A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  He drew the bedroom’s only chair next to the bed. He asked her if she was cold like that, with every inch of her exposed.

  She said no, for the room was warm and although the window was cracked open to the night, there was no draught. She asked him if he was certain he didn’t want to come to bed. She murmured, You’ve not slept this night, have you? And after a moment she added in a whisper he would have missed had he not been so acutely listening, What’s she done?

  He shook his head. He told her not to worry about him. For she was his waking and his sleeping, he said. She was the ground that he walked upon.

  She said to him, Alastair, don’t be mad. I’m mere flesh and blood.

  Not to me, he told her.

  14 OCTOBER

  FULHAM

  LONDON

  Barbara had phoned Rory in advance, within minutes of arriving at New Scotland Yard where the other woman had left her message, but she’d got no answer. As it was early, she reckoned Rory was either in the shower or providing her dog with his morning walkies. So she left a message about her time of arrival in Fulham and didn’t worry when her call wasn’t returned. She had more important activities to consume her. Getting permission to sally forth from the Yard was directly on the top of that list.

  She put some thought into it. DI Lynley’s intercession had brought about the additional autopsy. He had two connections that he’d employed with his usual blue-blooded finesse: a forensics specialist he’d long ago been a pupil with at Eton and the detective chief superintendent in Cambridge with whom he had worked—along with Barbara—when a university student had met her death by the river a few years earlier. The first of these two individuals undertook a study of the initial autopsy report, after which he’d made a formal written recommendation for another look into matters concerning Clare Abbott’s death. The second had fielded the phone call from Lynley, which garnered the Cambridge cops’ cooperation in the matter. What Barbara had thought was, No skin off their noses, as it wasn’t down to the Cambridge police that the initial autopsy hadn’t been as thorough as it might have been. But Lynley liked to smooth the waters before sailing upon them, so she didn’t argue with his plan. She was depending upon this water-smoothing quirk in his character when it came to getting herself into a position to go to Fulham.

  Isabelle Ardery wouldn’t want this. She liked Barbara Havers just where she could see her, monitor her, and jump upon her the moment she stepped out of order. In fact, it was likely she’d already bought Barbara an open-ended rail ticket to Berwick-upon-Tweed, so sure would she be that Barbara couldn’t possibly keep her nose clean for long. So giving her the go-ahead to deliver information to Fulham wasn’t an activity she was certain to embrace. She would instead tell Lynley to use a courier to do the job. Or she would instruct him to do it himself. Or she would say that a uniformed constable could take on the responsibility.

  Lynley would counter by arguing that this simple act of providing information to the Fulham woman was exactly the sort of thing Isabelle could use to test Barbara’s level of professionalism and the true depth of change in her character. He would say that Isabelle could not possibly intend to keep Barbara Havers on a short lead forever and the only manner in which she would learn if she could actually trust the detective sergeant was going to be to provide her with certain opportunities to bollocks things up.

  He’d say Isabelle, as well, Barbara thought. She’d tell him to call her ma’am or guv or boss or even superintendent but he’d want her to remember those sweaty moments when he’d groaned or murmured or shouted her name as they’d writhed together on a lumpy mattress somewhere in London. That could work against him, of course, but Barbara reckoned it wouldn’t. As former lovers, Ardery and Lynley had each other’s back when it came down to it, whether they would ever admit it or not.

  So when he came to her, handed her the report, and said, “Do not step across a single line, Barbara,” after his meeting with the superintendent, she wasn’t altogether surprised. She promised him six ways to Sunday that she would be a model of every possible facet of admirable police work, and at the time she actually meant it.

  Barbara wasn’t overly concerned when she rang the bell next to Rory’s surname on the panel near the front door of her building but failed to rouse her. She was inconvenienced by the fact that it had begun to rain, but she had on her mac and there was shelter enough from the wind to allow her to light up and smoke a fag. When she’d topped up the nicotine in her bloodstream, she rang the bell again. Nothing. Its position on the panel suggested that Rory Statham lived on the building’s first floor, and it seemed to Barbara that behind a closed French window on that level, a dog yipped as she rang the bell another time.

  This was moderately disconcerting. Barbara tried another of the bells on the panel. A man’s voice answered and she told him who she was and why she was there. Could he release the door and allow her inside? she asked him. She explained that she was unable to rouse the tenant of flat 3 and as she could hear the dog barking—

  “Bloody hell, I wish you’d shoot him. He’s been going on for hours.” The man cut her off and released the lock on the door.

  Barbara made for the stairs. There was only a single door on the first floor, and behind it she could hear the dog. Her knocking sent the animal into a frenzy. A door above opened and someone came powering down towards her.

  By his voice, she recognised Mr. Shoot-the-Dog. He was, he said, trying to work. Had been trying to work since dawn. He was trying to concentrate on what the worldwide markets were doing, and this wasn’t helping matters. Was she going to do something? Because if the police weren’t capable of responding for five hours when a call was made, what the hell were they good for?

