Playing for the Ashes

by Elizabeth George

  Faraday saw Lynley evaluating them. “After a while you see enough of Taylor, Adam, and Nash, and you find yourself thinking, ‘This looks easy, I could have a bash at plaster myself.’ Not that there’s much call for new designs. But everyone’s always looking for someone with talent for repairing the old ones.”

  “These are good,” Lynley said. “Innovative.”

  “Innovative doesn’t cut it if you haven’t got a name. And I haven’t got a name.”

  “As what?” Lynley asked.

  “As anything other than a fixer.”

  “There’s a place for fixers, as you’ve no doubt found.”

  “Not one I want to occupy forever.” Faraday used the pad of his index finger to test the consistency of the plaster that was setting in one of his moulds. He wiped his finger on his stained blue jeans and slung a plastic bucket up from the floor. He carried this to a concrete tub at the far end of the lock-up and began sluicing water into it. He said over his shoulder, “You haven’t come here to talk about ceilings. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me about last Wednesday night. The truth this time, if you please.”

  Faraday sloshed water in the bucket. He scrubbed at it with a metal brush that he took from a shelf above the tub. He poured the water off and rinsed the bucket out. He brought it back to the workbench and set it next to a bag of plaster. His feet left a trail through the white dust that powdered the floor of the lock-up. His prints mixed with others already there.

  “I’ve got the distinct impression of intelligence from you,” Lynley said. “Both times we’ve met. You must have known we would check on your story, so I’ve been wondering why you told it in the first place.”

  Faraday settled against the workbench. His mouth played in and out with a bubble of air as he apparently considered the various answers he might give at this point. “I didn’t have any choice,” he finally said. “Livie was there.”

  “And you’d told her you’d gone to a stag party?” Lynley asked.

  “She thought I’d talk about going to a stag party.”

  “That’s an intriguing distinction, Mr. Faraday.”

  There was a tall stool on wheels tucked beneath the workbench. Faraday rolled this out and straddled its seat. Sergeant Havers made a place for herself on the top step of a three-step ladder, settling in with notebook in hand, while Lynley remained where he was. The lighting in the lock-up, unlike the lighting he had encountered during his visits to the barge, benefited Lynley this time. It came both from the street and from a fluorescent tube above the workbench, and it shone directly into Faraday’s face.

  “Obviously,” Lynley said, “we’re going to need an explanation. Because if you weren’t at a stag party and were merely using it as a cover for something else, it does seem more likely that you would have cooked up something less easy for the police to verify. As I’ve already said, you must have known we’d check into it as soon as you gave us the names of the films and the video shop.”

  “If I’d said anything else…” Faraday rubbed his fingers into his neck. “What a mess,” he muttered. “Look, what I was up to has to do with Livie and me. It has nothing to do with Fleming. I didn’t know him. I mean, I knew he lived in Kensington all right, with Livie’s mother. But that was it. I’d never met the bloke. Neither had Livie.”

  “Then I imagine you’ll have no difficulty relating the facts of last Wednesday night to us. If they have nothing to do with Fleming’s death.”

  Sergeant Havers made meaningful noises with the pages of her notebook. Faraday looked in her direction.

  “Livie believed that the stag party story would check out,” Faraday said. “Under different circumstances, it would have done. So she was expecting me to talk about the party and if I hadn’t done, it would have led her to know something that would hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt her, so I gave you the story she expected to hear. That’s it.”

  “I take it, then, that you use the stag party as a regular alibi.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “Sergeant?” Lynley said. Havers began reading off the list of video shops that Nkata had given them, as well as the dates upon which the films had been rented throughout the last five years. She’d recited only three years back before Faraday stopped her.

  “I get the point. But I’m not talking about it, okay? The stag party story has nothing to do with what you’ve come to see me about in the first place.”

  “Then what does it have to do with?”

