to do to fend it off: be brief and be gone. She said, “The job, sir. So just let me do it,” and she put her hand on the door handle, ready to open it. “But ta, anyway. I appreciate that—”

  He stopped her with, “I know what it is to miss someone, Barbara.”

  That only made things worse. She couldn’t leave him then, and he bloody well knew it. She sank back into her seat and looked straight ahead, at poor old widowed VR and her triple chin. She said, “I know that, sir. In my own case, I also know how stupid it is. Helen was your wife, for God’s sake, and she was murdered. These were my neighbours and they’ve only moved house.”

  “Love is love” was his reply. “God knows that it doesn’t require shared blood or legal documents or anything else to make it more intense. When someone’s gone, they’re gone, but what we’ve felt for them isn’t. To cope with that—having no place to put those feelings any longer—it takes a monumental effort of will.”

  She turned her head to look at him. He was watching her. Those dark brown eyes of his—always unexpected in a bloke whose hair went completely blond in summer—were fixed on her with what she knew he felt but what she also believed she didn’t deserve: compassion. Their situations were different, no matter how he tried to paint them. Nothing would ever make them similar. But she owed him so much, and she felt a real need to tell him that in the only way possible, which was obliquely.

  She said, “Thank you for that.”

  “For what?”

  “What you just said. You’re a decent bloke, for all your fine ways and your family silver and ancestral portraits.”

  “Ah.”

  They were silent together, both of them studying the Healey Elliott’s fascia with its knobs and dials and mysterious indicators. Finally, Barbara said to him, “On the other hand . . . d’you think you could get her to take a step away? Not the guv. I mean Dorothea. She had me speed dating the other night, and she’s been banging on about dancing lessons for the last two days. I’ve managed to hold her off by claiming fallen arches, but I don’t think she intends to take that one on board permanently by a long chalk.”

  He nodded, but his lips twitched in an effort not to smile. “On the other hand,” he said, “a fine rumba is a beautiful thing, Barbara. It’s not quite a tango, but it’s a very close second.”

  She smiled as well. “Sod you,” she said. They chuckled together companionably.

  They left the car park and rode up in the lift, separating when they reached their floor. Barbara worked her way to her desk. She was stopped by one of the younger DCs. Phone message, he told her, and he handed it over.

  It was Rory Statham who’d rung her, she saw. The message was merely to ring her back on an urgent matter concerning Clare Abbott.

  It was the notation about Clare Abbott that helped Barbara recall who Rory Statham was: the woman at the book signing in Bishopsgate Institute, the one who’d given Barbara one of Clare Abbott’s cards after the feminist’s minder had removed it from her. She dug out her mobile and placed a call to the number on the message.

  “Thank God” were Rory Statham’s first words, followed at once by, “I need to speak with you. Privately but in person. It’s to do with Clare. She’s died in Cambridge and—”

  “I saw that in the paper,” Barbara said. “I’m dead sorry about it. Heart attack?”

  “That’s just it. There was never anything wrong with her heart. I’ve the autopsy report and I’ve taken it to her doctor and he’s said . . . Look, can you meet me? I’ll come to you. Or I’ll meet you anywhere at any time. It’s dreadfully important.”

  She sounded in a real state. Barbara couldn’t blame her. When it came to loss, she was becoming something of an expert on how it felt. She said, “I c’n do round eleven o’clock,” which was her break time. “But you’ll have to come to me. And I got to say that if something burning comes up here in the meantime, I’ll have to cancel.” She hated to have to couch things in such terms, but if she knew nothing else, she knew she had to toe the line.

  Eleven o’clock at New Scotland Yard was no problem at all, Rory Statham told her. She would be there.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  At precisely eleven, Barbara’s phone rang. Rory Statham was phoning from below. She had Arlo with her, and the security team were giving her a very difficult time about the dog.

  “I’ll be down,” Barbara told her. “They probably think you’ve fed him explosives with his morning brekkie.”

  The reception area was its usual knot of police, civilian workers, and visitors. Barbara spied Rory Statham through the crowd. She was waiting directly next to one of the large ground-floor windows, this one possessing a spectacular view of the vast array of concrete barriers that protected the centre of London’s policing from individuals driving lorries packed with Semtex.

  Barbara worked her way over to the woman, extended her hand in greeting, and tilted her head towards the exterior of the building. It would be easier to talk outside, she told her. They couldn’t go far as, u
nfortunately, she didn’t have much time.