  This was Barbara’s first clue that a phone call had been made to the local rozzers who, undoubtedly with more on their plates than settling a barking canine, had put the complaint directly to the bottom of their daily must-dos. She dug out her warrant card, allowed the seething gent to have his way with it, and told him she was not there because of the animal within the flat—clearly in distress, she informed him—but rather to have a word with the woman who lived there. Did he know where she was?

  Of course he didn’t bloody goddamn know, he told her and if she couldn’t do something about that mongrel . . . Let her call it a sodding assistance dog if she would but he had no intention of putting up with—

  With neighbours like this, Barbara thought, who needed vagrants accosting one upon street corners and dope deals going down in the nearest park? She thanked the gentleman for his deep concern about the welfare of the woman inside the flat and suggested he take himself back to where he belonged. She had some serious thoughts on exactly where this was, but she didn’t share them with him.

  She went back outside the building, making sure to wedge the front door open by means of the autopsy report she’d brought with her, along with her shoulder bag. On her way out, she looked for a porter or a concierge—not very likely in a building this size but one could always hope—and failing that, she rang at one of the two ground-floor flats to see if extra keys were perhaps kept somewhere? No such luck, hence her return to the street.

  There were several possibilities. One was to ring the local rozzers herself and ask them to break down Rory Statham’s door. Another was to ring nine-nine-nine with the same request. Both of those could take hours and she didn’t have hours before Isabelle Ardery would be climbing up her backside, so she went for option three.

  A thick wisteria that looked to be about fifty years old grew on the front of the building, its substantial trunk twisting and turning in the habitual way of that plant as it forged a route towards the roof four floors above. It hadn’t shed its leaves yet, so there would be a bit of interference from them—not to mention rainwater—but it grew close to the small balcony onto which the French windows of what had to be Rory Statham’s flat opened. If Barbara was in luck,
those windows might be unlocked.

  She reckoned she could manage the climb as wisterias provided plenty of hand- and footholds and the French windows were, after all, only on the first floor. So she gave herself a mental pat on the back for having worn brogues instead of court shoes that would have made short work of plunging her off the vine and onto the ground.

  Given, she wasn’t much for the Tarzan aspects of life. Given, she was in wretched physical condition. But desperate times and all the rest set her upon the wisteria with determination. One false start toppled her back to the ground with a painful thud, but after that it was butter on a crumpet.

  The front of her was soaked from residual rainwater on the wisteria leaves by the time she reached out for the railing of the balcony on the first floor. The back of her was soaked from the continuing rainfall. The railing of the balcony was stone, thank God, but Barbara tested it all the same to make certain it was securely in place.

  It didn’t give. So far, so good. Getting herself onto the balcony didn’t require a leap either, as it would have done in a television drama. Instead, it was an arm’s length away from her. She wriggled a bit higher on the wisteria, felt it creak menacingly, hoped for the best, and flung herself at the balcony. She came to rest on her stomach across the stone railing, in something of a downward-facing dog pose. Her legs flailed, she sent thanks heavenward that she was wearing pristine knickers, and with a grunt and a heave and a determined scissoring of legs, she tumbled onto the balcony.

  She landed on her cheek and hit a puddle. She cursed and scrambled to her feet. The surface of the balcony comprised slick marble squares, which didn’t make this an easy manoeuvre, and she nearly went over the side of the railing when she slid on what appeared to be moss—did moss even grow on marble? she wondered—that formed miniature continents rising from the damp.

  She glanced down at her clothes. Her mac now had a ruined zip and beneath it, her beige skirt was filthy. Her tights had ladders suitable for use by the fire brigade, her shoes were badly scuffed, and she could only imagine what the rest of her looked like.

  Inside the flat, the barking had moved from the door to the French windows. Barbara heard Arlo frantically scratching at something just on the other side of the glass. The damn curtains were closed, so there was nothing to see. But Arlo’s presence inside, his state, and the absence of his owner all boded the worst.

  She tried the French windows. Of course, they were locked. What else would they be? she asked herself. She looked round for something to ease her entry into the flat, but there was nothing at all. Not even a convenient flowerpot with an azalea drooping in its soil.

  As far as she could see, she had two choices. The first was her foot and the second was her elbow. She reckoned there might well be an artery in her foot and her luck being what it was, she knew she’d slice right into it and languish on the balcony bleeding to death before she could get inside the flat. That left her elbow.

  She backed against the French windows. She gave thanks that the building did not have double glazing, and with a mighty shriek that she’d seen employed in martial arts films, she drove her elbow into the glass.

  It took three tries, but she managed it, all the time trying to settle the dog inside, who’d gone berserk with the first blow she struck. When the pane finally broke, Barbara reckoned that someone somewhere surely must have phoned the local cops by now, but not a siren sounded anywhere.

  She cleared the glass from the opening she’d made. Carefully, she stuck her hand inside. The windows hadn’t been bolted at top and bottom as they could have been, so when she felt for a key and turned it, she managed to get herself inside.

  She said, “Arlo, Arlo. Good boy. Nice dog,” and was truly relieved that Rory’s assistance dog was not an Alsatian, who would have probably taken off her arm first and her face second. When she worked her way through the curtains, the dog came to her immediately. In fact, so pleased was he to see her that he low-crawled across the room to her, whimpering. She extended her hand and he sniffed accordingly. She passed the dog test.

