The Marx Sisters bak-1

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Let him try, Kathy,’ he snorted. ‘Just let him try.’ He waved and pushed the outer door open against the bitter wind.

  27

  Spared the necessity of having to go to work, most of London had decided to stay at home rather than risk the icy conditions outside. The route to the suburban crematorium was deserted and Kathy, arriving early, found herself alone in the car park. She chose the same spot where she and Brock had parked the previous September, with its good view of the entrance to the chapel. She had his Polaroid camera, and when people began to arrive, took pictures of them entering the building. But there were so many of them that she soon realized that she wouldn’t have enough film. Moreover, they were all wrapped up heavily in coats and hats and scarves against the cold, and after a while she gave up what seemed like a pointless exercise.

  She found Eleanor’s funeral an unsettling experience. The crematorium chapel, with its emasculated, ecumenicized forms of liturgical architecture, its medievalmodernist pews, lectern and stained glass, seemed an incongruous setting for the rendering of the Internationale which opened the service. The congregation seemed illtempered, forming knots and factions of elderly men and women who pointedly avoided looking at each other, on ideological grounds perhaps, or for more personal reasons, and who obviously resented being crushed together. In the front pew Terry Winter sat sullenly on one side of Peg, his wife and two daughters, wearing brave expressions, on the other. Mrs Rosenfeldt, who had closed her new enterprise for the afternoon, was a spectral figure among a pack of mourners at the rear. Only Peg’s preference for the colour red in all its shades lent some warmth and unity to the proceedings-the scarlet drape over the coffin, the two vases of red roses on each side of it and on Peg herself the same bright outfit she had worn to Meredith’s funeral six months before.

  An elderly man, stooping like a black stork over his notes, gave a brief tribute to Eleanor’s work for the socialist cause. Peg then took his place at the lectern and thanked all those who had come to pay their last respects to her sister, as well as to those who had written. They would, she said, with an affecting sob, be glad to know that, despite all the changes to the street where they had lived happily for so many years, her sister would find her last resting place there, as she would have wished-indeed on the very spot where their great-grandfather had once lived and their grandfather had been born. The new owners of Jerusalem Lane had kindly arranged that Eleanor’s ashes would, together with a few of her most precious possessions, be placed that very evening in a specially prepared casket and sealed into the foundations of the new building. A plaque in the foyer would record these circumstances.

  Kathy was as baffled by this announcement as were obviously the rest of the gathering, through whom a ripple of uncertain applause briefly passed.

  For all that, Kathy felt her tear ducts sting as everyone rose at the end and sang Jerusalem to wish farewell to the departing casket.

  Outside she stood alone for a while, uncertain why she had come. She stamped her feet, her breath forming trails of steam in the still cold air. Already it was almost dark. She thought of Brock and his friends on the North Downs, rugged up in their Range Rovers, no doubt, or red Mercedes sports, drinking hot coffee spliced with whisky, and his sensible admonition to her to have fun. Easier said than done, she repeated to herself, feeling her spirits sink miserably towards her frozen feet.

  Her gloom was interrupted by a hoarsely cheerful Scottish accent.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant. Was that not grand? There’s nothing like the Red Flag and a few verses of Jerusalem tae stir the blood. Even if neither of them was written by a Scotsman.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Finn. I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  ‘Och aye, lassie. Peg asked me tae come along. Do ye know Mr Jones here?’

  ‘Yes. Hello, Bob.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Bob, is it? Did you know that this laddie once accused me of bein’ a member of the middle classes? Can ye credit that?’

  ‘Shocking.’ Kathy smiled at Bob.

  ‘Well’-Finn rubbed his hands together and stamped his feet-‘I’ve always maintained that the real point of a funeral is the wee dram at the end, tae restore the spirits of the living, but I think Peg’ll be tied up with her friends, so I suggest we retire tae the pub I saw up the road before we get frozen tae the spot.’

  Bob nodded his head vigorously. ‘I knew we could rely on you for a really sensible suggestion, Danny. Kathy?’