  “Not with Wednesday night and not with Fleming, if that’s what you’re hoping. So do you want me to talk about Wednesday or not? Because I will, Inspector—and the story’ll check out—but I’ll only tell it if you agree to back off about the rest.” When Lynley started to respond, Faraday interrupted with, “And don’t tell me the police don’t make deals when it comes to the truth. You and I both know that you do it all the time.”

  Lynley pondered his options but realised there was little point in carting Faraday off to New Scotland Yard for a show of police muscle and a taped session in the interview room. All the other man had to do was phone a solicitor and maintain his silence and Lynley would find himself with no more information than he’d been able to garner from his previous interviews with the fixer.

  “Go on,” he said evenly.

  “You’ll back off about the rest?”

  “I’ve said I’m interested in Wednesday night, Mr. Faraday.”

  Faraday dropped his hand to the surface of the workbench where his fingers sought one of the rubber mouldings. “All right,” he said. “Livie thinks I was out on Wednesday night, doing something that I needed a solid cover story for. That’s what I told her, and since she already knew the cover story, I didn’t have much choice but to trot it out for you when you came round. But the fact is—” He jiggled the rubber moulding. He stirred on his seat. “The fact is that I was with a woman on Wednesday night. She’s called Amanda Beckstead. I spent the night at her flat in Pimlico.” He looked at Lynley with some measure of defiance in his expression, as if expecting to be judged and readying himself for the judgement. He seemed to feel compelled to add, “Livie and I aren’t lovers, in case you think I’m betraying her. We never were. I just don’t want to hurt her by making her think I need something she would like to give me herself but can’t. I don’t expect you to understand what I’m talking about, but I’m telling you the truth.”

  Faraday finished the sentence with his colour high. Lynley didn’t point out to him that there was more than one form of betrayal. Instead he said merely, “Amanda Beckstead’s address and phone number?”

  Faraday recited them. Sergeant Havers scribbled them into her notes. Faraday added, “Her brother lives there as well. In Pimlico. He knows I was with her. He’ll confirm. The neighbours can probably do the same.”

  “You left her rather early in the morning, if our account of your return is accurate.”

  “Livie expected me to show up around five to fetch her from her mother’s. So that’s what I did. Although as things turned out, I needn’t have made such a rush of it. She and her mother were still going great guns over breakfast.”

  “Arguing?”

  Faraday’s expression was surprised. “Hell no. Burying the hatchet, I guess you’d call it. They’d been separated since Livie was twenty-two, so they had a lot of ground to cover with each other and not a lot of time to cover it in. From what I could tell, they’d been up all night talking.”

  “About what?”

  Faraday shifted his attention to the rubber mould nearest his fingers. He smoothed his thumb against the side.

  “May I assume,” Lynley said, “that they were covering topics other than the ultimate disposition of Olivia’s ashes?”

  “It wasn’t anything to do with Fleming,” Faraday said.

  “Then you should have no qualms about telling us.”

  “That’s not quite it, Inspector.” He raised his head and fastened his eyes on Lynley.
“It’s to do with Livie herself. And it ought to come from her, not from me.”

  “I find there’s a great deal of energy being expended on protecting Olivia Whitelaw. Her mother protects her. You protect her. She protects herself. Why do you think that is?”

  “I’m not expending energy on protecting Livie.”

  “The act of denial requires energy, Mr. Faraday. As do evasions and outright lies.”

  “What the hell are you suggesting?”

  “That you’re being less than forthright with the facts.”

  “I told you where I was on Wednesday night. I told you who I was with. I as much as told you what we were doing. That’s my part of the story and the rest you’re going to have to get from someone else.”

  “So you do know what they were talking about. All night.”

  Faraday cursed on an expelled breath. He got up from his stool and paced across the room. Outside, Cyndi Lauper at the Platinum Gym had given way to Metallica at maximum volume. Faraday strode to the door of the lock-up and slammed it to the cement floor. The howling guitars faded slightly.

