The shrubbery didn’t present an unbroken border. There were occasional gaps in the growth, which connected the pub car park to the edge of the common, and the detectives stepped through one of these, beneath a natural archway that grew from an oak.
Another cricket match was going on at the south end of the lawn. It was a village match by the look of it. The players were adults garbed in traditional if individual white and the spectators sat in deck chairs, round which children shrieked and darted, frequently causing one of the umpires to shout, “Donna, for God’s sake, get those little blighters off the pitch.”
Lynley and his companions attracted no attention since the shrubbery grew along the common’s northeast boundary. The ground was rough here, hard uneven earth across which ivy grew in irregular patches, its tendrils creeping not only along the ground but also up a sagging expanse of wooden fence. Along this fence, rhododendrons flourished, their branches nodding heavily under the weight of enormous heliotrope blooms. The occasional holly bush reached out spinyleafed branches among the rhododendrons, and Sergeant Havers went to look at these as Lynley inspected the ground and Ardery watched.
“One of our crime-team blokes spoke to Connor O’Neil,” Ardery said. “He owns the pub. He was working the taps on Wednesday night along with his son.”
“Did he give us anything?”
“He said they finished up around half past twelve. Neither of them saw a strange car in the car park when they locked up. There were no cars left but their own, in fact.”
Lynley said, “That’s no surprise, is it?”
“We checked this site as well,” Ardery continued firmly. “As you can see, Inspector, the ground’s beaten down. It isn’t the proper consistency for taking a print.”
Lynley could see she was right. The vacant spots where ivy didn’t grow were littered with last year’s disintegrating leaves. Beneath them the ground was packed solid, like a stretch of cement. It wouldn’t be capable of taking an impression of anything, be it footprint, tyre print, or the killer’s signature.
He straightened. He looked back the way they had come. The shrubbery was, he believed, the most logical place to hide a vehicle if, indeed, a vehicle had been used at some stage of the crime. It gave on to the car park, which in its turn gave on to the lane that led to the footpath. The footpath steered the walker to within fifty yards of Celandine Cottage. All that was required of the killer they sought was a working knowledge of the local environment.
On the other hand, hiding a vehicle wasn’t completely necessary if the killer acted in concert with someone else. A driver could have paused momentarily at the Fox and Hounds, let off a killer who faded down the lane that led to the footpath, and merely spent an hour or more driving round the countryside until the fire was set and the starter returned. That suggested not only long-term collusion but also an intimate knowledge of Fleming’s movements on the day of his death. Two people, rather than one, would have had to possess a vested interest in his demise.
“Sir,” Sergeant Havers said. “Have a look at this.”
Lynley saw that Havers had inched along the rhododendrons and holly. She was squatting at the point where the shrubbery last made contact with the pub’s car park. She was brushing some fallen leaves to one side and lifting a tendril of ivy from among perhaps a dozen that reached into an oblong patch of earth.
Lynley and Ardery joined her. Over her shoulder, Lynley could see what she had found, a rough circle of packed earth some three inches in diameter. It was stained darker than the rest of the ground, coffee coloured as opposed to the hazel surrounding it.
Havers used her fingers to snap off the tendril she was holding. She grunted her way to her feet, shoved her hair off her forehead, and held the tendril out for Lynley’s inspection. “Looks like some kind of oil to me,” she said. “It’s dripped onto three of these leaves as well. See? Here’s some. And more there. And there.”
“Motor oil,” Lynley murmured.
“That’s what I’d say. Just like the oil on the blue jeans.” Havers indicated the Springburn Road. “He’d have come along there, killed the engine and the lights, and coasted along the edge of the lawn. Parked here. Slipped through the shrubbery and the car park, making for the footpath. Taken the path to the cottage. Jumped the wall into the paddock next door. Waited at the bottom of the garden for the coast to clear.”
Ardery said quickly, “You can’t think we wouldn’t have found tyre prints, Sergeant. Because if a car actually drove across the lawn—”
“Not a car,” Havers said. “A motorbike. Two tyres, not four. Lighter than a car. Less likely to leave a trail. Easy to manoeuvre. Easier to hide.”