  ‘Why not.’

  She returned to her car and was about to start the engine when she heard a tapping at the passenger window. She looked across and her heart lurched to see Martin Connell’s face through the glass. She stared stupidly at him for a moment until he banged impatiently on the door again, and she leaned across and opened it.

  ‘Could freeze to death out there,’ he complained as he got in quickly and slammed the door. He was wearing a black coat, black leather gloves, gleaming white shirt and an expensive silk tie that Kathy thought just a little flashy for a funeral. He turned to face her, and gave her one of his big, warm, charming smiles, his eyes travelling speculatively over her features.

  ‘You’re looking good, Kathy. Really good.’

  ‘What do you want, Martin?’ She heard her voice unnaturally flat, and resented him for it. Even my voice isn’t my own when he’s around, she thought to herself.

  He smiled and didn’t answer straight away, as if he would first read everything that was going through her mind. Just another bloody lawyer’s trick.

  ‘Well, I wanted to see you, speak to you again. It’s been a long time.’

  The words weren’t important, it was only necessary to use the voice, so confident, so sonorous, to bring to life the well-remembered style, the warm, easy, habit-forming styles as addictive as a drug, which she had allowed to soak deep into herself through long susceptible hours on the phone, in the dark, in whispers and in parked cars just like this.

  ‘No, Martin. I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing to say.’

  He leaned across to her, uncomfortably close in the intimacy of the car, his left arm stretched out with his black gloved fist on her steering wheel.

  ‘We’re working on the same case, Kathy. We’re bound to see each other.’ His voice was intimate, patient, amused. ‘We could help each other. One way or another.’

  She took a deep breath, glad to feel angry now. ‘Clear off, Martin. Just clear off. Find someone else to try it on.’

  He drew back with a little smile. A tactical withdrawal. Try a different tack. ‘You lot are making a hash of this one, Kathy.’

  There was something in his voice which chilled her suddenly. The grown-up was telling the child how reality was going to strike her down if she didn’t do what was required.

  ‘That Sergeant Gurney, for instance. Left himself wide open, walking into my chap’s office like that, and rifling his files, without a warrant. The girl says he pushed her aside, rather brutally actually. He doesn’t know how much trouble he’s in. And it’ll reflect on Brock, of course.’

  Kathy clenched her jaw, getting her anger under control.

  ‘Does Lynne know where you are today?’ She got some little satisfaction from seeing him blink at the mention of his wife. ‘In fact, it only occurred to me the other day, that I never really knew for sure if she knew about us. Did she know, Martin? Did she know that she was the second choice for the trip to Grenada?’

  Connell stared at her for a while, his lips pressed tight together, then abruptly turned away and yanked open the car door. A flurry of snow sprayed into the car as he got out. Just before he slammed the door closed again, he stuck his head back in and hissed, ‘You are the hardest bitch I ever screwed, you know that?’

  Kathy leaned over and banged the lock down on the door. Several small flakes of snow lay on the passenger seat, melting in the warmth he had left there. She gripped the steering wheel, and began to shake.

  In the snug of The Crooked Billet, Danny brought them their drinks,
brandy for Kathy and Scotch for Bob and himself. He raised his glass.

  ‘Tae absent friends.’ For a moment they were quiet, savouring the heat of the spirits slipping down inside. Kathy took a deep breath, willing Connell out of her mind.

  ‘Well,’ Danny said, licking his lips, ‘Peg will be moving out at the end of the week.’

  ‘What!’ Kathy stared at him. ‘Is that what her announcement about Eleanor’s ashes was all about?’

  Danny Finn smirked. ‘Aye. It just needed the right negotiator tae make everybody happy. The trouble with most people who try tae get their own way is that they don’t bother tae listen tae what the other party wants. Well, I was a shop steward for a while, and I learnt that the first priority in any negotiation is tae understand what the other man really wants-which may not be what he says he wants.’

  ‘What did Peg really want, then?’ Kathy asked sceptically.