  They got as far as the pavement just across the street. With a brisk autumn wind rattling to the ground the leaves of the London planes nearby, Rory handed over a manila envelope.

  “I need your help,” she told Barbara. “I’m not sure where to turn. They’re saying she died of . . . It’s more or less two causes, they’re telling me. Heart arrhythmia and then a seizure. Only her doctor—Clare’s doctor?—has seen the autopsy—that’s what I’ve brought with me—and he’s compared it to her medical history. He’s been her physician for decades, and he’s told me that there’s nothing from her history with him or from anything she indicated when he took her on as a patient that would explain why she had the seizure. No brain trauma. No tumour. Nothing.”

  Barbara could see how agitated the woman was. So could, apparently, her dog. Arlo whined at her feet, and Rory scooped him up and held him childlike, with his paws against her chest. Barbara said to her, “As to the heart?”

  “Arrhythmia?” Rory licked her lips. She seemed hesitant. Barbara repeated her question. Rory finally said, “He said it could happen. He said that sometimes it does happen unexpectedly. Rapid beating, slowed beating, misfiring, all of it. Only, you see, Clare’d been tested. All the heart tests you can imagine five years ago, so for this to occur . . .”

  “What’re you suspecting?” Barbara said.

  “I don’t know,” Rory said. “Only, you see, she wasn’t alone in Cambridge. Caroline Goldacre—d’you remember the woman from the Bishopsgate signing? The one who didn’t want you to have Clare’s card?—she was there. They had adjoining rooms, and Caroline had locked the door between them so that Clare wouldn’t be able to . . .” She shifted Arlo from one shoulder to the other. It seemed an action designed to allow her a moment to get herself in order. She said, “There are too many things that don’t seem right, and I don’t know where to turn.”

  Barbara nodded. The fact that the door was locked between their rooms could have meant nothing and it probably did. Still, she opened the envelope and pulled out the report.

  She scanned it quickly. Height, weight, marks on the body, examination and weight of individual organs, toxicology, contents of stomach, condition of brain. A cursory reading suggested to Barbara that the conclusion of a seizure caused by cardiac arrhythmia was probably correct.

  She looked up. The expression on Rory Statham’s face killed off Barbara’s words before she could say them. Then Rory spoke. “They’ve released the body to me and I’ve had it . . . I’ve had her sent to Shaftesbury. Her parents’re long dead, you see, and her brother . . . The last thing Clare would have ever wanted was to give her brother access to her body. She has no other close relatives, and she and I have been family to each other since . . .” She took a steadying breath. “You see, I lost my partner some nine years ago? We were on holiday and—” Arlo gave a small yelp. Rory started. She’d been clutching at the dog and it seemed she’d inadvertently grabbed at him too tightly. Rory lowered him to the pavement with apologies, as if he could understand her words, which, perhaps, he could. She stayed crouched next to him and looked up at Barbara, saying, “Clare got me through it. And now to think that something might have happened to her . . .”

  Barbara said, “Of course.” She was at a loss, though. She wanted to help, but she wasn’t sure how. Bloody Christ, she thought, there was so much sodding pain in the world. How did anyone manage to live to old age?

  She put the report back into the envelope. She said the only thing she could. “C’n I hold onto this? I can’t promise anything. It looks straightforward. Still, there might be a chance that something’s been missed and as I’m not an expert . . . What I’m saying is not to make any arrangements about the body yet. I’ll be in touch.”

  The woman’s gratitude came at her in a rush, like a wave that released energy too long held in. She said, “Thank you, thank you,” and she buried her face in her small dog’s wiry hair. She said to Barbara, “Will you ring me, then?”

  “I will,” Barbara promised.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  She’d reckoned on having to dig someone up from SO7 to look over the material that Rory Statham had handed to her. But that didn’t turn out to be necessary. Instead, a brief conversation with DI Lynley resulted in her giving the autopsy report to him. He’d come by her desk with a “Lunch, Sergeant?” invitation to join him at Peeler’s. He added, “On me and in celebration,” to which she said, “Of what?” His reply, “Mission accomplished. At least on one front. It wasn’t easy. It required all my reserves of diplomacy, so I daresay we’re both owed a decent meal.”