  “I can’t cope much longer. Livie knows it. I know it. I’ve managed to hang on this long mostly because I’ve been able to scrape together a few hours now and again to see Amanda. She’s been…I don’t know. I guess she’s been my lifeline. Without her I think I would have chucked the whole thing long ago.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Coping with Livie and ALS. That’s what she’s got. Motor Neuron Disease. From this point on, she’s going to get a whole lot worse.” He moved restlessly from the workbench to a stack of old mouldings that lay against the far wall of the lock-up. He poked at these with the toe of his trainer, and when he continued to speak, he did so to the floor rather than to Lynley. “When she can’t use the walker any longer, she’s going to need a wheelchair. After that a ventilator and a hospital bed. When she gets to that point, she can’t stay on the barge. She could go into a nursing home, but she doesn’t want that and I don’t want that for her. The more we thought about the situation and wrestled with solutions, the more we kept coming up with her mother. And going home to her mother. That’s why Livie went to see her on Wednesday.”

  “To ask her mother about moving home?”

  Faraday nodded. He kicked at the pile of old mouldings. Three of them broke, coughing a gust of powder onto his jeans. He brushed the powder off. It was a useless gesture. The white dust of it was everywhere.

  “Why didn’t the two of you simply tell me this to begin with?” Lynley asked him.

  “I’ve already told you,” he said. “Or at least I’ve tried. Can’t you see what’s going on? She’s living with dying. She loses ground every day. She and her mother’d had nothing to do with each other for years and there Livie was, having to crawl back in order to ask her mother for help. You think that was easy for Livie? She has a lot of pride. The whole situation put her through hell. So if she didn’t feel like relating every detail of that night to you, I wasn’t about to make her. It seemed to me like she told you enough anyway. What more did you want from her?”

  “The truth,” Lynley said. “Which is what I want from everyone involved.”

  “Well, you’ve got the truth now, haven’t you?”

  Lynley wondered. Not so much about whether he had the truth or not but about Faraday himself. He’d seemed forthright enough once he’d made up his mind to cooperate, but there was no way to overlook one salient aspect of their interview with him. As long as he’d been relating the facts of his own behaviour on Wednesday night, he’d stayed in the glare of the fluorescent light. But once his story shifted to Olivia, he’d sought the shadows. Light and shadows seemed to be recurring themes in Lynley’s encounters with Faraday and the Whitelaw women. He found he couldn’t ignore the nagging question that asked why these three individuals kept seeking the dark.

  Lynley insisted upon driving her home. Once Barbara told him that she’d suffered the torments of the Northern Line that morning rather than exposing herself to the aggravation of constipated traffic, he noted the fact that Kilburn was no great distance from Belsize Park below which the neighbourhood of Chalk Farm made a diagonal slash between Camden Lock and Haverstock Hill. It would be ludicrous, he said into her protests, to return her to the Yard when a ten-minute drive would take her to her doorstep. When she tried to argue, he said that he wasn’t hearing any idiotic arguments, Havers, so did she want to direct him to her house or did she want him to drive round blindly with the hope of stumbling upon it by chance?

  Barbara had managed to keep him away from the grim realities of her home in Acton for the three and a half years of their partnership. But she could tell by the set of his jaw that she wasn’t going to be successful in arguing for the nearest tube station this evening. Especially since the nearest station was on the wrong line entirely and would require an extended romp changing trains at Baker Street and an even longer romp doing the same at King’s Cross. It was a good forty minutes by train or ten minutes by car. She grumbled about it, but she gave him directions with a show of good grace.

  In Eton Villas, Lynley surprised her by pulling the Bentley into a vacant space and shutting off the engine. She said, “Thanks for the lift, sir. What’s on for tomorrow morning?” and opened her door.

  He did likewise. He stepped into the street and took a moment to scrutinise the surrounding houses. The street lamps clicked on in the midst of his observation, highlighting in a pleasant fashion the Edwardian buildings beneath them. He nodded. “Nice area, Sergeant. Quiet.”