  ‘She wanted tae do the right thing by her sister Eleanor. She didn’t really want tae stay any more in Jerusalem Lane, but she didn’t want tae let down her sister. It was Eleanor, ye see, who first brought them all tae the Lane, on account of their great-grandad Karl Marx having lived there, and their grandad, Freddy Demuth, being born there. It’s a fascinatin’ story. Anyhow, we eventually came to an answer.’

  ‘You conned her, you mean.’

  ‘Don’t be so suspicious, lassie.’ Danny looked hurt. ‘I’m not trying tae rob the old dear. The answer we came tae was this, that Eleanor can stay in Jerusalem Lane, in perpetuity, and Peg can go tae a lovely wee modern apartment that’s just been completed in a refurbishment job we’ve done up in Highgate, not a stone’s throw from great-grandaddy’s final resting place in Highgate Cemetery, which she likes tae visit every Sunday afternoon.

  ‘Well, Eleanor’s stay maybe won’t be in perpetuity,’ he added. ‘I did explain tae Peg that the kind of things we’re building now will almost certainly be obsolete and ready for redevelopment in twenty or thirty years, anyway, but she wasn’t worried about that. In fact she seemed rather taken with that idea.’

  ‘What about her rent?’

  ‘Hen, she’s seventy-two and not that strong. We’ll work something out in the purchase price of number 22 with Terry Winter, so she doesn’t have tae worry.’

  ‘You’re a cunning old bugger, Finn,’ Bob laughed. ‘Anyway, I’m glad she’s going. Jerusalem Lane is no place for her now. What exactly is she going to do with Eleanor’s remains, then?’

  ‘Well, I had the contractor’s joinery shop make up a nice wee oak chest tae her specification, two feet by two feet by one foot six, and into that she’ll put the ashes and so on, and this evening she and I and a couple of the contractor’s men will lay it tae rest precisely under the spot where number 3 Jerusalem Lane used tae stand, and which just happens tae be the position for the main lift core of tower A, on which the big concrete pours start in the mornin’. The timing was perfect, ye see.’

  Kathy and Bob lingered in the pub after Danny left, reluctant to exchange its warmth for the freezing night outside.

  ‘Why did you come to the funeral, anyway, Bob?’ she asked.

  ‘In the hope of seeing you,’ he said with a lopsided leer.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she said, glumly drawing patterns with her finger on the table top.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Try that stupid patter on me.’

  ‘Oh.’ He rocked back in his seat and blinked. ‘Sorry.’

  She gave a little frown. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I like you, when you’re being yourself. But you’re hopeless at chatting up women.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right. Always have been. And I haven’t had much practice for a long, long time. Apart from a disastrous attempt on Judith Naismith.’

  ‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘your patter would have had to be miraculous to have got you anywhere with her.’

  ‘The stupid thing is, I meant it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About coming here in the hope of seeing you.’

  ‘It’s not a very good time…’ And then, seeing him blush and begin to stutter, she added, ‘I mean that I’m sort of preoccupied at the moment with this bloody case. But I wouldn’t mind something to eat. Why don’t we go somewhere?’

  They found a Thai place which had recently opened. Kathy ploughed hungrily into the peppery tom yum soup. When she finally lifted her head, she saw Bob staring thoughtfully at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, you look like someone who’s stuck at the end of stage one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The French mathematician Poincare said that there are four stages to the creative process. First is the gathering and absorbing of the data. I don’t just mean finding out the facts and making lists, but actually getting your brain to soak the information up and get a feel for it. Towards the end of this stage you’re trying to make sense of it-in Poincare’s case trying to devise a theorem, I suppose, for me trying to get a design concept for a building, and for you reconstructing the murder. But the solution is very elusive. You just can’t get an answer that feels right. And you get to look like you look now.’

  Kathy smiled. ‘Go on.’

  ‘OK. So you put it out of your mind. You go out to the movies, or go for a run, or get drunk, or whatever. You let your brain get on with it in its own time, and you stop trying to worry the problem to death. This is stage two, the mulling stage.