Lynley felt reluctant to accept this scenario. “A motorbike rider who then smoked six or eight cigarettes to mark his place at Celandine Cottage? How does that play, Sergeant? What kind of killer leaves a calling card?”
“The kind of killer who doesn’t expect to get caught.”
“But anyone with the least knowledge of forensics would know the importance of not leaving evidence,” Lynley said. “Any evidence. Of any kind.”
“Right. So we’re looking for a killer who foolishly assumed this killing wasn’t going to look like a killing in the first place. We’re looking for someone who was thinking primarily of the end product here: Fleming’s death. How to bring it off and what there was to be gained, not how it might be investigated afterwards. We’re looking for someone who thought that cottage—crammed with antique bloody firewood, Inspector—would go up like a torch once that cigarette burned down far enough in the armchair. In his mind there wouldn’t be evidence. There wouldn’t be a cigarette end. There wouldn’t be the remains of matches. There wouldn’t be anything but rubble. And what, he would think if he did pause to think, would the police be able to make of rubble?”
A cheer went up from the spectators of the cricket match. The three detectives swung about. The batsman had hit the ball and was dashing for the other set of stumps. Two fielders were racing across the outfield. The bowler was yelling. The wicket keeper was throwing one of his gloves to the ground in disgust. Obviously someone had forgotten a cardinal rule of cricket: No matter what, always try for the catch.
“We need to talk to that boy, Inspector,” Havers said. “You wanted evidence. The Inspector here has provided us with it. Cigarette ends—”
“Which have yet to be identified.”
“Denim fibres stained with oil.”
“To be substantiated by the chromatograph.”
“Footprints which have already been identified. A shoe sole with a distinctive marking. And now this.” She gestured to the ivy he held. “What more do you want?”
Lynley didn’t reply. He knew how Havers would react to his answer. It wasn’t more that he wanted. It was less, far less.
Inspector Ardery, he saw, was still staring at the ground beyond Sergeant Havers where the oil stain made its circular splodge. Her face was vexed. She said quietly, more to herself than to them, “I told them to check for prints. We didn’t have the word yet about oil on the fibres.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lynley said.
“No. It does. If you hadn’t insisted…”
Havers’ resigned look asked Lynley if she should make herself scarce a second time. Lynley lifted a hand to tell her to stay where she was. He said, “You can’t be expected to anticipate evidence.”
“That’s my job.”
“This oil may mean nothing. It may not be the same as that on the fibres.”
“Damn it,” Ardery said more to herself than to them. She spent nearly a minute watching the cricket match—the same two batsmen were relentlessly continuing to try the marginal skills of the opposing side—before her features settled once more into a semblance of professional disinterest.
“When this is all over,” Lynley said with a smile as her eyes met his once again, “I’ll have Sergeant Havers relate some of my more interesting errors in judgement on the job.”
&n
bsp; Ardery’s head raised fractionally. Her response was cool. “We all make errors, Inspector. I like to learn from mine. This sort of thing won’t happen again.”
She moved away from them, in the direction of the car park, saying, “Is there more you’d like to see in the village?” She did not wait to hear his response.
Havers took the tendril of ivy from his hand. She bagged the individual leaves. “Speaking of errors in judgement,” she said meaningfully and followed Ardery into the car park.
CHAPTER
15
Jeannie Cooper poured boiling water over the P. G. Tips and watched the teabags bob to the surface like buoys. She took a spoon, stirred, and put the lid on the pot. She’d deliberately chosen the special tea-set this afternoon, the one with the pot shaped like a rabbit, with carrot cups and lettuce leaf saucers. It was the pot she always used when the kids were ill, to cheer them up and make them think of something besides an achy ear or a stomach gone peculiar.