  She looked round. The heavy curtains swathed the room in darkness, but they did nothing to cover the scent. Faeces, urine, and something more. Vomit? Vomit mixed with blood?

  Barbara felt the hair on her arms stir. She pushed the curtains back to flood the room with the muted daylight outside. She was fairly certain what she was about to find inside the flat, and so she found it: Rory Statham was twisted into an agonised posture, somehow wedged between the sofa and the wall, on the sitting room floor.

  CHELSEA

  LONDON

  In handing over the second autopsy report to Barbara Havers, Lynley had thought matters would be quickly resolved. Barbara’s brief had been to share the information from the report with Rory Statham while he turned over a copy of it to the Cambridge police. For Clare Abbott’s death had been either suicide or murder. A more detailed toxicology study had revealed the cause of her death but not the means through which a poisonous substance had found its way into her body.

  “Sodium azide,” he’d said to Barbara when he handed the autopsy report to her.

  She’d taken it from him and asked, logically, what sodium azide was. He hadn’t known himself, but he’d earlier phoned his longtime friend Simon St. James for the information.

  “Labs use it as a preservative so bacteria don’t grow in reagents,” the forensic scientist told him in answer. “It’s deadly poison. Is that what killed the woman in Cambridge, Tommy?”

  To Havers, Lynley said, “If someone ingests it, it apparently works something like cyanide, just not quite as quickly.”

  “So Rory Statham was spot-on, wasn’t she?”

  “In that the cause wasn’t natural, yes. In that it was murder, that remains to be seen.”

  He’d pointed out to Havers that Clare Abbott could have taken her own life. Barbara scoffed at this. The woman had been at the top of her game, she said. He’d argued that celebrated figures at the top of their game had been known to do away with themselves, to which she’d countered that there was no way on earth this celebrated figure would have offed herself, not with her new book flying off the bookshop shelves. To Lynley’s comment that they didn’t really know the woman, did they?, Havers had said, “We know a bit about human nature, sir. And let me tell you this: Clare Abbott did herself in the way I just gave up Pop-Tarts for breakfast.”

  Point taken, he’d said. But suicide or murder, Clare Abbott’s death wasn’t their remit. It belonged to Detective Chief Superintendent Daniel Sheehan. Their job was limited to passing along information to him. Or so things had been supposed to go.

  When his phone rang, Lynley had hoped it would be Daidre Trahair. He hadn’t seen her in days, and he missed her rather more than he wanted to consider. It turned out to be Havers, however, although it was difficult at first to tell because a dog was barking, it seemed, directly into the detective sergeant’s mobile.

  “She’s been poisoned, sir,” Havers said, her voice rising with agitation. “I swear to God she’s been bloody poisoned. Someone got to her. I found her on the floor and she’d sicked up everywhere and I think she’s in a coma and—”

  “Rory Statham?”

  “Who bloody else?”

  “She’s still alive?”

  “Barely breathing. Barely anything. I rang triple nine and they’ve taken her off to A & E.”

  “Where are you, then? Christ, Barbara. Whose dog is barking?”

  “Hers. I’m in her flat. He’s an assistance dog or something, like blind people have. He’s meant to stay with her and he’s gone bonkers now they’ve taken her out of here.”

  “Is there some place you can put him?”

  “Hang on.” More barking ensued, growing progressively more panicked. Then it faded and Barbara returned. “He’s in her bedroom. Bloody hell. I have no clue about dogs, but if he could talk, I wager h
e’d tell a real tale about all this.”

  “Have you phoned the police?”

  “I am the police. We’re the police. Look, the means have to be the same, Inspector. Whatever got to Clare—”

  “Sodium azide.”

  “—got to her. Rory.”

  “Perhaps. But this isn’t ours, Barbara. If anything, it’s Fulham’s.”

  “The means are the same. Murder and now attempted murder. Of two women who were known to each other, connected to each other in more ways than one. Professionally. Personally.”

  “Nonetheless—”

  “You can make things happen, and I need you to do it. I know you understand why. What it can mean. For me. In everyone’s eyes so I can finally . . .” She stopped herself. He could hear her ragged breathing. When she said, “Inspector, I need you to help me,” he was as torn as he’d ever been.

  Still he said, “Barbara, you’re on someone else’s patch. Considering what you’ve got going on there, I’m surprised Fulham hasn’t sent a uniform already.”

  “They don’t send uniforms when all they know is that someone was carted off to hospital. And as of now that’s all they know and we can keep things that way. You can keep things that way.”

  “Christ. Listen to yourself. It’s exactly this sort of thinking—”

  “All right. Understood. On board and all the rest. So meet me at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. That’s all I’ll ask.”

  “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that. And even if I agreed to meet you, what would be the point?”

  “The point would be talking to the casualty blokes with me. Talking to the doctors. Talking to whoever. Listen, the paramedics didn’t even want to touch her when I said sodium azide. They actually put on hazmat suits. So they’ll be looking for the poison straightaway at hospital, and if we speak to them, we’ll know what we’re working with.”

  “We’re not ‘working with’ anything.”