  ‘Then, one night you wake up with a start at three o’clock in the morning with the answer staring you in the face. Or maybe it hits you in the bath, like Archimedes, or while you’re on the loo. This is the eureka stage, stage three, and it’s wonderful, pure euphoria. You can’t understand why you couldn’t see it before, it’s so obvious, and so beautiful. That’s the important thing, the answer doesn’t just work, it’s also elegant and economical and beautiful.

  ‘At least,’ he smiled shyly, ‘that’s how it can be, when you’re very lucky.’

  Kathy nodded. ‘Brock was trying to tell me to relax this weekend and put it out of my mind. Maybe that’s what he meant. He went off gliding or something. Maybe he’s decided to move on to stage two. This isn’t another of your silly chat up lines, is it, Bob?’ she said suddenly. ‘To persuade me the only way I can progress this case is by forgetting all about it and going out and getting drunk with you or something?’

  ‘Good heavens.’ He looked at her, wide-eyed with innocence. ‘I never thought of that. What a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Anyway, you didn’t say what stage four was.’

  ‘Ah yes. Very important. Architects sometimes forget it. Stage four is checking that your brainwave really does work, and isn’t some seductive chimera that doesn’t quite fit.’

  ‘Well, look,’ Kathy said. ‘This is what we’ll do. If stage three strikes, we’ll go out and get wonderfully drunk together. A deal?’

  Then she added, ‘Provided you don’t turn out to be the killer, that is.’

  Bob dropped a forkful of masman curry down the front of his trousers. ‘A deal,’ he said.

  28

  Kathy insisted on saying goodnight to Bob at the restaurant, then drove back to Jerusalem Lane. The whole block was in darkness, silent. Ice crystals crackled under her feet as she walked down the deserted Lane to the incident centre. It was locked, abandoned for the night, and she used her key to open the front door, fumbling in the blackness for a light switch inside.

  The sense of emptiness, of the absence of Brock and Gurney and their teams, pervaded the building, bringing back the feelings of loss and despair which she had felt at Eleanor’s funeral. Unprofessional feelings, she felt, a sign of personal involvement which was dangerous. Underlying them was the sense of the intimate presence of death, of Meredith’s death, and Eleanor’s, of the death of Jerusalem Lane, and, deeper still, of the other deaths, more distant and less easily acknowledged, of her father and her mother. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she went home, so
she went upstairs and turned on the heater, pulling off her hat and gloves, unwinding the scarf around her neck, and opening the front of her coat.

  Slowly, with the rising temperature of the room, her mind began to focus on the case again. Her eyes travelled once more over the ugly colour photographs on the wall, the white board, the sheaves of notes and typed pages on the table.

  Out of her coat pocket she pulled the Polaroid photographs she had taken at the crematorium, a dozen of them, and spread them across the table. As she’d suspected, they weren’t very clear. She recognized a few people she had noticed at the time, and saw several more she hadn’t.

  Among these was a tall slender woman in a headscarf and dark glasses who might conceivably have been Judith Naismith. It occurred to Kathy that most of the potential suspects for the murder of Eleanor Harper had been at her funeral, and she recalled Martin Connell’s gibe that they were making a hash of the case. The thought of their conversation made her throat tighten and brought on the shakes again. She was shocked to find that he could still affect her this way, and she tried systematically, calmly, to trace the source of her reaction. It wasn’t just his betrayal of her over North. That had made her angry, but what she felt now wasn’t predominantly anger. It was fear. She took a deep breath and forced herself to continue the line of thought.

  What is the source of the fear?

  It was his manipulation of her which made her afraid.

  Why does that make me afraid?

  And so she continued, an interior, silent interrogation, knowing always where it must lead, and pressing on until she had admitted the answer to herself, as she had been taught she should. For within Kathy there still lived a young girl, unresolved, unassimilated, misused, still haunted by a dark figure, a man as powerful, as cold, as manipulative as Martin Connell. And the fear was not just the fear of him, but also of the possibility of her own failure to survive without him.