She set the pot on the kitchen table where earlier she’d removed the old red oilcloth, spreading out in its place a green cotton tablecloth speckled with violets. On top of this she’d already laid the rest of the tea-set: lettuce leaf plates and the bunny-shaped milk jug with its matching sugar bowl. On the rabbit-family platter in the centre of the table, she’d stacked the liver paste sandwiches. She’d cut off the crusts, alternated the sandwiches with plain bread and butter, and surrounded the lot with Custard Cremes.
Stan and Sharon were in the sitting room. Stan was watching the telly, across whose screen a giant eel was swimming hypnotically to the rhythm of a background voice saying, “The habitat of the moray eel…” while Sharon bent over her bird notebook, using coloured pencils to fill in the markings on a gull she’d sketched yesterday afternoon. Her glasses had slipped to the end of her nose and her breathing was laboured and loud, like she had a bad head cold.
“Tea’s ready,” Jeannie said. “Shar, fetch Jimmy.”
Sharon raised her head and snuffled. She used the back of her hand to push her spectacles into place. She said, “He won’t come down.”
“You don’t know that, do you? Now fetch him like I said.”
Jimmy had spent the day in his bedroom. He’d wanted to go out earlier, around half past eleven that morning. He’d slouched into the kitchen with his windcheater on, opened the fridge, and pulled out the remains of a take-away pizza. This he rolled up, wrapped in tinfoil, and stuffed into his pocket. Jeannie watched him from the sink where she turned from washing the breakfast dishes. She said, “What’re you about then, Jim?” to which he replied with the single word nothing. She said that it looked to her like he was planning on going out. He said what if he was? He wasn’t about to hang round the house all day like a two-year-old. Besides, he had plans to meet a mate at Millwall Outer Dock. What mate is that, Jeannie had wanted to know. Just a mate, that’s all, he said. She didn’t know him and she didn’t need to know him. Was it Brian Jones, Jeannie had asked next. Jimmy had said, Brian Jones? Who the hell…He didn’t know any Bri—Then he’d recognised the trap. Jeannie remarked with innocence that he remembered, didn’t he, Brian Jones…from Deptford? Him Jimmy was with all day on Friday instead of going to school?
Jimmy had shoved the refrigerator door closed. He’d headed for the back door, saying he was off. Jeannie had said that he best come have a look out the window, first. She had said she meant it and if he knew what was good for him, he was to do like she asked.
He’d stood with one hand on the doorknob and his eyes shifting uneasily from her to the cooker and back to her. She said for him to come. She wanted him to see. He’d asked what, with that curl of the lip which she always wanted to slap from his face. She’d said he was just to come here, Jim. He was to have a good long look outside.
She could tell the boy thought her request was a trick, so she moved away from the window to give him room. He sidled across the floor as if expecting her to pounce upon him, and he looked out the window as she had bidden.
He’d seen the reporters. It was hard to miss them, lounging against their Escort across the street. He’d said, So what, they were there yesterday, to which she’d replied, Not there, Jim. He was to look in front of the Cowpers’ house, she told him. Who did he think those blokes were, the ones sitting in the black Nova? He’d shrugged, indifferent. She’d said, The police. So he could go out if he wanted, she told him. But he wasn’t to expect to be going out alone. The police would follow him.
He’d grappled with this information physically as well as mentally, his hands clenching into fists at his side. He’d asked what the police wanted. She’d told him they wanted to know about his dad. About what happened to him. About who was with him on Wednesday night. About why he died.
And then she waited. She watched him watching them, the police and the reporters. He tried to look uncaring, but he couldn’t fool her. There were subtle signs that gave him away: the rapid shift of weight from one foot to the other, one fist driven into the pocket of the jeans. He threw his head back and lifted his chin and demanded to know who gave a shit anyway, but he shifted his weight uneasily once more, and Jeannie could imagine that his palms were sweating and his stomach was quivering like jelly.
