Lu stopped suddenly, turned to face him and pushed him against the wall. “You don’t? Really?” Her mouth was near his but not on it. The words came out in hot little puffs. “You’re pretty dim then; how did you make it to superintendent?”
“I can always make my way back down the chain.” He said this against her lips, not quite, but almost there. A breeze stirred the few leaves at their feet, the few cast-off bits of paper, and her hair, long and loose, floated up like a veil.
“We need to discuss this, you know. At your place or mine? I told you he was lying.”
“No, you said he was full of shit.” This was whispered with his mouth so close to hers they seemed to be breathing together, air lacking oxygen if they’d breathed apart. He felt the same thing he’d felt when she’d walked into Billy’s room at the Zetter.
“Your place or mine?” she whispered.
“Mine,” said Jury, his hand on the back of her hair, cutting out the sliver of light, the whispering, the air. Again, he felt he was smothering.
Naked, sheet pulled up to her chin, she smoked a cigarette and watched him through the scrim of smoke. “You going somewhere?”
He had pulled on pants, vest, shirt, was sitting on the edge of the bed, starting to button the shirt. “I’ve got this case, see, that occasionally demands some of my atten—”
Lu slapped his hand away from the buttons, grabbed on to the collar and pulled his face down to hers. “At least, don’t button it.” She kissed him.
“Is this love, then? What?”
“Love? Is that what you want?”
He smiled and brought his face down to hers again. He was close enough to brush his lips across her cheek. He said, “I want…” then across the bridge of her nose, and over the other cheek, at the same time running his hand down her arm and then up to her hand. “This!” He snatched the cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.
She swung the pillow around and hit him, laughing. “So that’s all I am to you! A source for all of your sinful addictions.”
“Pretty much, yeah.” Cigarette still in his mouth, he rose, buttoned up his shirt. “Get up. I’m going upstairs to check on Stone.”
“Stone?”
“A dog. His owner’s in Europe somewhere. He’s a musician. Has a group, plays guitar. Be back in a minute.” He leaned down, kissed her, left.
She was gone when he returned, leaving no trace of herself behind. Clothes on the floor, shoulder bag and shoes, her damned cigarettes had all been gathered up and gone with her. Not a trace, not a clue, that is, except the general wreckage of the flat.
Jury had to smile. The living room looked as if it had been tossed by Vice. He padded into the kitchen, filled the kettle, and set it down smartly on the burner, as if the violence that had risen in his blood after the last twenty-four—no, not that even—would now be forced onto anything that happened to cross his path.
He opened the cupboard, pulled out a mug, and slammed the unprovoking cupboard door shut. He leaned his forehead against it. Then he turned his back, head in hands. Are you fucking insane?
For one wild second he feared the cupboard door would answer. All of the inanimate things around him seemed to be pulsing, attuned to the same current. It was as if there were a crying-to-be-used leftover violence or rage. Was this supposed to be the legacy of love? But it wasn’t love. Love, he feared, wasn’t big enough to hold it.
They couldn’t keep this up.
He couldn’t resist it.
A knock at the door yanked him away from the wall. He hoped it wasn’t anyone he knew; he might just land a punch on a jaw. Quickly, he finished buttoning his shirt, and on the way to the door set the coffee table upright again, but hadn’t time to upturn the chair and end table. They weren’t in the line of vision from his door, so that was all right. He opened it.
“Mr. Jury.” She was wringing her hands.
It was Mrs. Wasserman, the tenant of the basement flat.
“Did you hear it?”
He arranged his face in simple greeting. “Hello, Mrs. Wasserman. Hear what?”
Anxiously, she whispered, as if “it” might hear her and knock her down. “The awful noise last night.” As Jury stood his ground in the doorway, blocking her view, she looked upward, as though she were seeing through the second-and third-floor flats. “Could Carole-anne have had friends over?” “Friends” to be counted of course as one particular friend, but not by her. “A party, perhaps? It was so wild I’d think you would have heard it.”