  “Right. So what time d’you want—”

  “Let’s see your new digs.” Lynley slammed his door.

  See? she thought. Her chest filled with a bellow of protest, but she managed to control it. She said, “Uh, sir?” and thought of his own digs in Belgravia. Gilt-framed oil paintings, porcelains on the mantelpieces, silver glinting in the breakfront cupboards. Eaton Terrace was a far cry from Eton Villas, despite the homophonic coincidence of their names. Holy hell, she thought and hastened to say, “Oh, gosh. It’s not much, Inspector. It’s not anything, in fact. I don’t think you—”

  “Nonsense.” And he was striding up the drive.

  She followed him saying, “Sir…sir?” but saw it was useless when he pushed open the gate and began heading for the front steps. Still she tried with, “It’s just a cottage. No, that’s not right. It’s not even a cottage. It’s more like a shed. Sir, the ceiling’s not high enough for you. Really. If you go inside, you’ll feel like Quasimodo in less than a minute.”

  He followed the path in the direction of the front door. She threw in the towel and said, “Balls,” to herself and then to him, “Inspector? Sir? It’s this way. Round the back.”

  She led him along the side of the house, trying to recall in what condition she’d left the cottage upon her departure that morning. Underwear hanging over the kitchen sink? Bed made or unmade? Plates off the table? Crumbs on the floor? She couldn’t remember. She fumbled for her keys.

  “Unusual,” Lynley said behind her as she searched through her shoulder bag. “Is this intentional, Havers? Part of the overall design for convenient modern living?”

  She looked up and saw that her little neighbour Hadiyyah had at last seen to it that her promise was kept. The pink-draped refrigerator that as late as this morning had still been sitting on the flagstones in front of the ground-floor flat had now been moved and was standing to one side of Barbara’s own front door. A note was sellotaped to the top. Lynley handed it to Barbara. She ripped it open. In the diffused light shining from one of the windows at the back of the house, she saw a delicate script that resembled calligraphy more than it did cursive. Someone had written: Unfortunately unable to place refrigerator within your cottage as door was locked. Terribly sorry, and then signed, as if with disgust at the beauty of the script, two names of which only the initial few letters were legible. T-a-y on the first name. A-z on the second.

  “Well, thank you
Tay Az,” Barbara said. She related the ballad of the misplaced appliance to Lynley. She finished with, “So I assume Hadiyyah’s father moved it back here for me. Nice of him, wasn’t it? Although I don’t suppose he’s much liked having it as a conversation piece outside his front door for the last two days. When I get the chance…” She flipped on the lights and gave the cottage a swift inspection. A pink bra and a pair of knickers speckled with green dots were slung over a cord that ran between two cupboards above the kitchen sink. She hastily buried them in a drawer with the cutlery before she switched on a light next to the day-bed and returned to the door. “It’s really not much. You’ll probably—Sir, what are you doing?”

  It was a needless question, for Lynley had put his shoulder to the refrigerator and was in the process of moving it. Barbara had visions of oily grime soiling his elegant suit. She said, “I can manage that. Really. I’ll do it in the morning. If you’ll…Inspector, come on. D’you want a drink or something? I’ve got a bottle of…” What the hell did she have a bottle of, she wondered as Lynley continued to heave the refrigerator from one leg to another, walking it towards the door.

  She went to assist him, taking up a position on the other side. They moved it easily enough across her small terrace and had only a few minutes’ discussion over how best to waltz it across the threshold and into the kitchen without having to remove the front door in the process. When they finally had the refrigerator in position, its flex plugged into the socket, its motor whirring with only an occasional ominous wheeze, Barbara said, “Terrific. Thank you, sir. If we get the sack over this Fleming business, we can always go into removals next.”

  He was taking in the hotchpotch of her belongings, one part Camden Lock, three parts Acton, and a good fifteen parts jumble sale. Like a compulsive bibliophile, he went to the bookshelves. He chose a volume at random, then another. She hastily said, “Junk reading. It takes my mind off work.”