She found herself wanting to be the victor in this situation, wanting to ask him casually if he still planned to go out and about on this fine Sunday morning. She found herself wanting to press the issue, to open the door, to bid him be on his way just to force him to admit to his grief, to his fear, to a need for her help, to whatever the truth was, to anything. But she’d kept silent, remembering at the last moment—and with a clarity that cut—just what it was like to be sixteen years old and facing a crisis. She let him leave the kitchen and pound up the stairs, and she hadn’t invaded his privacy since.
Now, as Sharon climbed up to fetch him, Jeannie said to Stan, “Into the kitchen. Look sharp, all right? Time for tea.” He didn’t reply. She saw that he was scouring the inside of his nose with his little finger, and she said, “You! Stan! That’s disgusting! Stop it!” and the finger was hastily removed. Stan ducked his head and thrust his hands well beneath his arse. Jeannie said in a gentler voice, “Come on with you, luv. I’ve made us some tea.”
She directed him to the sink to wash while she poured the tea into their carrot cups. He came to her side and mumbled, “Got the special plates today, Mum,” and he slipped his hand—still damp from the washing—into hers.
She said, “Yeah. I thought we could do with some cheering up.”
“Jimmy coming downstairs?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Stan pulled his chair away from the table and plopped onto it. He chose a Custard Creme, a slice of buttered bread, and a liver paste sandwich for his plate. This latter he opened, holding each half flat in either of his palms. He said, “Jimmy was cryin’ last night, Mum.”
Jeannie’s interest quickened, but she said only, “Cryin’s natural. Don’t you go hard on your brother over that.”
Stan licked the liver paste from the bread. “He d’n’t think I heard him cos I didn’t say. But I heard all right. He had his head in the pillow and he was hitting the mattress and saying, fuck it, just fuck it.” Stan shrank back as Jeannie lifted a quick disciplinary hand. “It’s what I heard, Mum. I’m not saying it myself.”
“Well, mind that you don’t.” Jeannie filled the other cups. “What else?” she asked quietly.
Having divested it of its liver paste, Stan was chewing the bread. “More naughty words.”
“Such as?”
“Bastard. Fuck it, just fuck it, you bastard. That’s what he said. While he was crying.” Stan licked the liver paste from the bread slice in his other palm. “I ’spect he was crying about Dad. I ’spect he was talking about Dad as well. He broke them sailing boats of his, did you know?”
“I saw that, Stan.”
“And he said fuck you fuck you fuck you, when he did it.”
Jeannie sat opposite her younges
t child. She closed her thumb and index finger round his thin wrist. She said, “You aren’t telling tales to tell tales, are you, Stan? That’s a nasty habit if you are.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Good. Because Jimmy’s your brother and you’re meant to love him. He’s in a bad patch now, but he’ll come round all right.” Even as she said it, Jeannie felt the spear, the one that kept up the pressure beneath her left breast without ever once breaking the skin. Kenny had been in a bad patch as well, a patch that started out bad and only got worse.
“Jimmy says he doesn’t want any bleeding tea. Only he didn’t say bleeding. He said something else.” Shar fluttered into the kitchen like one of her birds, with sheets of drawing paper for wings. She pushed Jimmy’s plate, cup, and saucer to one side and smoothed the paper on top of the tablecloth. She picked up a sandwich delicately and took a ladylike bite as she surveyed her work, a bald eagle soaring above pine trees, with the pine trees so small that the eagle looked like he was a second cousin to King Kong.
“He said fucking, didn’t he?” Stan pinched the edges of his bread and butter, scalloping them.
“That’s enough of that word,” Jeannie said. “And wipe your mouth. Shar, see to your brother’s table manners, please. I’ll see to Jim.”
She rummaged in the cupboard next to the sink and brought out a chipped plastic tray. It had been a long ago wedding present to her and Kenny, lime green decorated with sprays of forget-me-nots. Just the thing, she had thought, for passing round scones and sandwiches at tea. She’d never used it for that, however, just for lugging one meal after another upstairs, catering to a child with a cold or flu. She put Jimmy’s teacup on it, adding sugar and milk the way he liked it. She picked among the sandwiches, the bread and butter, and the Custard Cremes.
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