Jury looked at the ceiling where, in the flat above them, the dog Stone’s nails click clicked as he paced. “Stone?”
“A dog making that racket? Now you’re just teasing. What worries me is an intruder—”
Jury held up his hand, palm out. He’d got it. “Stan’s back.” Why did that statement sound so ridiculous? He cleared his throat. “That’s what you heard.”
“But I haven’t seen him.” Her voice wavered, wanting it to be Stan, but still afraid it was an intruder. “One person making such noise?” Slowly, she shook her head.
“He had his group with him. Haven’t you heard them overhead before? They’re a weird jazz bunch.”
Worry bit into her brow, making tiny crevices. “That’s music, Mr. Jury. This wasn’t music.”
“Music? Sometimes I think when they get going they make sounds like falling furniture.” Jury laughed. Ha Ha Ha.
“I’ll have to speak to Carole-anne.”
She wasn’t giving up on the Carole-anne and her friends idea. He had to get her off that tack. If she told Carole-anne about the noise, Carole-anne would suss it out in five seconds and be livid. Livid. She hated the idea of Jury’s looking at other women. Livid and heartbroken, she wouldn’t speak to him ever again for the rest of their natural lives together.
“Listen, Mrs. Wasserman, don’t say anything to Carole-anne. Let me take care of that. I’m a detective, after all. I have ways of getting information.” He winked. Her answering smile was small and weak. “But I’m sure it’s not an intruder. Probably Stan came back and he and Stone had a tussle on the floor. You know how much he loves that dog.” In the circumstances, that hadn’t come out very well.
But Mrs. Wasserman seemed appeased. “Well…you’re probably right, Mr. Jury. But if you see him, tell him to stop by and say hello.”
“I will.”
“Sorry to bother you.” She turned toward the stairs.
“No bother at all, Mrs. Wasserman.”
Jury turned and shut the door, congratulating himself on the way he’d handled that, including his brilliant solution, and went whistling back to the kitchen and the kettle.
On his way he looked around the living room at the overturned chair and small side table, the newspapers and magazines that had spilled from the upset coffee table and lay strewn across the rug, the rug itself scudded into little waves, pillows, books—and why were the desk drawers pulled out of their sockets?
Are you fucking insane?
TEN
In St. James’s Church, a woman was arranging flowers, pink peonies and blue hydrangeas, in a large vase near the altar. He walked down the nave to where she stood, holding a peony as if debating where to put it. “Very pretty,” he said, not knowing why he was commenting and startling her in the bargain.
“Oh!”
“Sorry, I was looking for whoever’s in charge. Actually, I don’t know this priest, but—” He described the man who had bumped into him last night. “Fairly young, a little shorter than I, maybe six feet. In his thirties, perhaps?”
She laughed. “Oh, no. I think what you’d be wanting isn’t St. James’s. It’s Our Most Holy Redeemer. But I don’t know the name of the priest there. I think the present one might be there just temporarily. Anyway, you want to go to Exmouth Market.”
“I’m not sure where that is.”
“You just go back out to Clerkenwell Close, you’ll pass Northampton Road, then round to Exmouth Market. It’s a lively place. You can’t miss
it.”
Jury thanked her and left.
Exmouth Market was a sudden eruption of restaurants and coffeehouses and cafés that probably hadn’t been there yesterday. Another trendy little area.
The Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer was located among these bristling little businesses. It was surprising in its architecture, more in the Italian Renaissance style. Or so he guessed from its gabled front, reminiscent of a basilica’s. At least he thought so, knowing little about architecture, especially church architecture.
Inside, it was even more Italianate. Above him was a lovely vaulted ceiling that featured in one of the many cards and pictures Marshall Trueblood had brought back from Florence. It would be no use asking Melrose Plant; all he brought back were gloves. His only interest appeared to be the glove store. Jury kept his eyes trained upward. Who was the famous, very famous, dome builder?
“Brunelleschi,” said a mind reader at his elbow.