  In the Met’s marginally decent restaurant, he revealed that he’d spoken at some length with Dorothea Harriman. The secretary had admitted that the speed dating had been a terrible idea. “I’d no idea the men would all pretend to be younger,” she’d said. “Isn’t that what women are supposed to do? I myself ended up ‘dating’ at least five blokes who—I swear to you—weren’t a day under forty, Detective Inspector Lynley.”

  When Barbara expressed her relief, Lynley held up a hand lest she think that Dorothea had thrown in the towel on all matters romantic when it came to Barbara. As he put it, Dorothea hadn’t quite released into the void her hopes that she could still somehow persuade Detective Sergeant Havers to attend dancing lessons with her. “I can only report that she promised to ‘give it a rest for now,’” Lynley told Barbara frankly.

  “Ta, sir,” Barbara said. “I c’n fend off the dancing lessons. No worries there.”

  “It might help if, in a week or two, you claim to be newly”—he seemed to search for a word— “newly ‘involved’ with someone. Or perhaps with something?”

  “Something?” Barbara asked. “Like romantically inclined towards a car, you mean? I’d need the Healey Elliott for that. I see how you look at that motor, sir.”

  “Admittedly, it’s love. But I meant a . . . perhaps a recently acquired hobby? Too busy to be called upon for dancing lessons and the like because you’re now . . . what could it be?”

  “Embroidering tea towels and pillow cases for my bottom drawer?” Barbara asked sardonically. She shook her head. “I’ll hold her off without sinking to lies. Meantime . . .” She opened the envelope with the autopsy materials inside. She said, “I’ve had this given to me,” and she explained the rest: Clare Abbott, her death, Rory Statham, her promise to that woman, and all the relevant details. She said, “I’ve had a look and it seems straightforward enough, but could you . . . ?”

  Lynley brought his reading specs from his jacket pocket and slid them on. They’d placed their orders before Barbara had offered him the report, and it wasn’t until their meal arrived that he looked up from his careful perusal of it. He said, “You’re right, Barbara. It does seem to be all here. There’s only one area that might be worth pursuing. But it’s a minor possibility at best.” He went on to talk about the toxicology report. A simple screening had been done, he told her, as she no doubt had noticed. This type of test looked for an array of common drugs, some legal and some not: drugs like amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, narcotics, cannabis, and cocaine. The presence of any of them would trigger a more detailed and sophisticated test to determine exactly what form of the drug was present. Was it something for a congested head cold or crystal methamphetamine, for example. In the case of Clare Abbott, the simple toxicology screening had been done, no drugs were present, so no further toxicology test was performed.

  “If there were no drugs present,” Barbara said, “why would they go further? It all looks straightforward, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, unless you consider that the death might have been caused by something that a simple screening doesn’t show but a more complex analysis would. That would involve blood, urine, and tissue samples. Gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers. It would also involve a large expense which can be avoided
if the obvious conclusion is”—here he looked to the part of the report that indicated the forensic pathologist’s conclusion—“sudden heart arrhythmia causing a violent seizure causing death.”

  “But that is what happened.”

  He removed his spectacles, folded them, and returned them to his pocket. “Yes. But if there’s a question at all about the death, it should deal with what could have caused those two events. This”—he tapped his fingers on the autopsy report –“depended upon the forensic pathologist’s curiosity and, unfortunately, his funding. With no indication at the scene that anyone messed her about, there would be no reason for him to delve once he could assign a cause of death.”

  “It would take a second autopsy then, wouldn’t it?” Barbara said.

  “It would,” he told her. “Not a simple thing to arrange in these circumstances in which nothing at all seems untoward.”

  Barbara considered this. She thought about the likelihood of a second autopsy being ordered merely at the request of Clare Abbott’s friend. It would take the participation of solicitors and magistrates and coroners and God only knew who else. But perhaps with a nudge from the Metropolitan Police . . . ? Surely something more efficient could be effected if the Met got involved.

  She said thoughtfully, “I think it’s what we need.”

  “The second autopsy? With not a single sign that anything was amiss at the scene, Barbara—”

  “A locked door,” she said. “Between adjoining rooms.”

  “Hardly earthshaking.”

  “I know. But this woman, sir? This Rory Statham? I get the impression Clare Abbott was like her only family or she was like Clare’s only family or something like that, but the point is . . . if it can set her mind at rest . . . I expect that Clare Abbott’s estate would even pay for it, if it came to that. And then Rory wouldn’t have to go through the rest of her life wondering why and how and who and what. She’d know. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”