Jury whipped around and looked into the face of the man who had passed him in Jerusalem Passage. He had seen him only in half light and for only a couple of seconds, but he was the man who had run into Phyllis the night before.
“Oh. Brunelleschi’s dome; now I remember.”
“This church is modeled on Santo Spirito. Florence. Have you been there?”
Jury smiled. “No. Friends have.”
The priest looked up. “It’s a copy. Or rather I should say it’s based on that ceiling.”
“Is Holy Redeemer your church, then?”
“Mine? Oh, no. I’m more or less pinch-hitting for a few months.”
He seemed quite young. But Jury thought that might simply be the agelessness of faith or, possibly, art. Of where they stood, both looking up at the Brunelleschi-inspired ceiling. Jury found himself suddenly very tired. The deep restfulness of the church seemed to enrobe him. The air seemed to be thinning.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” said the priest. “You’re visiting? Traveling?”
Jury smiled at that. “I wish I were. No, I live in Islington.”
“I’m Father Martin. I get the impression you’re here for something other than our ceiling.”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
The priest cocked his head. “No. We’ve met?”
Jury realized he hadn’t produced his ID and fished it out. “Sorry. I’m from New Scotland Yard.”
Father Martin looked astonished, as if he wondered what old crime had caught up with him.
“We haven’t really met. You bumped into us last night near the Zetter. That narrow passage—?”
“Of course. I think you were with someone…a woman. I’m sorry. But then I don’t expect you came here for an apology.”
“Right. You probably know there’s been a man murdered at the Zetter. That sort of news travels fast.”
Father Martin’s expression underwent a series of changes, none of them happy, yet none of them as unhappy as the man last night had worn. “Yes, I did hear about it.”
“His name is—was—Billy Maples. Do you know anything about him?”
The priest studied Jury’s face closely enough to make him uncomfortable. Probably sees right through me.
“I’m not sure, Superintendent. Let me think about it a bit.”
He knew him, thought Jury, but he wasn’t going to press him.
“Of course. I’ll be back. Thank you, Father. In the meantime if you hear anything at all that might be relevant, get in touch right away, will you?” Jury handed him a card.
“Yes, of course,” said the priest, looking at it. “I will.”
“You’ll find him in the kitchen,” said the clerk or concierge, he couldn’t be sure which, in answer to Jury’s request to see Gilbert Snow.
Jury said, “I’d rather not go looking for him in the kitchen; I’d much prefer he come out here. Or perhaps”—Jury looked toward the dining room—“in there?”
She tossed her long hair back from her face, called the kitchen, said to Jury that Gilbert Snow would be right out. She nodded toward an area behind Jury. “Why don’t you wait in the bar? It’s quite comfortable.” She motioned toward an area raised a little above the lobby.
Jury sat down on a well-cushioned couch, thought about getting some water. There was a sort of window that joined the bar and the dining room. He could see waiters and waitresses going about the tables.
Gilbert Snow was prompt in coming. Jury stood up and shook his hand, then asked him to sit down.
Jury said, “You’ve been working here for a while, have you?”
“Yes, sir. Been here since it opened. That weren’t long ago. It’s quite new. I was one o’ the first to be taken on.”
“Before that, had you been in hotel work?”
“Oh no, sir, no. I was one o’ them worked the barges from the Isle o’ Dogs down to Gravesend. Then all this buildin’ started up, with all them warehouses turned into flats, or lofts, I believe that’s what they call ’em. Bit fancy. I mean, the Isle o’ Dogs, it’s but a bedroom community now. Clerkenwell, you remember what Clerkenwell was? It’s not been but a few years; it’s not decades we’re talkin’ about, no sir, just a matter of a few years.” Gilbert leaned closer, elbow on the little table, as if about to impart confidences. “Soon it’ll be Spitalfields that’ll go the way of Covent Garden. I mean London was goin’ along fine in its old ways, then people decide they got to have their lofts and garages and water views.” He flapped his hand in dismissal of Thames views. “I used to like us, I did. I liked how we could do with less. Not like America. Can you imagine an American doin’ without her dishwasher? She’d be sunk.”
Jury said, “There’s a lot of America that does make do with less, a lot less. We don’t hear about it, though. The old coal-mining towns stripped bare. The Appalachians, parts of the Midwest. You know what I think is wrong with America?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“It’s just too big. It’s too bloody big.”
Gilbert nodded. “I think you just might be right, there, I do indeed. It’s so big not even half of it knows what’s going on in the other half.”
Jury nodded and said, “To go back to Mr. Maples. Had you ever seen him before?”
“Once when he was a guest here before.”
“So you recognized him?”
Gilbert frowned. “He was out on the patio when I brought the supper up and he came into the room to sign the check and add on to the gratuity. Very generous person.”
“So you’re sure it was Maples.”
“Well, yes, of course. It’d be pretty crazy to think someone else comes in and shoots him, then orders dinner and pretends to be him and then just leaves? That’d be a peculiar thing to do.”
Jury smiled. “You’d be surprised what these villains can get up to.”
Gilbert shook his head. “Well, that’s your job, then, sir. I wouldn’t fancy it myself.”
Jury smiled. “Yes, that’s my job, unfortunately.”
ELEVEN
Waterloo Bridge lay under a dense fog when Jury parked his car on the Victoria Embankment an hour later. It was one of those pea soupers people liked to talk about, back when they called London the Smoke.
The area beneath the bridge was used as a sort of encampment and shelter for a dozen or so of the ill-fated men and women who, during the day, begged for their supper or investigated dustbins.
They all knew one another from camping here over a long period of time. They were by way of being mates, a family almost. Seldom were they all here at any one time during the night; usually it was only four or six of them.
Jury thought it was remarkable the way the police turned a blind eye to these lodging arrangements, but they did, as long as the group was gone—and their chattels with them—during the day. At night, they were left alone, out of sight, out of mind.
Benny Keegan was one of them.
“Wot? You’ve come again?” said Mags, then sang, “Lookin’ better than anyone has a right to—”
<
br /> Jury laughed. It would’ve sounded like that Dolly Parton favorite had there been any possibility of mistaking Mags for Dolly. Mags sat in a huddle of shawls and scarves, looking up at Jury.
She went on: “That’s like t’ree times in the last mumph you been here. Things must be tough if they let you lot off to cruise under the bridges. What’s a matter? You ain’t meetin’ yer quota so you gotta come here and shake down us law-abidin’ citizens?”
“Don’t be so hard on the Filth, Mags. It’s them that let you doss down here. Where’s Benny?”
Serious now, she lowered her voice. “That was tur’ble, wot happened. And our Benny bein’ t’one to find the body!”
Jury had picked up a magazine from one of the piles around her. That was how she’d gotten her nickname. “So where is he?”
“Prob’ly along there—” She raised an arm and pointed down the length of the Embankment.
A fire was going strong in an oil drum, blazing up in the hollow-cheekboned face of a tall man in a long dark coat whom they called the sergeant. He had put himself in charge of keeping the place drug free, though not, of course, drink free, which would be expecting entirely too much. He liked his nip now and then. He had also taken on the responsibility of seeing that the others cleared out during the day.
“You can ’ave that one.” She nodded at the ancient copy of Playboy. “Look like you could use it, you not ’avin’ anything like a love life.”
“I’ve got you, Mags.”
“You got that centerfold is wot you got.”
“Better than nothing.”
“Better’n somfing, ya mean. Just look at the size of ’er!”
“Mr. Jury!” he heard Benny call, followed by a bark. Sparky.
“Hullo, Benny. I need to talk to you. ’lo, Sparky.” Jury knelt to give Sparky a good head rub. The rougher, the better Sparky liked it.
The three went over to sit on the stone steps that led from the Embankment down to the river.
Dust Page 6
